Human Centered Achievement |Eric Lopkin - Ep 178

0:03 All right, I gotta tell you I'm excited today. It is to make the Great Experience podcast. I am doctor Stephen Green. That's success doctor, your host. We got a guest today. Five straight podcasts with no guests. I'm back with the guests. And he's really not just any guest. Is an all star. We got an a lister today. I think you really enjoy what he's going to bring to the table. He's an author, the podcaster himself, all around good guy. Name is Eric Lopkin up from the great state of Connecticut. Anyhow, let me. Tell you a little bit about Eric. We're gonna jump right in again. This is to make the Great Experience podcast. We talk about your journey to success. Eric Hopkin is the president and CEO of the Modern Observer Group, a trailblazing coaching consulting firm he founded in two thousand and nine.

0:54 Thirty five years of cross industry experience including journalism, advertising, public relations, finance, medical research, operations or brings uniquely integrated perspective to business personal development. Sounds good, doesn't it. Huh also is the first background laid the foundation for the firm's signature system. And this is what we're going to deep down, deep dive into the human centered achievement transformative approach that places people at the heart of success strategies. He's a best selling author, a respected business coach of podcast or, a dynamic speecher. He's got two books, thousands of podcast episodes that really true thousands Yeah, that. Incredible, incredible? What is another? One thousand and one?

1:39 And the Modern Observer Group has empowered thousands of entrepreneurs, executives, and others to enhance their performance achieved lasting success without sacrificing well being. His commitment to impact extends beyond business. He's a dedicated community advocate who sits on boards of several nonprofits, including the Connecticut Humane Society Animal Welfare Initiative. Is Info Go Initiative, I'm well sure with that. It's connects with individual with chronicle metal conditions and so on. Short version, this guy's a player. As I said before, he is an a lister. Welcome Eric Lopkin to the Make the Grade podcast. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for having me here. I'm excited to be here.

2:20 Excellent. Well, you know, I get an intro like that. We don't even need a podcast. Thank you, Thank you, Eric, thanks for spending some time with us today. Let's start with this. Let's start with this human centered achievement. Is this something you kind of invented or is kind of residual from something else? How'd this come about? Let's start with that. This came about when I formed the Modern Observer Group. We were actually not a coaching company at the time. We were an operations and communications consulting firm, okay, and I had decided I had been working with the client on six Sigma. I don't know if your audience is familiar with Zig Sigma. It's a very intense management consulting strategy that's very heavy on statistical analysis, and it's very expensive to implement. So it had some great things that I wanted to be able to apply to my smaller clients, but it's not at all applicable to small business. It's really focused on fortune five hundred.

3:32 So an opportunity it presented itself. Yes, So I started looking into this and other management techniques Lean, six Sigma, Kaizen, and as I was doing the research, I realized that all of them were very process heavy, which is great because process is a core of what became human centered achievement. But they all had a fatal flaw. They all forgot that there's a person at the core of this that actually has to be able to do the process. Little detail, little detail. So in all of the research, now, what we were looking to create was actually a process to create businesses for small business owners. And what we did was we nailed this down to seven basic elements and it was mindset, focus processes, communications, innovation techniques, evaluation metrics, and continuous improvement.

4:39 Nice. And we rolled these elements out. We used them to help our clients, and about a year after we rolled it out, we started getting calls from our clients saying, you know, we really love this process. Give a coaching program so we can train our employees to use this so they can you know, use it in their day to day life, their business, you know, their jobs. Well, we didn't have a coaching program at that point, so we created it. And now this is thirteen years later from when we rolled out seven thousand success stories later, right, that is the coaching is the bulk of what we do.

5:23 Yeah, it's it's I'm kind of a little bit of a parallel universe to you. Can you list the seven elements again, because I think each one of them alone could probably be a long conversation. But there's you know, I my coaching is more on the entrepreneur's solo kind of level. But these are these are these are critical, mission critical things. So mindset, it's mindset, focus, focus, processes, keep going, keep going, communications, big big communication, very big. Innovation techniques like that one, evaluation metrics okay, and continuous improvement.

6:04 So let's talk about your coaching program. Is this something where you would, let's say, come into a company and then they would have you work with their salesforce or their HR people or a department or is it a company wide or is it everything is set up differently. It really depends on the client. We've got a number of different programs. We have what we call our Velocity coaching. This is an intensive one to two hour session for an individual. We have ongoing coaching programs we've done company wide depending on the size of the company. We never have more than ten people in a single group, whether it's a mastermind group, a company coaching, you know, whatever the situation. We always cap out a single group at ten people because we want to be able to give them at least some level of individual achieve achievement and attention.

