IC032: Developing Employees with Personal Transformations with Willard Barth



Episode 32

On today’s episode, Jess and Cassi interview an Interview Connections client, Willard Barth, and he teaches them a lot about themselves and how to better understand their coworkers and employees.


1. What topic resonates the most on the podcast interviews you’ve been doing lately?

a. Willard recently released a book called “The Anatomy of Transformation.”

b. People seem to mostly be focusing on his interesting personal journey: Willard lost one of his legs to bone cancer when he was a child, had to overcome a drug and alcohol addiction, and has even been in prison.


2. What was your time like on Broadway?

a. He released a CD almost twenty years ago and had a 17 year friendship with Les Paul.

b. Willard shared the stage with Les Paul over one hundred times.


3. What’s the connection between your life as a creative/performer and your life as a business consultant?

a. When you’re a business consultant, you need to come up with creative solutions to solve problems.

b. When he was writing and performing, people would get an escape for either a few minutes or a few hours, but now he’s giving people a life-long result with what he’s doing for them.


4. How can I create a more streamlined, but still personalized, sales process?

a. Have you identified your sales process map? Capture what’s in your head (each individual step) and get it down on paper.

b. Write down what you can automate or delegate out to someone else and what steps you personally need to be involved in.

c. Think of what you can improve upon the most to make your sales process even more effective.


5. How do you motivate and incentivize a small team when each person is motivated by different things?

a. Willard doesn’t believe in motivation because it’s short term, but he believes in influence. If you really want to consistently inspire someone to take action, find out what inspires them.

b. Six human needs: significance, certainty, uncertainty, love, connection, growth, and contribution.

c. Understand what human needs most inspire someone through their personality profile and direct them in such a way where their needs will be fulfilled.


6. How do you identify what specific needs motivate someone?

a. Ask them quality questions that will teach you something about how they succeed, how they feel in certain situations, and what makes them feel fulfilled.

b. When you understand what motivates someone and feed it back to them, they feel like they want to take action and be involved.


7. Why are personal transformations so critical for business success?

a. After Willard meets with his team to lay out a 90 day plan, he tells them that the person they currently are will never achieve those goals because if they were capable of achieving those goals, they already would have.

b. A small/mid-size business is a complete and total reflection of the person who owns it.

c. In order to become a better leader, you need to become a better communicator and a better delegator.

d. Many people don’t recognize the areas that they aren’t strong in and therefore don’t delegate those aspects of their business to someone else on their team who is the best equipped to handle it.

e. Fears and limiting belief systems keep us from becoming successful. If you want to grow your business, you need to grow, face, and transform areas that have been limiting you all of your life.


8. Are the six human needs mentioned in your book?

a. Willard does talk about the six human needs in his book.

b. The original idea, the Six Human Needs Psychology, was developed by Tony Robbins.


9. DISC Personality Profile:

a. Each quadrant of DISC will house members of your team and areas of your business.

b. D- dominance. I- influence. S- steadiness, C- compliance.

c. A lot of companies have the right people, but they have them working in the wrong quadrant. Once you understand someone’s personality profile, you can move them to the right part of the company and better understand what influences them.



Resources Mentioned: 

Connect with Willard

Willard’s Book


We Know What You Did on Fear Street

Fan of the Band