Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 015 | Exactly What to Say | Phil M. Jones

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator.Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wish you knew exactly what to say. Would it make you a better spouse, parent, or a better leader. Well, if that is the case, you’re going to want to pay attention to today’s episode because my guest today is the expert with magic words. My guest today is Phil Jones and he is going to tell us how we know exactly what to say so we can change our words and change our world right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wish you knew exactly what to say? Would it make you a better spouse, parent, or a leader. My guest today is the expert with magic words. My guest today is Phil Jones and Phil is going to tell us how we know exactly what to say so we can change our words and change our world. Phil is an international keynote speaker, sales expert, and business educator who is teaching the world to sell.

Phil, welcome to The Key Leading Podcast.

Hi, Eddie. Thanks for inviting me on the show. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Man, I’m so excited to have you here. You’ve got a fascinating background. Can you just tell my listeners a little bit about my background.

I mean, I don’t know how far we want to go back but I’ve been in business for quite some time. So I started my first business at just 14 years of age. I was knocking on the doors of my neighbors asking them quite politely whether they would like to have their cars washed. Now, by the age of 15 my local car cleaning business was delivering me more money than many of my school teachers. So I kind of started with this entrepreneurial genes relatively earlier. I’ve been in a number of entrepreneurial businesses through my teens but at the age of 18 I was faced with the dilemma of having an offer on the table from one of the most prestigious universities in my country in the UK but didn’t want to go. I wanted to get my education in the workplace.So at 18 years of age I applied to join a number of graduate management training programs with some large retailers and kind of dispelled the myth that you need a degree to get a good job and at 18 became the youngest ever sales manager for a business called Debenhams Department Stores. It was the largest independent department store group in the UK. And there’s a beautiful thing about being in senior leadership position at the age of 18 and it’s that you kind of don’t know what you don’t know. So in terms of getting results, I just followed the protocol. I learned from the people that were there before there. I’d be curious and inquisitive towards the people that were crushing it and then I’d take my cues from their clues.

I did pretty well through the corporate lens and I went from that role to open stores for them up and down in the country, went from there to run sales team for one of the largest furniture retail business in the UK, went from there to become head of retail, Commercial Director for Premier League soccer clubs, went from there to found a property business with a business partner of mine that turned over 240 million Pounds at its peak and that takes us through to about 2008 when the world changed a little and my business that was growing on a Monday we couldn’t give away by the Friday when the economic downturn changed. We had the banks move against us, currency markets move against us, and my confidence just disappeared too. So I brought that business down and while I was figuring out what I wanted to do next, I continually got invited into chambers of commerce, small business networking groups, asking about what people could do to turn their business around.

So I started delivering seminars and training courses in and around that subject matter while I was figuring out what I wanted to do next. Then 11 years on from there I’m still doing a similar kind of thing and now I’ve written five bestselling books, spoken on 57 different countries, 5 continents, streamed about 2 million people but, yes, I do different things, I know how to get people to buy from me more often, get them to spend more money when they shop and I help people find more customers. That’s about it.

Well, those are the only three things I had to do that is the envy of many people. Many of us wish we could do one of those well. You’re surely included.So, I want to tell people a little bit about how I know you because you and I have a mutual dear friend who we love and adore and that is the amazing Sylvie di Giusto.

You bet.

And she kept telling me “Eddie, we have this new guy who’s just joined our chapter. You got to meet him. His name is Phil Jones. He is incredible!” And then I finally met you six months later. So you’re already gold with me because anybody who Sylvie talks about like that is gold.

She’s the best.

She’s awesome! Then you and I met and got connected through the C Suite and then we were keynote speakers for the National Speakers Association Winter Conference last year, 2018. By the way, congratulations on getting your Certified Speaking Professional credential.

You bet and I took some time to get the paperwork completed.

