Relationship Secrets from Hong Kong with Priscilla Chan
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
After working for the Hong Kong government, Priscilla Chan decided to test her courage and character when she started her own business. As she spearheads Speakers Connect, Priscilla encourages speakers to spend time and passion on what they want to talk about. What speakers need to remember is that they shouldn’t sound mechanical when giving their pitch. Clients will listen if your research is tailor-made for them, which will in turn make you sound human instead of a robot. These are some of the relationship secrets that will translate to a successful pitch.
Today’s guest is Priscilla Chan, the founder of Speakers Connect, which is a speaking bureau based in Hong Kong. She has an amazing story of how she worked for the Hong Kong government and quit that job to start her own business. Not only that, but she had to start a business that nobody really understood what that business was. They only understand it in America and Australia but not in Hong Kong. She was quite the pioneer eight years ago and continues to be very successful doing it. She said, “The pain of staying stuck in a job that you don’t love is worse than the fear you have of trying something new.” She took that leap of faith in herself. She said, ”Running your own business really is a test of your own character; what kind of values and integrity and how do you communicate with people.” What she looks for in a good speaker, and I think this is true in any situation, is someone who’s got passion, expertise and customization of what they’re talking about. Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Relationship Secrets from Hong Kong with Priscilla Chan
Today, I’m honored to have Priscilla Chan who’s the Founder and Director of Speakers Connect, which is based in Hong Kong. She has such a fascinating story of how she works with speakers from around the world and clients around the world. She really has an insight into how she decided she was going to do this business after working for the Hong Kong government for years and decided she was going to go out on her own. In addition to that, she writes a blog on technology and startups. Priscilla, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me.
It’s an honor. We met through our mutual friend, Freddie Ravel. I always find that some of the best people I meet come from introductions. Do you find to be true for you, Priscilla?
Yes. I think it’s also because you feel the trust that the friend actually introduced both of you to each other. I also find that actually speakers are always very helpful. They like to introduce people to each other and they help each other out. I really enjoy working with speakers.
Before we get into what you’re doing now with speakers, let’s go back to your own story of origin, I like to call it. I know you went to the University of Hong Kong and got your MBA there. Did you ever have a thought while you were working on your degree that you would eventually have your own business?
Relationship Secrets: I got many different experiences, but sometimes this is something that I really like.
It’s actually a process. After I graduated from my first degree also from Hong Kong U, I started to work for the Hong Kong government. It’s a good training for me because Hong Kong used to be a British Colony. Even after the British left Hong Kong, the civil service system is actually quite the same. We actually follow the British Civil Service. Being a government official in the Hong Kong government, I actually have been posted to different departments and different positions every two to three years. The exposure was very good. Every now and then, I was exposed to totally different and unrelated positions. I learned a lot from my previous experience. Just after sometime I find that this is interesting. I got many different experiences, but sometimes this is something that I really like. Sometimes that may not be something that I think is the most suitable for myself. This is not up to me to choose because we follow the rotation program. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be there for two to three years and then you proceed to the next position.
At one point, I was posted to the secretariat for organizing international events hosted by the Hong Kong government. I find that this is interesting. I have very little sleep. I sleep maybe two to three hours closer to the event day. My energy level was actually better than when I was going to a 9 to 5 job, which is basically just handling more documents or maybe working on Excel files most of the time. This is what I like. I like to see things happen and I like to see good ideas spread. I started to think whether in the coming further years I still want to work in the government or I want to do something that I feel more passionate about. Then, I started to do research and find that there’s something called speakers bureau as a business. In Asia, this is quite new at that time. I started to think whether I can do it. I decided to maybe before my next promotion, I’d quit the government job and started my own business.
Having said that, it’s a very long journey. The learning curve was very steep because working for the government means that I basically do not have any business training. The decision-making process is totally different when you are basically using the money to buy services versus when you are actually the person who is selling the service. The first two years was actually quite miserable.
The key that you said to me really jumps out is your energy level was completely different even with less sleep when you were doing something you were passionate about versus the 9 to 5 when you had all the rest in the world but it was drudgery. I think that’s such a great litmus test for everyone to take away and say, “If you’re not energetic and passionate about what you’re doing, it’s time to take a stock of your life. Either change your job or change your approach to it.” That seems to be such a nice a-ha moment for you.
Everybody actually can feel it if you are honest to yourself. Sometimes we may not want to admit it. Maybe we have fear of the unknown. Giving up a very stable salary and just jumping into something that you do not know whether it would be sustainable or not. It’s challenging even making the decision itself and just trying to do it. At one point, I find that I’m basically unemployable leaving the government job because the private sector may not necessarily think that this is something relevant for them. At that point, I just think I have to make it work. At the end of the day, follow your heart. It’s cliché to say but it’s quite real as well. If you feel that every day you’re going to work and you do not feel this is really who you should be, it’s actually quite painful as well.
Not following your heart and your passion can be just as painful as staying. You think, “If I’m going to stay in a safe job, I’ll feel okay.” You’re actually going to feel just as much pain as you will with dealing with the fears of the unknown of a new career. I think that’s a really interesting point to make that everybody has to take that leap of faith in themselves, make it work and figure this out. Let’s take a little bit of a deeper dive on this experience you had from going from being someone who was buying things, working for the government, to now having to sell yourself and your agency to companies to get to hire you and the speakers you represent. What was the biggest challenge you faced trying to figure out how to do that?
[Tweet “Running your own business is a test of your character.”]
Running a business is basically a test for your own self to start with. Your character, your values, how you make decisions, how you deal with people is all around a test. Over time, you try different things and you get better. For me in particular, from a government background, I do not have the business decision-making process in my system originally. What I particularly had to learn at that time is, “Now I’m actually on the other side of the table and it’s slightly different.” I have to learn it, to learn how to communicate. Not exactly sell but essentially also selling my speakers, selling my services, but more how to communicate the service to the clients and let them know. If I have a conference and I’m looking for speakers, rather than I go to ten people and ask whether you’re good, and everybody would tell you that they are good, now you can actually go to a bureau and because we know the speakers, we can actually maybe give you some advice. I look at it that way. Having said that to start with, a speakers bureau or other business, I think the business itself is like another copy of you. How good the business is how good you are doing actually.
It’s almost like the business is a mirror of your values and your belief systems. It’s like, “Who am I attracting into my world? What kind of clients am I attracting?” In your case, not only clients that are going to use your agency and your bureau to find speakers but, “What kind of speakers am I representing? Do they represent my values and beliefs?” It all just starts to be a big reflection back to you is what I’m hearing.
I think it’s all decision-making, who you work with, how you deal with people. I think it’s very important. The respect, and whether you can be frank and honest with each other, those are important in doing business. Also, just in being a human being.
That’s interesting you said that because when I listen to people give a pitch to get their startup funded for example, they’ll say, “Please tell these people to be a human and not a robot.” So many people think like, “I’m giving a pitch now. I have to be formal and not be myself.” I loved your opinion on this, Priscilla, I find that the best speakers are those people who are authentic and human while on stage. It’s a little trickier than it might seem to be that relaxed and confident and vulnerable. If you can be, “I’ve worked very hard to do that for my own self. The more I do it, the more the audience connects with me.” Whether you’re talking to somebody one-on-one or you’re talking to a big crowd as a speaker, I think that the willingness to be human is the secret to being successful.
From time to time, I have people who actually would like to become a speaker asking, “What are the hot topics now?” I can definitely let them know what are the hot topics now, say for instance, technology, AI. But if you are not really in that arena, this is not your business. It’s more important to look inside to see what is the important messages, the uniqueness, the story that you can share with the audience. That is even more important.
