BrandsTalk

How to bulletproof your brand w/Dan Goodwin

November 08, 2022 Brigitte Bojkowszky Season 8 Episode 88
BrandsTalk
How to bulletproof your brand w/Dan Goodwin
Show Notes Transcript

interrogation: I’m a stickler💫

In this episode I'm in conversation with Dan Goodwin, Keynote Speaker - Strategic Business Consultant and Advisor - Investigations Specialist - Provocateur of Pattern-Interrupt 

Dan drops all the value bombs on 
💡how we can arm ourselves for interviews to obtain exactly what we want and need to move our businesses forward and what pitfalls to avoid
💡how we can protect our brand from infringement
💡how to deal with the interplay of logical reasoning and intuitive skills
💡how we can bulletproof our personal brand to be our best

Before he was bitten by the Entrepreneur bug, Dan finished 19 years at a Fortune 100 company where he served as a Regional Security Manager.  While there, he conducted internal investigations, including fraud, theft, and human resources issues. After Dan left corporate America, he started several businesses, including security consulting, real estate, coaching, and mentoring. In his current businesses, Dan uses his investigative background to assist business owners and corporate management teams in researching and obtaining information to move their businesses forward. Mainly providing business advisory and consultancy services, primarily for businesses as they prepare for scale-up opportunities.

Get in touch with Dan Goodwin

  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/dgoodwinus/ 
  • www.linkedin.com/in/dgoodwinus 
  • www.cyaconsulting.services   


Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:

Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:

👉 Download Your Entrepreneurial Branding Starter Checklist: https://courses.bridgetbrands.com/f/entrepreneurial-branding-starter-checklist

Brigitte:

My guest today is Dan Goodwin before he was bitten by the entrepreneur bug. Dan finished 19 years at a fortune 100 company where he served as a regional security manager. While there he conducted internal investigations, including fraud, theft and human resources issues. After Dan left corporate America, he started several businesses, including security consulting, real estate coaching and mentoring. In his current businesses, dan uses his investigative background to assist business owners and corporate management teams research and obtain information to move their businesses forward and mainly providing business advisory and consultancy services primarily for businesses as to prepare for scale up opportunities. He says he's 21 with 36 years of experience has one favorite wife, two kids, three grandkids, four grandkids, one grand dog. Oh my God. That's gonna be a fun conversation today. I warmly welcome Dan Goodwin. Welcome to BrandsTalk.

Dan:

A thank you, Bri Brit. It's very nice to be here. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to our conversation and yes, that everything you've described turns into total chaos when all the kids and the animals are all together.

Brigitte:

I can't imagine. Absolutely. So Dan, you have an interesting story to tell. Your corporate career started in the main room and you made it to the top, please. Would you like to share this story with us before we go into all things? Bullet proof.. Dan: Sure. Thank you. Yeah. I've went to counseling to try to forget some of this, but I'll bring it up one more time. Okay, good. So yeah, I started with the local division of telecom company here in the United States. And I did start in the mail room. It's funny because my dad and my uncle, two of my uncles actually worked for the parent corporation and they found my dad found this job and said, oh, You're in between right now, you ought to just work in this mail room. So I did, and I found myself. Delivering mail, getting the feel for business, getting the feel for tell the telecom business specifically, and an opportunity came up about a year later and I became a security assistant and that's a fancy way of saying I was a paper pusher because I was helping compile F call detail records for criminal and civil issues that for, you know, We're our clients, our customers. So I did that for about three years. And when I got promoted to the position of security investigators, so that's really where the investing piece of my career started. And we did do those investigations for fraud and theft and embezzlement and sexual harassment and all the other human issues you have when you have a large a large population of people together. I did that for about, I'm trying to think that was about a five year training for my next position. And I became a regional security manager that, oh, then that's a fancy way of saying I had five states here in the Midwest , that I was responsible for and the computer forensics team reported directly to me. So yeah, that. That was the short version of 19 years, right there. Wow. 19 years. You made a decision. You left corporate America in 2007, you founded CYA consulting. It's called cover your assets. This implicates already some meaning. And you chose your company brand name very intentionally. Why did you chose this name?