Yeah. No, that’s a big deal. So you joined an elite group of less than 15% of the professional speakers in the world to have earned that designation. So that’s phenomenal.Then I heard all these great things about you, get a to meet you in person and I’m like “Wow! Phil’s a good looking guy who’s got this accent. That’s a killer accent.” And then you’ve got the strong sense of fashion. Then I got a chance to I see that you’re more than just good looking guy with swag as we say on this side of the pond, Phil. You gave that keynote and I went “Wow! Phil is impressive!” And I went on to learn that your book that you wrote, many of us would be happy if we made Amazon Bestseller lists or the New York Times is like everyone’s aspiration and Wall Street Journal but the reality is the average self-published author only sells 250 copies of their book, quiet as it’s kept, and the average published author only sales 2000 but you’re not average. Can you tell my listeners how many copies of your book you sold?

As of last month, we probably just ticked over 3,85,000 copies. And that’s across hardcopy, eBook and audible downloads.

I hear you. Everything counts and that’s staggering, Phil. Almost 4,00,000 copies around the world.

Exclude international as well. So we’re being translated into, I think, 23 different languages, all in the works.

Oh really? I didn’t know that. So 23 languages?

Yes, that’s on top of that. So I have no transparency on units through international copies at this stage.

Okay. So we’re only talking about 4,00,000 English copies. We don’t know the numbers on the 23 other languages.

You bet.

Wow! Phil, that’s just phenomenal. Congratulations! The big question someone who’s listening who’s a current author or want to be author would probably ask is how did you do that.

Yes and the answer is longer than what we have time for in this podcast. I think the short answer is one copy at a time. I think it’s important to get a focus on that. And I think the other thing that people look towards is the focus for the majority of authors, money is wrong, is what they look for. They look to be on the bestseller list and selling books is easy. Getting people to read books is the real goal. So you want to be on the most read list, not on the most sold list because it’s the reading of books that encourages the transfer of “You should read this too” type conversations and that’s what creates a perennial seller as opposed to something that is just sold to you or maybe [inaudible] in the shorter. So you’re goal should be focusing on how do I get book into the hands of people that are then going to read it.I think part of the mastery in exactly what to say is, one is, it’s a universally applicable skill set. It’s something that almost everybody has an interest in. So it’s a beautiful niche that is acceptable by everybody. Secondly, the book can be read cover to cover in 60 or 75 minutes, which I think is a remarkably important way of packaging information in today’s day and age. So not only do I need to get the books into the hands of lots of people but people finish it. When they finish it, they go on to then share the stories around it with other people. I mean I’ve never read a book and not felt smarter at the end of it. And when we feel smart, then we feel the desire to the other tell somebody. So there’s a huge amount of word-of-mouth strategy that stacks towards the success in that book too.

Very well said, Phil. And I love the fact that you said we should desire to be on the most-read list and not necessarily on the most-sold list. And you accomplished that because it is a quick read but it’s not just quick reading. You got some really solid morsels in the book. And the structure. Tell our listeners a little bit about the structure of the book and how you came up with that because I really like it.

People, in my mind, want to read books because they want to take action on the back of it. My frustration as an avid reader of business books for entire life is I have to consume 50,600; 60,000; 70,000 words in order to find the three pages to actually have the action.

Yes.

That would move me or I find the actionable insights in chapter one and then read the next 11 chapters to the reinforce what already was told in Chapter One. So I wanted something different to that. I wanted a book that also makes the reader the star of the story as opposed to the author the star of the story. And the content and exactly what to say was not new ideas to me. So I’ve been teaching magic words and precise word choices to influence people to take action since 2009 to 2010. They’ve been key parts of my training programs and key parts of my keynotes. And they’ve always been the big takeaway. They’ve always been the one thing that people would go away talking about after the fact. So I knew I had to do more with it. In 2012 I had an invitation to go deliver training for a large telecommunications company where they wanted me to deliver sales training advice to all their admin stuff that were in the frontline in the core sense and they wanted to a takeaway to be able to help support that training session. So I wrote a two-page PDF that I called Magic Words – The Seventeen Words To Influence and Impact People. I think that was the title of it at the time. I mean, it was well received on the back of that training. Next day I found myself in one of my mastermind groups with a group full of fellow speakers and the topic of books came up and they were all saying how hard it was to get published. And, bear in mind, this was 2011. There was less transparency on how you could become published easily at that point in time than there is today. And me and my big mouth got me into trouble that said “Look, you could turn a book around in as little as seven days, if you were so inclined.”