For example, the whole concept of artificial intelligence and whether or not that’s going to take over jobs, robots and things and people have that big fear. I talk about how I’ve helped somebody in artificial intelligence that’s competing against IBM Watson come up with a way to take a very complicated concept and explain it in a way that’s still a story. What I did with him was I said, “You’re talking about structured data and unstructured data. Unless you really understand artificial intelligence, nobody knows what that means. Let’s talk about it in terms of an ice berg. There’s the tip of the ice berg, that’s what’s above the water. That’s the structured data. Below is the unstructured data.” Just that visual image when he was giving a pitch suddenly made it more compelling and understandable right away. I said, “What’s your big, unique difference whether you’re pitching against IBM Watson or anybody else?” He said, “We understand verbs and IBM Watson doesn’t.” I said, “Okay. The story is you come home, you see your wife crying. You don’t know if it’s tears of joy or if it’s tears of sadness or just because she’s frustrated you left your socks on the floor again.” Until you understand why somebody is upset, you can’t really respond to it.
Relationship Secrets: Just that visual image when he was giving a pitch suddenly made it more compelling and understandable right away.
Then, we took that concept of understanding verbs into an actual case study of a brand like Nike, for example, hiring and using this. Right now, they can just see if their social media is trending positively or negatively, but not why. Once you understand why, then you know how to respond to it just like you would a person. That’s what got him the funding. If that’s a hot topic of artificial intelligence, I think you need to have some experience of working with people in the field and being able to talk about it in terms of everyone can understand and not keep it so cerebral and unique to just experts.
Sometimes how I look at my speakers is actually they are the translators, translating something that people do not understand into something that they can understand.
For example, for me, one of the things I like to say when I give a keynote to an audience is one of the things that’s never going to be outsourced to a computer is trust and the relationships you have with people. While your particular job, if you’re an X-ray technician, a radiologist, that might be done by a computer because it can be done faster and more accurately maybe. But the relationship, that bedside manner as a person in healthcare, that is never going to go away. If you have some sad news to give somebody, that you have a tumor or whatever it is, you still want that to come from a doctor, in my opinion, and not a computer, right?
Yes.
I think that’s the big takeaway for people who might be afraid of artificial intelligence, because that’s a hot topic now, taking over everything or artificial intelligence creating additional artificial intelligence. What won’t ever go away is how we started the interview, it’s all about relationships and the trust that you build with people and get introduced that way. When you really realize that that’s what you bring to any situation, and not necessarily all of your knowledge but your essence, your personality, your values and your ability to emotionally connect with people. That’s what I hear you saying is really the secret sauce.
Yes, we are in the people business.
Can you tell us what it was like to get your first few clients to say that they would hire you to find them a speaker? How did you decide what industry you’re going to go after first?
We tried many different things at the very beginning because comparatively in Asia, speakers bureau is still quite a young concept. I remember in the early days, we did organize events, showcases to recruit the potential clients and come to see the speakers live speaking. Every time when I open the event I would ask, “How many of you actually have heard of this term called speakers bureau? Out of 100 people there for instance, maybe five hands would actually raise. It’s actually quite new. I would try to explain to them, “We’re like a model agency but not for models. We are for speakers but sometimes our speakers are quite good looking as well.” That’s how we explain the concept to our clients, but it’s quite a long way.
You told a story. You gave an analogy that people that could go, “Now, I understand.” That’s such a great example of a good pitch.
At the very beginning, we tried different things. We just see what actually would work because we cannot really just copy from the US or just copy from Australia. The market is different. Language is also another thing that we have to pay attention to because in Asia there are so many languages being spoken in different countries. It’s very different in the US or in Australia. English, basically you go everywhere, is one language. From the frontend to the top management, you can have one language. Asia is a totally different story. We have to handle that differently as well.
Do you have an example of some of the challenges? When you have a speaker come from the US to speak in Asia, do they typically have a translator there?
Relationship Secrets: For frontend, you may actually need the local language rather than speaking English.
Depending which country they are speaking. In Hong Kong, we do not necessarily need a translator but if it is in Japan for instance or in South Korea or in China, sometimes you may need an interpreter for the presentation. Also, depending whether it’s for the senior management or for the frontend staff, it would be different as well. Sometimes, for example, for insurance companies or real estate agents, for frontend, you may actually need the local language rather than speaking English.
When you work with these big companies like IBM, Nike and Pepsi Co, do you work with their US corporate headquarters or do you work with the people who are in charge of Asia?
We have both. Sometimes it would be the regional headquarters contacting us. Sometimes it would actually be from their headquarters. It really depends on different scenarios.
Do you find that if a speaker does a good job in one country for a company that then they would like to have him come speak to their team in another country?
Yes, they do. It’s also an easier decision to sell to the management as well. It happens, yes.
You and I in a previous conversation had really an interesting answer to the question of, what do you think makes a good speaker? Would you mind sharing what your criteria is for what a good speaker is based on your experience of what makes the client happy?
Firstly, you have to have a thorough understanding of the topic that you talk about. You have to have passion on that particular topic. You’re talking about it constantly, if you are not passionate about it, you are bored very quickly yourself. That’s very important. Particularly, more and more often speakers having just one presentation and go to every client with that particular single presentation doesn’t work anymore. We actually prefer speakers who would do the research and customize their presentation for the client. You can actually have the same framework but the examples you are using or what is the implication. I think the speakers should do the research and actually tailor-made for the clients for their particular interest. Whether their clients actually are facing some issues or they have a particular area that they would like to focus on, I think that we should be very clear about that. With the presentation, you help them to work out what they want to achieve.
To me, what I hear is the secret formula is passion plus expertise plus customization equals a great speaker that gives a good outcome that makes you look good to your client. To me, that’s the job of the speakers, to not only make the client happy but to make you happy and make you look good to that client. When that happens, then that client is going to continue to use you for other speakers. That’s how I approach my relationships with a speakers bureau like you. My job is to make you look good to whoever has entrusted you with finding the right person for them. I think that mindset really translates into a great partnership with you and your speakers, yes?
[Tweet “Passion + Expertise +Customization =Excellence”]
Yes. If the speaker can do a good job to meet the client’s needs and actually answer the questions, the burning questions that they have and the other things actually take care of themselves. I think respect of the client’s time, that the audience may be twenty people, may be 100 people, may be 1,000 people, they actually spend that one hour with you. The respect that they invested time in you and what you invest in that to give them, that’s very important. If we can actually think through that, the outcome would actually be good.
One of the ways you can show respect, and I know how important that is in the Asian cultures, is doing your due diligence and research and customizing your talk and learning their acronyms or their buzz words in that particular industry. For example, Nike, I used to call them for advertising when I sold ads at Condé Nast. Now, they have taken this concept of customization to a whole new level. Certain stores allow you to go on a computer in the store and pick the color of your shoe laces and have certain things set on your shoe so no one has your exact shoe. They realized that part of technology is giving customers customization. The irony of that is if you wanted to talk on that topic, then you obviously have to customize your talk to talk on that topic to Nike or anyone else. It’s a fascinating full circle of why customization is so important as your speaker because it’s so important to the clients that they need to do that for their customers even if they’re a big company like Nike.
I think more and more so with the advancement of the technology in every aspects. With data, with 3D printing, this is going to happen. The younger generations who are going to be our clients in making decisions, they’ll get used to this mindset as well. We have to be prepared.
Do you have any thoughts or suggestions that you want to give the listeners on being a successful entrepreneur besides the passion and overcoming the fear that you’ve mentioned?
