Paul: 0:29

Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers podcast. I really didn't think of the alliteration of that when I wrote the title of the show. It's so hard to pronounce every week. On this week's show, I am honoured to introduce to you Daniel Hammond, who I recently met, as a potential guest for the show, but Daniel and I have been chatting offline and we've really, we see eye to eye on so many topics and subjects. So I'm really excited to introduce you to the guests, the dear Daniel. Welcome along.

Daniel: 0:59

Thank you so much.

Paul: 1:01

A little bit about Daniel's background if you don't already know him. So he's the president of Business Interrogation LLC and also managing partner at Customer Driven Leadership LLC. Historically, Daniel is a US combat veteran who is an expert in three intelligence disciplines and 20 years in business leadership. And I can tell you that just sugarcoats what it is that Daniel's background really is. And we might get into a little bit of the bits that he can share with us without having to Like the bits that you can tell us. And as we were discussing offline, Daniel you specialize in identifying and solving complex challenges for both individual entrepreneurs and for entire organizations. And at the core of that is, is your ability to quickly uncover the unknown unknowns, which is a skillset that I know that many businesses need and would appreciate having somebody around who can discover those things for them, rather than stumble on top of them and set that virtual landmine off themselves. So that obviously helps businesses to optimize their processes, mitigate risks, and identify and unlock new opportunities. Aside from all of that, Daniel's also a prolific author and speaker. And he already contributed to multiple leadership and business development publications, which you can if you're watching this in landscape mode, you will be able to see the many books that Daniel has contributed to in the background there on the bootcase, which is just phenomenal. So I, I don't even know where to start with that tremendous varied background, Daniel. How do you get from being a US army combat veteran to intelligence to helping business owners uncover problems. What's the, what's that journey look like? And what's your superpower that lets you uncover those unknowns?

Daniel: 2:47

Yeah, that's a great question. You're going to make me interrogate myself today, my friend.

Paul: 2:51

That's the

Daniel: 2:52

Yeah, I think one of the things that I, as I was growing up, even before I got into the army I was always fascinated by how things are connected. And I very quickly when I join an organization, I, the first thing is what does success look like for me in my role? And then the second thing I look at is what do the people around me need to be successful in their roles? And so I typically find myself. That curiosity, I think, makes me useful to leadership because I know I can step in to pretty much anybody's role. I once got an army promotion because I was at a battle simulation center and a lieutenant Didn't want to do what his job was which was move all the units around and so he goes Daniel Do you know about computers? And I said, yeah, yes, sir. I do. And so he goes, okay, you're now the Battalion Maneuver Officer and and he goes, what's your job? And he goes, I said clerk and he goes, okay I will be the clerk. I will file the things and so You know I got to a place where every time I went to the Battle Sim Center I was the guy that knew everything. I knew how all the pieces fit. And so I literally had senior officers deferring to my opinion on things because they knew I knew it so well that if they just trusted me, everything was going to be fine. And post Army, I, I did some I taught interrogation for the military as a contractor. Then I moved to Honduras and I lived in, I lived abroad doing a lot of stuff. My wife had a textile export company. I helped with that. Our family got home invaded. That led to a physical, a job at a physical security company. A guy, a friend of mine said, Hey, My company's bleeding money. Do you think you can figure out what's going on? And within a month I had found a million dollars of hidden debt. I created new revenue streams. I got it to a place where it was doing okay within the three months. And it was a company with 435 employees.

Paul: 5:08

I have to say, Chris Voss has nothing on your background, right? People often quote Chris Voss, and like, when I look to people who have that tangible, real skill set, and do you know what, before we were talking about this, and I was trying to figure out where you would go with that answer, because in my head, I can imagine you being that sort of annoying person that asks questions all the time, and In that environment, that's not always welcome, is it? It's that curiosity sometimes is just shut up and do your job, all right, but I guess if you can prove a few times that by asking those questions, you're adding real value because then you can be something more than what you originally were, rather than just asking questions for the sake of asking questions, then you add real value, right?

Daniel: 5:53

Yes, I think that's well said. You're 100 percent right. Not everybody likes somebody who rocks the boat. And certainly I'm asking questions to see how things can be made better. Middle managers. Don't always like that skill set around them because, they know, a lot of them I think are comfortable with what they do. They know what they do and they want to keep doing what they do. But if, I find if you don't disrupt yourself, eventually you will be disrupted by some external force and you won't be ready for it. That's really I think the core at what I try to do. When serving businesses and entrepreneurs is disrupt them, is to see far enough down the road to see what's likely to disrupt them. And then we talk through what would you do if that happened? And then when it does happen, they're not surprised, right? And they know what to do, what action to take. And a lot of times when you know, When you're prepared to respond to a disruption, you're able to surf that wave and get ahead of everybody else in your field, right? You're making the moves before the market shifts.

