175 | Becoming a Catalyst for Strategic Transformation with Juan Riboldi
Our guest today on the pod is Juan Riboldi. For over 20 years, Juan has been advising innovative leaders of progressive companies on strategic decisions to achieve breakthrough results. He's the founder of 3 successful startups, an executive advisor to top company leaders, an author and speaker and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Juan Riboldi Awarepreneurs Interview
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Juan Riboldi
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs Podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection, someone who has market tested experience, and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's guest and our topic, I have one request. If you could go over to iTunes, or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a rating and review, it helps tremendously. Thank you so much for considering. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Juan Riboldi. And our topic today is Becoming Catalyst for Strategic Transformation. For over 20 years, one has been advising innovative leaders of progressive companies on strategic decisions to achieve breakthrough results. He's the founder of three successful startups, an executive advisor, for top company leaders, an author and a speaker, and a member of the Forbes Coaches Council. One Welcome to the show. Thanks, Paul. It's a real honor to share with you today. I'm just really excited to like get into transformation and really granular way that word gets thrown around a lot. But I like how you use it in a very precise and very grounded, right. So I'm super excited about this conversation. But before we get there on Talk to us a little bit were called to wear printers. And one of the ways we like to get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness, or a resiliency practice that you personally use to bring your best self to this work day after day, week after week. Excellent. So one of the things that has brought the most peace and focus to my life over the last several months, has been a practice of meditation. And in a very specific way, I have set aside a consistent time of my super busy crazy day to go out into plays for I could be communing with nature. And just meditate and express gratitude for what I see just around me. I mean, the sunshine, the blue skies, you know, the, the landscape around and all that. And before COVID I found myself always catching late flights on airports and being in taxis trying to fight traffic and, and I was wishing that I had these time to do these meditation on a regular basis. And sometimes I could do it from my hotel room, but it wasn't very consistent. And, and since covered, I thought you know, I don't have any more, the need to be fighting the traffic and the flights and all that. So every day, about 6pm I just go off for a little walk out in nature near where I live. And I have a regular spot where I just stop and contemplate meditate, I express gratitude for everything in my life. And it's amazing how happy I feel and how much peace I gained from from that simple daily practice and is now to the point that I always I miss it a day or two, I really feel the difference. You and I are both blessed to live in really beautiful places. And I think you know you live up in Utah and New Mexico and just our nature is like it's almost like a another friend or another spiritual brother in my life. Right spiritual sister in my life. I I kind of think we share a little bit of a flavor of relationship with where we live, because you've talked about it's so fun. Yeah.
Juan Riboldi 03:51
Yeah, absolutely.
Paul Zelizer 03:53
So you grew up in Argentina on and and that certainly has influenced your worldview and kind of like it'd be hard for a listener who was trying to understand like who you are and how you got to this work to not understand where you come from. Tell us a little bit about growing up in Argentina. And how does that impact kind of how you approach this work that you do now?
Juan Riboldi 04:14
That's great. So growing up in Argentina, I felt that I was just an ordinary kid going through the regular routine that most kids go through high school, start college, do some sports. But in the backdrop of all that there was something going on that, for me had become so much part of the everyday experience that I didn't. I didn't realize how much it was influencing me. So for 12 years, starting when I was 12 years old, the country entered into military dictatorship period. And I remember distinctively the day it happened I was still in elementary school or transition turning into high school. And I remember the teacher saying that this was a good thing for us because it was going to help us and stay safe and secure and have more law and order. In a country that was feeling, getting a little bit out of control. And the things are getting into a lot of social tensions and all that. And you know, I said, As a kid, you're hearing your teachers say that you assume that it's all for the better. We try to follow all these guidelines, but very quickly, these direction of things became more and more controlling, and more and more oppressive. There were many curfews, and we started in general, as citizens in Argentina feeling maybe greater and justice, greater oppression, greater government influence in every aspect of our lives, to the point that there were curfews into family gatherings, which for Argentine society, that's the lifeblood of what keeps people together. And then there were suppression of in the media and information. And to the point that there were starting to take people out, basically, that were suspects of being revolutionaries, essentially people that were concerned about what's going on, and they didn't feel good about what the government was doing. And in the middle of all that turmoil, I was by that time, probably 17 or so I find myself one time going to a movie thinking it was just a regular movie. And it was a movie that secretly was blacklisted as a bait, to get people that were supposedly having, you know, critical feelings about the government. So through that, you know, watching that movie, all the sign everyone that was there in that cinema was arrested, thrown in jail, and at a time that there were no records about why you came to jail. And you had to justify your innocence. Through a very, very serious interrogation process. The interrogation process still, I remember distinctively was, you know, something, how you think how to the movie, now that you have two lights facing out you you cannot see your interviewers, they're asking you a lot of trick questions with a lot of emotional triggers to to confess that you did something or you have some negative feelings towards the government. Even a small confession would be the end of my my days, probably. And fortunately, I was eventually let go. And, you know, rather than feeling afraid, I feel actually even more a stronger sense of doing something for social justice or for improving the condition of my country. Fortunately, in the next, you know, the following three years after that the country moved towards democracy, that was a very difficult and dramatic process to to claim a return back to elections. So that was way back, you know, several decades ago now.