I cannot claim that I’m successful yet. I’m not sure whether everybody is suitable to be an entrepreneur. I think some actually prefer to work in an employee environment. They prefer to work for somebody. If you take Steve Jobs or if you take Richard Branson, really famous entrepreneurs, I’m quite sure they cannot work for anybody else apart from themselves. If you listen to yourself whether you can actually face challenges when things are slow and you put a lot of effort in it and you still do not see anything. Whether you can actually still have the trust and confidence in yourself and just kept carrying on until you make it and make good decisions at difficult times or when there is dispute with your partners, with your colleagues, how you communicate your point of view across and get the support. When to make decisions to go ahead, when to make decisions to actually live it. I think those are actually important when you want to be successful in business, and I’m still learning.
Relationship Secrets: You have to keep trusting yourself even when something hasn’t popped up.
I think it’s a lifelong process actually, at least for me. I really love the fact that you said you have to keep trusting yourself even when something hasn’t popped up. With the sales career that I have as a background, things are not always linear and the expectation that it’s going to go straight up all the time doesn’t happen whether you are working at a big company or for yourself. To get comfortable as you said, trusting the process, I almost look at it like you plant a seed in the ground and you go, “How come it hasn’t sprouted yet?” If you dig up the seed, then you stop the process. You just have to keep planting and watering the seed and trust the process in your own career that all those seeds will in fact produce enough to continue to make you successful and along the way, not taking out any fear or anxiety on the people you work with as part of your own internal stuff of being frustrated that the things aren’t happening as fast as you may want them too. That’s some really great life lessons about business, but also I think just in general how you approached life. Now, it’s so melded that the concept of, “This is who I am at work and this is who I am when I’m not at work,” is much less than it used to be now. It’s all just who are you all the time. When you can get that authenticity going across, then it’s really what people respond to. That’s what I found, do you agree?
Yes. I think there’s more so for entrepreneurs because your character actually shows in your business, in how you deal with people, even on your website some of your character actually would show. Another thing is I find that eight years into the business, I actually become a calmer person. When things are good, I would tell myself, “Be calm because you know that sometimes things would be slow.” When things are slow, you still keep calm and just keep doing what you should be doing. It’s kind of like waves. It’s never a constant, but it’s just up and down. It’s actually quite normal. If you can understand that then you would have less pressure on yourself and you just keep focusing on what you should be doing.
I’m a big believer that whatever we focus on, we get more of. If we focus on scarcity and fear, we get more of that. If we focus on trust and confidence, we get more of that. Getting off the self-esteem roller coasters is one of my big missions and purposes as a speaker is to help as many people as I can. Stop looking outside of themselves for their self-esteem. In sales, you could say, “My numbers are up, I feel good about myself. My numbers are down, now I feel bad about myself.” You’ll exhaust yourself going up and down that roller coaster all the time. There are other ways to stay motivated and focused without feeling bad about yourself because you didn’t hit a specific number and a specific week or month. As an entrepreneur, you certainly have modeled for us how to do that and hopefully more people who will listen to this will have that same resonance of, “I do that. I only feel good if things are perfect and things are really never ever perfect. I might as well stop waiting for everything to be perfect and just decide I’m happy and I’m on purpose and I’m passionate about what I’m doing and it’s all going to work out if I keep doing that.”
Another thing is actually about problem solving. Nothing would be just be there and very neatly presented to you. There would always be something that you have to tackle with. You just find a way, “If this doesn’t work, then what? Then I try another way to do it.” I still remember in the first two years, not on day one, we had the first deal that we can actually sign the contract. Things were quite slow at the very beginning. I remember at that time, on top of promoting the services that we had, I just do whatever I can to actually have some income for the company. I also did events planning for clients. I also actually even go to teach some younger adults on various topics just to keep the income coming in the first two years until we actually rely on the business, we can actually sustain ourselves. I know many people do that in their early years just to sustain the business. If you have that mentality, you will find a way to do it.
Basically, I hear what you’re saying is do whatever it takes to keep the lights on as you grow your core business. Priscilla, you’ve been a great guest. We want to let everybody around the world know about you who listens to this podcast in 60 different countries. If you want to have Priscilla find you a great speaker and if you’re a big company, go to SpeakersConnect.com. How else can we support you, Priscilla? Is there anything else that you want to promote or tell us about, how we can follow you on social media or anything?
You can find me on LinkedIn, @PriscillaChan. Also during my leisure time, I write mainly in Chinese for the time being, sometimes in English as well on technology and also on startups. I talk about the impact of the new technology and the impact on society and also on business mainly because I work with so many futurist and technology speakers. I find that writing is a good way for me to, apart from serving my clients, but also to spread some of the interesting ideas to my readers and for general interest. I enjoy that a lot as well.
It’s all about embracing new technology. Like Blockchain currency for example, I’m getting very involved with ICOs and helping people with their pitch to have a good business model to use cryptocurrency as a new tool to help people grow businesses. It’s an exciting time that we live in. If you embrace learning all of it, then you can be part of the story.
[Tweet “It’s more about having an open mind.”]
It’s more about having an open mind. A lot of things, even for policy makers, you may still have to fear that Uber is coming to town so how about the taxis? Self-driving car is going to be quite popular. How do we make the regulation whether we’ll be a very closed economy or we embrace it. More and more I find that people actually have a more open mind and they embrace change, that new technology actually will do better in the long run because it’s coming anyhow. You’re either left behind or you’re just try to pick as soon as you can.
You’ve been a wonderful guest, Priscilla. It’s been an honor interviewing you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insights with us.
Thank you so much for having me today.
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How To Stop Worrying About Sales Growth with Rick Janezic
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Rick Janezic is the founder of Ascenceo, which helps entrepreneurs who are waking up in the middle of the night worrying about how they’re going to make payroll and how they’re going to grow the company, not have to do that anymore. He said, “When emotions are high, that is when facts are few.” He gives people the right information on what the problem is whether it’s in sales, marketing, onboarding new clients, or keeping new clients, so that the entrepreneurs can have some peace of mind. He also helps investors figure out what they can do to help the founders that they’ve invested in who are struggling with their sales. He has some really great insights on how to do it and make it easy so that you are taking guessing out of the picture. He said, “When you’re guessing, you start doubting your judgment.” Listen in to Rick’s secrets on how to make your sales soar and how to stop worrying about sales growth.
Listen To The Episode Here
How To Stop Worrying About Sales Growth with Rick Janezic
Today’s guest is Rick Janezic, who is the founder and CEO of Ascenceo Revenue Sciences, which is the secret to keeping your sales growing and booming. Rick went to Wharton. He’s been an investor with Golden Angels. He has the secret and the science behind the ways to keep sales growing and growing and growing. Rick, welcome to the show.
John, it’s a pleasure to be with you.
I always like to ask my guest to take us on a little bit of a story of origin, if you will. Obviously, you’ve had some great education, going to Wharton, etc. but you’ve been doing this for a long time. We’re going to do a lot of car analogies on this episode because of your website and video. Looking under the hood of what does it take to get a company’s sales growing, if the leads start to die down, the revenue goes down, the expenses go up, things that are a big problem. You’re solving a big problem, aren’t you?
We’re trying to work with company owners, company leaders, and investors in those companies to really take a more thoughtful, deep, and scientific look of process that a lot of people think of begins and ends with sales, but it’s really broader than that. We talk about customer development. Rather than just a customer development process, the series of steps or the recipe, if you will, we take a look at how that recipe gets put into action by people, the decisions that they make, and the actions that they take. We try to use a combination of probability sciences, process engineering, as well as optimization to help customers and everybody throughout that process run as fast and as confidently as they can. That process of creating a client, keeping the client, and keeping those clients incredibly happy and pleased.
