David Stewart: Looking Towards Success And Beyond Age
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Both success and challenges will come to you regardless if you are a young student or a businessman on the verge of retirement. In that case, there’s no excuse for one not to look beyond age and embrace a learner’s mindset. Business consultant David Stewart joins John Livesay to share his inspiring journey of working with different companies for improvement and growth. He talks about his most interesting stories and takeaways when helping others build their teams, create a diverse community, and embrace stress as a springboard toward the next level. David also explains how his engineering education and career as a professional photographer allowed him to connect well with people in a precise way. By understanding others no matter their generation, he eventually found himself starting the publication Ageist.
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Listen to the podcast here
David Stewart: Looking Towards Success And Beyond Age
David Stewart is our guest. He is all about breaking down boundaries. After a certain age, a lot of people think, “I’m too old to learn something new.” He said, “Hard is not impossible,” and his whole philosophy is, “I want a bigger box.” Find out what he means. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is David Stewart, who is the Founder and face of AGEIST. He is a passionate champion of the modern 50-plus lifestyle and the leading authority on the mindset and aspirations that drive this influential demographic. As the go-to reference on people in our age group, he frequently shares his expertise and insights with major publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, CNN and more. He has consulted for a wide range of Fortune 500 brands and businesses. He was the keynote speaker at The Global Wellness Summit in Singapore in October 2019. Before he launched AGEIST, David was an award-winning photographer specializing in portraits of people that combined his engineer’s precision with a refined design and visual aesthetic. David, welcome to the show.
It’s great to be here, John.
There is so much there. I want to ask you questions about how did you come up with the name of this online publication and how did you get into photography. I’m going to let you take us back to your own story of origin. You can go back to childhood when you got your first camera. You can start the story wherever you want, but I’m always looking for how a passion that became a profession happened, as well as maybe some lessons that your parents passed on to you that have influenced your story.
The thread that goes through my life story is I want a bigger box essentially. The box was always too small. When I was a kid, my grandfather was into photography and I was given a camera, those polaroid Swinger cameras. Before that had a Brownie camera. I was young like five or something. My entire life, I love cameras and photography. I grew up in this small town in upstate New York, a lovely, idyllic place, and I never fit in. I felt like a one of one. I felt like I was from Mars or something. My parents love them to death, but my dad would say like, “You are not very smart essentially.” I was super curious. I was always into discovery. It often involved disassembling things that often he did not want to be disassembled. I was labeled as being not very smart.
My mom is all about being average. Mom loves average because she came out of depression. It was all about to keep it even, be like the neighbors, don’t stand out. A few years ago, John, I was going through some stuff and I saw standardized tests of mine when I was a kid. They are all like 99 percentile. If you had a kid like that now, you would do something different than what has handled me. In high school, I learned to be quiet because I realized anything I said, I was going to be ridiculed and teased for the kind of clothes I wore, the music I listened to. It’s this farm town in upstate New York. They are nice people but I was out of the box.
What happens is I don’t do that. I do great on standardized tests but in high school, my grades are not that good because I shut down. Anytime I opened my mouth and share anything, I’m going to get beat up so I don’t do that. The guidance counselor said to me, “We think you should go to technical school. Go to a two-year college because we don’t think you can handle it.“ I was like, “Let me show you.” I did the hardest thing I can. I went to engineering school for two years. I was on the Dean’s List. Going to engineering school, for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s like joining the Marines. It’s still the hardest thing I have ever done. It’s so demanding. They are not like the PC kind. They are always yelling at you like, “Sir, you should re-evaluate your career alternatives because this is not for you.” It was intense but after a couple of years, I realized the box was too small. I didn’t want to be an engineer because it was too focused. I wanted to learn more. I get a degree in Political Science from Boston University. Because I had a background in Engineering, which was full-on intense. Liberal arts school was nothing.
[bctt tweet=”I want a bigger box.” username=”John_Livesay”]
At the same time, I got a job. I worked at Fiorucci. At night, I went to photography school. I started studying photography. When I was 22, I graduated from school. I have a little temp job. As only a 22-year-old can do, I declared myself a photographer. I say it, therefore, I am. It worked out. My first ad in Vogue was at 24 and then by 26, I was living in Paris. I was working for the magazines. I moved back to New York, which was hard. All these other places you have lived, but if it’s New York, you have to start again. I was doing that thing and then I started doing advertising. I was doing pretty well. Then I moved back to Paris when I was about 40. I was commuting to Paris, New York, LA, Tokyo doing a lot of advertising, then I got sick.
What happened was when I was 49, I developed this weird auto-immune thing. I spent the better part of a year in a hospital as a science experiment. That caused some re-evaluation of the lifestyle I was living. There were consequences to that. I dialed that back a lot. I moved to Los Angeles and kept doing advertising. The way it works in advertising photography, your job is to carry out a vision that someone has created for you. I would go in and say, “This is great. We can do the light. We could do casting like this. This is the vibe but are we targeting the right people here? Is this the right message that we want to put out?” They would look at me and they would say, “You are thinking too much.”
It would be like asking the model in a fashion shoot if she likes the clothes. It’s like, “That is not your job. Stay in your lane.”
It was like, “You are here to take the picture.” I needed a bigger box so I started AGEIST when I was 56. AGEIST began as everything in my life begins, as a curiosity. It was an investigation. I thought people like you and I were living in this vital, vivid, forward-leaning way. Everything I see about myself and my age cohort out in the media is this medicalized and infantilized like, “Grab your bag of meds. You are not going to make it out the door.” I didn’t know anybody like that.
All the pharma and the ARP and I thought, “This is bananas. I’m not scared. I feel strong. What all is this about?” We did a lot of investigation on that and then we started publishing this little newsletter to 50 of our friends, with the grand global ambition of them remaining our friends. We started this thing and what we are is a branding consultancy with a media arm. The media arm is what everybody sees. We love our community. We love our social. We publish like demons. We have a super high bar with who we profile, the visuals and how it looks. We keep it smart and challenging. Because we have the social and this publishing, we are a consultancy. We are best in class because we have a minute-to-minute interaction with this cohort that everybody wants to know about and they are not very good at speaking.
In the consultancy, we do some large research like quant analysis and qual stuff. We produce content for a big sneaker company and a big car company. We help them with their messaging. We help them to understand our people and then connect the dots to whatever their brand values are. Because we are of the age that we are and a lot of their creatives are awesome people, they are so smart and clever, but they can’t time travel twenty years into the future. It’s impossible and asking them to do it is unfair.
Beyond Age: It would take 10 years to really learn how to use a camera and learn the technology and another 10 years to develop a point of view.
When we were twenty and somebody said they were 40, I can’t even fathom what that is. Let alone 60. I don’t know what your psychographics are in any way, shape or form, and that 60 now is different than it was even many years ago. What you are doing is allowing brands to realize that there is a lot of disposable income in 50-plus people. If they don’t see themselves in the stories that are being created by the brands, they tune out, whether it’s a luxury car, a cruise ship line or whatever else you might be trying to sell. You bridge that gap between what today’s affluent, healthy, 50-plus people are doing and figure out a way for brands to connect with them emotionally where they are. The people who are working for those brands are not that age for the most part.
It’s almost impossible for them to get inside that person’s head. Focus groups aren’t going to do it. Because you’re doing AGEIST, you are hearing firsthand what people’s motivations are, challenges, what lights them up now, why they want to make a difference, whatever is going on. That is unprecedented in a lot of ways because if the old way of doing it is to get a corporate job, stay there for 30-plus years, get the gold watch, retire and then maybe golf and travel. That is about as detailed as it ever got. Nobody had a model of people staying relevant. Every once in a while, you’ll read about David Gary is 92 and too old to retire. There are a few outliers like you were as a child, the Picassos of the world. I feel that people who are creative are the ones that stay curious and still produce content that keeps them young, relevant and vibrant.
It’s the people who, “If I’m not doing this, if I’m an accountant or whatever it is, and that stops, I don’t know who I am anymore,” where they lose a sense of self. Yet you are able to say there is a whole group of people that are creative, staying creative and connecting all those dots. You mentioned being young in your twenties and breaking into all these competitive industries, advertising, Paris. What was it you had? Was it your tech skills as an engineer that made you be able to shoot? Back in those days, because I remember taking a photojournalism class, it was still in the dark light room with a lab. Nobody was shooting in raw back then. There was no digital and yet you always need some technical expertise for the right lighting. Do you think you had an eye that other people didn’t, that your pictures popped? It’s like a model, you show your portfolio and you either get the gig or you don’t. You are competing against the Bruce Webers of the world and Michael Croft. There are a lot of well-known fashion photographers. What do you think it is that you brought to the table at such a young age that made people give you a shot?