Paul Zelizer 08:12
I mean, you're not 17 anymore.
Juan Riboldi 08:19
When I came to America, I came with that in my background without knowing I was carrying that this was pretty much the backdrop of, of your life. And then I came to America and I saw the opportunity, I saw a much better system, I saw something that I felt would allow me to grow and progress. And I committed myself to working in the area of organizational change and leadership development to hub companies and organizations find these better, more effective ways of working together, both in the corporate level startup level, non for profits, government, all of that.
Paul Zelizer 09:00
That’s a beautiful and powerful story, I was joking before, but like, I'm sorry, you had to go through. We wouldn't want that for any 17 year old person. I don't want that for any young, anybody on planet Earth, but especially how terrifying as a young person to get, you know, you're just sort of trying to figure out who you are and having to go through that. Sorry, you had to go through. So that kind of fueled this passion or this mission or this conviction. I'm not sure quite how you grew, but something really powerful like, Alright, I'm gonna go step into we're humans gathering either gathering organizations a lot, and yeah, like, how did you get started in that work?
Juan Riboldi 09:44
So when I came to the United States, I had a scholarship to complete my degree in engineering. And I still didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I went through a couple of different major transitions as far as like, you know, college degrees. And then I ran into these emphasis for master's in organizational behavior. And that makes sociology with business and psychology and intrapreneurship. And all of a sudden, I found something that I resonated with, I felt like I could really commit to doing this the rest of my life. And I was fortunate enough to have an internship working for IBM, big corporation in New York, in the internal consulting role, right at the time that IBM was going through a massive change, they have missed some cues on the computer market. And they were literally moving out of selling laptops and personal computers and start moving into consulting services. I remember, well, I grew up like 10 minutes, 15 minutes down the road from my world headquarters. It was a really turbulent time such a turbulent time. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So I was there, I was there. And I was experiencing as a business analyst. what it was like to facilitate a large scale change for that time was like 165,000 employees that needed to pivot very quickly from what they were doing to a whole new line of work, and figuring out how to be competitive, how to create opportunities for customers, employees, and the company. And I thought that was a very wonderful experience compared to the the challenges that I've seen in Argentina trying to move to a more egalitarian, more representative form of government. And, and this, on contrast, was a process of inclusion of representation of collaboration of no feedback and an open information. So I thought, wow, if we could, we could use the same tools to address some of the challenges that we face in, in the world at large today, we can not only prosper, but live better lives. So that's where my passion for this type of work started. So you have this experience in a very large organization going through very rapid change. And then somewhere along the way, he's decided, Well, I think I want to start my own thing, talk to us. you've launched three businesses now, like what was the first. So after five years working for IBM, I realized that while I loved what I was doing, I thought I needed a little bit more autonomy than working inside a large corporation, I saw myself as doing more than, than holding to a job and moving up the career ladder. So one weekend, my wife encouraged me to just take the whole weekend off and just envision where I wanted to go 10 years down the road. So I literally went with paper pad and spend, literally a couple of days out out in the woods, meditating, and visioning, visualizing the future. And at that point, I came up with an idea for the first business that I launch. I tried to launch it, as soon as I left IBM, and I realized that I didn't have all the necessary skill set. So I ended up taking a job with a startup consulting firm at the time, back here in Utah. And I then set the date to start that first business called decision wise. And the idea was to provide information to help executives made more informed decisions using a lot of customer and employee feedback. Back in those days, the internet was brand new. So doing all these online was a new technology new approach. And that business grew very rapidly - it was a transformation in business.. So it was a very successful startup from the get go. So our listeners, if you've been listening for a while, you've heard me joke about my spiritual highlighter, I want to pull out my spiritual highlighter and something you just said, one I really want our listeners to note. And that is you talked about when you're getting ready, and you're feeling like it was time to start something you spent some time envisioning. This is very fresh in my mind, we're actually going to be doing for the aware printers community event called envision 2021 was literally spending a good portion of my morning like this kind of how are we going to help our community we have like over 300 members in the WordPress membership community? How are we going to help our leaders you know, envision in 2021 because such a chaotic time 2020 has been so chaotic in 2021 could be also chaotic. How do you envision in this time so it's so I just want to circle like what you said one, how important that is to give yourself a little space when you're launching something new to do some envisioning and don't just like go from like one thing to another but that space to dream and be creative and get some things down on paper.