The sticky factor that everyone’s always looking for. How did you get this experience, Rick? What did you do before you launched your company?
I’ve been a very curious person my entire life back to the point that I was a young child. I’m sure that everybody goes through that process of why, that questioning and wondering about why things are. Why things work? Is that really true? How would we understand that? How could we prove that? That’s been with me for a long period of time. That helped me get through my studies in engineering, through business, through marketing, and through helping run companies, help turn companies around, and helping improve those companies. I’ve been doing these for several decades, unfortunately. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long but time flies when you’re having fun.
As any good entrepreneur, you saw a problem and you’ve decided you have a unique solution with your experience and intellectual property using the science to solve it. Let’s take a deep dive. One of the things that really stood out to me when I was on your website is, there’s a hundred steps sometimes to get a new customer. Is that the norm? Is that low? Is that high? What have you found?
Sales Growth: All too often, folks think that selling is a one-to-one. It’s gotten much more complex.
It depends on the type of company, the type of process, the type of product, the type of service, the richness of that, the number of people that are involved on the market or the sales side, as well as people on the buy side. All too often, folks think that selling is a one-to-one. It’s gotten much more complex. There are many more people that are involved both on the seller side as well as on the buyer side. Often, I found that folks haven’t really thought through that entire process. How do you prepare for a meeting where it may be you and a colleague meeting with five to ten people on the buy side, and really understanding what’s the decision process that they’re going to go through? What’s really the problem that they’re trying to solve? What’s the evidence that you bring as well as the enthusiasm that you bring that helps them understand you’re the right company, you’re the right solution to a problem that they have?
I’m going to ask you to put your investor hat on for a minute. When you hear a pitch, what are you looking for as it relates specifically, since this is your area of expertise, to how they’re going to monetize and get revenue in the company? What are some of the things that you think make a good pitch?
One of the key things that I’ve seen, and I’d love to get your perspective since you and I have some similar interests, I don’t want to hear about the product. I want to hear about the problem, because people don’t buy products. They buy solutions to problems. How clear, how deep, how thorough is your understanding about the problems that your clients have? How compelling the interest is on their part to solve those? I try to really understand, what’s the problem? How do you know that somebody has a problem? How do they know they have that problem?
I couldn’t agree more. The more empathy you show for the potential customers that you’re targeting, the better the investors feel that you really understand that problem. You’ve said something that’s really interesting to me. I think most people when they’re pitching an investor like you, forget that the whole premise is based on the people that we are targeting have a problem so big that they’re willing to change their behavior to solve it. That’s the big a-ha, that people underestimate how big the problem has to be in order to get someone to change their behavior. What are your thoughts on that?
There’s a gentleman whose book I read recently who is out of New York, I believe. It’s Charles Duhigg and it’s called The Power of Habit. All too often, folks don’t really understand. They think, “I’ve got a product and this product fits the problem.” What’s the probability? What’s the likelihood? What’s the difficulty socially, culturally, practically from a process perspective of an organization changing their habit? When they look at doing something, what they were doing with somebody else’s product, now they’re going to do it with you. That means they have to change their habits. They have to learn new things, do new things to really be able to get that value. Not just have it be a technical fit but have it be a business fit. Thinking through the realities and some of the challenges of getting folks to recognize those habits, understand those habits, and then having a successful process to carry them through into that new habit is critical.
Sometimes an investor will say, “This looks like the right team. They’re solving a problem. They got some unique ability to solve it. There are some barriers to entry with the competition. I think I’m going to invest.” They invest and the leads aren’t converting. The sales cost go up and the revenues are down. They have a big problem. They start doubting if they made the right choice. They start putting pressure on the founder. That’s really where an investor would reach out to you and say, “Rick, help me out here. You’re an investor too. Did I make a mistake? How can we fix this sales problem?”
I’ve heard that term, “We have a sales problem,” many, many times. The challenge is you may have something that’s manifesting itself and making it look like it’s a sales problem but isn’t a sales problem. If it is a sales problem, where is that problem? How deep is that problem? Is that pervasive across everyone, which tells me either you’re remarkably bad at selection or it’s really not a sales problem? Maybe it’s a marketing problem, maybe it’s a product problem, maybe it’s a segmentation problem. Really doing that diagnosis. As they do in healthcare, you want to diagnose before you prescribe. How do we know what the true source of that problem is and the cause of that problem? What’s the biggest risk? What’s going to have the greatest amount of leverage to be able to improve, ameliorate, or address that problem? If we’ve got fifteen problems that we need to solve, which one do we do first? Which one do we do second? Can we do some of this in collaboration with one another or some of them so big and so challenging that we can only tackle one at a time?
Like cars, running a business, you need a great engine to have great performance. What you’re really offering people is the ability to retune, repair, and rebuild the engine of sales in a very step by step methodical scientific way, it sounds like.
It is. It’s to the point where you can either guess at doing things, you can only guess so many times before investors lose their patience, before clients lose their patience, before high-quality talent says, “I don’t want to be a part of this. We don’t have professional leadership in place or a professional plan in place to really address some of the challenges that exist.” Guessing is no fun because you can only do that so many times where you start to really doubt your own judgment.
[Tweet “Guessing is no fun as it causes you to doubt your judgement”]
One of the mistakes that I see lot is the wrong message to the right market or the right message to the wrong market. Do you have a story around that that you can give us an example?
I try to keep the client’s dirty laundry in the laundry room so others don’t see it. With that said, I’d give you an example of a company that we had done some work with a while ago that were starting off with something in the healthcare space. It was really a challenge to understand, who within the organization has this problem, recognizes this problem, and is willing to engage in understanding, “How do we make that problem go away?” One of the challenges that we found, because this was so new and so different, that when we’d start to try to engage with who we thought the appropriate people would be, they didn’t really know how to think about that. They didn’t know how to respond to that. They didn’t understand, “Do I have this problem. Do I own this problem?”
One of the key challenges was to really stop, step back and ask much easier questions. When you call into a very large organization, there’s a common theme or a common belief that a brand new product, that somebody’s going to magically see it and recognize it. That’s not always the case. You may be calling on the right person but until you really understand, “How do I ask a question they can confidently answer?” because you don’t want to make somebody look foolish. They’re probably not going to help you in that case. That ability to ask easy questions and sometimes simple questions. I’m a fan of Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker had his Drucker’s five questions: What’s your mission? Who’s your customer? What do they value? What are your results? What’s your plan? Easy to ask, tough to answer.
What is your mission? What do you exist for? What’s the purpose of your organization? Why was it created? What are you really trying to accomplish? Second, who’s your customer? Who is it that has this need for what it is that you do? Product, service, combination of the two. The third piece, I think is one of the critical pieces, what do they value? The way that you present and you think about your product or service may not be the same way that they value that. It’s the dialogue and that deep level of understanding about who your clients are, how they think, how they behave, what their habits are, what the challenge is, how they’d recognize whether or not they have this potential problem that you think that they might have. Then what’s the process that you use collaboratively with them to really validate, test, and confirm for you and for them they have it, it’s a big problem, and they’re ready, willing, and able to solve it.
That really is the empathy we were talking about earlier and that’s the sweet spot that you’re solving. If that isn’t done, then everything doesn’t work.