Seven days?

Yes. And I turned that two-page PDF into a simple both published book and eBook called ‘Magic Words’, using the same title. I just fleshed out the two page PDF and stuck atop a title on it and turned into a book, put it up into the Amazon store, and emailed it out to my list, shared it with a few other people, ran a free Kindle promotion and 12 days later we got 120,000 downloads of the free copy of the book. so Magic Words kind of existed in my library from that point in time.When I went through my geographic move from the UK to the US in 2016-2017, I knew that I wanted to be able to do more here. I was looking back at my previous body of work with Magic Words being part of it knowing I wasn’t that proud of it.

Really?

Well, it wasn’t meant to be a flagship piece. It was produced under the pretense of how quickly can you turn a book around. It wasn’t how do I create my showpiece.

So it was your dear piece.

Yeah. So knowing that I was coming to the US, I was like “Okay, I’m going to do a new book.” And then I thought to myself well “Why would I do a new book? Why don’t I do the same that I’ve always done but do it better?” So I took Magic Word and I rewrote it through the lens of what I now knew to be true and I considered creating a number of very big ideas into very small compact resource to tackle what I believe is one of the biggest challenges that people are facing in leadership, in sales, in conversation as a whole which is finding the right words at the right time to move people to take the right action. And I rewrote the book in an afternoon. And what was fun about writing this book is I wasn’t sharing any new ideas. The content was so familiar with me that the writing of the book was easy. This isn’t to launch a new idea into a space. It’s to punctuate a body of work that I was so deeply rooted in over a decade. Crafting the content was pretty easy but I wanted it to read like a story with the reader being the center of the attention giving them gold from the get-go, shooting the big guns, like not trying to hide the key secret in any of the information as quickly as possible, just put it right up there upfront. And then I edited it and reedited it and reedited it and reedited it and reedited it and reedited it and I spent six months reediting the manuscripts to be able to trim all the facts, to be able to create a continuity in flow. And then I worked with one of the best hybrid publishers in the world which is an organization could Page Two out in Vancouver to be able to present the information in what we believe to be the most user friendly form as possible. So we didn’t do the typical line breaks there because that’s how many words they were on a sentence. We created the white space where the white space was needed. We created the call-outs to be able to influence the right piece. We crafted this book like a tailor would craft a fine suit that you and I would know so well. That’s the level of detail we went into to how this page flow works. And I wanted to make it look stunning. I wanted to make it look like it was something people were proud to own. And that was the work that went into building the book. The content was the easy part. The sculpting and the crafting of positioning was the challenge and I’m real proud of it. And now we are 22 months into his journey. And my next move isn’t to write a new book. My next move is how I as taking this to make it better. So there will be a second edition over the next 12 months that is going to turn good to better or better to better still, better to better still. That’s my body of work. And when you study the success of any great artist, much of their success is anchored one taking idea and continuing to refine it. It’s no developing a new idea after a new idea after a new idea.

Well, I love the title that you had for the first book – Magic Words – but now you’ve changed that. You went from one afternoon to six months of editing to a new publisher and it’s now Exactly What To Say – The Magic Words For Influence And Impact.

And think about why that word choice is even important in a title.

Okay.

And think about how that creates a leadership lesson too is if I call the book Magic Words, I talked about what’s inside the book. Not only that, your subconscious brain says “There’s no such thing a magic words.” It becomes counterintuitive. It’s a label for a book, not a movement or an embodiment that puts you the reader at the center. So you don’t want magic words. You want to know exactly what to say.