Paul Zelizer 15:00
I can't, like say how much of a fan I am and how much I hear that we're now at. We just published Episode 170. Yesterday, and that, that theme of taking a little time to envision and make it yours don't use somebody else's processing layered on if it doesn't fit. But many folks that have done well in those hundred and 70 guests, that's a through line that I'm hearing over and over again. So thank you for saying that one, I just want to connect our listeners don't get that once it's some really important there.
Juan Riboldi 15:33
I would, I would definitely highlight that I found that all successful transformations in business start with a very strong vision. And it's not just the vision of the leader is a shared vision. So the leader has to involve many others to be part of creating that collective vision. And then it can be enacted because it takes many people to to bring these things about. So I think is a very powerful thing, that the power of purpose aligns people to something greater than themselves. And that's where the power to shape the future comes. So So I think it's very important to start with vision to make it a shared vision. And sometimes I find that even for me, trying to envisioning the next year is difficult when you get in the context of everything that could potentially happen in the next few months. But if I think beyond that year, if I think, Okay, so what do I want for my life for the next 10 years, then I could reverse engineer maybe what I want to go next year, almost regardless of what exactly happens, you know, because I have even a longer term direction that I'm that I'm heading to. So that would be my quick point on that.
Paul Zelizer 16:54
Another great point, why not get people who really move the needle in terms of having positive impact and build businesses that really do transformation. And I put really, in quotes, I guess it's for each one of us to define, but again, I think that word is tossed around casually, or at least more casually than I wish it were in some of the, you know, more values and, you know, inner and outer mindful conscious business spaces. I love the word transformation. But I think we're a little lazy sometimes and how we talk about transformation in business. And, and the idea of how you know, the people who are using it skillfully and actually, at the end of a decade are at the end of their lives looking back and say, Wow, a lot happened, versus the people who use that word a lot, but are kind of scrambling from day to day, a lot of the the differences like you're saying that longer term, do you have somewhere you're trying to get to at the end of a decade or the end of your life, and the folks who are just going from week to week or month to month and like okay, check, I did everything I need to do to like keep food in the refrigerator this month, they might talk about transformation a lot. But at the end of a decade, sometimes it doesn't seem like that much has changed in terms of what they see the impact they say they want to have. So again, just a highlighter thing. Notice what one saying he's given some really good advice, and we haven't even really asked him for advice. Yeah. That's the kind of guy thanks, one, just just timeframes like decision wise, like when did that launch just to give our listeners kind of a sense of chronology.
Juan Riboldi 18:31
So decision why this isn't the decision wise was founded in 1997. So a long time ago, I let it for 10 years. And then at that point, my partner wanted to buy me out basically, and continue to run it. And I was at a transition point to in my life that I wanted to move to the next phase of my career, I have been doing this type of informing executives with employee and customer feedback. And I wanted to move more in the area of strategy and organizational change, which is what I'm doing today. So I thought that the opportunity was right to make these transition. And at that point, I sold decisionwise, to my partner, he still runs a company very successfully. And then I went on to write a book, which took a lot longer than I thought he would actually because I had to really understand what I was writing about and do some real research. But when I came up with that book in 2010 2009, I launched ascent advisor that is the consultancy that I that I have today. And the focus was to help companies go to the next level to to make these change for the better. And at that time, he was right in the middle of recovery from the world financial crisis. So so the theme was very pertinent to To a lot of companies that at one point they thought they were going up and up, but then things were turning downhill, and they needed to figure out how to recover.