It becomes a challenge. The fourth question is, what are your results? What have you been able to accomplish to date? Number of customers, number of products, whatever the series of metrics that exist are. Now that you have those four answered, the final question is, “Now, what’s your plan?” Given everything that you now know, what are you going to do?”
That’s everything because if you don’t have a plan to fix the problem or hit certain milestones, investors get really nervous. Let’s just take, “The leads aren’t converting.” We’re running ads on Facebook or whatever it is. We have a sales force that’s going out and trying to get new clients. There’s such a long lead time or they’re just thinking about it, they don’t want to make a change. The reasons are varied, I’m sure. Is it, A) the sales force isn’t good, or B) the price is too high, or C) the competition is beating them?
Sales Growth: Do you have competitors? Who are those competitors?
Part of it is to take a look at the market. Is there really truly a market there? Do you have competitors? Who are those competitors? Michael Porter did work a number of years ago that he talked about Porter’s Five Forces. That takes a look and says, what really determines the size, shape, health and trajectory of a market? There were five factors that he looked at. One of them is called rivalry. How many other people are you competing with? Either internal to the organization or traditional suppliers, if you will, folks who build products and services to try and address that market. If other folks are doing something successful, they’re growing rapidly, they’re picking up customers, and then it’s time to look inside and say, “Either we don’t have the right product, we don’t have the right team. We don’t have the right message. There’s a credibility issue.” It’s really going back and diagnosing what is that gap. Sometimes it is on, “We didn’t build the right product for the right market because we didn’t really understand our customers.” Sometimes, it is the sales team. One of the toughest challenges that every organization has is selection. Not hiring, selection. If the ideal candidate showed up on your doorstep, would your selection team recognize that?
That goes back to really not only having an ideal avatar for your client, but an ideal avatar for your sales force so you’re not just hiring the best of whoever just happened to show up but, “None of this people fit because we have these criteria.” Is that what you’re saying?
It is. Even to the point where one of the questions that we ask as investors if someone says or asks us for a $1 million, we ask, “What is that going to go for?” They’ll say, “We need to hire a couple of key people.” We’ll ask, “Who?” Not what role, who.
That’s so key. “Who are you going to go after?” Not just the job description, but you’ve already thought it through that far. That’s great. I’ve never heard anybody say that. I love it.
Who specifically? How is that person number one? If that person says no, who’s number two? Why is number two number two and why is number one number one?
That’s good stuff. That’s really great. I hope everyone is really hearing that. I always tell people, when you pitch to an investor, you need to be prepared for questions. You need to have answers that show you’ve thought things through. If you get asked this question by a smart investor like Rick, you better have the answers. If you don’t, you better hire Rick to help you get the answers. Not only have you helped investors who’ve gotten some frustration because the sales are stalling, but you also help founders make sure that they have a really strong sales strategy in place and that after they’ve gotten the funding, they continued to use you to keep the sales growing. Is that accurate?
It is. It’s one thing to have the capital. It’s another thing to know what to do with it.
What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen a founder making besides let’s just say, not thinking out who they’re going to hire? Let’s say, they hire their number one or number two choice and they’re still having trouble hitting their sales goals. Is it because they’re not training them? Is it because the sales force is not understanding how to be compelling? What’s the biggest bump that you see in the road?
If it were so easy that we could say that it was just one thing, that would make life a whole lot easier. One of the reasons we always talk about revenue sciences, the science piece of that, and the customer development engine, it’s really taking a look from product development and innovation to marketing, to sales, to customer onboarding, to customer success, to loyalty and expansion. If you take a look at that entire waterfront, that entire process and understand where the problems are, where the gaps are. Is it a team gap? Is it a process gap? Is it a fit gap? What’s really not working well and how do we know? How do we test that? Is that an assumption or is that a fact? How would we prove that that’s indeed the case?
Until you can really get to that point, it’s a guess. Guessing can be very, very expensive and very, very frustrating. One of the things that we take a look at from an investor perspective is, do they have a board? Do they have some advisors? What’s the quality of the advisors? It’s easy when you’re in the battle to think that you’re doing the right thing. Without some oversight, without some guidance and another set of eyes to help take a look at blind spots that you may have about the market, about the product, about competitors or about yourself, it’s tough to recognize that.
I think some of the problem, especially for first time founders seeking money, is they don’t even have the big picture that you just described. How marketing and sales relate to each other? How is the customer on-boarded? What are we doing to keep them loyal? How do we get referrals? None of that’s thought through or they haven’t thought through each one of those areas in great enough detail that they’ll just start to guess and say, “We’ll wing it when we get there.” That never really works.
It’s an option. It’s generally not a good one though.
It’s like not practicing your pitch. I can’t stand it when someone says, “I’m just going to wing it.” I’m like, “Oh my god.”
That’s disrespectful to the audience.
This premise here I think is really interesting because having worked at Condé Nast, there’s always some rivalry between marketing and sales. I’m sure you see that. I worked at big control data and all big computer companies. There’s always a rivalry between engineering and sales. Speak to that problem, because it happens, I would assume, in small companies. The sales person is like, “I did my job. You guys are on-boarding these people in such a clunky way that they’re frustrated and leaving. There’s a problem, there’s no customer service. That’s not my job.” It just goes on and on, doesn’t it?
[Tweet “Emotions are high when facts are few”]
It really does. We were interviewing a CEO not too long ago who just had a remarkable background, engineering and theology, which is a rare combination to include in one individual. He studied Greek philosophy. One of the philosophers, I apologize that I can’t recall who the name was, had an expression, “Emotions are high when the facts are few.” It’s easy to do finger pointing when you really don’t know what the answer is. What we try to do is to really shine a light on the facts that we know and go through a rigorous process to get through the facts that we don’t know, because many of things these days can be discovered internally or externally. Sometimes, it’s writing a check. Sometimes, it’s just spending the time to really dig down and get to the point of knowing that you know that you know. That helps to reduce that finger pointing, improve that collaboration, and help to take out some of the arguments or the differences of opinion because it gets from a point of being who’s right to what’s right.
It takes away all the emotion. You’re no longer pointing fingers, “You’re wrong. I’m wrong,” taking blame but going through the facts so it can remove some of the emotions. That’s what I took away from what you said.
My mom and dad used to say, “Don’t point the finger at somebody else because you’ve always got four pointing back at you.”
Of course that creates morale problems and all kinds of things. We talked about getting people to change their behavior. My favorite example is, if the economy hadn’t been bad in 2008 or so, people wouldn’t have been open to Airbnb. They’re changing their behavior, “I’m letting a stranger rent my room or rent my place.” There is some catalyst to make people change their behavior. If we all didn’t have smartphones or the majority of us anyway, Uber wouldn’t work. The problem that you’re solving right now has been going on for a long time. That’s why so many businesses are going out of business or not getting funded, because they haven’t thought through all these things. You’re really not asking people to change their behavior so much as just instead of trying to wing it and guess it, “Hire us so we can give you some science to have a strategic plan in place with the money you get and what to do if there are some other problems that your plan hasn’t worked, that you can figure out what to fix first,” is really what I’m hearing is the big value you bring.
I’m going to say it’s unnecessary to try and fall asleep at night and to be worried about the things that you worry about, because that says that you don’t really have good strong answers. When we know what to do, generally speaking, people will run toward that. If I know what to do, I know how to do it, I know what great performance looks like, I know what success looks like, generally speaking, I’m going to have a beeline to that. When I don’t have that, that causes threat, it causes indecision. The common term is analysis paralysis. That’s because there’s a level of uncertainty that folks haven’t had a process that they can think through, analyze, and get to the point of knowing that they know so they can move forward with confidence. That cascades all the way throughout the organization. Not just at the executive level but from the bird’s-eye view to the worm’s-eye view and everywhere in between.
