Welcome And Guest Introduction

Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Richard Bliss, and you're listening to Digital First Leadership. I'm going to tell you how much I appreciate you all listening in, sharing what the insights you've gained from the episodes of We've Run This Podcast now for a year or two. And today I have an interesting guest because uh my guest, he and I have been talking a lot about what everybody's talking about AI. We're talking about LinkedIn. We're also talking about something called vistage and the concept of leaders coming together to support one another. And so my my guest is Andy Scott. Andy is a vistage chair, and I've invited him on the show to talk about leadership, talk about business, talk about technology. So Andy, thanks for joining me.

Fantastic. Thanks, Richard. Great to be here.

So let's talk about, first of all, kind of your positioning, how we got to know each other as a vistage chair for the audience. What is that? First of all, what is vistage and what is a vestige chair?

Sure, great. So Vistage is the largest CEO and leadership development organization in the world, about 50,000 leaders worldwide. It's been around for about 65 years. And at its heart, it's around bringing together high-performing leaders to help each other, to dive into each other's biggest challenges and opportunities together with no other agenda. So that's the focus of these groups. We bring in world-class speakers like yourself, Richard. Uh, and also I coach these leaders one-on-one as the vistage chair. And so my role as a chair was to form a new peer group here in the San Francisco Bay Area of high-performing leaders in non-competitive businesses, because everything that is said is confidential, uh, and really build that group of purpose-driven leaders to help them both make better decisions and become better leaders.

You know, I've sat in on many vistage, having been a vistage presenter now, I come in and talk to them and I get to hear some of the most fascinating conversations because sometimes they let me sit in and listen, and it is fairly confidential. These are business leaders opening up about hiring practices or firing practices or businesses that are failing or mergers, all kinds of different issues that oftentimes you struggle if you're particularly a leader. It's kind of lonely at the top. And who do you go talk to about these things? And this is where I found such incredible value in what I've seen from Vistach.

So true. Yeah. I mean, I've been I've only been a chair for about a year and a half, and it's been amazing to watch these leaders come together, build trust, and really bring some of the toughest challenges that they're facing to each other for their help, right? You you mentioned some of the key ones. A lot of it's teams and talent, but it goes far beyond that. It's it's really, you know, big their businesses having major challenges, downturn. Oh my gosh, what do I do? And it's hard to have those conversations with your team. It's hard to have um your conversations even with your board of directors and and others, because they all have agendas. And the point of this group is being with these leaders that will support you. The trust is built so that they really want to help you achieve your goals.

Trust And Accountability In Peer Groups

Yeah, it's been fascinating to see because I'll sit in. Obviously, I've only been there for one session with this, whatever chapter I'm speaking with, wherever I'm in the country. And by the way, Monday of this recording, I'm headed for three days of vistage presentations in Arkansas. Awesome. Right. So Arkansas, uh, the Carolinas, right, Midwest, up and down the West Coast, it's just all over. And so it's been great where Vistage is such a strong presence. And it's fascinating because I'll be sitting in and as they go around the room, they'll say, Hey, Susan, last time we talked, you were struggling with this decision about how you were going to handle growth in this area. And what I found fascinating is that, well, that everybody knows, meaning they don't have to do a reintroduction of the concept. They already have been talking about this for a while, and then they're checking in to see, how's it going? Because here's the advice. Well, and then she'll say, Well, I took your advice about here and I thought about what you said over here, and this is what we're dealing with. And it's like, wow, I I'm just sitting there listening like a fly on the wall, and it's fascinating.

Yeah, that's a that's a big part of these groups, is where we'll dive into these challenges and someone will say, Okay, and we make sure they say this, I'm going to do something, right? They're going to make a commitment to the group that they're going to take action, right? All the leaders are taking their time to help this leader, and we get a date on it, and we make sure that we follow up with them. Because some leaders don't have accountability baked in, and that's important. They know they need it. They need to be held accountable to the decisions. They need to make decisions. Because sometimes not making decisions is almost is even more dangerous than than making a wrong decision. So that's that's a really critical part of this, is we constantly go back and say, how's that going? Can we help you? And really circling around a leader that's that's got some challenges.

