Developing Your Soft Skills

Episode 910: Developing Your Soft Skills, with Greg Alcorn

Developing your soft skills will help you in both a professional and social setting. Start developing your soft skills today.

Greg Alcorn is the founder and CEO of Global Contact Services (GCS) with locations in North Carolina and New York. GCS provides outsourcing, management and consulting in the area of customer service. GCS currently has over 800 employees. He is a regular speaker on the subjects of developing your soft skills.

Greg’s a North Carolina resident, graduating from Catawba College and earning his MBA from UNC-Charlotte. In 2010 he was named Catawba’s Alumnus of the year, 2015 Church and College award and the Adrian Shuford Award in 2016.

For five years, he served on the NC State Board of Education. From that experience, Greg started ApSeed Early Childhood Education in 2015. ApSeed provides eReaders to economically disadvantaged children ages 0-4 years old, 6,000, so far. Recently, he received the MLK, Jr. Humanitarian Award for this work. He remains involved in numerous non-profits.

Greg’s book is a result of many relationships across all walks of life. He has worked in a blazing hot brickyard, played on a Cinderella Final Four basketball team for one week, and for decades, he has helped Fortune 500 companies with customer communications. The book of 7 Dumb Things We All Say is a quasi-memoir filled with soft skills of do’s and don’ts.

What you will learn from this episode about developing your soft skills:

• How Greg’s background and career journey led him to become the founder and CEO of Global Contact Services (GCS)
• How Greg recognized the importance of developing your soft skills and then passing the training to your associates
• Why Greg recognized the problem of replying to someone saying “thank you” with “no problem”
• How to identify when you are using negative or passive language, and how to convert it into positive, active statements
• How to avoid common language traps, mistakes, and habits that you may not even be conscious of
• How Greg defines “conversational bullying,” and why it is the antithesis of meaningful dialogue
• How Greg and his team built and scaled GCS to over a thousand employees, and what key lessons he learned in growing GCS
• What critical skills Greg feels a business owner should develop to effectively lead their team
• Why Greg believes strongly in the benefits of having many mentors, and what key lessons Greg has learned from his own mentors
• How to start developing your soft skills along with everyone else in your organization

Resources:

• Website: www.gcsagents.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/galcorn/
• 7 Dumb Things We All Say by Greg Alcorn: https://amzn.to/2BfYPFM
• Say THIS, Not That…Most of the Time™ training program: www.gcsagents.com/call-center-training-online
• Read more FAQs about developing your soft skills

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to a related podcast about developing your soft skills from our special guest, Kurt Mortensen

 

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success and about developing your soft skills from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe, their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, if you haven’t recently visited our resources section of predictive roi.com, you’ll realize that we’re building and scaling that section.

 

It is really turning into a library of free resources on the Predictive website. So you can now download free practical and tactical guides. Everything from search engine optimization. We added just several more ebooks on business to business podcasting on the Trojan Horse of sales. All of these wonderful success strategies that we’ve compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests.

 

So to get yours, just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources. It’s all free. Whatever you request, we will send it right to your inbox again as PredictiveROI.com/Resources.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: Greg Alcorn’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s guest, Greg Alcorn, let me share some additional context about why I was so excited that Greg said yes. So he’s the founder and CEO of a company called Global Contact Services.

 

And that provides outsourcing, management and consulting in the area of customer service. He’s also the author of the new book, Seven Dumb Things We All Say. And he’s also the creator of the training program entitled Say This and Not That. So we’re going to dive into his book Onward Nation, but we’re going to do that in a couple of different perspectives, which I think are these perspectives, I think are what is going to really make this conversation helpful.

 

And so at a high level, let me just say this. So Greg wrote the book. I mean, I think it’s really common for business owners to say, gosh, I’m going to write a book because of all the business development aspects, like the ROI of thought leadership, which I totally get and I totally support. Is it going to drive leads to the sales team?

 

Is it going to help conversions in existing funnels? Is it going to be a value add to your existing customers and share that with your prospects so that you know they benefit from your smarts? Absolutely unquestionable biz dev, from your thought leadership? That’s the ROI. Thought leadership. However smartly. In fact, I’ll say it brilliantly. Greg also recognized that there’s a very important, obviously internal audience, but I think it’s uncommon for business owners to say, wait a minute.

