Build Relationships and Get an Introduction with Michael O’Neal
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Michael O’Neal, who hosts a podcast called The Solopreneur Hour: Job Security for the Unemployable. He talks about when he creates a podcast episode that’s typically an hour long, he promotes it for four hours. That’s been one of the keys to his success. He’s got this amazing course called The Art of The Interview that I highly recommend you stay tuned and listen to. He really talks about his secrets of getting huge traction. One of them has to do with using social media smartly and the other is relationships, but from a place that you may not expect would be a great place for getting the top relationships and how to do it and get those all-important introductions.
Listen To The Episode Here
Build Relationships and Get an Introduction with Michael O’Neal
Today’s guest is Michael O’Neal, who is a podcast expert. He has his own podcast called The Solopreneur Hour: Job Security for the Unemployable. He also produces a lot of other podcasts such as The Kickass Life and Mechanic to Millionaire. His Solopreneur Hour podcast started back in August of 2013. It already has eight million downloads and he was able to monetize that in six months to six figures. I think that’s some kind of record. He is a big guy into a lot of different things besides podcasting, including music. He’s got this amazing course called The Art of The Interview, which I can’t wait to hear about. Michael, welcome to the show.
John, thanks for having me. That’s very kind of you.
Our mutual friend, Matthew Kimberley, I heard him several times on your show. I know that everything happens through connections. Certainly in the world of investing, investors tell me all the time, “We love to get warm introductions before we hear somebody pitch.” The same is true in the podcasting world, isn’t it?
It really is. I was just having a brunch meeting before this in a co-working session. I was looking at ten new emails in my inbox. Seven out of the ten, “I should totally be on your show.” I can count on one hand in three years the number of times that I have gotten one of those emails and go, “You’re right.” It really requires, at least for me, it requires a heads up from a friend. That third party intro is something I talk about. This course called Conferencetopia, which is free. You go to conferences all the time when you’re in this entrepreneur space. I’ve watched people spend thousands of dollars going to these conferences and then get nothing out of them. Even though they have a great time, they don’t move the needle in their business. I reverse engineered how I had built relationships and built my business from conferences. I made this free course for that.
Build Relationships: One of the major tenets is, “Always get an introduction.”
One of the major tenets is, “Always get an introduction.” If you and I are standing in a crowd and you know your friend knows that person, instead of just walking up to me like, “I’m Michael O’Neal. I have a podcast, blah, blah.” You’d say, “Would you mind introducing me to the mayor?” whoever it is. It’s not only that, but it’s them knowing how to introduce you that makes all the difference in the world.
You’re basically transferring all of the credibility and the trust and integrity that you have with that person when you make that introduction in person or in an email. Don’t you think that’s really what you’re doing there?
I just got introduced to a guy last week and I was at a conference. My buddy, Phil Mershon, who runs Social Media Marketing World, it’s a big conference coming up in March in San Antonio. He says, “Scott, I’d like you to meet my buddy, Michael. Michael has a podcast and talks to other unemployable people like himself.” He says, “He’s also a great drummer. This is Scott, entrepreneur, has an amazing new app. By the way, he was the sax player for Pink Floyd.” There’s context there. It changes how people view each other. It changes how the conversation goes. It really makes a huge difference how people are being introduced. It’s something we don’t consider enough when we go to conferences.
That one thing you talked about, being the sax player for Pink Floyd, that’s the memorable hook, isn’t it? That’s the “Oh my god. There’s a story there.” That’s what I keep telling people when they’re pitching to get their startup funded. Whatever you have that makes you unique and memorable, bring that up to the top when you give a pitch. You have such a great story yourself of how you decided, based on what was going on in your personal life, that you were not going to work for somebody anymore, and figure out a way to overcome your fears. Can you tell us that story and then specifically how you overcame the fear of, “What if this fails?”
To be fair, I never had that fear. That’s something I’ve never really had. I assume it will fail. I just know in the entrepreneur game, we’re going to miss more than we’re going to hit. That a show, in this case, a podcast, has a minute chance that it will be a huge hit. Just like anybody that pitches a new TV show. You file a process and then all the vetting and all that stuff. Then maybe the timing works or the content works, or whatever, somehow, but there’s no guarantee of that. We’ll definitely have more concepts than hits.
With that said, I’m running a pretty solid streak right now. I launched The Kickass Life with David Wood in 2012. That ran until late 2013 or so. That show crushed. It was top ten in health the whole time we did it. Then I launched The Mechanic to Millionaire, which is a buddy, Dave MacArthur, who’s a really successful network marketing dude. That show has been this killer, rabbit-and-hare growth for probably four years now. It just keeps going up and up and up. If I looked a year and a half ago, two years ago, that show was doing 400 or 500 downloads a day or something, which was pretty good even by today’s standards. Now, it’s at 1,500 downloads a day, which is still not Joe Rogan. We’re not getting 90 million a month. But in the grand scheme of things, in our little entrepreneurial podcasting space, that’s a very successful show.
Then I launched this one, and this one was a pretty quick hit. Then I launched The Hines Ward Show. I was the co-host for that one. That has done really well as well. We’ve got two more shows in the hopper.
One being our mutual friend, Matthew Kimberley, is coming up, right?
Yeah. Tipsy Business, which we don’t have a logo or anything yet. Matthew is hilarious. Matthew’s quick, very quick-witted. To me, entertainment always trumps value, if you will, actionable content. I always want to be entertained first. If they can, then those nuggets will fall to the ground because they’re entertained and they’re engaged in the conversation you’re having. Way too few understand that concept. Think about your favorite teacher of all time, they’re entertaining. That’s why you still remember some of their lessons.
[Tweet “Build Relationships: Own a social media platform and be active to get rapid growth.”]
For me, I would go one step further and say the best way for people to become entertaining is to learn how to become a storyteller, because that’s my favorite teacher. He always told great stories about history as opposed to just giving me the facts. Can you tell us an entertaining story of how you were able to get to eight million downloads so quickly? Traction is so important for investors when they’re looking at startups. They want that kind of rapid growth. I’m thinking there’s probably a story there that could be applied to a startup, who’s listening to this and like, “I could use that same skill or strategy or even process to apply to my business to scale fast.”
I think you’ve got to own social in some way. You’ve got to own a platform and really use it. You can pick it, it can be Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, whatever you want to use. You should definitely not be one of those people that’s like, “That’s for the kids.” You need to be active in that conversation. You can’t outsource everything. You’ve got to be the one that responds to these people’s comments. That’s one.
Two, I alluded to it before, which is the relationships that you build at conferences and out in the world are critical to your success. They were a high number of responsibility for the success of my show early on, because I was able to stock those first two or three months with some baller people. Some people that had huge social media followings back in the day in 2013, when you could still get someone to share the show because they hadn’t been on 300 shows by then. That matters. The relationship side really matters. A really diligent head-down promotion is what I did. My show would be an hour. I would spend four promoting each show.
The other thing that I got from Derek Halpern, which I really enjoyed, is you don’t have to be a content creator. You can take that content that you already have and keep repurposing it and keep promoting it. Those episodes I did early on, Matthew Kimberley episode, or you name it, you get really good content from that. So what if it’s three years old? Why shouldn’t I hammer the promotion on that old episode constantly on social media? They go, “That was a really valuable hour I spent. What else do they have?” Then all of a sudden, they’re plunging on your show. I would say the short answer to that question is the relationship-building that you do at events is really what moves the needle for your startup.
If you combine two of the things we’ve already talked about, which is building that relationship up and third party validation, third party introductions with people. You’re having a great conversation at a conference, you see someone that could move the needle in some way for you. ”Would you mind introducing us?” You guys have a great conversation. Before you know it, you’re at dinner and good things happen at dinners at conferences. Things get funded. It sounds cliché but it really, really matters that you can build these relationships and that you take that skill set very seriously in this space.
[Tweet “Repurpose content. Spend 4x time promoting it as you do creating it.”]
I love everything you said there. Own social. Be active, don’t outsource that. Relationships, everyone hears is important, but I like what you say, is the relationship you get started and keep going from conferences as a source=, not networking events, but actual conferences where you all have something in common, and get those introductions as opposed to doing it cold. Those are some amazing takeaways that apply to everything; podcasting, funding, pitching, anything that you want to scale your business.