Paul: 7:08

It's almost and again, as we discussed offline, it's almost like your job is to brick shit, right?

Daniel: 7:13

That's, I, my, my slogan is I break things for good. And Yeah, I'm, I've broken infamous war criminals in my interrogation roles. I have simulated taking down major financial institutions and having them think of what if nothing worked? What would we even start to reassemble our business? What's most important to our getting to the other side and surviving this issue? And a lot of times people, you would think, oh I've got to have these key services, but those key services have dependencies. And so really you can't start building the pyramid at the top, right? You've got to, you've got to build the base first and then work your way up. And so a lot of that is what I do.

Paul: 8:04

And you you even have a service where you'll work with a business owner and within 20 minutes you'll have broken something in their business that they find really valuable to have understood why it would brick and how it would brick and what they can do about that, right?

Daniel: 8:19

Yeah, from a marketing perspective, solving everybody's most complicated problem in 20 minutes is a really horrible business model because yeah, how many people's problems could I solve every day? And that pipeline is going to be really big. But it is what I, it is what I love to do. And it certainly is what feeds me maybe not financially every day, feeds my soul, right? It's

Paul: 8:44

puzzle.

Daniel: 8:45

Very well said. Yeah, very well said. I love solving complexity. And I do it, that's really, the evolution of Daniel is better understanding what makes me uniquely useful. And it's been a, it's been a long journey. A lot of it crosses into marketing, like with customer driven leadership. I built a nursing school with my wife and partner in central Honduras and coming out of that. We needed, we wanted to help make Honduras more more financially successful so that people would have more opportunities there and wouldn't need to. Migrate to the US. And so we knew we were going to raise some money, need to raise some money. And so my partner, Dr. Ted Anders had a system and called Customer Driven Leadership. And so he said, take a look and tell me what you think. And within five minutes, I saw how all the pieces fit together and I saw I could disrupt it. But what was interesting about it was designed to be prepared for disruptions. And it was equipping every function within the organization to optimize itself coming out of the disruption. So I knew that I could disrupt it for a month, but you're going to get a report saying Daniel's causing all of our problems. You should maybe think about either promoting or firing that guy. And we've already solved them. And we're better than we were before we were disrupted. It creates a self evolving company. And I've never seen anything like that. So I was all in. I wrote the book.

Paul: 10:27

And it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating concept, especially from the outside of somebody who's never looked any deeper than that. And it is, it's quite intriguing. So what would you say, how does that align with a business's, obviously this podcast is specifically around marketing. So how would you say some concepts that draw out of that, that apply to marketing that perhaps people could take away and think about today?

Daniel: 10:48

Yeah. So I would say. My, my partner had this amazing system. And it would definitely fall into the sounds way too good to be true type. Just the stories I've heard from people who ran it. And typically entrepreneurs that run his system exit within three years at, 10X growth. I'd say that's typical. And then. I designed it to scale cause I'm like, I know exactly what we need. We need to train a team of people who can do this. And and then but I wasn't good at selling magic beans. It was a struggle because the investment is such, and the complexity is such that I wasn't connecting with my ideal clients. They liked me, but. It didn't, grow into a, I want you to revolutionize my business relationship. And that was frustrating. And it, I think a lot of it tied to the fact that I didn't have the direct experience with it. So I could say, I know how it would solve this problem or that problem for you. But I couldn't say I've seen it do this and authenticity is super important to me. Now we did we have run it with a client and, we, we came in with a company that had five employees, it was a dental office and everything was on fire every day. And. As we started to bring it in, one of the employees was four of the employees were like, yeah, we're excited about this, bring it in, and one of the employees was like, no, I don't want to play, I don't want to play that game. And it's because they were the one causing all the fires. So even before we started the implementation, that person quit because of the accountability of the system was going to show them, show everyone they weren't doing their job. And then all of a sudden things got easier. And then we put the system in place and in the last two years this company had five employees and was making. Maybe 30, 000 in revenue per month. And now they just hit two months over 130 840, 000 with four and a half people and everything is running like clockwork. The stress is gone. They're able to do incredibly innovative things like one of the employees there in Florida is moving to Portugal and they're going to continue supporting the company because they just know it so and they don't need to physically be in the office to do their role. It's crazy cool.

