Exceptional Stories For Exceptional People With Karl Pontau
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Imagine listening to a bunch of technical jargon and you have no clue what he or she is talking about. It’s because, as humans, we react to things on an emotional level. This is why Pixar movies work so well, it’s all because of their exceptional stories. Join your host John Livesay and his guest Karl Pontau as they unravel the power of storytelling and how you can sell products with it. Karl is the founder of Squash and Stretch Productions. He helps companies attract and maintain clients by the use of storytelling. Listen to the conversation to know how our brains work and why we resonate with personal stories. Learn how to catch your market’s interest with animation and storytelling today.
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Listen to the podcast here
Exceptional Stories For Exceptional People With Karl Pontau
Our guest on the show is Karl Pontau, who says, “Exceptional stories create exceptional connections with people.” He has a company, Squash & Stretch, that creates animation for people to take complex concepts, and turn them into stories that target those heartstrings. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Karl Pontau, who is the Owner of Squash & Stretch Productions. When companies need to explain complex concepts, generate more revenue or strengthen their brand presence online, Karl and his team help them by telling exceptional stories using high-quality, custom animated content. The key to explaining complex concepts is not to throw information at your audience, but rather tell a story that provides context and structure. You can see why he’s on the show because we’re singing from the same songbook. Karl, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Our mutual friend, Caroline, who edited my book, is someone that recommended you. One of the things I love about that is I talk about how trust is transferred. That is an example of that in action. Let’s hear your story of origin of how you got into this.
I’ve been an artist my entire life. I grew up drawing, painting, sculpting big Legos kid. I got my passion for storytelling from my dad. He’s a good storyteller. I knew I wanted to study animation when I saw the first Toy Story film. I was like, “I’ve got to do that. That’s cool.” Beginning of 2002, I started to feel like something wasn’t quite right with me physically. I’ve been a competitive swimmer my whole life. I knew what that was supposed to feel like. It wasn’t like my shoulder hurts. It’s like a general blah feeling, but by August, they still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with me. I had lost 50 pounds and had sunken cheeks. I was pale. I started to get bad headaches.
My parents took me for an MRI up in Walnut Creek. We were waiting around for another appointment when my pediatrician called and said he’s going to drive up from Pleasanton to come to talk with us. We saw him walking up with this big envelope in his hands. You could tell he had been crying. He brought us into a little side meeting room. I remember I was sitting knee-to-knee with him in this big U-shaped chair with high armrests leaning forward towards him. He pulled out the results of the MRI and showed me I had two brain tumors. It felt like I got punched in the chest. I moved backward in my chair.
[bctt tweet=”When someone who has more experience than you gives you advice, take it and apply it.” username=”John_Livesay”]
For the next two weeks, everything sounded like the adults from Peanuts. I never had the flu, never broke any major bones, never been stung by a bee. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been bitten by a mosquito, so to get a brain tumor diagnosis at fifteen is a complete sucker punch out of nowhere. I got so much help from friends and family. My high school adjusted my schedule and got me a tutor so I can still graduate on time. People I barely knew were giving food, gifts and other supports. That inspired me to want to give back and help as many people as I could because I’d probably be dead if it wasn’t for all the help that I got.
In undergraduate school as I was studying Animation, there was a big student Digital and Design competition I participated in. There was a big screening at the end of 1,000 people in this big auditorium. It may be ten people in the room. When everyone laughed at the joke in my animation, I was like, “It’s so cool. I can connect with people and have a bigger impact with animation and storytelling.”
After grad school, I started my company. We tell exceptional stories for exceptional people helping tech, biotech, health and wellness companies explain complex concepts, answer common questions, increase revenue and strengthen their brand presence online. A lot of people think they can explain something to us by throwing information at their audience. We use that story that puts information in context and structure by helping these companies that are working on huge problems facing the world like reversing climate change, renewable energy, battling cancer and preventing Alzheimer’s.
If we can help accelerate those processes by improving the company storytelling abilities, more people in the world get their problems solved and their lives improved. Our client’s business does better, we get a happy client, everyone wins. It’s a way for me to have a bigger, positive impact on the world around me. That’s why I do what I do.
There’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s start with the competitive swimmer. I was also a competitive swimmer. I talk about that in my TEDx Talks, “Be the lifeguard of your own life.” Unlike in a hurricane, no one is going to come to rescue us. We have to rescue ourselves. The lessons we learned from being a competitive swimmer are incredible. I want to hear what your big takeaway was from being a competitive swimmer. Mine was when I was racing against somebody in breaststroke, he always beat me. In this one race, I beat him by a few tenths of a second. They said, “You stayed focused on the wall. He turned his head to see if he was ahead of you.” By turning his head, I was like, “When I focus on my own progress and stay focused on my own goals, I win.” That’s true in business as well. We’re not comparing ourselves. Do you have a story of what you learned from being a competitive swimmer?
Exceptional Stories: The key to explaining complex concepts is not to throw information at your audience but to tell a story that provides context and structure.
One of the biggest things I learned from that was the importance of having a coach, listening to a coach and following the advice of someone who’s been there before, plays that trunk and knows how you can move forward. Something I’ve carried over into my business and in work life is that when someone who has more experience than the expert says, “Here’s what I recommend you do,” I don’t assume I know better than them. I’ll take that advice in him and apply it. It’s been a huge help.
I also think about racing someone else. I performed better, pushed to do more and achieve more. There is a sense of competition between someone else, not necessarily looking at them but you know they’re in the lane next to you. You’re both going for that wall and trying to get their first competitor in practice assuming against yourself. It’s hard to be super motivated when you can tell that someone is going for the same goal.
When you interact with that person, there’s a level of a relationship there. It makes an effort easier to find than dig deep and trying to achieve that goal first because there was a competition there. One of the things I’m trying to do with my company is going to build a community of people that are all going for the same goal, what I’m calling Collabetition. They know each other exist and they can share some ideas. I don’t want to say patent. They are not going to be giving away treats.
By knowing they’re going after the same goal and being in the same space, they’ll be pushed to do even greater things because they are not competing as each other. Instead of being super siloed and swimming in their own pools at their own pace, it’s getting in a race against someone else where you’re a little more aware of where they are and stuff. That way, everyone achieves the goals quicker.
The tweet for that is when competition and collaboration meet, everybody wins. You’re telling that story of a coach. When I was selling advertising for a fashion magazine called Speedo down in Southern California, I convinced them to advertise with me because I came up with a solution that they had not thought of with a fashion show around a hotel swimming pool of the sportswear and treating it like fashion.
They brought Michael Phelps in since he was on the payroll during the Olympics. I went up to him and I said, “Everyone says you’re so successful, Michael, because your feet are like fins and your lung is bigger than most. I’m guessing there’s something else.” He said, “Yes, John. When I was younger, my coach said to me, ‘Michael, are you willing to work out on Sundays?’ ‘Yes, coach.’ We got 52 more workouts in a year.” I thought, “If we want to be at the Olympic level of what we’re doing, the question becomes, “What are we willing to do that other people aren’t?” I’m imagining you have a story around something like that in what you do that other people in animation aren’t doing. Do you have something that you can share with us on that?
