Recharge Your Mind Daily With Tom Cronin
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Believe it or not, meditation can actually save the world. In this eye-opening episode, John Livesay interviews Tom Cronin who is the author of The Portal. Founder of The Stillness Project, a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit in stillness daily, Tom is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people’s lives. Learn how you can start to figure out ways to get new insights and recharge yourself at the same time through Tom’s meditation techniques.
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Listen to the podcast here
Recharge Your Mind Daily With Tom Cronin
Our guest is Tom Cronin whom I heard speak in person and couldn’t wait to have him on the show. He has spent over 26 years in the financial markets as one of Sydney’s leading bond and swap brokers. He discovered meditation in the early stages of his career when the anxiety and chaos he was experiencing hit a crisis point and he completely transformed his world both personally and professionally. He’s the Founder of The Stillness Project, a global movement to inspire one billion people to sit in silence daily. Tom is passionate about reducing stress and chaos in people’s lives. He’s ongoing work in the transformational leadership in cultivating inner peace through meditation takes him around the world hosting retreats, mentoring, presenting keynote talks and teaching and creating the portal film book experience all of which are part of his commitment to the current planetary shift. Tom, welcome to the show.
It’s good to be here. Thanks for inviting me along, John.
You are welcome. I would love to take us back to your own story of origin. You can go back as far as you want. You can take us right to the places of the pressure the stress of being in the financial markets or you can take it further back if you want. When did you make a decision that you’re like, “I want to make a lot of money?” Had you had any exposure to any alternative concepts? Whatever you think is a good starting point to your journey would be of interest to me.
It’s funny how we end up in our journeys. I had no interest in finance and never shown any interest in it. Ironically, after school, I wanted to become a journalist and write articles for Time Magazine about capitalistic greed to save the world from the treacherous world of the banking system. I took a year off school backpacking around Europe and blew a lot of my money in Amsterdam. I was eighteen so use your imagination and I got back home. I had quite a few months to fill before my degree doing Journalism and I applied for a bunch of jobs in the paper. I was going to quit those jobs once it was time to go to university and once I got a bit of money in the bank.
Lo and behold, one of those jobs was on a massive trading room floor. I walked onto that floor and immediately felt the energy and I landed the job. Before long I got swept into the excitement, drama and the glamour of the trading room floor in the late ‘80s. This is when Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort started his career in 1987. I started my career in 1987 and it was the year we had Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko Wall Street film came out as The Bonfire of the Vanities was showing and Sherman McCoy. There was a lot of money greed world of finance came out in 1987. It was the start of a big fueling of a bonfire. I was quickly swept up into that world. I didn’t go end up doing my degree because I was making so much money. I was given a corporate Amex card, a fast corporate car and was told to go out and win the clients’ business. That was the start of the journey.
[bctt tweet=”Create a gap in your day to allow your own insights to happen. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
If Twitter existed, the hashtag would have been Greed Is Good.
Greed is good, lunch is for wimps. I became a fast, effective and efficient broker. I was good at what I did and rose the ranks quite quickly. Before long, you’re swept into that lifestyle. You’re doing lots of drugs, drinking late nights, 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, all-nighters with clients, big traders and big cowboys from investment banks. It was fun when you’re 18, 19, 20 but over time, what happens is this lifestyle gets ingrained and deeply embedded into your nervous system and your body. It starts showing up as a sign of wear and tear. My body before long started to show extreme signs of wear and tear, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. This accumulated over time until eventually, in about nine years into the career, it exacerbated to such a point that I started to have what was deemed a nervous breakdown at that particular point in time. Part of the problem was not everyone in the finance industry had a nervous breakdown. I put a lot of fuel on that fire.
Not only was I by day fast, yelling and screaming a lot is the nature of the job and we’re on a busy desk. By nighttime, I got deeply involved in a part of that culture that not everyone got involved in. There was a lot of cocaine, drinking and drugs. On weekends, when a lot of the brokers were playing rounds of golf, relaxing, sleeping and recovering, I got involved in the late ‘80s early ‘90s rave culture. I’ve been to a big warehouse party scene that was opening up in Sydney. It was like a new El Dorado. It was a new frontier for the club scene and I was enamored by this exciting world. My weekends were spending time in warehouse and recovery parties all weekend doing other things that go along with that. There was no break, rest and no ability for my body to recover. That’s why the symptoms started to exacerbate over time.
Would you say you were an adrenaline junkie? Since you were adrenaline high at work and on the weekends was another source of that.
Yes. I was doing a lot of research on it over time. I was looking at biochemistry and I had low dopamine as a result of that. You look for the highs where you can get that boost. It was drugs, drinking, partying, nightclubs, raves or anything that will give you that hit leads you to go back to get more. By seeking it in that environment means that when you’re not in that environment, you’ve got this massive so you need to go back for more. That’s where addiction starts to come in. That was definitely a big part of what was going on looking back in hindsight.
Interestingly, the shift came when I found meditation and the regulation of that biochemistry in my body, this beautiful regulated trickle effect of oxytocin and serotonin seeping into my bloodstream completely changed. It was an absolute game-changer for me and my ability to efficiently and effectively work in that environment. I worked another sixteen years in that career without doing all the addictions. It wasn’t like I became a perfect monk. That was certainly not the case. It meant that the craving and the yearning and those late nights and all the drugs that started to drop away quite quickly and the need to seek those big highs weren’t there.
Was it cold turkey like if someone’s got other addictions, they stopped drinking, doing drugs or sometimes go to rehab? Did you stop doing that from one meditation?
The drugs were quick. The yearning to have those experiences wasn’t there. What was happening with the meditation was profound. I couldn’t believe that I could feel this good quickly. A lot of the anxiety, depression and insomnia simply went away. That’s simply a scientific and biological process of getting your body out of an extreme sympathetic nervous system state because all day you’re in this sympathetic nervous system state response.
For those who don’t know what that means, would you define that for us?
If you think of the sympathetic nervous system and stress, it’s a stress response in the body for an extreme circumstance. If you’re facing a marauding tribe or a saber-toothed tiger, your body is a mechanism to preserve life. The number one priority in your body is to preserve life. Your body doesn’t realize that you’re in a nice highly paid job and it feels that you’re in a dangerous situation. The same symptoms start to prevail if you’re in a life and death or a stressful situation and you’re having that stress response in your body. Your biochemistry in the sympathetic nervous system state is a high level of cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine and a reduction of melatonin, serotonin and oxytocin. It’s a simple black and white or flips the switch type of scenario.
Recharging Your Mind: The number one priority in your body is to preserve life.
It’s a basic fight or flight.
We’re in fight or flight but when we get out of fight or flight, which is exactly what happens when we’re in a meditation experience, we move out of the sympathetic and into the parasympathetic and the P for peace is the peace response. The peace response is part of what happens for the body to restore balance, recalibrate and optimize itself and recover from that extreme circumstance. It’s a beautiful design of the body because we’re designed to have optimal well-being that’s normality. Our systems are not designed for most people being happy and healthy. Most businesses are built on the premise that we’re unhappy and we’re unhealthy. If you look at where most of the world’s economies are flourishing are in the world being unhealthy and unhappy.
When you take a look at that because I vividly remember when people were allowed to smoke at the workplace. Even if they were to say, “No. You have to get out or go outside,” I was within the fast-paced world of media sales, I’d go back to the corporate headquarters in New York, and I’d see these people standing outside taking cigarette breaks in the freezing cold. I could not wrap my head around it. I understood it was an addiction but that was their idea of a break. You went from the stressful situation to the phones not stopping, emails and all the other endless voicemails at one point and now, it’s text messaging. It’s a constant on fight or flight, “Let’s take a break and have a cigarette.” It’s not the healthiest form of a break.