 

Not only am I going to share this thought leadership externally, but I’m going to also be really intentional about how I share it internally, how I’m going to share that with my frontline managers, how I’m going to share that with their teams of people, how I’m going to use this to also level up and move to the next level internally.

 

What we’re doing with our systems, processes and our expertise, it’s awesome. We’re going to talk about that. Then we’re also going to step through some of the really big takeaways for business owners out of his book. I’ve never met a business owner who would who had ever argued that soft skills are not critically important? Of course they are.

 

However, Greg has done a lot of research and broken down the things specifically that we’re unconsciously even aware of that we’re currently seeing. How are we bookending sentences? What are the seven things that we all say and we shouldn’t be saying? And these are things that, on the surface might seem innocuous or or harmless or just kind of all of that stuff is part of my habit when I’m talking.

 

But becoming aware of that, it’s like, oh, wait a minute. A simple word, like the word just in how I’m using that could totally impact that sentence. And the meaning of that sentence. So we’re going to talk about all of those things. Okay. So obviously I’m starting to ramble here because I’m super excited about this conversation. So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation, Greg.

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: Greg’s Path and Journey

 

Thank you Steve, and hello Onward Nation. Oh my gosh, I am so excited that we’re going to cover some, some really important topics. But before I start throwing questions your way, because I do have a ton of them actually take us behind the curtain here. Your bio. Impressive. The company you built is awesome for your book.

 

Obviously I’m excited for us to dig into that, but that’s only a portion of your story, so take us behind the curtain here. Greg can tell us more about you, your path, your journey, and then we’ll dive in. Okay. All right. Well, I’ll tell you where we are right now with GCS Global Contact Services. We’ve got about a thousand employees, and we do staffing and management for contact centers.

 

So we’re in the soft skills. Every day we make about 30,000, have about 30,000 conversations every day. So the 1% things that we look for make a big difference. When I started the company in 2001. But I can take it. Take you back to when I was in high school. I was, well, I made the top 50% of the class possible because I wasn’t, wasn’t applying myself, but, worked a lot on conversational skills back then.

 

Didn’t know it then, but, because I thought I was going to be a pro basketball player, and, I averaged nine points a game, and so. But, you’ll never find it if you Google it. So, I started applying myself a little bit more, and in college, I was lucky enough to, after college, get with a company that was run by an entrepreneur that said, my job is to give you a company to run if you want one.

 

And when you’re 23 years old and you hear that, you don’t even know what he’s talking about. But, it did morph into there were certain milestones that occurred that we took to the marketing department of what was a metals and metals distributorship called Southern Alloy. We spun off the marketing department that I was running and called it so more.

 

And so Ma was trying to be all things to all people in a marketing environment. And, back in about 1987, we did some strategic planning and found out that our distinctive competencies, our competitive advantage wasn’t any different than anybody else’s. Except we had one thing. We had a, what was back in that time called a predictive dialer, which did outbound, sales and that, again, that’s back in the what became then and then in the 90s became a white hat, white hot, industry.

 

And we grew from 2 to 20 employees in 1989 to 200 employees in 1991 to 2000 employees in 1994, and went public in 1995, in a roll up that became a different company called Tell a Spectrum. As you could tell by listening to me, I’m from the South, and they wanted me to move to Philadelphia and didn’t want to do that, so I quit.

 

Had a four year non-compete in 2000 when we got GCS, we got the band back together and we got the, got got the, team going. But during that time, during and and and from 2001 up until current and all the way back into the 90s, I would write a weekly that’s w x la weekly memo, to our staff that would, talk about what a client was doing or, or talk about what was going on in the business, but, you know, sprinkled in on that or things about soft skills or things about what, you know, what we say and how we say it and the things that we could, be working on. 

 

Because in our business, in a customer service business, we have two things, that is, principles that we have. One is called the definition of sanity. And that is doing the same thing over and over again. And expecting the same result, the same result. And that’s what we want every time when we are doing our 30 plus thousand conversations a day.

 

When the other thing is, and this is real important from, from my perspective was a real milestone for me when I discovered it is the micro is the macro that in our business, it’s important to be as close as possible to that conversation that we’re having with our clients customer and be able to hear that. And this is really pretty much where this book started, was with a woman called Lisa James.

 

That was, what? When I was there, I was speaking to her. She was a CSR customer service rep, and she said, my supervisor told me that I was up talking, and I didn’t know what that meant. And then, she kept saying it every day, and then she played me a recording so I could listen to it or not.