Back then, it was transparency films. It wasn’t even negative films. The table stake is you have to be able to come out of whatever the assignment is with something usable. That required a certain level of technical expertise. As you said, nobody was shooting in raw. There wasn’t even an autofocus camera. The exposure, the color and all of that stuff, you have to be able to do that. There was a certain moat around that, which was good for us back then, which evaporated with digital. That was the beginning. I’m pretty good with that stuff like chemistry, optical camera stuff. I was able to have some points of view. It’s very difficult to have a developed point of view at 24.
Certain photographers like Annie Leibovitz and Bruce Weber, those people are known for a look. You probably didn’t have a look developed, but you were able to capture ads. You are working under pressure because if the things are out of film or something is out of focus, it’s a lot of do-overs.
Because of my engineering background, I have a good understanding of light refraction, light reflection, how things happen on people’s skin, how shadows fall, what kind of light. Those were easy for me. It was layered on top of that point of view. Back then we used to say, “It would take ten years to learn how to use a camera and learn the technology and another ten years to develop a point of view.” There weren’t any top-level photographers under 40 back then because the technical stuff took a while to get good at that. Maybe they thought I was cute or something. I got to say in that world, it counts.
[bctt tweet=”Keep learning at every age.” username=”John_Livesay”]
If you are an architect, an interior designer, a photographer, a stylist, you have to look like you stepped out of the pages of the magazine. Even as a salesperson selling advertising for Condé Nast, there was a certain level of expectation that your appearance would match the brand in some way. The line when I was selling advertising for W was “Everybody puts on clothes, but not everybody gets dressed. The people who read W get dressed.” Even if it’s the same look every day, whether it’s the black sweater of Steve Jobs, the hoodie with the startups, it’s an intentional statement. That people realize your talents alone is not enough. This is true in everything. People want to work with people that they like, trust, get along with, aren’t divas and dependable.
All of that at a young age is sometimes difficult, but if you are hungry enough, then you stand up. Here is where I think your story has an interesting twist. Many people would think, “I’ve made it, I’m in Paris and I’m this. Now I moved to New York and I got to start over? Forget it.” Ego would kick in so much. Yet you get in with the ultimate in-crowd that Andy Warhol interview days. That is the ultimate pinnacle of creativity. I have taken a tour of the museum in Pittsburgh. It’s so prolific like a Picasso of creativity and everybody wanting to be in that Studio-54 vibe. Even people who were born way after that still want to hear about what is that lifelike. You from a small town were able to figure out a way to get behind that line of not the red curtain, but they have those things where you can’t get past the VIP ropes. They opened the rope for you and said, ”You are one of us.”
As you said, I was from this little farm town. I had a very high level of naivete. Going into interviews and meeting these people was like, “Okay, whatever.” It’s like, “You there with funny white hair.” “Okay, what do you want me to do?” I remember I had a meeting with the art director of French Vogue and we were talking. I have no idea what the consequences of that could be. He was like, “I just liked him. He was a cool guy.” We were talking about pictures, whatever.
You are comfortable in your own skin. I would say that would be the big takeaway because a lot of people, especially when the stakes get high, they get uncomfortable. They get all in their head worrying about if they are likable or enough. I don’t think you’ve had any of that going on. You weren’t attached to the outcomes is what I’m hearing.
Pretty much. These people were highly sophisticated. They were at the pinnacle of defining style and fashion at that point. I’m a kid from a farm town in upstate New York. There is so much that I don’t know. People would set up these meetings with me, “We need to meet this person.” I would come in as my normal bouncy self and be like, “How are you? Let’s do this thing. This will be fun.” There was no filter. I don’t care.
You were speaking at The Global Wellness Summit. That topic is very important. You had your own health challenges but people just assume that as we get older, it’s like a car, you got to replace some parts. It’s a lot of maintenance and things you took for granted that you now can’t. What was your talk about? What was your insight?
Beyond Age: Through a diverse ecosystem of different ideas and points of view, a more cultural breakdown is possible.
A lot of my appeal on stage is my physicality. I’m a spunky guy. I’m 62. I come in bouncing up on stage and it’s the same naivete. It’s like, “How’s everybody?” It’s 700 C-level people and government officials and stuff there. I’ll start talking and I say, “I’m 62.” The whole crowd is like, “You are 62? How did that happen?” I tell them, “This is how you do this.” I think that your analogy of the car is correct. There is more that we have to do to maintain ourselves. We have to be more conscious and direct. I don’t eat anything like I did when I was 25. I don’t exercise that way. That doesn’t mean that everything comes to a crashing halt at 50. Do you see the Twyla Tharp thing on PBS? Twyla is 82. She is totally, single-minded, creatively obsessed. This is what someone 82 can look like and do if they take care of themselves all the time.
Dancers constantly moving and keeping everything well-oiled. It completely gives you the car analogy there. Who has been some of your favorites that you have photographed? Do you have a story or two of some people that you photographed that were like, “That was an incredible shoot or I’m so proud of that picture?”
I used to do a lot of work for the New York Times magazine. They would hire me to do portraits. I love doing portraits because I find portraits to have much greater longevity than fashion. Fashion is, to an extent, disposable of the moment.
Bill Cunningham was in the street now, and then the next he will be somewhere else.
I love doing fashion because of the team. It’s super creative and collaborative. Doing that in Paris is like I will probably never be around that tight group of super-focused creative people again. Portraits, you have to quickly understand, John, that the whole mythology in the media that this is a bad, good, great, less good person is not the case. That bad people aren’t that bad. The good people are not that good. A lot of this is a story that is told out there to sell. Partially, in the media business, we do that but I get that.
One of my more memorable stories is with Mr. Mike Tyson. This starts when I’m in Northern California. I’m photographing David Blaine who became my friend. He is an interesting guy. I’m photographing him for the New York Times. My phone rings and it’s The Times. They said, “Can you go to Maui next week to photograph Mike Tyson?” I was like, “Didn’t he eat Evander Holyfield’s ear? Didn’t he just get out of prison?” I was like, “Can’t you give me some nice pretty movie star or something. Why do you always give me the psychopaths?” I talked to Blaine. I said, “Blaine, this thing is going on.” He’s like, “Don’t worry about it. Mike’s cool.”
[bctt tweet=”There’s more that we have to do to maintain ourselves. We have to be more conscious and more directive.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We have this conversation about Mike. He is friends with Michael Jackson and all these funny people. I said, “I will do it.” We go there. It’s Mike’s training. Before the training, he has an interview with FOX Sports. FOX being FOX, what they do is they send a female sportscaster and everybody had been warned. I’m not the interview media. I’m just the photographer so I’m watching all this. She gets right up in his face and she says, “The first question, why do you hate women?” He’s like, “Huh?” It doesn’t stop. She’s inches away from him. “Why did you rape that woman? Why do you hate women?” Mike handles this for few minutes then he snaps.
Mike has two very large, strong guys who pick him up by the arms and hold him because he would have killed her like she would have been dead. Mike is out of his mind. The next two days, I have watched this and I’m like, “Please, God help me.” I’m in my hotel room and you wait until you are summoned to the secret training facility. I get the call and I go to this secret training facility in the front lobby of this outdoor thing. It was filled with very large bleeding men in a state of semi-consciousness. There are about a dozen of them moaning and blood coming out. I look at a conference room where Mike has set up a ring and they’ve got a DJ in there. I watched Mike hit this huge guy with an uppercut so strong, it picks him up and shoots him across the ring, then the guy is out.
Mike continues to train and throws up in the ring. The trainer comes out and says, “Mike’s in a bad mood. I’ve never seen him do this.” I’m thinking, “Please.” Mike comes out. He got a phalanx of guys behind. Mike’s not that big like 5’10. He has a fairly high voice. He comes up to me so I go up. I showed him a Polaroid of what we’re doing. I said, “Mike, we’re doing cover for New York Times magazine. I’m here to photograph you. He’s like, “I got to get a haircut. Come on down to my condo.” I’m thinking, “Okay, let’s do that.” We go down and I met him in his condo. Mike still got his trunks on. Now it’s a big old film camera that I’ve got. I’m an arm’s length away from Mike. He starts running this line of shit on me. He starts with this like, “I’m so bad. I would eat babies. I’m like horrible. You can’t believe the horrible things that go on in my mind.”
