Resiliency Through Hard Times: The Loss of my First Dog
Posted by Cristen Fitzpatrick in blog | 0 comments
Happiness
One of the happiest days of my life was the day I was able to bring home my new King Charles Cavalier Spaniel puppy who was only 8 weeks old. He was so sweet and affectionate, I decided to call him Buddy. He quickly lived up to his name and followed me from room to room. He would fall asleep on my lap and quickly learned how to play fetch. Taking him to obedience school was a lesson for me in how to communicate clearly and give feedback immediately. When he learned to run to me across the lawn when I called his name, I felt elation and joy at both his enthusiasm and accomplishment. Who doesn’t want to be greeted with that kind of happy, unconditional love?
Soon, Buddy was the talk of the neighborhood from our daily walks. One time, a woman stopped her car and asked to take a selfie with him! As Buddy got older, he just became more and more affectionate and fun to be around. He became my personal companion as I went through the transition of being laid off from my job to working for myself from home. He soon became my co-worker. (Who says you can’t have a “co-worker” fall asleep on your lap when he only weighs 10 lbs?)
Loss
About two months before Buddy’s 3rd birthday, he suddenly seemed tired and wasn’t interested in eating. He would often let out a yelp for no reason at all. I took him to the vet and he said, “Let us keep him overnight and we can give him fluids and a shot to see if he will get better.” The next day, the news was not good. “He is not responding the way we hoped. We have to do an MRI to see what is going on.” The news got worse as the results showed he had SM which is a rare genetic disease that causes the brain to grow bigger than the skull. It is painful, which explained the yelping. There is no cure.
The decision I had to make was to let him suffer or put him to sleep. This was especially painful for me because I had to make a similar decision for my Dad just 4 years earlier, who at 83 year old had a gradual decline leading to being in a coma in an ICU. He had me as his POA, and I had to tell the staff to stop care as he didn’t want to live like that anymore. But the decision to stop someone’s pain and suffering is never easy and one that can make you second guess your decision long after it is done.
Struggle
My struggle to understand what had happened to Buddy was confusing and made me feel like my world didn’t make sense. What was fair about a small little dog, who only gave love, having to give up his life so soon? I had dealt with loss before: loss of a job, loss of a loved one. But nothing prepared me for this type of loss. While I told myself that I can cope as I did with other losses, the loss of Buddy haunted me in a different way. I felt like I was losing my connection to my source of unconditional love. The question of “who am I?” without my job took some getting used to as I adjusted to a new norm. The question of “who am I?” without my dad was a big adjustment as I took a long hard look at my own sense of mortality and asked myself the tough questions, like “Am I doing what I want to be doing?” But “who am I?” without my dog Buddy seemed confusing and profound in a way I did not expect.
To help clear my confusion about why this was so painful, I wrote down 10 things I learned from Buddy:
- Stay in the moment. Let things go instantly, even if they are scary things.
- Accept people for who are they are. Greet everyone as a friend.
- Find joy in simple pleasures: belly rubs, sitting in the sun.
- Don’t fear the future.
- Don’t think about the past.
- Expect the best from others but forgive them if you don’t get it.
- Be grateful for what you have: food, kisses when you come home.
- Take naps.
- Look people in the eye.
- Learn new tricks.
I realized that these were my own lessons about myself I needed to learn. For instance, I needed to learn to stay in the moment more and forgive faster and find joy in simple things. When I realized this daily reminder was a big source of my grief, I started to begin the process to heal.
Revelation
A friend suggested I write Buddy a letter to express my gratitude as part of the process.
Buddy,
You took me to a whole new level of love. You kept me company in my lap as I launched my podcast and went on morning runs with me to get our day started out right. From you hopping on my stomach when I stretched out my back to climbing all over me at night to get your treats, I will miss your constant affection.
Seeing you wag your tail and having you run into my arms always put a smile on my face. You showed me how to trust that the world is a safe place full of love. You treated everyone with love and respect and were happy to roll on your back for a belly rub at anytime.
To say you will be missed is an understatement. You really lived a life of quality over quantity and opened my heart up forever.
I Love You,
John
Then I asked myself, What if Buddy could write me back? I sat quietly and imagined what he would say and here is what came pouring out:
Dear John,
Thank you for loving me so much you let me sleep rather than experience more pain or surgery.
You made me feel so loved from the very first day.
You worked so hard to find food I like and hand-fed me when I didn’t care about eating.
Sleeping with you made me feel safe and loved.
We had so much fun playing Fetch.
You had me meet so many other people (who all loved me) and dogs to play with.
I loved sitting on your lap and sleeping while you worked.
I am free and will love you both forever.
Whoever is in your life is loved and know I’m with you always.
Love,
Buddy
I realized I had been trying to “bury” the loss and put it in my past. It is like driving fast, hoping the pain was in my rearview mirror and would disappear. But until I wrote that letter and got an answer from Buddy, the pain did not disappear. After, I finally started to have some peace of mind.
Lessons Learned
Ironically, three months later, the owner of Buddy’s brother, Coco, contacted me. He said he could no longer keep Coco and, “If anyone should have Buddy’s life, it should be his brother.” I knew Coco because he and Buddy would see each other often for play dates. So while it was never about replacing Buddy, it was a comfort to have Coco and part of Buddy’s DNA in my life.
