Latest / Daily Influence / 776. Responsible Business Leadership: Ben Fischer on Marketing, Accountability, and Turning Experience into Positive Influence

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776. Responsible Business Leadership: Ben Fischer on Marketing, Accountability, and Turning Experience into Positive Influence · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IA Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
• 0:32
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• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence, I'm Greg Clino.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before we dive in, I want to share a quick note.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We recently launched the Smart Advantage newsletter, which offers practical insights on leadership, accountability, workplace culture, and building a stronger business delivered to your inbox weekly.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're looking for simple, actionable ideas, you can apply in your business or leadership role, you can find the link to subscribe in the show notes below.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now let's move into today's conversation where we'll continue exploring the ideas, actions and influence that helps us lead and live with greater influence.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today, I'm joined by Ben Fisher, the founder and CEO of Zivzo Marketing Group.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben brings more than four decades of hands-on entrepreneurial experience across restaurants, franchising, real estate, consulting, marketing, advertising, and video production.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: What makes his perspective especially valuable is that he is not advising from theory alone.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is built, operated, exited, failed, adjusted, and rebuilt across multiple industries.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben helps businesses clarify their message, strengthen their brand, and connect strategy with execution.
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today we'll talk about what decades of business ownership taught him about influence, accountability, resilience, and the responsibility leaders carry when their decisions affect customers, teams, communities, and future opportunity.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben, welcome to daily influence.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for having me on today.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you've had a much broader business journey than many people realize.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that gives you a different lens on leadership and influence.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've owned and operated businesses across multiple industries, including a long history and restaurants and hospitality.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you look back, what experiences most shape the way you lead today?
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what do those experiences teach you about the responsibility business owners have to the people around them?
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, transparent, you know, being transparent and honest to everyone that's, you know, in your organization is, you know, a must, you know, people depend on you as an owner of a business or CEO or president.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: You, you are the guy.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it all comes together when it's pay day and you gotta make sure of these, your employees or whoever your vendors, everyone is getting what they bargained for, meaning the relying on you to pay their rents and their mortgages and everything along that road.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you really have to understand that people are depending on you.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that always weighed heavily on me.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was always concerned about my employees.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that if you can take care of the people who take care of your customers, then your organization is going to grow.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Being responsible, basically, like a shock absorber where the blame stops with you and you
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So those are key elements.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: 100% are.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: One thing we talk about often on daily influences that influences not always loud.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it shows up in how he guides someone through difficult decisions or help them see what is possible.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you share a specific moment when you're work with a business owner, a client, or a team member, created a positive impact beyond just marketing results or revenue and what
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: organization and what to do learned from that experience.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will give you a recent situation where we represented a dozen disgruntled franchises of a franchise company who engaged us to bring in a attorney and to suit the to the franchise company for some of the things they were doing that
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, we were able to to resolve the issues and to create settlements for every, uh, one of the disgruntled franchisees.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, their lives were chaos prior to the resolution.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what impact we had was what aim were able to settle the dispute, get them, uh,
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: and to create closure and direct these people to close that portion of their life and move along.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that had a very positive result.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not only were they able to get some money, they were able to go forward, while these people were stuck in the mine.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to me, that was very gratifying.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to them, I know that they were thrilled to death.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, the responsibility in balancing and being able to create a result for people that ended up with a positive response, positive going forward and that was very rewarding for me.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, Ben, thank you for sharing that story.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, marketing has power, it shapes perception, trust, buying decisions, and sometimes
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: whether a business survives, that brings a real responsibility with it.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you help a company tell its story, or position itself in the market, how do you balance the persuasion with responsibility?
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the first thing we do with any client is really get into the nitty-gritty of their business.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the more we know about the business, the more we can help the business grow, the better we can plan a marketing program.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if the operation doesn't support what they want to do, we get them to the point where it does.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we formulate a comprehensive marketing program
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, which also you're in a world today where you have to be fourth right because people are so savvy and people have AI and Google and, you know, you're dealing with an educated consumer today.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you have to be able to deliver what you promise.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you can't, you're just going to, you know, you should yourself in the flight.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: waste your money and you'll lose clients and customers if you don't deliver what you claim you're going to deliver.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if I don't believe that the client can do what he wants us to do, we won't do it.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We just, you know, pass on.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not worth our reputation to be involved with a company that is not putting out the best and marketing campaign that is riddled with holes in it.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we don't like to do that.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that makes sense, you know, a lot of leaders have ideas, the harder part is turning those ideas into a discipline plan that people can actually execute.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: When a business owner comes to you with a big vision, but scattered execution, what is a framework or process you use to help them get focused?
