We recently connected with Sam Silverstein and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sam thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

I grew up in a family business. My mother and father were entrepreneurs, and I was fortunate to be able to learn so much from them. I saw how a husband and a wife could work together and manage the blend between work like and married life. This has positioned me to be able to work with my wife. My parents always had life lessons and business lessons to share at the dinner table or in other settings. In essence, they shared their journey with me, and I benefitted from all of the insights and advice they provided.

Sam, 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?

Over time, people would repeatedly thank me for advice or help that I had provided them. I wondered, “What would happen if I purposefully tried to make a difference?” This started me on the journey to write my first book. I have now written 12 books and work with leaders worldwide to understand accountability better, how to build a high-performance workplace culture, and how to develop leadership teams that will propel their organization into a bright future.

I founded The Accountability Institute and created the Certified Accountability Advisor™ certification program. We created The Culture Audit™, which allows us to analyze any organization’s workplace culture and create a custom action plan to help them build a sustainable, high-performance workplace culture.

What makes us unique is that we do not see accountability as a way of doing; that is responsibility. We teach that accountability is a way of thinking, specifically how you think about people. We position our clients to create a workplace culture that values people and always attracts and retains the best people.

I am honored to have served as President of the National Speakers Association and to be inducted into the National Speakers Association’s Hall of Fame. I am equally honored to have the opportunity to work with industry and government leaders worldwide and help them create unique, accountable workplace cultures.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Looking back, I realize that I have built my reputation in my market by putting on blinders and applying myself to be the best I could be in a very focused area. My background was in business. I have sales, manufacturing, leadership, motivation, marketing, and accounting expertise. I spoke on those subjects as a professional speaker, but I was never known for anything specific.

Once I realized that I had a focus problem, I invested the time to dig deep and find where my interests lay. Accountability was at the very core of everything I believed and taught. I shifted my business to focus solely on accountability and how it impacted individuals, businesses, communities, and our world. I researched accountability, did case studies, wrote about accountability, and created assessment tools that measured accountability in people and organizations. Over time, people started to seek me to speak on and help them with accountability and workplace culture. People started to say things about me that I didn’t have to or shouldn’t say about myself. They said, “Sam is an expert on accountability” or “Sam is the most trusted voice in accountability.” These comments mean a lot to me. It’s not me artificially bragging about myself. The market noticed me and responded, and I am so grateful for that.

Does your business have multiple or supplementary revenue streams (like a ATM machine at a barbershop, etc)?

Initially, I saw myself as a professional speaker. As I continued to write books, I realized I was an author and, hopefully, a thought leader. My books not only turned into speeches but into development programs that we could teach. We created online learning tools, a workplace culture assessment, and a certification program to certify people inside an organization to use our tools to develop stronger leaders and build stronger workplace cultures. We also certified coaches and consultants to use our tools with their clients to do the same. Our revenue streams developed in ways I could not have imagined initially, but our continued narrow focus on accountability positioned all this to happen over time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://samsilverstein.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samsilverstein/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samuelsilverstein
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/samsilverstein
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/samsilverstein
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/samsilverstein
• Other: https://theaccountabilityinstitute.com/