One of my favorite things to do is to try and come up with a quick pitch for people in any area to get new clients, to get new customers, to get funded, whatever your elevator pitch is. To me, if I was saying, “What would be the elevator pitch for Ascenceo?” It would be, “Want to stop having sleepless nights as an entrepreneur?”
That’s a good one. I do like that. John, I may have to borrow that or buy the trademark from you there.
“Having trouble sleeping as an entrepreneur? We help you figure out what those things are that keep you up at night and fix them.” If you just said it that way, everybody will be going, “Oh my god, tell me more. How do you that?” That’s the whole thing of a good pitch. Just to intrigue people enough to want to get them to know more. They’re like, “I’ll help you with your sales. I’ll help you grow your sales.” Okay, but you go, “Let’s help you get rid of those sleepless nights as an entrepreneur. Are you worried about your sales? Are you worried about making payroll? Are you worried about marketing? Are you worried about getting funded? I can help you with all those things that keep most entrepreneurs up at night.” Then we’ve got people going, “That’s what I need.”
John, I appreciate that moment of clarity for you and for me. Thank you.
My pleasure. Is there any last thought you want to leave us with? I think that one is a great one but I’m going to give you the opportunity to give us one last thought that you want to give us, Rick.
Sales Growth: Most things that you need to know, that you’re not sure about, are knowable.
I think the big thing is most things that you need to know, that you’re not sure about, are knowable. We try to use the process of helping you get to the point of knowing that you know so you can move forward with confidence, with certainty. That creates energy and vitality both internally with the organization and then when someone shows up from the sales perspective or from a service perspective, they’ve got that confidence. They’ve got that swagger to know, “I know how to help you when.”
It’s like a doctor going, “Don’t worry. I’ve figured out what your problem is. We just need to take your tonsils out. I’ve done a thousand of these operations. You’re going to be just fine.” They’re like, “Fantastic. You’ve figured out my problem. You have the solution.” That’s it. You’re really the doctor of sales in my opinion.
Rick, I can’t thank you enough for being here. Tell us what your Twitter handle is, the best way for people to engage to your company.
The best way is to go to Ascenceo.com.
What’s your Twitter handle?
I have two, one is @rjanezic and @ascenceorevsci.
Rick, thanks again. I think everybody has really learned something. Emotions are high when facts are few, so let’s get those emotions down and those facts up and go to Rick. He’ll get rid of your sleepless nights as an entrepreneur and as an investor. Thanks, Rick.
John, thank you. I really appreciate the time.
Links Mentioned
- Ascenceo Revenue Sciences
- Golden Angels
- The Power of Habit
- Porter’s Five Forces
- @rjanezic
- @ascenceorevsci
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Up The Mood Elevator with Larry Senn
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Today’s guest on the successful pitch is Larry Senn, the author of Up the Mood Elevator. He has some great insights on how you can shift from being angry and irritated to being grateful. He said that really is the key. He’s been called the Father of Corporate Culture so he knows how to get people and teams to work really well together, and of course that’s the secret to being successful. His whole premise is if you maintain a gratitude perspective, everything shifts, and that companies have value systems just like people do. He’s got so many great nuggets that I can’t wait for you to hear how he tells people to ask this question, “Do you have winners or whiners on your team?” Enjoy the episode.
Listen To The Episode Here
Up The Mood Elevator with Larry Senn
I am honored to have Dr. Larry Senn on my show today. Larry is someone that you probably don’t realize what an impact he’s had on your life and your business. He is a pioneer in the field of corporate culture and has literally been called the Father of Corporate Culture, so we’re going to ask him about that. He really has a vision to create a process to allow leaders to create a healthy and high performance culture. Of course, if you’re trying to get your startup funded, that’s one of the key factors as to whether it’s successful or not. Investors are always asking you, “What kind of culture do you have here?” From his Doctoral dissertation, Organizational Character as a Tool, he’s played a key role in really helping people for the last 30 years. He’s got a book out called Up the Mood Elevator. I can’t take you on a ride literally but since I’m all about helping people with the elevator pitch, we’re going to have a lot of fun talking about that. Larry, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m delighted to be here. It’s great to be with the famous Pitch Whisperer. There’s actually some mysticism in being a whisperer. I’m anxious to learn more about how you really create that deeper connection, which is such a key. I also think we’re aligned in the notion that nothing happens until you can sell something, whether it’s funding, an idea, a product, a vision. That’s what makes life move. Nothing happens until that happens, so it’s a wonderful art to develop.
We all have to “pitch” ourselves all the time. Even if we’re starting our own company, we have to pitch our vision to get the right team, we have to pitch to get clients, and if you want to pitch to get funding, it’s a skill that everybody needs to learn. Part of it has to do with being comfortable with who you are. That comes from defining your own culture even if you’re a one man band or one woman band at the time. If you wouldn’t mind, Larry, can you take us back to your own story of origin. There’s a story behind how I became The Pitch Whisperer, as you alluded to. I’m really fascinated to hear the story of how you became known as the Father of Corporate Culture.
I followed what my father told me to do initially, went off to engineering school. I didn’t come from a wealthy family so I started my first commissioned work selling flowers on street corners at eleven. As I started college, I started a business with kids selling flowers on street corners. Then I found that they didn’t sell flowers that time in supermarkets, so I started a second business selling flowers in supermarkets. By the time I was eighteen, I was driving a Jaguar XK120 and doing pretty well for my businesses. I said, “Maybe I’m more a businessman than engineer.”
When I finished engineering school I went on to get my MBA at UCLA. What I found is that I loved case studies. I love to try to understand businesses and what made them tick. Early on, I decided I want to be consultant. With the help of a professor and a kid named Jim Delaney, that’s why it’s named Senn Delaney, after the two of us, we started an early day retail, more of a process improvement firm. What I quickly found was that it was easier to decide on change than to get people to change. Most organizations were a bit like dysfunctional families. They had politics and turf issues and trust issues. I got my epiphany. We actually were hired, Delaney and I, to help Sam at Walmart, create the original supply chain for Walmart. It was a dream job. He was like an evangelist. Talk about a Pitch Whisperer, this guy just could charm you in. He had this vision of bringing low-cost goods all over America. He really lined up all the financing to build that organization and to grow it. Working with him was a dream. At the same time, we were trying to do something similar at Woolworth in New York. I would fly from Bentonville, Arkansas into New York and it would be like going to the morgue, just a bunch of old guys and there were old guys sitting around the table. Their only purpose seems to be to maintain the status quo. I said to myself, “That little company in Arkansas is going to take over the world and this one is going to die.”
There something about them, it’s almost like they have a different personality. I need to understand that. I realized that companies are like people, they have value systems, they have habits, they have character and that’s what corporate culture is. The name didn’t exist back then. This is in the 60s. I found a professor at USC who’d written a book called Readings in Organizational Character, just people commenting on the phenomenon. I went to him and I said, “Dr. Wolf, I’ve got to understand this thing because it has more to do with success in any company, even my own company as a startup, than anything else.” He said, “People have talked about it. No one’s ever studied it. What if we paid your way through the doctoral program and you study this phenomenon?”
You hit on a big problem there and you got a big solution for yourself out of it, what a great story.
That was really what led to ultimately writing my Doctoral dissertation as the world’s first research on the concept of corporate culture, then starting the world’s first firm devoted to shaping corporate culture. It’s those two things that got CEO Magazine to name me the Father of Corporate Culture.
