Episode #520: Christmas Special — Fireside Chat with Greg "Kris Kringle" Kyte

NEW SHOW FEATURE: If you want to ask Ron or Ed a question and be featured on the show, please submit a voice recording from any device at https://thesoulofenterprise.com/questions

SHOW SUMMARY: In this episode of The Soul of Enterprise, hosts Ron and Ed welcome back Greg Kyte, a CPA, MBA, and stand-up comedian renowned for his unique blend of accounting expertise and humor. As the G. Robert Newhart Non-value-added Fellow at the VeraSage Institute, Greg has been performing stand-up comedy since 2002 and is the creator of "Exposure Drafts," a cartoon series for the accounting profession. He also co-hosts the podcast "Oh My Fraud" with Caleb Newquist, where they explore financial fraud cases with an irreverent twist. In this lively discussion, they delve into the art of humor in business, the intersection of comedy and accounting, and the importance of engaging content in professional education. Greg shares insights from his experiences as a comedian and educator, offering valuable perspectives on making complex subjects accessible and entertaining.

ABOUT GREG KYTE
Greg Kyte is the G. Robert Newhart Non-value-added Fellow at VeraSage Institute.

In 2016 I started Exposure Drafts, a cartoon series for the accounting profession. My cartoons have been featured on GoingConcern.com, and I've created custom cartoons for Intuit and the Thriveal CPA Network. My cartoons are also available as holiday cards from RuBook Creative (rubookcreative.com).

I've been performing stand up comedy since 2002, and I've brought that experience, energy, and humor to the stage as the emcee for Xero's Xerocon and Thriveal's Deeper Weekend conference, and this October to Gusto's Gusto Next conference.

My experience as a comedian and as a teacher (I taught junior high math for ten years in a former life) have allowed me to create entertaining, engaging, NASBA-certified CPE content. Literally tens of thousands of CPAs have attended my fraud and behavioral ethics courses on the CPA Academy and Encoursa platforms. I've also created custom CPE content for Gusto and Xero.

I'm also a licensed CPA in the State of Utah where I'm the controller for a group of medical office buildings.

SHOW NOTES

Segment one

• For the last 5 years, Greg Kyte has been joining us for our Christmas episode. He's back and he's hoarding medicine from the local pharmacy which makes total sense (or none at all).

• Greg has been a part of a few hilarious videos over the years. Check out Bob’s BBQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJv5xIFcRXU 

• Some other great videos from Greg: Great Moments in Value Pricing History part I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU-XJzRINIk 

• Great Moments in Value Pricing History part II: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky307jkr8dE

• Exclusive breaking news on The Soul of Enterprise: Greg Kyte will be stepping away from Oh My Fraud! beginning in 2025. He very much enjoyed it and expands on some of the reasons in segment one of the show today. 

Segment two

• Here’s another great video mentioned by Greg Kyte today: Billable Hour Scratch & Win https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EaVMhENXVM  

• Rita Crundwell was the subject of an episode of Oh My Fraud! President Biden just commuted her sentence. https://ohmyfraud.com/episodes/dont-look-a-fraud-horse-in-the-mouth 

• So how did Rita Crundwell end up getting caught? It started when she took a vacation and her subordinate raised a flag (not knowing what they were stumbling into).

• From Greg Kyte today: “So often these people who perpetrate frauds are people who have developed trust over a period of time.”

Segment three

• Did you know that Greg Kyte and Caleb Newquist did an episode of Oh My Fraud! about Greg’s workplace early in his career??? https://ohmyfraud.com/episodes/financial-foul-play-a-true-tale-from-greg-s-workplace 

• “It's not unethical to drive faster than 55 miles an hour, but at one point it was illegal to do so. That's the clearest example when we get to talking about morals versus ethics.” —Greg Kyte

• From Greg today on the difference between ethics and morals: Ethics are, “Am I doing something that's wrong?” Morals are, “Am I doing the right thing?”

• From ChatGPT: Think of morals as your personal sense of right and wrong, your internal compass. Ethics are more like the rules or guidelines for behavior in a group, profession. or society.

Segment four

• A book discussed on the show: “Would You Kill the Fat Man?: The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong” https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691154023/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0691154023&linkCode=as2&tag=verainst-20&linkId=EDZV2KLDBF2CRXSI 

• “Utilitarianism: the whole idea of the greatest good for the greatest number. That's very hard to argue against from a philosophical standpoint.” —Greg Kyte

• Towards the end of the show, Ron and Greg had a conversation about backing into religion to defend an ethical position. You should listen because X/Twitter is really not the place for this. :)

• A big THANK YOU to Greg Kyte for joining us today. He’s our annual Greg “Kris Kringle” Kyte guest once again!