Dan:

Well, CYA, it may have a different meaning to some of the people tuning in, depending on what what geographical area they're in. I've always been pushed to boundaries type of a person, even as a young child and mischievous and a little cheeky. So cover your assets. Was the C by part was the, the gigging at The professionalism, however that, you know, there is a deeper meaning behind that, because really there's three CS on there., it's cover your assets curate your assets and circulate your assets. And that speaks to longer play, a longer goal. Because the fact is if you don't cover your assets, whatever your assets are, your business, your life, your personal things, there's nothing to curate. And there's nothing to leave us legacy and circulate when you're gone. So that's the story behind CYA. Yeah.

Brigitte:

I always like to listen to the story of how you arrive at a brand name, because there is so much thinking going into it, there is so much meaning that such a brand name usually conveys and just think about all these big brands. They all have a meaning attached to it. So let's jump back to starting your business. You've gone through this whole transformation of becoming a business owner. How difficult, or how easy was this journey for you to starting your own business? What did you take away with learning and why? Why did you start it? I wanna know why, what

Dan:

the purpose, well, the why is a simple one word answer burnout. okay. So that was I was so ready. I counted one time ETT that in 19 years of being in the telecom business I survived 23 or 24 merger and acquisitions. Because if you remember in the nineties and early two thousands is when all of the telecom mergers were happening, everybody was being gobbled up. Lots of drama. I'm thinking at one point. In the, in our system, we had 88,000 employees worldwide. So that's quite a few. We had 27 people on the investigations team spread out all over the United States. So that, that in itself what kept us busy. So that was the Hawaii was the burnout. I was tired of dealing with. People's bad decisions, bad judgments. That would cause me to have to get on a plane and go visit with them about. Whatever had gone wrong or gone sideways so that's really why. And then the, really the rest of the story is I did not go into my entrepreneurial career with the idea of opening consultancy. In staying with the investigations piece, I really had launched into real estate. And as I had gotten my license, I was working with investors. And if you remember, in 2007 is when worldwide the housing market, real estate market crashed. And I found myself. Advocating for people who were facing foreclosure. And I was negotiating short sales with banks. So I was able to actually use my negotiating skills that I used in my professional life, and then went forward with that. So that's and then to see what the consulting piece was just an outgrowth. If I was gone from sprint and I had family and friends that had small and medium sized businesses. They also had human issues of fraud and theft and human issues. And em, and they didn't have anybody to call and they would call me and I would help them work through these issues so that's a burnout other projects. And then getting pulled back into consulting work, basically using the skillset I learned in my corporate life.

Brigitte:

So was it an easy road or a bumpy road? This transition

Dan:

ah, it's it was not easy. It was bumpy. There's a lot of things I. Wish I would've learned before I pulled the trigger. I think my wife would agree with that too. Lots of things that should should have been fleshed out more. And actually I find myself for people that call me or contact me and said, you know, I'm getting ready to retire. I'm looking for a second career Encore, career, golden career, whatever you wanna call it. And. I give them the lessons that I learned. I ask them enough probing questions so that they're at least thinking about these things. It not, and I'm not trying to change their decision to leave. I'm just helping them make sure that they've thought about the aspects of leaving and where those holes need to be filled. Yeah,

Brigitte:

I think that's helping them a lot because you can shorten the journey, even though they have to go through it themselves, but they're already aware of it. They have a sense of, there is something coming up and I'm now exactly in that situation. How do I manage it to get out of that in the best possible way? All right. Good. So I wanna dig deeper into interrogation and how we can use that. Dan you have a unique approach to research, engagement, and specific investigative techniques that serve you well, as you draw upon all these thousands of interviews, you completed over your corporate and entrepreneurial life. As business owners, but also as managers, we often need exactly these skills to interview the potential target clients we want to serve, or the staff we want to hire or to find out whether this is the right business partner we want to collaborate with. So how can. Best prepare ourselves to interview. For example, at potential clients, we want to target in order to really serve them best, to get an understanding of them. What are their needs? What are their strongest pain points, their real wants and desires. Would you shed some light on your techniques and could you give us a list of the most important steps to consider so that we can arm ourselves with a viable, structured process going into such interviews to obtain exactly that info that we want and need.

