Close The Sales Gap Through Stories with Dr. Mark Goulston
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Episode Summary
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Listen To The Episode Here
Close The Sales Gap Through Stories with Dr. Mark Goulston
Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone
I am thrilled to welcome back, Dr. Mark Goulston, who is my mentor and a close personal friend. I’m honored to say that. I’m going to tell you a little bit about Dr. Mark. He was originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer. Imagine being qualified to do that. His expertise has been forged and proven in the crucible of real life, high stakes situations. If you’re in sales, there are high stakes situations all the time, whether you’re going to get the sale or not. That’s why we brought Mark on. He’s an influencer who helps influencers become more influential. His background from speaking in Russia on empathy, which is a key skill that any person in sales or pitching needs to have, as well as the author of several successful bestselling books such as Just Listen. He’s an expert on so many things, but he’s going to talk to us about how we can become better sellers and the science behind it. Mark, welcome.
Thanks for having me on again, John. I’m proud to call myself your mentor. That’s really been special.
Mark, you and I were having a conversation that generated the concept of multitasking. People are like, “I’m going to be on my phone. I’m going to be listening to you and writing an email at the same time and maybe checking a text message that pops in.” There’s a big myth around that. I think you’re an expert who can talk about that as a topical opener because you can’t sell and tell a story at the same time. It triggered so many thoughts about multitasking and the ability to be present with people. Can you talk about what inspired you to have that insight?
I have an anecdote because people remember stories. I think you may have taught me about that. Here’s a story. We live in Los Angeles and they say it’s better to show than tell. Within a month after 9/11, I was called in by a number of groups to say, “Can you call the group down?” I was a member of a professional services networking group and these were lawyers, accountants, insurance people, very transactional people, but the whole world was shaken. I did an exercise with one of the groups which had about 25 attendees. I said, “I want each of you to talk about a dark time in your life that you never thought you’d get out of but you did and that life was never the same again after you got through it.” What was fascinating is they all went around. I think it can show you the power of a story. There was a very civil, demure female attorney. It was very easy back then, hopefully, it’s changed, to see people who had manners, who are attorneys not having the killer instinct, not having what it took to be able to handle your case. She was seen in that way. She was highly competent.
Here was her story, and she said it with no scintilla of being impressed with what she said. She said, “One of those times in my life was on the day that I graduated law school and I was about to be given a chance to start paying back all the debt I had. On that same day, I was given total custody of my two younger siblings.” You could feel in the audience, she’s no lightweight. What was fascinating is I would say it was 90% recall of people’s stories. Whereas this group, we’ve been meeting for years and a lot of times you hear the elevator pitch and you still don’t know, “Is this a banker? Is this an accountant? Is this a lawyer or what do they do?” They say the same old spiel.
I think what happened is as people shared stories that they were connected to, everybody lowered their guard. That’s what you and I spoke about. When you share a story that you’re emotionally connected to, it causes the other person to feel he or she is emotionally connected to that story so I can lower my guard and lean in without worrying that they’re going to do a bait and switch. That said, and you’re a master at this, you need to teach people that when they share a story, it just can’t be a memorized one where they raise the inflection at the proper time to demonstrate how I am so emotional and then do a bait and switch. It’s a challenge because when you tell the same story many times because it touches a nerve, you need to be able to still be present in the story as opposed to knowing this is instrumental to my getting them to connect with me and then I’m going to start selling them.
Actors on Broadway get the same script every time, and yet the really good ones make it fresh and respond to how the audience is responding and they’re in the moment, which I think is the big takeaway. If I’m someone who is in sales and we all have to sell ourselves, we’re pitching ourselves to get hired, we’re pitching ourselves to get a new client, we’re pitching ourselves to get hired as a speaker, we’re pitching ourselves to get our start up funded. Whatever it is, you’re selling yourself and your ideas to get implemented all the time. People say, “It’s time to sell. Push.” My whole premise is to tell a story that people see themselves in and you become magnetic. Instead of pushing, you’re going to pull people in. When you’re telling a good story, you’re so present as you just described, that you’re not selling. What happens to us from a scientific standpoint? You obviously have a medical degree, so you understand mirror neurons and how that all works. Why is it that when we’re telling a story where accessing, if you will, a different part of someone’s brain and the defenses go down?
I’m glad you mentioned mirror neurons. I have several books and I have a book called Just Listen and the subtitle is Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Listening. What I talked about in there were mirror neurons. For people who don’t know much about neuroscience, mirror neurons were discovered in the late 1980s actually in macaque monkeys. They were called “Monkey see, monkey do” neurons because people noted that monkeys would imitate each other. They would even imitate you. There are pictures where you’ll see someone sticking their tongue out and one of the monkeys and the monkey sticking his tongue out backwards, back at that person. Mirror neurons mirror what’s coming to them. I introduced the concept in Just Listen, which I’ve spoken to in many occasions, called the mirror neuron gap. Imagine that we’re often trying to mirror others. We’re trying to conform to their needs. We’re trying to please them. We’re trying to not tick them off. The more that we do that consciously or unconsciously, the more it develops a hunger in us for the world to mirror us in return. The greater the mirror neuron gap, meaning the more we feel we’ve confirmed everybody else’s emotional, psychological needs, the greater the gap and the greater the gap, the higher our cortisol is. It is stressful when there’s a big gap. Some of the things that widen the gap are sarcasm, ridicule, abuse and sullenness.
