How to Lead a Business with Integrity

07/18/21 • 11 min

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. I was named after an inspiring business leader named Nathan Tanner. When I went to college, the building that housed the business school I attended was the Tanner Building, named after Nathan Eldon Tanner.

Nathan Eldon Tanner was known as a man of outstanding executive ability and unquestioned integrity. Throughout his public career, he was known, even by his political opponents, for his rugged and undeviating honesty. His high moral standards were said to be constant, undeviating, and immovable. I have a long way to go to live up to Nathan Tanner’s example. However, in today’s episode, we’re going to tell Nathan’s story and discuss how to build a business with integrity.

One of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight; but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards in the night.” Tanner’s wife said. “And he tried to accomplish what he set out to do by doing just that: By rising at five A.M. to teach himself typing when he was running the store in Hill Spring.” (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org)

Tanner’s Life

Nathan Eldon Tanner was born on May 9, 1898, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and he grew up in Canada in the small town of Aetna, near Cardston, Alberta. On his family’s farm, he learned how to work hard, driving a four-horse team at the age of twelve, caring for livestock, and nursing his entire family back to health when all but him had smallpox (Source: rsc.byu.edu).

In Alberta, Tanner worked as a teacher and school principal before being elected to the Alberta Legislature, where he served as speaker of the Assembly. He was chosen as Speaker of the House, but before he had never even attended a session of the legislature and was elected to act as chairman of sixty-three members. On the subject, his wife said, “We were given an elegant suite of rooms in the legislative buildings, to use as we liked, and ... it seemed that he had fallen into the ‘lap of the Gods,’ but only he and I knew the hours, day and night, that he spent studying parliamentary procedure. This was the beginning of jobs which he was given, which he said were far beyond his ability to cope with.”

When Tanner was acting as Minister in the Alberta government, he earned the well-deserved nickname of “Mr. Integrity” because he refused to compromise by accepting gifts of any kind and was strictly honest in his dealings. The affectionate title followed him through a lifetime of success based on principles of fairness and integrity (Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org).

Later, he served as president of Merrill Petroleum Ltd. and director of the Toronto Dominion Bank of Canada. In 1954, he became president of Trans-Canada Pipelines. As president, he directed the construction of a $350 million, 2,000-mile pipeline from Alberta to Montreal (Source: NYTimes.com).

Tanner later moved to Salt Lake City and quickly established himself as a business and civic leader. He served on the board of directors of First Security Corporation and Mountain Fuel Supply Company. He helped plan, develop, and promote building projects in Salt Lake such as the Salt Palace, Symphony Hall, the Fine Arts Center, and the restored Capitol Theater (Source: NYTimes.com).

Decision-Making and Concentration

Tanner was said to have near flawless judgment when he was making decisions. Religious leader Victor L. Brown said, “He gathered all possible facts before making a decision, never making an impetuous or off-the-cuff decision. He had an unusual talent for setting bias and prejudice aside if such existed. He did not make the mistake of having pet projects that would tend to warp judgment.”

Another of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “I’d much rather be part of the solution to a problem than a part of the problem.”

Tanner used his power of concentration to help him make quick and well-informed decisions. For example, one day a group was making a very detailed and technical presentation that lasted over two hours. There was little time for discussion. At the conclusion of the presentation, Tanner said something like this:

“Recommendations one and two can be implemented with little difficulty. Recommendation number three needs more study, and your chart covering this portion of the presentation needs to be redone for the following reasons (which he listed). Recommendation number four will require much more study and appears to be untimely at the moment.”

This experience occurred after Tanner’s eyesight had been seriously impaired, so he hadn’t seen the chart—it had only been described to him.

Tanner was able to concentrate for the whole of the two hours and concisely relate his conclusions at the end of it. He didn’t let his bad eyesight become an excuse for him to not be part of the solutio...

Tanner’s Life

Decision-Making and Concentration

Another of Tanner’s favorite sayings was, “I’d much rather be part of the solution to a problem than a part of the problem.”

This experience occurred after Tanner’s eyesight had been seriously impaired, so he hadn’t seen the chart—it had only been described to him.

Previous Episode

Answers to 10 Questions About Email Marketing

Welcome back to another episode with email marketing expert Brittany Bayley. In the last episode, we discussed how to grow our email lists and essential email sequences. In today’s episode, Brittany answers common email marketing questions.

How often should we email our list?

How many times per week should we email our list? For nurture emails, Brittany said we should be emailed at least twice a week. She recommended sending one email highlighting something external such as an interview or podcast episode we’ve done. This trains our readers to open the email and click to go somewhere else.

If a YouTuber, podcaster, or blogger publishes something daily, it is usually best not to send an email every day because we may overwhelm our audience. We can send something like a weekly summary or highlights for all the episodes we’ve published that week.

There are some situations where a daily email would be acceptable. If “daily” is in the title of our show, our audience members will likely expect to get daily emails. Or if we set it up so they know it will be daily emails, then they may not be overwhelmed. If we aren’t sure what will work well for our audience, we can test different frequencies and see how they respond.

We can also give our audience options for how often they want to receive emails or which kinds of emails they’d like to receive. When they sign up we can ask if they’d prefer highlights or daily emails or perhaps they only want to hear from us when we have a new product or a sale. Brittany said, “Segmentation is . . . a great way to show that you respect your subscriber and that you respect their time.”

How do we find the best incentives or lead magnets?

To find the best incentives and lead magnets, we need to turn to our audience and be aware of what they are going through. What experiences are they having? What’s going on in their world? How can we help them get through that?

Brittany saw many successful lead magnets related to COVID-19. She saw things like “How to deal with stress in a pandemic” or “How to take your business online in a short period of time.”