You should be going to a conference a quarter. That should be the minimum amount. Per quarter is what you should be going to. It not only keeps you connecting, but it keeps you motivated. You see these people that are cranking. You start seeing some of the same faces. Again, that helps relationships get built.
That’s a perfect segue into something else you’re doing that I’m really impressed with and I want to hear more about, which is your mastermind, Sololab. You talk about this great quote that we’ve all heard, “You’re the sum total of the people you spend the most amount of time with.” Tell us what you’re doing in Sololab and who that’s for?
Build Relationships: I don’t think you know what you know until you’re teaching it to somebody else.
My group are people that either have a side hustle going on or they are leaving their 9 to 5, or they’ve been in this thing for a little bit and they’re trying to find their swing, if you will. If you play golf or tennis, you’ll understand that phraseology. I didn’t know that I was going to do it when I started the show. I was just bringing people on that I thought were smart and interesting and had cool stories and we were talking. Every once in a while, I’d get an email that says, “Do you do any coaching?” I say, “No, I don’t, really.” But after the 40th one, “Yeah, I totally do.” I started talking about it on the show.
I don’t think you know what you know until you’re teaching it to somebody else. It’s like as a drummer, I can go back and listen to some of my old music and go, “I don’t even know I knew how to do that.” You just don’t recognize maybe some of the smoothness. I had to talk to Matthew Kimberley a couple of weeks ago in the show. The way he phrases certain things, that is a gorgeously phrased way to sit down and do a sales pitch for someone.
Let’s give an example of that, because I listened to that episode. He’s very smooth with that charming accent, “Would you be interested in having a conversation where I could see if and how I might be able to help you grow your business fast? Is that of interest or not?” Really framing that up fast. Obviously, that sounds very conversational and not robotic, but it’s been thought through and practiced much like a musician practices before they perform.
Like a stand-up, actually. Every word has weight.
It’s a thread that unravels. I tell people when they’re pitching investors, they need to have thought through their opening and their closing just as specific to that rehearsed but not robotic smooth way of inviting someone to join into what you’re offering, and not coming across desperate but really inviting them to join in. It’s the difference between saying at the end of a pitch, “Any questions?” versus having a smooth closing, where you’re asking them to invest and join in the vision.
It would be cool to talk about that initial conversation too. At some point, you want to end up in front of these people and being able to pitch them. But how do you even begin to do that? My buddy, Clay Hebert, got a thing called, “The Six Word Intro.” The idea is, “I help blank do blank.” If someone says, “What do you do?” which you’re going to hear a million times at conferences. You have to be prepared for that answer. You’ve got to know exactly what you’re going to say, and you have to have an idea of what the funnel looks like after that first sentence.
The analogy I can give is Tim Ferriss has this TV show, The Tim Ferriss Show. One of the episodes was that he wanted to learn MMA. He was learning jiu-jitsu. He wanted to learn, they call it rolling, which is moving around and wrestling and trying to get different moves. His whole show was about rapid learning. The instructor said, “There’s too much for you to know. I can’t teach you all of this stuff in three days. But I can teach you one move that you can execute well and I can teach you eight different ways to get into that move.” He taught him a rear naked choke. He taught him six or eight different ways to get into that move in various situations that he would be in while he’s rolling around on the mat with someone.
Picturing that in your head, when you get into a conversation with somebody at a conference, you have your one move. You’ve got to have multiple ways to get into that conversation. That’s not to say that every conversation needs to be a sales pitch or anything like that. It always starts with, “What do you do?” That’s always the first question you’re asked. I can say something like, “I help other unemployable people, like myself, take their hobbies and skill sets and learn to make a business out of them.” That’s how I’m going to answer that question.
[Tweet “Build Relationships: Relationships from conferences are the key to success.”]
It intrigues people, they’ll say, “That’s interesting, tell me more,” which is the whole point of a good pitch.
They’re going to go, “How do you do that?” I can say, “I have a podcast where I’ve interviewed some of the world’s thought leaders over the last three years.” I stop it there and they go, “Tell me more about the podcast.” That develops into a deeper conversation, and then they’re in my Sololab.
You said two things that I really want to underscore for the audience. Number one is, don’t open what you do when you get asked with how you do it, i.e. “I host a podcast.” Instead, open with some statement that makes them intrigued enough to want to know more. Only give them enough to continue to ask more. Don’t do verbal diarrhea on somebody and just go into all the details.
First of all, you haven’t been given permission to tell your story yet. That has not been implicit in the conversation. You can’t start telling it. Two, if you can’t answer those questions in those six words or twelve words or whatever it is, your brand isn’t dialed in enough. You actually have to go back and work on your brand, which could take months. That could really be something that you work on until you can answer that really, really succinctly. That’s the important part.
It took me a long time to get to, “What do you do?” “I’m the Pitch WhispererR. I take people from invisible to investable.” Then I stop. If they want to know more, then I tell them more. “What’s a Pitch WhispererR? How do you go from invisible to investable?” It’s just enough to get people intrigued. The same thing is true in that first 90 seconds when you’re pitching an investor. This has been great. I personally want to ask you for one of your favorite, most entertaining interviews you’ve done on The Solopreneur Hour. You had so many great comedians and musicians. Do you have an entertaining story of somebody that you had on?
I’ve been a life-long musician. I ended up having this conversation with Scott Page a couple of weeks ago at this conference called NAMM, National Association of Music Merchants. Within a minute, I’m fascinated by the dude. I just want to hear about this historic rock and roll guy. He talked about playing in front of 620,000 people in Venice at one show. That’s a lot of humanity right there. He talked about after selling out Wembley Stadium for three nights in a row, having a party in the suite of the hotel that Roger Waters had. In the one suite, at one time, there are 30 people, but it was Paul McCartney, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Madonna, Sting, and ten other people. It was all musical legends and then ten other people, whoever else happened to be there. That, to me, was actually really difficult to not just totally nerd out. I remember looking at my little Zoom H6 and going, “We’ve been talking music for 47 minutes.”
This amazing course, The Art of The Interview, you’re doing, I want to hear more about that because investors tell me time and again, “When someone comes in to pitch me for funding, I want to have a conversation with that person.” They don’t have to suddenly become this robot or get nervous or hide behind who they are because at the end of the day, they’re investing in them. What can people learn in The Art of the Interview that they can use in their everyday life to get the right people to join their team, to get customers, and ultimately to get funded? It’s all the same skills.
There’s some technical side to it, obviously. I remember having this conversation. I was at a happy hour with a friend of mine. She had brought a friend. My friend had gone off and had a conversation or went to the rest room or whatever. I was there by myself with her friend. It was that awkward, awful small talk that you get in when you’re with a stranger. Somewhere around minute five, I was just sitting there thinking about taking my phone out. I thought, “Wait a second. For a living, people have told me, is a pretty entertaining conversation with a complete stranger every single day. Why am I not doing it?” I mentally flipped the microphone on. I had this great conversation. That’s on me. That’s me not connecting the dots between my actual skill set and how it translates into the real world. That was the subtext of The Art of The Interview.
Build Relationships: People find your show so much more memorable when you’re good at what you do, when you’re a good interviewer.
The other part is, and this is as frank as I can be, most podcasters are awful at podcasting. They’re really, really bad at it. Partially, it’s not their fault. Partially because we’ve had some people that are really successful financially in podcasting that are bad hosts. They’re just not good at the media, the actual broadcast hosting side of being a podcaster. By the way, it’s also not their fault. They never really considered it. They’re more marketers than they were podcasters. When you listen to someone who’s good at it, it’s such a stark contrast in conversational flow, in content, in how the message is delivered. You’ve got people that find your show so much more memorable when you’re good at what you do, when you’re a good interviewer, when you’re good at the show flowing well, when you’re good at introducing people, when you’re good at plugging their stuff.
Here’s a perfect good example. Once you’re interviewed a bunch, you start to see the tendencies of people. You can see where they came up and the schooling they had in the podcast world and who they paid attention to. Think about this, John, how often do you make it to the very end of a podcast? If you listen to other people’s show, percentage wise?
I would say, if it’s a good show, I’ll make it to 90%. More than half of the podcasts that I listen to, I’ll scan the show notes. I’ll be like, “There’s nothing really good until twenty minutes in.” Sometimes you can look at the transcripts.
If you’re listening, you don’t know the show notes, the transcripts, do you listen to 85% all the way through? Are you 75%? Are you 65%?