This is going on for a while. I realized I have to do something. I need to radically change the dynamic here or I’m not going to get the picture I need. I remember David Blaine so I had this moment. I reached out and I slapped Mike Tyson and I say, “Mike, you aren’t so bad.” I know there are two outcomes here. I will be dead. Mike would kill me. I slapped him right across the arm. I whack him and I say, “You aren’t so bad, Mike.” He looks at me and smiles. He’s like, “You’re okay.” What he was doing was like, “I’m going to mess with the honky journalists.” We got along great and we had this wonderful conversation. Mike is a very unusual human being but I like him. It was memorable.
It also shows how much more is there to take a great portrait than just pushing a click on a camera. There is rapport, finding the right moment, shifting the tone if you have an image of what you want in your head, building trust, all of the things that good entrepreneurs have to do to build their business.
It’s very similar. You need a point of view and the point of view needs to be yours. It needs to be distinctive. This is something that I tell all the companies I work with. I say, “When I’m in your world, I cannot be confused. I’m in anyone else’s world. It needs to be exclusively your world.” If I’m in Nike world, if I drive under their site or some of their stuff, I know exactly where I am. For so many people, that’s hard for them, especially the founders and the CEOs. You want to attract those super fans. You want them to love you more and then they will attract other people.
Beyond Age: Let your good stresses help you adapt and grow.
The other thing that I hear so often around age is all companies aren’t interested in reaching to them, whether it’s through advertising or even having them work there. Yet, there is this growing awareness for the need for diversity, which to me includes people of different ages. Are you seeing people starting to open that up and broadening the definition of what diversity is beyond gender and color to include age or no?
It’s a very loaded difficult thing to do. Let’s talk workforce versus advertising marketing because they are different things. The thing about age is we all age. If we feel negative about older people. What we are doing is we’re feeling negative about ourselves in the future.
We are looking at our own mortality. We don’t want to look at that.
You’re tied up with reproduction and illness, death. That is part of it. We talk to HR people about, where’s the fail here? We interviewed some HR people for big companies. We said, “Listen, talk to me about this. What’s going on? Are you trying to hire older people? Do you want age diversity?” They are like, “Yes because we realized if you have a bunch of twenty-year-olds in a room, they can drive the car fast, but it’s going to end up in the ditch. We need this diverse ecosystem of different ideas and points of view.” What happens is the breakdown is cultural. Generally, the younger people will be the boss. The older person is coming in probably 50, 60, and maybe their boss is 35 or 40. It’s bridging that cultural gap where there’s relatability. It’s something that I tell people who are out there looking for jobs. I say that you need to be in touch with popular culture because that’s how people communicate.
I was calling on Lexus’s ad agency. There were a lot of young girls, 20s, 30s in the media department. I would purposely watch The Bachelor because when I took them to lunch, I could have a conversation about, “Can you believe that?” It’s the willingness to speak that language to be in that currency. Now, it’s video games and Fortnite. It’s an ongoing thing. You have to decide whether you want to embrace it or not. The analogy I had from a friend was some actors made it from silence to talkies and some didn’t. It’s a choice we always face as we embrace new technology and conversations. If you don’t understand the difference between Bitcoin and blockchain, you may not be able to have a conversation with a lot of people. It’s an ongoing thing. I love that a lot. Is there any one myth that you think people have about people over 50 that you’ve been able to bust through your AGEIST publication?
There is a couple. The one is that people can’t learn. People can learn. There is a thing called neuroplasticity. It doesn’t go away. You can learn. I’d never use PowerPoint. I’d heard of it but I’d never seen it. I’d never written anything. All those Microsoft programs, Excel, Word, none of that, Google analytics, nothing. You just learn it. People can learn and I think this is on both sides of the age equation. The people our age have been, “No, I can’t learn that. The old dog, new tricks. I can’t do that.” That’s a cop-out. You can do that. It’s hard. The people on the other side are like, “They will never be able to learn.”
[bctt tweet=”Total comfort leads to total decay.” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the ways to pop that bubble is exactly what you did. You immediately say, “I get what’s going on in the culture. These things are going on. Let’s have a conversation about The Bachelor or whatever.” They are like, “That is interesting. This guy’s cool.” That is one of the big things. What we do is we provide aspirational, inspirational and attainable role models where we say, “This is possible.” You may not want to live like us. That is okay. That’s fine. You can do whatever you want to do, but if you do want to, hear somebody and look at what they are doing. This is how they did it. It’s possible.
It breaks up the need. If there is no role model, then you have a belief possibly that it’s impossible. If someone has broken that mold, you say, “There is a precedent that’s been set that I can still do X at this age.” It opens up your own possibilities. Even if you don’t have to become Twyla Tharp, they can still say, “Maybe I can take a dance class, even if I have never danced” or whatever it is that keeps them moving. I love both of those so much. Any last thoughts or a favorite quote you want to leave us with?
Hard is not impossible. It’s just hard. The other side of that is total comfort leads to total decay. Adaptation requires stress and challenge. What I like to say is we looked at our parents and our grandparents. They got those La-Z-Boy chairs. They sat in front of the TV and ate donuts, look what happened. That didn’t turn out so well. As we get older, we get used to this idea of what we should be seeking as constant comfort. Stress has a bad name but stress is how we adapt. Learning is stressful. Meeting new people is stressful. Going to the gym is stressful. These are all good stresses that will help you adapt and you can.
The website is WeAreAGEIST.com. David, thanks for sharing your passion for life and all of your wonderful insights on how this demographic will continue to stay relevant and ways that everyone can not fear if they are not there yet.
It’s been so great to be here. Thank you.
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Gain The Edge With Jim Padilla
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Meet Jim Padilla. Jim is a master saltrainer, an expert team builder, launch expert, and one of the founders of Gain The Edge LLC. Jim has great success in helping entrepreneurs gain the edge in their business such as building teams and leading them to find their true potential. He is also great at busting everyday myths such as the “win-win” or “not being attached to the outcome”. Join your host, John Livesay as he sits down with Jim to talk about his five core values in his business and how he applies these pieces of wisdom every day.
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Listen to the podcast here
Gain The Edge With Jim Padilla
In this episode of The Successful Pitch, Jim Padilla busts some myths about getting people to know, like and trust you. He busts the myths that win-win doesn’t work, and also the myth that you shouldn’t be attached to the results. He talks about the importance of curiosity driving the day. We get into a deep conversation about when you’re protecting yourself, you’re not serving others. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Jim Padilla, who is the visionary captain of the ship for a company called Gain The Edge. He is a master sales trainer, an expert team builder, and a launch expert. He’s got over twenty years of experience in building teams and leading them to success. He has a solid track record of achieving results. More than that, he’s a launch expert. He and his team, which consists of his lovely wife, Cyndi, have led dozens of entrepreneurs to huge success in their launches, driving sales, and surpassing goals and expectations. He shared the stage with Jay Abraham and Les Brown. Jim brings an exceptional level of experience and talent to the world of sales. His real talent is that he can inspire his team to achieve their full potential. Who doesn’t want that? Jim, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me here, John.
Let me ask you your own story of origin. You can go back as far as you want. You can go back to childhood or to when you were in school. How did you start thinking about, “I have a talent here of inspiring people, I see that there are some problems when people try to grow a company that I might be able to fix?”
I will go back to childhood because it sets the context. I was born in a pretty unfortunate situation with teenage parents. My dad took off right away. Mom pretty much freaked out and responded with a lot of fear, rage and anger to a tough situation. It was an abusive, loveless and Godless home that I grew up in. I ended up in foster care and on the streets at sixteen running in gangs and getting into lots of trouble and in jail by nineteen.
You can imagine spending every waking moment trying to read the room and figure out how to influence people in your direction, not because you needed them to buy something but because that was the only self-defense mechanism I had. If you didn’t close the sale there, there was a lot more at stake. Little did I know that years later, I’d be making millions of dollars teaching other people how to read the room and influence people in their direction, so that they won’t see you as a threat and they’ll let down their defenses and be able to buy from you.
There’s so much there. First of all, you’re an amazing storyteller. I love that line, “Little did I know.” Suddenly we’re on the journey with you. The premise of any good storyteller is that the stakes are high. If you’re in jail at nineteen, it doesn’t get higher than that. The stakes are pretty high for basic survival. Let’s talk about reading the room. I joke with people now, you still have to read the Zoom even if it’s a virtual call. That’s why I’m big on having people have their cameras on. Even if people are on mute, you can still read the Zoom, the room or the energy a little bit in my humble opinion. Let’s go back to some basics of reading the room in general. Everything from, “This is where I lost them, where they got confused and where they got distracted.” Pick any one of those three things to talk about how people can be better at reading the room.