Finally, some big tech companies like Google and others are starting to say, “We’ve created a nap room or a mindfulness place.” It’s now starting in those kinds of companies, in particular, to be seen as you can’t go from one unhealthy activity like the martini lunch from the ‘60s or the Mad Men mindset, which is go all the time, is no longer something that people think they can keep doing to themselves. Let’s talk about that. The culture shift in companies big and small, from do whatever you have to do, ends justify the means, take red-eye, hit the ground running, don’t go to sleep, brag about how little sleep you get, take cigarettes and drinking and go to these conventions, burn yourself out of both ends. It’s because we work hard and we play hard. Do you see that starting to change at all?
Absolutely. These are smart companies. They’ve got big businesses to run. They need to report annually back to shareholders to continue to increase profits. That company isn’t a bottom line. It’s not a logo, share price, or a PA. It’s a bunch of people that walk in the front door every day. Those people are grappling with their personal relationships, financial, and health issues. That company knows, the smart ones anyway, that for them to optimize that company, they need to optimize the brains of the people that work in that company. They need to optimize the people that are working for that company because all of the ideas within that company come from someone’s brain. If we’re in the sympathetic nervous system, fight-flight stress response state, our brain and nervous system are severely compromised.
Our ability to be productive, happy, engaged and healthy, which means we’re not taking sick leave. It gets severely compromised if we’re not looking after our staff. This is a big shift that we’re starting to see with those progressive companies realizing that the bottom line is their people are producing the concepts, ideas, the creativity that makes the company flourish. We need to look after those people because they’re our assets. Mental health in Australia has been proven as a great report put out by PwC. It showed that poor mental health is costing Australian Business $11 billion a year. This is a small country. In America, it’s going to be gargantuan. For every dollar a company spends on improving and enhancing the mental health of a company, the return on that investment for general business is $2.30 and for small businesses in the mining sector, it’s up to $14.
Let’s define that. That’s a fascinating return on investment. Mental health, that phrase people go, “Is that going to see a therapist?” We’re talking about a lot of other things. Can you define what mental health means for you? What does $1 look like spent on mental health? Is it a meditation room? Is it a meditation class? What else could it be for a company?
[bctt tweet=”From stillness and silence comes peace and happiness. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s a lot of things. It would come under things like providing yoga. It would come under providing meditation programs. It would come under allowing staff to take effective breaks that are sleep pods. It’s fantastic. Napping is an efficient use of time for companies and in increasing productivity. Think of humans like a phone and we have a battery. If we start to run out of charge, the phone becomes almost redundant. We need to keep rebooting our battery cells. For me, my rebooting prior to this podcast, we were driving for a few hours from Seattle to Bellingham. My director who we’re traveling with will take a meditation break where we’ll reboot our system. We have to go to a screening of the film and we have to do a Q&A and it’s going to go a bit late. We want to make sure that we’re vibrant, energized and clear. Meditation is an efficient way of getting a reboot to our battery cells so that we’re supercharged and ready for the next session.
I’m going to make that one of your tweets from the episode. I love that, “Reboot your mind battery like your cellphone.” People can understand the need for their cellphone. People get desperate when their cell phone starts to go down in batteries. You see everyone at the airport frantically looking to charge and yet there’s nothing anybody’s doing to recharge their own brain. That’s a fantastic analogy. Tom, I’m a big proponent of this and people ask me, “How do you always stay positive or you don’t seem to be stressed out?” I give keynote talks on how are you on for those moments like you’re describing what you need to go do at your screening. If I mentioned meditation, they go, “I don’t want to talk about that or I tried that but I can’t do it. Guided or unguided, I can’t sit still.” I had a conversation with someone and I said, “Have you heard of the monkey mind?” It never stops talking.
What advice do you have for people who say they literally tried it, don’t like it, can’t do it, or want to do it? Even a meditation tape, I feel such pain for people. I get that it’s hard to sit and quiet your mind but your company’s graciously not only having a book and a movie but actual guided meditation so it’s not just listening to music. What is the first thing people can do who maybe are open to it, tried it, hate it or can’t do it? It’s one more thing to beat yourself about, which is crazy.
This is the reason why these techniques have been around for 5,000 to 10,000 years. They’ve stood the test of time and that’s because they work. If they didn’t work, they simply would have been redundant. It’s a matter of finding the technique and teacher that works for you. You can go on an app and you can read and learn from a book but ideally, the most efficient and effective way is to learn with a teacher. They’re qualified in the art of training you into meditation. There are different forms of meditation. Some are a little bit more challenging and some are possibly harder to access than others. I did a lot of research into meditation. I wanted one that can get me deep quickly and it wasn’t going to take me three hours a day of trying to clear my chakras.
Recharging Your Mind: Meditation is a very efficient way of getting a reboot to our battery cells.
What I wanted to do is to transcend and to find a deep state of restfulness and that’s why I chose a particular style of meditation using particular mantras or sounds that would take my mind quite deeply. Also to allow me to get into a deep state within minutes. That’s a technique that I searched for. It comes under different names like primordial sound technique, or Vedic meditation or transcendental meditation, but they’re all using a particular sound or word that you repeat over inside your head silently that takes the mind deeper and deeper.
That’s an effective meditation but it’s not the only one. Other people like the Vipassana or Zen style meditation which is sitting and guided meditations. I do recommend to continue to look and search, there’s not just one. There are multiple forms of meditation. If you find a technique that you resonate with, there might be different teachers and some of you resonate more within that tradition than other ones. Some students love coming to me because of my background and some like going to another type of teacher in that tradition and that’s totally cool as well.
You wrote a book called The Portal: How Meditation Can Save the World. First of all, I’m fascinated that the subtitle of the book is saving the world as opposed to helping you be more productive or help save yourself or something like that. That alone tells me much about you, Tom, and your book, because a lot of people will go, “That’s a lofty goal. I don’t know if I need to buy a book to save the world. I want to make myself better.” Let’s start with that title and where that came from. How’d you come up with Portal? Did you get anybody else surprised that you’re talking about saving the world?
It is. What we didn’t want to provide was a manual because there are so many of them out there already. A step-by-step, that’s not what this is. This is a portal that represents two things. Firstly, it’s your own individual journey through the transitional point, which is what meditation is. It’s the pathway through to a place that already exists and that stillness and silence. Why we want to get some stillness and silence is on a physiological level, it transforms our body and our biochemistry. On a spiritual-mental level, it allows us to find a deep sense of peacefulness and contentedness that exists without that constant yearning, craving mind that is searching for more and more all the time.
The Portal is the process of transcending or going into the journey of meditation but it also represents the transitional point for humanity. We’re on a macro level, transitioning from a state of ignorance, suffering, chaos and confusion through to an awakened period of time for humanity. In Vedic philosophy, it’s called Satya Yuga, which is an era of time where there is collectively a society that’s generally healthy and happy. A lot of things have to change when we get to that point. A lot of systems have to change.
[bctt tweet=”Recharge your mind battery like you do your cell phone battery. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Let’s talk about mass consciousness in the state of fear. When 9/11 happened here in the States, it was constantly broadcasting planes crashing into the buildings over and over again. People don’t realize watching how it’s addictive. The fear of what’s next, “Are we next? What about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco? Is this building safe?” Unless you consciously choose to go into a portal, where things are peaceful and calm and not at that effect, to me, it’s almost the difference between staying up in the storm on a sea or going under the water. The analogy I also think might be useful and I’d love your opinion if these are useful. If you’re taking off in an airplane and it is stormy, whether it’s snow or rain and you get high enough, you get above all of that. That becomes another portal analogy for me.
That’s a beautiful one.