What I missed most was seeing them play together, so four months after that, I got Coco a companion I named Pepe, who is also a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel. I have gone from the depths of despair taking walks by myself after Buddy passed to having two dogs now that love and support me and play together all the time.
My vision is a world where people can find their own way back from loss and exercise the resilience muscle rather than grief being so all-consuming that it seems like it will never end.
Writing a letter to the person or dog that you lost is similar to a practice Jungians and indigenous people use. Jung called it “active imagination.” The word “imagination” refers to one of the three major ways in which we access what Jung called the “unconscious” and indigenous cultures would call “the invisible world.” The other two tools are dreams and visions.
When we allow ourselves to dream and reconnect with the soul and love of the animal or person we lost by actively writing a letter of lessons learned, we can start to repair and rebuild up our resilience muscle as we heal our heart muscle.
A friend asked me that if I knew Buddy would die before he was 3 years old and I would feel this sad, would I do it all over again? I said yes! The joy and life lessons are so profound and a life that has no sadness has no joy either.
Marketing Mastery With Mostafa Hosseini
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
What are the secrets in formulating the best marketing strategies to scale your business up? Join your host John Livesay as he talks with Mostafa Hosseini about lead generation, qualifying leads, implementing marketing plans, and much more. Mostafa Hosseini is an entrepreneur and business coach that could help you create and implement a one-page marketing plan in three days or less. He shares his story on why he decided to drop the digital marketing services and keep coaching and consulting. He emphasizes the importance of identifying your target market. With his top three values of growth, family business, and learning, there are many takeaways in this episode of marketing mastery. You are sure to take the leap to make a profitable business for yourself and your loved ones.
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Listen to the podcast here
Marketing Mastery With Mostafa Hosseini
Our guest on the show is Mostafa Hosseini, who’s an expert in marketing. We talk about how nothing works when someone’s trying too many things at once and how important client retention is. That is an untapped vault of cash that people aren’t using properly. Finally, he says 70% of entrepreneurs suffer from depression and overwhelm, and he helps them solve that with a laser focused plan. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Mostafa Hosseini, who helps coaches and consultants create and implement their one-page marketing plan in three days or less. He is a serial entrepreneur, a business coach, and the Founder of Persyo, which he’s also the host of the Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs podcast, he’s the creator of Simple Marketing Formula, and much more. He’s been coaching and consulting for many years, helping businesses in various niches and industries grow and scale. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
I would love to hear your personal story of origin. You can go back as far as childhood or college. How did you get into becoming such an expert in marketing?
I was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to Canada back in 2000. I finished high school and I was eighteen when I got here. I went to school here. When I got first got here, I did not speak English. I went to English school for a couple of years to be able to speak. I went to school for engineering for two and a half years, didn’t liked it, dropped out, got into business school, loved it, which is what I wanted to do since I was a child. I got a diploma in Marketing Management. I got my Bachelor’s in Business Management with a minor in Marketing. I went to school for a long time and I started Persyo Marketing back in 2010.
Let’s stop the story there for a second. How did you come up with the name of your company, and what does it mean?
When I was trying to pick out names, the names that I wanted were all taken, the domains were taken. I had to come up with the name. What happened was one day back in 2010, I was sitting at a food court here in a mall in Calgary and I saw this restaurant. I’m like, “What about Persyo?” Persyo because I’m Persian-Canadian. I made the name, Persyo did not exist. When I searched Google, it didn’t bring up any results. I’m like, “Bingo.” The domain was available. I went for it. I asked a few people, “What do you think?” They’re like, “It sounds good. We like it.” I started Persyo Marketing. We did full-service digital marketing along with coaching and consulting our clients.
Marketing Mastery: By knowing what you want, you increase your odds of winning by 10 times compared to a person who doesn’t know what they want.
Back in 2017 or 2018, it got a little too competitive for me. I’m in a hyper-competitive environment and I decided to drop out and drop the digital marketing services and keep coaching and consulting. That’s my story. I’m married. I got two boys. My top three values are family business and growth and learning. I spend 99% of my time with family, business, growth, and learning. I love nature, mountains, skiing, hiking, barbecue. I love my Persian kebab. If you ever come up here, if I see you anywhere, I’ll do some barbecue and go from there.
Now that you’ve worked with so many different kinds of clients, do you see them having similar challenges or making the same mistakes in their marketing? Are they too complicated typically? Is that why you’ve honed it down a little bit to help people focus?
The number one challenge that I asked people over the years when it comes to their marketing is not knowing what to do. They want to grow their business, get more customers, and the rest of it, but they don’t know how to do it. The other challenge that they have is they start trying too many things. They are poking around twelve different things at any given time and nothing is working. That creates a feeling of frustration, overwhelm, anxiety, and people get depressed because they don’t get results. Back in 2017 or 2018, I read three books that changed the way I think and changed my business. The first one was Zero to One by Peter Thiel, who is one of the Cofounder of PayPal. In the book, Peter Thiel talked about how competition is for losers. He says, “You got to be in a place where there is no competition or you have very few competitors.”