If it’s somebody really great, like Alec Baldwin, I’m in, because I love it from the start.
All the way to the end? You hear the closing credits?
Yes. It’s because he’s entertaining and he’s himself. He’s a great interviewer and all those things you just mentioned.
Would you say that you don’t do that with others though?
Correct, yes. There’s a definite problem you’re solving.
In my case, I probably don’t make it to the very end. I love podcasts. I live in the podcast world. I probably don’t make it to the ending credits 85% of the time. 15%, I’ll make it to the very end. 85%, I don’t. If you are a current trend of podcast host, you have to understand that you’ve got guests that are coming on your show that are doing you a massive favor. They’re providing great content for your audience. Do we agree on that?
Absolutely, and their time.
They’re giving their time, however they are, however far long they are in the time line. That could be more or less valuable. If you get a Jack Canfield or a Gary Vaynerchuk, you know their time is worth a lot of money. They’re getting a $100,000 for a keynote speech for an hour. With that in mind, as the host of the show who’s getting this massive favor done for you by this guest, the guest hoping, “Maybe I’ll sell a few books. Maybe I’ll get a few new people to my content,” that kind of thing, where do we plug the guest currently?
Towards the end.
Now. At the end.
Yes. Because we don’t want it to be “sales-y” so we have to save that and no one’s listening. Totally understand where you’re going now. I love that.
Number one, we go, “Where can people find you?” As a host of a show, it should have been the first question you ask before you started recording, “Where can people find you so I can help you?” Two, we do it at the very end. That’s one of the things that when you listen to a pro, let’s say anybody comes on Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or Jay Leno, the first thing they do is introduce the guest and say their new movie, blah, blah, blah, is out in theaters on Tuesday. They plug the guest right at the beginning of the show. As a good host, we should be plugging beginning, middle, end. Whenever that guest has a good take, we go, “That was really great. Guys, why don’t you tweet them at,” whatever their Twitter there is. That’s a pro move that 99% of podcasters do not do. That’s the kind of thing that The Art of The Interview talks about.
That leads me to another question, which is one of the things I pride myself on is preparation. If I have somebody on as a guest and they have a book, I do my darnedest to get a hold of it and read it before they get on the show. The same thing with someone like yourself. I did listen to a couple episodes, both of you as a host, both of you as a guest. I know what other things you’re doing. All of that preparation, that’s what I think separates you on any pitch. I’m always telling people, before you get in front of an investor with a pitch or a potential client, you must prepare and not just go in and wing it and expect it’s going to be brilliant without any preparation.
Build Relationships: You’ve got to step up your conversation game. You’ve got to be a little more committed.
You better know that that investor is the coach of their daughter’s softball team. CEO loves dirty jokes on the golf course. That’s how it got done. What I mean by that is there’s enough that happens that’s not “business.” If I walk into somebody’s office and I see a vintage car model sitting up on their desk, we’ll probably talk cars for probably 45 minutes. What that five minutes is going to be a foregone conclusion because we’ve already connected on a deeper level and on a relationship side. Now, you can always do that. Some people that are investors are just those are the guys that flip to the back page. I can’t do much, but then that means you’ve got to step up your conversation game. You’ve got to be a little more committed.
Let’s face it. Most people have a lot of anxiety. Even with an introduction at a conference and going up to someone and starting a conversation. If they can learn those skills, it will totally transform their business. What’s one mistake you see people making in an interview situation? Let’s say, not necessarily as a podcast host, because you’ve gone through those, but just interviewing somebody in a situation at a conference that you’ve been introduced to, you’re trying to get to know them. We’re saying that conversations, when you flip that switch and pretended that it was an interview, then everything went great. I’m guessing you could take some of those skills from your Art of Interview class and apply it to conversations.
I think one that I see happen a lot, and it just happened to me on Tuesday, is non-inclusive body language. I had sat down, there was a girl that sat next to me and knew my friend. It was three chairs in a row, and I was on the end. She just turned her back on me and had this conversation with this person. She could have been the world’s best entrepreneur or business person, I will never do business with her. She just turned her back on me. In fact, in that same scenario, I was speaking with the speaker that was at the event and then another person. We were in a little triangle. I sensed that there’s somebody on my right shoulder, behind me, and I opened up. I welcomed them into the circle and then I made the introduction. You have to do that with people. Even if it’s this deal where you’re lucky enough to get this conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk or something like that, that person, the influencer, will appreciate more, they will recognize what you just did and how selfless it was and how inclusive you were, and that will put you into a different category with them. I’ve seen it happen over and over and over again.
I’ve seen that happen myself where you’re sitting at a round table at a meal and you’re listening to a keynote speaker. Someone will literally turn their chair just to talk to the person to their left and ignore the person on the right. You never know who’s there.
Not good. Bad business.
What final piece of insight or a book you’d like to recommend or a podcast you want to have people listen to, in addition to The Solopreneur Hour, that you think would be helpful for people?
One other addendum to that last thing we just talked about, when you’re in that meeting, be super nice to the underlings. Be really nice to the assistants. Don’t be dismissive. Have a good conversation with the elevator person or the janitor. Believe it or not, they’re major gatekeepers.
I’ve seen that happen many times where you’ll go in to pitch for something and that person walks you out and you get in the elevator, and the receptionist will say, “That guy was great,” or, “That guy was a jerk.” That makes or breaks your deal.
I use an app called Evernote on my phone. I put all the names of all the door guys because it only takes one or two times where you can be like, “Hey, Fred. What’s going on, man? How are you?” Then you never have to wait in line. It happens to me every Wednesday. I play at this club every Wednesday and there’s a line around the block. Do a little handshake and go right in, every single time.
Just from remembering somebody’s name.
It doesn’t take much. Anyway, recommended, if you want to get really good at conversation, I love this show called Off Camera with Sam Jones. Sam does amazing interviews. He’s my favorite on iTunes right now. Plus, he has a Rolodex like you wouldn’t believe. It’s all major celebrity A-listers. What he does is he’s a photographer in Hollywood. He’s worked with a ton of them on a professional level and then started the show. He just has this great super low-key conversational style. He’s very well-researched. It was a common theme that we talked about today.
Follow Michael on Twitter. Your Twitter handle is @SoloHour. The podcast is SolopreneurHour.com on the website. I’ve listened to both. I’ve followed him on Twitter. I highly recommend everyone to do that. Most importantly, I really invite you to sign up for The Art of the Interview. It’s going to change your way that you have more confidence and it’s going to give you the success that Michael has had. Thank you so much for being with me today, Michael.
I should mention the URL. It’s ArtOfTheInterview.co. Thanks, John.
Thank you.
Links Mentioned
- J Robinett Enterprises
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
- The Solopreneur Hour: Job Security for the Unemployable
- Conferencetopia
- Sololab
- @SoloHour
- ArtOfTheInterview.co
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Be The Boss Nobody Leaves with Scott Love
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Scott Love who is the author of a great book called Why They Follow and How to Lead with Positive Influence. Scott says he shows managers how to be the boss that nobody will leave. The way he does that is by getting people to think about what’s the noble goal of your company. The more you get people to buy into that, the more they are willing to stay loyal to you. He talks about three things that you need to ask people before you hire them. Then he also talks about the three core areas of success, which are influence, resilience, and achievement. He really gives insights to everybody who’s looking for the way to get the best talent to join your team and stay there. He talks about something called emotional equity that you are going to want to be sure to find out what it is and how to use it. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Be The Boss Nobody Leaves with Scott Love
Today’s guest is Scott Love. Scott is an expert on the topic of employee loyalty. As we all know, investors are really interested in who’s on your team and are they loyal to you, especially when times get tough. There’s a lot of research where he shows managers how to be the boss that nobody will leave. He is a successful entrepreneur himself. He is a former Navy leadership trainer, an Annapolis graduate, and he gives managers tactical ways to build employee loyalty so that companies can increase retention, decrease turnover, and of course, attract those all important high achievers.
Scott, welcome to the show.
Thanks, John. I am excited to be here.
You are a published author as well. You have this great book called Why They Follow and How to Lead with Positive Influence. But before we get into that, I would love to have you take us back to the days of what made you decide you want to go to the US Navy Academy?