I think to myself, you described when I heard you speak, and you’re such a good speaker. If anyone’s looking for a speaker, I want to recommend you personally. Where do good ideas come from? Where do insights come from? You describe this wonderful place of peacefulness, calm, insights, innovation and creativity. We’re not going through the portal to get there and we’re staying, if you will, above the sea where it’s stormy and thinking some great ideas are going to come from that. I want to have you expound on that a little bit from what I heard you talk about because that imagery resonated with me.
I was doing a talk at a company. I was taking them through what their standard day would look like. Instead of mirroring back to them roughly what their day might look like. They ensure that their day wakes up and they get on their phone and quickly scroll through their news feeds, get on the bus or the train going to work, go through their emails, go through possibly watching videos on YouTube, get to work, do their emails, and have meetings. They take a lunch break, catch up on their social media, which they haven’t seen for the last few hours. They’ll go back to work and go through some more meetings and some emails and some documents and things like that. On the way home, they’re going through their news feeds. When they get home, they’re watching the TV watching the news, Master Chef and The Bachelor. They might do a final little wrap on their social media before bed. If they’ve got a little bit of time, they might pick up a book and read a book.
If you look at what’s happening in through that entire day, their mind is digesting other people’s words and thoughts. What happens is there are no open windows for their mind to have some level of accessing a field of creative possibility. They might get inspired by some of those podcasts, books or videos that they’ve watched and all of those Instagram posts that effectively had none of their own insights and a-ha moments. There are no gaps in the day. The interesting thing is we’re doing this time and time again day in and day out where 85% of our thoughts are regurgitating recycled thoughts of the day before, which are 85% to 95% of other people’s thoughts. It’s because there are not enough gaps in the day to have any of our own thoughts anyway. Most of those thoughts when we do have them is, “I wonder if I’m going to have a Caesar salad or whether I’m going to have a chicken pizza for lunch.”
Recharging Your Mind: In order for the world to be healthy and happy, we have to be healthy and happy.
It’s fear-based, “Is my marriage ending? Am I going to go broke? Will I be homeless?” If you keep having those fear thoughts and you’re in a loop or if you can’t believe somebody said something that made me mad. Now I’m mad as if it happened and it happened last week. You’re triggered all the time and you’re walking around angry. That’s where I’m thrilled that someone like you is on the planet because if you step back and think how many people are angry behind the wheel of a car, on the subway and at an airport. If no one is meditating or getting out of this anger loop, no wonder everyone’s rude and pushy.
I had a woman on a podcast asked me to speak about the emotional poverty we have on the planet. I said to her, “We need to pause this there because we actually don’t have emotional poverty.” She was thinking that having emotional expression is a healthy thing, but it’s not. What we want to do is transcend even that. It’s okay if we’re having an emotional response that’s authentic and relevant to that particular experience. What we also as well as want to explore is being in the next level of our own evolution where we’re not completely reactive because emotions are reactive to situations. We’re constantly reacting to situations, where that is making me feel this.
We’re not in our own state of autonomy where we’re able to observe those circumstances from the space of compassion, from love, from unconditional love, and from a state of acceptance. I’m moved into action to create change but I’m not having a rapid deterioration in my feeling body as a result of what’s happening in the world around me. That gives us autonomy but it also gives us a power that allows us to move forward in a much more autonomous state where I’m able to be proactive in creating something that’s going to contribute to the improvement of society and my own well-being. As opposed to constantly deteriorating my own state, because other things around me are making me feel that way.
To try and sum up what you’ve said, if we create a gap in our mind and in our day even where we can get quiet and listen to some of our own internal insights. We break that loop of fear, anger, resentment and reaction in a much faster way, which gives us some power and freedom.
We do it daily. We have a daily meditation practice and that is a technique that allows us to sit, withdraw from the world of sense, story and drama to go into a state of stillness and silence. That stillness and silence are dynamic. It’s not empty, it’s dynamic. It’s the field of all infinite possibilities. We use that analogy the phone doesn’t have the internet in it. The internet is around and the phone is on the internet just as we sit within the field of all possibilities. Most of us don’t know how to access that field. When we go into stillness of silence, we now quiet the mind and the mind is open to tuning in to all possibilities. Everything that’s been designed and created by man and woman, suited by humankind was cognized out of the creative intention, possibility and the intention to manifest that. It’s a phone, pen, a brochure, the chair we’re sitting on, it’s the car you’re driving in. It all had a possibility and was in the field of possibility. It took someone to manage to cognize it and turn it into a manifested reality.
Which came first, your movie, The Portal or your book?
The film was first and in the making of the film, we interviewed 9 people, 6 stories and 3 futurists and we took extracts of those interviews, compile them and edited them into a book format. The director and I added extra components to that.
What’s the website for people to go to find out about the film, the book? There will be some other things coming up here including some meditation apps or even the way to hire you to speak or work with you one-on-one if I’m understanding correctly.
[bctt tweet=”The portal is the process of transcending into the journey of meditation, but also represents the transitional point for humanity. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
EnterThePortal.com is all about the film, the book and the online programs and TomCronin.com is for booking for speaking, retreats and coaching.
Tom, this has been wonderful to hear from you again, to get to ask you some specific questions and your overall energy. You can tell that you are walking your talk. Any last thoughts you want to leave us with?
It’s easy for us without social media and news to think the worst is happening in the world. That’s what does sell media but there are some phenomenal exciting things happening in the world as well. We are in the process of transformation. The mere fact alone that we can have a podcast like this beam it out to people all over the world and talk about positive progressive things, it shows that progress is happening and change is happening. To get excited about what lies ahead for humanity. It is complex. There are some major challenges facing us but as we talked about in the film, we all have something wonderful to contribute to the world. Realizing, expressing and sharing that is part of what makes this world a beautiful and colorful place. Beyond where we’re at if we have a vision for what life looks like on an enlightened planet is an exciting world where people are healthy and happy. It’s phenomenal.
In order for the world to be healthy and happy, we have to be healthy and happy.
That’s it. That’s the starting point.
Thanks again, Tom. The book is called The Portal, the movie is The Portal, TomCronin.com and EnterThePortal.com.
It’s good to be here. Thanks for reading.
Important Links
- The Portal: How Meditation Can Save the World
- The Stillness Project
- https://EnterThePortal.com/
- TomCronin.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Speakers Loft: Elevating Your Value As A Speaker With Kristian Ravn
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Breaking into an industry and carving your name on its walls is all about mindset. In another inspiring episode, John Livesay chats with Kristian Ravn, a former journalist, philosopher, and the Founder of SpeakersLoft, a tech solution to help prevent loneliness for speakers on the road. Kristian talks about his background in philosophy, journalism, and technology and how it all come together on SpeakersLoft. He shares his idea of trust before everything else and how to negotiate around fees for speaking gigs, and discusses the phases in engaging with people including mirroring.
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Listen to the podcast here
Speakers Loft: Elevating Your Value As A Speaker With Kristian Ravn
My guest is Kristian Ravn out of Denmark. He’s created something called SpeakersLoft, which is a tech solution to help prevent loneliness for speakers on the road. What a fascinating concept. He talks about his background in philosophy, journalism, technology and how it’s all come together on SpeakersLoft. One of the favorite quotes from the episode that he creates content around is, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” No matter what industry you’re in and you’re trying to break through or grow your business, that’s the mindset you have to have.
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My guest is Kristian Ravn. What he does is he has created something called SpeakersLoft. He helps create more business for public speakers who travel for speaking. He is based in Copenhagen, but he is certainly a citizen of the world. Kristian, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for having me.
I always like to ask my guests to tell their own stories of origin. You can go back as far as you want, in your childhood or your college, university days. I know you didn’t wake up as a young lad and say, “I’m going to launch SpeakersLoft because I see a problem in the speaking industry I can fix.” You’ve had some other training as a journalist and philosophy. Give us a sense of your background and how you got to be a grouper.