[bctt tweet=”When competition and collaboration meet, everybody wins.” username=”John_Livesay”]
What amazed me when Phelps is winning all the medals and breaking the records in the Olympics season where he kept racking up gold after gold was there’s a behind-the-scenes documentary style video they did showing what his routine was, his training regimen, and how much he had to sacrifice and give up to be that good at swimming. His life was wake up, eat, swim, eat, sleep, wake up, eat. He would eat thousands of calories because he’d burn them all off in the next three hours of the swimming session. Seeing that story behind what made him be able to achieve all those medals in the Olympics is what humanized him and made the difference between the person and the icon. The icon is standing on the podium with the gold medals or is on promoting Speedo. You can’t relate to him until you see the story and see what allowed him to get to that point.
One thing that makes my company different is that we focus on the story, not just the animation. The animation does have the icons, the logos and the graphics, but if it’s not telling a powerful story, no one’s going to relate to it. It’s the story that makes people resonate with the message, the animation, and follow the call to action. People have an animation about this on my homepage. People don’t invest in animation because it’s an animation. They invest in something because it gives them the desired result.
Animation is a tool to tell a great story. The story is a great tool to inspire people, to follow a call to action or to respond a certain way. When we’re making animations for a client, the first thing we start with is, “What are you trying to achieve? Who is your target audience? What story is going to inspire them to do the thing you want them to do? How can we connect you from where you are to where you want to be through those key points?” Creating any content and throwing it up online doesn’t work anymore. You have to have that high-quality story and custom content to get the results.
You’ll agree with me that good stories show the hero having some vulnerability. Michael Phelps did a documentary called The Weight of Gold, where he talks about his battle and another Olympic athlete’s battle with depression after the Olympics is over. Who are you after the parades are done, all the adoration is over and you’re not an Olympic athlete anymore, especially if you’ve been doing it for ten or more years like he was? It is a crisis of identity. That made me connect to him even more that he was vulnerable enough to share that. I love to hear the story of origin. You’ve got a great one of the purpose of Squash & Stretch. Can you explain a little bit about what that is and how that became the name of your company?
I’ll touch on Michael Phelps, the crisis of identity and depression. I see him as a spokesperson for an online mental health service, which is perfect. The times ruin the importance of mental health and people being so aware of it. It’s perfect because you have that whole pressure. Your life is the one thing that you stopped doing and then you’re like, “What do I do?” I agree there. The Squash & Stretch name is homage to Disney because when we were starting the company, that’s Disney Studios, which is his second studio. His first business failed, which is a testament to not giving up for any entrepreneurs out there.
Back then, there wasn’t a best practice for animation that had been established. If you look at the content made around then, it’s pretty bad by standards. He sat down with his animation team and they came up with twelve animation principles that if their work is going to be considered good, complete, done and have these twelve aspects to it. Number one on that list is Squash & Stretch. If you take any one-on-one animation class, the first thing you learn on day one is the same twelve principles. The tools have changed a lot since Disney’s day, but what makes animation work is still based on the same twelve principles. It’s homage to the giants who shoulders anyone who animates standing on. Whenever other animators see my business name, they’re amazed and everyone else goes, “What?”
Exceptional Stories: Focus on the story, not just the animation. It’s a story that really makes people resonate with the message and the animation.
Let’s talk about how you use this in healthcare. Give us a story of a healthcare company that’s very detailed if you’re talking about bloodstream or something. Sometimes, they have a product to sell. It’s complex, and yet they want to get it across quickly and ideally in a story. Do you have an example of a healthcare company that you’ve helped?
We’ve done some work for a company that helps place people in clinical trials that can qualify participants. We made up some animations explaining the clinical trial process for a few of their trials. One of them had to deal with premature babies with respiratory issues. You’re trying to explain to people. The new parents are freaking out because their kid has breathing problems. They’re going to try and see this type of test, if there is a nebulizer and this system to help improve the lung function of these premature babies. It’s trying to explain the risks and everything going on to people that are already emotionally stressed and beyond the normal amount of stress and lack of sleep of a new parent. These are the ones with the kid who has some health issues. Being able to clearly explain what’s going on with the study and get the information clearly is valuable.
Let’s talk about that because I haven’t heard anybody describe it quite like that. You did such a good job of painting the picture of you’re a new parent, you’re stressed out from your child not being well on top, the lack of sleep that new parents have anyway. Imagine that you, as a new parent, are trying to process information. That’s fairly complex about clinical trials in this case. You’re emotional and you’re exhausted. I know myself when my sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she had to record what the doctor was saying because you are in a state of shock that you can’t even hear what they’re saying, let alone remember it or understand it. You’re solving that problem by being able to show people. We’re wired differently to hear information versus watch an animation and absorb a story like we do Pixar.
Part of our brain devoted to a sensory input analysis, 80% of that goes to vision. Also with animation, you get the audio and the visuals. The brain can engage and helps with recognition or memory and all that stuff.
You’ve also worked with tech companies. That’s a whole other very left-brain kind of thing, not necessarily related to technology and healthcare. My whole premise is that people buy emotionally and then back it up with logic, even for the most technical thing.
You might not be surprised to hear after the first story I told that I’m very interested in how the brain works. Reading a number of books on the subject, on the topic, we make decisions on the lower brain, which controls emotion and decision-making. Unless we’re presented with something that challenges our preconceived worldview or the way we see things. Our brains are lazy and designed to conserve energy as a survival mechanism. Unless we’re challenged by our worldview challenges information, you have a brain that isn’t even engaged when it comes to decision-making.
[bctt tweet=”Can you solve my problems?” username=”John_Livesay”]
The lower brain would take in something and think, “They’re not going to clash on what I think the world is.” We bounce it up to the upper brain, have the ratio and logic. Analyze this stuff and see if I can figure out how this will fit with my worldview. The brain kicks in, figures some stuff out and passes it back down to the lower brain when you make a decision. If you’re presented with something that doesn’t, can I call it to clash with how you see things? It doesn’t even kick in when it comes to decision-making.
When people are making decisions about all things, it’s 100% based on emotion and rationalized later if needed. That’s the reason why telling the stories is powerful and important, even for industries that are considering very left-brain and technical. Engineers often speak engineers. They don’t speak layman’s English. There’s one example of how we help a tech company. Early in 2021, we worked with a company called Enovix. They make next-generation lithium-ion battery technology.
They were spending about 45-minutes to 1 hour-long sales meeting trying to explain to other battery engineers how their technology can produce about twice as much energy and lasts about 30% longer than existing batteries. It’s about the same production process with a few drops in tweaks. We made this two-minute animation concisely explained the differences between their technology and the current technology and how they want to use this stuff. They loved it and they put it on their website for a while.
A couple of weeks after they posted it, they announced they’re acquiring a publicly-traded company and the valuation after the merger is $1.13 billion. Early in July 2021, they were awarded a $350 million contract with the US Army to make batteries for all the wearable tech soldiers wear. It saved them a ton of time and helped make their ability to explain the value of what their product does. It was two minutes instead of 45 minutes.
I have a premise that a good story should be clear, concise and compelling. With the steps that you’re using in your animation, it does all of that and more. When it’s compelling or you tug at heartstrings and people open the purse strings, people see themselves in the story and then they want to go on the journey with you. You talk about this in the steps about the appeal of a cartoon character has to correspond to what we would call charisma in an actor. Part of what people don’t realize is, “How am I being moved by a cartoon character? Why am I feeling something here?” Whether it’s Pixar or even something about the battery lasting longer than you would normally expect. If it’s helping save a life of a soldier, we’re involved emotionally. It’s no longer just, “That would be nice to have.”