Paul: 13:22

It's

Daniel: 13:23

But if you can't sell

Paul: 13:25

a market. And I guess before we come back to that notion of around the marketing side of things, you said something earlier on that was really interesting that I reckon most people haven't picked up on. And that was when you were talking about identifying the employee or the employees that were the disruptor in the business, you mentioned promoting them or getting rid of them. And I'm a big believer in this is that. There are two sorts of people in the world. There are hyper intelligent people and team players that are in the wrong role, or not engaged in the right way, or starting to feel entitled because they've been mistreated in their role. and are playing the game because they know it better than anybody else. That is both a potential danger, in which case you potentially need to get rid of them because you might not be able to win them back round and that is a real problem for the business because they, believe me, they are the people that know all the HR rules, they know how to play the game and they are incredibly clever. But then you've got the other sort of people who can be rescued and are your potential best employees, you just don't know it yet. Is that fair?

Daniel: 14:31

Yeah, I think that's incredibly fair. In fact, I would also say That there's a lot of misinterpretation, potentially, in that space. I can't stop evolving, and if I'm in a static organization that doesn't want to change what it does it's gonna be a nightmare for me, and I'm gonna be a nightmare for them. And, I'm, I am very loyal, but here's the thing Paul. I will fight for your better future, whether you want it or not. You can't take me out of the fight. So if and I've seen that in the past I've worked with managers that want everything to stay the way it is, but I know the market is going to change. They're not going to be ready and it's going to crush them. And so I will work to evolve them to the place where they can survive that. And again, Not everybody's up for that. You mentioned Chris Voss. I'm a huge fan of Chris Voss. And it's very interesting. He's got that really great perspective on negotiating, my perspective is on motivations of people and, because I've got to convince somebody as an interrogator who hates me and my country and the fact that we're invading them and all of that stuff and win them over to where they want to actively help me. When reading Never Split the Difference, there were a couple of times in the book where Chris is like, and then I did this and I was like, that's not gonna work because I felt like the person's motivation wasn't going to deliver on what he was expecting. And again, most of it, I learned so much from that book and have been blessed to, to To have met Brandon Voss, his son, had some fantastic conversations with him. And yeah, I love what they do, but it's also about the motivations, right? It's getting people to I'm sure of something, I'm hard to convince. And it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong. You can see that in political elections everywhere, right?

Paul: 16:39

100%. 100%. Some fantastic stories there. One day we'll have to unpick some of those learnings because I'm, like you, I'm very intrigued by the human condition. Let's call it that. We're an interesting species at the best of times. I guess in line with that. How do you then find your successes and challenges with marketing your own businesses then because I'd imagine that makes you like quite hard to, I'd imagine it makes it quite hard to get across sometimes just how important that is because it's you're relying on pains that businesses haven't yet felt and might never feel as your trigger points. So how do you use marketing techniques and sales techniques to showcase what might be and convince them that they need to act now to prevent that and improve their business?

Daniel: 18:06

Yeah. So fantastic questions. And yeah, I need your wisdom for this more than you probably need mine, but I'm happy to share some of the struggles. One of the things that I know is if you, A, what I do doesn't fit on a billboard. It's not like I can't say, Hey, for those CEOs that have a future problem that they're unaware of, you should call Daniel

Paul: 18:31

exactly.

Daniel: 18:32

because they've got enough stuff going on today that call will never come. How I've evolved is understanding how I can help people and then getting in communities. of trust where if you help somebody here, as soon as they hear somebody else, that's got a problem they're saying, Hey if you've tried everything else and you haven't figured it out, give Daniel 20 minutes and see what happens. So there's some of that. Some of the other things is I've gotten pulled back into larger organizations where there's a lot of complexity. That's another place where I add real value. And I think, one of the core parts of marketing is to figure out where do I add value in a way that Helps others and gets cash flow for me, right? And again probably customer driven leadership is the thing that I have that is most genius is this system. And I've got the skillset to get it set up and balanced as does my partner. But again, if we can't connect with the people who say, sign me up that's not where I need to spend my time, and I try to sell it myself while doing other things, which is confusing, right? I do, I design cyber disasters is another way that I push people into their unknown unknowns. And I sell operating systems and cyber disasters. Hire me. It's horrible. All I know, that sounds horrible, right? I created a bigger umbrella called Business Interrogation where I just ask questions to help businesses grow. If you need a cyber exercise, I can design that. If you, if your if your systems are clogging up and you need somebody to go in there and just go this could be optimized and there's a hidden risk here. I do that. I call that service break my business model, where I just come and interrogate your business. Like I used to interrogate war criminals.