Possibly looking back as a young man, I grew up on a farm, the dangerous side of Denmark, Germany border. Everything was going the traditional way until I stumbled upon the philosophy thing, which was mesmerizing to a young mind. I figured we have all these smart Germans and a lot of smart English philosophers. The self-off certainty you have when you’re twenty, I jumped on that and I went to the university. I was like, “I’m going to solve the problem of identity. I’m going to solve the problem of ethics. I don’t see why this is so hard.” I went through some humbling years because those problems are fantastic. I consider it a privilege to have spent time on them, but I also at some point decided that enough was enough and I’m not going to be the one to solve any of that.
I started studying journalism, which I’d say the hardest thing I’ve ever done was going from something so abstract as to try and conceive the boundaries of what can be thought to telling a story, which I know also you’ve dealt with a lot. Storytelling is a fantastic tool, but nobody cares if it doesn’t have structure. It isn’t concrete and it doesn’t have images. There’s no flow. I’m trying to tell people how the world as they perceive it may not be as it is horrible in the storytelling. That was very hard. After that, I worked in publishing for a few years and I felt myself becoming more and more interested in the tech side of things. Working with data sets, finding out what is it that makes a speaker or offer going successful. If you break down all the data, you can find about it and what makes a difference when you go into the marketing side.
I did that for a couple of years. I met the friend of a friend, who runs the speaker bureaus. He said, “The work I do is I have these thousands of speakers across Europe and in North America. They have a very lonesome job because they go out in their own states. They are the center of attention for 45 minutes. They get on the flight back and they prepare and research and try to find the next job. We have to cater to the client, not the speaker because they’re the ones paying.” It always feels like we could possibly create something more, something that creates a sense of meaning in being a speaker. He said, “Do you think you can do that?” We had a beer. I said, “I’m pretty sure I can do that.” Now we’re doing the SpeakersLoft.
I find it fascinating because hearing the backstory of philosophy, which you said one of the topics was identity. Who are we, what’s our purpose, what makes us different than everyone else, yet how do we fit in as a tribe? All of those are issues that people face from time to time depending on where you are in your little journey. Journalism hones in on the who, what, where, when aspect of it. Those journalistic skills are important for crafting a talk and certainly a story. You take it one step further with technology where you have created a tech solution to loneliness. That’s how I define SpeakersLoft.
You’re doing me a great honor by describing it that way. If it becomes that, I will be so insanely proud.
I’m the Pitch Whisperer. I love to come up with a soundbite for people so that they can get people’s attention. They are intrigued to want to know more. If you say that to people, you might get the ideal answer where people say, “What do you do?” It’s like, “I’ve created a tech solution that helps loneliness for speakers on the world traveling.” People might be intrigued enough to want to know more, which is the answer that everybody hopes for when they’re giving their little elevator pitch.
Speakers Loft: The whole business of speaking is about trust.
I’ll be sure to try it out.
Let me know how it goes. Those little nuggets all come from the story of origin, which is why I always tell our audience, it’s so important to have your story of origin ready in a clear, concise way so that people get a sense of who you are. It’s important, Kristian, that people trust and like you before they’re willing to get to know you. What are your thoughts on that?
Trust is everything. We even found hints of trust in the data of speakers. The whole business of speaking is about trust. One thing phenomenally interesting is if you look at the actress in the field around speaking where the bureaus are very central. You could make a strong argument that they are a nonsensical entity in the ecosystem because they are a middleman that takes money from two sides that get along together. I’ve had that set by speakers and it’s going to, “Why should I give my bureau commission? I don’t like to work with bureaus. I don’t see the point.”
If you, as a speaker don’t see the point, then you need to step into the shoes of the client. If the client books through a bureau, they know that their reputation inside the company they’re from is on the line when they hire a speaker. It’s not that they’re hiring the speaker, they are placing that trust and money in a brand who will also fail if they fail. It’s a sharing of the burden. If you have that level of trust and the need for trust as part of your analysis, it makes perfect sense.
You’ve touched on a couple of things that are key here. First of all, the model of a speaking bureau, a lot of us as speakers think. “I can sell myself. I don’t need somebody.” I have come to learn those successful people who have created a brand of being perceived as a thought leader and an expert where people are willing to pay you to come to speak, have a team of people that represent them because you’re too busy doing what you do. Steve Wozniak, for example, does not pitch himself. The same thing is true when I launched my book. I hired a publicist. What the publicist and speaking bureaus offer from my perspective is helping clients de-risk their choice of who they’re going to hire.
[bctt tweet=”Trust and integrity are the keys to success.” username=”John_Livesay”]
If a publicist has a relationship with a journalist at a Fortune or Inc. or what have you, they pitch a story, an idea covering how do you get out of the friend zone at work? Here’s John’s book on how to do that. The journalist respects the publicist enough to know, “That’s an interesting hook. If you think this is good and you think the author would be a good interview, I’ll do it if it helps.” The same thing is true when a client is involved with the speaking bureau. They want to know if this person has integrity, which is one of the things you talked about with ethics. Are they going to do what they say they’re going to do?
The practical issue is, is this speaker going to show up? If you’re a client and you want to hire a speaker, it’s a one-off from the speaker. If they do poorly, it’s probably not going to pursue them that much. If they get all of that gigs through the bureau and the bureau pitch them to the client and they let down both the client and the bureau, they’re not going to get any more from the bureau. All of this is a risk and trust balancing game.
You’ve created SpeakersLoft that is a place that allows speakers from all over the world who are traveling to connect with other speakers while they happen to be in that city or town.
That’s phase one. We can trust anyone we don’t know or we can, but it’d be weird and doesn’t lead anywhere. The idea is when I go to Rome, Berlin or Washington and so can any member of the network, the fashion emails, everyone is saying, “I’m going to be in town. Do any of you have time for a cup of coffee? I’m interested in how the business is going here.” This magical thing happens. This is what happens when people meet. Some people you click with and you’re like, “I like this guy. This woman is inspiring,” or “The conversation we just had over a cup of coffee blew my mind.” These people are going to be people we feel comfortable helping out in the future.
A lot of clients will say to me sometimes, “You did a great job. Thanks a lot. We never bring the same speaker back. Who else do you know that we might consider next?” If you’ve got a relationship of speakers that you’ve connected with through SpeakersLoft or other ways, that’s a fantastic referral source and it works in two ways. You’ve been kind enough because you have this unique perspective of seeing all the different specificities, the expertise that different people speak on that you’re like, “This person might want to know this person.” Some of the introductions you’ve made to me because all these people are on your platform have been life-changing literally.
Speakers Loft: Mirroring is repeating back the last three words somebody says to you but in a downward inflection.
One gentleman, in particular, is our mutual friend, Sameer Somal. He helps people with their digital reputation and specifically in the law industry. He and I were brainstorming and I said, “You’re helping law firms at the beginning of their process of getting a new client.” People are going to search for law firms to see if they even want to interview them. Once they see that they have good results and there are no negative things, they might call them in to interview them. That’s where I step in with my talks and training to help them be better storytellers to win against two other competitors. It was like, “I’ve spoken to this law firm and let me make an intro for you.”
That collaboration is valuable. You introduced me to another gentleman, Fireman Rob. He has this amazing story of he’s a superhero, saving people, fires and 9/11, but he needs some introductions and some help along the way. Some of us are able to mentor other people and make introductions on, “You’re thinking of writing a book or you’re thinking of launching a podcast. Let me give you the people that I’ve already vetted.” That whole energy of creating a place of trust and support. This other factor, unless you’ve experienced it and you did a great job painting the picture of it, people who have to travel for work have an understanding of what it’s like.