It doesn’t have to be super cartoony either. There’s a ton of different styles in animation that are possible. When we’re picking a visual style for a client, we look at their existing brand, their target audience and figuring out what’s going to appeal to that audience and fit their brand. It’s popular and trending. It’s not all super cartoony. Things that are aimed at kids can be very sophisticated, more believable, realistic than other people would expect. You want to have the right characters because people empathize with characters on screen, empathize with people more than objects or concepts. You don’t even have to have a super detailed character, but as long as you’re talking about someone, you explain how they’re feeling and what they’re struggling with, what the conflict is and how they’re feeling about that, those situations or things that people can empathize with.
Exceptional Stories: Part of our brain is devoted to sensory input analysis. Around 80% of that goes to vision. Animation has audio and visuals, so the brain can engage at once.
If you’re trying to hook an audience, sorting your story with, meet this character, here’s what they care about, feeling, struggling with, people who share those feelings in situations are going to go, “I get this person. I want to see what happens to them.” If that’s your target audience of who you’re trying to reach, then showing them going through the experience of working with your business and how they’re going to feel during that experience and at the end, showing the results and how they feel afterward, how much their life is better because they hired your business for whatever you do, bought whatever product or whatever you’re trying to get them to do, showing that journey and that experience get people to be like, “I want that response.”
Once they have that and you share your call to action, that’s what inspires people to get off their butts and do something else. I’ll click on the computers because no one is going anywhere much. That story is powerful. A lot of people make the mistakes of not setting up the character right and not setting up the conflict right. Jumping right to what they do. Unless you establish why people should care in that first eight seconds or so, no one is going to watch the rest. All they talk about themselves too much is huge, companies talking about themselves too much on their websites and other content is about them. People only care about two things, which is to share my values, “Are you here to help me?” The weird thing our brains do when we’re presented with something new is subconsciously ask, “Is this going to kill me?”
It’s the leftover survival mechanism from back on the Savannah days if there’s a rustling bush in the distance. If you weren’t afraid there was a lion and when there was a lion, you got eaten. All the people that survived ran away when it rustled, even if it wasn’t a lion. You still have to provide enough information about your business that makes sure people know they can trust you and that you share their values. If they show, “Can you share my values? Can you solve my problem?” Then go right back to talking about the clients that they’re experiencing, how you’re going to help them improve the quality of life that they’re looking for. Most people talk about themselves too much, and people don’t care.
You gave us some real value bombs there. Let me highlight a few of them. What I heard you say was the better we describe a problem someone’s having before we jump into what our solution is, the more people are involved in this story. The other key element that I teach everyone when I’m teaching them how to tell stories as a sales tool is you must have a resolution to the story. The story doesn’t end when you say what your solution is. We fix the problem. We need to know what life is like after the problem has been fixed. We see it in classic stories like the Wizard of Oz. Imagine if that movie ended when she got in the balloon to go back to Kansas. There wasn’t that great scene of her with all those insights about no place like home and all that stuff.
This concept of once we feel safe and that people share our values is, “Can you solve my problem?” The big unspoken question everybody has when they watch a video, listen to someone present or pitch is, “Will this work for me?” They might trust you and like you but if they don’t think it’s what you have to offer will work for them, then they’re not going to buy.
[bctt tweet=”Exceptional stories can change the world. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
The magic of storytelling is you pull someone into the story enough where they are in the journey with the character and they go, “This person is like me. If it worked for them, I guess it will work for me.” Until that journey and that embodiment of who you’re taking on the journey unless you’re in the story is left-brain analytical, “Nice for them that that happened, but I don’t think it’s going to happen for me.” There’s where the big gap is between why people aren’t closing more sales or getting more people to understand what they’re doing. It’s because they’re not seeing themselves in the story.
They’re talking about themselves too much. When you’re telling a story like that, the clients are the hero, the company is the guide and helping them along the way. It’s not about you. When you show the results, it’s about the results for the other clients and how much better their lives are. I love that example of the balloon. It’d be funny to see a compilation of famous endings of films to cut them all off before that’s a complete entity. Triggered people get anxious or annoyed if they didn’t see the entire resolution.
That open loop is very annoying. It’s big to have explainer videos on websites. People don’t want to read. They want a short little video. It’s much more impactful if there’s some animation, music and all that versus just a talking head. What is the best way for someone to reach out to you?
They can visit www.SquashAndStretch.net. We also offer a free story assessment service on the website. There’s a five-point assessment we go through for their website and give them a report that shows where they can improve. We offer them some next steps that will help them close the gap themselves, or they can do a gap assessment and figure out how we could work together to make sure that their storytelling on their website and their other media is as optimized as possible. They can check me out on LinkedIn. Search for Karl Pontau and reach out that way.
Karl, thank you so much. Many people are drowning in the sea of sameness. There are many other people that do what we do, whether it’s insurance, coaching or whatever it is. With your skillset of animating and bringing your story to life that’s going to cut through the clutter and make people stand out and become memorable, a lot of people are going to be interested in exploring how you can help them do that.
Thank you.
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Referral Diva With Virginia Muzquiz
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
There is an art and science to being a magnetic human. John Livesay’s guest in this episode is Virginia Muzquiz, known as the “Referral Diva” and the Founder of Master Connector. Virginia talks with John about how you can influence without being manipulative. The key is empathy, which is the secret to quality referral partnerships and friendships. The sustainable method of referrals and connection is creating a team. You’ll need affiliates, ambassadors, and advocates who work on your behalf because they like who you are. If you want more tips on how to be magnetic, this episode’s for you. Tune in!
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Listen to the podcast here
Referral Diva With Virginia Muzquiz
Are you looking for a way to improve the number of quality referrals you get? Our guest, Virginia Muzquiz, is the Referral Diva who’s going to give you a plan on how to get referrals, execute the plan, track it, evaluate and repeat. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Virginia Muzquiz, who is the Founder of Master Connectors and the creator of Referrals On Demand, which teaches solo entrepreneurs how to turn their network into a referral generating machine. With more than two decades of experiencing, developing and leveraging social capital to build a business, she has been teaching entrepreneurs and small business owners the art and science of filling their sales funnels with high-quality referrals.
She is passionate about increasing prosperity across the globe and uses her business to further the efforts of Ten by Three, an international nonprofit, creating economies of scale in third world countries by turning artisans into entrepreneurs. Her IMPACT FIRST philosophy inspires her clients to make different skills that inspire others to promote, connect and refer them to perfect ideal clients. Virginia, welcome to the show.
Referral Diva: There is an art and science to being a magnetic human and using influence without being manipulative.
Thanks so much, John. It’s great to be here.
Let’s go back as far as you want, your childhood, college, wherever you want to go and give us a little sense of when you start getting passionate about the value of relationships.
Every time someone says, “Tell me your story,” it makes me want to break into song and be like, “When I was a young warthog.” It’s from the lion king, I don’t know why that always cracks me up. I discovered the value of relationships because, as a kid, I grew up without them. I grew pretty independent. My brother is seven years older than I am.
He was off riding his bike when I was cutting my teeth on a tricycle. I didn’t have a playmate or anything. My mom was a woman who took great physical care for me but she was a victim of domestic violence and was deeply abused by her father. She was emotionally unavailable. My dad’s a grumpy old geezer and workaholic.