Define that word for us just in case it’s not a word that everybody says in their everyday language.
Sullenness means if you have ever talked to a teenager or a spouse and they’re really upset and you think they’d feel better if they spoke about it, they just say, “Leave me alone. I’m fine. I’m okay.” Clearly, they’re not a happy camper but they’re just sullen. They’re withdrawn and they’re moody.
[bctt tweet=”You can’t sell and tell stories at the same time.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Let’s double click on that because for people reading, you can transfer this, not just to your personal life but your business life. If you’re managing people and you’re trying to motivate them or you’re a speaker, like you and I are, and we’re trying to motivate an audience or just not getting through, sometimes it has nothing to do with us. If you’re selling something to someone and you don’t have any idea what the story was, what phone call they got. Maybe they got chewed up by their boss, who knows what happened and they are just not in the mood to hear what you have to say? The awareness that not everybody’s always just as excited as you are to be talking about what you’re talking about is a huge tool in our toolbox.
It reminds me of a 60 Minutes segment that Oprah Winfrey did. It was about a program I think in Wisconsin that treats childhood trauma. In the 60 Minutes Overtime, someone interviewed Oprah because Oprah said that was the most life-changing story she’s done in her entire career. That’s a pretty big claim, so the person interviewing her in 60 Minutes Overtime was like, “What do you mean?” She said, “There’s a reason they’re so successful in treating these traumatized children who are not just passive, they’re acting out, they’re doing destructive things, they’re hitting, they’re kicking. Their whole approach is they believe that most people are good inside, but it gets distorted. Their whole approach when they approach people is to say, ‘What happened to you that this is what’s going on now?’” They always believe that something happened, a prior story, a prior incident to cause what’s happening as opposed to just jumping down their throat and saying, “Stop doing that. Why are you doing it? Why are you acting up?”
It was fascinating because the reporter asked Oprah, “Did that change your life?” She said it changed everything. I think what she was really admitting is that between the lines that you can be judgmental if someone acted up instead of realizing something had happened to them to cause them to act up. I think what she was admitting is before realizing this, I would react to the behavior and said, “Why are you doing that? Stop doing that,” as opposed to, “What happened to you?” Here’s the power of going behind things and it’s in my book, Just Listen. There’s an anecdote and this is the power. If you’re reading and you want to influence people, what’s more powerful than what you tell others is what you enable them to tell you that matters to them. The more you can get them to tell a foundational story or a story behind what’s going on. To your point, I was meeting with a CEO and it took a while for me to get an appointment with him. I’m seated with him and it is clear he’s not there. He’s not making eye contact. It’s clear that he had made the appointment and he probably wanted to cancel it.
I work for myself. I can say things that if I had a sales manager and I told him I said this, they tell you “How did you dare say that?” To this fellow who was clearly preoccupied, I said, “How much time do you got from me?” He goes, “What?” I said, “Your time’s up.” “What do you mean?” I said, “How much time do you got for me? Look at your calendar.” He ruffled around. He was ticked off and he said, “Twenty minutes.” I said to him, “We’re into minute three and it’s clear that there’s something more important in your mind than meeting with me. I’m guessing it’s more important than a lot of the things you’re going to do now. Here’s the deal. Let’s stop our appointment now at minute four, but take the remaining sixteen minutes and take care of whatever is on your mind because I think what we would talk about would be worth your undivided attention, but you can’t give that to me. It’s not fair to this conversation, but it’s not going to be fair to other people. Take care of that other thing. If I’ve been too rude, just tell your assistant, ‘Don’t ever let him back.’”
He was a big footballer and he looked at me and he paused and then his eyes watered up. I say to myself, “Mark, you can’t be the shrink out in the business world. Stop making people cry.” He looks at me and he says, “You’ve known me for four minutes and you know something that people 30 yards from us don’t know because I’m very private.” I said, “What’s that?” He looked at me and he said, “My wife’s having a biopsy and it doesn’t look good.” His voice is emotional. I said, “Go be with her. You shouldn’t be here. Make a call. I’m sorry. Take care of it.” It was fascinating because he looked at me and he felt the relief of being able to tell his story that was behind his behavior. He was like one of these big Newfoundland dogs coming in from the rain. He shook his shoulders, he looked at me and he said, “I’m not as strong as my wife, but I’m pretty strong. I did two tours of duty in Vietnam. You’ve got my undivided attention and you’ve got your full twenty minutes.”