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #519: Instant Profits — Third interview with Mark Stiving

NEW SHOW FEATURE: If you want to ask Ron or Ed a question and be featured on the show, please submit a voice recording from any device at https://thesoulofenterprise.com/questions

SHOW SUMMARY: In his third appearance on The Soul of Enterprise, pricing expert Mark Stiving, Ph.D., returns to share new insights on maximizing profitability through value-based pricing strategies. As the founder and CEO of Impact Pricing, Mark guides businesses toward understanding and articulating their value, so they can stop leaving money on the table. Join Ron and Ed as they dive deep into Mark’s expertise on aligning organizations around value creation, optimizing pricing structures, and tackling the nuances of customer willingness to pay.

ABOUT MARK STIVING
Mark helps companies discover how buyers perceive value and how to price offerings to capture more of the value they create. For over 25 years he has studied, led and coached businesses through the lens of pricing, a radically different approach from other business experts. He knows that every person inside your company affects the price a buyer is willing to pay. The prices you achieve ultimately indicate how well the entirety of your company operates. Mark has driven a company-wide pricing initiatives worth hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental profit. He started and sold three companies, improving his championship pricing skills in each one. Mark will change the way you and your audience think about pricing and business as a whole.

SHOW NOTES

Segment one

• So why is Mark joining us for a 3rd time on the show? He is still driven by changing the way you think about pricing and customers. And he’s written another book about it. https://impactpricing.com/instant-profits-book/ 

• Mark’s new book is called Instant Profits and Mark starts right up front with, “this book is about 1/10 the number of words in my other books, yet it's priced five times higher.”

• “Don't go raise all your prices to all your customers. The whole premise of the book is choose the right customers, the right products, the right situations." —Mark Stiving, author of Instant Profits https://impactpricing.com/instant-profits-book/ 

• “So if we could actually articulate what we do and the value we're going to deliver to our customers, we have room to raise prices.” —Mark Stiving

Segment two

• “If you haven't raised your prices over the last four years you have given your customers a 23% discount and gotten zero credit for it.” —Mark Stiving

• There are three profit drivers: price, sales volume, and cost. Two of those are negatively impacted by inflation… If that sounds interesting to you, check out Hermann Simon’s book Beating Inflation https://www.amazon.com/Beating-Inflation-Concrete-Effective-Corporate/dp/3031200926 

• From Mark today: Consumers are less size sensitive than they are price sensitive. In the B2B world, find features that only a few of your customers are using. Take that feature out of the product, and leave the price the same. Then create a new tier.

• Did you know that Mark Stiving publishes a Monday newsletter on LinkedIn? Link is here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/mark-stiving-s-newsletter-6929460546874355712/ 

Segment three

• Regarding ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month: ”I thought it was brilliant because what it says to me is that there's a group of people out there that are getting so much value out of ChatGPT and they've they figured out who they are and what they're doing.” —Mark Stiving

• “How much value do I think that specific customer is going to get from this specific product and this specific application? As AI is able to help me figure that out then I'm able to do pricing better.” —Mark Stiving

• What does Mark think is going to be the continuing impact of behavioral economics on pricing? “Behavioral economics has probably reached its peak in terms of how much is going to influence pricing.”

• What are your thoughts on, on freemium options? I think you've got to have a really clear business case to say freemium makes sense. Freemium is really a marketing tactic. It's not a pricing tactic.” —Mark Stiving

Segment four

• Does pricing follow strategy or vice versa? “We need a corporate strategy and, once we have that strategy, we can figure out what pricing model fits best with that strategy.” —Mark Stiving

• “When we start thinking about price and stop thinking about value then we stop thinking about how we serve our customers. Buyers trade money for value.” —Mark Stiving

• A big THANK YOU to Mark Stiving for joining us today. Please check out his new book, Instant Profits (it’s a quick, fun read). You can find it at this link https://impactpricing.com/instant-profits-book/ 

Buy on Amazon

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode #518: Trends in the Transformation Economy with Christophe Jauquet

NEW SHOW FEATURE: If you want to ask Ron or Ed a question and be featured on the show, please submit a voice recording from any device at https://thesoulofenterprise.com/questions

SHOW SUMMARY: Ron and Ed welcome Christophe Jauquet, an expert in health and well-being innovation, to discuss his latest book, The Transformation Economy. Christophe delves into how businesses are evolving to focus on experiences that meaningfully impact people’s lives. From redefining customer engagement to fostering personal growth, Christophe shares insights on the “transformation economy” concept and its implications across industries. Join us for a fascinating conversation on creating value beyond products and services in today’s market.