Dan:

Yeah. Well, you've asked about 20 questions there, so I'll just start back at the the beginning. Just a little, just a quick recap in 95 was when I was able to go to the it's called the John Reed school of interview and interrogation in Chicago. That's basically where I, I found my formal formalized training. Learned how to interview skills and a little bit of sales. Little bit of psychology, a lot of NLP, neural linguistic programming. I didn't know that's what it was called, but that's really where I cut my teeth and learned a structured method of actually how to interface with people, how to get in rapport quickly with people, how to make people feel that they were seen and heard. And. That they had a safe space to share information that I really was there to get their side of the story. These lessons learned I've taken those forward with me and I've helped other business owners and other management teams and executive teams as they've gotten ready to make some sort of a shift scale up obviously is the sweet spot I like to play in That, that piece of it, those skill sets are invaluable, especially in how you treat people and that you treat them with respect and validate them as human beings. No matter if you agree with them, they've done something dastardly, right? You still have to walk out of there with the fact that you've interfaced with another human being and hopefully. That you have conveyed that they are worth. They have worth anyway, why I kinda went off the philosophical in there. Yeah. well, it speaks to the psychology and it speaks to the character of the people that you deal with. And listen I've had terrible people that I've interviewed that I would say bordered on evil and they don't stick around. They walk out the door that's fine. We just have to go with pres. Information that's presented to us, you know, and you don't wanna do. And just draw that parallel to business owners, interviewing clients or potential, you don't wanna deal with those people anymore. They don't match your energy. They don't match your goals, your vision. So all right. Now I think I answered three or four of those roundabout. What specifically, what would you like for me to touch on next?

Brigitte:

Yeah, so I think there is a kind of a structured process when you go into interviews yeah. Into qualitative methods, which an interview is. So how do you start is like warm up questions and then you go more into the general questions and then in the specific questions. Demographics that you need to know in order to make sense of things. How do I do that? Do you have any best practice advice to set up such a questionnaire guideline and then yeah. To how to approach a person in how to go with a person through that and how long should such an interview be? If I wanna figure out is that an ideal client that I wanna serve?

Dan:

So here's what I would suggest first is that you establish some baseline questions so that you can get some baseline behaviors. So there are things that I could ask you, Brit, that would be, you know, your name maybe your. You know, if it's an employment situation, you know, your present position, how long you've been there, who's your supervisor. These are things that are automatic responses from somebody that they, it doesn't take a lot of thought to answer them. And what you're doing is you're the person and you're observing their body language, their behaviors. If they've got any nervous you know, behaviors, any ticks or anything, any tells as they say in the biz. And that really helps you, that when you get to other questions, if you see a huge Delta, a huge difference. Between those, then you may have something that you need to further ask, right? Yeah. So the numbers here, 7 38 55, 7% is the, are the words we speak. And then 38% is tonality. and 55% is nonverbal. Yeah. So when you're working with somebody and you see this difference in nonverbal behavior doesn't mean it's necessarily deceptive. It just means it probably needs a little more layering, a little more filtering to figure out what needs to be asked next. Yeah. And that, because everybody. They've got an agenda and they've gotta check all the boxes, especially HR people. They wanna check all the boxes that they ask this question and a yes, no, yes, no. Or other explain. And as a business owner, you need to look deeper. Than that than just what's on an application. Even if you're talking to somebody and they've sent in a questionnaire ahead of time, the way you handle that is you review that questionnaire and say, oh, Bri it, hang on just a second. Before we get started, I just want to confirm this and this. And you use that checklist as your way to establish baseline behaviors. So you may not have to be writing all that down again. In fact, it would save time if you didn't, but there is a way to use previously provided information just to do the gut check. So anyway, I could preach on about that for a while.

Brigitte:

Awesome. I think that was really eyeopening. Just to remind ourselves that there's 7% only that the word counts basically then 38% tonality and then the 50 5% of non-verbal. So we really need to read into the mind. And then the not only the mind, but it's the whole person that is in front of us, that we have to understand and then make sense of that, and then go deeper and to really get an idea about the person we wanna serve at the end of the day to get an idea what their real needs are. And it's understanding what they don't know they actually know, we go very much into the unconsciousness of the person.