Typically, you’re on the road and you don’t know anybody. Sometimes if you’re in sales and traveling or you’re going to a convention, you know other people. When you don’t know anyone, especially if you’re in a foreign country or city. You go from that high of attention and hopefully great feedback and feeling like you made a difference to, “I’m back in my hotel room alone. I’m having dinner alone or the night before,” and all that stuff. How differently that creates the experience for someone if they could tap into SpeakersLoft and say, “I’m going to be here, I’m going to be there,” and start to meet other people who would understand their industry and understand the challenges of being on the road. In fact, one of the jokes I heard from someone was, “We speak for free. They pay us to travel.” Tell us a little bit about the platform and the technology behind it.
Phase one is building this global city guide and it grows whenever we get new members, we have new cities in. The last ones are Heidelberg, Germany, Glasgow and a place in Virginia. We were mostly in North America, but I’m glad to see Europe is picking up and a few places down in Australia as well. That’s one thing. You go into the system. You got a profile. You can send out an email to everyone saying, “I’m going to be in town.” You can talk to them on the Facebook group. Phase two is a structured way to share everywhere we’ve been. What’s strange or fantastic about speaking is that the relationship with the client is typically not going to be for years.
If you’re an ad agency, you’re going to work with a client for years because that makes a lot of sense. As a speaker, you do it once. What we want to create is when you and I, for instance, connect on that. I speak at Carlsberg here in Copenhagen. After that job is done because we’re connected, you’d get a hint saying, “There are these people in Copenhagen. Kristian just spoke there. You’ve spoken on the same topic. Maybe they’d be interesting. Maybe he can introduce you.” You get an automatic warm lead feeling from your connections, which will then make it easier to focus on what to pursue next. The job is probably not going to be next door, but I don’t think I’ve met a lot of speakers who don’t want to travel.
[bctt tweet=”What’s strange or fantastic about speaking is that the relationship with the client is typically not going to be for years.” username=”John_Livesay”]
We are willing to go where they need us.
That’s fantastic because you can get all these leads saying, “There’s this one job in Germany. There’s this one in Tokyo. There is this one down in Ben-Hur in Namibia.” You’re going to pursue him like you would other jobs. Apart from that being a place where you already have a foot in the door, this is all about trust. If you can go somewhere and you can talk to a specific person and say, “I know John and he spoke here. He talked highly of your organization. I was curious to see if you’ve got other things coming up.” That’s a foot in the door. That can take the lead toned down from maybe 1.5, 2 years to maybe half a year or a year. That’s worthwhile there, but it also focuses on the job you have in front of you as a speaker. It can feel like you’re climbing a mountain every day. You’ve got to keep your website updated. You’ve got to be all of these different social media profiles. You’ve got to do your accounts and your expenses. You’ve also got to talk to your bureau and they probably have something they want you to update as well. It’s so many things all the time. “In the sense of a focused approach, I thought we’d try this.”
Is there a phase three or it’s just those two phases?
Phase three is a lot more fluid in my mind, but I imagine it would look something like if you go on the website and say, “I’m going to Rome.” I say, “These five organizations in Rome, the ones the members say are easiest to work with, you should probably call them up in advance and see if you can get another gig while you’re there.” That becomes possible as the community matures because you need some data. You need some relations. It’s definitely doable, but first things first.
Are you familiar with the FICO scores, credit scores here in the US? If you have good credit and you pay your credit cards on time and all that good stuff, you get a good credit score and that determines whether you get a good interest rate for a new car or home. I was thinking since you’re such a data tech guy, and the same thing with Uber, you get rated by the drivers. You rate the drivers and the drivers rate you. Everybody who rides an Uber has a rating on there. You also see what the driver’s rating is. I was envisioning that phase three or four, whatever it’s going to be, that there might be some rating from other fellow speakers. “This person is helpful and/or clients,” that could be an interesting way to keep this growing and incentivize people to keep their scores up. If it incentivizes people to be nicer to their Uber driver, I’m all for it. I would assume the same thing might be happening within this ecosystem.
[bctt tweet=”Fiction an immensely good way to gain a perspective. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
If we can find ways to say, “This organization is nice to work with and this speaker is helpful,” that would only strengthen the community. There is a need for it in the sense that if you don’t have any of these checks, anybody could theoretically come into the system and start spamming everyone in every direction. We don’t want that to happen because that would cost everyone in the system credibility. There needs to be some of you give a little, you get a lot, you give a little more, you get a lot more.
You also have great content on the site and in the emails you send out. In fact, one came in about negotiation tools. Everyone’s always interested in that concept. That’s a very hot topic.
It’s so fascinating. That is a world of its own. I started reading about it years ago and that blew my mind. I was dumb enough to think of it as a trench warfare game. I want to get this. I started reading these books. I lost all the color in my face. I was like, “You have not been a very bright man for a long time,” but it’s fun to learn.
Your wife using it on you, which made me laugh and I thought, “The fact that this concept of mirroring other people, that’s how empathy comes about.” When people do that, even hostage negotiations for the FBI, the negotiation person has to show some empathy for the criminal if they’re going to be able to negotiate with them. We’re not at that level of lives being at stake, but it’s typically you and two other speakers. It can feel like a life or death situation depending on how much you want that particular speaking engagement. This premise of enticing people to keep talking and mirroring where they are as opposed to jumping into what you want. Talk a little bit about your experience, either with your wife or what you’ve seen in business.
The mirroring thing is repeating back the last three words somebody says to do but in a downward inflection. If you do an upwards inflection, it’s going to sound like a question. You don’t have to make that question. You say it and that spurs the moment you’re talking. There are a lot of things that need to be done. You don’t just want to keep people talking. The reason you do it is you’d want to get them saying their fears out loud. There are always concerns. If somebody wants to hire you as a speaker, they probably checked out your YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn and maybe talk to some people about you. There’s probably still something lingering in their mind.
They might not know what it is until they’ve said it. You’ve probably tried that too, that sometimes we’re a little hesitant to do something and we don’t know why. We’re talking about it and realized when you say, that’s probably what kept me back. The client can feel that too. Mirroring it is a way for them to offer information and you can dig into it and say, “I’ve sensed some hesitation in you when you say this, are you afraid? I don’t know enough about the line of work you’re in. Did you have a bad experience with a previous speaker?” A lot of the times, people say no to the speakers. It’s not because they don’t want that speaker, but because of something they experienced in the past or they’re worried about meeting the fees or something. If it’s not brought to light, you can talk about it. When you do mirroring, you’d get them to talk more so you can find out where they are in this whole discussion.
[bctt tweet=”Mirroring is a great negotiation tool. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
It reminds me of psychotherapy. When you go to see a therapist, let’s say you’re a married couple. You walk in the door and you say, “We’re here because our sex life is bad.” They call that a presenting problem in therapy. That’s what you think is the problem but if the therapist listens enough, mostly some underlying causes for the presenting problem. The reason that’s happening is there are some unspoken resentments or whatever else is going on that’s causing that problem. The same thing is true in business. You have some amazing content on SpeakersLoft about your fees and this great line about, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
It seemed fitting. I wanted to say it wasn’t quoted by me, it was by an American woman who wasn’t represented properly in politics. She just kept at it and that’s an admirable way to go about things.
Almost everyone who has to sell anything themselves or product or service, please come up and you have to justify your fees. Do you have any suggestions around either the mindset of the value you’re providing or negotiation around fees?
SpeakersLoft did get the report on that. It depends on where you are in your stage. If you’ve been on stage several times and people are calling you, then a whole to your fee. Stand your ground. You need to get paid for this because what you deliver is a real product. People know that, but I also think people sometimes feel like imposters a little bit. You’re going in front of a lot of people and you’re saying, “I want somewhere between $7,500 or $12,000.” I have a very large data set. Some people get a lot of money for going on stage. One was $250,000, which was well done, well negotiate. It becomes a problem that confidence is an issue. There’s a thing you need to get over. You go from trying it a few times for free to saying, “I want to be paid maybe $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000,” if you’re in the US. You have to hold to it. If you break through that glass ceiling, it’s going to be easier. The first time is horrible. The first time is full of doubt, fears and stuff, but I generally say if you knew it and you’re in the US state, it takes about $4,000 or $5,000 if you are doing it no directly with the client.