 

Talk is like a valley girl. Where at the end of every sentence, the pitch goes up and it becomes annoying when you do it too much. And, And she said once I heard it, I was going, wow, you know, that’s just something so small that if we could do that and that, so we but so we created a system where everybody could hear themselves every single day with one small 15 or 20 second, recording and that started a unique system that we have with GCS that nobody else does call the feed system feed, feedback to each and every associate, each and every day.

 

And that’s part of the book. But that was something that got us started. Wow. 

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: A Two-Way Conversation

 

Okay. So there’s a couple of really, really cool things in there. First, what really stood out to me is, I mean, again, from a marketing perspective, this is like a theme that is just coming out even early on, when you’re thinking about your content or ROI of thought leadership, you’re thinking both internal and external.

 

And so you mentioned that weekly memo to team keeping them updated on the business, for sure, but then incorporating some soft skills training in that weekly update like that’s amazing that instead of just outbound to clients and prospects, keeping them a forward to what’s going on in the business that you’re doing that that intentionally with an internal audience that is super, super smart.

 

Greg. You know what? And that’s the thing that I tried to do the most of, then and now to make sure it’s a two way street is when people say, well, you know, here’s an example. Five years ago, I was listening to a conversation that was with one of our customer service reps, and a customer and our representative said these four things.

 

It was over in about a three minute period. But these four responses to the, are the customer saying thank you. So the customer said, thank you. And we said, no problem. Then they said, thank you again. And we said, no worries, thank you, Australia. And then we said, “Thank you. And you could hear the thank you’s being diminished and getting a little bit weaker.

 

And we said it was the least I could do and it was nothing. Oh, that was a revelation. And so we’ve got that. And it’s in the book too, but it’s also something that we were able to go and share with everybody. And it doesn’t bother everybody. It bothers me because no problem is a double negative. But and you’re welcome puts the emphasis on the person that said thank you.

 

So it’s more of a you versus a me and you don’t you you got to see the psychology of it for a little bit. But once you do it’s like, oh, I get it. So I am Stephen, five years recovering. No problem at all. Like try not to say no problem. It doesn’t bother everybody. But if you can see where it comes like that comes to that.

 

So it’s a two way street where it’s funny how you can get feedback from, like I said, we have a thousand employees. It’s great to be able to get feedback from them saying, hey, I read this memo and you know what else bothers me? And they also and so it’s a collection of, different idiosyncrasies.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: Saying “It’s My Pleasure” Instead of “You’re Welcome”

 

The one that has recently come out is my pleasure. That’s done in a lot of service industries. And when said, you know, I don’t have a problem with that, my sister thinks it’s creepy, you know, that it’s kind of tough when you can. You have to say my pleasure. 75 times every hour, right?

 

It comes off. It doesn’t come off as sincere. It’s a pretty powerful statement, but it’s also self-serving. It’s my pleasure. Instead of saying you’re welcome being something that is focused on the other. So that’s like the kind of feedback you get, it goes two ways. It’s, you throw you, you put your soft skills, ideas, the psychology of it.

 

You put all that out there and you get. And if it’s done right and you make sure you have a two way street with your associates, with your friends, with your family, you can learn a lot. It’s a great journey to go on and social skills. Yeah, that’s really interesting how you’ve turned that into a listening post, right?

 

As a way to collect feedback and to be able to listen to internal stakeholders. Right. Yeah. 

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: Variations to the Standard Replies

 

Okay. So let’s give us a little bit of additional, maybe kind of on the fly training here. So the thank you piece, this is really sticking out to me, as you mentioned, the no problem, no worries.

 

Like, I’m like, all right. I was literally thinking to myself, Holy bananas. I do that all the time. Yeah. And I do it in an email all the time. And so now you’re making me painfully aware of how I can be better there, which is great. So aside from that, you’re welcome. And maybe that should be the standard reply when somebody says thank you, you’re always seeing.

 

You’re welcome. Are there variations to that? So like how else would you recommend or is it just somebody saying thank you. You say you’re welcome and then move on to something else. Just reflect about it. I mean, there’s no real wrong answer on that. It’s really about your own personality. It’s hard. It’s hard to change. You can’t change your personality.