Using LinkedIn For Warm Referrals

Yeah, that sounds like my team telling me that uh, right, Richard, make a decision. Right, I hear that. Now, something that you're bringing up, because uh you and I have talked, and obviously I spend a lot of time talking to these vistage groups about LinkedIn. Yeah. Right. And one of the things is as you grow your chapter, you have been using LinkedIn to kind of find those individuals who might find get value out of a vista chapter. And I was fascinating, and one of the reasons we're having this uh discussion is the effort that you're putting in and how you're going about identifying candidates. And that's this is applicable for anybody who's hiring somebody for their company, who's looking for a prospect for a customer as a salesperson, because you're doing some very specific, purposeful, outbound cultivating, and you're using LinkedIn to do it. And I was very fascinated with that process that you're doing. You're willing to share that?

Absolutely. Yeah, it's um it's really important that we bring together the right leaders into this group, right? We've already set a culture and we're gonna be very selective of who gets the remaining seats in in our group. And so we've kind of talked about what are the ideal characteristics of these leaders. So again, we're based in the San Francisco Bay Area, so geography is one of them. You know, these are certain size companies, kind of five or 10 million up to 150 million, and you know, certain industries and other attributes that that we look at. And so I'm using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a tool to curate a group of leaders that might be a good candidate for our group. And there's an interesting way to do this where you could utilize um some filters within Sales Navigator to figure out who they're a connection of. So you build uh a list um based on, say, one of my members. And I have this these these criteria baked in that that that covers some of the attributes that we're looking for. And it shows me that a member is connected to a certain number of leaders, and we find that, oh yeah, that could be actually a good candidate. And it and it sparks a conversation with that member to say, yes, that person is great. I hadn't even thought of him. He would be amazing, or she is she is totally an amazing leader, and she would add to the conversation and she would get a lot of value out of it. So it's a great way to kind of spark ideas for getting referrals, and certainly that can work for any kind of business, right? Leveraging warm relationships is is a tried and true way to get in referrals, introductions to get new business.

Yeah.

And so as you're thinking about, as listeners often ask me, hey, what about premium? What about sales navigator? And so when it comes to sales navigator, you've identified there are certain filters that you're able to use. So in my case, I use sales navigator, and I did training this morning with a client about this. I look for people who used to work for one of my best clients. So I have like four clients that I say, I'm looking for somebody who used to work at one of these four companies. And then I stay in this filter, but they don't work there now. That means I want somebody who used to work at a company that I've done work with who's moved on. Now I want them to be in sales, I want them to be a VP of sales or a chief revenue officer. And then here's the kicker. And and uh Scott, and you know this one. And that is, I want them in their role for less than a year or maybe less than two years. And then when I ask my audiences why would I do that? It's because when a new chief revenue officer or a new VP of sales comes in, they want to make an impact. And now suddenly sales navigator is telling me these people who probably know who you are, have just moved into a new role, they saw the impact you had at the last company. Probably a good idea to reach out now and engage with them. And exactly what you're doing as well, using these filters to find, in your case, specific CEOs who would be open to joining a vistage chapter, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Again, you're you're way ahead of me on this.

Oh, I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

Sales Navigator Filters And Real ROI

Yeah, there's so many ways that it's an it's not an inexpensive tool, but the ROI can be can be real, assuming you actually learn how to use it and leverage it.

How Leaders Are Using AI

Yeah, you bring up a valid point. When I work with so many of my clients, some of my clients are spending one to two million dollars a year on Sales Navigator, right? A lot of money. And yet they're they're frustrated because the salespeople don't seem to be getting the most out of it. And I come in and say, yeah, because they don't understand LinkedIn. It's like they're they look so it's an expensive lookup tool. They look somebody up. I'm like, okay, yeah. Now what are you gonna do with it? Without understanding the principles of how the LinkedIn algorithm works, sometimes there's a disconnect there as they go from looking someone up and then how do I engage with them on LinkedIn? And that's one of the things that obviously I talk a lot about about a lot. Um let's also talk then about AI because nobody else is talking about it. Maybe you and I can be the first ones to be talking about it.

Let's do that.

So you use AI quite heavily. And tell me a little bit about how you're using it.