It’s all about getting out of your comfort zone and asking for a little bit more. It’s based on confidence. One of my favorite quotes about confidence is from the tennis pro, Arthur Ashe, who said, “The key to success is confidence and the key to confidence is preparation.” He’d probably do that. You are extremely prepared. Do you have a final quote or a book you want to recommend?
I pretty much read books on anything I can find. I try to read a book about something I don’t know anything about. I’d highly recommend doing that because that makes it very hard to become walled in by preexisting beliefs. That would be my advice. I’m reading Philip Pullman’s books about his dark materials and Lyra, his world of demons and stuff. It’s a fiction. I find fiction an immensely good way to gain a perspective. I would highly recommend doing that as well.
The website is SpeakersLoft.com. If anyone is thinking of becoming a speaker, is the speaker, wants to grow their network, wants to get a little less lonely on the road, or wants to see a great way of creating something new as an entrepreneur, I recommend going to the website. Thanks again, Kristian. It’s been great having you.
It was my pleasure. Thank you.
Important Links
- SpeakersLoft
- Sameer Somal – Previous episode
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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You Don’t Have To Be Ruthless To Win With Jonathan Keyser
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
You don’t have to be ruthless to win. By using the Selfless Service Model, Jonathan Keyser skyrocketed his success. Jonathan is the Founder and thought leader behind Keyser Co., the largest tenant rep commercial real estate firm in Arizona and one of the most rapidly growing in the country. Today on The Successful Pitch, he talks with John Livesay about his journey – how he learned to be selfless, lost his way, and realized that the key to success is to help others. He also talks about the difference between being the kind of person that’s always hunting for the next deal versus developing relationships and growing them to get referrals and growth. Service is a choice and not something people are forced into, so don’t miss this episode to discover how you, too, can take a stand for culture over profits and still achieve extraordinary success.
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Listen to the podcast here
You Don’t Have To Be Ruthless To Win With Jonathan Keyser
Our guest is Jonathan Keyser, who’s the Founder and thought leader behind Keyser, which is the largest occupier services commercial real estate brokerage firm in Arizona. Through sheer determination and focus on selfless service, Jonathan is disrupting the commercial real estate industry. He’s a bestselling author, a media contributor and a strong supporter of the Conscious Capitalism movement. Jonathan is here to share his journey, mission and selfless service approach to business and his book, You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. His book isn’t about him, it’s about you. Jonathan will share how you can activate selflessness in your life and see how and why this counterintuitive strategy can create extraordinary long-term success in your own business. Jonathan, welcome.
Thanks for having me.
I love this mindset of selflessness and You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. Can you take us back to your own story of origin? Jonathan, were you a young lad, was it high school, was it college, when did you start to notice that being successful is about helping others?
My story is unusual compared to most people in business. I was a Christian missionary kid overseas in Papua New Guinea. For those who don’t know where that is, that’s right by Australia. I grew up being taught by my parents to love and serve, help, give and do good for others. When we got back from overseas, I had this realization, “We’re poor.” I didn’t like being poor. I decided that I was going to be rich. I got into commercial real estate because I wanted to be rich and a buddy of mine said, “You could make a lot of money doing this, and this is a personality fit for what your personality is like.”
I got into commercial real estate to make a bunch of money and I realized quickly this is a ruthless industry. Everybody is scratching, clawing and fighting their way to the top. I thought, “Love and serve, that’s what my parents taught me. They’re poor, I don’t want to be poor.” Ruthless, that’s what I see around me. These guys have fancy cars, huge homes, beautiful families, and exotic vacations. I became ruthless because I wanted that stuff but I was miserable and I was misaligned with my core values. I felt trapped, I felt I wanted the stuff but I felt I had to be ruthless to be successful.
[bctt tweet=”Stand for culture over profit. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
A number of years ago, a speaker at a conference gets up and starts talking about service and I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, “This guy is a successful guy. What the heck is he talking about?” He’s talking about how he’s created a successful enterprise by helping others succeed and I thought, “Huh.” I went up to him afterward and first I had to see if he was the real deal. I said, “Is that a shtick that you say, or is that real? Is that something that you practice?” He said, “No, I do.” I said, “How does it work?” He goes, “Think of it like you’re hunting. You grab your gun off the wall, you go out, you shoot a piece of whatever, you bring it back, skin it, eat it, and you’ve got to go do that all over again. What I’m describing is more like farming.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Imagine that you’re out serving and helping as many people as you can all day, and each one of those acts of service is planting a seed.” He likened it to a citrus tree, which in my backyard here in Arizona where I’m based, citrus trees grow everywhere here.
I have a huge one in my backyard that’s a lemon tree but when it was little I thought it was half dead, I didn’t even think it was ever going to yield fruit. It took me a lot of nurturing, watering and pruning and all of that activity led to a tree that I can’t give the fruit away, and that’s where he likened it to. He said, “Over time, as you help all these people and you nurture these relationships, they yield fruit and you don’t have to go out and sell all over again.” I said, “That’s amazing. How do I do that?” That started this process where I decided I was going to reinvent myself. I came back to Arizona through my old cut-throat business plan away that was sales-oriented and helping everybody that I could, asking people one question, “How can I help you?” People are like, “What do you mean how can you help me?” I’m like, “What do you need?” I was helping people get jobs. I was helping people’s kids get connected.
I was doing anything they needed. I was helping people find doctors. I became a free community concierge and everybody in my industry thought I had bumped my head. They thought I’d gone off the deep end, here I was national rookie of the year for Grubb and Ellis and all of a sudden I’m doing what appears to be nonprofit work for free. When I went up to that speaker and asked him, “If this is true, if this works, how come no one else is doing it if this is such a strategy for success?” He said, “Because it takes too long.” I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “It will take you about five years.” I thought, “Okay.” That’s what I experienced too when I was back here building it, this is the long game. I was helping, serving, giving, nothing was coming back and through that process, people were questioning my sanity.
After five years, all those acts of service that I have been putting out there started to come back. I went from laughingstock at the company to top producer and then it started to take off. In an epiphany moment in 2012. As I sat there frustrated with my inability to scale a culture of service within a traditional commercial state firm environment, I realized that I had the opportunity to start, this needed a life of its own. If I could create a company and teach other people in commercial real estate brokerage how they could succeed by helping others succeed. If I could show that’s possible, I could change the industry. I could change the world and show other people that were in ruthless industries as well, “You can do this too.”
I came back from that trip where I had an epiphany and started my own firm. We’re the largest firm of our kind in Arizona and one of the fastest-growing in the country per Inc. 5000. I’m speaking all over the country. My book hit number one and it’s a wild experience because I know what it was like when I started it, and I know how many people were skeptical and thought I was crazy. The world has shifted and more and more people are starting to realize that, “Maybe this service stuff works.” My bottom-line message to the world is, you truly don’t have to be ruthless to win and in fact, I would argue that the most sustainable way to create long-term success is by helping as many people as possible. That’s what we’re about at Keyser and that’s why we’re growing quickly.
There might be some people out there saying, “I love the concept, Jonathan, but I don’t have five years. Can I still not be ruthless and be successful in the near short-term?” How do you answer that?
Selfless Service Model: The world has shifted and more and more people are starting to realize that selfless service actually works.