I had too much competition that I felt like a loser. I’m like, “I got to change this.” I had competition all over the planet. In the digital marketing world, the barriers to entry are not very strong. People wake up one day and they’re like, “I’m a digital marketing advisor.” I decided to drop out of the digital marketing services and stick with coaching and specialization. The next book that I read that made a massive shift in my thinking was The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. If there’s one thing I wish I knew many years ago was this 80/20 principle. The next one was Essentialism by Greg McKeown on what is essential and not. I went through this phase and within 4 or 5 months. I’m like, “I need to simplify and focus.” I came up with a Simple Marketing Formula where we consolidate and simplify everything into one page.
Most business plans, especially coming out of MBA, it goes on and you don’t know where to start even with an executive summary it’s still so overwhelming and the shiny object of, “We should be on TikTok?” I’m like, “It depends on who your audience is. Not necessarily.” I like that. This 80/20 rule, for those people who may not know exactly what it is, I certainly found that useful in my sales career that 20% of your clients give you 80% of your revenue and 20% of the time you spend give you 80% of your results.
Are you spending time with clients that aren’t generating that much revenue? Sometimes, the lowest 20% of your clients are taking 80% of your time. That reframing of all of that is so crucial. Are there some myths that people have like, “If I spend so much money on my marketing, I should get this much percent growth automatically guaranteed?” or anything like that you see people thinking, “You’ve heard that, but that’s a myth.”
You mentioned one of them that, “If I spend so much money, I’m going to be successful.” It could happen, but it may not necessarily be true. One of the bigger problems that I see is if I worked hard, I’m going to see results. You talked about the 80/20, if you work on the 80% that doesn’t produce results, regardless of how hard you work, you’re not going to get there. I heard Tony Robbins said, “If you run East looking for a sunset, regardless of how hard you run and work, you’re not going to see it.”
[bctt tweet=”Nothing works when you try too many things at once. 70% of entrepreneurs suffer from overwhelm because of the lack of a plan.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I also think of the people at Kodak and Blockbuster, I’m sure they were working very hard up until the last minute.
The company doesn’t exist anymore. The strategy was outdated and what they were doing didn’t work and it got wiped up. Those are some of the biggest things.
You hinted at it, but let’s double click on what is this simple marketing formula that you’ve come up with?
The simple marketing formula was I need to apply to 80/20 principle to marketing and break it down to a few simple steps that cover 80% of the stuff that you need to do. I came up with six steps. Number one, you need to set your goals. You need to know exactly what you’re trying to build and achieve. As an example, when you’re trying to build a house, you design it, you do the dimensions. How many bedrooms, many garage doors, and the rest of it.
Come up with a plan, hand out the plan to the builders, bingo, they start building. You barely ever build a house in a city, at least, without a plan. If you do, you won’t get any insurance for it, and/or you would not put your family under that roof. You need to plan and know what you’re trying to build. If you don’t have a plan and a goal, you’re not going to achieve it. It’s pretty hard to achieve a goal that you don’t have.
It goes back to even time management. If it’s not scheduled, it doesn’t get done.
Step number one, know what you want. By knowing what you want, you increase your odds of winning by ten times compared to a person that doesn’t know what they want. It makes logical sense. Step number two, identify your target market, who do you serve and what do you do for them? Stop saying things like, “I serve everybody and anybody.” The fact is, if you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody. Who do you serve and what do you do for them? Step number three, your offer. What do you offer to these people? How do you connect your offer to what they want, need, and their challenges? There was a connection there. Step number four is your lead generation. How do I find leads? What’s one system that I need to master? Again, people are poking around at twelve different things.
Marketing Mastery: If you work on the 80% that doesn’t produce results, you’re not going to get there regardless of how hard you work.
If you pick LinkedIn, then don’t be spending time and money on TikTok or vice versa.
My strategy is to figure out LinkedIn and get it to a point where it’s driving leads to you while you’re sleeping, then move on to Facebook, then move on to something else. In that one platform, I’m pretty sure if, it’s the place for you, there’s so much business that you may not even need to go somewhere else. LinkedIn is massive. Lead generation. The next step is lead conversion, step number five. What is the step-by-step process to turn a lead into an actual paying customer?
That’s my sweet spot of helping people tell stories. Once they’re talking to a qualified lead that makes their offer seem irresistible.
We map it out step by step and we try to identify bottlenecks. Going back to the 80/20 principle, try to figure out what is these 1 or 2 steps that take 80% of the time. What do we need to do to speed things up and make things more efficient?
It’s anticipating a common objection so that you’re not a deer in a headlight when you get one.
There’s a bunch of things that could be happening. The fact that we map it out, people get these massive a-ha moments because 99% of people don’t have it mapped out. When they put it out there, they realize, one, “Because we visualize the process, we see what’s happening and more importantly, we see what is not happening.”
The myth is, “I’m losing my lead conversion at the end of the conversation. I’m not closing them properly.” I say, “You lost that sale at the beginning of the conversation.”
[bctt tweet=”You need to set your goals. You need to know exactly what you’re trying to build and achieve. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Maybe before you started, that’s another problem. Step number five, conversion. Number six, client retention. What do I do to keep my customers do repeat business from them, with them, and get referrals from them?
Is that an unoverlooked goldmine? I tell people it’s just like any relationship. Friendships, spouses, anything. You can’t take relationships for granted.