Very nice.

If you just think about that from a human perspective, and I believe that pivot Entitled has been a significant part of its success and it’s also created me the ability to able to expand upon the franchise of creating this ‘Exactly’ book series of Exactly How To Sell, Exactly Where To Start, and exactly what I do next. Who knows.

Yes. And so you’ve become the Chicken Soup guy but with a different title, right. So I love that concept. I love your thought process. And you’re right, it is a leadership lesson because we have to be able to reinvent ourselves and be able to step back sometimes with a new Lens.

And I think there’s a really interesting point as we build on that too is if I ask a room full of people whether they want to be good at something, better at something or do their best to something, what do you think everybody in the room thinks?

That’s a good question. What do they think?

They will want to do their best at things. We’ve even said things to other people like “Don’t worry, you’ve tried your best.” And we’ve even reached for the excuse ourselves like all “Oh, I was trying my best.” Yet they shoot towards the best is actually a complete pack of lies because how many times have you said there was to somebody “Oh don’t worry, you’ve tried your best” but knowing that that wasn’t true? How many times have you even mouthed the words yourself “I tried my best” and knew that you had more to give? It is a mistake to be able to aim at doing your best. Our goal as leaders should be to be able to look at ourselves and look at everybody within our organization and have them continue to focus on better. If the focus always remains on better, then what happens is you surpass what you currently believe is your best over a period of time. And it enhances this ability to create permanent reinvention which is what’s required to be able to survive and certainly required to thrive in today’s modern business climate. So my pivot to everybody is to look at everything that’s important to you and don’t say “What does best look like?”, don’t focus on best practices. Get to work on saying “What does better look like? What are the better practices that we can be working on?” that means that tomorrow is better than today. That’s it.

I love that, Phil. So don’t focus on what is the best. Focus on what is better because that pushes us to a space of continual improvement.

You Bet!

Well, thank you, Phil.So what I’d like to do now just pause for a moment for a word from our sponsor.

Okay everyone, we’re back with Phil Jones. He’s telling us how we can know exactly what to say so we can change our words and change our world.Phil, I’m enjoying our conversation and, again, thank you for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me.

So, Phil, I want to continue our discussion about your book Exactly What To Say. You’ve turned that into a series and I personally have even benefited from your ability to wordsmith and to simplify things because when I wrote my book, you were kind enough to take some time out of your schedule to help me with my thought process and help me with words and titles. So you truly are an expert.Now, you do a lot of things to help organizations so much so that on your website and your bio you don’t say that you’re the speaker for every organization or the coach for every organization. You actually describe yourself as one of the most in-demand assets for corporations. Can you tell my audience what that means.

One of the things I learned about the work that I’m good at it is I enjoy building businesses but what I enjoy more is helping other people build theirs. And simply my skill set sets in the area of making other people’s train sets run raster. And by describing myself as an asset, I think that’s how I see, I’m a tool in their toolbox. I’m part of the team but not part of the team. I’m like that magic guy on the bench that when you find yourself in terms of trouble you can call out and know that you have a secret weapon that can allow you to be able to overcome some of the challenges but he swings in and he swings out. And that’s what companies use me for. They use me as like a fixer, I guess, a lot of the time or to be able to help provide the route forward or the path ahead when they have some cloudy judgments themselves or they have a problem they don’t know how to work around.

Excellent. So I definitely want to make sure that we’re going to talk about it in a little bit about how folks can reach out to, get in contact with you so that you can help fix their organization.Now going back to your series here, you were very kind by the way to send me all three copies of these books that I’m holding up and I’m actually going to be sharing these with folks and making sure everybody has a chance to see these and read them, that are in my network, but if somebody is wondering which of the three should they start with, Phil, I’ve been telling people Exactly What To Say is what they should start with and then pick one of the other two to go into. Read all three but then in terms of picking their next choices, which would you say people should start with?