[bctt tweet=”Curiosity drives the day.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We can touch on all three of them. There are some common threads, a through-line if you will, for all of them. The first and foremost is you have to come to complete surrender to the reality that it’s not about you. If it’s about you, meaning you have to make the sale. You’re positioned a certain way and you can’t tarnish that. You can’t say certain things but you’ve got to say others. You’ve got to self-censor. If all of those things are in play, you are not focusing on the audience. You are not focusing on the other person, which means you are not going to serve them because you’re in conflict with serving you. That is going to impact all of this.
You have to get to a place where curiosity is what drives the day. You have to assume the best of the person you speak to always. If I assume you’re trying to hurt me, then I now have to start protecting myself. If I’m protecting me, I’m not serving you. Everything has to be outward-focused and you have to come to that place where you believe the best intentions of other people. We have five core values in our company and they tie into our values as people. It’s ownership, relationship, partnership, flexibility, and optimism.
I am an eternal optimist. I don’t mean glass half full, I mean, if you turn around and see that your dog took a crap on that rug, your immediate thought should be, “I have been wanting a new rug.” You have to see the high side of everything. In transparency on that, I had a big blessing from God to help make that happen. He dropped me in a bombshell of an upbringing. I learned at a young age that everything is overcomeable. When I see a problem, I don’t go, “Oh my God, a problem.” I go, “How do I solve it?”
Let’s reframe and restate those wonderful values, not just business but personal because that’s the first takeaway. They’re not separate. We’ve all experienced that now in a much greater way than we ever did. I’m one person at home and one person at work. Now that’s been blended for a while, people are like, “Oh.” These all have to be consistent: partnership, relationship, ownership, flexible, and optimist. This concept of ownership, to me, means you’re not pointing fingers, you’re not blaming other people. The framework of being a partner means that when someone is a little down, you might be there to help boost them up and that it’s a win-win thing. Of course, the relationship is the premise of that long-term view. Even if I get mad or I say something that hurts your feelings, we don’t throw the whole thing away.
If you notice, they’re all tied together. All of them are interwoven. We talk about them so much here. We make business decisions based on that. We’ve let people go from our team who were fantastic humans. We started realizing, “How come there’s all this friction here all the time?” We started evaluating. We say, “The way they handled that demonstrated no ownership. They didn’t take partners. They didn’t demonstrate any flexibility. There was no optimism, there was only finger-pointing.” It didn’t work and it’s not because they weren’t great people, they don’t fit here. We look at that through all things.
Here’s another huge takeaway you gave everybody, Jim. If you don’t define your brand, values, culture, whether you’re a one-person company or not, then you don’t have a moral compass to decide whether you should take an action or not, “Is this a fit for me or not?” That comes back to what you were also saying about this premise of reading the room and building trust. When you have these five values, as you described, defined, integrated, and not just pieces of paper somewhere, what that allows you to do is to trust your gut even more because you know who you are at such a defined level. That is where most people think, “I don’t need to define my culture. My values don’t matter.” They then wonder why things are hectic, chaotic and not streamlined. Without this map and this compass, moral or otherwise, no wonder you’re lost, both emotionally and in your business.
Gain The Edge: You end up teaching people how to read the room and how to influence them so that they won’t see you as a threat. By doing this, they’ll let down their defenses and be able to buy from you.
Part of the success of what you do with companies is you’re digging things that are hard for people, like getting leads, closing business, and getting people to trust you. I’ve never heard anyone say what you said, which is, “If I’m protecting myself, I’m not serving you.” I need to take a minute and let that land not just intellectually but emotionally. You start looking back on personal relationships, maybe breakups or conflicts with friends. What this reminds me of is years ago, when I was in my twenties, someone said to me, “It’s the old question, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” It was the first time I’d ever heard it framed like that. All these years later, I’m hearing you say it differently but still equally impactful. Are those things connected?
Yes, very much so. You mentioned the term win-win a little bit ago. Not to douse out your fire on that, but we take a different perspective. I had analyzed this for a while because you hear everybody talk about the win-win. It’s a common term. When I hear the win-win, it implies equality. It implies that you and I are both here to give something to this. Most of the time, it requires me to give you a certain amount and you to give me a certain amount. Usually, there’s some measurement involved. John, neither one of us is equal. There are things that you’re better at. There are things that I’m better at. For us to both be equal, then one of us has to compromise. I’m going to say, “If John is going to give me this much, I’ll reduce what I’m going to give,” or you do the opposite. We’ve tweaked that term and we come from the perspective of win-them. What that means is we show up to ensure they win. That means I give 100% of me and you give 100% of you. If my 100% is bigger, that’s the way it goes.
I love busting myths. We talked about another one we’re going to bust later. That’s why I wanted to go through all of those five to make sure that I was having the same semantic meaning. I’m glad that you said no. Let’s put it in terms of personal relationships. People sometimes can go, “I see myself in that story.” If you’re in a relationship with someone and they’re keeping track of how many times they take out the garbage versus you taking out the garbage, first of all, that’s exhausting. People can get caught up in that minutia because they are coming from that premise of everything has to be equal.
That goes back to childhood. I have two younger sisters and my mom would make us lunch and put out the three glasses of milk and pour it. My sisters and I would hold the glasses next to each other, and if one person got half a millimeter more, we would complain that it wasn’t equal. The poor woman, she’s trying to make kids’ lunch and now we’re like, “It’s not equal. It’s not fair.” If you do that with your relationships outside of your siblings, let alone in the business world, it’s not just exhausting but it’s counterproductive, isn’t it?
It is. I’ll give you a real-world example and our company is involved. We provide outsourced sales divisions for scaling entrepreneurs. We have a strong, well-known client we’re working with who has an internal team. We have our team. There are two different initiatives that are usually happening. While we worked on a project, their team and our team were working. My team kept coming to me. Even if we have a situation, they’re like, “We need to get them to do this. We need to get them to do that.” If the client needs this, I’m like, “All those things we need to get them to do costs money, time or both. What are we going to do?”
Taking ownership. Are we taking partners in that or are we dictating? Are we being flexible in saying, “How do we adapt?” Are we being optimistic and saying, “How do we help them get there?” Are we taking the partnership? Are we taking ownership? Here’s my definition of ownership, so you have it. My part of ownership says I’m going to help you. However, I can get the result. Your part of ownership says that you’re going to get the result whether I help you or not. That’s ownership. That means I’m going to get it done somehow. We’re not taking ownership of that situation. We’re saying, “They need to do this and I’ll do that.” I’m like, “No. We need to bring solutions, optimism, strategy, vulnerability and flexibility often.”
[bctt tweet=”When I protect myself I am not servicing you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We need to show up as a partner. That’s how this works. What that’s going to help them do is they’re going to help them go, “They’re awesome partners. Look at what they’re doing. They’re thinking of us first.” We’re showing up going, “I can’t be all in for you because I’ve got to cover my back.” That’s the whole definition of win-win. If I show up to ensure you win, I automatically assume you’re doing the same for me, and I don’t have to worry about anything else.
You also talked about seeing the best in people and trusting. Do you ever find yourself regretting that sometimes or saying, “Somebody took advantage of me. They didn’t keep their word. How do I navigate that so I don’t make that same mistake again?”
I answer that a little differently than I would have when I was 22. At this point, I have to assume. To quote my good friend Susie Carter, “The tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoes are misaligned for some reason that I can’t identify.” If your mouth says one thing and your tongue in your shoe says something else, there’s something going on that I haven’t been able to figure out. You’re promising me something because you feel you need to, but then you’re doing something else. I have to look at that as much as what was my part of that. What do I own in that process? Was there something I could have said or done differently? Could I have chosen a better partner more wisely? It’s easier for me to go, “Jim, this is a you problem. How do we fix it?” If I created the problem, then good news, guys, I can fix the problem. If the problem is yours, I can’t do anything to fix it.
Who owns the problem? It has always been a big part of that analysis of that and emotional intelligence. I want to get your opinion about this, Jim. Is it not being attached to anyone’s outcome or anyone’s sale having to go a certain way? Is that part of it too?
As a generalization, you could say yes, but that phrase has always bugged me a little bit.
Let’s talk about it. We’re trying to come up from not being attached to one thing making us happy or successful are changing our self-esteem. How else can we look at that?
Gain The Edge: Name one thing that you’ve bought recently from somebody you didn’t know, like or trust. You didn’t buy it because you knew, liked, or trusted it. You bought it because you wanted it.