By far, in years of marketing in my own business, client retention is the easiest most profitable sure-fire marketing process and action we have done. It’s like an untapped vault of cash that you have to open and there’s cash.
That’s a great image. We’ll use that as a tweet.
That’s it. Six steps.
The importance of this is trying to get a plane without a flight plan or build a house without an architecture plan. You’re just wandering all over the place if you don’t know where you are in the process and where you’re going. Is there a story you can share of how it’s helped a particular business owner?
I got probably 100 stories. I was looking around a whole bunch of video testimonials from people that we have helped. Identifying your goal, it calms your mind down. The sense of, “Here’s what I want to build.” Think about the frustration and anxiety of not knowing what you want. I call it being like a floating particle into air. I go right one second, I go left the next second, up and down, we don’t want to have consistency. It gives you that feeling of assurance and calmness.
Marketing Mastery: Identify your target market, who you serve and what you do for them. If you try to serve everybody, you end up serving nobody.
Once we’re calm, we can make better decisions as opposed to making them out of fear.
It’s like, “Here is what I’m trying to build. I need to find four customers this month.” How assuring is that? How many phone calls do I need to make to find four customers? Next, identifying the target market. Again, it gives you the certainty that here is who I serve. For example, I serve accountants between the ages of 40 to 45 in the State of California. How hard would it be to go on LinkedIn and find a county in the State of California? What do I do for them? For example, I help accountants in the State of California create and implement their one-page marketing plan in three days or less. All I have to say is, “I specialize in your service,” then finding customers becomes a lot easier.
Then the secret sauce to that is what is life like for those accountants after the three days? Peace of mind, revenues start going up, they start getting the referrals, and they know who their target audience is. They’re not just an accountant for everyone.
Another way that they become more profitable is when they drop all the extra lead generation activities that are not producing, they save on costs, become more profitable, either saved the money or refocused the money few things that are producing, become more profitable, bring in more leads, and everything becomes a lot easier. At the end of the day, you can sleep a lot better, your quality of sleep goes up.
If we can keep getting research in how important that is, your metabolism, your health, your mindset, what wakes you up in the middle of the night and keeps you up, that stress. I love your analogy of when our brain is not calm, then it never shuts off. It’s trying to solve the problem or figure out, “What should I be doing next?” To me, it’s interesting because sometimes, when I’ve worked with people who sell insurance and helping them craft a story, I say, “On some level, you’re selling peace of mind to people.” You don’t have to worry about if there’s a fire or whatever. On some level, what you’re doing is peace of mind for one of the most important aspects of running any business, which is we need customers and cash.
We need to figure out how to do it in a way that works as opposed to guessing because that’s anxiety. We don’t get behind the wheel of a car going, “I can figure this out. I don’t need to be trained.” Yet some people go, “I’ll figure out the marketing on my own. I don’t need anybody’s help, I’ll figure this out,” then you’re like, “That’s an expensive, time-consuming, lethal way to do it.”
You touched on it and we talked about it in the beginning, that is the number one challenge was not knowing what to do. There are so many options that not knowing what to do affects our mental health. Up in Canada, it might be pretty closed down in the States, the chances of people experiencing a mental issue is about 1 in 5, about 20% with average people. With entrepreneurs, it’s 70%. We have a 70% chance to experience mental issues. I’m willing to bet that not having a simple plan and not knowing what to do has a lot to do with this. If I wake up in the morning and I have twenty options and I’m just poking around, not knowing what to do and not knowing what to focus on, that messes my mind up.
[bctt tweet=”If you’re going to have a plan or if you don’t have a goal, you’re probably not going to achieve it. It’s pretty hard to achieve a goal that you don’t have. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
When you’re having conversations with these lead gens, you’re speaking to somebody who has the money to pay for it and they’re having a conversation with you to see if this is the time, if you’re the right person. If you’re in that 70% of entrepreneurs or accountants that are mentally stressed out, it’s like dating. People can smell desperation, fear, and pressure. You’re like, “I need four clients this month. I don’t even have one, and the month is half over. I’m going to talk fast when I’m talking to you and hope I get you to say yes.”
I’m getting stressed out as you’re describing.
That’s my skill, telling a story where you feel like you’re in it.
It’s important to know what you want.
You can’t fake being calm. Ultimately, people buy our energy. I was up for a speaking gig and it was between me and two other speakers and my agent emailed me, “Congrats. They picked you, they liked your energy.” I went, “I forget that’s what we’re all selling.” Our energy. Money is energy and action. You’re offering a plan that takes all the energy and all the ideas that somebody has of what they could do for somebody and gets it into a laser beam-focused energy. We all know what a laser can do, cut through metal and all kinds of stuff. They do laser surgery now. If I had to describe to people why they should explore getting this one-page marketing plan done in three days, it’s the power of the laser, which then gives you the peace of mind that you’re not going to be one of those 70% of entrepreneurs who are struggling with wondering what to do next and the stress that comes with that.
One of the things that we showed during those three days is how to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and how to almost eliminate your competition. Usually, when you ask people, how are you different? They say, “We do a good job.” That’s not different, everybody promises that. Having these pieces figured out gives you that calming assurance and the calming effect where you can be like, “Forget about everything else, just do this.”