Storytelling And Selling: A lot of people have trouble with their close, pitch or sales because they’re so nakedly about themselves.
I think if you’re reading this, what happened is I mirrored him by knowing something was going on that was causing him not to be present. By then having him tell the story of what was going on, and again I didn’t race to put it aside. If I was really a jerk, I would have said, “Do you think you’ll be able to compartmentalize that so we can get onto the pitch?” It shouldn’t surprise you. I know this person since then. That’s the power of not only storytelling but getting other people to tell their story. There’s something I’ve come up with, and you might want to try this if you’re doing a pitch. What I notice is a lot of people have trouble with their close, pitch or sales. The reason for that is because you’re so nakedly about yourself. Even if you’ve had this conversation, when you have to come in and ask for the sale, a lot of salespeople are awkward because what you’re doing is you’re stepping out of it being about a win-win into, “Am I going to get my number?” That’s I think what fuels the awkwardness.
Something I’ve been coaching sales teams about is what I call starting with the close. Somewhere early on in the conversation and you have to modify to fit the situation and whatever you’re selling and you say to the other person, “Can I tell you what I think our conversation is about? It’s not about me selling you anything or you buying anything,” which would intrigue people to go, “Can I tell you what I think is going on?” You’re doing this early on, you could say, “The purpose of this conversation is that I get a yes from you. If not now, in the near future. If I get a yes from you, there’s a possibility, I’ll not only meet my numbers but I’ll exceed my numbers. I’ll get a raise. I’ll get paid more. I’ll get a bonus. I put myself in your shoes. What I realize is it’s about for you as what I call 1116 squared.” I’m putting that together in an article and possibly a book and they’re going to say, “What is that?” You could say, “What you’re listening for as the buyer of products and services for your company is if you say yes, whether you will regret it one day, one week or one month from now. That’s the 1, 1, 1.”
You’re listening for that because if you regret it and it turns out badly, your boss is going to say, “What did you buy this thing for? We can’t use it. We can’t implement it. I have to tell my boss why we brought it into the company.” My guess is you’re listening to make sure that you won’t have the 1, 1, 1 regret, but the six squared is what you’re really listening for unconsciously. I this going to be the purchase where your boss’s boss says to your boss, “I’m giving you a raise because you and your group just brought something into the company that helped us be so much more successful than the CEO singled me out to say, ‘That was pretty neat, what you brought into the company.’” The 6 squared is what you’re hoping is that your boss’ boss will be so pleased with they’re getting a raise that they’re going to do the same for your boss. If your boss is someone who’s not totally self-absorbed, they’re going to know that not only did your bosses group to achieve that sale, but you’re the one who was the key person.
I do this when I’m being hired as a keynote speaker. I future pace the event planner and I’ll say, “What would it look like a week after this event for you to look really great to your boss? What feedback would you be getting?” They think to themselves, “I guess at the event I would see people engaged and not on their phones and then people will come up to me and say, “That’s the best speaker we’ve had in years. My boss would say, ‘You really nailed it. The people are actually using what John talked about in telling better stories now and we’re winning more pitches,’ and all of that would start happening.”
If they get stuck and they can’t visualize what good feedback sounds like, I will reference other keynotes I’ve given and say, “Here’s what happened last time, the feedback they got,” and then they see themselves in that story and they go, “That’s the journey I want to go on.” I think there are lots of applications to what you just shared there of future pacing people of when you make the right decision, because everyone’s afraid of making the wrong one. There’s fear to pull the trigger. If you can tell a story and paint the picture of what it looks like when you make the right decision, then they can take a breath, as you said, and the storytelling is happening versus the selling. They’re like, “That’s for me.”
[bctt tweet=”Show, don’t tell, how people can see themselves working with you.” username=”John_Livesay”]
What I loved about what you just said and what I hope readers will pick up is it goes to the word relevant. When you future pace it, it needs to be relevant. You outlined it perfectly that a week or two weeks later, whatever the timeframe is it’s exactly that. The speaker was engaging, people didn’t look at their phones, plus you gave them information that was doable by them. I think that’s a key component, doable by them. One of the problems that experts have is they’re so passionate about their expertise that they often want to infuse people with all kinds of insight, how it works and why it works. That can sometimes be helpful. A lot of the audiences in business, what they’re listening for is the bottom line. The bottom line is, is this something that is relevant to me that I can use immediately without having to become an expert?
What I like about what you do is you give people actual tips and a roadmap for telling a great story. They don’t have to be natural born storytellers. If they follow those steps, the result will be people saying, “You tell an amazing story.” I know that when you work with people, initially they learn the skill and it may not be authentic, but as they start to attract an influence and attention, they begin to say, “I like this. I like that telling the story was not just affective and selling more, but more people came up to me.” When people learn what you have to teach them and they give presentations, people are going to come up to them and some of these people will say, “No one’s ever come up to me after a presentation.”