It’s an impossible question but I’ll answer in truth. The three sit as a trifecta and can be read in any order.

Okay.

And they’re designed to complement each other but they don’t necessarily need to be sequential. The sequence they were written is worth considering in terms of timeline which was Exactly What To Say, Exactly How To Sell, and Exactly Where To Start. With at that point in mind, exactly where you should still if you’re wondering right now is dependent upon what are your given set of circumstances. If you’re looking to be at a table and say what it is that you’re doing right now and say “Hey, how do I have more effective conversations and how do I make my boat run faster?”, the quickest way to be able to test your feelings as to whether my work is a good fit for you us Exactly What To Say. It’s the shortest read. It’s the most instantly applicable. It’s something that is almost a condiment to what is it that you’re doing. It’s like the hot sauce that just adds to a meal but it’s not the meal. That’s where Exactly What To Say sits.If I look at the other two publications, Exactly Where To Start is a great book if you’re kind of in the rough, like you’ve been meaning to launch a podcast forever, you being planning to be able to launch a new business idea, you start wondering how do you lean forward the new initiatives. You got to start and you want to be able to make it a reality. If you got any big idea that you’ve been procrastinating on forever and you want to get it done, Exactly Where To Stat will give you a roadmap, precise actions, precise though processes to be able to say “I’m going to turn this thing from an idea into real,” not into gazillion dollars’ worth of success, into it now exists for you to be able to refine. And Exactly How To Sell is an instruction manual. It takes the art of salesmanship and it demystifies it to a simple set of tools that allows you to be able to prospect more effectively, allows you to have more effective questioning techniques to be able to qualify your consumers better, helps you be better prepared for your meetings, gives you frameworks to be able to then start the difficult conversations, helps you close more sales, helps you to overcome objections, it gives you understanding to what ‘I Can’ management really looks like, helps you deal with that pot full of people that you’ve acquired over a period of time and turn them into an endless supply of ongoing business.

So my answer to which you should read first is dependent upon what you’re currently in the mood for being able to give some effort towards.

Thank you. And if I’m not mistaken, Exactly How To Sell was in the windows of a very important store.

All three of my books have been in the windows of Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York and I think probably my biggest and most favorite acolytes for any of my publications so far is the work that I’ve done with Audible. So I’m the first nonfiction author to have created a piece for the Audible Original Series recorded live in Audible’s Theater on Minetta Lane in New York City. So we recorded a full-day sales training workshop there that was designed as interactive experience that puts the listener of the Audible program now in the workshop without having to ever have to be there. We launched that this February and that getting real great reviews of teaching people to sell but without them needing to have the constraints of physically attending a workshop or taking you there at the office or covering up the effort to be able to get somewhere. So that’s called How To Persuade And Get Paid.

Yes. So I was going to mention that. I’m glad you talked about that because it’s one thing to have a book on Audible but to have actually been recorded there in the theater and the photos of people going to your website to be able to see those photos, it was just a gorgeous setting that you had, and to do that live, man, what an accomplishment.

Yeah, that was eight hours of recording done in one take with no edit, no errors, no script, no PowerPoint, no notes, no prompts, interactive sessions recorded from live theater audience of 250 people. I wanted that experience, one, to be able to demonstrate credibility but, two, for the listener to be able to understand that if you record a program that is you direct to somebody else, you’re not hearing how other people might react, you’re not getting the other voices that are involved to either show empathy to understanding in the same way that you do or you can experience somebody else changing their mind. That was my goal of being able to create and also to demystify what sales training is like. I have a real passion for changing the way people think about salespeople and it is glamorized and glorified in a way that is just ugly and crass and in today’s modern world where integrity and trust are currencies that are more valuable than almost anything else is the role of a sales professional is very, very different. And with all selling something either it’s a product, an idea, or an outcome, a change, knowing how to do that with some grace is a skill that frightens made it might get missed. And when you look at the youth of today and understand why many of them aren’t achieving what they’re capable of, it’s because of the fear of asking for the things that they want in life because nobody takes the time to teach people how to ask for things with brace.