I cannot come up with my power offer. I’m just buried in this picture so deep. People are like, “You’re a marketing guy.” I’m like, “I can’t see my stuff. Give me feedback.” What I’m trying to say is what other people look at you and talk with you, they can give you an outside perspective and it’s a lot easier.
Let’s also give out your website for people who want to find out more about what you offer.
Marketing Mastery: If one platform helps you drive leads, it’s the right place for you. There’s so much business that you may not even need to go somewhere else.
The website is Persyo.com. You can also find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and all of our social media if you search for Mostafa Hosseini. Hopefully, I will be there.
Thanks so much for taking us through step-by-step the six ways that you help people get their laser focus. Any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?
Always encourage people to know what you want, have a plan to get there, implement the plan, and get support along the way. By doing that, you will increase your chances of success and odds of winning by 80 times compared to a person that doesn’t have a goal and a plan, doesn’t implement the plan, and gets no support along the way. Think about that.
Even climbing Mount Everest, those people have support, how to get Sherpas, and all kinds of stuff. Mostafa, thank you so much again for being on the show. I’m looking forward to hearing stories of how you’ve helped some of the readers.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to share my message with your audience.
Important Links
- Mostafa Hosseini
- Daily Confidence for Entrepreneurs
- Simple Marketing Formula
- Zero to One
- The 80/20 Principle
- Essentialism
- Facebook – Mostafa Hosseini
- LinkedIn – Mostafa Hosseini
- https://TD865.IsRefer.com/go/one/thepitchwhisperer/
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Thrive Loud With Lou Diamond
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Today’s guest is Lou Diamond, the founder and CEO of Thrive LOUD. Lou is passionate about helping businesses and performers thrive through all kinds of power of connecting. Lou shares with John Livesay how each person has their own world. So when you connect people, you’re bringing worlds together! Why is this important? In the world of sales and entrepreneurship, connection is at the heart of relationships. But not everyone clicks and connects with each other. How then do you increase the chances of connecting with your client? Join in to find out!
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Listen to the podcast here
Thrive Loud With Lou Diamond
Our guest is Lou Diamond, who’s an expert in helping people engage better. He said that when you connect people, you bring worlds together. We need to strengthen our connection core and learn how to move through fear into courage. Find out how he shows us how to do this.
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Our guest is Lou Diamond, who is a dynamic speaker and master connector who will energize and motivate your organization to explode your sales, retain your clients and build a thriving culture. For over 25 years, he has been a top sales performer, speaker and performance mentor. He’s a consultant bestselling author, podcast, TV host and the CEO of Thrive, helping businesses and performers thrive through all kinds of power of connecting. He’s consulted, mentored and presented to hundreds of companies, the world over and inspires the audience to feel like they can conquer the world and make tons of great new connections doing it. Lou, welcome to the show.
John, truly a pleasure to be here with you. I am excited.
Part of the reason I’m excited is I have the pleasure of spending some time with you. I know what a treat the readers are in for. Can you take us back to your own story of origin? You can go back to childhood school, wherever you wanted, that you said, “There’s a whole thing about connecting here that I like and most people aren’t doing.”
I’m not going to go to the womb because I am connected to my mom. That was by an umbilical cord and everything. I have always been the person that likes to bring things together. When I say things, let’s go with the noun, person, place or things, all these connections from people. Remember the Justice League, like superheroes bringing all the superheroes together? I think that’s always been a thing. I love knowing what great people can do and bringing them together in a work environment, as friends, in sports, competitions and dramas on stage. Facing all these people together to see how incredible the power is of a group, where people can bring those other connected powers together or those complementary skills that one can help from one another where others can learn from them. I have always believed that when you connect people, you bring worlds together. Each person has their own world and when you bring those worlds together, each individual that you connect with arrives from that connection. You grow and you move onward and upward from that experience of just one simple connection. I have been trying to diagnose it, even more, John. That is to almost double click down and say, “Where does it all start? What is the thing that draws people in a connection?”
There’s a chemical connection between two people who are lovers. We always see them from across a crowded room and attraction component. We all know that what happens when they first meet or when anyone first meets, that first conversation that you have, that has so much power, something resonates in that particular conversation. Over the years, in roles in sales, entrepreneurship, account management, I’m thinking of all the places that I interconnect with different ideas, businesses and people. What I have recognized is, wouldn’t it be great if we can decide what it is that makes us connect faster? What’s going to increase the likelihood that there is a connection? We all know that sometimes we don’t connect. We don’t necessarily see eye to eye. What can we do to improve the chance that we connect? It’s what I have been doing, helping people do that better.
Let’s zoom out and look at how important that is from the standpoint of, if you don’t have a connection with someone, they won’t give you the time of day to even listen to your presentation or your pitch. They certainly aren’t going to remember you, to give you any referrals. The flip side is, if they do connect, you are a welcome guest. They can’t do enough for you. That is at the core and it goes beyond basic rapport building, doesn’t it?