Why They Follow and How to Lead with Positive Influence
A lot of it was part economic, part, “That’s all I knew.” My dad was a Marine Corps officer and we just didn’t have the funds for an Ivy League school. Here I was, a kid in South Texas in sixth or seventh grade. That’s when I made the decision, “What am I going to do with my life?” All I knew was the military and that’s what I wanted to do. Who wouldn’t want to be GI Joe when they grew up? Worked really hard, kept the grades up, did the sports, Eagle Scout, all the other things, and, how about that? I got in. I am surprised I graduated just because it’s so tough. When you set your mind to something, you can do it. In that school, whoever wants it the most is the one that gets it. It’s more about drive, determination, grit, and guts than talent and smart. If you can’t outsmart them, you can outwork them. That’s where it all started, my voyage in learning about leadership and talking about that as a topic to business people.
What a great topic because the grit, perseverance, and drive that’s needed to be a successful entrepreneurship you learned getting through this intense Navy experience and that’s what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
I have a lot of respect for my classmates that were right there with me. I am humbled to be part of that group. There had been days as an entrepreneur when I look back and I’m like, “What are you going to do? Send me underway for six months?” My biggest problems are that I’ve got a slow paying client. It’s not that bad. I’ve got friends of mine they are underway right now on aircraft carriers, in senior leadership roles. I am so grateful that they are working harder than I’ve ever worked at a lot less pay than what you can make as an entrepreneur because that is the service and it is the service. I think it’s something that does have my respect totally for people that made it a career.
I learned about leadership, I learned about getting things done. I was fortunate after I was on my sea tour to earn a spot as a leadership trainer, I was just in the right place at the right time. This was in the early 90s when the Navy had an initiative Total Quality Leadership, which was a derivative of W. Edward Deming’s concepts of Total Quality Management. That is why I really started understanding some progressive leadership concepts and teaching them to thousands of military officers, seniors enlisted, and civil service workers. I was 24 at the time. It was a good spot for me to be in prior to becoming an entrepreneur, prior to being a consultant, to doing the work that we will talk about that I’ve done as a headhunter and really developing this deep, narrow, experiential base on the topic of, why do people leave companies and how can a company keep them and keep them happy?
Are there some trends that you learned when you were recruiting people in about how important the culture fit is to making sure that that’s a good hire?
I think so. Culture is important. What I’ve seen in terms of the advisory work I’ve done with organizations is that everybody’s got a great culture. I own a company called the Attorney Search Group. I recruit partners for international law firms in Washington and New York. Every law firm I meet with, I say, “What’s different about you?” “We’ve got great culture.” Everybody has great culture. “We are collaborative.” Everybody is collaborative. “We’ve got a No Jerk Rule.” Everybody has a No Jerk Rule. I want you to tell me what’s distinct, what’s unique about you that nobody else can say and start with that.
Be The Boss: We have to look at what is that intrinsic motivation that causes people to thrive.
One of the trends that I see is that everybody, and this is what I call the first cardinal rule of human behaviors, that people are going to do what’s in their own best interest. When people come to work every day, they come to work for themselves, not the boss. When people are looking at how can we attract high achievers to our company? We have to look at what is that intrinsic motivation that causes people to thrive. We have to look at what our collective vision is, what’s our purpose, and how can we align that with the intrinsic motivation of those people that are looking to join.
Law firms in particular can be perceived as somewhat of a commodity, especially in the law world. They specialize in different things. If they are all saying the same thing, “No Jerk Policy. We’re collaborative. We got a great culture. You should come work here. There’s going to be a lot of hours.” It can’t be something like startups in Google days, “We’ll do your dry cleaning for free and you get free lunch.” If there’s more to it than that, how do you advise people on how to get this top talent? Because the audience here are probably are startups and maybe they have a cofounder, but when they get funded or maybe even they are going to get somebody else to join the team for low money in exchange for equity, what is it that they need to define? I think it goes into what you said earlier about the vision but I’d love to have you expand on that.
Let’s go back to what most of us have heard; Abraham Maslow’s the Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow, an organizational psychologist in the 1960, he came up with what’s been the most widely adapted model of human need. At the very bottom, we have a need for basic survival needs: food, clothing, water, and shelter. Above that, we have a need to feel safe and secure. Above that, we have a need to be part of a team. We have a need for that affiliation. Above that, our second most important need is recognition, our ego drive to be recognized. Then above that is self-actualization, to be fulfilled in the work that we do.
Now, I would say if you are recruiting people that are low-level administrative, they are thinking more about the bottom two. “I’ll leave for $2 an hour or more,” or they want to work in a place where they feel safe. Most people that are junior level professionals, that are recent college graduates, they might be more interested in that third one. “I want to be a part of a team, but also I want to be part of something that is bigger than myself.” I think an organization has to look especially at those top two needs. Self-actualization, how can you be fulfilled in your purpose and then how can we recognize you for making a contribution to this team?
When I was doing the organizational development consulting and leadership training back when I was 24, young naval officer, I would go around and I would interview civil service workers, people that are working at the government, a lot of them were low-level workers. People who were mechanics, plumbers, people in the trade, joined the government, and stayed there 30 years. What I saw were people that were very loyal. They were very passionate about what they did. They really cared and the harder they worked, the more their pay stayed the same. They weren’t in it for the money. It’s interesting that if we can find out how can we harness their intrinsic motivation as it relates to their recognition, showing them that you’re significant and then also showing them that you, that the work that you do makes a difference, not just for the people around you but for the entire greater good.
Here’s an example. When I was on active duty, I was an operations officer of a very small wooden ship. It was a minesweeper commissioned in 1956. This was in the early 90s. Our sonar wasn’t working and I had to get the sonar up. Petty Officer Shaffer, he had been there every weekend for the last six weekends. I got to get it up. He had little kids at home. I had to get him to spend one more weekend to get the sonar. He had to be working Monday morning. I could have used my authority. I could have used my rank. But I said, “Let me talk with you about this. As you know, the Iraqis have invaded Kuwait. Right now, we’re the most important ship in the United States Navy. We need to get underway Monday. Right now, you’re the most important sailor in the United States Navy. I need you to get that sonar working and stay here this weekend.” “Yes sir.” I was able to show him that his work mattered to help the entire organization’s goals and that he would get that recognition. Sure enough, he gave it one more weekend. Nobody complained.
[Tweet “What is the noble goal of your company?”]
This is another lesson I learned, is that employees talk. There is this invisible range of response, that’s what I call the response ratio, that an employee chooses. It’s on a scale of one to ten. If I lead based on my authority, you’re going to give me a one. You’re going to give me the lowest level of output. But if I lead based on what I just explained, my leadership, being able to tell them, “This is how your work matters. This is why you can drive significant,” and it doesn’t have to be a formalized discussion. It can just be comments that you make over time and people observe that. They make a decision, they choose, “I’m going to give it a ten based on that personal leadership.” I think that’s the one thing I would like managers on your show to really listen to and pay attention to. What is the noble goal that my company has? It’s got to be more than making money. It’s got to be more than profit. It has to be service. It has to be value. You have to start with that and then translate how does this noble goal translate into a personal and an emotional connection with our employees?
What is the noble goal of my company? Because once you communicate with that, if I understand this response ratio properly, when people are engaged and feel that what they’re doing matters as it relates to the noble goal of the company, they give a ten effort as opposed to just saying, “I’m the founder. Do what I say. Don’t ask questions. It’s my company.” Even if you’re the cofounder and all the back and forth arguments over what I want versus what you want, let’s both step back and say, “What’s the noble goal of the company?” and let that be the deciding factor versus our egos.
Absolutely, because it’s not about us. We’d like to think it is, but it ain’t about us.
Let’s talk about this great book of yours. What motivated you to write it?
I think the uniqueness in my career is very rare. I have not built large teams. I don’t have an interest in building a large team. I’ve been in a leadership role in trade associations, leading an all-volunteer force, professionals that don’t have any time to put time into something and get them to be excited about that. That’s a lot harder than leading people that have to be there. I think just some of the articles that I’ve written in the past, some of the blog posts, I chose some of those that I thought could really help people to accelerate the goal. If I could have retitled it, I would have thought, “How Do You Get Your Employees to Work Harder.” That’s what everybody wants.
[Tweet “If you lead, they will stay.”]
The title is, Why They Follow and How to Lead with Positive Influence. If you just remember why they follow. You showed the penguins on the cover, which I just love, that really will stick in people’s minds, the image of penguins. Let’s talk about the cover a little bit too. What is it about penguins and following that made that so relevant?