 

You can change behaviors. But I’ll tell you what. When somebody says, you’ve made my day, you know, when somebody says to me, you know, you’ve made my day. You know, I mean, they’ve made my day. You know, it goes both ways. It’s so kind when somebody says something kind to you, you know, you’re welcome. What’s that?

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: Converting Something Negative To Positive

 

Yeah, that’s very kind of you, you know, or. Thank you. You know, that’s very kind of you. And, it is if you just step back and you put a piece of paper and just carry it around with you, with a T-Square, with a line right down the middle of it, and every time you hear something that is, that you think might be negative or passive, that you can convert into, positive or active, for example, and the one that, business owner here where I live told me just the other day, it’s in the book, it says instead of saying, you close at five, say you’re open till five. 

 

It’s just as small as that. That can make a difference. The one that I think is just, perplexing is if you go to two doors and there’s one of the doors says, use other door, you know, well, why does the passive door get all the, you know, the you know, why you have to look at the passive door to and then have to make a decision to go to the other door.

 

Why don’t you put that little sign that says, use this door right on the one that you’re going to use. So little things like that just go a long way. And sometimes the one that I’m still, I’m not over. I don’t know, 30 years ago when our number one salesperson got inducted in the College Hall of Fame.

 

Okay. And he did his speech, and he came back. I mean, he was crying during the speech. It was terrific. Was very emotional for him. And he came back and he just. We were best friends, and, and he came back to the table. I said, what’d you think? And I said, you said, 47 times, and it just crushed him.

 

It just was not good. And I just feel bad that I did it. That is just sometimes that’s best needed to say nothing, you know, just that whole what mama says. What is it? You know, if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything. But there are examples in the book that are like that.

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: The Delivery of the Message Impacts The Message Itself

 

Well, so let’s go there too, because in our chat Onward Nation, when Greg and I were in the green room before I started recording, you mentioned that to me, Greg, that there are some words that we use, whether it’s whatever, that really impact the delivery of the message or impacts the message itself.

 

So what are some of those other, if you want to call them, crutch words? I’m sure you have a much better way to describe this, but what are some of those other things you see business owners and their teams like? They could be completely unconscious, that’s what they’re doing. But it’s really having an impact.

 

I think they’ve got to be very aware of your sentence bookends. Okay. And some of the things like, hey, Stephen, you know what? Or, you know, there’s only one answer to that. What is, you know, and there are people that do that all the time, and it’s just a filler for them. They’re uncomfortable with it.

 

So we just have to be conscious of what we say to begin a conversation. For example, Hey, you want me to, let me tell you something really funny, okay? Comedy or humor comes out of being surprised, right? So if you’ve told me that you’re going to tell me something funny, it’s even worse if you’ve already heard it.

 

But if they’re going to tell you something, then your laugh is not as natural. Or, you know, you don’t have that same kind of surprise. The other obvious one, I think everybody, if you’re listening to this and, you know, anybody that’s under 40 years old, probably at this point, they use the word like more than they should, the people that say the word and at the end of a sentence and then they just keep on talking.

 

For example, the one we talked about was, if somebody gets the question right at the end of every sentence and then just keeps talking, they’re not waiting for a conversation. They’re waiting for you, they’re waiting for you to nod your head so they can keep going. And they keep saying it all the time.

 

Right. And it gets annoying pretty soon. Right? And you don’t know when to stop them, right? And then if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, right, you can’t stop them. Right. And you look for things if you want to know what your good and bad Senate’s bookends are and you’re brave enough, ask somebody that loves you and ask them and give them up and be ready and be ready for some things that you may not expect.

 

Be able to ask that. The other thing, some of the other things we do, Stephen, is in the world of questioning skills, the ability to ask an open ended question versus a closed ended question. For example, I work a lot with college students, and one of the questions when you first meet a college student is, where are you from?

 

Well, there’s one answer to that instead of and then what I’m practicing now and again you can see that I’m, you know, that I’m, I’m a student of soft skills. I’m not a master. And now what I’m practicing on is to be able to ask them, tell me about yourself. And that just gives them a total attitude.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: Conversation Bullying

 

You know, I would have never learned that. That the student I talked to was a volunteer, firefighter in, county, you know, and in an area 25 miles away from the school. If I said, where are you from? So it’s a lot of fun to be able to ask those kinds of things and be able to practice, listening skills, questioning skills, Senate’s book ins, how to introduce yourself, how to close a conversation.