Paul Zelizer 20:10
So talk to us a little bit about this frame strategic transformation, like what does that even mean?
Juan Riboldi 20:17
That's a great question. And for me means, as you pointed out, means something at a very specific level of meaning. So I find that we live in times of accelerated change, the pace of change is not even constant is accelerating, and we see it in every aspect of our lives, starting with technology or access to information, changes in education, changes in economic system, political changes, demographic, social, cultural changes, even climate change. But not all that change is necessarily intentional, or for the better. So I find that a transformation is when someone is intending to make a change for the better to make an actual improvement in the way things are. And to implement that change for the better in an intentional, deliberate way, follows a very specific approach, as opposed to all the other changes that are either random consequences of other people's actions that we are simply impacted by, or even negative consequences of deliberately. Not positive directions for change. So I find transformation in business to be these opportunities to move towards the greater good for all of us.
Paul Zelizer 21:48
I love that definition. And can you give us an example of a listener saying, Okay, that makes sense. But help me kind of like, put my boots on the ground? While I'm like, give me an example of a strategic transformation in business that either you were part of on or just something you respect? Like, yes, that's what I'm talking about.
Juan Riboldi 22:05
Okay. Oh, boy, there's so many I'm trying to do
Paul Zelizer 22:08
You know, more than one is OK too.
Juan Riboldi 22:11
Okay. I will start with a case of entrepreneurial startups, which is a fascinating situation. So in this current economic environment, there's a lot of people that are concerned about how they're going to stay in business, how they're going to just survive, you know, there's so many restrictions, so much uncertainty, the economy is in a very unpredictable terms. And I have the privilege to work with some of the fastest growing companies in the United States. One of them in particular just was ranked number 17. In the Inc 5000. And working closely with them, I find how they are facing the same complex and predictable and uncertain environment that everyone else is facing, and how they're carving a space for them to be relevant, and valuable. And I could give very many examples of specifically what they did. But if I were to summarize the general concepts, I would say goes like this, under the felt need for change, or the realization that we need to do something different, we tend to initially put a red frame around the situation, we tend to frame it as as a threat, or something that is happening to us something that we now have to do. So take for example, all the restrictions around COVID, 90, these particular company was a manufacturing company, producing personal care and cosmetic products. And under the regulations, he was threatened to actually have to send all their employees home and shut down because of their many restrictions were covered. And when you are faced with those type of scenarios, it's very easy to feel, you know, defensive to put these red frame of saying, Oh my gosh, what are we going to do, how we're going to fight this? and all that. And it's important at that time, to recognize that the red frame is informing us that reality is not what we thought. But then we need to create our green frame around the same situation, and reframe the way we look at it and find the opportunity. So in this particular case, this company thought if we get shut down, this is the end, but we're still producing something that is a value to society. And right now, probably the most valuable thing for them would be if we can produce hand sanitizers and if we can redeploy our employees to produce hand sanitizers and there's many first responders around the state that could use these hand sanitizers. So by quickly redeploying their efforts and focusing on these hand sanitizer campaign, they were actually granted essential workplace status. So in other words, they got to keep all their employees working. And on top of that, they put them to work on doing something that other time was seen as very critical. But partner with several institutions around the country, including police, hospitals, and some other health care, manufacturing and distribution entities. And they donated the very first several thousand units that they produce. The interesting thing is that when you're in a situation of need, the last thing you're thinking about is to donate, you know, your products. But this company took that step that generated a lot of goodwill, within the community and environment and open up opportunities to do other business with, with different companies. Through all these, this company found ways to continue to serve customers in a better and stronger way, and has been able to grow significantly, even through these last very challenging months, to the point that they are listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the nation at this point. So I would say, the key point is recognize the what is causing you alarm, you know, concern or fear, even put a red frame around it, and saying, This is my red frame of mind, how can I reframe the situation? If I look at changes and opportunity rather than a threat? What are the opportunities here, and when you start finding opportunities, then you have to create a strategy to capture the opportunities, mobilize all your resources towards those opportunities, and quickly find a way to capitalize on what can come out of that. So that very simple process is a way that all of us can pivot into something that creates value and is relevant in the future.