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, again, we get into the nitty gritty of their business how it works and the more we know, the more we can help them.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But first thing we do is declutter them.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, a lot of people come to us and they've got this idea, that idea.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you know, there's an old saying, you put too much on them, and it's a play, I'll never read.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you need to narrow down
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: what your focus on the market plan is going to be and make sure that the offer you're providing to the consumers has value and a lot of people, you know, they spend a lot of money on marketing but they don't give people a valuable offer that would be redeemed by people have the offer, and valuable which would ultimately build their business.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, the key to the show when it comes to that type of marketing or any kind of marketing is organization systems controls and making sure that the offer you're putting out there has enough of a hook enough of value to have people utilize it that that offer and be able to deliver those are the key elements.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those are good points.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, with the number of businesses you've built and operated, you've had more than just highlight real moments.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There had to be some hard lessons and bad calls and pivots along the way.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's one failure, difficult business decision that changed the way you make decisions.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it was a failure, but not on my part, the failure was the landlord never took care of the roof and the roof collapsed on the 25,000 square foot bakery manufacturing facility.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the pivot was to find a contract production company that would produce the bakery.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was a bakery both to produce the bakery products and then to handle the logistics and shipping.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of the day, it proved to be a more profitable venture than had the roof not collapsed.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because we eliminated all the overhead in all of the unnecessary expenses where the contract production company that did all the baking for us.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was on their plate, not on our as a longer.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So our profit margin skyrocketed and we lost some customers due to the time to get everything set up.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love how you took something that could be so tragic or negative and turned it into a positive for yourself in the business.
• 11:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, but it was a trying experience and you, you know, you learn a lot.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you learn more from a bad deal than a good deal.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, so I think that people who have some success can get a little, you know,
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: then they stumble but you know here's something to remember success is never final right so if you're successful today don't think the next venture is going to be successful just because you've had a couple winners you know so so that's something to always keep in mind you know I always tell people there's always somebody smarter wealthier and have a better business plan that can execute better than you and it's true there's always somebody so
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You gotta keep that in mind and bring yourself down to Earth and stay level headed and look at all the pluses and the minuses and to think that everything's all plus or plus or plus, it's not.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, influence is not just external.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's also how we communicate with teams, vendors, partners, and customers every day.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are two or three habits you practice intentionally as a leader to influence people in a constructive,
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, when it comes to staff, they need to, they have to respect you.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can't, you can't demand respect, you have to earn their respect.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you earn their respect, they follow your lead and the results are much more constructive.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But any business, it's like riding a wild Bronco.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if you don't ride that Bronco hard, it's going to throw you.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can't be laddied about how your business is running.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can't pass off the, the, the, the, the,
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: organization management to people who are ill-equipped or not thinking the situation as you would as an owner.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you really need to to keep the range tight and to operate your business.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: runs the way you want it to and that the customers or your vendors and everybody involved with you knows that you're on the right track and they have faith in you and they believe in you and also that makes it easy to expand and to obtain new employees and different levels.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for sharing that event as we close.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to bring this back to the listener who may be building something rebuilding something or wondering whether their influence really matters.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you could give advice to your younger self, but frame it for today's business owners, leaders and community builders, what would you tell them about using their influence more intentionally.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think the younger entrepreneur, a business owner, needs to take their times, keep it level headed, slow down, don't be so impulsive.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as you gain experience, you'll understand that things you may have done when you were younger and impulsive, you won't do as you've gained experience.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that, you know, experiences of the loudest voice in the room.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: but I think that takes time in patients to really get to that level.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Time in patients are seeing things that the younger generation us included when we were younger, don't seem to have.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I love that you said to slow down.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's really important to you, message.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's fine, because I think about some of the decisions I made when I first started out, I would have done so many different things.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, hindsight's always 2020, you know?
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't be afraid to ask for help.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't be afraid to pick up the phone and call people you respect.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: One thing is buy them and get an opinion.
• 15:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But don't ask for an opinion if you're not going to listen.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because that's another thing that some of the, you know, I've experienced with younger kids today or younger not kids or people in businesses.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They ask a question, but they don't want to hear the answer.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have, they just want your answer to reinforce what they already think.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that doesn't work.
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have to listen.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's great advice.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben, thank you for sharing not only business lessons, but the responsibility behind them.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I appreciate about this conversation is the reminder that influence is not separate from execution.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It shows up in the way we make decisions.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: We communicate expectations.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: We serve our customers and help others see a pass forward.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do to it?
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm they can email me at Ben at zibzo.com, zivco.com, or call me at 833-948-9663-extension700.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, here's the thing.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm happy to talk to anybody.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have questions, I love talking to you know, young entrepreneurs and business owners and if I am, I always enjoy helping them and guiding them to the next level.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Ben.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate that that's very generous to you.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to put this information in the show notes.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ben, thanks for joining us.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm grateful for you.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope to be on another one of your programs.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to our listeners, today's challenge is simple.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Choose one place where you influence already exists.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your business, your team, your family, or your community, and use it with more intention.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clare if I one message, take one accountable action, or encourage one person who needs direction.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Small actions done responsibly or how positive influence compounds.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us on another episode of Daily Influence.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: If today's conversation inspired you, please share it with someone to help expand their positive influence.
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember, small actions create big impact.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Keep showing up, leading and growing one day to time.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep having a positive, responsible influence.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bye-bye!