7:08 So is the from a business So I'm a business owner, I want I want happier, more productive, more profitable employees basically, right, I mean. There's there's more to it than that. But what would you consider success metrics? Right? Like? Like? Is it based on bottom line improvement? Is it based on better morale? Uh? Is it based on I don't know, trends? You know? Uh, you know, trajectories bring where you want them to be. I'm sure it's a little bit of everything. But does that build into what you're doing? Yeah, Evaluation metrics is one of the key principles that we use. Uh. What those metrics are depend on the goals of the client.

7:53 So when we deal with an individual person, and one of the reasons that we call this human centered achievement is we found over time people were using the same process in their day to day lives rather than just businesses. We have folks that used it to turn around their health, to turn around their relationships. So these things are applicable not just to business but in everyday life. So what metric you use changes depending on the goal. It could be to improve your health. We know folks that have used it to help fight diabetes, to help fight multiple sclerosis.

8:37 So the metrics for those are. For ms, it would be you know, results of a cat scan for diabetes, it's your A one C. For businesses, it could be ROI, it could be cash flow, it could be overall profit and loss, depending on what the goals are. Some other goals we've worked on with clients on the business side is absentee dates going down, productivity metrics going up, reducing turnover for employees. So it really does what metrics do you use depends on what the goal is that we set up going forward. And that's actually a very important point because a lot of people use either meaningless metrics like they you know, when they're working with communications, you know they'll use you know, social media likes rather than actual engagements or results of the engagement. So you need to be able to target the metric to match the goal.

9:48 How long To make sure you asker this correctly, what what would be your typical length of engagement with the business. This isn't going to happen in a week, No, when we were six months, twelve months? Is there? When we work with the business. Generally we target a one year engagement, okay, so that you really start seeing results after three months. After six months, it starts becoming more ingrained, and even the folks that were resisting at the at the beginning, because let's face it, people have a tendency to resist change. So after six months, I think that yeah, after six months, they've started to see the results and understand why we're doing that.

10:37 Now they're getting carried up the stream by the same canoe everybody else is in. Right, so by the time we get to the end of a year program, everybody is rowing in the same direction. You've already started seeing results, a lot of the goals have already been achieved. So that's usually our minimum for a business is a year engagement. That being said, though, we've got companies that have stayed with us for five years, ten years because they keep seeing increasing results from the program, and every time they hit a goal, they'll go, Okay, hey, that was great. Now let's see how much further we can go, and they'll raise the bar.

11:22 Which is basically the idea. Anyway, sometimes you have to kind of have a reset, you evaluate your reset. You kind of get everybody on the same page. I've often seen situations where you get a company has multiple salespeople and there's no consistency in their operations. The sales guy is doing it his way, a person be is doing it her way, and nobody knows what the other person's doing. It's almost like nine little businesses within a business. But the name is very is very app human set are and achievement. This is based on people. Achieving individual success which can tribute to the collective success of the team slash company.

12:04 Yes, it's very focused on the people. And you know, we often say what our job is is to integrate the people, their passion and their processes to ensure peak performance. Nice. So, if I'm by the way, this is doctor Stephen Green, I guess Eric Blopkin the Brainchild. His brainchild is human centered achievement. Love it. This is the makes a Great Experience Podcast. We're here to help you on your journey of success. Little things, little things out up to medium things out up the big things. Eric. If I'm an entrepreneur, I'm sitting there going this sounds great for a business. Can I apply to these same principles.

12:50 I'm a solo person. I'm wearing nine different hats? Right, would this help is a leading question? Would this help those that population as well? And if so, because you give a few insider tips here of how that might happen. Yeah, actually the process was created specifically with solopreneurs in mind. There we go, Yes, beautiful. So yeah, it is perfect for a solopreneur because the solopreneur has to balance all those different hats. And it's not just being chief cook and bottle washer at the business. You know, Yes, they're the CEO, they're the CFO, they're doing all the work, but they've also got a personal life outside that. So they've got to be able to integrate their personal life and avoid burnout. Solopreneurs have an incredibly high rate of burnout, and it's because they take everything on themselves. Most especially when they start out, are very reluctant to outsourced tasks. They feel it's like, oh, no, you know, either I can't afford it, or I need to be able to control all of it. And to a certain extent, you do need to be able to control it, but that doesn't mean you have to do it.