I remember when we met years ago when you came up to me and you said, that’s one of the best presentations I’ve ever heard because you spoke with us or above us. I think I will always remember that my whole life because it was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. I didn’t know who you were, so it even took on more meaning. That’s the goal, whether it’s a keynote presentation or a one-on-one conversation where you’re trying to get someone to take some action. I think the real takeaway from what you said there is everyone has this unspoken question in their head when they’re listening to you talk, especially if you’re telling a story about someone else you helped, and that question is, “Will it work for me?” It’s great that that person went from this to that or that other event planner got rave reviews, but these people are not that. They have to see themselves in your story and you are the master with this. It’s the mirror neurons. The more we get those mirror neurons to match, the more they see themselves in the story, you’re closing that stress gap and then they think, “Yes, this will work for me too because I’m matching. The more I’d match myself in that story if I understand your whole strategy there.”
The compliment that you took from that about you talking with an audience, when you talk with an audience, you’re mirroring them. When you talk over or at them, you’re pushing them away, you’re increasing the gap. If their minds are overwhelmed, and most people’s minds are, and you’re talking to them, they will nod from the neck up, but they won’t execute because it’s just more information and they can’t hold on to everything they have. When you talk with people, people lean into it because sadly, this is an interesting awareness that you could share with your audiences. You could say, “Raise your hand if you feel talked with less than 10% of your conversations.” I think a lot of them are going to raise their hand. “Raise your hand if you feel being talked with would almost exponentially increase the other person’s influence with you.” They’re going to raise their hands. You can say, “Raise your hands if what I’ve presented so far, not just stories I’ve shared, but hopefully my enthusiasm for you. I want to make you more successful and I want to introduce a way that you haven’t recognized. It’s yours for the having, for the taking.” It’s not rocket science. It might be neuroscience and because I think storytelling, especially stories that you’re connected with and that are relevant to them, people lean in to that and they feel talked with.
You’ve been interviewed by everyone from Oprah to Larry King. You understand the value of being present in those moments when the stakes are high. It’s not hostage negotiation, but your adrenaline is kicked up a notch or two when you’re being interviewed by people like that and the cameras are rolling and it’s live TV. The preparation that goes that, that you can depend on your skills when you need them is something so valuable. I wanted to give an example of the preparation I did and then get your take on what you do. It was invited to be on a show called Talk of the Town and talk about storytelling and selling. They said, “A lot of our viewers are in the morning and they’re stay-at-home moms. Is there anything in your book better selling through storytelling that’s at all relevant to them?” I said, “Yes.” A mutual friend of ours said to me she’s got some twelve-year-old boys that she’ll say to them, “How was your day?” She gets one-word answers, “Fine. Good.” Every parent has had that experience.
Storytelling And Selling: What people respect is when you have values that you don’t stray from and that are being of service to them.
I said, “Instead of asking your kid that question, ‘How was your day?’ you could say, “Tell me a story about the best part of your day.” It causes them to think about it, learn some storytelling skills and get a dialogue going.” The producer liked that and so did the host of the show. Customizing your audience, when you talk about being relevant, the ability to shift and say, for these people who are going to possibly hire me as a speaker, it’s a very different messaging and story I’m going to tell when I’m on camera talking about my book. You have done that so many times and I wanted to get your thoughts on the ability to be prepared and what is it that we can all do and learn from you so that we can be more flexible and in the moment.
There’s something that’s helped me get prepared and at the same time, lessen my anxiety because I’m an introvert and so I have to pump myself up to be present. Something I’ve been focusing on, and I’m coaching other people to do, is if you can imagine that whoever you’re speaking to or with, if you think to yourself, they are looking and listening for what? If you imagine what they’re looking for and listening for, I’ve actually identified several key elements that they’re unconsciously looking for and listening for. If you can deliver on them, you’ll have an amazing influence. The first thing that they’re looking or listening for is can they trust me? I’m this foreign entity. I’m obviously presenting something, until proven otherwise I’m selling them on something, which is basically I want you to hire me for more. The first thing is can they trust me to not hurt them or take advantage of them? Unconsciously they’re comparing me to all the people who did hurt them, took advantage of them, especially the ones who initially they thought were their friends.
The next thing that they are listening for is confidence. The confidence is, “What’s his track record?” Confidence comes not from what I say I can do. Confidence in me comes from them hearing what have I already done that helps someone exactly like them that produced hopefully measurable results. When they hear a track record of something, I was able to do with other people just like them, that makes it relevant. They have confidence. Here’s the extra thing and this is really underneath the trust and confidence. They’re actually listening for whether they can respect and admire me. Why? When they can respect and admire me, I become someone they want more of, not for my service as a product. They want my esteem. I had seven mentors, they all passed away.