First of all, in the way I see it, if I don’t care enough, if you purchase this product, on some level, I’m having to admit that I don’t care if you solve your problem. What does that make me? I have to do a better job of preparing you for what we are trying to solve or make it crystal clear that this isn’t a good fit if you’re not committed to solving this problem. All we do is solve your problem and help you get there. I have to be able to own that frame. Do I claim all of my future success on whether or not this transaction goes through? Absolutely not. I’m a smart business owner. I know how to do this. However, I have to be attached on some level, otherwise, I probably shouldn’t be in business. That’s my lens on this.
I get it. We can be attached to solving a problem but if that person is not attached or committed to solving a problem, then we go, “That’s not a fit then.”
We have to be real. If you and I were in a sales conversation and the opportunity was presenting itself, at some point, I have to be able to come to the fact that my job is to make sure you had crystal clarity about all options on the table, and all consequences of not taking action. That way, I know you made an eyes wide open decision to do what’s best for you. That’s all I can do.
Let’s talk about that because that’s a big thing that most people don’t present or think about, let alone tap into what is the cost of not making a decision or taking action now? They come up with all kinds of excuses why they can’t take action now or something’s changed, “I said I was going to, but now I’m doing this instead.” The endless rounds of reasons why. There’s one thing when people say, “No, this isn’t a fit,” and there’s one who’s like, “I’m going to do it,” and they change their mind and you’re like, “What?”
A lot of times too it’s about being incredibly aware and present at the moment. Let’s say you and I are talking, and we spent twenty minutes and you’re saying, “I am so done with this situation. I cannot stand having to decide, do I go serve this client or do I go to my son’s soccer game? I am so tired of lying to my wife about the fact that we’re not making money in this business because I don’t want her to think I’m a failure,” or whatever that is. Then they say that they’ve got the option to take advantage of the business offer and they go, “I’ll wait until next year.” “I’m good with that. I’m good with you waiting until next year because I’m going to be in business next year and I need clients too.”
This is all good. However, I want you to be crystal clear on whether you’re going to survive that, and I’ve got a real challenge for you, John. Why is it okay for you to continue to live your life? Why are you making a choice every day of, ‘Do I go see my son’s soccer game or do I go serve a client?’ when you should be able to do both? What are we going to do to solve that? Are you interested in solving that? Because we’re not solving the problem of you getting more clients. We’re solving the problem with you having more choice and freedom, and being the man that you told your wife you were going to be. All that is, is me being an unapologetic truth-teller.
[bctt tweet=”You have to come to complete surrender to the reality that it’s not always about you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Without making them feel horrible.
Was that abusive, the way they laid that out to you?
No.
It’s truth-telling and it’s because I care.
You can teach other people to do this. That’s the other thing. Some people are like, “Ugh.” We talked before the show that one of the big myths out there besides win-win or not being attached to the outcome and now we have a third one. To get people to buy from you, they have to know, like and trust you. Get people to know you. Start networking or whatever. We both are on the same page that that is the worst way to run your life and your business. What are your thoughts on why that doesn’t work?
I call it the myth of the know, like and trust. It’s in our realm. We’ve got the KLT with a line through it. That’s what that means all the time whenever we write that because we talk about it a lot. It’s funny, even from a simple list perspective. Anybody reading this, name one thing that you’ve bought from somebody you didn’t know, like or trust? I guarantee it’s happened, whether it was a burger or a car. You didn’t buy it because you knew, liked and trusted them, you bought it because you wanted it. We do that all the time. Somewhere and some way, I want to know who this guy is. I want to give him all the credit for it.
Gain The Edge: A win-win implies equality between two parties. The truth is that neither one of them are equal. In order for there to be equality, one has to compromise.
Some guy somewhere was the first person to use the know, like and trust as a factor, and everybody thought it was so good that they started repeating it. It’s in every sales book in the history of man and I don’t get it because it’s not a factor. Here’s the biggest one. First of all, you need to be able to know yourself and know your outcomes as a result of moving forward. You need to be able to like the path that is laid out. You need to be able to like the fact that you can make a great decision about this and like the decisions that you make.
You need to be able to trust the fact that you are in a position to make the right decisions and that whatever decisions you make are good ones. You do not need to know, like or trust me. Here’s the thing, as a salesperson, here’s the number one killer for you. Salespeople, are you paying attention to? Stop what you’re doing, pay attention right here. Pause on whatever it is you’re doing right now. If you are focused on getting people to like you, you are your biggest problem because you need to be able to speak the truth to clients, and not being liked is in direct conflict with speaking the truth.
You gave us an example of speaking the truth without being worried about whether the person who heard it liked it or stopped liking you. Zooming back into personal relationships, so many people struggle with the rule of a parent is, “I want my kids to like me.” Sometimes they’re not going to like you. You give them boundaries and structure. If you give them everything they want all the time so they would like you, they don’t need another friend. They need a parent. That’s the same fear that happens in the business world. It’s like, “I’ve got to be friends with everyone who buys from me, otherwise I don’t feel good about myself.” You’ve reframed that up to, “You need to be a truth-teller.” It’s the same thing with your kids, “I’m sure you don’t feel like doing your homework, but you have to do it before you get to do something fun or whatever it is.” It’s the same structure. I love that instead of getting somebody else to know, like and trust us.
Flipping that back as a mirror to them and saying, “You’ve got to know yourself, like what decisions you are making, and trust that you’re on the right decision that you trust your own.” That is a big reason why people don’t buy and it’s an unspoken one in my observations. They’ll give you 101 excuses or objections but at the bottom of all of that where your intuitive skill is able to go do that is they don’t trust themselves to make the right decision. Therefore, it leaks into every area of your life. This is the person that can’t decide what to order at the restaurant or can’t decide where to go to a restaurant. Everything is so overwhelming to them, so why would that suddenly stop when they have to decide what car to buy, what house to pick or whatever, let alone hiring someone.
Here’s the beauty of this. When you learn to tell the unapologetic truth, you’ll learn to do it in such a way that people won’t run. You’ll start recognizing that this is what keeps them closer to you, not pushes them farther away and it becomes something that you start to own and appreciate. I can tell you that I am more direct. The Bronx Puerto Rican to me comes out a lot but I also lead with my heart. I care about people immensely. I’m at a place where I don’t censor myself about anything. I say what I’m thinking.
Do you know how many people hang up on me? It has been a few years since the last person who hung up on me. Why? Because the truth is magnetic. We’re wired for the truth. They may not like it, they may not want to hear what you’re saying but they need it. That’s why they don’t go away. Here’s a great one. The last time that I can recall somebody specifically hanging up was when one of our sales managers was running an event years ago. We had a client who was in Sweden and he came to this event in San Francisco, a week after his parents died. It was a big effort. He was going through this big emotional weekend and he got to this place that’s going to make a $12,000 investment.
[bctt tweet=”You have to mentally get into a place where curiosity is what drives the day.” username=”John_Livesay”]
He had all kinds of excuses and our sales manager, Mike at the time said, “Here’s the deal. You’re not committed. You don’t want this. I don’t want to spend my time trying to convince you of something you don’t want because you’re not committed. You don’t have a dedication and commitment to what you say you want. I’m going to wish you well.” He hung up after he yelled at him for five minutes, “How dare you? I flew across the country a week after my parents died. I committed. I want this.” He hung up on him, and the next day called him back and gave him his credit card. He goes, “You’re so on point. If I want this, I’ve got to do something about it.” He hung up on him, but then he couldn’t sleep because he knew the truth hit him in the face.
If people want to work with you and learn more about Gain the Edge, you do everything from a done-for-you sales team, to launching products for companies, to continuing to help them grow. It’s one of three different kinds of buckets. They can check out your website, GainTheEdgeNow.com, but what’s the best way for people who want to learn more to see if what you have is a fit for what they need?
I’m going to do something bold here. I don’t know why I felt compelled to do this but in the interest of truth-telling, authenticity and taking partners, I’m going to drop my number here. You guys can call me. I can give you any one of our opt-ins, all that stuff. I was going to say, text me. My phone has been on silent for over years. I don’t even know if it’s ringing. I can’t afford the distraction. If I’m here with you, I can’t worry about what’s happening on the phone. Text me and tell me that you heard me on this show here and let’s talk. Please, don’t spam me and stuff. The number is (916) 587-1946. Give me a text and tell me what’s up. I’d love to talk about what you are doing, how are you scaling your business? What problems are you trying to solve? Who are you trying to solve them for? How can we help you? How can I introduce you to somebody who can?
Thank you for sharing those words of wisdom and your own vulnerability. I could talk to you forever. Anybody would be smart to take you up on that offer to text you to take a look at the truth, as they say, sets us free. You’ve got the proven track record that I’ve seen in action and working for a lot of mutual friends. I’ve seen it in their actions as well. Thanks again, Jim, for being on the show and telling us all that we needed to know.