The big takeaway for me is when you said companies have value systems like people. I love that so much, Larry. I think people sometimes aren’t even introspective enough to figure out what they value. Then if they’re starting a company they certainly don’t think of it like a person, so they don’t really even think that they need to define what the values are. You’re saying you really better have it, otherwise you won’t succeed.
In fact, for anyone who’s creating one, there’s a series of essential values that exist in any healthy individual leader, team or company. One of those, for example, is called the performance value rooted in accountability because I think in life we have winners or whiners. If you really want to make it, then you really want to be highly accountable. Then you also have to have a collaborative value because you can’t do it all alone. Unless you can partner with others and bring people on board and have healthy relationships, you can’t be successful, so that’s a second of the essential values. There’s a set of values that we all have if we’re successful, even if we haven’t thought about, but we have them. We are accountable. We are collaborative. We are open to change. We do have integrity.
[Tweet “You either work with winner or whiners.”]
You speak in such great sound bites and nuggets, I can’t get enough of you. That’s great stuff. It’s memorable, it’s got a good hook, and it really is an a-ha wake-up moment for people who are running their own company, and then also if you’re at all willing to look at your own growth as a person and as a leader. You can take a minute and go, “What do I have to do the majority of the time?” If I find myself whining or complaining about something that’s not really important, stop it.
I think that life is partly about energy management. What’s your energy like? If you think about it, one of the great drains of energy is moaning, complaining, blaming, being in wait and hope as opposed to the energy created by having a bias for action and results orientation. Energy is drained if you have politics in your company, no matter how small or large, people not getting along, that’s another energy drain. If you have people who are aligned around your purpose and going for the same goal with healthy relationships, then you have this clean positive energy that really does move you forward. That’s just a part of any person or organization.
That’s a really interesting way to distinguish it because from a metaphysical standpoint, quantum physics, you look at everything as energy. Certainly, when I’m working with people on crafting a great pitch and telling them the importance of using stories to pull people in and literally become magnetic, being magnetic, being charming, that is an energy that is created between people. You either repel or you’re attracted to want to work with people or not and have them as clients. All that stuff comes into play. If we can take the perspective you just gave us and say, “The better I manage my energy, then the better I’m going to be as a person and the better I’m going to be at being magnetic to my ideal clients.” I just love that. That leads us right into managing our energy on upping the mood elevator. How did you come up with Up the Mood Elevator: Living Life at Your Best? How did you come up with that title?
[Tweet “Companies have values like people.”]
We got to thinking about these essential values. In fact, one of the values is positive spirit. What became clear to us is that when people are at their best, when people are their best selves, at the top of their game, they tend to be more accountable, collaborative, creative, innovative. They have better energy. If you think about even yourself, when you’re at your very best, what are the kinds of feelings you have? For example, when I’m at my best, I’m more optimistic, I’m more hopeful. I feel more resourceful. I feel more confident. Those are some of the ways that I feel. I feel more loving as a father or a spouse. I feel more creative, more energetic. Those are feelings I have. On the other hand, think about those times when you’re really off your game, when you’re at your worst. For me for example, I tend to get more bothered and impatient easily, more irritated and bothered. I can become more judgmental. I can worry. I can become more self-righteous.
If you think about those things, you can put those on a scale that you call a mood elevator. At the top of the mood elevator is grateful. That’s an overriding emotion we have. When we’re seeing a sunset for seeing the birth of a child, there’s no thinking, it’s just positive, just embracing emotion. That’s at the top. Then you come down to feelings like being forgiving or being creative. Those are all higher states of the mood elevator, then you go all the way down to depressed at the bottom. Every moment of every day, we live somewhere on this thing called the mood elevator. Wouldn’t it be great if you know how to press a button that could move you up? What if you learned how to not do damage when you’re down? For example, have you ever said something to a loved one you wish you could take back? Where were you in the mood elevator? You were down there because when you’re down there, your thinking is unreliable, you say things you don’t mean, you sent emails you shouldn’t have sent. It’s just learning to know that you’re thinking’s unreliable in the lower mood states in the mood elevator and not acting on them, it really can change relationships, it can change companies, it can change many things. I remember one of the CEOs said to me, “Larry, I can’t always be up the mood elevator but I can learn to do no harm.” His mantra is, “Do no harm when you’re in a bad mood.”
[Tweet “Don’t do damage when you’re down the mood elevator.”]
If you’re at the bottom of this mood elevator that you so brilliantly created where are your depressed and angry, because typically behind depression is anger that’s unexpressed from my experience, is it possible to just jump right from that to being grateful or do we have to slowly move ourselves up? Like let’s just get a little where we be just maybe realizing we’re not depressed but a little irritated and then maybe we can start to find some humor in the situation so that we can start? Can we jump from depressed to grateful?
Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you’re sitting there at home one evening and you really are down that mood. One of the goals you had in your life is you wanted desperately to see Hamilton. It’s impossible to get tickets and you’re sitting there depressed. Your friend calls up and says, ” John, I just scored four tickets to Hamilton and I want you and your spouse to come with me. In fact, I know a member of the cast, we’re going to get to go backstage. We’re going to have dinner beforehand across the street. Would you like to come with me?” Now where would you be in that?
You instantly jump up.
The Mood Elevator: Take Charge of Your Feelings, Become a Better You
Let me tell you what happens. Our thinking creates our experience of life. Our thinking creates our reality. We’re talking about how someone can immediately shift as in the case of learning about going to Hamilton. The fundamental principle in understanding the mood elevator is that we create through our thinking. Worried thoughts create worried feelings. Grateful thoughts create grateful feelings. Every moment it’s like we’re creating a movie and we’re the producer and we have all the Hollywood sound effects to go with it. There are times where we will be stuck for a period of time in the lower levels. Just to know it’s our thinking though helps a bit, but there are things you can do. There are pointers to being up the mood elevator.
One of those is if you can do a pattern interrupt, and what I just described is a pattern interrupt, you were thinking very depressed and all of a sudden you are thinking Hamilton. A pattern interrupt can be as simple as taking a walk, walking with the dog. I pick up the phone I call Bernadette, my soul mate of four years, because just talking to her raises my spirits. I call one of my kids and just listen or maybe pick up the phone and call the grandkids. There are things you can do. I can read a book and get lost in the book, go to a movie. If I can change my thinking, I will change my mood.
We found that there are two things that scientifically shift what you call your set point on the mood elevator. One of those is pretty obvious but people don’t do it, and that is take better care of yourself. We don’t get enough sleep. We don’t take enough breaks. We don’t eat right. We don’t exercise. It’s scientifically proven that if you really get run down, you can catch a cold more easily. The fact is if you get run down, you catch a mood more easily. If you’re physically fit, taking care of yourself, you are much less likely to slide down the mood elevator. That’s one basis. That’s in my book, The Mood Elevator, that’s actually chapter nine, Shifting Your Set Point: The Wellness Equation.
Let’s take a moment and acknowledge that you walk your talk, because a lot of people can say, “Exercise, eat right, take breaks.” You literally do it. Can you just tell us a little bit about what you do to stay in shape?
Yes. I am nationally ranked and undefeated in the 80 and over sprint triathlon category. I just won the Long Beach triathlon two weeks ago in my category.
When he says 80 he means 80 plus years old, not 80% of something. I wanted you to really own that because you are walking your talk and it’s such an inspiration of how not only live better at any age but how to live better in our third act. I just think it’s so inspiring there are people out there like you. We know people like Carl Reiner maybe and other people or Norman Lear that are even older than you are that are still out there creating and making a difference. When you say something, it has a whole different level of credibility than somebody who’s just saying it, I don’t know, 30 or 40 years old. Thank you for that.