 

Those are things that we’ve been working on for 30 years and continue to work on. Well, and if I was tracking correctly in my notes during our chat in the green room, when you mentioned the example of, you know, ending the sentence with, right, as you just, we’re kind of walking us through, I think it was that example that you may have called.

 

It’s almost like conversational bullying, isn’t it? Yes. That’s what we call it. Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, there’s when you do all the talking and all you learn is what you already know. So it’s better to be able to have it to where it’s a dialog, to be able to have it, you know, it can be you could call it a tennis match.

 

You can talk about, you know, cats chasing each other’s tail. When you have a very meaningful dialog, you both learn something, you can have what we call, parallel monologues. You know, those where you’re talking about something and the person with you is just talking about something completely, you know, that is more about them.

 

You know, for example, I was talking to somebody a year or two ago about a horrific wreck that I had seen on the highway. And I was shaken by it. And so I get almost through with the description of it, and he immediately starts talking about a wreck that he had seen, you know, a year before that was in a different state.

 

That was not not he didn’t use what I was going through to continue the conversation about me until we got to him. He just stepped over my part. So it became parallel monologues instead of a dialog. Right? Well, sometimes we’ve all felt this too, where we’re sharing the story like that in the, the parallel almost becomes like one Upmanship.

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: Building A Thousand Employees

 

Oh, that’s your story. And that is really disrespectful. Yeah, yeah. That’s nothing. I got about this. That’s nothing. Let me tell you about this. Yeah. You’re right, you’re right. So let’s shift away from your book for a second and let’s think about your company. So GCS, you’ve built that to a thousand employees.

 

Obviously, that doesn’t happen by accident. When you think of building and scaling the business and obviously it takes time to be able to do that, this is not an overnight thing. You and your team, you’ve worked really, really hard for many years to get to that point. If you’re to think about it from a habits perspective, almost a daily habits perspective, are there a couple of daily habits, Greg, that there are parts of your routine that you really believe contribute to your success?

 

I think the main one is I can’t. I compartmentalize three things: leadership, management, administrative, okay. And the leadership managers change management leads to the same thing, and administration is to get all the things out of the way that are that get in the way of the first two, the things that you have to do. And I try to take the first couple hours of the day on administration and just get all of that out of the way so that when I get into those centers and when I’m able to talk, to manage that, totally focus on the leadership part of it.

 

And they’re totally focused on the management part of it, and we can and the administrative stuff can get out of the way. So I used to try to get the office set, you know, before the sun came up. And that’s in the wintertime. And the, the be able to I mean, in the summer to be able to get in now, spend more time, you know, alone, making sure that I can get everything out of the way because email can’t kill you if you let it, and and be able to have it to where I can spend that so that that is big for me.

 

The other thing I do is make sure that I don’t move from one day to another. That’s the conversation that I’m dreading to have. And so I take what I’ve got told me at the very beginning. He says, write down all the things you got to do for the day. Look at the one that you don’t want to do the most and do it first, because otherwise it’ll kill you.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: Becoming a World Class Listener

 

And so that has saved me a lot of time and a lot of negative energy. Yeah. I love the discipline there of forcing yourself to do what is difficult first. Because if you can check that off the list it is amazing how the stress of that thing can be affecting the rest of our outlook on the day or the week or the month or whatever.

 

Right? Yeah. And it helps. Yeah. It sure does. Okay. So let’s now think about this from let’s go back to soft skills okay. And let’s think about this from again a business owner and critical skill. So it might seem a little bit like redundant soft skills. And now I’m asking you about skills. So to be good at this too, to really be good at this from a business owner perspective.

 

Like what skills does the business owner need to be, need to be able to master to really be good at this? As an example for, you know, his or her team, is it empathy? Is it something else, like what is it that a business owner really needs to master? Oh, wow. I think, you could, put empathy in there as and and a subset of empathy is listening.

 

And, to be a world class listener is important to me. What we’ve always said is there are four parts to being a world class listener. The first thing is to commit to being a world class listener. Just consciously say, have the awareness, say, I’m going to be a better listener. You know, as I go forward.

 

The second one, and this is one we incorporate in the office. The second one is, Shakespeare to be or not to be listening. You can’t be on your A game all the time. So if you’re not listening, just own up to it. I mean, I love doing it. I mean, it’s just, we’ll be in a meeting.