Dan:

Right. And I will say that. This is why I have a, an SOP, a standard operating procedure. I don't do any business meetings unless it's video. I mean in real life yes. In real life. But the last two years, 90% of my business is right here behind the camera. And if you'll notice, I'm looking straight through the camera to you. I see you on my screen. But I also know that when I do these business meetings, I record everything. So that if I do have a question at some point in the interview or the meeting, I can go back and. Now, when I said that, what did she do? What was her reaction? Did that comment land? Did she flinch this? Here's my rule. There's nothing that seeks to be misunderstood more than a text message or an email. Because you cannot hear the tone and you cannot see the body language in which is being delivered so important that we have this this conversation via video. I, and I had a gentleman the other day. I have a disclaimer on my zoom rooms that. This is being recorded, whether it says it is or not on zoom, it's being recorded. And he threw a hands up now I'm not comfortable with that. Okay. Not a problem. Let's just call it a day and go on. And we didn't have the conversation. And I was okay with that. so anybody that's not willing to lean into a conversation and talk about a potential business relationship, JB partnership, affiliate, whatever it is. It's okay. You make that business decision for you. I'll make it for me. So anyway now you've got me ranting again.

Brigitte:

okay. Wrap this up. Are there any pitfalls we shall be in mind not to fall into by all means when we contacting interviews.

Dan:

Well, you know, Interviews. So when you use the word interview to me, I'm thinking HR. So obviously you have HR considerations. When I have conversations, which is or partnership possibilities is what I like to talk about. Yes. Be aware. Don't feel like you have to put all of your cards on the table, right on the, in the first conversation. Ask more questions than you are asking. Remember, whoever's asking the questions is in control of the conversation. They really are. And then let let the conversation flow naturally. You may come out with 20 questions out of the starting gate. However, when you take the time to truly listen, reflect, and then take that path where it needs to go, and you discover something about the person that's not on their LinkedIn profile or is not widely known, then that connects you more deeply with them. At the human level. Yeah. Especially if you find something you can appreciate about their passion, their vision, what they do for fun, what nonprofit are they helping with on the weekends? That conversation is just being a good listener and a good human.

Brigitte:

I wanna take that to the next level now, because it is not only about research, about data, about facts and numbers. It's not always about logical reasoning, right? So there is more, and it takes, as you say, grit and use of intuitive skills. So there is this interplay of rationality and intuition that makes us whole, and helps us arrive at good decision making. Can you dive deeper into that whole context of intuition and about logical reasoning and how that all comes together.

Dan:

Okay. Wow. We're gonna need another week.

Brigitte:

That's that? We also need to listen to what our instinct is telling us at the moment.

Dan:

Yeah. Well, there are people that would say intuition is something that's innate or you grow. And I agree that there's probably a little truth to that what I've learned and I consider myself to be intuitive. What I've learned is you can train that up. To a certain point and you can become better at it. You really can. So when I always, so when I, so let I'll use that, I'll give you an example. I had a business owner call one time said, I think my executive assistant is skimming is you know, embezzling. And I said, well, John, not his real name, by the way. I said, John, you know, when did you suspect this was an issue? And he said about three months ago and I said, well, go get you a mirror and look in the mirror. And anything that happened from 90 days till today, the person responsible was in the mirror because you didn't ask. The crucial or the, even the Contra confrontational question, because you were uncomfortable because this is your best friend from high school. This is your brother-in-law. This is your best friend. This is, you know, somebody that was recommended by somebody you trusted and biases. towards that relationship, overcame your judgment on pushing forward to getting to the bottom of it. That's a tough lesson to learn sometimes. And when I talk to people and they get emotionally wrapped up like this was a relationship emotional rap, it was a best friend or whatever. When they get it wrapped up in that it puts their. Critical thinking skills on the back burner, right? When God knows the world needs more critical thinking skills right now when we are approached with a business issue and it is delivered with emotion and it is delivered with emphasis and maybe loudly Do you believe it right away? Do you wanna believe it? See, that's the issue is we want to believe it so mad sometimes that it overcooks the logical piece of it. So that's where I think you were going between logic and intuition. How do you manage that and how do you step back and do a pattern interrupt on that piece of it?