For me, it was a process where I had to convert myself from ruthless to selfless, and that was not an overnight or an easy process. One, you can’t rush growing a flower. It was a certain amount of relationship development that takes time. For those who are looking to make a quick buck, this is not the strategy. You can switch podcasts. This is for those who want to create long-term success. That’s the first point. The second point is knowing what I know now. Part of what I did in the book was take all the lessons that I’ve learned over the last number of years and pack it into this book so that you could create an extraordinary culture of selfless service for yourself. One simple way to look at it, for those who want a quick takeaway, without changing your entire business plan, without changing your entire strategy or your approach, bring a mindset into every interaction you have, then this mindset is one of, “How can I help this person?”
What I always try to do is every interaction I have, I’d be present. I listen to my own head, I don’t think about what I have to do afterward and what I have to do before. I’m right there in the moment and I try to focus on that person from a mindset of, “How can I ask the right questions? How can I listen deeply? How can I ensure that I’m identifying ways that I can help that person?” I don’t consider an interaction a success until I’ve identified three ways that I can help them. By helping them, I don’t mean how can I help them do a real estate transaction? I mean, how I can help them in ways that have nothing to do with how I make money? If you do that, what you’ll find is that the relationships you create, the speed, the trust, like Stephen Covey talks about, is much more rapid than going through a traditional sales route.
I believe that selfless service is selfish. I believe that self-interest to help other people because over the long-term, you’re going to create extraordinary success. It’s not an instant gratification game. The other problem is, a lot of people will think, “I gave somebody something and I helped them and there’s nothing coming back.” It’s like, “That’s not the point.” The point is you can’t outgive the universe. If you’re expecting something in return, you’re not doing it from a selfless service place. It’s almost creepy, it’s like this barter, but they don’t even know its barter. You’re ending to give them something of value, expecting something in return but pretending you’re not, but upset if you do. It’s crazy but everybody does it.
It reminds me of an artist who has to express whether they sing, paint, or write and if you don’t do it, you start to get depressed and I feel like that about speaking. We’re professional speakers. We speak because we love it but there’s a part of us that needs to get that out into the world. It’s part of our purpose and our mission. That’s what I feel listening to you. What resonates with you is, “I need to give and it’s part of my DNA.” I’m not attached to it coming back in any particular form and when we let go of that scorecard, what I’m hearing you say is, “Then we’re free to be our best selves.”
You’re a storytelling specialist. If you think back on all the relationships that are deep in your life from childhood and think about the people that you love the most and that you’d do anything for. It’s not the people that sold you a bill of goods. It’s not the people that took advantage of you in a weak moment. It’s the people that went above and beyond to help you. What if your entire strategy was, “How can I help all the people that if they appreciated it, could bring business to me in my firm?” How do you selflessly serve? We only have limited time. I’m not saying go and serve everyone because you can’t. Truthfully, I talk about this all the time in my keynotes, service has to be a choice. Not a choice, it’s an obligation. As soon as it’s an obligation, it turns into something that’s no longer service.
You can feel it if somebody hates their job and they don’t want to be an actor, they’re taking your order at a restaurant and they’re rolling their eyes and you can’t do that. Speaking of part one of your journey to selflessness, you have this great chapter called more than a pizza delivery guy, and I would love you to share that story.
[bctt tweet=”Service has to be a choice. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
When I was coming up, being poor, I was taking every opportunity that I could to try to figure out how I could make money. Before I even had the big, “I should go do something big with my life.” I was working at a burger joint. I was the cashier that wasn’t making much money and then someone, who became my buddy, drove the car through the window and he said, “Why are you working here?” I said, “I’m trying to make some money.” He goes, “You should come work over here at Domino’s Pizza.” I said, “Why is that?” He goes, “I make way more money than you. Look at my car.” I looked at his car and I’m like, “That’s a nice car. Can you get me an interview?” He said, “Yes.”
I went and I got an interview and I walked in and looked around. At the time, it was like me going to the commercial real estate brokerage firms where there are all these people that were successful and I said, “I want to be like that.” Here, it was the same thing and I was like, “How much money do you make? You make how much? You make $2,000 a month, are you serious? I could spend $2,000 a month.” I became the best delivery driver there and I figured out how to work the system. I figured out how to get the most runs and make the most money. As part of it, I realized that there could be more. I remember one day, I was sitting on my bed and my dad came in the room and he said, “Jonathan, you should do something big with your life.” I said, “What do you mean? I’m at Domino’s Pizza. I’m making $2,000 a month. I’ve made it.” He said, “You could be something great.” I said, “Like what?” He said, “You’re good at arguing, you could be an attorney.”
That whole idea that I could be an attorney, and I could wear a suit every day and be one of those guys that I saw on the TV, blew my mind. That was when the shift happened where I decided, “If my dad sees that in me, then maybe that is possible but if I’m going to be an attorney. I’m going to go to the best school.” I went to UCLA because I wanted to go to the best school I could get into. Once I was there, I had a professor talk me out of being an attorney, he told me, “I don’t think you’ll like it, Jonathan. You’d be bored. You should do something more entrepreneurial.” That’s how I stumbled into commercial real estate.
I love that journey from pizza boy to entrepreneur success, it’s fascinating. What I’m hearing through my storytelling lens is every good story has some mentors or Yoda in Star Wars, if you will. You had your father and a professor that took an interest in your story and shifted that narrative a little bit from, “There’s more to life than this.” You’re in your story sometimes, especially if you’re young, you can’t even imagine another life. Ironically, I met the CMO of Domino’s Pizza at a Coca-Cola event that I was speaking at, and I said, “Dennis, what’s your biggest marketing challenge?” He said, “Getting tech people to come work here.” Because his team has developed that tracking app. It’s no longer enough to get the pizza fast, people want to know, “Bob puts your pizza in the oven and it will be out in six minutes, and then Sue is going to drive it and checking the order before it goes in the box.”
That’s become a huge interactive way for people to get involved with the brand emotionally. He said, “We have to recruit tech people. We’re a pizza company that uses tech and that’s not doing it.” They used the rebirth storytelling genre and say to people who are in tech, “We’re an eCommerce company that happens to sell pizza. We’re using artificial intelligence to predict if you order the same pizza every Friday at 7:00. Odds are, the minute you click on the app or pick up the phone, we can put that order in, the pizza and maybe shave a minute of your delivery time off.” It’s come a long way from when you were delivering pizza. I thought you’d like that little update. Storytelling, technology and data are all coming together.
Selfless Service Model: If you’re expecting something in return, you’re not really doing it from a selfless service place.
You can see it in my industry as well. If you look at what we’re doing, the whole idea of bringing selflessness into an industry that’s not known for it, it’s revolutionary. There’s nothing like my book out there in the commercial real estate space. When we went number one in the commercial real estate category, I was blown away because people are interested in learning how they can do this for themselves. That’s why I wrote the book because I want people to say, “If this crazy guy can do it in commercial real estate and he can succeed and win in an industry as cutthroat, predatorial, and as ruthless as commercial real estate brokerage, you could do it anywhere.”
We have people that for the first time they have a broker that they can trust, someone that cares about them. You look at commercial real estate brokerage, it’s one of the most conflicted industries in the world. You have these big firms that say they represent both sides of transactions, it’s crazy. Here we come bringing this conflict free, deep level of service orientation, we talk about stories. I remember a client of ours, Marissa, who had a fast-growing technology company. I remember going into her and having a conversation. We explained all the things that we did and then throughout the process as we walked her through all the different steps and found her a flexible and great new office space for her people, and she said, “Jonathan, I’ve worked with a lot of brokers and I’ve never experienced that level of service. I swear you guys worked 3 to 4 times harder than anybody I ever saw and/or experienced.” I said, “That’s the point.”
The point is that when you go above and beyond for people, it creates extraordinary success. Why do I say that? Because not only is Marissa a client for life, but Marissa is out telling all of her friends, “Those Keyser guys, they are the best commercial real estate brokers firm. You have to talk to them.” That creates this pipeline of referrals. Where most people at traditional firms laugh at us and say, “Those guys do so much unnecessary work.” We’re used to the sales funnel, put as much in, push it through as fast as possible, get the deal done, but they miss the relational part of that. They miss the value creation opportunity, which is where we love to play.