One of the most important things to me about all of them was their esteem. These influential and powerful people gave me the gift of their most precious thing, which was their time. It was interesting because I so wanted their esteem and never wanted to disappoint them, I would never tell them something I was intending to do unless I was 150% sure I would do it. I want to be in integrity and I wouldn’t want them to think, “He’s flaky.” They were so forgiving and they liked me and I think we loved each other for more than what I was doing that they would have cut me more slack than I did. People are listing for, “Can I trust you? Can I have confidence in you?” Because of their experience of really not necessarily interacting with people that they respect or admire a lot, they’re not consciously listening for that. When you can deliver on that, people want more of you. What I’ve discovered that people respect is when you have values that you don’t stray from and the values are always focused on other people being of service to them.
That taps right into why companies hire you to become a keynote speaker. They’re trying to make sure that they have a culture that attracts and keeps the right talent there so that they can be more competitive. If there’s dissonance between departments, they can bring you in to get people to start cooperating and listening and working together in a new way that’s never been possible before. Those are some of the takeaways that I’ve seen from watching your reel of you in front of Russia and seeing some of the companies that have hired you to speak before. Are there any last thoughts you want to leave this with, Mark, about what takeaways the audience has when they hear you give a keynote?
[bctt tweet=”Talk with people, not at or above them.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Here’s an anecdote. People look up Goulston Moscow on YouTube. They made a three-minute highlight reel to say this is what our events look like and our speakers look like. I actually wrote a blog called the Three Da Formula. Da is yes in Russia. It was a way of easing my own anxiety. I spoke for six hours. It was just me one day for a one-and-a-half hour module and questions. People said, “Were you exhausted?” I said, “When you have adrenaline going through every pore in your body, you only get exhausted afterwards and you can’t move after.” What I did at the beginning was what you want to do to be successful as you want to get into the other person thinking. What I did at the beginning, and I try to do this now in most presentations, I said, “Wouldn’t you agree that it’s important for the speaker to get where you’re coming from?”
I did a little research on new Russians. My first slide was a slide of a Russian audience with their arms crossed and all of them looking pissed. I showed that slide and I said, “What people told me is when you go to Russia, don’t smile.” I showed the slide and they laughed and I said, “What I realized is you’re not smiling, not because you’re upset but you’re looking for whether you can trust me to not take advantage of you or hurt you because historically, every time some foreign entity came into Russia, it was to hurt it. You have hundreds of years of people trying to hurt Russia, trying to kill off Mother Russia. You’re listening for what my intentions are. Let me see if I get where you’re coming from.”
I’ll give you an example, but other people have to modify it. I said, “Most of you are managers. You don’t get anything done yourself. You get stuff done through people. You don’t do this stuff. You let people do it. Is that true?” “Da.” “Is it also true that you’re coming here because your way of getting things done is sometimes to be pushy, which gets short-term results but it’s stressful on them, stressful on you, causes them and you to drink a little bit too much vodka, not eat that well? If there’s another way to get the same results or better results, it’s less stressful. Is that what you’re listening for?” They go, “Da.”
The third thing I said, “Finally, what you’re listening for is can you get from our six hours together tactics and tips that are doable by you and there is no upsell? I’m not selling you a course. The Russian edition of my books are out there in front if you want it. You don’t have to buy it, but you’re looking if you can get things that are doable and implementable by you in your life, and you don’t have to like psychology. You don’t even have to like thinking. If I could give you those, would this have been worth your time and money?” They go, “Da.” The idea is if you can get into people’s thinking, it’s pretty easy like what we talked about earlier.
It’s easy for you because you’ve done it so long and you’ve been used to getting in people’s heads as a therapist. I think it’s the lessons that we can all take away of empathy, listening and storytelling. Those are the three key secrets to becoming or compelling and less pushing, Mark. I can’t thank you enough. The book again is called Just Listen. I can’t thank you again for giving us such great insights into the ability that if you’re telling a story, you can’t be selling and people love stories. Thanks, Mark.
You make me want to be a better person. I feel like this is that Jack Nicholson movie.
Thank you. That’s very kind.
Links Mentioned:
- Dr. Mark Goulston
- Show – Previous episode
- Just Listen
- YouTube – Dr. Mark Goulston in Moscow
- https://MarkGoulston.com/
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The Game Changer with Chicke Fitzgerald
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
Many entrepreneurs who could be one step closer to the peak of their success hit the plateau for fear of taking risks. These daunting risks are often disguised as remarkable transitions, and Chicke Fitzgerald would totally agree. The author of The Game Changer, Chicke shares where she got the motivation to write her cathartic book and delves into the importance of investing yourself in making a massive difference in your life and career. The founder of Solutionz, a travel company involved in technology, Chicke reveals that building a company is not for the faint of heart. On top of that, she breaks down the board of directors in her life and why having women on boards are more profitable.