I grew up alone with Nancy Drew books in trees. I was a Betty Bossypants. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t have social skills, because where do you learn social skills as a kid? You learn them in your family. We didn’t do that. I grew up feeling lonely, disconnected and constantly seeking relationships and approval. What has happened is over time, I’ve realized that there is an art and science to being a magnetic human. Being able to use influence without being manipulative.
I work with people a lot when they say, “We want to be persuasive without being pushy when we’re selling something.” You have a different distinction around that as far as connecting in general, which is great.
I believe that there is a bit of a science to persuasion and influence but the difference between a narcissistic sociopath and a CEO is empathy. There are a lot of CEOs that are pretty narcissistic. I’m not being critical about that if you don’t understand what you do, what you say and how you walk in the world inspires or alienates people and you’re running around being the victim of your own bad behavior. I did one of those TTI assessments where they’re like, “Here’s your DISC and motivators.” There’s this like skill-based thing and it comes back. I have a 10 for influence and I have a 0 for empathy. I burst into tears years ago. I was like, “I am a sociopath. This is horrible.”
[bctt tweet=”Curiosity is the key to being more empathetic. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
The guy who did the testing said, “The simple fact that you can understand that influence untempered with empathy is a problem. It means you’re probably not a narcissist. You just don’t have a skillset.” I started coaching. Believe it or not, there are coaches who teach you empathy. It’s a vocabulary. I started realizing that understanding empathy was the key to quality selling, quality referral partnerships and, quality friendships. It’s that ability to understand, listen for and have some curiosity about, “What is John feeling in this moment and can I name it?”
I love that you said curiosity. That is one of the most underrated characteristics in a leader and people because it requires you to get the focus off yourself. You need to be interested in what’s going on in the world and learning a new skill. “I’m curious to learn about you. How did you get to where you are?” Any of those things lead to people saying, “You’re taking an interest in me. That makes me feel connected to you.” Ideally, the situation is reciprocal. There’s one thing you wrote in your LinkedIn profile. I’m a fanatic about reading those. It’s a great opportunity for people to tell their stories in a way that either pulls people in or pushes them away. How did the Referral Diva come up?
I was starting out in my coaching practice. It was 2010, 2011. I had purchased the Referral Institute Franchise, which doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s not a thing. The franchise rebranded and then got sold off. I realized the need for differentiation. You get behind a brand but you also need your edge. A friend of mine who was a mentor and an investor in my early coaching practice took me to this agency and said, “We’re going to take you to this agency. We’re going to brand you personally.” It’s going to be great. They’re way ahead of their time. They’re trying to give me a QR code and they’re like, “You need to be on Twitter.” I’m like, “I don’t do social media. It’s a time suck. I don’t want to do it. I’m not interested. I’m not going to Twitter.”
The owner of the agency walks through and goes, “Could you stop being such a diva?” The branding person that was assigned to my thing goes, “That’s it. Referral Diva, that’s you.” I was so incorrigible at the time. The definition of a diva is a woman of extraordinary talent. Not to brag but I’m extraordinary. I’m talented at the things I’m talented at, not much at the stuff I’m not but I’m talented at what I do. I started trying to embrace that side of the Diva brand. We are going forward and officially rebranding to the Referral Alchemist.
The Alchemist
I love the book The Alchemist. That’s the name of your process, the Referral Alchemy. This concept that you talk about, we’re lucky sometimes we meet a couple of referral archeologists who keep us in mind, referrals and take the time to think about who’s a smart connection. Most of us don’t know how to hang out with those kinds of people, let alone how to be one. It seems to me that you’re solving both problems. You teach people how to become an alchemist in terms of being able to tap into the network in a meaningful way and then how to find others so that you’re spending time with the right people. That helps your own network, which makes you a better referral.
If you look at the Master Connectors logo that I have, it’s a Buckminster Fuller Geodesic like the Epcot globe. The idea here is, first of all, the triangle is the strongest geometric shape. Geodesics are built out of triangles and the best relationships are three-way. I gain influence when I introduce you to a third party. You’re connected to me. They’re connected to me. You’re connected to them. That strengthens our relationships all the way around. The other thing about a geodesic that is unique is that it is the only geometrical structure that gains strength and durability as it gets taller. That has to do with the fact that it’s round and dome-shaped. The taller it gets, the wider base gets. It makes it more stable.
The key to the whole alchemy piece is being able to hub enough connections that you can get anywhere around the geodesic because you have a point of connection somewhere. I’ve got an alchemy epic fail and then an alchemy epic success. The success story is Rob Goyette was on my show and I asked him, “Who do you want to know?” I make it my business to introduce the people I meet to the people they want to know who do you want to know. He said he wanted to meet John Lee Dumas.
It happened that somebody in my network had coached with him and had presented me to John to have him on my show. It was a brand new show, so I was terrified to have this conversation with John Lee Dumas. I didn’t schedule him. If somebody hands you, John Lee Dumas, on a platter, I don’t care how unprepared you are. He’ll make you look good, just say yes but I didn’t have the confidence to say yes.
I ended up calling Zach, telling him, “I’ve got this guy, Rob. Do you still have a connection?” He said, “I don’t but my friend does because my friend lives in Puerto Rico.” Zach introduced Rob to the friend, the friend introduced Rob to John Lee Dumas, John Lee Dumas introduced Rob to someone at this party and those two inked a massive deal.
It’s like the Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees of Separation in a way.
They say everyone is Six Degrees of Separation and that’s not the case. Dr. Ivan Misner and Michelle Donovan did the research. What they found was that only 29% of people are capable of doing it. It’s based on a study that was done where you had to get a letter to a destination and mail it to someone you knew, then they had to mail it to someone else they knew. Only 29% of the letters arrived at their destination. I imagine that there were letters along the way that could have gotten to the destination but for the apathy of the individual who got the letter. I got the letter but I was apathetic about sending it on to the next person.
Most people are weak in the follow-up. That’s a big distinction I see in particular.
It can be fun for me. It’s an adventure. It takes on this LARPing quality, Live-Action Role Play like, “How can I get to the next step? Who else could I ask? Where could I push? Where could I find it?” For me, it’s going on an epic quest. I won’t work that hard for everybody but I’ll work that hard for people who I think are merit that much activity.
[bctt tweet=”Get a referral engine by planning and tracking. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
It’s like the hero’s journey in a way. There are obstacles along the way but then the stakes are high. Let’s get into what problem you’re solving. What happens to someone’s business if they’re only relying on advertising and they maybe get the occasional a lot of the blue referral but they don’t have a system in place to create that or support that coming?
Generally, they’re stuck not getting any clients. That’s the challenge. Here’s the real truth, John. I’m not against paid traffic, print advertising, television advertising or sponsorship but they all take money because if you’re going to do it, you need to be ubiquitous. In order to do that, there’s this frequency element. It used to be people saw you 3 to 5 times and that was enough. Now it’s 12 to 17.
Somebody needs to see your Facebook ad twelve times before they’re going to click on it. How much money do you need to put behind that? You’ve got to know how to beat the algorithms, know your SEO words, have the right message and AB split test. It’s so overwhelming. I’m a $75,000 a year coach. You don’t have a choice but to use referrals. I have this Referrals On Demand system but it’s the most simple form. I use PETE, it’s an acronym. Meet my friend PETE, Plan, Execute, Track, Evaluate. Without it, you won’t have a consistent revenue stream.