14:14 The example I always give solo preneurs is your bookkeeping. Most solopreneurs are not bookkeepers. So where they could pay a bookkeeper for about an hour or two a month, they're actually spending ten to fifteen hours a month doing it themselves because they're not an expert at it. I see that all the time. Excellent example. I also see a lot with social media, Yes. Where you know, there's a science to social media. And when I say when I say social media mean engagement, not just making a post with a picture or something. It's a science to it. There's a lot of metrics to it. There's a lot of feedback loop to it.

14:58 If you're seriously pushing a bit sound on social media, you need somebody knows what they're doing or else who's going to waste time? Yeah, there's the old adage. So entrepreneurs either burnout, run out of money, or maybe make it right. Yeah, tell me about your book or books? What do they tell you the titles? Do they have titles? Are they just The first book came out in twenty twenty that was the Businetics Way, and bus Neetics was actually the original title of what we later termed Human Centered Achievement is It's all about those seven elements. We actually renamed the system human centered achievement after talking to folks that had gone through the program, and that was when we learned that they were using it for their health, for the you know, for their personal lives, and we realized that the process was bigger than just building a business.

15:56 So the original title of the process was Businetics and the Businetix Way talks about those seven elements that I mentioned. And then last year I was a collaborator in a book called Cracking the Rich Code. This is actually a series of books. The one I was in was volume fourteen fourteen already. Oh they're they're they're way past fourteen already. But this was a book where we collaborated. Brian Tracy actually did the preface. Tony Robbins endorsed the book. In fact, you know, he's on the cover of it. And this this was an international best seller.

16:42 So this was yeah, I'll do a little show and tell. Check it out. There you go, there's your edition. Look at it. I'm on I'm in seven. Oh wow, look at you. It's me. If you can't see this at home, if you're listening, it's Jim Bridd who's a long time, very successful direct sales guy line was Kevin Harrington and. Who was kind of hangs his hat as being on Shark Tank. But he's also the person who invented the infomercial yes, which has changed a lot of the ways people advertise. Yeah, it's a great series. This is great. I've really more given a lot of these books away as a lead magnet kind of thing. No, it's a great community too. We can talk about that another time. Yeah, it's a fantastic community. And then my third book is actually coming out on October fifteenth, really, so that's just a few weeks away from when we're recording.

17:33 That'll be a little closer to the release of Okay, let's talk about that. Yeah, it makes a great experience podcast. Our guest is Eric Lopkins. Eric is in his third book, You know what does Trace? Well done? Brother, I tell us about your third book. Yeah, the new book is called Yes You Can. It is also focused on the human centered achievement process. A lot a lot of the information from my first book, The Businetics Way is you know, revisited in this but we expand it because we also talk about The new book is broken up into three sections. The first section actually talks about the science behind human centered achievement and everything in the process is actually based on four branches of science, and it's quantum physics, psychology, neurology, and epigenetics.

18:33 And we've combined those four fields to really explore human potential. So the first section is all about the science and it's it's not technical. There's no math, you know, involved in it. It's meant for people to just get a decent background in what those what those fields are, how they work, and how they relate to human potential. The second you see this. I'm sorry to cut you. We're gonna say something else. I didn't mean to cut you off. I was just gonna go on about the other sections. But if you want to follow up. Well, no, I was going to ask you this. I was going to ask you this. You've built a great concept.

19:19 I mean, over the least what twelve years or so, it's evolved, it's changed needs, but the core of it really is fundamentally the same, which is helping people by improving their sort of broad lot in life, and that sort of transcends into their business but also their personal life. Where do you see this going down the road? You're a young guy, I don't think you're ready to hang up your human centered achievement hat. Yet, or maybe you are. Do you see this further evolving? Does like like AI? Everybody's talking about AI. You can't go ten feet? That's wrong? Got is all this like robotic automation? Is you know? Do you see that impacting kind of human experience?