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Listen To The Episode Here
The Game Changer with Chicke Fitzgerald
My guest is Chicke Fitzgerald and she says that she zigs when others zag. I love that. Chicke has spent the first half of her career working for an industry leading travel distribution technology and telecom companies. If you’ve ever made a travel booking online or checked in for a flight, chances are Chicke worked for or consulted to one of the companies that pioneered that technology. The second half of her life has been turning up, trip, tech and travel storytelling on its head. She formed a company in 1996 called Solutionz. It’s the smart trip technology leader behind TripProximity, which is a smart trip widget. She’s advised multibillion-dollar entities on strategies and was a subject matter expert on four global M&A transactions representing tens of billions of dollars. TripProximity is a B2B widget that integrates online trip planning to the next reason, motivating the trip. She’s going to tell us all about that. Chicke has a new book out, which is by the same publisher that mine is and it’s called The Game Changer: A Business Parable About Transformational Business Design. Welcome, Chicke.
That is an absolute mouthful.
It’s a little bit of a tongue twister. The big thing is I always am telling people to let go of perfection. If you let go of trying to be a perfectionist, you’re more authentic. You are more relatable and you are certainly someone I’ve had the pleasure of getting to work with and know. That is all of that, Chicke. Your personality and your warmth come through in everything you touch. Let’s talk about your own story of origin. Growing up as a young girl, did you dream of getting into the travel industry? How did all that happen?
[bctt tweet=”Invest in yourself.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I wanted to be married. I’ve got a daughter who’s twenty, I’m glad that it’s in her heart’s desire. I did finally get married when I was 33, but I have put a lot of miles under these feet in the meantime. I actually started working when I was sixteen. I went through a phase. I was the youngest of three girls and I was incredibly rebellious. My dad was a pastor that was fitting. It’s expected of a PK. I ended up not dropping out school but skipping out of school every day and going to work at a Christian bookstore, which I found hilarious. I have a very wry sense of humor. It was a friend of my dad’s, which is how I got the job, but it laid the foundation for a lot of things in my life. I’m the mother of an eighteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old. I love to see the work ethic that has been instilled in them. Part of that we know as parents come from seeing your kids enjoy the fruits of their labor, seeing that paycheck and the money in the bank and not having to ask for things.
I went off and tried college on for size. I was a straight A student. I wrote a paper during my first semester of school about the value of experience versus education and you can guess what comes next. I went home at Thanksgiving and told my parents that I believe I can do better out in the world of business than I can finishing college. They have always been incredibly supportive of me. They allowed me to quit. I came home from Oral Roberts University to Miller Brewing Company. My life has all of these odd twists along the way.
The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
While I was at Miller, I got great experience in accounting, corporate systems planning and a lot of wonderful things. One summer, I ended up going to Portugal with my parents. They had been missionaries there years ago. I wanted the chance to see the country. I quit before I left figuring I could get a job when I got back, not realizing that the college dropout thing might come out back to bite me but it didn’t. When I went to an employment agency, they came up with two jobs that would be perfect for my background, since I had accounting system background. One was with an attorney and one was with a travel agent.
I love two things. “I’m rebelling against my father and yet I’m going to go work at a Christian bookstore. I’m going to go to Oral Roberts University, which is very faith-based, and then I’m going to go work for Miller Brewery,” which I’m imagining it’s all about happy hour there.
We had a tap in the break room with a beer in the morning and the afternoon. There was beer served in the cafeteria. I ended up moving from that travel agency into working for one of the very first accounting system companies. First of all, they had filled a room at Miller Brewing Company, but they were down to about the size of a very large refrigerator by the time that I got involved with installing accounting systems. They were built by a company called Data General. They had these great flashing lights on them.
I went around and taught people how to use them and how to move their books quite often from a shoe box into an automated accounting system. I learned the travel industry from the back of the house to the front of the house, which I think was foundational for where I ended up, which was with the largest travel technology companies in the world. Sabre, Worldspan, which later became a company called Travelport, and then did a couple of M&A transactions. Most of those happened not to be successful, but not because of my efforts, with the largest travel technology companies in the world, Amadeus and Abacus.
[bctt tweet=”Who is in your Board of Directors for life?” username=”John_Livesay”]
You’re also the host of your own show, which is called The Game Changer as well.
I rebranded it. I figured out that I wanted to write this book, which actually started almost a decade ago. I read a book that you may know by Bob Burg and John David Mann, and that book is called The Go-Giver. I read it on a short flight from Atlanta to Tampa. By the time that we pulled into the jet bridge, I think I texted both men because it was like, “This book is so amazing.” It was the first business parable I had ever read. I had already started my radio show and it was done under the brand name of my company, which is Solutionz. The radio show was called Solutionz Live. For five or six years, I kept thinking, “I would love to write a business parable,” because I had already come to the conclusion that nobody was going to want to read my life story.