Do you find some people are hesitant to make referrals? Let’s say you’re coach and you got a great client. Maybe they’re embarrassed that they’re even using a coach that they don’t want to tell their friends. I see a lot of people who are financial advisors like, “Any referrals you have?” Let’s say you’re doing a good job, whether you’re somebody’s empathy coach or financial advisor and you want them to send you referrals.
You ask, “Should they be giving referral fees?” What’s the process that you teach because I know you have an upcoming course we want to talk about? I’m trying to identify some problems that you’re helping people solve. Most people are afraid to ask, then they ask and they still don’t get it. They don’t know why. That’s what I see.
There are a couple of things here. Number one, referral fees don’t work, so don’t do it. I’ll give you $25 if you send me your mother. That’s not happening. The only place that it works is in joint venture marketing but that’s a whole other ball of wax. We can talk about that but that involves paying people high dollar cost of client acquisition and the average solo entrepreneur doesn’t even know what client acquisition costs are, let alone how much their cost of client acquisition is. There’s that element of that. What I teach is very relevant to joint venture marketing and it is an essential skillset because if I want you to promote for me, I need to build this relationship with you that has some reciprocal value. Referral fees, in general, don’t work. They will not inspire your clients to refer you.
Second thing, your clients are not going to refer you because you do a bang-up job for them. The idea is like, “If you go to a movie, you tell everybody about it. If you go to a great restaurant, you tell everybody about it.” I’m sorry. No, one’s talking about what a great coach you are on an intentional basis. If someone says, “John, you’re killing it. What happened while I was working with Virginia?” Only if someone notices and asks, “Will your clients do it?” Your clients rarely are going to put their neck on the line, mostly because they often don’t know what to say, how to do it or what to work?
The real money and sustainability are in creating a team of affiliates, ambassadors and advocates that willingly work, out of goodwill, on your behalf because they like who you are. They believe in your worldview, what you’re up to and want to further your cause because they think you’re the man and they want to proliferate that.
Referral Diva: The real sustainability is creating a team of affiliates, ambassadors, and advocates who willingly work on your behalf because they like who you are.
People can tell that when they’re hearing or even reading an email, they can tell whether it’s an authentic connection or not. I believe everything’s energy from a quantum physics standpoint, money’s energy, relationships are energy and trust gets transferred. That’s the thing that most people do not realize. “I got to get you to trust me. Let me show you all the social proof,” look you in the eye and all that other stuff that you need. What you’re offering people is the roadmap to how to get trust transferred. That’s how I would sum you up to somebody.
I would say that to be true and a lot of it has to do with clarity, clarity about who I am, what I want, what I’m up to in the world and my purpose. Why am I here on the planet? What am I here to do? What change am I here to affect? It’s the ability to communicate it clearly.
Clear, concise and compelling are my three Cs. I’m constantly teaching people with their storytelling skills. Let’s double click on the concept of you working with solo entrepreneurs. Can you give us 2 or 3 industries? Are they coaches? If so, what kind of coaches? Are they the guy who owns the dry cleaning business? I don’t think that’s who it is. Who’s your ideal client? Who’s this for?
I’m working with midlife expert entrepreneurs is where that’s coming in. Coaches, consultants and I consider a financial advisor, accountant and attorney. They’re all consultants of some sort. People that are using their expertise to solve problems for others. They’re selling something intangible. It’s easy to be like, “I’m selling magic markers. Do you need a magic marker? A magic marker will suit your needs.”
That’s fine but when you’re talking about things like money, deep dark secrets, transformational journey or whatever that is, you start getting into stuff that people are going to hold tight to the vest in the trust level for that. It’s not just I can buy it at Walmart, think this is crap, throw it in the garbage and buy something at Target. That’s not that easy.
Tell us a little bit about what you have coming up with this program, Referral Engine. Is it an online course?
It’s delivered live. It’s a hybrid coaching program. There’s video support. I’ve got the video modules for the support and then we’ll be meeting once a week for Q&A. We’ll be covering things like how do you align your business with your lifestyle? Most people are building a business and then trying to fit life in. My clients decide on life and then they align their business with that.
It reminds me of some people who have kids and then once the kid arrives, everything revolves around the kid. The parents suddenly lose the time to work out. They don’t see their friends anymore and everything’s about the kid’s life. There are other people who have kids like, “The kid is joining our life. The kid is not our life.” I was like, “What a great distinction.” It doesn’t mean you don’t take your kids to birthday parties but that’s what I hear you saying. Is that a great analogy?
It is. By the way, my two girls are capable of sitting on a bench for four hours and entertaining themselves with their thoughts.
No electronics needed?
[bctt tweet=”Align your business with your lifestyle.” username=”John_Livesay”]
No. My kids grew up in the Game Boy era. It boils down to, “What is it that you want to be doing? What kind of life do you want to be?” It’s, “I know what life I want to be living. With whom do I want to take the journey?” I call it defining your tribe. It’s getting in touch with your values, mission, vision, passion, purpose, the impact that you want to have and who do you want to invite in. Dr. Ivan Misner and Stewart Emery wrote a book called Who’s in Your Room.
It’s up to us to decide who we let in. If we let somebody in by mistake, get them out. It’s so good.
Who’s in Your Room: The Secret to Creating Your Best Life
You can never get them out. Did you know that? Ivan Misner does this. He’s like, “Think of somebody that you kicked out your room.” You said, “Get out of my room.” Did you think of somebody? They’re still in your room. They are still living because they have taken up space in your neural network. Unless you have a frontal lobotomy and you have a cut-out, it’s not going anywhere.
The notion of defining your tribe is, “Who do I psychographically want to take my life’s journey with?” It’s number one. Number two, “How will they know that I get them?” How do we communicate? I’m communicating to you how I see you. What you need to be thinking when I’m talking to you is like, “How did she get in my head?”
That goes back full circle about the importance of listening, being curious and having empathy. When you hear someone express a challenge or a problem they’re having, you can then say, “If you’re having this, I bet there are 100 or 1,000 other people like you.” That becomes part of the concept for your marketing. This whole concept is fascinating of how we communicate and what trust is. Virginia, where can people go to find out more about you and your wonderful program about building this Referral Engine?
You can locate information about the Referral Engine at MasterConnectors.com/ReferralEngine. On the forms there, it says like, “How’d you hear from us?” If you found out about it here, make sure you fill that out and let us know so that John gets brownie points and kisses.
Thank you so much. What a treasure. I love that you’re so passionate. Your daughters are lucky to have you.
Thank you so much, John. I appreciate it.
Important Links
- Virginia Muzquiz
- Ten by Three
- The Alchemist
- Rob Goyette – Previous episode on Business by Referral Podcast
- Referral Engine
- Who’s in Your Room
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Accessing Your Massive Untapped Potential With Lynn Thomas
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Accessing untapped potential is difficult because you don’t know what you’re capable of. The only way to find out is by challenging yourself. Lynn Thomas, CEO of Thomas Consulting, Inc., joins John Livesay to discuss how you can uncover areas for growth and development. She started as a tax attorney, but that did not stop her from transitioning careers and exploring opportunities, finding what truly works for her. She highlights the importance of emotional intelligence in facilitating your growth to becoming your peak self. The possibilities are endless, and it’s up to you to take the proactive step of coming out of your comfort zone. Find out how you can do that and other advice on dealing with rejection and employee retention.