Thanks for being able to share. Guys, please go put this stuff in action. Trust yourself. You’ve got everything you’ve ever needed to be able to have great, powerful and influential conversations at any time. You’ve got to stop thinking you can’t because you’re the only hurdle that you’ve got.
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Profitable Relationships With Dov Gordon
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
When you think of leaders, you often think of the celebrity-like leader—someone charismatic and loud-spoken. They have a big fanbase and are all over social media. While they work for others, they’re just not everyone’s cup of tea. Opposite that, did you know that there is also another type of leader, the under-the-radar type? If you’re someone who’s looking to be more low-key but still get the results you want, then this episode is for you. Join host John Livesay and his very special guest, Dov Gordon, the CEO of ProfitableRelationships.com, as they talk about forging profitable relationships and what it takes to be an under-the-radar leader—someone who naturally attracts the right people because they’re genuinely interested in who you are.
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Listen to the podcast here
Profitable Relationships With Dov Gordon
Our guest is Dov Gordon who has created a company called Profitable Relationships. He talks about a backwards network giving you a laser focus, as well as how you can become an under-the-radar leader. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Dov Gordon who helps consultants get ideal clients by becoming under–the–radar leaders in their industry. He helps them use backwards networking to reach their ideal clients consistently. A lot of experienced consultants know that the best clients come from referrals and relationships, but referrals are unpredictable and relationships take a lot of time. Instead, Dov helps you become this under-the-radar leader in your industry. It gets better because he also shows you how to leverage the relationship marketing he had been doing for free into a six-figure revenue stream. Dov, welcome to the show.
John, it’s good to be here.
I would like to ask you to take us back to your own story of origin. You can tell us where you’re living now, but if you can even come back to childhood or university days where you started learning about the importance of relationships.
I grew up in New York. I live in Israel. I’ve been here for quite a number of years. I never went to college. I never had a real job but I had spent my teenage years reading business books. At some point after getting married at 21 and realizing, “I need to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. How am I going to support this little family here?” I came across the idea of business coaching and somehow that called to me. I’ve never worked for a company. I didn’t know anything, but I knew that I had an ability. I knew that I genuinely cared and I had what I’ll call talent.
I’m going to offer a distinction because an early mentor of mine said to me, “Dov, you’ve got a lot of talent. You need to turn that to develop skills, systems and processes.” I remember it was such a shock because I had never made that distinction. I didn’t understand that at all. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I knew I had the ability. I knew that I could coach people even though I never had a job. That’s the typical thing like, “Who are you?” I’ve got answers for that from many years of doing it. A lot of people suffer from imposter syndrome because of comments like that. I’m happy to address that.
I knew that I had a lot to offer, but I didn’t understand why I was struggling. I didn’t quite understand this whole idea. I remember when he said to me, “You need to develop skills,” I was thinking, “What kind of skills? Playing the piano is a skill. Maybe carpentry is a skill. What kind of skills do I need as a consultant? What does it even look like? What is a consulting skill?” I’d been learning a lot of different things. I never realized that they were skills or I never understood what’s a skill or a skill of asking a good question or a skill of telling a good story as you teach or skill of articulating an idea in such a way that it meets people where they are and then leads them to the next small step. The skill of leading elegant sales conversation, making a recommendation and listening. Each one of those can break down into many different, smaller skills.
What’s a process? What’s a plan? It’s a series of steps that you follow to go from here to there. I was just doing things. The first 7, 8 years that I was trying to make it as a consultant, I had some success but it was like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll right back down, and then you start all over again. I had that frustration and that epiphany that my mentor gave me was one of countless. Thank God, I’m still alive. I still have my epiphanies where I like, “How come I didn’t understand that before?” That’s what happens. I’ve come to understand that’s the way life is. Life is where you keep moving forward despite the fact that you can’t see all the way there. You have to move forward imperfectly. You’ve got to listen to that inner knowing. We all have this conflict, the inner knowing, balanced with the inner doubt. Some days one is stronger and some days the other is stronger, but we all need to keep moving. It’s that forward motion that gives us the clarity that we think we need before we take the next step.
[bctt tweet=”Become an under the radar leader.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Let’s talk about the imposter syndrome since you’ve hinted at it. Who am I? That is something that can haunt you even at the highest levels unless you heal it or work on it. I remember watching Oprah being interviewed once. She said, “I can have the biggest star, CEO on my show, and you think that person needs reassurance?” I know for myself once I was speaking at a summit, there are a lot of other speakers on a two-day event. I started reading the bios of everyone else, which I don’t recommend. There’s a Harvard graduate, a New York Times bestseller and I thought, “I don’t have any of those.”
You can do such a game with your mind where I’m like, “The woman who hired me is going to get fired.” I started stressing out and I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. What do I care about when I hear a speaker? Do I care where they went to school? No. Do I care how many books they sold? No. I care about how they make me feel, think and if I learn anything. I have to trust her that she’s been doing this for several years and that she knows what she’s doing enough to say, ‘I deserve to be on this stage with everyone else.’” That’s how I talk myself out of that imposter syndrome there for a minute. I would love to hear how you help others to possibly do that.
I don’t know that I work on that directly, but when you work on yourself, that definitely improves. I remember during those first eight years, I was leading a strategy project. I started a CEO peer group for companies between $10 million and $200 million to $250 million in sales. I remember asking one of my first clients. I assume he just liked me and felt like I could probably help him with something. My fee was so low that he went along with it. I remember asking him like, “What does a million-dollar business have? How many employees do they have?” He gave me the obvious answer, which is, “It depends on what they do.” At the same time, I was comfortable enough to ask him. I wasn’t afraid to look stupid.
When I was a kid, I learned that if you’re embarrassed, you’re not going to learn. I’m very shy by nature. I’ve overcome it to some degree, but it’s still my nature. Over the years, I’ve come to care less and less about what other people think because I’ve come to realize more and more that these people that I thought are such geniuses are very often idiots. Sometimes they’re incompetent and they don’t realize it. Sometimes they’re incompetent, but they try to compensate with their strong personality, arrogance and disdain for the people that they’re supposed to be serving.
Two things are going on here. There’s a little bit of imposter syndrome and then there’s a shyness issue. One of your attributes and what makes you so likable is you’re confident without being arrogant. You are able to explain your benefits, for example, why you’d be a great guest on the show even without being pushy. If that’s something that a shy person can do, it doesn’t come “naturally” to you, then that inner confidence, that energy you put out when we were getting to know each other, comes through. I’m like, “That’s the energy I want to be with. That’s the energy I want to bring to my show.” There’s a fine line between no confidence and arrogance, especially if you tend to be someone who’s shy or might have in your past the imposter syndrome. I’m trying to give as many different things that people who are reading to go, “That’s me and how did he overcome that?” A lot of it has to do with the awareness that at the end of the day, what people are engaging with is our energy and our likeability factors.
I remember when my speaking agent called me after I was being interviewed for a speaking engagement and she said, “Congrats. They picked you over the other speakers. They liked your energy.” They literally said it that way. We think we were being hired because of our content, our book, our video or what you say in the interview. Later the person who hired me said, “You made me feel good talking to you. I figured if you’ve made me feel good interviewing you, you can make all 300 people in the audience feel good.”
I want to emphasize that as a starting point for these Profitable Relationships, which is one of the companies that you are offer and help people. I’m sure a lot of readers are saying, “John, already get to the question, what is an under-the-radar leader?” Because most people think the opposite, “I’ve got to be everywhere. I want to be on the top of everyone’s radar.” The first person they think of when they think of a sales storytelling speaker, “Bring John in.” You’re flipping that on its head, which I always love. That grabs your attention. You’re saying, “No, be an under-the-radar leader.” What is that defined as?
Profitable Relationships: We’re human beings. We don’t buy the products and services that are best for us. We buy the products and services that are best marketed to us.
I’m not sure where people are coming in with this, but at ProfitableRelationships.com, we talk about helping consultants, experts or whoever become under-the-radar leaders in your industry, as opposed to this famous celebrity type, which is the model that we tend to see more often. I’ve found that it’s important for most of us. It’s not just the right model for most of us. I discovered that myself. You wake up in the morning and you think, “I’m good at what I do. I’ve got a lot of value to offer, but how do I get clients?” You discover that there’s a big difference between being good. People do not beat a path to your door just because you’ve got something good.