Paul: 20:39

But I Might be really complex in terms of its sales process and how you get people there and no doubt you will have already customers there and going through pipeline. If you want to increase that, you need to make it more accessible and you've done that through those smaller bite sized elements where people are more likely to go, Do you know what? I wouldn't yet pay for Daniel's full services, but 20 minutes and he's going to tell me something I don't know and it's going to be really valuable. Why wouldn't I give that 20 minutes and see what it's worth? And I think building that repeat model up, I see this a lot with consultancies, right? They're a big fan of, let's do some free work for you. I'm going to come in, we're going to do a week's free work. I'm going to do a deep dive and I'm going to share my findings. Because we all know that once you get involved that heavily with a business and you start to look under the covers, you'll find the direct things that you can support them with, which are incredibly valuable, but you do not know until you're in there And even on a sales conversation or a market and call or whatever, you can't ask the right questions of those people because of the unknown unknowns, right? I don't know how I'm going to be able to help you yet. I help people in a lot of different ways. So instead of me trying to guess what you're going to do let me come in and do a little bit and improve my worth one bit at a time. I think that's a really powerful idea to take away.

Daniel: 21:59

Was a strategy I was all in on Paul. My, I basically gave it away to 35 people from solopreneurs all the way up to CEO of a team. 10 million revenue company. And what I found out was, it was that I was going to give away the 20 minutes and then give them a list of ways I can help them solve that problem. The issue I had upon reflection was everybody said that it was incredibly valuable. Nobody called for the follow up services. Really, it was the deconstructing their problem so that they knew how to solve it themselves that was the real value. And so now, I come in and I do the interrogation on the business and if I can't help them, they don't pay me. And getting that commitment up front, and again, I like to work for scale. If I can solve a 5 problem for you, Paul, buy me a cup of coffee, I'll be happy. I don't like coffee, so I won't be really happy, but a big iced tea, 32 ounces or larger would be fine. But, if if, I can also go in and solve beyond a shadow of a doubt. I've worked in areas of complexity where, I've interrogated people on weapons of mass destruction. I don't have PhDs in bioweapons and chemical weapons and nuclear and missile systems and all of that, but I had no problem getting the information that was needed and I can do that. across industries. I see how things are connected and where things can go wrong and where you're leaving money on the table. And if I come in and give you my time and it doesn't give you any new insights, don't pay me. And if it solves a 10 million problem, just give me a 32 ounce iced tea. right? Write me a check. yeah,

Paul: 23:46

that's, and that's an interesting, like it's skin in the game, right? And you've got to have confidence in yourself. You've got to back yourself. And I think there's too many businesses out there that won't do that. Or they do it with false pretenses like, Oh yeah we'll do that. But somewhere hidden in the contract, I'm going to get my pound of flesh out of you. And they're scared of doing the work because they don't actually have the talent or the skillset that they claim to have. And I can, even just talking with you, I can see that's not the case where you are and you obviously already backing yourself to do that. So I think it's,

Daniel: 24:19

I will take, yeah, I will take myself out of a business relationship if I'm not providing value. I have zero interest in that. One of the things that I really love is in big collaborations, partnerships more, more loose entrepreneurial collaborations. I'm really good at managing what success looks like for all of the individual people that are collaborating. And I can help them. Make minute adjustments so that the target hits for everyone. And you know what, A guy that I totally respect, is Chad Jenkins. He has a company called Seed Spark, and I'm part of their entrepreneurial growth community. And it's all about collaboration. And in that group I'm like, Hey, just, make me. a partner in the collaboration because you're running your business, you're running your business. Who's making sure that this collaboration delivers on its promise? And Chad once said, Daniel, you're like an outcome optimization specialist. You try, you make sure that we get the most value out of this opportunity. And I really, I like that. I like to, whether I'm the special sauce with it or the. The Swiss Army Chainsaw that you're, that you need to solve a problem.

Paul: 25:38

I

Daniel: 25:38

That's what I love everybody needs that to an extent, like I'm really poor at long term strategy like thinking outside of the next 3 4 steps,

Paul: 25:46

I'm a doer, I'm in the moment, I'm doing things right now, I've got a jobs list, my jobs list gets done, I'll fire it off and box it off, but I know whatever venture I'm working in, I need somebody who can go, here's one you want to aim for Paul, Here's where you need to get to. Here's where have you considered doing this and adding this? And that's, the, some of the parts, some of them together is greater than their parts. Oh, no, I hadn't thought of doing that. That makes sense. Like why haven't I thought of that myself? It's obvious now that you've pointed it out. And I think that's the beauty of that kind of capability that you've got there. To bring it back to market. And then just before we wrap up for the show, we've got a couple of questions that I ask every guest. What is, in your opinion, one market and tactical strategy that you see a lot of out in the world that you just wish business owners would stop trying to use? What is it that grinds your gears?

