We recently connected with Michael Collins and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Michael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about growing your team – how did you recruit the first few people, what was the process like, how’d you go about training and if you were to start over today would you have done anything differently?

Any time I’m joining a new company and team one of the things I need to do in the early days of my tenure is evaluate the existing team and determine if everyone is in the right role, where we need different talent or additional talent and capabilities. I solve some of that by identifying where someone may be in a role that isn’t a fit and they would be able to excel in a different role on the team. I also typically find amazing talent on the team who has the ability to step up into a bigger role. Once I’ve accomplished the talent review and moves with the existing team, I usually have some roles to fill with talent we recruit from outside the organization. The thing I value highly is the enthusiasm and attitude of candidates. I would rather have someone who has 80 percent of what we need for the role but who comes with high energy, a great attitude and is able to get along with the other people who are already on the team.

Michael, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I studied Communications and Journalism in college and my early jobs were working at newspapers covering local governments and school boards and writing feature stories. Through that work I developed strong writing skills and the ability to organize information. After that I moved into corporate communications and then expanded into marketing. I worked at a full-service integrated marketing agency and that was a great training ground working with many different clients from many different industries. My super power is putting together high performing teams and focusing on generating profitable revenue growth. My teams and I have also launched new product and company brands globally. I’m most proud of building marketing teams that bring together both employee and customer experience to fuel innovation and growth.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I’ve been in the leadership game for awhile and I recently read James Clear’s book titled Atomic Habits. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it! In the book, Clear says most people need consistency more than they need intensity. Great examples of consistency and intensity he provides include:

Intensity:
-run a marathon
-write a book in 30 days
-silent meditation retreat

Consistency:
-don’t miss a workout for 2 years
-write every week
-daily silence

Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress. I’ve incorporated the key principles in Atomic Habits into my team leadership.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Everyone has a different story to tell, business they own or work in and it will guide which social media platform or platforms you invest time in creating content, adding followers and nurturing your community. I focus all of my time building my presence on LinkedIn as it reaches the most targeted audience for me. I think most people will tell you and, I’ve found this myself, it involves spending regular time on the platform not just creating content but interacting with content created by others. I try to do that with content from my connections as well as with content from other thought leaders. It won’t happen overnight but over time it’s possible to build a robust community of connections and followers who you can turn to when you want to crowd source an answer, share your own experiences and tips or when you are looking for new clients or a new job.

• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/collinsmichaelj