We’re all human beings. We don’t buy the product and services that are best for us. We buy the products and services that are best marketed and sold to us. We buy a good story. It doesn’t matter if the story is true or not. Not that it doesn’t matter, but in terms of our decision, we might regret it later on. It’s remarkable. We buy a story and then we convince ourselves that we buy logically. Who is it who said, “A man buys something for two reasons, the reason he tells his wife and then the real reason?” I forget where what that’s from.
This is an important foundational point to get out there. This is not the right path for most people. That celebrity, “Look at me. I’m posting 5 or 10 times a day on Instagram and Facebook.” I came to understand that from frustration, from getting up and thinking, “How do I get clients?” All the models that I saw were people who I felt like there was no way that I could be like that and still be true to myself. I’d have to be faking it. I’m not interested in getting clients because I’m pretending to be somebody who I’m not. I want clients who want to work with me because of who I genuinely am. Most people want that.
The celebrity approach, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s totally fine for people who are naturals at that. That is a fit for their personality and their values. As long as they’re being honest and ethical, that’s what they should do, but the rest of us need to become comfortable being ourselves, which is our greatest competitive advantage. We need to become comfortable and as some would say, “Find your voice.” Another thing is that most consultants, experts or coaches are not looking to build a multi-seven-figure business and scale. That’s not what most people want.
Most people either avoided the corporate world or left it after 10 or 20 years. What they want is to be doing great work with great clients, and making a great mid to upper six-figure income, and have some time to enjoy it with their family, their friends, by themselves or whatever they happen to like. They want to feel like they’re doing good work. They have an opportunity to take the skills that they’ve honed over the years, that they’ve mastered and applied to important projects that matter. People listen and appreciate their expertise, and to be well and fairly paid for it. That’s what people want. When you take those two things together and you recognize that 85% of the people should not be on the path of the charismatic guru. They should be instead on the path of mastery.
Once you realize that, “I’m not even trying to build this multi-seven-figure firm. I don’t need to do what they’re doing. What do I need to do? What’s the value of what I sell? If a new client is worth $5,000, $50,000, $150,000, how much am I trying to bring in?” You develop a very simple model. It’s rough but it does not have to be absolute because things change, but you need something that’s clear enough to be a target to aim for, and then you build simple steps towards it. That is a path of mastery and that comes from a deeper understanding of who your ideal client is, how do you talk to them, and what are the things that get them to move.
Over the years, the idea of becoming an under-the-radar leader in your industry develops because going back several years now, I was shifting from more of a corporate focus to working with other people like me, who I realized that I finally figured a lot of this out. I won’t say all of it. I still haven’t figured all of it out. I see that there are people who are a few years behind me and they’re struggling. I seem to have this ability to suffer through certain things and then teach clearly to others in a way that saves them some aggravation. Everybody’s got to walk across their own hot coals one way or the other.
[bctt tweet=”A backwards network gives you laser focus.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That gives part of the authenticity. If you’ve experienced the pain point that you’re solving yourself, you’ve been in their shoes. That’s the truth for me as a speaker to sales organizations. Having been in corporate sales for many years, I know what it’s like to have deadlines, quotas and all kinds of challenges, internally, externally and politically. My stories and my credibility are much higher than someone who maybe just wrote a book about it. One of the things I teach is your ability to show empathy and describe a problem in such a way that people see themselves in the problem, or they’re going to feel like you’re in your head. That makes you relatable and then they’re leaning into, “If you understand my problem, you probably have a solution for it.”
I would say that this under-the-radar concept is quite revolutionary because if we all think, “I have to be the next Tony Robbins in order to be happy, successful or feel good about myself,” then that’s a very high bar to hit. If you say there are a lot of people that “aren’t famous” that is doing so well that you’ve maybe never even heard of. They’re under the radar for the majority of people, but within their specific niche, there are a few names in the industry that people go, “I know that guy.”
What I came to realize is that if you get to know or if you are known by 30, 50, 100 well-placed people across your industry, you’ll have all the clients you want. You can be as busy as you want. You don’t need to be well known by millions of people. What so many people are aiming for is they’re trying to do things that they think are going to make them internet-famous or they want to have a bestselling book. There are places for all these things. Everything has its place. I never come and say, “This doesn’t work. Do it my way.” I think that’s idiocy. Everything works and everything fails. The question is, why does it work when it works? Why does it fail when it fails? When you have that understanding, then you can devise your own simple system that works for you. That’s what everyone is looking for.
That’s what I came to realize. That was a big insight for me as I came to understand that if you have relationships with well-placed people from several dozen perhaps to maybe 100 or 150. If you want to be a successful leadership consultant, you cultivate those relationships. You can get published in whatever publication you want based on your connections. You can get to any stage that you want. You can get into any company that you want through introduction with this network that you’ve created. It doesn’t mean that anyone’s going to just introduce you for any reason. You have to have a reason.
I know people who know Tony Robbins, but I don’t have a good reason to be introduced to him. I can’t think of what I would possibly do for him. It doesn’t mean that I can’t, but if I woke up and I was thinking like, “I have something that’s good for Tony Robbins. I have people who know him. He knows them in one way or the other. Some have worked with him and some who they’ve been clients of his or whatever it might be.” Not only they’ve attended the workshop but they were higher-level clients. If you have a reason and you have a relationship, then you can get to places that other people can’t get to.
You also talk about backwards networking. The first question I have is how do you define frontwards networking? Is that the normal get an introduction to somebody, go to an event, start hobnobbing? Is that what forward networking is, the traditional way of what we think it is?
I wouldn’t call that typical. That’s typical networking.
Profitable Relationships: People start to feel better about themselves when they get positive feedback or validation from people that they see as on a pedestal.
What’s backwards?
Backwards is what I’m talking about. It’s where you recognize that I don’t need to know everybody. I need to be known by a relatively small number of the right people. There are a few different ways to go about it. I’ve been helping clients do what I’ve done over the years, which is to form what I now think of as an alchemy network. I’ve got two alchemy networks myself right now. One is called the JVMM, which is for more colleagues and we promote each other. If you’re in that network, feel free to say anything you want or ask me anything about it. The other is a network that’s more for consultants who are looking to grow by referral and relationship.
As a consultant, I came to recognize that generally, your best clients come from relationships, referrals, word of mouth. The problem is that referrals are unpredictable. Most people don’t know how to build a system to generate referrals consistently that works. Number two, relationships take a lot of time and you don’t know when it’s going to bear fruit, whether this relationship will lead to anything. On the other hand, it’s not a relationship if you go into it transactionally. A relationship is when two people recognize like, “Let’s get to know each other and let’s move forward in a way that we’re both better off.”
The idea of now forming a network that is comprised either of a network of your colleagues that you’re all working together, marketing to similar audiences, and you can expose each other, introduce each other to your own audiences. That would be one type of alchemy network. Another kind of alchemy network is a network comprised of your ideal clients. People who you serve at a higher level. The third type would be recommenders. For example, a client of mine is a consultant and he does projects at large companies, $500 million-plus for anywhere from $200,000 up to low-seven figures. That’s like a 90-day to multi-year. For him, a decision-maker or the CEO or managing director of a $500 million division does need to be somewhat involved in the decision to hire him because the price is rather steep, but more so because it involves multiple departments in the company. The likelihood that the managing director or CEO is going to be at least somewhat involved in the decision is very high.
I’m mixing a few things together. Let me take a step back. I suggested that he form an alchemy network comprised of recommenders, people who are 1 or 2 levels below the CEO, still in a very senior position, but much easier to reach. Because when you’re forming a network, in his case he formed a network for R&D Directors at manufacturing companies doing $500 million or more. He’s reaching out to these people cold on LinkedIn, but he’s getting a lot of them responding. I remember he told me once that within 48 to 72 hours, he had five of these senior executives from $500 million and $1 billion-plus companies book themselves on his calendar as a result of some cold messaging that we had worked on together, reaching out on LinkedIn, and a little bit back and forth. That intrigued them because he wasn’t trying to pitch them something and so on. I don’t remember exactly what we did in his case, but the idea was that we were telling them about the alchemy network and inviting them to a conversation to see if it was a fit for them.
It would be harder to get a relationship with those people if you were trying to pitch them something on the get-go is what I’m hearing. The tweet I think I like is, “Backwards networking gives you laser focus.” You’re not trying to be all things to all people, whether you’re starting a mastermind free for them or you’re trying to just get to know them by the right people who can do that. That’s the takeaway that I’m hearing. I know you started the joint venture mastermind. Originally, it didn’t cost anything and you just wanted to get the right number of people in there. Now, it has become so desirable to get in that people are willing to pay to be in it. A lot of people think, “Start something for free. That doesn’t make any sense.” Yet it does, if you’re building relationships with people that could eventually help you or hire you in some form. It’s the other takeaway.