Paul Zelizer 27:12
What a great story. And I love that I don't think I've ever heard that before Rhonda from a red frame. I do. I'm a neuroscience geek. So I can think of all the neuroscience of what you're playing with there. I think probably intentionally because I know you Although you didn't say a red frame and green frame what a simple but incredibly exquisite way to to give people a tool. Great listeners, pay attention to that practice that you're going to get a lot of value out of that. This also reminds me if somebody wants another example, we did an episode with Zack Hurley, the founder of indie source and very similar story, except for them, it was masks instead of hand sanitizer, there's a sustainable clothing and fashion startup and they had access to a lot of sustainable fabrics. And a lot of us made, you know, they pivoted, they had a whole bunch of fabrics, they had a whole bunch of people who make stuff clothes and medical devices with velcro and all that stuff. And as soon as things hit, they just recognize Wow, this is a big deal could have major implications on the fashion industry. And it has, because people aren't going to work. We're not traveling, they got that really quick and started churning out masks and did a buy one get one like very quickly way ahead of the curve. And they're growing extremely fast. Zachary is a 30 under 30 on several different 30 under 30 list and indie sources blowing up are many people in the fashion industry or they're closing up business for good. So anyway, another example, I'll put a link to the interview is that currently there, but just to give people another sense of what does that mean, and how does that work? So let's do this. I want to take a quick break and hear from our sponsor, we come back on I want to hear how you do this with clients. How do you help people go from that red frame shut down construction to being open and to transformation and very proactive ways? Do you have a business that you are wanting to grow? And you want to do it in authentic ways, and you're not really sure how to do it. If you have an impact business, one of the best things I can suggest is podcasting. Whether you're on the guest side of the mic like Manas today, or I happen to be the host today, podcasting is an incredible opportunity. And let me give you a couple of reasons why. First is the average podcast episode is 43 minutes long. Have you ever tried to like talk about transformation in a deep and nuanced way in a 13 word Instagram meme, so it's not fun, right? Or 12 second video for a Facebook ad right? It's really hard when your company and your idea and you're looking at nuanced layers of sustainability in paying attention to diversity, equity, inclusion and the inner element of mindfulness and being you know, just skillful in your intentionality in the business. All that Ah, it can be so hard. But podcasting, people who listen to podcast love new ideas they expect or at least they're open to a deep dive conversation and exploration. They make more money. And they're early adaptors. They want new ideas. They don't want the same old, same old, fabulous audience. It's an incredible medium. And especially the guesting part, it's free. You just have to find the podcasting. You know, spend some time coming up with a good topic. If you'd like some help thinking about how you can use podcasting, to help your good idea, get out there and impact more people and help you reach your revenue goals. Go check out the podcast success team, that aware partners. You can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody who helped sponsor this podcast through the podcast success team. So one Talk to me a little bit about Alright, does making sense. I'm a listener, I know our listeners pretty well by now hundred and 70 plus episodes, I think they're with us. They're like, Oh, this makes a lot of sense. I like what this guy saying. But like, if I don't yet know how to like, go from this isn't really working. Or actually, I'm actively seeing this as a red frame. This is a threat. And I want to kind of turn it into an opportunity. I want to be proactive, I want to find innovation, I want that strategic transformation. But like I'm not sure how to get there. What would you say to somebody who's in that space?