“It's much more about the intention and what you're teaching versus the container like a challenge or an ebook,” Brittany said. We need to be offering incentives and lead magnets based on what the customer needs, not based on what we want to offer or sell.

The most successful lead magnets Brittany has seen relate well to their audience. Instead of using techie business jargon, they use simple terms their customers use and understand, making it clear for the audience.

How do we write subject lines?

Subject lines should be eye-catching and pattern-interrupting without being unclear. We don’t want to just put something random in the subject line that has nothing to do with the email’s content just to get people to open the email. When we do the random eye-catching thing but don’t give them the context behind it, our audience will feel tricked and they may not continue reading our emails.

Asking questions, having statements, and using emojis can be great ways to draw attention. We can also use things like caps, parenthesis, or brackets to draw attention to the subject line. Anything that varies from the typical subject line can be eye-catching. Depending on our audience and what they’re expecting from us, lists such as “5 Ways to...” can also work.

Brittany recently received an email with the subject line, “Brittany, do you have time today? I want to run something by you?” Brittany is acquainted with the sender, so she was immediately intrigued and opened the email. The sender had written a great email and wanted responses from her list, so it was a great way to pull her readers in.

Everything with emails should be based on our benchmarks. To get benchmarks, we need to make sure we’re emailing one to two times a week for 60 to 90 days to see what they are, then we can go from there and test to see what works well for our audience.

How do we improve our calls to action?

Calls to action (CTAs) can be tricky because we want our readers to take the action but we don’t want to be annoying when we give them that CTA. Though we may want to pack everything into one email, we should only have one clear and concise CTA in each email. It should be set apart from the rest of the email, not buried in a block of text.

Brittany usually writes her emails out of order. She writes her CTA first, then she’ll write the hook. Last, she bridges those two together through the middle or main body of the email. When we’re writing our hooks, we need to keep the CTA in mind, so every word should be leading to that call to action. When we write the email in reverse it is easier to carve the path leading to the CTA and our readers will have a better time following it.

How long should emails be?

The length of our emails can als...

Next Episode

3 Podcasting Hacks

Dave Jackson is a podcast consultant who helps people plan, launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. He began podcasting in 2005 and launched the School of Podcasting, which has more than 2.7 million downloads. He's the author of the book Profit From Your Podcast and is a featured speaker at events. In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn, which is one of the largest podcast hosting companies.

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss Dave’s journey to podcasting and three of his key strategies to hosting a successful podcast.

Dave’s Journey to Podcasting

Dave began his journey as a teacher and taught in the corporate world for about 20 years. “The great thing about being a teacher is you get to help people all the time,” Dave said.

While he loved teaching, he wanted to find a new way to help people beyond the corporate world. A friend told him about podcasting, so he googled it to find one and a half pages of results. Podcasts weren’t big at the time, but as he continued to do his research, he realized the shift towards podcasts was going to be a tectonic shift in the future.

Dave went back to school to get his degree and started a podcast, while also working other side jobs to help support himself until he could build a big-enough audience to make money with his podcast. What really got him hooked on the idea was his first voicemail from an audience member. Someone from Germany reached out to him to let him know how inspired he was from his podcast. That’s when Dave realized he could teach through podcasts and help people from around the world.

“I got to help people, and I [thought it was] the best thing ever,” Dave said. “That's when I decided I was going to launch the School of Podcasting. I just knew if I waited long enough, it would catch up.”

Since then, podcasting has grown exponentially with more than two million active podcasts and more than 48 million episodes as of April 2021 (Source: Podcast Insights).

In 2016, Dave joined Libsyn where he helps customers with questions about building their own podcast. He’d been a customer for Libsyn for 10 years when he gave them a call. He told them he had bad news and good news. He was out of a job, but it meant he was available to work for them. He also told them about his podcast, School of Podcasting.

His podcast wasn’t just a way for him to make a profit or to help his listeners. It also helped him get a job. He has been hired three times because of his podcast. His podcast gave him an opportunity to show people he knew what he was talking about. “Our podcast isn't, in many cases, our business, it's our business card. It's what allows people to get to know you without making a giant commercial,” Dave said.

While Dave works at Libsyn, he continues to host his own podcast at the same time. With years of experience in the podcasting world, he has learned many lessons and key strategies we should implement in our own podcast. Here are three of them.

Focus on a Specific Niche

The biggest mistake Dave sees podcasters make is trying to be everything for everyone. People often want to start a podcast with a very vague goal in mind. For example, someone may start a podcast with the idea to interview people with interesting stories. But what are those interesting stories? What is going to make someone want to listen to us over others?

If we don't bring in an audience, we don't have a podcast. Generic and wide-ranging goals don’t work 99% of the time. If we want to host a successful podcast, we need to focus on a specific niche audience.

Dave said that people often come to him with a goal to get sponsored, but sponsorships only happen if we have a large audience and can get massive downloads. And we only get massive downloads, if we are speaking to a specific group. We want to appeal to the needs and wants of a target audience. If we aim to meet the needs of everyone, we will end up meeting the needs of no one.

Even if we host a great podcast with a specific audience in mind, it can still be really difficult to get enough downloads to actually make money off a sponsorship. Instead, Dave recommends going even further and directing our podcast to an ever-smaller audience. “You don't have to have a ton of listeners if you have a hyper-niche show,” Dave said.

If we have a very direct, niche audience, we can get sponsored by other companies who have a similar audience to us. They will choose to sponsor us over others because we have such a specific audience that their product or service will resonate with.

For example, Dave had a client who ran a podcast called Special Mouse, a guide to the Disney Parks for guests with health issues and special needs. She didn't even have a thousand downloads in an episode, and yet she got a sponsor. Why? Because there was somebody in Florida that specialized in t...