[bctt tweet=”Strengthen your connecting core.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Completely. I was talking about bringing those worlds together. I’m showing two circles. This is John’s and Lou’s world. When you first meet or your network, those two worlds just touch each other. That’s not really a connection, I would call this networking. You know that you keep someone in your network. A real connection or as I like to say in the business world, connect working or connect work, is you bring those worlds overlapped into each other. When you do that, you have penetrated and seen inside the world of someone else, almost stood in their shoes and understood what’s going on in their world. By the way, when those circles overlap, they are too. When that’s happening, you are getting a better understanding of how to help one another. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling something with someone if you are working on a team together in the work environment. Also, if you are the leader of your company and your different, amazing producers in your business, the people who help your company grow, if you have connections with them and they to you and your ideas, where you can go with this, John.
It’s so often that you recognize when things fail. Through your initial point, that connection wasn’t made, and they fall away. The effort you need to do to connect is coachable. It is actually something that you could do. That’s what I do. I help people understand what is called their connecting core and what they need to do to strengthen those muscles so they can connect with others and how to maximize the opportunity when they have a chance to connect. That’s taking and creating an engaging conversation, which is not just with you and me talking or your readers who are reading this. It’s also how you would engage a larger audience. It is a conversation that you are having. If you made your conversations more engaging, you would be badging on it’s so powerful and incredible. We also know that it’s the reason that we are continually successful, those who know how to connect.
The concept of what I hear you saying is, it’s a skill that we can learn like driving a car as opposed to, “Some people are lucky. They are conversationalists or extroverts. I’m not that person. I don’t even think I can ever improve my ability. I hate small talk.” Do you have a process that you can share with us of what people can do?
John, you are nailing it. For the readers, they need to know John just took a swat and nailed the bug while we were doing this. He just did a full swing. Was that what you were doing?
That’s what I was doing. I live in Texas. There are a lot of bugs here.
Connecting can be coached. You can learn these skills. You want me to give you the basics of the muscles that I train people through.
Thrive Loud: If you think about super why, it’s your superpower. It’s the reason you were put on this planet.
If we were talking to a fitness trainer they were like, “First we work your calves and then your biceps and then we whatever.”
You heard me say this, that we need to strengthen your connecting core. The core in my world is the muscles that you need to strengthen so that you have the ability to connect. You do not need to be the most loquacious person like John Livesay or a very outspoken, energetic, highly motivated type of guy like Lou Diamond, who you would like to see these Type A personalities. You can be an introvert. You can be someone that doesn’t care to have to go out and do this. The skills that I help people master is very into what you specifically are and helping to unearth your specific, special superpowers that everybody wants to connect with. It’s called the SAFE. Each letter represents a different muscle in the connecting core. Instead of a six-pack, it’s a four-pack. I will work backward.
After the pandemic, I would be happy for two packs.
I’ve got to tell you, some people went fitness crazy during the pandemic and some people went the other way.
Some people learn a new language. Good for all of them.
I will work backward on the SAFE just because it’s easier to tell the story. The E is the power of Empathy. As I mentioned before, that’s the ability to stand in the shoes of another and see things from their perspective. You do not need to be the most outgoing, showy speaky person in the world to understand this. This is one very important muscle. This is the muscle of listening, within the power of empathy. That’s knowing how to be a true, proactive listener, not just passive listening. This is active listening, where you are focused incredibly on the target. Focused listening is what we need to work on. There are other components to that muscle too but at the core, you need to ask great questions that start conversations, that build relationships with who you are going to do business with. This is the part where you are asking those questions and listening to how to respond.
[bctt tweet=”The purpose of a connection is to help.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When you restate what someone has said, they feel like you care enough to get me. Ironically, it works almost every time like, what I heard you saying was or it sounds like you were stressed or whatever the issue is. I was having a conversation with my mom and I restated what she said. She goes, “That’s what I said,” Then I started laughing and I said, “I know. I was just restating it to let you know that I heard you.” You know moms, it usually works great.
I think you know this and I happened to be a certified coach. It isn’t my main gig that I deal with because I do coach top performers. I have learned this a long time ago, you cannot coach family members. It just doesn’t work, ever. There are too much going on. Having the power of empathy and being an active listener are very important. The next muscle, which I love to talk about, is a fearless mindset. Now a fearless mindset, John is not void of fear. A fearless mindset is knowing how to move through fear into courage. You talk about those individuals who be like, “Lou, I’m not the chattiest, outgoing person, how am I going to be a connector with everybody that I go through?” We will make it clear that some of those are fears that are just holding you back. Knowing what those fears are, even to have that powerful conversation with someone the first time you meet them, is to say, “What I can get when I gained this?”
I go through a whole exercise of how you can flip fear on its head and understand what it is and embrace it. For example, I’m afraid to go speak to this person because I don’t feel comfortable just introducing myself. I always like to flip it. If they came over to you and started talking, would you be willing to talk? What’s wrong the other way? Always take a little contrarian view with it. The whole key thing is, it’s important to know what those fears are, giving them a name and moving through them. My fear most often is mediocrity. To me, mediocrity is a failure for some reason. I’m like, “I’m just average.” I can’t even deal with average. I want to be a superstar. I want to be above average. When it comes to mediocrity, I was flipping around. That’s still better than half the people in the world. I’m going to have mediocre days but I’m also going to have great days.
One of the biggest fears is rejection. How do we flip that one?