Juan Riboldi 31:31
That's great. So I have found that to achieve a transformation in business, to truly take an organization of individuals from the current state to another, hopefully better and more desirable state. It's a plan process, you cannot just assume that people are just going to get there. About two years ago, I was brought in by a large corporation that was in the middle of trying to pivot and make a very strategic transformation. And for several years, they have tried to do that by training people just giving them more knowledge and more, more tools and more concepts. And I believe that training and education is wonderful. And I think it's definitely part of the process. But there were concerned that the company had not changed. And they said, No, we've done all these things. We even created these tools for them to use what they were learning in the training and apply it in their work, but they're not using these tools. So what's missing? And what I like to say is that in order to to create these changes, we need to conceptualize several elements. And the first and most important element is to be very clear about what is the value we're trying to create. And again, it seems like starting with why starting again, with vision, but at this point, I would say you need to come up with a goal. A goal is a way to focus people on something that they want to achieve that is meaningful to them. Without a goal. We can try a lot of different things and even learn a lot of different things. And even I could try new tools. But we don't know if we're going to get to anything different than where we are today. So the first and most probably difficult thing for entrepreneurs or business leaders is to say what exactly is the goal and the goal doesn't need to be financial, it could be also social, could be, it could be a goal for a customer could be a goal for a product or an innovation or something better that you want to create. That could also be represented by a financial achievement. But defining that goal is very critical. Because everything else that we're going to do around transforming has to do with achieving a goal. Very quickly to illustrate that, back in the 1960s. I know it's almost history, its history right now. The nation was going through a period of a lot of social turmoil and instability, United States was losing a lot of traction in world leadership. And at that time, president john F. Kennedy surprised the nation with the goal to send a man to the moon and bring him back alive before the decade was over. Well, that was almost
Paul Zelizer 34:29
a moonshot, right. Yeah.
Juan Riboldi 34:36
That's a transformational goal. The point of that is interesting is that sending a man to the moon is very specific. Now he didn't say let's fix the economy. let's address all the educational problems or, or let's say address all the racial tension problems. He said, less listen to the moon and bring him back alive. And he will take the entire nation to do that. You know, and The interesting thing is that in the process of the United States working to achieve that technological miracle, they had to overcome many other social, economic, educational barriers. And there are some movies that have come recently in the anniversary of that of that event, that that really illustrate all the many things that had to be transformed in the process of achieving that great transformation on goal. So I would say that the first thing is for us to be able to have clarity around that. And it probably starts with envisioning, you know, you have to, to do that envisioning and visualization of what what you want to achieve, and then maybe translate that vision into a set of priorities and initiatives, then you need to find the right people to come on board, and create the right structure around those people. So bringing in a lot of really good, smart, talented people is one thing, having them work well together is a lot more complicated. So you need to clarify roles and responsibilities and process. And then you need to engage them in a way that they can work collaboratively and work well together. And last but not least, set a set of metrics or measurements that track performance towards that goal. So while the goal is the desirable outcome, you know, if we were to track, how close are we to send a man to the moon, or launch a rocket into space, that doesn't blow up, that could be a discouraging measure. But we're going to measure whether we created a capsule that can sustain the you know, the winds or the heat that is more measurable and encouraging, you know, progress to performance, so, so is around finding those performance indicators and measuring them. So what I essentially describe is this process of strategy, deployment, execution, and results. And the faster that we can go through those cycles, the faster that we can accelerate the transformation.
Paul Zelizer 37:07
Thanks for sharing that process with us one. One of the things that our listeners really asked me to do is to help unpack how things work as an enterprise. So you just gave us the process of how you work with clients. And thank you so much for that we're going to point some risk resources for listeners who want to learn more, but let's let's get a little granular just like how does one's work? Work? an enterprise right, so so like one thing, you mentioned your book, and you put a lot of time and care into your book, talk to us about the book and what's in it.
Juan Riboldi 37:41
So I wrote this book to capture my work of the last 10 years in strategic transformation. And in the process, as is always happens, you even clarify your own thinking. So the book has been very elucidating, even for me. So I found that many of these things I was doing even 10 years
Paul Zelizer 38:00
ago called One Punch on the list, if I'm a listener only What's this book called?
Juan Riboldi 38:04
So it's called a strategic transformation, how to deliver what matters most. And it's available on Amazon, feel free to get copies, send requests. So back to the the concept of how do I do what I do. So the book is out there. And right now I am literally sending copies of the book to executives, both former clients and current clients, as well as executives, those fast growing companies, or well established companies, or even government leaders that are bringing about transformation for their societies. And he's just a gift copy of this point, personalized with some personal notes for the particular audience. And my sense is to follow up with an offer to have a 30 minute conversation about their goals. So typically, some of these leaders call me back some I call them back, they thank me for the book. And we usually have that 30 minute conversation. And if they're interested in more, I could then have a workshop with their entire executive team, on site or online. So they can learn how to activate this process. for them. Some clients have wanted me to be more in deeply involved. So in some cases, I actually become almost like a permanent play are helping implement these processes for some companies, and I usually work with about two or three clients long term in this capacity.