Brigitte:

Yeah. So how do we best manage it? What is a good approach of how to figure out what do I do in this situation right now. And first of all, being aware of that,

Dan:

well, awareness is half the battle. The, so the pattern interrupt question that I always go to is when somebody comes at me hard with an emotional statement, You ask, you know, the Socratic method, you use the question. Well, how would I know if that wasn't true. And that forces you to take it outta your head and look at it and defend it, examine it from the other point of view. Now you can use that with people to gently challenge them times, sometimes not judge gently, but you can gently challenge them that you come at me and you give me a hard statement. I say, well, brilliant. I'm curious. How would, you know, if that wasn't true, because when we use, when all of the chemicals cut loose in our brain and we are wrapped in tight emotion it negates critical thinking and there has to be some way to stop that feeling is not thinking feeling is feeling So anyway, we could go down that, that rabbit trail for a while, but I'm just, I'm letting you know that how you feel about something doesn't make it true. You really must take a step back and examine the facts and then double check yourself. And this is so easy nowadays, take any emotional subject, any social issue, any political issue. I'm not gonna name anymore. You can use your imagination, anything that's in the news, whatever that is, you can use your imagination. And when you. When you abdicate your critical thinking skills to someone else, be that a social media channel, a news organization. A business journal, whatever, when you abdicate your critical thinking, then you are basically parroting and repeating the programming that they are giving you. And my challenge to everyone is do your own thinking, do your own thinking and don't accept truth from anybody don't even accept truth from me. Go research. Make sure. It's you make sure you get back to source data, make sure you fact check it and then fact check the fact checkers to make sure that they're good. Also anyway, you can't do that at infin. You know, you've gotta, at some point, you've gotta say, okay. Based on the research I have at this point in time, I'm gonna go with this position. Awesome.

Brigitte:

Thank you. all right. Good. Now we come to the jucy stuff of our talk, where we need critical thinking skills. It carries. Also the title of our show today, how we can Bulletproof our brand. So how can we protect our brand from intellectual property infringement, copyright issues, et cetera. What are the activities for protecting our brain? What are the first steps to take here?

Dan:

My, so when I have somebody come to me and they say, I'm going to And I still work with startups occasionally. So I'm always on the cusp. A lot of the people I work with are thinking about modifying or changing or pivoting their brand or they're getting ready to merge, right? They're getting ready to do the M and a, the dance and figure out, you know, who came out on top with the the branding and, or the new design. So the first thing is be very methodical in your research. Look and here's the, here's what I tell people. You got free tools and you got paid tools and then guess what? You have experts in the field. And I am not the expert in the field, but I'm gonna refer you to one probably because the obvious things you should be able to find on the internet, you should be able to find like on that first level, that first scoop level. Make sure that you're not infringing make sure no one has a variation on it, or if they do that, you can. Make it differentiated. So that, that would be my first suggestion. And then I used to have a presentation, the seven secrets that you should have known about your employee. And at the end of every slide, at the bottom, I would have the hook question. Now, can you do this? Can you do this yourself? Or is it time to hire profess. And obviously the answer is after seven slides of that and about five questions per slide, they're tired of it. They're tired of the question because, they know, oh my God, this is so much work and I've gotta go hire professional. So that's my short answer is obviously if you've got an idea, you wanna start researching it. Yes. At the end of the day, invest in yourself, invest in your business and make sure you're not that nobody's gonna have a claim at the end, after you become SU it's not a problem until you become successful. Okay.

Brigitte:

Yeah, I think that is critical. Thank you so much. Yeah. Ask yourself, can I do it myself or do I need to hire a professional. Yeah. Ask yourself all the time this question. All right. So now I wanna switch gears a little bit. You recognized and managed tremendous personal, emotional growth in your life, through all the life stages, the ups and the downs and the wins and the setbacks and the detours, which ultimately made you what you are today. And that is being in your sweet spot. And I can feel that you love what you are doing and thereby you are in your best version. What does a strong personal brand mean to you in that context?

