"The secret to being a successful CEO is to listen; if you don't listen, you'll never know what's going on with your company."
Joe Bass is the founder of Good Promotional Products. Good Promotional Products is a business that helps entrepreneurs promote their business by buying promotional products at cheap, cost effective prices. He is also the Promotional Product Specialist and is always promoting his business at trade shows and helps create promotional items like t-shirts, bags, pens, magnets, and cups, amongst other things.
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Table of Contents
Welcome to your ValiantCEO exclusive interview! Let’s start with a little introduction. Tell us about yourself.
Joe Bass: I am the founder and promotional product specialist of Good Promotional Products. Good Promotional Products is a one stop shop for all of your Promotional Products. Please visit our site, to see some of the most exciting Promotional Products in the Industry. We work with over 3000 Manufactures to get you the best quality and pricing. We strive to give you the best customer service in the Industry. Please visit our website and sign up. You will automatically be able to receive special pricing by doing that.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get to where you are today? Give us some lessons you learned along the way.
Joe Bass: When I was young I wanted to be an astronaut. However, as I got older, I learned more and more about what it takes to be an astronaut. And I realized it wasn’t for me. So the lesson I learned is to find what is for me. And I found I had a knack for creating promotional items and selling them. Therefore I decided to start my own company creating promotional products.
Tell us about your business, what does the company do? What is unique about the company?
Joe Bass: My business is Good Promotional Products. Our company sells promotional products at affordable, cost effective prices. What makes us unique is we sell our promotional products at much cheaper prices than other companies. For example most promotional hats cost about $15. However we just charge $8-$9. And that is just one example of many!
How to become a CEO? Some will focus on qualities, others on degrees, how would you answer that question?
Joe Bass: To become a CEO you need to think about one thing; do you have what it takes to be a leader? Or are you more of a follower? If you feel you are more of a follower then a CEO job will not be for you. But if you think you can take a leadership position then you can become a great CEO!
What are the secrets to becoming a successful CEO? Who inspires you, who are your role models and why? Illustrate your choices.
Joe Bass: The secret to being a successful CEO is to listen; if you don’t listen, you’ll never know what’s going on with your company. And then your company can’t run efficiently. One of my inspirations is Dolly Parton. She basically sells herself as a brand. And one thing she does is listen to people; in fact she uses her celebrity to help people all the time. Thanks to her the Moderna vaccine was able to be developed. I only hope I can ever be as influential and kind as she is.
Many CEOs fall into the trap of being all over the place. What are the top activities a CEO should focus on to be the best leader the company needs? Explain.
Joe Bass: The top activity a CEO should focus on is to find ways to stay focused. And that could be anything so find what works best for you. Is it keeping notes? Keeping tasks on your phone? Whatever works for you will help you focus on being the best leader the company needs!
The Covid-19 Pandemic put the leadership skills of many to the test, what were some of the most difficult challenges that you faced as a CEO/Leader in the past year? Please list and explain in detail.
Joe Bass: When it comes to being a CEO/Leader, I would say that the most difficult challenge I faced as a CEO/Leader was to decide which departments to close and keep. As we were losing clients there was no way we could keep all of our clients. And, therefore, there were some departments in our company that unfortunately had to go. But I didn’t want to as I wanted to pay everyone. So do I get rid of customer service? No customer satisfaction is extremely important to my job. Accounting? Absolutely not. Marketing? No. So what I ended up having to do was put a pause on my recruiting department. And, therefore, I had to fire many of my recruiters. I didn’t want to do it but, as someone who wasn’t getting many clients in or employees, I just had to put a pause on the recruiting department until things got back to normal.
What are some of the greatest mistakes you’ve noticed some business leaders made during these unprecedented times? What are the takeaways you gleaned from those mistakes?
Joe Bass: When it comes to these unprecedented times, the biggest mistake I have noticed from many entrepreneurs is they don’t want to find ways to grow. Instead they want to do business the same old way. But we don’t live in a pre-Covid world; we live in a post-Covid world. And things have changed. Instead of being afraid of these changes, we need to embrace them. Therefore embrace ways you can change your company then ignore those changes.
In your opinion, what changes played the most critical role in enabling your business to survive/remain profitable, or maybe even thrive? What lessons did all this teach you?
Joe Bass: The change that played the most critical role in enabling my business to survive is losing clients. When the pandemic first happened I ended up losing a lot of clients as they were going out of business themselves. To thrive I decided to focus on the clients I still have and help them promote their business. By helping them promote their business they were able to thrive more than ever before even though they were in the pandemic. This helped me learn that quantity can be important because, if you only have a select few people to pay attention to, you can help the quality of how their business is run.
What is the #1 most pressing challenge you’re trying to solve in your business right now?
Joe Bass: The most pressing challenge I’m trying to solve in my business right now is to make sure there’s enough products to sell. Some of the places that made my products went out of business. Therefore I’ve had to find new places to make products, which has led to a slow down of product quantity. But I’m trying my best right now to make sure we get enough products as soon as possible.
You already shared a lot of insights with our readers and we thank you for your generosity. Normally, leaders are asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is the most useless skill you have learned, at school or during your career?
Joe Bass: I don’t have any useless skills I can think of; I think any lesson I learned can be useful to my business.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. We will select these answers for our ValiantCEO Award 2021 edition. The best answers will be selected to challenge the award.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Joe Bass: As I said before the most difficult decision that benefited my employees and customers is deciding how to focus on how many clients I lost. When the pandemic first happened I ended up losing a lot of clients as they were going out of business themselves. To thrive I decided to focus on the clients I still have and help them promote their business. By helping them promote their business they were able to thrive more than ever before even though they were in the pandemic.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Joe Bass for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Joe Bass or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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