Rick Cochran writes from decades of experience leading organizations, building teams, creating industry-first business models, and helping people translate potential into measurable performance.
Featured Leadership Series
How Great Leaders Inspire Action, Build Trust, and Drive Results
They say that leaders are born, not made. While it is true that some people are born leaders, some leaders are born in the midst of adversity. Often, simple people who have never had a leadership role will stand up and take the lead when a situation they care about requires it. A simple example is parenting. When a child arrives, many parents discover leadership abilities they never knew existed in order to guide and protect their offspring. There are countless war stories of simple GI’s and sailors who rose to a challenge on their own in the heat of battle. Clearly, leadership potential exists within each of us.
Selling with Intent: Leaving Nothing to Chance by Rick Cochran is a comprehensive and actionable guide for sales leaders at every stage of their careers.
The book meticulously breaks down the intricacies of sales leadership into accessible insights and strategies, structured to be either read sequentially for a holistic understanding or consulted selectively for specific challenges. It covers a range of essential topics from the foundational roles and challenges of sales leaders, the development and execution of a winning sales strategy incorporating AI and SWOT analysis, to the fine art of managing high-performing teams and effectively handling sales objections. Additionally, the book explores advanced topics such as leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain, maintaining a competitive edge, and utilizing stress and change as catalysts for growth in sales settings.
Authored by Rick Cochran, a seasoned leader with extensive experience across diverse industries, this book encapsulates a career's worth of insights into enhancing performance, driving sales success, and achieving professional excellence with deliberate and strategic intent.
Understanding the Business Behind Every Decision
Business acumen is loosely defined as the ability to assess an external market and make effective decisions. Knowing what is necessary to navigate and create a successful business seems innate for certain people; Steve Jobs demonstrated great business acumen. Fortunately, it is possible for the rest of us to improve business acumen. The right training combined with experience will improve your business savvy.
Developing People Who Perform at Their Best
You are in your office looking over your performance report and it happened again. Your low performing employee failed to meet quota this month even after you spoke with them about the importance of meeting goals. This employee has a great attitude and you know they can do better. You just do not know how to motivate them to reach the goal. Money used to work, but that has worn off. You are baffled and you know being frustrated makes matters worse. What do you do?
This Coaching and Mentoring book focuses on how to better coach your employees to higher performance. Coaching is a process of relationship building and setting goals. How well you coach is related directly to how well you are able to foster a great working relationship with your employees through understanding them and strategic goal setting.
Most leadership books focus on solving problems. Appreciative Inquiry: Science of Positive Change offers a different approach—one grounded in strengths, possibility, and forward-thinking action.
Drawing on the proven principles of Appreciative Inquiry, this book presents a practical, human-centered framework for individuals, leaders, and organizations who want to create meaningful, sustainable change. Instead of concentrating on what is broken, Richard Cochran demonstrates how to identify what is already working—and how to build upon those strengths to drive growth and transformation.
Through clear explanations, real-world insights, and actionable tools, readers will learn how to:
• Discover and leverage personal and organizational strengths
• Clarify vision and align action with purpose
• Increase engagement, confidence, and performance
• Lead teams using positive, strengths-based strategies
• Build momentum for lasting improvement
Whether you are a business leader, coach, entrepreneur, educator, or individual seeking personal growth, this book provides a structured yet accessible system for leading change with intention and impact.
Grounded in decades of leadership coaching and organizational strategy experience, Appreciative Inquiry: Science of Positive Change equips readers with the mindset and tools needed to move beyond problem-fixing and into possibility-building.
Captivate, Influence, and Inspire Every Audience
This Presentation Skills book can benefit anyone who presents: a trainer, a meeting facilitator, speaker, or seminar discussion leader. No matter which role you are assuming, this workshop will help you become more efficient and proficient with the skills of providing information to others.
Creating a Culture Where People Take Ownership and Deliver Results
Accountability helps to ensure that every employee will take responsibility for their performance and behaviors, and continue to manage this responsibility. When we implement goals and communicate with one another, we can achieve powerful results. Building an accountable workplace requires strong teamwork and collaboration. Every team member must have a strong understanding of the values of the company and recognize the importance of their dedication, in order to attain success.
Creating Win-Win Agreements That Build Long-Term Relationships
Although people often think of boardrooms, suits, and million dollar deals when they hear the word “negotiation,” the truth is that we negotiate all the time. For example, have you ever:
· Decided where to eat with a group of friends?
· Decided on chore assignments with your family?
· Asked your boss for a raise?
These are all situations that involve negotiating! This book will offer an understanding of the phases of negotiation, tools to use during a negotiation, and ways to build win-win solutions for all those involved.