Let me make it clear. People are afraid of the word no. True story because I know you work with salespeople and you know this is true. Some people will leave an item on their sales pipeline list. They haven’t even reached out to this person in 3, 4, 5 weeks. They haven’t called them. The reason why is they think that there’s still a chance that those people may say yes because they are afraid to hear this person say no if they pick up the phone. I want to make it clear. If you pick up the phone and call the person and say, “I’m not interested right now,” that is a win for you. I love the word no because no is going to enable me to focus on the yeses. “No, faster,” is what I tell everybody when it comes to that particular fear of rejection. You will be able to focus on winning more yeses because you need the noes.
I will lump them together in the essence of time. There is authenticity and your super why. If you think about super, why it is your superpower. It is the reason you were put on this planet, I shared with you. I was put on this planet to work with incredible people and help them thrive through connecting. Everyone has a superpower. It’s unleashing that superpower when you let someone know what that is, just as I have right here with your readers. They are already connecting with me because we love superheroes.
Thrive Loud: The greater connector you are, the lesser ego you have.
This goes back to when I was a kid. I want to be in the Justice League and bring those people together. We love hanging with superheroes. We want to be with superheroes. We know that when we speak to a superhero, we are in cool company because that’s the person I want to hang with. Nobody wants to connect with a dud. We want to connect with a rock star. The other part and this bring it all together. This is the linchpin of connecting. You know this to be true. That’s the A. You couldn’t be as empathetic as possible, have the fearless mindset, unleash all your superpowers but John, if you do not have an authentic bone in your body, you are disingenuous. You are untruthful. We all know that is what you remember people for and you will not want to connect with someone. You will want to distance yourself and disconnect with anyone that is not being authentically who they are and fake in that regard. Bringing out authenticity, being open, honest and coming from the heart is what draws us in and keeps us together. Without it, that whole connecting core is not worth flexing at all.
Sometimes being a little vulnerable. Let’s say you are at a networking party and you haven’t been to once in a while. You overcome your fear, move into courage, go up to somebody and you start talking because you flipped it and go well. I would talk to somebody. They came up to me. If you said something like, “I haven’t been to one of these events in a long time. I’m surprised at how nervous I am. It’s like a skill. I haven’t had add muscle. I haven’t had an exercise in a while.” I’m talking to that person. I’m going to say, “You are not alone. It’s weird for all of us.” That’s a nice way to start a conversation, I believe.
Starting a conversation, John. I know you are a fellow speaker as well, that is how I opened my conversation with a new company. It was the first in-person event in a very long time for many of us because of social distancing and the pandemic. I started out and said, “What do I want to say? I always do this. How am I feeling?” If I’m pumped up and excited, that’s usually where I lead with. The reality was, is that one, I missed it. I missed being in front of people. I said, “I want you to know I am legitimately and honestly happy to be here.” Also, I’m unbelievably excited because this is the first time that I can reach out and I was allowed to touch people.
As opposed to looking at a screen of a myriad of people like we have in Zoom for 2020. I highlighted that. I think every single person in the room was also like, “I totally am in the same boat. We have a speaker here that’s talking to us.” That’s connecting right out of the gate with your authenticity from the start. That’s the thing that draws people in. If you are not that way, I won’t be in the room with those people. That’s quick. Those connecting core and those muscles, there are lots of exercises to do. If you flex those muscles every day, think of where you can take things, think of how you can develop your relationship.
I could see you do a half-day workshop or more on the super why.
The best exercise or the one I love doing the most, I would say I agree with you, is the superhero exercise. It’s the one that the audience loves the most because it’s a lot of fun. The most engaging and powerful I have ever walked through is, we call it the FOBIA workshop, Fear Of Being Immediately Authentic. That’s the fear muscle. We walk through the fear. We have had tears and real breakthroughs. For people, it’s probably the most powerful, not as much fun as the superhero but definitely a lot of fun. We do those and I love those workshops. They are great, engaging.
[bctt tweet=”When you connect people, you bring worlds together.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I think you said something there that I want to underline which is how important it is to use it like a muscle. We know we have to brush our teeth every day, whether we feel like it or not. We have to look at these muscles of empathy, listening, overcoming some fear and recapping or refining what our superpower is. We are going to get better at it but we can’t just do it once a month and think, “I’m still not good at this.”
I want to let you know and I know, John, your personality would obviously be a natural connector as well. You adapted it. I have been doing this for a very long time since those little days of always bringing those people together and connecting the dots. It is something you can always work on, improve upon and get better on. When we will get to the plug section, I’m going to give a challenge to your readers of things that they can do. It’s something that I’m working on now. We have decided what you need to do to not only improve the way that you connect and do exactly what we were talking about and flex those muscles but you also can grow your world and your business just by doing something for ten minutes a day. Imagine, thinking about that ten minutes a day and the ability of what that can do and all the opportunities in and not only that but also business opportunities they can do and bring you to more connections.
That’s called an open-loop and storytelling so we will come back and close that.
What about people who feel like they need to get a lot of credit for making an introduction or making a connection? What are your thoughts on that?
I will ask that question that you are referring to the sense, “I want to get compensated for making an introduction.”