I was thinking what would be an image that everybody loves? Who doesn’t like penguins? I’ve never met anybody that says, “I hate penguins.” I think we’ve all seen those documentaries and penguins huddled together, they survive, and they take turns shielding each other from the cold. Just like in a wolf pack. There is an alpha in the pack and the alpha has to be a good leader, otherwise he gets killed. I think looking at the pack mentality, surviving together, how can we get people to work harder? “I’ve got to be a good leader. How can I be a good leader? I’m going to find out what causes people to choose to respond at a higher level.” Let me get right to the point of how you can get your people to work harder. You’ve got to find out why they follow and lead to that.
Be The Boss: What’s the most effective way to solve this problem the quickest, the most economically, and have the most fun?
I use game theory a lot in making decisions in business and it really cuts through a lot of the clutter. What’s the most effective way to solve this problem the quickest, the most economically, and have the most fun? Let’s find out why people follow and lead to that. That’s my whole style. Anytime I come in and speak somewhere, let me give a life changing 45-minute presentation, just two or three points that stick, that makes a difference. It’s exciting to see that.
You talked about one of the chapters being the three steps to servant leadership. Is game theory part of that?
I think it is. I used to be a professional card counting Blackjack player years and years ago. Two of the alumni of the MIT Blackjack Team mentored me. I pretty much got pretty good at this game because I liked it because you’re not breaking any laws. You’re not doing anything illegal or immoral. You’re just exploiting the casino and the game legally by understanding the math behind it, because in Blackjack, there is a defect. That’s what I learned. Don’t put money on the felt unless the count is high and don’t do anything unless there is a high likelihood of gaining a favorable outcome.
I use game theory in pretty much anything that I teach, which I think is why it makes sense to most people. I believe in simplicity. What’s the simplest way to get people to change? Giving them bite-sized easy morsels. You’ve seen the book. The chapters are probably two or three pages long. It’s a book that you can read on flight and get right to the point.
What kinds of questions do you have when someone is interviewing someone that you would say, “Is this person a good fit for me and my company?” What are the questions that you recommend a founder or anybody who’s hiring somebody ask in an interview?
Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Great Teams
First thing I would look at in business more than anything, it’s all about the results. Start with that. Start with the results. Get very clear on what are the performance outcomes. One of the best books I’ve ever read on hiring is Hire With Your Head written by Lou Adler. I always give him credit whenever I talk about this because he’s got some great ideas. What are the three results that you want this person to achieve? Start with that and have them tell you, “How have you achieved this in the past? How are you achieving this currently? What action steps would you take to achieve this in the future?” I would start with that.
Other three things I recommend managers to look at are the three core areas of success. This is just my own concepts, having been a headhunter for over twenty years. As I mentioned, I just sold my recruiter training company. I’ve trained, I’ve been in hundreds of search from over 4,500 recruiting and staffing firms from over 36 countries that have invested in my training programs, of my business I just sold. I taught this a lot to other people. The three core things you want to look at are: influence, resilience, and achievement.
Influence meaning, “How can I build a team of followers?” Or if you are in sales, “How can you talk people into things where they thank you for that at the end the process?” Find examples in the past of someone that has been able to lead or sell. Second thing, resilience. Have them tell you a time where they were able to turn professional adversity into success. If they haven’t learned that now, they’re not going to learn that in the future. The third, achievement. Find people that have been successful early on, “Tell me about the job you had when you were in high school. Tell me about your grades. Tell me about your musical instrument.” I remember sitting next to a young lady once on a flight and she is a professional musician. She played the flute. I was curious about this. Her father was in the Marine Band. She was raised with musicians in her family. I said, “How many hours a day did you practice in high school without your mom telling you?” “At least two hours a day.” “Did your mother ever have to tell you to practice?” “No. I did it on my own.” Two hours every day. That’s achievement.
Look for past tells, past indicators that people have a high likelihood, game theory again, of being successful in the future. Influence, resilience, and achievement. There is one owner of a firm I was consulting to and he said, “I’m so frustrated with the people I’m hiring. They’re not working out. I see so much potential in them.” I told him, I said, “They don’t see it in themselves. You’re hiring projects. You’re hiring people that have never done anything significant in their whole lives before. They’re not going to become successful once they start working for you. They need to already have had that. You don’t need a project.”
That’s the advice I give to people listening to your podcast. What are the three performance outcomes you want them to achieve, have them tell you how they’ve achieved it in the past, how they’re currently doing it, and what action steps they’d take to achieve those three goals in the future. Then also qualify them on influence, resilience, and achievement.
I love the action steps. What did you in the past? What are you currently doing? What would you do if you were to come here? If somebody can answer that for you, let’s just say you’re hiring somebody to do your marketing or your sales, they should have some great stories; what they’ve done, what they’re currently doing, and what they would do that they put some thought into why they want to work for you.
Be The Boss: I think we all have a tendency to hire people that remind us of who we used to be a long time ago.
I think we all have a tendency to hire people that remind us of who we used to be a long time ago. We like to be around people that remind us of ourselves. I think it’s too easy to fall in love with that perfect candidate. I’d recommend, have an unattached business colleague of yours from another company interview people for you. Someone that knows you, knows your business, maybe they’re a frenemy, maybe they are a friendly competitor or whatever, or if you have a professional coach, have them interview people for you and listen to their input. Because you might get all excited about that rock star candidate, but it might be for the wrong reasons.
Regarding this other area of success, what a great filter, because it’s all about storytelling. If you’re pitching an investor, you should be able to tell an investor an example of how you had influence to get your first customer or get somebody to join your team. You should be able to tell a personal story about your own resilience when things were tough at this startup or another one and how you overcame it as opposed to just saying, “I have tenacity and grit.” You need to tell a story. Then third of course, is this whole concept of achievement and being able to prove, “Look, I know how to do this and I’ve got a formula. It’s not by chance. It’s not by accident. I know what it takes to get results.” Investors in particular love to see people who have traction and know how to do it.
One of your amazing quotes is, “I show managers how to be the boss that nobody wants to leave.” You’ve touched on it a lot. First of all, on how to get that right person. Then I really think the answer to that is going back to what you said earlier about the noble goal and showing them why what they do matters, not leading by dictatorship. Is there anything else you want to expand about how to be a boss that nobody leaves?
I think it’s being someone that puts other people’s needs ahead of your own. There’s a conflict because I’ve got mission achievement and then I’ve got to take care of my people. This is something I learned every day at Naval Academy. Take care of your people. Here you are, you are working in business, and you’ve got to accomplish goals. I remember I interviewed General Walt Boomer. He retired as a four-star Marine, a Deputy Commandant of the Marine Corps. This is years ago when he was the CEO of Rogers Corporation. I asked him, I said, “Walt, you’re a Marine and you’re an executive and you have to make a decision. What’s more important: mission accomplishment or taking care of your people?” He said, “That’s a tough question.” Because we know, Marines, it’s all about accomplishing the mission. He said, “Let me think about that.” He said, “It’s taking care of your people. As long as you’ve got the right people in place, they will accomplish the mission.”
[Tweet “How to be the boss nobody leaves.”]
I think that’s the secret. If you don’t have the right people in place, it isn’t going to happen. You get the right people in place. A leader’s job in my opinion is to be invisible. At the end of the day, you want the team to stand up and say, “We did that ourselves.” It’s a concept that I call emotional equity. You want them to have an emotional stake in the success of that business. How do you do that? By asking them questions as a boss, “What do you think we should do? Why do you think we should do that? What’s the worst thing that would happen if we did this? What action steps would you recommend? I want you to do this. Draft up a one page document on the action steps that you would take to accomplish what you told me. Let’s talk about that this afternoon.” Now, it’s their idea. They own it.
[Tweet “Find out what Emotional Equity is and how to use it.”]
When you ask people questions, “What do you think we should do?” One of the most valuable things you could ever do is ask for people’s opinion. I tell people all the time, “If you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money with an investor.” It totally dovetails into what you’re saying here. If you ask an investor, “What advice do you have that could make my startup better?” They start collaborating with you. If you ask your employees, “What do you think we should here to fix this problem?” Now they’re part of the solution as opposed to just being dictated what to do. That is a big takeaway. I think we couldn’t leave on a higher note than this concept. I’ve heard of emotional intelligence but I’ve never heard of emotional equity before. How can people follow you on social media? What is your Twitter handle?