Dan:

So strong, personal brand is when you own that and your reputation within the whatever expert in the field you're going to do that you have integrity. For me, it's in my investigative you know, interviews. It is in my research. You know, people say, well, this is what I believe and why. Well, that's just the start of the investigative research for me, you know, until I can either. Affirm that, or I can find contradictory data points and re remember very good. Two reasons. People ask questions, affirmation of a deeply held belief, which yeah. This shirt makes me look awesome. So I'm affirming that I'm fishing for compliment or that they're seeking new data points. They stay genuinely curious about. And then the reason people don't ask questions , they're not seeking new data points because then they have to process new information, which has consequences. If they do something or they don't do something , and then it's a cascade because for the most part, we're comfortable in our bubble and we don't want anybody to bust that bubble. We don't want anybody to insert anything that is not a way for growth. And my, my. Encouragement, especially to business owners who are getting ready to scale up that they're ging to tweak their brand or promote it bigger is always be seeking new data points, new information. Make sure, ask your friends, ask your family, ask your clients, ask your customers, ask your employees. What does this brand mean to you? How do you protect it? How do you grow it? And the whole thing about the personal branding is we are wrapped up into our personal branding. We become the face of the company, and we become the character of our company. That's so important. And I think people they get, they stray sometimes and they forget they have the success and then they do something stupid and believe me, there are enough naysayers out there. Ready to jump on anything stupid you do or say. Anyway, you've got me preaching once again.

Brigitte:

Do you have any helpful advice, like three pieces of advice, how we can Bulletproof our personal brand and be in this growth mindset?

Dan:

So the first thing I would say is there are skeletons in your closet that you drag them out and you smash them with sledgehammers. that sometimes we, sometimes those things play bigger in our head than they are. I would remind every person that every entrepreneur has failed businesses. If they don't, they're lying. Because I have failed businesses and projects. We're not perfect. We need to cut each other, some grace, mercy, and love. So that would be the first thing. Now, if the skeleton is too big to smash with the sledgehammer, then I suggest you have a narrative ready for that. You know, explain it. This bad thing happened five years ago. It's never happened again. This is what we did to, you know, to address it, fix it, you know, fluff it up whatever that is, so deal with it. Sometimes those skeletons are a bigger deal to you than the are to anybody. Because it stays in our head. We play that failure over and over in our head. And my thing is use the failure as a stepping stone to never make that mistake again, by the way, there are some people I work with that are determined to make their own mistakes. I know that everyone watching or listen has those same people in their life. No matter what you tell 'em. They never wanna make their own mistake. So that would be a thing to, to get that up and then focus on the future have goals ha be organized you know, to bullet this is all to Bulletproof your brand to make sure that you have gathered all the data points you've brought 'em together in some sort of coherent package. And then. Full speed ahead. Once you've got all of those hatches Batten down full speed ahead.

Brigitte:

Awesome. Beautiful. I take that. all right, Dan, before we wrap it up today, I would like to ask you some rapid fire terms. It's like something comes up out of the blue in that very moment. Are you ready?

Dan:

Well, now the last time I had some, I was at the doctor's office. They were doing word association. Is that what you're talking about here? Yes,

Brigitte:

exactly. A quick word wrap. all right, bring it on. Ready? bring, I bring it on interrogation.

Dan:

I'm stickler. Okay.

Brigitte:

Due diligence,

Dan:

Smart.

Brigitte:

Okay. Women empowerment.

Dan:

Love it. I should say the future. There we go.

Brigitte:

Wow. Okay.

Dan:

Brands reputation.

Brigitte:

Okay, good Dan. Thank you so much. Where can listeners find you if they wanna get in touch with you to help them Bulletproof their brands

Dan:

oh, so the playground I play in is LinkedIn. You can find me there at Dan Goodwin, CYA consulting. That's the easiest way to reach me. And that is exactly I'm in there 95% of my day at my communications. At least that's where to start the conversation. Obviously we moving off that platform at some point, but that's. Can find me and that's where I can be found. And that's where I play everyday.

Brigitte:

I love this platform. It helped me so much to grow my business. And I'm busy also every day in there. Dan thank you so much for being my guest today on Brent talk. It was real pleasure having you to learn about how we can arm ourselves for interviews to obtain exactly what we want and need to move our businesses forward and to learn how we can Bulletproof our organizational and personal brands. Thank you Dan.

Dan:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Brigitte:

Thank you.