The Game Changer
Maybe your mom and a couple of close friends, but you might sell a case of books and what good is that? One day I went to the bookstore and I looked at all the business books and I was so overwhelmed. You know many there are, even in the category that you have written into. Every time I would do that, it was like I still want to do it but I was so discouraged. I kept doing my radio show where I was interviewing mostly authors, but sometimes experts on certain topics. One day, I went to the library with my kids. They were young, so they went over to the kids’ section and I went to the business section. This time, something was different. I started looking at the racks and racks of books and on every shelf there were two, three or four authors that I had interviewed.
It also inspired me to a different storyline. I hadn’t even laid out with the book what was going to be about, but that was really a moment and guided how the book actually poured out of me one weekend. Literally, I wrote it from a Saturday morning through Monday morning. It changed quite a bit after that. The funniest story about writing my first book was that when I sent it to someone to read, of course, I read it through myself again and I thought, “This entire book has no dialogue in it. Everything was inside of people’s heads.” I realized, “If anybody’s going to read this, I better learn how to write dialogue,” because in a parable, obviously it’s interaction between people and some thought, but that’s how it all came to be that it is.
It’s very much told in a Forrest Gump-like manner.
It was on purpose, but it was a way that I could interject things that had happened in real life into this fictional account of a small travel technology company in Tampa, Florida.
[bctt tweet=”Building a company is not for the faint of heart.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Who are the books for? I’m guessing it’s a much broader audience than just people who are entrepreneurs and people in the travel business. There are some life lessons in here.
The most obvious readers of this book are other founders and entrepreneurs who are working with founders on their idea. I think investors are a good audience for this book. Unless you can get into the head of the entrepreneur that you’re investing in and understand the dynamics, it’s hard to be successful even if you’re incredibly wise and are putting in smart money. The other thing is being an employee of a company that you can both lead and fund by devoting your time. I’ve been blessed to have on my current venture 22,000 hours’ worth of sweat equity put in by my team. Those people were also an audience for this book.
That obviously shows commitment. One of the big takeaways in The Game Changer is that building a company is not for the faint of heart. You talk about having this label, personal and professional dragons. Can you give us a story one of those?
Game Changer: Going after consumers one at a time is enormously expensive.
It’s funny because I had been working with you and I’d actually interviewed you about your book, The Successful Pitch and also your most recent book, Better Selling Through Storytelling. All of that is to help me get ready for my fundraising round. The real story there is that a lot of entrepreneurs see raising money as failure instead of success. It’s completely counterintuitive, especially if you have the investor hat on. I remember the whole time I was writing this book, I would have this recurring dream that I was going up a chair lift at a ski resort. I neither liked to be cold, nor do I like heights and I am not a good skier. This dream had all kinds of underlying stuff going on. Every single time I would be on this chairlift, I would look down and I would see all these men.
They were all dressed in business suits and they were skiing down effortlessly on moguls, which if you’ve watched the Olympics is one of the hardest kinds of skiing there is. That dream was a picture of how I felt about fundraising. For other people, it was completely effortless. Here I was, cold, afraid, and I had to get over that. The writing of this book was actually cathartic because it allowed me to get my fears out. It allowed me to get my hopes, my dreams and all of my aspirations out into a story that I wrote in such a way that it wouldn’t be about me, but I was able to weave myself into this fable.
Let’s double click on that concept. Everyone else has it easy. I’m the only one that struggles. That alone is enough to make you want to buy The Game Changer book and listen to your show. Being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely job and you need to surround yourself with other people who believe in what you’re doing, support you and not let yourself go into the trough of depression or despair that everyone goes to. Do you have any tips for people on how to be resilient?
[bctt tweet=”A lot of entrepreneurs see raising money as failure instead of success. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
There are a couple of key messages, one is learning the power of innovation. Not only innovation in product and service that you’re doing but innovating how you operate every day. That might be business models, it might be the tools that you use to interact with your team. One of my biggest challenges is I have been working from home for ten years. I am so tired of managing remotely. I know a lot of people aspire to that and would like to work from home. At the end of the day, your goal should be finding joy in every step of that journey as your company moves to the next level. You’re going to look back on it and believe it or not, you’re going to laugh. You’re going to be able to laugh at yourself, to laugh is not to cry sometimes. To come back to that comment on investment being a signal of failure, it is a new leg of the journey that is the beginning of that success journey. When you take a look at people who lose a large amount of weight, they continue to look in the mirror and see themselves as being very fat. I think that entrepreneurs, one of the other things that we have to guard against is we bootstrapped for so long.
We don’t always make the decisions that we would if we were well-funded. No investor wants to see you go out and splurge but there are things that you must actually do for the company when you do get funded. That’s not bringing the team on board, but you need to spend properly on the right systems and infrastructure. The other thing and this one was the most important thing in the book. It’s understanding that everybody who comes to the table, whether it’s your investor or your turnaround team, if they send in a team to try to help the company get to the next level or even your own team, that everybody has a backstory. You are good at mining this out, this show and in everything that you do. When you learn those backstories, you’re going to learn that even on the surface, it looks like everything is effortless. You’re going to hear about struggles and then you can say, “That happened to me, too.”