Paul Zelizer 39:41
So when I hear they're on, I might suggest one way to talk about you providing value before you ask anybody to buy anything. You read this great book, and you send it off to people that are really good fit, you know who your ideal client is, you know, where you can really help and be helped service and you proactively, you don't wait. You're not sitting around twiddling your thumbs, you proactively send this book out. And with some notes or you know, some ideas of what might be relevant to their situation, and then the follow up out of that, pretty good things happen. Is that fair to say?
Juan Riboldi 40:18
It is very fair to say, I think that it really takes a lot sometimes for people to realize that, well, why should I be doing all these work for free. And the part of that I think about, what I'm doing is that I'm never necessarily selling my services, I am already consulting without a contract. So I see myself, the fact that sometimes I'm under contract, and sometimes I'm not, it's just a, you know, a transition point on what I would do anyway. So my goal is to be in contact with the clients that I choose to serve and help them one way or the other, in the ways that they they they see value, and at that point, we enter into a contract relationship.
Paul Zelizer 41:02
It listeners, it doesn't have to be a book, but again, spiritual highlighter here provide value before you ask somebody to hire you. And you can have a whole lot easier time of getting them to hire you. Absolutely. I wrote the book, but this podcast right and I can't tell you how many people who reach out to me and and want to talk about hiring me to play you know, I listen to some episodes of the podcast, and I want to talk to you about something. And just because I have this kind of brain. I'm so glad to hear from you. Can you give me somebody like like, how many episodes Did you listen to? And they might say 15? And I do like hour long episodes right? Here we are. Right? Yeah. 15 hours with me before we've ever talked, write your book, I've read the whole thing. I felt like you know, however long it takes however many hours it takes to read a really nice, meaty, really important book, right with a lot of big ideas. And they spend a lot of time with you want before you ever spent time with you. And then you say, oh, what do you think of the book and you have any questions and work very hard when you put in. So listeners, if you have something you want to grow, think about how you can provide value before you ask anybody to hire you, it's gonna be much easier to have them hire you. Thanks for that Juan.
Juan Riboldi 42:14
I have a very interesting story about that that happened, right, as I was launching a center advisor in the throes of the economic depression, 2000. And then I came up with my first book called The path of ascent. And I was doing something very similar. I was giving it out to executives, business leaders in their community, and then I was hosting seminars, these back then you were live seminars at a hotel room. So I have not only taken the time and expense to write the book, then send the book for free to a lot of customers, and then invite them to a half a day seminar at a hotel. Again, I was paying for that hotel room, and the breakfast. And the interesting thing is that out of you know, we'll have probably 15 people show up to these events. It was amazing how much business came out of that. One of the most, you know, colorful events was that this particular company, it was like, no, we're not going to send anybody we're very busy. We don't have time to do this. And they were really needing these having this type of seminar, because they felt like they couldn't have it. So I call the executor and said, you know, Jim, I believe that you're telling me that you don't need this. But the reality is that you probably needed you you're not sure if it's going to be worth your time. Why don't you come you don't have to pay anything, bring your entire executive team. And if you don't feel value, I'll pay you the cost of the seminar.
Paul Zelizer 43:54
That's bold my friend, not just free to come to the room, but I'll pay you your time.
Juan Riboldi 44:00
And he said, Juan you convinced - me I'm sending my entire executive team and I thought, Oh my gosh, your home is no charge up for everyone's time. So the interesting thing is that the seminar was just half a day and it's for free. And it went so well for these companies that they asked me if they could stay the rest of the day, extended reservation on the conference room and spend the rest of the day just talking about them when the rest of the participants left and and of course out of that came a very successful and very, very lucrative and value contract that represented a huge story of success for me personally as well as for them and and many people from this company that I still remain friends even till today.