ABOUT CHRISTOPHE JAUQUET
With over two decades in business management, Christophe Jauquet expertly navigates the intersections of Customer Centricity, Innovation, and Future trends. He keenly tracks groundbreaking innovations, social-cultural shifts and health-related behaviours to decipher what they mean for your business strategy. Leveraging this profound understanding, Christophe has been delivering transformational keynotes since 2014, guiding the future direction of numerous business strategies in diverse sectors—from retail, beauty, and insurance to consumer goods, construction, pharmaceuticals, and tech. At the core of his vision is the belief in integrating health into every business strategy.

SHOW NOTES

Segment one

• As a teenager, it was fashion. At university, it was economics. As a career, it was Pharma. Pull those three things together, and you have the blueprint for how Christophe became Christophe. More here: https://www.christophejauquet.com/blog 

• “Health care is always considered a vertical, a business, a sector. I in my first book, tend to argue for saying that the business of health is actually a transversal business.” —Christophe Jauquet https://www.christophejauquet.com/healthusiasm 

• Christophe referenced the 4 pillars of health on the show today. Loosely translated from French, they are exercise, good nutrition, relaxation, and sleep. 

• “Because there is no differentiation [in the gym industry], it's hard to battle on price and to win on price. So people lower their price to win…UNLESS you can provide an experience” —Christophe Jauquet

Segment two

• “Basically everything that that is in the book and the way that it looks is comes from my soul and the way that I wanted it to look” —Christophe Jauquet. What book? This one! https://www.christophejauquet.com/transformationeconomy 

• Regarding your health: “You can be who you want to be thanks to technology.” —Christophe Jauquet https://www.christophejauquet.com/healthusiasm 

• Have you considered combining life aspirations and achievements? Never hesitate to combine those two things, especially when they're complimentary. Christophe Jauquet wrote about this in his second book. More here https://www.christophejauquet.com/healthusiasm

Segment three

• TIL: A digital twin is a digital copy of either an object, a human, or even the entire world. The idea behind it is that you can use a digital twin to do tests or to better understand what is happening in the real version of the twin.

• “I think what is very remarkable about femtech is that they solve something which was happening for a long time in health and healthcare which is that we did not pay enough attention to women” —Christophe Jauquet

• “We work our entire year for one or two trips a year. So everything that we invest there, we It must bring back a lot of value. And so the travel industry has always been put under pressure to bring enough value to their customers” —Christophe Jauquet

Segment four

• “One of the earliest things that I've learned from AI is that it's a wonderful partner to brainstorm with.” —Christophe Jauquet

• “If you want to have an offering to be successful, you need to answer needs. You need to answer expectations, and you need to answer the transformations or the aspirations that people have” —Christophe Jauquet

• A big THANK YOU to Christophe Jauquet for joining us today. Check out his new book, Trends in the Transformation Economy, at this link: https://www.christophejauquet.com/transformationeconomy 

Buy on Amazon

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits. 

Episode Reprise: Auditing Santa

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This show is now available in your favorite podcast player or using the embedded audio. It was originally aired in December, 2021]

We have a really special treat for you with this episode! Somehow we managed to get our recording equipment into the offices of Santa, Inc. during an audit! Join the conversation in progress and find out how naughty or nice Santa has been with the tax code!

(There probably should have been a “gratuitous dad joke ahead” warning on that one. Sorry, folks.)

NEW SHOW FEATURE: If you want to ask Ron or Ed a question and be featured on the show, please submit a voice recording from any device at https://thesoulofenterprise.com/questions

Join us every Friday at 3pm ET / 12pm PT

• You can listen live at TheSoulOfEnterprise.com/live (the podcast is available just a few hours after the show airs live)

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• Prefer email? Shoot us a note at asktsoe@verasage.com

As always, please check our website for upcoming and previous show notes and recordings, use Twitter to find the show at @AskTSOE or find us on Facebook.

The Soul of Enterprise show hosts, Ron Baker and Ed Kless, are on X (the artist formerly known as Twitter) at @ronaldbaker and @edkless, respectively (and obviously).

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Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

Click the “FANATIC” image to learn more about pricing and member benefits.