Creating Teams That Deliver Extraordinary Results
Your organization’s people are its greatest asset, and when they work together as a team they accomplish even more. But teamwork doesn’t just happen. Teams have to be created, developed, and continuously nurtured. A solid team building strategy can create an environment of greater collaboration and collegiality, which is good, not only for the bottom line, but for your people themselves. There are many different ways to build a team, and to continue fostering a sense of teamwork. Developing a diverse team building tool kit helps your people grow at every stage.
Communicating with Clarity, Confidence, and Purpose
Writing is a key method of communication for most people, and it’s one that many people struggle with. This book will give you a refresher on basic writing concepts such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation. It will also provide an overview of the most common business documents such as proposals, reports, and agendas.
Executive Leadership Essentials
Using Self-Awareness to Build Stronger Teams and Better Decisions
Taking control over the emotions that shape our lives can have powerful effects. Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize and manage our emotions, behaviors, and impulses, as well as apply this knowledge to the world around us. It encourages self-awareness, internal motivation, and the exploration of diverse perspectives. Through effective and authentic communication, emotional intelligence will create positive relationships within any organization.
Communicating with Clarity, Confidence, and Influence
For the better part of every day, we are communicating to and with others. Whether it’s the speech you deliver in the boardroom, the level of attention you give your spouse when they are talking to you, or the look that you give to the cat, it all means something. This book will help participants understand the different methods of communication and how to make the most of each of them.
Making Better Decisions in an Increasingly Complex World
Critical thinking is vital to any kind of success, including your career and beyond. Simply put, critical thinking is a questioning approach to form a judgment or conclusion. It encourages reflective and independent thinking to guide us through the hundreds of decisions that we make throughout a week. Having these skills provides you with the best chance of making an informed decision. Everything and anything can be a subject to question with critical thinking.
As problems are bound to come up in any organization, it’s important to know how to address these challenges with good reasoning and logic. Utilizing your critical thinking skills will lead you toward being a more rational and disciplined thinker. This book will provide you the skills to approach problems critically, as well as recognize the power of open-mindedness and altering your perspective, in order to make the best choices.
Practical Strategies for Building Stronger Relationships at Work
Wherever two or more people come together, there is the possibility of conflict. This book will give you a six-step process that you can use to modify and resolve conflicts of any size. You will also learn crucial conflict resolution skills, including dealing with anger and using the Agreement Frame.
Winning the Battle for Your Most Valuable Resource
The practice of time management requires focus and conscious planning to help win back control of your busy day, and conquer financial goals. Challenges are often presented in the workplace, which can affect our ability to make optimal use of our time. However, with the help of prioritization, goal-setting, and appropriate organization of the mind and space around us, we are able to overcome time management barriers. This book will provide you with appropriate strategies to increase both personal and professional productivity, as well as learn to work smarter. Exceptional time management skills have a powerful effect on shaping an organized, successful business.
How Humility, Trust, and Purpose Create Exceptional Leaders
Servant leadership may seem like a contradicting term, but it is becoming a very popular tool in many businesses. Servant leadership is a philosophy that involves focusing on the success of others (i.e., your employees), and in turn building better professional relationships that can benefit both manager and employee. Servant leadership shows that managers can be great leaders while boosting their employee’s confidence and furthering their success at the same time
Building Trust, Credibility, and Influence That Lasts
In the information age, personal branding is necessary for the success of any company or individual. Failing to manage personal branding can lead to misinformation about you or your company becoming public. Taking control of your public image is no longer an option. Identifying and using the tools that affect personal branding correctly will ensure that the public sees the image you want them to see. A positive brand is necessary for success.
Helping People Navigate Uncertainty with Confidence
Change is a constant in many of our lives. All around us, technologies, processes, people, ideas, and methods often change, affecting the way we perform daily tasks and live our lives. This book will give any leader tools to implement changes more smoothly and to have those changes better accepted. This book will also give you an understanding of how change is implemented and some tools for managing reactions to change.
Turning Expectations into Performance and Performance into Results
Performance Management is not a company’s way of employing “micro-managing” techniques that stunt the professional growth of its employees. Rather, it is a strategic approach to ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. Whether at the organizational, departmental or employee level, the goal of performance management is to make sure all business goals are being met in a satisfactory manner.
Building Systems That Improve Productivity and Reduce Stress
Good organizational skills can prove beneficial in any area of your life. Organization can increase a person’s general productivity, project management, and can even affect their memory and retention skills. These skills are not acquired overnight – it will take a lot of practice and patience. But with a little guidance and the right tools, anyone can learn how to stop hunting for missing things and become better organized.
Leading Initiatives from Vision to Successful Execution
With the increasing demand for efficient project delivery, mastering the art of project management has become a critical skill for both businesses and individuals. Project management is the practice of planning, organizing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals and objectives, while adhering to the predefined project parameters. It provides control over the project lifecycle, from its initiation to its completion. Whether a business is planning a small-scale project or a large-scale initiative, effective project management is the key to ensuring success.