20:01 Can it enhance it? Is it a detriment? I found that very interesting because in one of my big things, education, and there's a huge penetration of AI into education to the point where like students don't even write papers. They say, hey, AI, write a paper for me about Columbus crossing the ocean. And it's become a very big concern, not sort of plagiarism ish, but but let's not go that direction. I'm curious where you see. This going to be in let's say a year, two years, five years, as technology continues to pervade our lives. And I'm not saying technology is band I'm just saying it's sort of sometimes a detriment to interpersonal communication, especially in a business situation. Sometimes, Oh I don't want to call that person, I'll just text them. Well, that's why they're not getting back to you to go to the next step in the sale. They want a conversation. So where do you stand on all this? And maybe more importantly, where do you believe your idea? This you've been centered achievement might help this meal your rate it shift it bring us back to maybe more of an actually human centered process.

21:06 AI and technology in general is neither good nor bad. It all depends on its use and its overuse. In fact, technology is one of the reasons that in our Core Principles, in the core Elements, we included innovation techniques because what we're seeing. You know, when you hear innovation, you generally think about technology. But innovation has actually been stunted by the invention of the search engine and now Google in particular because it's the largest but all of them. And you're starting to see the same thing with AI. And the reason for this is that prior to the invention of search engines, most innovation came from people knowing different things from different fields and putting two things that they thought, you know, didn't necessarily go together together to see what happened. Well, what we saw from testing over you know, basically going from nineteen ninety nine to about twenty fifteen or so, is that people are actually remembering less of these facts, they're learning less facts because they know all they have to do is go to their phone, type in, type in the question, and they'll get an answer. They don't have to know it. So that actually has been a drawback to innovation.

22:38 Interesting. Yeah, I had a guest on maybe a year fifteen months ago who had this whole concept of, like the whole AI was in its infancy then it still kind of is, but it's also progressed a lot, and it's much more available now than it was a year ago. But he had this whole idea of he was actually an advocate for not clutter your mind with things you don't need because you have it right there. It's almost like you have a library everywhere you go, if you're at your phone or whatever. All right, let's do this. This was a great conversation. I how can people get hold of you? If somebody wants your book or wants to learn more about your offerings? What's the path.

23:19 The easiest way to get a hold of me. You can email me at info at modern observer dot com. You can also go to modern observer dot com. There's actually a button right on the navigation bar to schedule keep going keep going right so you can schedule a call if you want any of the books. The books are all available at bookstores everywhere, Amazon, Barnes, and Noble Books a million, even your mom and pop bookstore can order it from their distributors. A regular regular John Grisham here, Yeah, and you can. Also you can also get more information on the books as well as the podcasts that my company does, by going to our media division, xvaudio dot com, which is e x v a d io dot com.

24:13 Beautiful. So if you're driving or you're listening waiting for your kid to get done martial arts class, this all is in the show notes. I gotta tell you I was a guest on Eric's podcast. I didn't really say that until now, but it was a great experience. This guy knows what he's doing. This guy is a wealth of information. He's got a great process. Take advantage of this, Take advantage of some of the things he's got there. Check out his sites, Steve Green to Success Doctor, my guest Eric Lopkin Human Centered Achievement. I love it. I love the title because it's so descriptive of what you're doing, which is. The whole idea, people centered on people. Let's get better, let's achieve. All right, let's do this. We're gonna go to a wrap up here. You want to play my little game I do with my guests. It's called the Fave five. All right, Okay, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you a topic. You tell me your favorite thing within this topic. It's very just don't overthink this. Number one color.

25:10 Color blue, red, green. That's more than one. No, No, what is your I thought you asked. I thought you were asking for five. Favorite all right, let me let me back up, let me back up. All right, maybe I wasn't clear. There are five top questions. Got it a favorite one? And east the first one? Okay, that's blue blue blue, all right. He's got a blue shirt on and I got a blue microphone spongy thing here. Color blue. All right, that's a good one. Number two food cheese burgers, cheese burger, cheese burger in paradise. Yeah, keeping it simple yet kind of can get a little gourmet here. In the music, favorite band song.

25:57 Uh, favorite artist is Billy Joel. My tastes in music are very eclectic, so I go across rock, pop, classical jazz. What I love about Billy Joel aside from you know the stories he tells in his songs and the songs itself. If you actually know anything about classical music, you can hear clips of classical music that have inspired him that he's turned into his songs. Interesting bottle, red, bottle of white, yep. Favorite place you've been or visited? You a big traveler.

26:41 That's tough. I've I've done a lot of travel. You're not like a happy place, maybe I sometimes I say that, Yeah, I mean it's not like. Hard for no, It's it's definitely not hard getically like no offense Hartford but none. Maybe you got out there somewhere a little more exotic in your life. I think I think my favorite place was probably Kangku in Mexico. There you go, although I have been told that since I was last there it has changed dramatically. It's gotten a little. I don't want to it's crowded.