There are different approaches. One would be you do this for free, which I did in one of my groups for the JVMM for several years, and then I realized I need to know who wants to be here. It was a very scary decision at the time to switch from free to paid, but we did and it worked out well. We’ve grown stronger and stronger ever since. I don’t charge high. It’s not like a $10,000 or $20,000 or $25,000 a year membership. It’s $1,000 to $2,000 a year. That’s what I recommend for these alchemy networks. It should be relatively easy for either your colleagues, ideal clients or recommenders to say, “Yes, I want to be a part of that.”
[bctt tweet=”If you’re embarrassed, you’re not going to learn.” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s a little bit of a different strategy depending on how you’re going about it and who it’s for. The idea of a recommender for this client, Mike, I suggested that he go for recommenders because it would be almost impossible to get a group going for the CEOs. Their area of responsibility is broad and many people and big companies are demanding their attention. If you go a level or two lower, the R&D directors don’t have access as much. He formed a network of R&D directors with who he understands their problems. Some of them will join his network and then from those, he gets to build those relationships.
Suddenly, he finds himself with great relationships with well-placed people across major companies across the United States. He now has backdoor access to many ideal potential clients. It’s like a backdoor to your ideal client’s office. One thing we designed was a simple process where over time as he gets to know them in his network, he helps identify a relatively small project with some of the members when they’re ready. Maybe it’s a $25,000 to $50,000, 90-day program or coaching of some kind, or a little project focused on something that’s within their domain.
For people who are reading and thinking, I need to form my own little mastermind, whether I charge or not,” one of the issues that come up that you probably can help them with is, aren’t a lot of those people competitors and they’re afraid of sharing private stuff or they want to open up the kimono so to speak and share that, “These are my struggles?” I’m trying to put myself in the head frame of the readers who would go, ”Ask him this.” That’s what came up for me, which is when you’re forming a mastermind, in this case, the story you’re telling us is about R&D. I’m assuming some of them might change jobs and go to competitors, and all those same people are in the same mastermind. How do you address that?
That’s definitely a question and it’s less of an issue than most people imagine it would be. The reason is this. No one is going to be asked to share their secret recipe for the cola or whatever. Every industry has associations, events and meetings where they get up and they talk. A lot of them have benchmarking of this or that kind. There are always things that people are willing to share. There’s a line and the point is that there’s enough value.
For example, in the healthcare world with COVID, the salespeople aren’t able to get into the surgeries or go to the hospital and catch the doctors between surgeries like they did. That’s a common problem across pharmaceutical sales and medical equipment sales. Those people could certainly feel free to talk about that as a challenge that the industry is facing, and maybe give some suggestions on how they’re handling it without feeling like they’re giving away their secrets. Is that a good example?
I think that’s a good example.
Cut back to your story about how you helped them and how things took off because I do want to ask you two more quick questions about your own mastermind and how you’re onboarding people in such an elegant way.
Profitable Relationships: Once you curate and bring together the right people, now you need to do things that make it easy for them to have conversations with each other.
Once you have a small project, then your client there feels confident. It’s like, “I’m not just bringing somebody in who I don’t know.” He’s built that relationship. It becomes a profitable relationship and that can lead to an introduction to a $200,000 or low seven-figure project. He’s only looking for 3 or 4 projects a year.
The masterminds are building trust. It’s the outcome of that.
Not only that but when I made that shift to charging for my first network and then I started a second network and started to focus all of my work with clients on helping them also build similar alchemy networks. I don’t use the term mastermind because that can mean so many different things to so many different people. It is a kind of mastermind for sure. Because it is its own little animal, I had to come up with the name, and it’s a way of creating alchemy. You have all these relationships from so many different places. When you bring them together in a way that is good for everybody, it just creates value from nothing or it creates value from things that you’re already doing. Sometimes it makes sense to do it for free, but sometimes it makes sense to charge. If you’re charging $1,000 to $2,000 a year for membership, you end up in a situation where you’ve created a $50,000, $100,000, $200,000 revenue stream from things that you’re likely doing already for free.
JVMM stands for Joint Venture, which is also known as being affiliate partners with people who have courses to promote, and then the MM stands for?
It’s Joint Venture Marketing Mastermind.
I wanted to make sure I understood what it was called. It is a marketing mastermind. Within that world, since I joined it, I’m very impressed with how you onboard people because that’s a big reason why people don’t feel like they want to join something. It’s “I’ll be lost in this. These people all know each other.” I knew you have a whole series of a few detailed personal introductions to the entire group. The thing that surprised me and impressed me the most at the same time was little steps like an email drip campaign, “Let me know when you have reached out to three people you didn’t know before you joined.” It doesn’t count if you’re reaching out to people you already know.
There are group comments and emails to the group of people asking questions, “Let me know when you’ve contributed some answers to that.” You’re thinking to yourself, “This is bite-sized. I can do this.” Yet, if I didn’t have a little bit of a roadmap from you, I would feel overwhelmed. How do I get to know a hundred and some people at once? You’re like, “Pick three and then comment.” I’m guessing there’s more to come. That is so unique and I wanted to acknowledge it, and then also ask you how you developed it.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody’s got to walk across their own hot coals one way or the other.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Thank you and I’m glad that it’s working for you. I appreciate the feedback. It’s good. How I developed it was just listening. That’s the old skill. Most of my creative ideas are just the result of listening and noticing what’s going on. I believe that when you’re forming your own network, whether it’s of colleagues, ideal clients, recommenders or whatever the network is for, they are two things that are valuable. Number one is curation and number two is conversation. The value that I’m bringing to my members, even with my potential clients, when you’re forming a network of ideal clients or recommenders, I’m positioning myself more as an authority rather than as a colleague.
It’s not a coaching program. It’s not necessarily a training program, but there are some elements where you’re bringing some of your expertise in a way that you’re not necessarily doing with colleagues. There are different reasons why people are joining. There are a lot of nuances here. What I came to realize in either case is that what matters in this type of approach more than anything else is curation and conversation. People can’t just pay and join. That’s something that matters. It’s not a very high fee, but if you’re not the right person, I don’t let you in. That’s something that makes us a little bit different from a typical membership community of one kind or another, or an association where pretty much anybody who can pay and has the right title can get in.
That is something that has made the JVMM solid and strong over the years, even when it was free. I’m not charging $25,000 a year for a membership. It’s not like I have the temptation to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by letting somebody in because that’s $25,000. That’s half a decent car or more. It depends on where you live or less. I don’t have that temptation because no one member is going to make any huge difference in my income here, but what does matter is that I am curating. I think a big part of the secret of this is the curation.
I’ve turned away somebody for JVMM who was probably worth about $100 million. Someone introduced us and he was interested. He had sold a start-up about twelve years earlier for over about close to $350 million, $330 million, I think it was. I imagine he had some investors or partners that had to get their piece of it and Uncle Sam had to get his piece of it. Let’s say he ended up with $50 million at the end. Over 10 to 12 years, you can grow that back to about $100 million. That’s what he was worth but in our conversation, he said something at the very end. He got his credit card and was about to sign up. This was all over Zoom. Suddenly, he said something and I said something, and then he pulled back. He wasn’t sure and then he emailed me afterwards. I clarified and said, “This is this and if that, then it may not be a fit.” That’s it. I’m not going to chase him.
What I look for in my members and this is especially key for people with imposter syndrome, sometimes people start to feel better about themselves when they get positive feedback or validation from people that they see as on a pedestal. I’m guilty of that to some degree as well. You have to learn to get past that. That’s a big part of making this work. When you are no longer concerned about that, and you care more about the total goal, the overall goal, then you’re able to curate your group properly. The second value that you bring with your alchemy network is conversation. Once you curate and bring together the right people, now you need to do things that make it easy for them to have conversations with each other. We’re also busy. You asked me how did I come up with this? I think of it as 365 days of onboarding. You’re not getting something every day to do because that would be too much.
I love that, curation and conversation. What a great alliteration and a way for people to start thinking of, are they doing both? They both need to be done. What’s the best way for people to reach out to you or follow you? What sites do we want to send people to?
We have a couple of short training videos on how to become an under-the-radar leader in your industry by starting an alchemy network if you like to. Some of these ideas are beyond that. We put up a link for your readers at ProfitableRelationships.com/livesay.
Thank you so much for being with us sharing your insights and making us rethink not only networking but relationships and whether we need to be above or below the radar.
Thanks for having me.
Important Links
- https://www.DovGordon.net/
- http://ProfitableRelationships.com/livesay
- ProfitableRelationships.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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