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Listen to the podcast here
Accessing Your Massive Untapped Potential With Lynn Thomas
Our guest is Lynn Thomas who talks about emotional intelligence as both personal awareness and personal regulation. She has great insight as to when it’s time to leave a job. I’m going to wait for you to find the answers on the episode. I hope you enjoy it.
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Our guest is Lynn Thomas, who’s a dynamic energetic leader with years of experience in customer service and retention. Also, with a proven record selling and sustaining more than 480 long-term clients purchasing best-in-class customer retention, loyalty and experience programs to improve customer and employee retention. Her expertise in creating and executing tailored client presentations and adjusting implementation plans based on relevant information assures client delight. She’s skilled at inspiring others to accept change and adopt new behaviors to deliver extraordinary client experiences and has strong leadership and relationship-building skills. She connects with people instantly and works as intimately as possible in a corporate setting to empower the employees and foster change. Welcome to the show, Lynn.
Thanks so much, John. I’m happy to be here.
Let’s start with your own story of origin. You can go back to when you were a tax attorney at Arthur Andersen or when you got your law degree, wherever you want to start the story.
Growing up, my father loves his job, which I didn’t realize how unique that was. He would come home singing and dancing, having a good day and tell us what was going on. There was this mindset that work was fun that was ingrained in all of us. It’s what allowed me to transition to different careers because as soon as I stopped having fun, my mindset inside went, “This isn’t the right place for me. This isn’t the right job.” I started as a tax attorney at Arthur Andersen. There are aspects of that that I truly loved, but I was getting feedback which is the key way to see what untapped potentials you have. Some people would say kindly, “You’re much more gregarious than we are. You’re comfortable standing up in front of a room talking or speaking.” I was like, “My parents are both speakers. It’s not a big thing.” They said, “Maybe you dress with a lot more colors.”
I got the sense that I was not bad but different. I didn’t hear this as negative. What I got for myself is I loved interacting with people. Not for 5 to 7 years more would I be at the partner level. For me, I don’t mind supporting for being behind the scenes but I’m best out in front or make the greatest impact out in front. I left. I went to Bank of Boston as a private banker, which I loved but in about eighteen months, I boiled it down to five different types of clients. Within about 3 or 4 minutes of meeting somebody, I could figure out which one they were. It wasn’t that challenging. I was recruited over to be a change agent for a division of the bank that was changing. This is an area that had not gone through any change for decades. They want them to change really quickly. The end result was that of the 1,800 people there, 2 people had heart attacks. One had died and was out on disability.
Accessing Untapped Potential: Be willing to go out to the skinny branches, reaching for the best fruit, reaching for the next step.
It was clear they were managing it well. That was great. They acknowledged that but I went out and found somebody who was willing to give a pretty thorough explanation of stress and that amount of stress. Stress is the new age thing back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. I came in and spoke to the head person. I said, “These people are good. They give a discounted rate because they’ve never worked with anybody here. It’s $500.” He said, “No.” I said, “It’s for everybody.” He said, “No.” I said, “I’ll pay for it.” He said, “No.” I remember at that point, the hair stood up in the back of my neck and I was like, “I want to get out of here.” I turned around and I resigned the next day. It was yuck. If this is about using people to get to the corporate bottom line, I’m not part of that. That’s not who I am. There had to be better ways. I knew there were better ways. That’s why I left and founded my own company.
I look back on it like, “Lynn, you gave up three careers.” The end of it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t challenging for me. It wasn’t using all of my untapped potential and some of it being tapped. I was fortunate I wound up working with the gentleman, Scott Jones, who did invent voicemail. He was enthralled with a lot of the work I did. I worked with his company for years. They had gone through a change. They were moving from where they started as a small tech company to a larger company. Usually, when a company moves, production goes down and they couldn’t afford for it to go down. I was working with all the various different teams. I was keeping them all inspired and motivated. I’m encouraging them to embrace the new place and how to make it their own. It wound up that their production has gone up. I was very delighted with the results there. I learned a lot from Scott.
One of the things Scott took away from what I said and took it to another level is doing two things uncomfortable every day. He does ten things uncomfortable every day. He gets a patent about it every two years. People say, “That’s a lot.” I said, “How do you do that?” I’m like, “Does he go anonymous?” I think so. He’s been doing that for years. Those are the source of his a-has or his new insights. Also, what he does is comes up with twenty solutions or options to his greatest personal professional problem every day. When he wakes up, whichever pressing, he forces himself to do that.
The great thing about that is I do it probably twice a week. I’m not as disciplined perhaps as he is. I said, “Scott, why twenty?” He said, “The first 3, 4, 5, everyone’s going to come up with. They are off the top of your head. That’s what we were going to come up with. “You have 5, 6, 7. Up to ten is okay.” When you start getting around 14, 15, 16, you’re combining them. You take a little bit of 3, maybe 5 and 11 and you’re like, “Wow.” The first time I did this, John, I felt this different level of creativity that I tapped into. In school, college, graduate school or law school, nobody ever said come up with twenty solutions.
It’s impossible. You’ll come up with one and you’re done. Let’s double click on some of the things you said here. There are so many great takeaways. The first one is it’s time to leave your job when it’s not fun and not challenging. That combination is the key. Sometimes something could be fun but you’re bored or you’re not having fun and it’s challenging but it’s tedious. When you have neither fun nor a challenge going on, that’s a lethal combo. I had not heard anybody put those two things together as criterion for when you know it’s time to move on. I like that.
[bctt tweet=”Time to leave your job when you are not having fun and not being challenged.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s for me. For other people, it may be different but I like to be challenged and I know that will push me deeper into different resources I have and finding the energy. It’s fun to do.
It’s a valuable thing to take a look at and we’ll tie it into EQ. The other thing you said that I like is to do two things that are uncomfortable every day. That could be taking a cold shower. It doesn’t get any more comfortable if they did it. It doesn’t suddenly make it comfortable. One example of that is taking a cold shower. I started doing that and I realize that you get pushed out of your comfort zone and you’re like, “I can tolerate this. Therefore, if anything else happens in my day that is uncomfortable, I’ve already got that muscle working a little bit.”
That’s a great way to do it. I’m not sure taking a cold shower is ever uncomfortable. You may get a little more used to it. Your body is not as shocked but the idea of being uncomfortable, I wish I could say I made this up but I was listening to Tom Peters years ago. He’s, if not the highest, one of the highest-paid consultants in the country. He was talking to all of us in this large audience and he said, “Would you go to work the same way every day, take the same route, the same exits, park around the same place, walk-in with the same people, eat with the same people at lunch, go home the same way, stopped to get the milk or whatever you need to get? At night, you watch the same programs. On the weekend, you hang out with the same people?” I said, “Where the heck you’re supposed to get new ideas?”
That was one of those blinding flashes to the obvious. You’re like, “If I do the same, I’m reinforcing confirmation bias.” What he said is, “Every time I go to the airport, I pick up a magazine I know nothing about. The rest of you pick a magazine you know something about to be comfortable.” I’ve started doing things like that, doing hobbies or things I’m not good at all. I’ve learned different things about myself. Doing two things uncomfortable every day becomes fun. For Scott, he needs no coffee or orange juice. When you wake up and you’ve done 10 years of 10 a day, you run out of them.
