If you are making money, your employees are making money, and your clients and vendors are making money as a result of your business process, you are doing a damn nice job,” says Paul Guenther. He is the Founder & CEO of Knowledge Hub Media and known for exemplary leadership skills.
In an interview with World’s Leaders, Paul shared his insights over leadership, entrepreneurship and industry challenges and advice for emerging leaders.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to entice the target audience?
Similar to what I mentioned before, our offerings are diverse by their very nature. They have to be, really. Our core competencies fall in the areas or demand generation and content syndication. We promote our client’s white papers and webinars to generate and deliver highly targeted, highly qualified b2b sales leads. As each of our clients have different products, solutions and services, they each target different segments of people (and companies). Our offerings are customized, fully tailored to target folks within the right job roles – at the right companies – who are typically already in the buying cycle for our client’s solutions.
As a CEO and business leader, describe the challenges you overcame through your journey.
It might sound simple, but just getting off of the ground was probably my largest challenge. Selling the first client, and then the first couple of clients, on what was still mostly an unproven idea and then proving that idea to me and my clients even beyond my own expectations. Besides that, it is mostly client and campaign fulfilment challenges. Marketing programs that are driven by very niche targeting criteria, and reaching lead volume goals by the campaign’s deadline but we are very proactive about never “overpromising and underdelivering.” We simply won’t do it. We forecast for lead output and delivery as well as anyone in the industry, and we are usually dead on. Even so, we are typically conservative with the projections that we give clients. This provides another layer of protection that helps to ensure things go smoothly and we keep our promises in terms of goals.
How do you maintain balance between your professional & personal life?
Simple enough, they are separate lives. I mean that in every meaning of the definition. I have friends who work for me, for example. My brother, also. My interactions with these people differ immensely depending on whether they are professional or personal interactions. I do not allow the two things to get intertwined in any way. Also, to put it simply, I do not work weekends. I work long and hard hours, all week, Monday through Friday and to that point, I owe it to my family – and myself – to ensure that I don’t get wrapped up in business dealings on Saturdays and Sundays. The weekend is my time for leisure and personal experiences.
What was your inspiration behind your product/service? How your products/services are are going to help those, who are not even privileged to hear about it?
To reiterate, the inspiration for our products and services often comes directly from our clients and partners. Given that we are a B2B company and sell directly to businesses rather than consumers. Anybody who wants to know about our products is usually able to and anybody who wants to have input as far as out products are concerned? Well they are certainly welcome to offer it up.
What is your approach to motivating and developing talent? How does the company continue to develop, grow and elevate people to be at their very best?
Oh it’s easy. Treat them the same way that you’d treat your family or good friends. When you want to educate somebody that you like, somebody you love… How do you do it? Are you authoritative? Or conversely, are you more consultative? I try to treat everyone with the upmost respect. My rule of thumb is NOT to “treat everyone the same way you’d want to be treated,” but rather, to “treat everyone BETTER than you’d want to be treated.” That can go a long way. In 11 years, now, we’ve never lost a single employee. Nobody has ever been fired or laid off, and nobody has quit, either. I’d like to – and hope to – keep it that way.
How do you sustain your leadership spirit in this changing technological era?
I do not think it’s very difficult, honestly. It is just the way that I have always done things, still do things. I guess it’s just the way that I am. My leadership approach rarely changes based on wavering circumstances or external forces – including this current era of ever changing, ever improving technology. To be clear, though, external forces could no doubt impact our company. They can sometimes curve our approach or force us to take different paths in certain situations. These changes can have an impact on our strategy, for example, or the products and services that we offer. But external forces have very little – if any – effect on my leadership spirit.
What advice would you like to give to the emerging business leaders?
Make sure you are willing to put in the time and that you are content to miss out on some other things in life when you are running a company. Especially in the early years, where much of your time is spent building the business from the ground up. There have been, and still are, many weeknights where I am up until 4:30 in the morning working and then back up and going again at 8:30 am the same day. It’s just part of what I do. If you are going to run an effective company, you probably have to work longer and harder than everyone else. You really do not want to be in a position where you are relying on anybody. Even if you think you can (and hopefully you can). Failure cannot be an excuse – because you never actually fail at anything until you decide yourself that you’ve failed. If you can’t get things done one way, you try doing them a different way.