Paul Zelizer 44:48
Well done. So so there's the book and then you're talking about another revenue stream your major revenue stream is consulting and working individuals and teams. Talk to us a little bit about the consulting you do
Juan Riboldi 45:00
So for consulting, I do a form of coaching for a group of executives around implementing a strategic transformation process. And that is sometimes at the business level, but sometimes is almost at the personal leadership level. So in some cases, people feel like they have a handle on the business, but they need to make a transformation within themselves and how they lead. So it's a little bit more like a coaching approach. When I coach an entire executive team is around implementing a strategy. And in some cases, some clients asked me to be on retainer, to have the actual implement some critical strategies. And this has been a lot of fun, and probably the most, I would say fulfilling and learning experience because you're not just teaching your concepts, but you're putting them into practice on a daily basis and seeing how they work. refining your your approach, understanding better. So in many cases, I have companies that have a group of change champions, some cats, sometimes there's as many as 15, or 25, change champions that I train on a monthly basis, and also coach individually as well. And in other cases, I work with the company as a catalyst for change within the organization, to work for transformation in business in their company.
Paul Zelizer 46:21
Beautiful. And then on top of all that, your podcaster. My name is Paul and I’m obsessed with podcasting. Talk us about your podcasts, and how does that fit into all the other things that you're doing in your mind?
Juan Riboldi 46:35
Yeah, so when I came up with the book, I thought, I need to find a way to start sharing the stories of these book with people. And knowing the power of podcasting, as you highlight it, I decided to invest in starting my own podcast. And when I decided this, I had no idea what a podcast was, to be honest, my kids that they all listen to podcast all the time. In fact, they get a lot of their education that way, they even pointed to several of their favorite podcasts, I listened to literally listened to about 20 to 25 podcasts over a period of time before I felt confident to even know how to go about doing one myself. And then with the help of of a team that is helping me with the technology side, we've been able to start a podcast and he said way to entry in a conversation with the, the potential reader of this book to the audience, basically, now that you've actually done it, would you recommend it to somebody else, potentially? Absolutely, absolutely. is, is, is a vehicle that helps you connect with the people you want to do business with, as well as enhance your own understanding of that market, you know, because you're talking with the people you want to work with.
Paul Zelizer 47:54
Yeah, like sitting down in a really relational way and having a cup of coffee or drinking a glass of wine, if that's your thing, or having a beer and iced tea. I don't care what the I guess. But like, yeah, you sit down with somebody, but it's scale, right? I was trying to try to try and explain this to a client, but it scales because you put it on the internet unless you do something silly, like not pay your hosting fees, it's there until there is no more internet. And you know, you could work really hard to do a lot of virtual coffees and now that it's COVID, or a lot of face to face coffees back in the old days, and you could never keep up with somebody who's podcasting skillfully, because they have scale at their back and you don't, right, right. Yeah, just, I'm not surprised. You're excited about that? Yeah. Well, I could hang out and talk all day. But I won't do that to you, our audience will put a link to your site and the book and your consulting and the podcast that people can definitely find out more in these really poignant time and doing this work transformation in business. (f you were gonna leave our audience with one thought, an actionable step or just something that you would hope they'd keep in mind about transformation in these times, what would that be?
Juan Riboldi 49:09
So what I would like to to share with that is that yes, we live in times of accelerating change, change is inevitable, but growth, which is the desirable and most positive side of change is optional. And by that, I mean is ultimately a decision that each of us can make. So making the choice to grow through these times. And through the situations that we have to face is ultimately a choice that starts as reframing our current situation into energy and the energy of others and your resources and other resources available in a channeled and unplanned way. So You can make those things happen. I believe that we happen to live in times that the world is transforming. It is changing, for sure. Nobody has any doubt about it. But there are great things that will come out of this. And we just want to be part of that movement on thank you for being on the show today. Thank you. Thanks, Paul, very much. It's been a real pleasure.
Paul Zelizer 50:27
So that's all the time we have for today's interview. Thank you so much for listening. Before we go, I just want to remind you, we do two episodes a week now they drop every Tuesday and Thursday morning. And if you have an idea for a listener, or a guest, we love listener, supported guests and topics, please just go to the Awarepreneurs website, go to our contact page. It has the guidelines we use for who we invite on the show, and pitch us your idea. For now. I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these poignant times. And thank you for everything you're doing to work towards positive impact in our world.
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