He’s like, “What am I going to do?” He’s like jazzed. He’s like, “We got to come up with ten things.” He knows the value of it but it’s his fun way to start the day. The reason we do that is if we stay in our comfort zone, what we all wind up in and it could be an exaggeration but not is a lead line coffin. We die if you stay comfortable. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I advocate if you want to reach new potentials and see new abilities come forth, which we all have, if you stay comfortable, you’re probably not going to find those. I don’t have any judgment on that. It’s wasn’t for me.
Accessing Untapped Potential: You can always learn something from a hardship.
I’m working with an insurance agency out in California. They brought in a new CEO. The first time they’re comfortable, they’re going to fire them because they said they want to be on the leading edge. That’s daring. If somebody said the fruit grows on the end of the skinny branches, that’s where the fruit grows. Sometimes going out there, you may fall. You learn your lessons. You stand there. You wipe yourself off and you climb back up the tree because that’s where life’s happening. Be willing to go out to the skinny branches, reaching for the best fruit, reaching for the next step. Maybe a mistake and you fall. “What did I learn?” Go back. At least for me with what I’m doing is all different types of skills to help clients because I don’t know in any organization what is needed for them to reach the levels of where they want to go and be.
This concept of if we’re not stretching our comfort zone every day that we will be in the same zone. My observation is even if you want to stay in your comfort zone, you can’t. It keeps shrinking if you’re not pushing and growing it. I wanted your opinion on that. Have you noticed that in your own life or others where they go, “I’m not going to learn any new things,” then you’re like, “Not only are you not growing but that comfort zone gets smaller and smaller?” You can’t stay where you are. You’re either growing or shrinking. There is no, “I’ll just stay here and coast.”
What I say when I’m doing a speaking engagement or something is if you do live your work the same way now as you did yesterday, you’re falling behind the crowd. Every day it was uncomfortable to do something new and different. That’s important because everybody’s out there, especially with COVID. COVID has taken us all into amazing uncomfortable stuff. I don’t think there’s anybody that’s been able to escape it. It’s been uncomfortable. It’s produced anxiety, stress, PTSD, grief and lots of horrific situations. It’s not positive but I’m a person who always believes that I can always learn something from hardship, from difficulty. There are always opportunities. There’s something always there.
What I see with COVID is that all of a sudden, the way companies can attract and retain top employees is by giving them almost unlimited development choices. Employees are thinking, “Am I going to be employable in 2, 3, 5, 7 years?” Who knows? The only protection is whatever your job is or whatever your skills are, you have to be on the leading edge, working with those on the leading edge or somehow engaging with them.
People say, “I don’t want to change.” Let’s say, “Let’s be clear. If you don’t want to change, that’s okay.” You’re rapidly becoming obsolete because things are changing. I read somewhere that COVID has accelerated the pace of digital technology for 4 to 6 years. It’s put us in 2020 where we’d be at 2025 and maybe people will feel like, “This feels more like 2025 or what I thought it would feel,” but we’re here. A lot of companies, a lot of Millennials and Gen Z say they are assaulted by the level of technology at some companies. The insurance legacies still hang onto some of that. It’s like, “Just give it up.” You have to make sure you’re giving your employees the best tools, especially those who are technologically savvy. You want them on the best.
[bctt tweet=”Do two things that make you uncomfortable every day.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Maybe you’ll see, “That will make this even faster, better, more robust, deeper or whatever the quality is that they want it.” Listen to them because the people older are not going to probably come up wit6h those ideas. That generation is going to figure out how to do those things. Listen to employees. When I find companies saying, “How do we bring them back?” My newsletter is coming out. I talk about it in that. What I find the best, John, is a series of decisions. Not one decision because nobody knows. Maybe months from now, COVID is going to get worse. Maybe it will get much better. We don’t know.
To make any decision permit, it’s like, “We’re going to start with everybody coming in two days a week. Let’s say Tuesday and Thursday.” Those days that they’re in, give them a reason to be in there. Set up meetings, collaborative and have people socially talking about what they did over COVID. What worked and what didn’t work. How did they deal with stress? Engage in them. I read about one other show telling about a client. It was a high-tech guy but he did is he changed the company. On the whole first floor, he’d put sofas and allow their tables that could come off and they could use. Most people were doing work there as they were talking with each other and there’d be much more productive.
Some people went upstairs after that idea but when people came in, the first place they went was the sofas. It was open and it was free food. He said people are more productive than ever. People want to come in, which he didn’t know what was going to work but he wanted to make it as attractive as possible. Ask your employees what they do like about working at home. Can you recreate some of that at work? Do they like the fact that they can take a break and go for a walk, run some errands, chat with some people, sit down or do yoga? What is it that people are doing? Is it Peloton? Get a few machines around. Who knows? To replace an employee, 300% or 500% of that employee’s compensation and that’s just to get on the skills. It will take 2 to 6 years for them to be as productive. If you have people who are talented, sit down. “What’s it going to take to keep you here? I want you.” If you don’t give it to them, they’re going to leave. You can sit back.
Don’t wait for them to have another offer before you try to keep them, is what you’re saying.
You make it so engaging for them. They’re heard, seen and valued.
Accessing Untapped Potential: If you don’t want to change, you’re rapidly becoming obsolete because things are changing.
That’s what people want. It doesn’t change from childhood when we jumped in the pool and say, “Look at me, mom or dad.” We want to be seen, heard and feel valued. I had an experience of what you’re describing. I was attending an internet marketing party virtually. That was originally in Austin. They started having them in person. He said, “We’re going to take something that we did on the Zoom calls, which is the random breakout rooms where people would meet new people and make it happen here in the real event.” Depending on what your name tag color is a number, you’re going to be going randomly into a corner to talk to people. We found that most people keep talking to the people they already know.
We’re taking a virtual experience where it was random that people liked and recreating it in a real-life experience. That’s an example of what you’re talking about. Figure out what people liked about the virtual and figure out a way to make that new real-life situation going back to the office. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about emotional intelligence, EQ because this is one of your areas of expertise that gives you these amazing results of employee retention and productivity. Let’s start with your definition of what it is and what the biggest mistake you see people making with it.
The higher emotional intelligence, the ability that gives you to be able to use your feelings and emotions, understand other people’s situations, use them, harness them, to be the best you can be and your team can be. I’ve been to some organizations where I had a situation where this one woman was not perceived her value to exceed everybody else’s. She was 11, 12, on a 10-point scale. Other managers didn’t value her. She thought she was the best and had great relations with everybody. When she took emotional intelligence, it was low. I’ll call her Harriet. I say, “Harriet, you didn’t come out high in emotional intelligence.” “It’s just a test. Dismiss it.”
I said, “Let me show you what the average of the company was. You’re twenty points less.” “No big deal.” I said, “It’s not a big deal but it’s significant if we look at some of the feedback you’ve gotten from the other managers.” “I’ve been here longer and they’re jealous of me.” She had her story. I said, “I don’t think it’s the whole story.” She was so blinded because she said, “If I’ve said that, I didn’t mean to.” What people don’t get and this is something that took me a long time to get too is I had to take a lot of responsibility for what I say how it lands on who I’m speaking to. She said, “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I don’t mean to hurt their feelings.”
“Because I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, I’m not responsible,” which is so insulting.
[bctt tweet=”EQ is personal awareness.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You should have the feelings you have. It’s invalidating their feelings and then dismissing them because “I didn’t mean to so therefore you’re wrong to have them.” It’s like, “No.” It’s taking the risk. One is people take responsibility for how it lands. If you get feedback regularly, you listen, you interrupt or you roll your eyes. Whatever behaviors people do, many of them are not aware of it so it’s great to give people feedback if they’re open to it.