27:23 It's it's kind of yeah, see when when I when I was there, it wasn't crowded. There weren't a lot of chains there. Yet It's yeah, how about you got like is you grown up, did you have like a hero, like a sports hero or a political hero? Music? Here? I mean you said Billy Joel. That might be the same answer. But like like if you could have dinner with somebody, who. Would it be? Uh? If I could have dinner with somebody? Uh, well, there's there's a lot of folks that fit that bell. I would have loved to have met Stephen Hawking. Dang, here's the to his question. This is the bonus question number six And I could see this going two directions, But who is your favorite podcast hosts?

28:12 My favorite podcast host? You can you can have two answers to this one. Okay. That that makes it easier because I'm going back and forth between two. Okay, here you go, here you go. I don't want I don't want you to get stressed on. One of them is Joe Rogan. Okay, love, I love the way he go. He takes conversations wherever they go. You know, it's never focused on any particular agenda. He just wants to ask questions. And the other one, I guess, which is kind of appropriate right now, is the recently deceased Charlie Kirk. There you go, which to just timestamp this that happened about a week ten days ago. Sadly, okay, Rick, anything briefly because we're coming up on time. We did not get into you want to just mention, I'm going to give you to Flora, going to give you the last.

29:07 Word for a last word. The one thing I would hope that all of your listeners take away from this and remember is the phrase, yes I can. Most people are not held back by circumstances. It's not finances that hold them back. It's their own mindset that says, oh, I'm not good enough. You know, I shouldn't try that. There's a possibility I could fail. Guess what, There's always a possibility of failure. The most successful people and businesses in the world have failed a lot more than they succeed.

29:50 Oh yeah, So. Don't hold yourself back. And always, you know, I tell people they should be telling themselves at least once a day, yes I can. I love it, I love and I've been on live meetings therek and he's sometimes sort of the keynote speaker with in our little networking chain, and that's always his closing message. I actually here's an idea for your podcast I should read. I should red resustate this. During COVID, I was podcasting like every day because it was like what else were you going to do? Right? We came with this up with this idea of doing a series of ten podcasts like the ten Biggest Failures, ten people who were successful that it had major failures and people didn't know about because all they knew was their success. Right. There's the famous story like Michael Jordan getting cut from his seventh grade basketball team or.

30:37 Something that's actually a myth that never happened. That's the narrative. Yeah, the narrative is that he was cut from the team. It wasn't that he was cut from the team. He was not considered because of his age. The coach had actually said, yeah, you're great at this, but you've got a cupple more years that we can put you on the team. And there's other people who are graduating that need the opportunity. Interesting, all right, So maybe that wasn't a great example. No, but that's a great concept. The myth has been it's like like Colonel Sanders, the cocky fried chicken guy, went to like seventy eight places where somebody probably said, yeah, i'll taste your chicken.

31:19 But anyway, it was I did. I did a lot of research. I did like ten of them. I was kind of really enjoyed. It's getting a lot of good feedback. And then I actually had to get something that was monetizable a little bit more, and I started doing some more stuff. But it's a fascinating study. I always liked the Profiles of Courage book, John F. Kennedy's famous book. Anyway, Eric Lopkin, I really appreciate you coming on folks out there and make the Great Experience podcast land. I hope you got a lot of value today. If you did, please share this. I can tell you because I know, Eric, this guy knows what he's doing. This guy walks the walk and he's got a great service. He's helped.

32:00 I don't know how many people, hundreds of thousands, millions, who knows. But more importantly, they're continuing to improve. They're not sitting still right. They are continually improving. They're getting better, they're getting happier, to getting more productive. Their companies are thriving because of this, because of his brainchild human centered achievement. Eric, thanks again. Next time I'm gonna give you a little spoiler alert next two episodes, I have guests. I'm gonna get back into some solo stuff. If you're out there and you have suggestions, who would you like me to have on the podcast? What would you like me to pontificate about. I am taking suggestions. You can go to this page put them in the comments where you can email me.

32:40 All. This is in the show notes reach out. I'm like eighty seven to one love email versus hate email. So that's probably pretty good day. All right, Eric, thanks again. I hope you have a good rest of your day and all. Let's keep in touch and I will see you absolutely. Thanks for having me.