I’m glad you mentioned that because that’s also something I was going to say. I don’t want my listeners to think that the title Exactly How To Sell – The Sales Guide For Non-Sales Professionals, don’t let that mislead you and this is if you are a person that sells and even if you don’t think you’re in sales because, as you just said, we are all selling something.So the other thing that I find interesting, Phil, is as an author myself I am always excited when I have a reader send me a note or post something on social media about how they’ve used my book and how it’s impacted them. Having sold 400,000 copies, I’m sure you’ve got tons of those stories. Is there one that may stand out the most to you about how someone has told you how one of your books has impacted them?

There isn’t one that stands out. I get seven to ten a day of some form of outreach from somebody that either pays compliment to the book but more importantly talks about change that he’s made. Some of my favorites though relate towards how people have picked up Exactly What To Say and not necessarily used it for commercial success but they’re like “Aw, damn, I’ve managed to get my kids to be able to do things that otherwise I found difficult” or “I found a way of getting my husband to finally take the trash out.” Some of those things are a huge fun for me to have received back but the ones I think move me most are when people move from a position of lacking in confidence to high levels of competence.

I like that.

And where they have those penny drop revelation in moments of like “I thought this was harder than that and I trusted what you said and I tried it and it works and thank you.” So I receive notes where people are like “I’ve been implementing the stuff that you told about and the incremental revenues meant that we’ve now been able to pay for our vacation for the first time in seven years.” That stuff is the thing that matters most. So when I receive a compliment on the book or receive compliment on any of my programs, my typical response is like “Thank you so much for taking the time to write. It means the world to me that you enjoyed the read but what I’m most interested in is what have you done with it.”

Yes.

“If you haven’t implemented yet, then come back to me when you’ve implemented. Tell me what’s changed for you. Let me know if you had any resistance along the way.”

Yeah. And true confession here, I did not read your book as soon as I should have read it and I realized after I read your book, the first one at least, Exactly What To Say that I could’ve really … I’ve probably lost business by not reading your book.

I’ve been told that once. They’re like “Ah, why did I not find this early on?” Even in some of my reviews online people say things like “If I had this 20 years ago, I’d be in a very different position.”

Yes, yes. This is one of those few books where as you’re turning every page, you’re like “Rats! I wish I’d known that.” I mean it is really well written and its’ a quick read, people can get to it and get what they need and, as you said earlier, they don’t have to wait to Chapter Thirteen. Immediately as you’re turning pages, there are ideas that are easy to implement, easy to share. You talked about how some parents have contacted you, some spouses have contacted you. This is the ultimate negotiation tool. In fact, I got to make sure I keep this away from my wife so she doesn’t start using it on me.

You try being the guy that wrote the book by that time. So that goes in husband and wife scenarios.

Oh gosh! So she starts quoting your stuff back to you. Is that what’s happening with you?

I know what you’re doing.

I can only imagine. Well, excellent.Man, Phil, I could talk to you forever and this one last question I got to ask you and that is this idea that you’ve spoken in over 57 countries, you’ve delivered over 2000 presentations, educated more than two million people, is there a country that stands out? Is there some country that you were in and I saw you were in Serbia, Morocco, you’ve been everywhere and maybe something happened and you thought “Wow! This is my place.”

My place is here in the United States of America because you people get it, like prepared to take action and committed to learning. There is a desire and a hunger to chase betterment more than anywhere else. I think my greatest fascination from working in a variety of different cultures that I have done is the similarities that outweigh the differences.

Okay.