Emotional intelligence versus personal awareness is the beginning of it. Only 1/3 of us, John, at any moment, know what we’re feeling. You have 2/3 of people not even know what they’re feeling. That’s just the beginning. There’s this thing I use called the feeling wheel. If you Google that, people have about twelve different words through their feelings. “I’m mad, angry, sad, pissed or happy.” The more you can expand that, “I’m annoyed. I’m content,” the wider range of feelings we can experience. One of the ways to increase personal awareness is to become more aware of your feelings. What triggered them? Why are you feeling them? If only a third of us are doing that, there’s 2/3 that has a lot to learn about that. That’s not good or bad.
With COVID, people better be much more aware of the feelings because we may inadvertently stomp on someone’s feelings. There’ll be people that we feel frustration, sadness, anger and do not know what to do with it because those typically didn’t come up much at work. I predict they’ll be coming up a lot at work because they’re going to be missing the old or how they did it the old, not liking the new or who they’re sitting next to, who they work with. This person didn’t come back and they really miss that person. It’s going to take a while for companies to go in that.
That’s personal awareness, then personal regulation, which is that people are able to regulate your feelings internally. You don’t yell. You don’t shout. You’re not abrupt. Any of the ways that I call anger leaks out like, “I’m not mad. Why should I be mad?” “I’m not hysterical. This is not hysterical. Do you want to see hysterical? I’ll show you hysterical.” I can manage that. Sometimes that’s taking deep breaths and say, “I need a moment. I’m triggered here.” Be honest with employees, “Can we take five because I need to go take a walk, I need to go to the ladies’ room or something?” Be aware and vulnerable. We’re going to die with triggers. It’s the way we’re built. For me, managing them, owning them and saying, “This is not appropriate for me to respond because I’m not going to respond from a solid place and happy place inside me or a positive place.” That’s emotional regulation.
Emotional Intelligence 2.0
That’s the area I find is probably where there are lots of blind spots. A lot of people are conflict avoidant and they don’t want to admit it. I apply it to mine. He finally said, “I think I minimize that conflict. It’s about to blow up the company.” He saw it separately as each individual event. I pointed out, “Didn’t you see that in that meeting? Every time you said risk, this person is like, “That’s not a big deal.” You still check it out and you never checked it out.” I forgot about that. He used to get back to me.” “He doesn’t want to take risks and you’re conflict avoidance so nothing’s moving forward.”
We live in our own world. We live in our own brains. We think the whole world is thinking and operating like us. As he became more aware of that, he would hold people accountable and responsible for getting back to him but he didn’t see that. A programmed from childhood is a lot of what gets through our particular activating system in the back and what we think is important. He probably learned comfort zone is not important so I’m not going to pay attention to them. They’re pretty important.
Let’s talk about something in terms of what most people do whether they’re in sales or not, which is rejection. How does EQ come into play with rejection, especially around the feeling wheel? Most people when they get rejected feel either sad or mad. It certainly can trigger previous times when they got rejected. Maybe even in their personal life, not in business life. If a client stands you up or cancels at the last minute, has some flimsy excuse and it’s the 2nd or 3rd time they’ve done it, then if you’re angry from being mad, you’re like, “Why do people think they can treat me like this?” You feel not seen and heard or certainly don’t feel valued. How can someone pull up from that downward spiral using EQ when the rejection stuff is kicking in, either they’re mad and/or sad?
I would say feel fully in a safe place. I believe in expressing feelings in safe ways. The best sound for anger is breaking glass. You can send away for this ball that you can throw it and break the glass. My psychiatrist told me about that. It feels great or yelling in the car safely. It’s expressing it in some way. Sometimes you’re talking through it for myself. If it’s the 2nd or 3rd time, if that happened to me, I’d say, “I have to have some accountability here.” If the person canceled once and had a flimsy excuse the second time. I went back a third time. That’s my motto on my face. I gave anybody a second chance and if they cancel, it’s about them. They didn’t want to deal with whatever I was offering. It wasn’t the right time. They were willing to speak up. They don’t want to say, “I’m a good salesperson or something.” They don’t want to say no.
Let me get that forward. It’s about them. As a salesperson, if somebody says no, whoever at that point was on the phone talking to them as you were talking to them, anybody else, they would have said the same thing. It’s about them. They’re saying no to something. The real question to you, John, is what did they say no to? It takes seven noes to get to a yes typically. They say, “No, it’s not the time. No, I don’t like what you’re presenting. No, I don’t need it.” It’s like, “I hear your no. Could you tell me why?” You may find out it’s not what you’re thinking. Not all noes are equal.
We love to jump to take it all personally. A lot of it has to do with that. Their whole life is out of control. They’re canceling everything. You only experience it on your end. That for me is one way to deal with a rejection thing where I go, “Am I taking this personally?” Also, the mindset of scarcity or abundance comes into play. “Am I putting all my eggs in one basket? If this person doesn’t buy from me or like me, does that mean no one’s ever going to like me or buy from me?” No. They’ve shown you your true colors. Thank you. I get it. I’m not going to keep pursuing this. I’ve got an abundance of people who will show up and do want what I want. I don’t have to get into this downward spiral of believing that things never work out. In fact, the opposite is the mantra that things are working out for me all the time.
[bctt tweet=”Feel fully in a safe place. Express feelings in safe ways.” via=”no”]
If someone’s giving you a true no, that’s great because there’s one fewer prospect for you to talk with. If it’s a true no, you’d investigate it, it’s great. That’s to you. “She’s the best. Let me move on.”
Any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?
I don’t have a last quote but I want to give an example with shirts. If I go and I pick out one blouse, the blouses don’t sell, “She rejected me. Why does she do that?” “It’s not about the blouse.” It’s like, “This is what I prefer that works.” Other ways to untap the potential is to put yourself in unusual, different situations like eating different food. When we were young, every Sunday we’d go eat at lots of different restaurants with all the different kinds of cuisine. My parents would say, “Try it. You’ll like it.” There are very few foods I don’t like. We go to different places to dance, have fun and see all that.
Look upon the world as being curious as a fun place. “Where do I find out new ways to do things, new ways that people handle? What is the new perspective? How can I see this differently?” Ask somebody, “If you were in my shoes, how would you see this?” Finishing with emotional intelligence, the relation management part is the hardest and that’s the fourth quadrant. That’s how you manage. My relationship with my daughter vis-à-vis my relationship with my client. It takes a lot of emotional and social awareness. Sometimes people want to jump into those and it’s very hard to do. I’d say the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a great one. It gives ideas of how you can increase them all. If you think about EQ, you can always increase it. Not like IQ. IQ always increases and easily. They tell you easy, fun things to do. Explore life, have fun. Be like my friend Scott where you wake up saying, “What am I going to do uncomfortable?” Enjoy.
What is the best way for people to reach to you if they want to work with you as a consultant or hire you as a speaker?
My email is [email protected]. I welcome any questions. I can also tell you how to say anything to anybody and make it sound nice. I’ve been told. I’m happy to do that if you don’t know how to say something. It’s possible that you said a lot of empathy over there in however I want to hear it.
Lynn, thanks so much for sharing your EQ, your passion and encouraging us to get out of our comfort zones.
It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much, John.
Important Links
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0
- [email protected]
- Lynn Thomas
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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