Do you think people should close the loop? If somebody makes an introduction to me, it was strictly like, “This is somebody you might enjoy knowing. You may or may not have some business potential together.” We had a great conversation. I decided to go ahead and just go on the initial email where they were introduced and reply all go, “Thanks again. Your instincts were 100% right. We had a great chat.” I think people appreciate that because they go, “I’m going to keep making introductions.” If you make an introduction and it’s avoided, I go, I wonder if they ever spoke. If I run into them and they say, “My best friend” and they forget that I introduced him, my feelings will be hurt. There’s a wide range of introducing and forget, no expectations or I need to be acknowledged for it. It’s different personalities.
Thrive Loud: Reach out and spend just about 10 minutes having a conversation with someone in your world that you don’t get to speak to that often.
I have the big belief that the greater connector you are, the less ego you have as it relates to it. If you are trying to bring two people together, this is a selfless act. You have to recognize that you are the one who sees the value in the connection and part of your job in that connecting might be addressing how you guys can be good connectors. I joke about this all the time, John. I used to show this image when I spoke. I talked about how I see people.
For some reason, I have never been talented to draw. I would say I’m creative but I’m certainly not artistically creative. When I see people, I almost see logos or icons of the things that I recognize with them. It’s almost like there’s an orb of things around them, maybe the school they went to or the business they work for, the sports teams they work for, the cities they come from. I will see those and I will be trying to match them up and not actually within like, “You know this individual because you both ended up going to school together. You may also have worked at the same company. You are both in the same field.” Sometimes, though, I recognize, let them figure out where those worlds can connect because you can’t always force a connection.
I like to sometimes just say, “I hope you guys connect.” If you are a good connector, you are already connecting with these people frequently anyway. You will learn that, whether that connection has happened. It’s probably good form for those that were introduced to say, “Thank you so much for introducing me. That was a great conversation.” Whether they do or not, I do recognize this is a busy world. Who knows where their world is at that point? The key part is it also identifies opportunities for me. Maybe I can help those people continue to be better connectors if they were not connecting where they should, I do think that. I will tell you, from my perspective, if I don’t need the gratitude or the ego for where it comes in, there are companies that hire me to bring in sales, people or make the connections.
While I’m being managed on that, I do believe that your job on this planet is to try to make as many connections. If you could help someone make a connection, in the Jewish religion, it’s like making a mitzvah. It’s an honor and high regard when you bring people together. It shouldn’t be something that you have to make sure, “You should have thanked me for that introduction.” That’s not enough. That’s taking your ego and making it all about you and not about them. It’s certainly not being empathetic.
There’s an art to making your introduction. When you take a minute to write a couple of sentences of why you think these two people would enjoy talking, give them a launching pad to have, “I didn’t know we both went to this school or we both are into whatever sport let’s say,” makes a big difference. Let’s close the loop before we run out of time. Tell us your last little secret.
This is a great tip that I want people to start doing. In decoding all those connections, as I mentioned at the beginning if you were to drill down and say, “Where did that connection start?” I mentioned, it started with a conversation. Here’s a task, if you want to improve the way that you connect and the way you grow and watch certain opportunities come back, here’s what I want you to do. For the next 22 days, I want you to reach out and spend just about ten minutes, having a conversation with someone in your world, in your network that you don’t get to speak to that often. It could be a friend, a family member, an old business colleague or whomever it is, you figure out who it is. It could be another podcast host that was on your show a long time ago for whatever it might be. Twenty-two days of finding at least ten minutes to reach out and have a conversation with this person.
[bctt tweet=”Unearth your specific, special superpowers that everybody wants to connect with.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Here’s what I’m going to tell you it’s going to happen. First of all, it’s going to be great to catch up with all these people. You can do it on the phone. If you can see them in person, that would be amazing but we recognize there are limitations. You don’t even have to do it with Zoom. I want you to listen with your ears and speak with your mouth. Have a conversation and check in with somebody that you haven’t spoken to, 22 unique individuals. You are going to, first of all, reconnect and touch base. You are going to feel good. Second of all, you are going to realize that opportunity in some other way. “There’s a social event and something. There’s this business thing I wanted to talk to you about. Lou, there’s a speaking conversation. There’s another group that I have been involved in.” In that short conversation, I guarantee you, you are going to unearth, maybe not 22 unique opportunities, but certainly, you will have them. Maybe 10, 15, who knows? Even if it’s just one, you are going to feel good. You are going to open up connections.
Here’s the best part. The third thing, after those 22 days, you are not going to stop. You want to make it part of your routine, to just reach out to someone every day that you haven’t spoken to in a long time. You won’t believe it. “I don’t know, 356 some odd people,” or whatever it is. Maybe you could figure it in the cycle. We did this just to check in on certain people. We started tracking it at a company. We had business people doing it. I wasn’t doing it like you’re going after a lead. Now, these were people you already knew. All of a sudden, we started to see a pickup in production at the company. We surveyed the company to ask if some people were feeling better. Even more impressively, a good percentage of these people recognize that they have made it a daily thing. They have alerts. They put in alarms, make sure to reach out to somebody. I have a window in my calendar every day where I do it. Reach out and go connect with somebody that you know.
That makes me feel better already, just listening to it and imagining it, all the receiving and the giving in. People want to reach you, they can go to LouDiamond.net or ThriveLOUD.com. Thank you so much for inspiring us to reach out a little more and become better and emotionally engaging others.
I’m going to say truly a pleasure to return the favor because you were an amazing guest on my program as well. I know my listeners will like it. Hopefully, yours did, too.
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