[bctt tweet=”Are you a hunter or farmer? ” username=”John_Livesay”]
That goes back to what you said which is, “Do you want to be a hunter, or do you want to be a farmer?” It encapsulates everything that you said. The other thing I admire about you, Jonathan, is your ability to break through the clutter with clever phrases. The book itself, You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win, our brains go, “What? That’s the opposite of everything I’ve ever heard.” You have this chapter here called Through Green-colored Glasses, if that doesn’t intrigue people to want it, “I know rose color, what is a green-colored glass?” As you’re continuing to read this, look for little moments that Jonathan has peppered into his conversations and his stories to pull you in so you can start to think, “What can I say or do in my business book marketing day-to-day conversations that’s going to make me stand out?” Now that I’ve set that up, we have to learn what do you mean by looking through green-colored glasses?
The biggest example to follow up on the point you made, the biggest example of where I do that is this idea of the moniker selfless service. I don’t like the term servant leadership because it carries all these religious and obligatory undertones, and especially with all the scandals in the churches and all of that stuff, I felt it needed a fresh statement. It’s not tied to religion. It’s not tied to anything, it’s selflessness. It’s living selflessness in business. I was frustrated and I was trying to figure out how I was going to grow and build this practice of selflessness within commercial real estate, within an industry known for the opposite. I heard about a coach that was a super coach, Steve Hardison, and I got up the courage to go meet with him and I sat down in his office and one of the first things he said to me was, “If you work with me, I’m going to introduce yourself to yourself for the first time.” All of me went like, “That is the greatest line ever. That is such BS.” The truth is, that’s what he did. He’s my coach and one of the most extraordinary people in the world. It shows how skeptical I was for everything.
The next thing he said was, “You see these glasses?” He held up an imaginary pair of glasses, he said, “When you put those glasses on,” and imagine you’re driving in your car listening to me right now. Imagine grabbing an imaginary pair of glasses, putting them on your eyes and he said, “What do you see?” I said, “I see green.” He said, “Exactly. Everything that you see is through the lens of your personal filter and your filter, let’s say for the argument of this point is green. What I’m going to do is I’m going to help you take off the green glasses and see things as they are so that you could make the substantive changes in your life that you need to make to get what you want out of life.” That is exactly to me, this whole point of selflessness, I was selfless underneath because it was pounded into me.
All of us, our nature longs to be in service to other people, it brings us joy, it brings us contentment, it does give us everything in life we want, but we compartmentalize it somehow. We have this idea that we’re supposed to love, serve, give and help, but we do that in our personal lives where it matters, with our kids and our families and our church groups. Then we get into business and we have this idea that we’re supposed to put on a tough suit and fight for number one. All I’m saying to the world is, “What if that same skillset that’s deep in your DNA, that matters and that works where it matters the most could work in business?” There’s a big gap between conceptually getting that, and knowing how to do it.
Many people kept coming to us, they’d walked through our office here at Keyser in Scottsdale, our global HQ. They’d say, “You can feel this selfless culture here. How have you done this?” We created the Keyser Institute and I wrote the book to train, empower, and certify that next generation of selfless leader and teach people the practical how-tos of how to put selflessness into practice in a way that’s not going to make you go broke or make you be taken advantage of or trampled, but make you win. In our business, we’re winning more than we’re losing, and people are like, “How in the world are those crazy Keyser people, that all they talk about is love and service, they don’t do any traditional sales, how did they win and beat us in that presentation?” That’s what I’m trying to do for people, show people the path where they could do this for themselves.
[bctt tweet=”The most sustainable way to create long-term success is by helping as many people as possible. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the key reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast is this chapter you wrote about, Be Disruptive and Embrace Change. My whole TEDx Talk, Be The Lifeguard of Your Own Life, is about that topic. It’s rare to find somebody like you that’s embracing selflessness, not having to be ruthless and embracing change, I go, “Who? I’ve got to know you.” Tell us, how do you create a culture in your own company? When you’re hired to give keynote talks on this, how do you help other companies that know they have to embrace change but are afraid of it?
We’ve come up with a three-step process which we teach in the book and we call it, reinvention from the inside out. What does that mean? Like Gandhi said, “You have to be the change you want to see in the world.” Reinvention starts with yourself. You’ve got to start with yourself. For everybody that’s reading that tries to gain this, let me warn you, part of why it took me long is because I was trying to gain it. It wasn’t authentic. You have to create yourself into a selfless leader. You might ask, “How do I do that?” That’s why I wrote the book, that’s why we have the Keyser Institute. At a fundamental level, you have to change yourself.
The next step, the layer number two is creating a company culture around it. How do you create a company culture around it? We write about it in the book, but there are a lot of things you can do. One of which is, look to attract and retain the right people and remove the wrong people. Then create a culture based upon principles that all support that culture you want to make and keep that culture alive. We talk about and train how to do that. The third level is the community. As my good friend, John Mackey, over at Conscious Capitalism that cofounded Whole Foods likes to say, “You have all these external stakeholders that most people don’t think about.” It was great to see all those CEOs stand up at the business round table and say, “That’s more than shareholder value.” Not that shareholder value doesn’t matter, it’s massively important. You have to make money to have an impact, but there’s more than that. How do you treat your vendors? How do you treat your partners?
If you’re a company that’s known for being selfless, and it starts from the inside out, because a fish rots from the head. If you’re a leader that’s not selfless, not willing to reinvent yourself but wants to go tell everybody you have a selfless culture, it will fail. If you truly want to create success through service, it’s all here in the book, You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. Those that need additional help, we have tons of free resources on RuthlessBook.com and we have the Keyser Institute to train, empower and certify that next generation of selfless leader.
You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win: The Art of Badass Selfless Service
Jonathan, I can’t thank you enough for giving us those three breakdowns. What’s fascinating to me when you’re talking about point number two, attract and retain top talent. If companies are focused on, “Let me get the best talent and not worry about onboarding them properly or let alone keeping them happy,” then they have to start hunting again. Your whole culture is service and make people feel important and it works for your clients and it works with your top talent. You have explained and tantalized enough to make sure that we want to buy You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win. If people want to engage you for your own expertise either as a keynote speaker or to come in as a consultant and help other companies create this new culture that’s been successful in your industry and translates across any industry, then they know how to reach you.
RuthlessBook.com, you can find out anything on speaking and on the book. Keyser.com, that’s our company website and we’d be happy to engage. We have a ton of free resources. We have tons of ways that we can help. I’d be happy to do a free strategy call for anyone who wants to talk about their culture and how we could potentially help. Anybody that’s interested in having a true real estate partner that looks out for their best interests, we’d love to help as well.
One final comment, John, on that last point you made. The hardest part is having talented people that are culturally misaligned and making excuses for why you keep them on board. That is what I see most leaders making mistakes are doing. Frankly, I made those mistakes when I started the company because we had people that talked the big game and once they got in, they weren’t what they said they were and they were living the antithesis of what we preach, but they represented real revenue. When that happens, that’s when you know, that’s where the rubber meets the road, are you a selfless leader? Are you willing to stand for culture over profits? If you do that in the long-term, even though there might be some short-term heads, that you’ll have long-term success. Every time I removed a misaligned person, the whole organization breathes a huge sigh of relief.
Jonathan, thanks again for being such a great guest and sharing your wisdom.
Thanks for having me, John. I appreciate all you do in the world.
Important Links
- You Don’t Have to Be Ruthless to Win
- Keyser
- Conscious Capitalism
- Be The Lifeguard of Your Own Life – TEDx Talk
- Keyser Institute
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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