Daniel: 26:34

Yeah. Running around trying to sell your service. Nobody cares about your service. It's not you're not going to win anybody over with, I have the best cheese grater in the world, and if you're buying any other cheese grater, you're a fool. Nobody, that doesn't work. You. One of my other collaboration partners is a PhD in value based pricing. His name's Dr. Amir Kahani. And he had, he and I have a system called Unique Business Contribution, right? It's people who are trying to sell to people. They're hitting a brick wall, right? But the thing is, You need to sell through people, like this is how the value I bring helps your clients get what they need, right? Because now I'm not a vendor to, to provide you a widget. I'm a partner in creating success for the people you care about that you're trying to serve.

Paul: 27:37

Yeah.

Daniel: 27:37

And that unique business contribution, it's like a lighthouse that shines the light of this is who we are and this is what we do in a way that we've even worked with companies where, everybody's selling the same widget.

Paul: 27:49

Yeah.

Daniel: 27:50

But once we go through the process, you are not talking about your widget, the way everybody else is talking about their widget. Yeah. That, that's the biggest one that I've seen

Paul: 27:59

And then flip that on its

Daniel: 28:00

and I've, and to be full. Yeah. And it was me too, right? I've been there, I've been that I.

Paul: 28:06

We've all done it.

Daniel: 28:07

I have the great, I have the greatest operating system ever made, created by a genius that used to work for NASA. Why is it not flying off the shelves?

Paul: 28:18

Flip that on its head then. What's one thing that you would like to see business owners do more with regard to the market? And what's something that can go away in action today that makes a huge difference to their capabilities other than what we've just discussed?

Daniel: 28:30

Yeah, I would say one of the things that I've really, that's really blown me away about customer driven leadership is we went into this office, dental office, and one of the biggest problems of the dental office was the owner. Because the owner had big ideas and he was chasing those, right? The shiny object syndrome, right? So what CDL did was it created board of advisors from his employees that wanted the business to succeed. And they basically, when he said, Oh, I've got an opportunity to go check. And then he has to pitch it to them. And then they say we got bills to pay. And we don't have enough in the war chest for you to go running after that right now. So some kind of check, whether it's, whether it is a business partner that can, that can call you out on things or whether it's a board Where the success of the organization everyone's invested in, so your employees that would normally never tell you no, are empowered to tell you no. Especially in the areas where you know you're likely to drive the car off the track.

Paul: 29:46

I guess even more important in businesses where you don't speak to external parties a lot as part of your, as part of your role, right? Like I see a lot of, I still come across people who don't network. It's not for everyone. I spend a lot of my time and that's part of the reason why I started this podcast is I wanted to meet more people and get out there and have a valid reason for talking to people rather than just, Hey, let's grab a coffee. And I see a lot of siloed business owners out there who. Let's be honest, you became a business owner because you didn't want to be accountable to anyone else. You wanted to make your own decisions, which is fine, which is great. But there is also that element of, I'm, I'll freely say it. Like I'm ADHD. I take risks that my wife wouldn't. That's why I'm a business owner, but where's the limit on those risks? Because some people are way less risk averse than I am. And you need those checks and balances. So I think that's a beautiful idea. It's a really great takeaway. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel: 30:43

Yeah, thank you.

Paul: 30:44

folks want to reach out and find out more about business interrogation, about CDL, about yourself, how can they best contact you?

Daniel: 30:50

Yeah, I would say the best way to engage with me is on LinkedIn. If you send me a message, tell me you saw a podcast with Paul, I would love, I'd love to to know that I made a difference here and and, share some of the glory with my friend here. I really, I love what you're doing, Paul. And I love this I certainly, businessinterrogation.com is there. But really just LinkedIn is the best place we can build relationship there and see how it can help.

Paul: 31:19

And I'll make sure those links, as ever, go in the show notes below. So if you're reading this along, you're watching this along, you're listening, and you should be able to find those links quite easily by the time this goes out. Thank you very much for being a guest on the show, Daniel. And thank you to everyone at home for coming along, joining us, listening, following, subscribing as ever. It's a genuine pleasure.

Daniel: 31:39

Thank you so much.