 

I’ll go. Wait, I wasn’t listening. Can you start over? So. Because I want to make sure I hear it, just to admit that it’s been very powerful too, to make sure that you don’t have any. It’s actually a time saver. Then going back and having them repeat it feels like it was, you know, that you’re wasting time.

 

The third thing that we talked about earlier is being able to ask oral class questions and being able to ask oral class questions, knowing the differences between the open, the, closed ended questions, and an open ended question that takes a lot of practice to be able to do that. And the last one, and this is old school, but the last one is to take notes, to be able to to work with that.

 

So, for me, the thing that works best for me is journaling, my leadership, capacity to be able to write down what is being said, what my questions are, what I want to be able to focus on what’s my messaging, for the day. How’s the agenda going to look for the next meeting?

 

At, I have to write those things down, and and and I do that in a very non-linear way. My journals could probably look closer to a Picasso painting than, you know, a letter or so. So it’s something that’s been very helpful to me, as I’ve been able to grow the business.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills

 

Developing Your Soft Skills: The Most Influential Lesson from a Mentor

 

That is awesome. I know we’re, quickly running out our time here, and I want to make sure that that before we do run out of time, I want to make sure that we talk about mentorship and and in the impact that mentorship has had as you’ve built and scaled your business to a thousand employees against such an impressive number.

 

So if so, tell us about what you would consider to be Greg, the most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors, and then how that lesson is still impacting you today as the founder as the business owner. So how is that lesson still paying dividends today? You got it. Well, first of all, I encourage everybody that I work with to have dozens of mentors try to look at them in every domain of life.

 

You know, I’ve got a fitness mentor, I’ve got a spiritual mentor, I’ve got an emotional mentor that I can work with. So I’ll give you an example. When I hired our CFO, it took him about three hours into his career with us. He’s still with us, for me to tell him all about my little league baseball career where I batted at 678, hit 12 home runs in 14 games, 48 RBIs to no hitters.

 

And I was co MVP with the coach’s son. Come bother me. Co MVP. All right. And so three years later after I told him that I’m in his man cave. And it turns out he had been athlete of the year in the county, had gone on to college and had become an All-American football player and didn’t even tell me.

 

So the reason why? Because back to that questioning skill thing. He was a world class question asker when he first started work with us and I wasn’t at that moment when I saw all his stuff, I said he was a U person and I was a me person. I was, but my attitude was all about me and.

 

Right. And so I said, I’m going to be a you person from now on. I’m going to be the kind of person that walks into a room and says, there you are, as opposed to being the person that comes into the room says, here I am. That’s a me person. I want to be a you person. So that is I mean, your mentors don’t have to be don’t have to be some kind of, you know, Buddha guru.

 

You know, they can help you get mentored by a ten year old. And I got mentored by our CFO, who, by the way, is now part owner of our company. Really smart. Okay. Such a powerful lesson. But then also, I mean, as far as the context of the lesson, but then also where the lesson can come from like this or like where we could and should seek mentorship.

 

That is awesome. Yeah. Thanks I agree, great conversation. This has just been fantastic off the charts. I am grateful again that you said yes. Greg, before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice? I know we covered a lot, but any final advice about developing your soft skills? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell us the best way to connect with you, Greg. 

 

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Developing Your Soft Skills: How to Connect with Greg

 

Okay, I think the advice I would give and it’s again, it’s in the book as far as, know what the paradigms are, be questioning of paradigms. I don’t know about you, but when I was younger, I thought paradigms were $0.20. But, you know, if a paradigm is a model, you know, that I put in a form of a, those orange cones.

 

The orange cone is blocking, parking space or something like that. Nobody will touch it, you know, but it turns out the guy had just forgotten to pick it up. But, it’s something that that looking at, questioning why we do things and when we do them, where we do, is something that I would think would be great.

 

You can reach me. I’m on LinkedIn, with my name is Gregory Mark Alcorn. You can buy the book on Amazon. It’s the number seven dumb things, we all say. And again, it’s an autobiography. And you can always contact me through our company website, which is GCS Agents. That’s plural. GCSagents.com.

 

Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back, we listen to Greg’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do the key is you have to take what he so generously shared with you, take it, apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results. And Greg, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day.

 

And I am grateful that you said yes to come to the show to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, Greg. Thank you, I appreciate it. And, enjoy being with you. 

 

This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Read some FAQs about developing your soft skills