It’s @ScottLove on Twitter. My website is ScottLove.com and that’s my speaking site. I don’t do consulting on that. I speak at conferences for right now because I’m so busy with my search practice, but every once in a while l speak at conferences for business and association groups. One thing I wanted to share, just because I have literally tens of thousands of conversations with professionals, trying to recruit them. I’d be the guy that would cold call people, and I still am, and trying to get them to leave. When people say, “I love it here. I don’t care how much more it pays.” I always ask them, “Why is that?” It’s all because of that relationship with the boss one level up. That’s all a company has to do, is help those mid-level, junior level, and senior level managers just get a little bit better with that one-on-one leadership skills. If they do that, you know as well as I do, it’s easier to get a new customer than keep an existing one happy. The same thing with employees. Nobody really thinks of it like that.
The cost of turnover is so high; productivity, time spent interviewing, and everything else. It’s night and day. Scott, I can’t thank you enough for all these words of advice on how to get the top talent, whether you’re startup or a huge company. Most importantly, how to keep them loyal by emotional equity. Thank you so much.
Thank you, John.
Thank you. My pleasure.
Links Mentioned
- J Robinett Enterprises
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
- Scott Love
- Why They Follow and How to Lead with Positive Influence
- @ScottLove
- Hire With Your Head
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The 10 Rules of Business with Karla Nelson
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Karla Nelson, who has created ten rules for business based on her five-year-old. It is absolutely adorable, memorable, and actionable. She said, “Startups don’t die from a lack of good ideas. They die from indigestion and giving up.” She said, “Productivity is not activity. You need to be really focused and have a strategy on how to get these relationships with investors to actually pay off. It’s not just about having conversations with people without a strategy in place.” Finally, she said that, “The death of entrepreneurs is solitude. It’s so important to collaborate and get help.” Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
The 10 Rules of Business with Karla Nelson
Hello and welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. We have a return guest that I am ecstatically thrilled to have back. We had Karla Nelson on in March of 2016. She was episode 51. Now we’re in the 100th plus episode. Karla is someone who has so much valuable content. I just had to have her back. We were having lunch in Sacramento where she lives. She is the epicenter of all things Sacramento, whether it’s media, contacts in television, radio, contacts in the startup world. It’s just amazing to see somebody with her pulse on everything going on, not just in Sacramento but literally globally. Karla has done a TedTalk. She really is a people catalyst. I can speak to that firsthand. Karla, welcome back to The Successful Pitch.
Thanks so much for having me.
You have so many exciting things going on. When we were talking about what you’ve created here; you’re going to have your own podcast and a webinar and a book coming out. I’m completely fascinated with this concept that you talked to me about called Child’s Play: The Ten Rules of Business brought to you by a five-year-old. It’s so simple you can remember them, and so effective you’ll want to. That is so intriguing to me because it’s catchy, it’s memorable. Tell me and everyone else listening how you were able to transfer your expertise as an entrepreneur, an investor, an expert trainer into how you came about the ten rules of business.
Rules of Business: Always keep your cool.
It’s actually quite a funny story. My four-year-old at that time, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, was just approaching her fifth birthday and she said to me, “Mom, when I get older, can you teach me everything there is to know about business?” Of course I chuckled saying, “Darling, nobody has the market cornered in regards to business. But if you’re good and you make good choices, I’ll be glad to teach you everything that I know about business.” It stopped there for maybe a month or two. But I was still keep thinking about it. She kept on asking different entrepreneurial questions in the meantime. There was one day, it was one of her first days of kindergarten, she was very frustrated about something. She was not necessarily melting down but getting extremely upset. I said, “Klaire, rule one of business: Always keep your cool.” Instantly, she transformed into this very calm five-year-old who had just learned this amazing secret about business and entrepreneurship, which is to keep your cool.
That was so effective that a couple of weeks later, she was on her scooter in the backyard. We have a big piece of concrete that they can ride their scooters pretty fast on. She bit the dust and had scrapes all over her legs. She ran inside and she was crying. She had this big old scrape. I said, “Klaire, rule two of business: Get up when you get knocked down.” When she turned around and walked right outside and got right back on her scooter, I thought, “I might be on to something here.”
Not only is it great for entrepreneurship but it’s great for parenting and the combination. Talk about a huge market there. Let’s talk about where you came up with these first two rules yourself because this, ‘Always keep your cool, never let them see your sweat’ concept, it’s so much harder to do sometimes than it looks. If you’re in touch with yourself at all, you get angry, you get frustrated especially when other people do things that just rub you the wrong way, whether it’s your own hot button. Or for me, if I see somebody bullying somebody else, I just see red and it’s very difficult for me to keep my cool when I see that behavior. Any tips on how to do that?
I’m right alongside you in that regard. In my younger years, I would respond way too quickly. The way I’ve really identified when something is pushing my buttons is just to step away. We’re always taught, “You never want to burn a bridge.” Those two are closely related in regards to keeping your cool. But then also, you never know who’s going to be on a team, who you’re going to work a deal with. You just don’t want to get to a point where you’re not thinking logically, but you’re thinking solely emotionally. I always like to say, “People buy with emotion and back it up with logic.” That’s working in a buying scenario. But in a relationship scenario, especially early on where you can get very frustrated and you respond too quickly, what I have found is if you just let it sit there for a couple of days, it’s no longer that raw sense of urgency of something that you have to do now. Anytime you feel like you have to respond or if you feel frustrated or hurt, one of the things you have to realize is ask yourself, “Why is that?” because there’s typically a bigger underlying reason of why that is. Then really look introspectively and just take a little bit of time before you respond. If you have any of that tension in your response, it’s probably not a good time to respond.
Taking that deep breath, sleeping on it, sending an email out, all of that good stuff. Of course getting up when you get knocked down. That’s perseverance 101. You fall off a horse, they always tell you to get back on that horse. It’s true of startups. That’s the whole concept of pivoting, isn’t it?
Absolutely. One of my good buddies, John Kunhart, he ran a $300 million venture firm here in Sacramento. He has a great quote that is, “Startups don’t die from lack of a good idea. They die from indigestion.” It’s just getting back up. The other thing he always says to the different companies that he had looked at for probably ten to twelve years as they were putting the fund together is the fact that where you start is likely not where you’re going to end up. You look at a company like Airbnb, their early days, they were selling air mattresses. Now they’re the largest hotelier because they saw a problem. The way that they initially looked at solving this problem is to tell people, “Use your room. Let people rent them out. By the way, we’ll sell you the mattress to be able to put them on.” Look where they ended up. They ended up having no real estate, no product. Where they started was very different than where they ended up. If you can always continue to come back and get up when you get knocked down, as long as you’re solving a problem that’s large enough, you’ll end up getting there. You might not look at all as when you looked when you first started.
[Tweet “Startups don’t die from lack of ideas, they die from indigestion.”]
When he was saying, “Startups don’t die from the lack of good ideas, they die from indigestion,” the indigestion is basically a metaphor for getting knocked out, right?
Absolutely. They just finally go, “I’m done. I’m sick. I’m tired of whatever it is.” Startups is not an easy world. We’re slightly like gluttons for punishment. You’re constantly having to pivot, constantly having to be innovative, constantly having to jump over these hurdles. The number one thing that you can do is just get back up. I love the Chinese proverb, “Get knocked down seven times, get back up eight.”
Let’s talk about rule number three. How did that come up to being through Klaire?
Rules of Business: Relationships are everything.
She was very frustrated with her brother one day and she was saying several things that were not very nice about her brother. I interrupted her as she was talking poorly about her brother. I said, “Klaire, rule three of business: Relationships are everything.” Instantly, she realized that just by saying something negative, she was impacting the value of the relationship with her brother. She responded so quickly on all of these because it was her own learning, I was just using the concepts that we all know are accurate. We all know contextually we can apply these in many different ways, but that, for her, as far as relationships were everything, she just realized that, “It’s more important that we have a good relationship than I complain about all the things that he’s not.”
There’s another little story in there about how she was at an event for a friend and got a little bored.