I want to also ask you, because this is one of my passions, is to help people get off the self-esteem roller coaster, especially if they’re in the sales position of only feeling good about themselves if their numbers are up, and feel lousy about themselves if their numbers are down. Let me tell you, it goes up and down multiple times in a day sometimes. I love your example of you can go from depressed to grateful if suddenly something wonderful happens, like getting tickets to a show you want to go to. Do you have any insights either from your own personal life or within the mood elevator of how can we shift our mood without having to have something outside of us come in and shift it?
[Tweet “Maintain a gratitude perspective.”]
That’s a deep question. What’s interesting is that we are so attached. We just learn in life that we think we are our results. The most significant factor that can help someone with the mood elevator is this notion of maintaining a gratitude perspective. I might have lost this sale today but my wife loves me. I have five wonderful kids. I can still run a triathlon. I’m so blessed in many ways. What can I learn from that sale? What did I do there that I didn’t do as well as I could? How do I turn that into a learning experience? The ability to maintain perspective in life. Whenever we get depressed and down, we’ve made the thing too big a deal. We’ve lost our perspective. All of us here and anybody who’s listening to this is in the small fraction of a percentage of people in the world based upon how fortunate we are, where we live, the fact we have a job, the fact that we’re learning and growing by turning into something like this. All of those things are wonderful things and yet we sweat the small stuff too much.
It’s Maslow’s hierarchy, isn’t it? You’ve got the basics handled and you know where your next meal is coming from and you’ve got a place to sleep, anything above that and the self-actualization stuff of constantly trying to make things perfect will drive you crazy and you won’t have any peace of mind. I’ve been fortunate enough to interview thought leaders, business experts like yourself. I interviewed Isaac Lidsky who happens to be blind, and wrote a book called Eyes Wide Open and runs his own company and looks at his blindness as a gift. I’ve interviewed Sam Morris who is known as the Zen Warrior. He was hit by a drunk driver 16 years ago and he’s paralyzed from the waist down. He tells me, “My brain’s not paralyzed. I’m helping other people transcend their physical.” Whenever I start to get a little mopey or frustrated or overwhelmed like, “Why isn’t this happening as fast as I want it to?” the impatience button, I go, ” I can see and I can walk. Let’s start there.” This maintaining the gratitude perspective is brilliant. I just love it so much.
I want to do a little bit of a shift if we can because you’re such an expert and you have so much information. One of the things that you are the master at, Larry, is helping companies that have merged two different types of cultures figure out how that team is going to get along. Can you tell us when example of what you’ve done so people can know to go to you for that in the future?
In any relationship, look at your differences as complementary.
Yes. Actually two companies merging is almost like two people getting married and all they have is their bios. They just met each other. It’s this phenomenon called cultural clash when two organizations come together. A famous example is a very costly one. Sprint when they tried to buy Nextel, it cost them $20 billion of market cap because of cultural clash. Most of the problems that United had. Continental was a pretty good culture and United was a terrible culture. The culture there was a clash. These things can happen. Some of the very successful mergers, CVS and Caremark, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, all those we’ve been a part of. It’s really about really understanding the culture of the two firms and getting really to respect and value the differences as opposed to judging it. I think in any relationship, a marriage or anything, if you can look at your differences as complementary, if you look at them as helping one another as opposed to being opposing or critical.
The key thing we do, in fact, right now we’re working with a company called CenturyLink and Level 3, a gigantic $34 billion merger. We just did a two-day off-site seminar with the new eighteen-person team about half of each company. We just spent a lot of time really getting to know each other and tell our crucible stories about where we came from, what our values are, what our aspirations are, what we want to have as a joint vision for the future culture of this organization. At the end of that two days is like they’ve been together ten years in terms of trust, openness. A term we put out there is it’s very useful in life to assume positive intentions in others, not assume motives. We so often assume motives. What happens in mergers is we assume motives. It’s believing that each person’s doing what makes sense to them even if you don’t agree with it. It’s not malicious. It’s just how they see things.
We bring these wonderful concepts like the mood elevator and assuming positive intention and accountability and collaboration. We play a fascinating game that they can only win if they cooperate. Initially, they compete and don’t win, but then they finally figure it out and they say, “We’re so much better together than we are apart.” There’s an interesting thing we call an insight or a-ha based learning methodology we use that many people describe our two-day off-site event as a life altering event. That’s part of our magic.
One of my favorite expressions is when you’re healed, you’re not healed alone. When you fix something inside yourself, you’re in an ecosystem or your family or friends or in corporate situations, where if one person can get that a-ha moment of, ” I don’t have to go it alone. I don’t have to assume that everyone’s out to get me or get me fired,” and come from this place of trust. I work with people all the time that there are three unspoken questions people have when they hear you pitch. The first one is, “Do I trust you?” If I don’t trust you, I’m not ever going to hire you, buy from you, fund you, any of that stuff.
You really have delved down into a great way for people to start trusting each other so that then the client could say, “This team gets along. They’re trustworthy.” Just to double-click for a minute on the United Airlines example, which didn’t have a good culture, as you said, those things leak out. That’s the controversy that happened with the passenger being dragged off. Then the way they responded to it wasn’t the ideal scenario according to the majority of people who looked at that. You’ve got to own your stuff when you make a mistake. Putting principles above people never works. That’s what I saw happening there. I’d love your take on if you agree with that or what your perspective is.
I do. One thing that can drive all that is to have a purpose or noble cause. For me, both working today at my age and writing the book all has to do with a purpose. Taking care of myself is my purpose of being around for my family. I have a seventeen-year old son in high school still, kids ranging in age from 17 to 52. The book really, my personal purpose is to help more and more people live life at their best mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. When I formulated that, I said, “I need to write a book about living life at your best.” The original book I wrote in 2012 was Up the Mood Elevator: Living Life at Your Best. The new book that just came out is called The Mood Elevator: Become a Better You. It really is my way of communicating things I’ve learned about living life as your best self more of the time. That’s what I hope to get to the world through the seminars that tens and thousands of people attend every year and through the book and ways like that. To any of your listeners, if there’s any way it’s helped any of them with their startup or their idea or anything, then I feel as if I’ve made a difference.
People can follow you on Twitter @TheMoodElevator. Larry, do you have any last words of wisdom? Obviously, you’ve led an incredibly productive, looking from the outside-in, very fulfilling life. Do you have any insights for people on how to do that? Almost like if you could talk to your younger self, what would you say?
Find your passion in life, the thing that really inspires and motivates you and creates energy for you, and then go about doing it being your best self. Be really accountable for the shadow you cast. Know that your mood affects others and that you are accountable for how you show up every day. You’re accountable to the world for that.
You cast a shadow wherever you go. That’s about being conscious, isn’t it?
Yes.
How else can people follow you?
There are some great videos I’ve done on The Mood Elevator and some great articles on TheMoodElevator.com. They can reach me at [email protected] also.
Thank you so much for inspiring us to find our passion. Stay healthy, stay active, and most of all figure out ways to get up when you’re down by using your mood elevator. Wonderful stuff. Thanks, Larry.
You’re welcome.
Links Mentioned
- Larry Senn
- Up the Mood Elevator
- Dr. Wolf
- Isaac Lidsky
- Eyes Wide Open
- Sam Morris
- Up the Mood Elevator: Living Life at Your Best
- The Mood Elevator: Become a Better You
- TheMoodElevator.com
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