The Virtual Board Of Directors

Yeah, so certainly um I've been in technology as a founder, as as an executive for most of my career here in the Bay Area. And so, you know, when A when all the buzz started coming out with ChatGPT, I was curious. And I dug in and started learning. And I I jumped into some um some trainings as some great vista speakers, including Richard, but others on AI, and then we've done some boot camps. So I'm trying to learn it. This is a tool for both myself and my own coaching. I have a side coaching practice as well as my vistage group. How can I leverage this tool to become a better coach, to build my groups with the right leaders, to save myself time in administrative tasks? And so it's been a learning curve. Kind of I moved a lot from um ChatGPT and custom GPTs and projects to now Claude, Claude's all the buzz, and really leveraging um the projects there and now even co-work, right? It's um the agents, et cetera, that that really is um can provide a lot of leverage. I'm early days in this learning, but I'm I'm really you know finding it interesting. Um, probably spend more time on it than I should, but um, but uh it's it's a journey, right? And I'm starting to see some time savings. The other piece of the puzzle is AI is so important to every leader, right? If you're not using it, your competitors are. And I share this in my group every every month. Um, not every most months, we'll do a section on like maybe 15 minutes. How are you using AI? And we have all levels of leaders and different types of organizations from from technology companies who are power users to not-for-profits. We have a very large not-for-profit that member, and her organization is is really diving into AI. How do they use it? And everything in between. And so I think it's really important to have that conversation. How are you how are you leveraging this top technology? You know, what can you do within AI to help you have a better organization, grow faster, and really help your team um build the culture and and systems that you need?

You know, because I'm I'm seeing that uh a lot with the AI. For example, I help my clients, a lot of executives, uh, create a virtual uh board of directors. You create a persona file, call the board of directors, you drop it into Claude, and the next time you have a decision, you run it by your board of directors. And I've had multiple calls, even today, and text messages. Oh my gosh, my board of directors just gave me the best insight. And these are just virtual personas through Claude that's helping you see things from a competitor's perspective or a colleague's perspective, right? As it builds them in. So it has been, I gotta tell you, you and I, I've just loved it. I think my wife's a little concerned about the long-term relationship that I have spent so much time with on that. Let's talk about the in real life. You and I are getting together on June 2nd here in the San Francisco Bay Area to have a workshop on a little bit of AI, a lot about LinkedIn. Tell us a little bit about that event that I'll be participating in.

June 2 San Francisco Workshop

Yeah, fantastic. Looking forward to it. So essentially, it's uh an experience vistage event. It's bringing together some high-performing CEOs that are interested in potentially being part of a peer group. And so this is an opportunity for them to experience it. Hearing from an amazing speaker like yourself talking about a topic that's relevant to nearly every CEO, they they should have some LinkedIn and AI strategy. So, really learning some insights there. And then, as a part of the discussion, it's a lunchtime event, uh, really pretty time efficient, two, two and a half hours. We'll dive in to do what we usually do in our meetings. It'll be an abbreviated version. It's issue processing. And by the way, that's the bread and butter of most of our meetings. Each leader is is uh committed to bringing a challenge or an opportunity to the group. And we'll dive in, and we have a really amazing process that this is created to really understand the nature of that problem because sometimes it's not what they think it is, and really understanding that challenge and then really giving feedback, unbiased feedback that a leader can really take in and put into action in their business. So it's going to be a great event um in downtown San Francisco on June 2nd.

June 2nd. And how do they find out more information about that?

Yeah, they can just um uh DM me, um Andy Scott. Um, I've got my own website as well, um Scott Summitgroup.com. And um, yeah, happy to share a little bit more about the event as well as my peer group in case they think it might be a fit.

And they can also reach out to me and I can put them in touch with you so as they come through. Andy, this has been a great conversation. There's there's so much more we could talk about, but I am looking forward to this opportunity to spending time with uh prospective vistage members to spend some time with you in person, uh, which is always interesting, right? That we get to know each other so much on virtual Zoom calls. And then it's like, oh yeah, you're a lot taller than I thought.

In real life, exactly.

Right? In real life. So thank you again for being a guest on the show today.

Thanks so much, Richard. It's a pleasure.

You've been listening to Digital First Leadership. My guest has been Andy Scott. We've been talking about Vistage, he's a Vistage chair, and he is having an event I'll be speaking at on June 2nd in San Francisco. Please reach out to myself or Andy. And Andy, one more time, what was that website? It's Scotsummit.com. ScottSummit.com, where you can find out more information about the upcoming event. If you have questions, feel free to reach out. You know how to find me. You can find Andy on LinkedIn as well. So thanks for listening. Take care.