A good friend of mine, Allen Batten, he’s an international trainer. He’s worked with many of the Fortune 25 companies. He was doing his eighth book launch. Because Klaire was doing so well, I told her she could earn these different meetings. She’s been in pitch meetings with me. This particular one was a book launch that she had earned. I took her to the book launch and this went on a lot longer than I had first anticipated. After an hour and a half of having a five-year-old sit very quietly, the second hour and a half was actually getting a little hard for her. When she was getting antsy, I just leaned over and said, “Klaire, what’s rule three of business?” The next hour and a half, she just sat there paying attention, engaged. Of course there’s probably a hundred adults there and she was the only five-year-old, to say the least. To have her sit there for 30 minutes was pretty impressive. It was her learning. She also sees all these people. She’s looking up to them as mentors. To apply the fact that everyone in that room, relationships are everything, she was just always wanting to rise to the occasion.
This area really is your expertise. You have, as a people catalyst, training. You break relationships down into three categories. Can you go over those for us?
In our training, we identify three different areas in being a people catalyst. Any great CEO understands and knows that in order to be a people catalyst, you have to have a great relationship and dynamic for your team and your strategy, your customer/client strategy, as well as your consumer/channel partner strategy. Those three conversations are extremely different; the team dynamics and what they need and what you need in order to support them, the client strategy and what you need to be able to support them, as well as the promoter/channel partner.
If you don’t know what conversation you’re having, what people tend to do is all they do is talk about benefits. Somebody comes to join your team, “We’re great. We’re great. You want to be a part of the team,” versus purpose versus, “We’re strength based and we leverage your strength in the midst of the team. This is our team. We think you’re a good dynamic.” Even with the client, they lend towards just the benefits. When you take a look at the channel partner/promoter, this happens all the time where people go, “Let’s go get coffee. John, you get to talk about how wonderful and great you are and I get to talk about how wonderful and great I am.” Then you separate ways and nothing ever comes of it because the conversation is not about just how great we are. We have to pull back the layers of potentially what would inhibit us from having a business relationship as well as are we an appropriate fit? If you don’t have that conversation, you can’t push that relationship down the path.
That’s such a key that most people really ignore. They leave and go, “I’m networking. I’m talking to people and nothing’s happening.” You just gave everybody the magic key to open that door, which is the values have to be matching, the brand has to match, all of the quality levels have to be there. There are a lot of things that people have to feel really comfortable before they make intros and referrals, right?
Absolutely. You have to be willing to go there to have that conversation and those relationships. Most of all, it’s difficult to have that even if you’re unconsciously competent at doing that. To become consciously competent and have a process and a strategy around it, you’re just so much more effective because productivity isn’t activity. Just because you’re active, it doesn’t mean you’re being productive and you’re moving that needle forward. Having a very clear strategy, that’s a relationship strategy, just allows you not only to have clarity around the conversation, but also to have metrics around it, to be able to measure. Then you can manage that and then teach and train others to manage it. That’s truly duplicating yourself For instance, if we’re talking the promoter conversation, a sales manager, now you’re duplicating this process and enabling them to be consciously competent at a specific strategy and then put metrics around that strategy so you could manage it.
[Tweet “Productivity is not activity.”]
Rule number four in the world of Klaire, who wanted to go to the mall.
Rules of Business: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.
This one has paid its dividends a million times over again, John, because she wanted to go to the mall and play in the little kids’ area. I told Klaire, “That’s fine, but go clean your room.” Up until this point I always had to help her; teach her how to do her bed and whatnot, how to organize and put things away correctly. I said, “Fine. Go clean your room. If you do a great job, I’ll go ahead and take you to the mall.” Five minutes later she runs back downstairs and says, “Sure, Mom. I’m done.” I said, “Did you do a good job?” “Yeah, Mom, I did a great job.” I walk upstairs and I take a look at it. Of course, things were shoved under the bed. It was obviously one of those kid deals where you’re just trying to find any place to put something. I looked at her and said, “Klaire, rule four of business: Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” She’s cleaned her room everyday by herself since that day. She keeps it really neat and tidy. It was pretty amazing. I even have a picture that I took of her room after that first day because I was impressed. I thought, “She’s five years old and she’s really truly so hungry for entrepreneurship that she’s applying these rules.” Of course I was just happy because I thought, “I’m never going to have to clean her room again.”
Then it leads right into rule number five, how do you respond when someone’s trying to teach you something?
This is a big one, John. How many people do we work with, both our clients, ourselves, being trainers, coaches? Klaire, she would respond to her dad and probably myself as well, I would notice her responding to her dad frequently with the two words before he ever completed a sentence, which was, “I know.” He’s trying to teach her and she would just constantly use this. I’d correct her every single time but it wasn’t effective. I actually was upstairs and I was viewing him trying to coach Klaire. I interrupted and said, “Klaire, rule five of business: Always be coachable.” The cutest thing happened right after that, John, is when she said, “What does coachable mean?” Of course she completely understands it now.
I chuckled and I said, “You have to be open that you don’t know everything. If you are not open, we can’t teach you anything.” Believe it or not, this is probably the rule of business that shows up the most for Klaire, is to be open and be coachable and listen when somebody that has been there, done that. Look at your podcast, it’s so valuable. If somebody has 25 years of experience, you have to be open to say, “That’s how you viewed it. That’s how you solved the problem. I don’t need to know everything.” It’s my favorite model, the Henry Ford model. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You just need to be able to go find the smartest person to solve that.
Investors look for that characteristic as one of the most important characteristics in any founder they decide to give money to, because they want to give their money and they want to give their advice. If you’re not open to being coachable, then they’re not going to want to work with you. It’s really important to get that. Let’s take it right into rule six. This story of Klaire on the beanbag playing with an iPad, I love.
The kids these days, they have their electronic equipment. I think she was just getting to first grade, much cooler than kindergarten. She had her iPad and I looked over at her and she had actually responded, when I asked her a question, with that nice little kid head bob to me. I just thought, “They’re five years old. Did I just see a teenager head bob?” Instantly my instincts said, “I’ve got to fix this problem really quickly.” I told Klaire, “Klaire, your attitude determines how far you go.” That one was actually squished pretty quickly with Klaire. That one doesn’t come up too much. It was very interesting to me that when you have a child that has confidence, basically these rules are teaching her more confidence. The whole previous rule of business, ‘Always be coachable,’ it’s just so effective to have her realize that, “If I have a poor attitude, then it’s going to inhibit me from being able to do all those things that I want to do.” That was definitely a cute one. I’m sure we’ll see her head bob come back during the teenage years where I’m going to have to really pour back into those two rules.
Your attitude, you either give up or you focus on how far you’ve come and you keep inspired or you get all frustrated by you not being perfect and you get discouraged and you give up. That attitude is everything, which leads right into one of my favorite rules that you’ve come up with. An investor said, “Don’t try to boil the ocean,” to me once when I was talking to him about what’s important. I thought, “Don’t try to boil the ocean.” I’ve never heard that expression before. Tell us what that means to you.
Rules of Business: Focus, focus, focus.
First of all, I love “Don’t try to boil the ocean.” That is just fantastic, especially in a startup because you think of the indigestion part we were talking about and boiling the ocean. Those two are so closely related because if you take on too much, you can’t be effective. I’m an entrepreneur, I have six or seven different ventures I’m working on at any given time and then I also am a mom. In the morning, there’s a very strict timeline. Literally, they have checklists in the morning. Otherwise, it just doesn’t work or we’re not on time or whatnot. Klaire was really trying to get into getting prepared for school. I put a lot of onus in them. They have a lot of checklist items to do and take care of the dogs and things like that. I was constantly having to remind her, “Klaire, your shoes, your this,” just constantly. It’s because she has, very much like me, a little ADD going on where you get pulled in these different directions. You see the dog, what do you want to do? Play with the dog. Go back to go get your shoes.
There’s one morning and after, I swear, the hundredth time of telling her what her next step should be, I said, “Klaire, rule seven of business: Focus, focus, focus.” She literally, in an instant, was staring at me and then she knew the next item on the checklist. She just went and did it. I didn’t even have to say anything. I don’t even know if she said a word. She just went right over. It was probably her shoes because that’s always the one that I’m on top of her. She laced up those shoes and continued on her checklist. I never tell her what the next step is anymore. I just say, “Klaire, what’s rule seven of business?”
Let’s assume people are going, “I’m going to be coachable. I’m going to be focused. I’m going to give investors a great pitch. They’re probably going to ask me questions either during my pitch or after my pitch.” What’s the biggest mistake they can make after they get asked a question?