Whether I’m a Mauritius, whether I’m here the United States, whether I’m in Tehran in Iran, whether I’m at somewhere else in the Middle East, whether I’m in Singapore, whether I’m in London, whether I’m in France, Germany, Spain, it doesn’t matter. The principles that exist are the same everywhere which just reminds me of how important it is to see the world through the other person’s lens and remember all we’re really looking to be able to do is to influence another human being. And human beings have way mo e similarities than they have differences. And that’s been joy. People are like “What’s different about being in this environment, in that environment?” and there are differences but they are so minute. The heart of the issue still remains the same and what everybody is looking for when you’re in conversation with them at any point in time is “Show me that you know me.” That’s what they want to be able to understand. And in any given negotiation, what the other person wants to ill understand is “What’s in it for me.” That’s it.

That’s it.

As simple as that. Back that up with “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Know that to be true. If there’s something that you want in life, be prepared to ask for it. And you want the secret to success in all those things is ask nicely.

It’s that simple.

It really can be. I mean there’s a lot of complexity to be able to do things with simplicity. It’s not anymore unique than that. I think we over complicate things with trying to put everything in box where really this is people that can help each other.

So, Phil, you’ve given us a lot to think about in this episode and I really appreciate it and I think the overall message to leaders from this episode is the fact that it all boils down to communication, exactly what to say, when to say it, how to say it. And it needs to be something in every leader’s toolkit. Is that how you would say it?

I think I’ll even simplify it further. And just remember that the worst time to think about the thing you’re going to say is the moment you’re saying it. My guess is in every single organization from everybody listening to this podcast right now there are conversations that happen that are almost repeats. A question that is asked from your customers, a response to a typical inbound inquiry, the way in which you answer your telephone is the way in which you respond to your team’s inquiries, the way in which you sign off an email. Every single one of those communication touch points is essential and always critical. Yet what the majority of people do is then make it up as they go along, forgetting there’s the power of words, the power of communication, the power of conversation and know this that it’s questions that create conversations, that build relationships, that create opportunities to move to action. So if you’re not controlling your conversation through questions, than what you’re doing is you’re leaving a whole host of influence on the table.

Wow! I love that – If you’re not controlling your questions, you’re leaving a lot of influence on the table. I love that. Thank you very much, Phil.Now, in the Keep Leading Podcast we love to give our leaders a quote or a story that they can use to help them keep leading. And I normally don’t do this but in this case I want to actually share something one of your reviewers, you have over 500 reviewers just for exactly what to say along, and one of them said something that I that was really well put. And that’s Matthew Kimberley. He said “Read this book once a day for a week, once a week for two months, then once a month until it all sticks.” And I just thought you can’t get a better review than that but what else would you say to leaders to help them keep leading?

I have a simple philosophy on success and I think I can sum it up in that success is created if you’re doing the basics to a high standard consistently. That’s it. And anytime anybody asks me how they could be more successful, what we do is we dive into those three areas. It’s getting brilliant with basics, doing those basics to a high standard, and delivering them with the consistency. That will get you anywhere you want to go.

Do the basics to a high standard consistently.

That’s it.

From Phil M. Jones. I love it.And, by the way, we want to make sure everybody knows to look for Phil M. Jones because there’s a lot of people named Phil Jones. And so where can my listeners find out more about the amazing Phil M. Jones.

PhilMJones.com should get you there. Google search “Phil M Jones.” You should find just about anything that I produced. And if you want to connect and join the conversations, my advice would be find me on Instagram which is @PhilMJonesUK and that’s me showing coming up in person or similarly search me on LinkedIn. Love to be able to continue the conversation when you’re there.

Thank you, Phil. We will make sure that that appears in the show notes, going to make sure we share all three copies of your books so that people can connect back to you, read your work, and book you to help their organization.Thank you again for being a guest on the Keep Leading Podcast, Phil. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having you.

My pleasure. Always love to be here and you doing great things too, buddy.

Thank you, Phil.Well, that concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.