It’s not to hear the answer. That’s why we ruled right into rule eight of business with Klaire. I was actually telling her about a very important story. There’s two different mistakes I’ve learned when you don’t listen. One is not hearing. What I mean is, not opening up your ears to the point that you are not thinking anything on your side; not how to respond, not that they’re right or wrong. Just being open to hearing those words and empathizing with whatever it is that they’re sending your way. The second one is to actually not do something with the information that you’re given. For Klaire’s, even the one leads to the other, the first leads to the second. For her, when she’s being communicated with, a lot of times she will want to respond or she will want to just not completely see your side. If it’s directions, then she missed a step in the directions or I have to remind her. There’s really two steps of listening and one feeds the other one.
For this particular situation, it was pretty serious. Her grandparents were in a horrible car accident. Her grandma broke pretty much every bone in both of her legs. I was trying to communicate to her this and she kept on interrupting me. Then I told her, “Klaire, rule eight of business: Listen, listen, listen.” After she stood there and did hear it, she was very concerned. It was cute. She went back to rule three of business, ‘Relationships are everything,’ and helped me put a big care box together and drew some cards up for them as well. ‘Listen, listen, listen’ is so critical from the young ages, she was five at the time, all the way to pitching an investor.
So many of these are connected too because think about ‘Always be coachable’ and ‘Listen, listen, listen,’ those two are so closely tied as well because I truly have to hear what somebody is saying to me then to open up and then go, “Okay.” That doesn’t mean you don’t listen from twelve different aspects of entrepreneurship and then come to your own conclusion and move forward. What it means is, when somebody is talking, you give them your undivided, open-minded attention of where they’re coming from and what point they’re trying to make. Otherwise, as entrepreneurs, the very thing that we’re looking to do, which is risk everything in pursuit of some dream, ends up working against us because we don’t see enough pitfalls or challenges. We’re experientially learning instead of just intellectually learning.
Listen to all of your senses, your gut, everything. When an investor asks you a question after your pitch, I always coach people, “Rephrase the question in your own words to make sure you heard the question properly.” The worst thing in the world is to think you heard what the question was and you give them that answer and it wasn’t what they were asking. Then they think you’re avoiding answering them and you’re no longer trustworthy and the deal is off. The real bonus is, after you answer someone’s question, I always tell people, “Go back and say, “Did that answer your question?” Because sometimes it didn’t and you need to get it clarified. Sometimes it did but it generates another question. That’s what you want to have, is collaborative conversation. I really love rule eight. Rule nine is probably my favorite. Why don’t you tell us about the time you were at the gym eating pizza?
Rules of Business: Gratitude is always the best policy.
One of our gym actually has a lot of soccer games there and whatnot. Every once in a while after we get done working out, we decide to completely ruin it and go eat pizza. We had taken the kids to get pizza. I had also let them have a very unique treat, chocolate milk. As we were finishing up dinner, my daughter looks over and says, “Mom, I’d really like some chips.” I was basically, “No.” I had already gone over my junk food threshold for the month. I said, “Klaire, rule nine of business: Gratitude is always the best policy.” She wasn’t happy with my no. But immediately I followed it up and I said, “Look. You’ve got pizza. You’ve got chocolate milk. Why don’t we be very thankful for what we have instead of not being satisfied with that.” I just used that one actually yesterday. Anytime they press for more and more, because one of the best things you could ever tell your child is no. How much do we learn from ‘no’ even as adults? Figure out a different way. Be innovative. No doesn’t mean it can’t happen, no just means the timeframe that your expectations are might not be the same.
That’s rejection in general; whether it’s rejection on getting funded or rejection on somebody joining your team.
I always say this, “Disappointment is when you didn’t get what you wanted in the timeframe you wanted it.” If you change that thought process of it and you’re thankful for all the things that you do have, it shifts your energy into, “The answer is yes. It just might not be on the timeframe of yes.” I really try to do that too with Klaire, is to say that, “The answer is yes.” My background used to be in finance, so we did loans, real estate, commercial against businesses, all different combinations of them. Then PPM’s, help raise capital, that kind of thing. I used to tell everybody when they looked at their financing, I said, “The answer is yes.”
Which brings us right to rule number ten.
This one’s a funny one because as I was sitting at the gym, I remember thinking, “I really want to make this one big.” Because I knew I was going to stop with the ten rules. You’ve got to keep some simplicity. I was very aware of everything that was going on. Her brother, Cole, has now been piggybacking the rules now. He’s learning but he was only two when I started. If I said, what’s rule three? Klaire didn’t want to respond, Cole would chime in. Now they hold each other accountable when Dad and I put up the rules of business. Rule ten, I sat there and I was diligently watching them, because I wanted the last one to be really, really good.
As we got done with dinner at the gym, I always ask Klaire to clear the table. She grabbed the big pizza tray and she started piling up all the napkins and paper plates and whatnot on the tray. I noticed she was just about ready to topple over. She had way too many stuff on the tray. I interrupted her and I said, “Klaire, rule ten of business: Never be afraid to ask for help.” She responded right away. It was interesting. She didn’t ask myself or dad for help, she asked her brother for help. She said, “Cole, will you help me throw this stuff away?” Of course he jumped up right away and helped her throw the garbage away. I remember thinking, “I really could use rule ten of business a little bit more.” That was a huge learning for myself. So many of us, we go at it alone.
I know I’ve shared on the previous podcast, I love the quote I got from a good friend of mine, Ernesto Sirolli, “The death of an entrepreneur is solitude.” The thing that makes us strong about being able to risk everything in pursuit of this purpose, passion, idea that we can turn this thought into a thing, ends up working against us because we think we need to be all things. We think we need to do it all. A lot of times we think, “I can do it better than someone else,” all these different entrepreneurial challenges. Truly we’re much better, all the stats show, all the research shows, that we have unique strengths. That’s why the people catalyst aspect of it, the first piece is, “Who are you and what is your strength?” If it’s not your strength, don’t do it. Because what happens is you trade your peak work in all the wonderful brilliance of who you are for weak work that robs us of our enthusiasm and our passion. We’re not good at it, so why try to do it anyway?
[Tweet “Death of Entrepreneurs is Solitude.”]
There’s a whole ecosystem that you have to learn in order to get funded. You have to know what investors want to hear in a pitch. You can try to figure all that out yourself or you can get somebody like Judy Robinett to tell you, “This is what you need to do step by step” and you get there much faster.
Funny you say that, John, because that’s how I referred you guys to so many different entrepreneurs. They come to me, I’m later stage as far as that. What I mean is, I can connect you to investors. But what I can’t do, I can’t prepare your pitch deck. Are you kidding? Number one, that’s not my strength. I always work with somebody else in doing that because it’s a unique problem that you need to solve. Here’s the thing, I could have 500 investors to introduce to entrepreneurs and I still can’t introduce them. Why? Because they’re not prepared. They’re not going in there. The thing is that we can see it from a million miles away. Newbie, it’s all over. What’s funny, John, is how many people that it’s not their first rodeo, they’ve done it over and over and over again, and they know that they can’t even create their own pitch deck. What do they do? They find somebody that that’s what they do and let them solve that problem for them.
Karla, how can people keep up with you on social media? You have a great webinar on how to be a people catalyst. Tell us all the good things that people can get more of you.
If you’d like the free webinar on how to be a people catalyst, then you can go to the website www.KarlaNelson.com. You can just put in your email and get that free webinar and take a look at it. It goes through not only the ten rules of business but also the different areas on how to be a people catalyst. It goes into a little bit more depth around those three different relationships that you need to have, especially as a CEO. Even if you’re a sales manager or whatever area of the business that you’re focused in on, relationships are truly everything. You solve problems with people. The more strength you have in your relationships, not only the happier you’re going to be and the more successful person you’re going to be, but it’s truly the key to business.
It’s Karla, what’s your Twitter handle?
It is @KarlaLNelson.
We’re going to follow you. Thank you for sharing these charming and memorable ten rules of business. You rocked the podcast for the second time out. Congrats on that.
Thanks so much for having me on the show, John.
My pleasure.
Links Mentioned
- J Robinett Enterprises
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
- @KarlaLNelson
- Karla Nelson
- Karla Nelson’s podcast
Crack The Funding Code!
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