You talk about asking the question, who’s in your executive village? We all need a board of directors in our life. What a great visual that is. How does someone get a good board of directors for our life, and not just our job?
This happened with my venture. I was looking for a true board member. I happened to want another woman on the board. Companies that have women boards are more profitable than those that don’t have any women. I’ve got two wonderful men who are on my board. One of them has been a part of the board of directors of my life for a long time. He’s been there through thick and thin and helped me out through a lot of things. I actually posted a job on BoardProspects.com and an amazing thing happened. I’ve got 250 responses. That was completely daunting and burned up a lot of time that I didn’t have. What I ended up with is this amazing group of about fifteen people who I know that I can call on no matter what my challenge is.
Add to that, I have a group of women. I run a group called The Executive Girlfriends Group that again, women tend to be a little bit more transparent about their failures and about things that they face in their personal life that impacts their business life. We all know if you have a fight with your spouse and then go to try to pitch to an investor, that’s probably not a good way to end up in that meeting. The board of directors of my life are those people who I can talk about every aspect of my life and not just the business stuff. I think that’s why so many of my close friends are my business colleagues because they understand that you can’t compartmentalize yourself.
The, “I’m one person at work, another person at home and on the weekends,” is gone away. It goes back to what we were saying about authenticity. The other thing you talked about in The Game Changer is investing in yourself. You have some practical tips in that story. Can you share one of the tips there?
[bctt tweet=”Companies that have women on boards are more profitable than those that don’t have any women.” username=”John_Livesay”]
The whole book is laced with individuals that are each facing an individual challenge. Unbeknownst to one another is they each reach out and listen to one of my real radio shows. Each chapter of the book pulls out a story both about the person who’s listening and what the author shared with me on that real radio show. There’s one which is actually the story of Bob Burg and John David Mann and the story from their book, The Go-Giver. The person who’s listening to that realizes that they have been approaching sales all wrong and that they thought they had to be a go-getter.
By investing 30 or 45 minutes in listening to a podcast, this gets back to my faith roots. I believe that God speaks to us through podcasts. I know it sounds crazy to somebody who doesn’t have that dimension of your life, but nothing in my life happens by accident. Even meeting you through Judy Robinett and all of that is a part of the plan. The other thing is investing time in more than just working 80 hours a week, which is what we entrepreneurs do to keep from working 40 hours a week for somebody else.
It’s important to realize that even if you’re working so many hours, you must invest in your own health, your own network and your own energy mindset so you don’t burn out. You don’t burn out the people working for you. That’s a big takeaway of learning what that is. Let’s double click on what’s going on with Solutionz and how you’ve identified a huge part of the travel market that other people are ignoring. That’s always the key to successful founders, finding a problem that no one else has to solve it. Tell us about that, what’s the segment and what problems are you solving? In other words, give us some elevator pitch that had worked with you.
It’s very interesting. Most of us, and I would imagine the audience you have in this show, we all travel. We all have trips crop up where we need to be somewhere specific. We don’t need somebody to inspire us of where to travel to. When we need to travel to someplace specific, you very quickly find out that that’s not how the travel industry tools work. They will serve up a hotel that is near an airport or a city center. If where you need to be isn’t that, then it takes a lot of time. We address that. We call our product TripProximity for that very reason that proximity does matter. We also believe that giving back matters. That’s another tenet of the book, The Game Changer. You need to build giving back into your business, which is what we’ve done in Solutionz. I think the most important thing, about what we have done in our company is we’ve realized that it is foolish to come out with a great new idea that resonates with all travelers and then go try to compete with the 800 or 8,000-pound gorillas. Expedia, Priceline and TripAdvisor, because going after consumers one at a time is enormously expensive. We have found a very clever way to insert ourselves into the systems that people use every day in their lives.
You’re targeting people who have what you call life moments. Tell us what a life moment is?
The travel industry has focused almost entirely on managed corporate travel. You’re a big company and you have to use American Express, Expedia’s Egencia product or some corporate travel tool. You’re on vacation and you need somebody to motivate you as to whether you should go to the Yucatan or go to Vail. All that inspirational stuff is important. Every other trip falls into what we call life travel. That is 72% of the market. We are going after those individuals who they know precisely where they have to be. Usually, they know exactly when they have to be there. There are some trips that are a little bit more flexible than that, but if you’re going to go and visit the college, you have to set up a campus visit. That campus visit goes on the calendar. It is logical simply to have that calendar entry pop up and say, “Would you like to come in the night before to experience the community?” It’s good for the university, it’s good for the parent and at the end of the day, it’s what we’re all about. It is that integration into that life travel moment.
If a company is trying to book a trip, find the best hotel and restaurant to use. They don’t want to go to Expedia and they go to Solutionz’s platform, a percent of what they spend is being donated to charities.
It absolutely is, but I want to make one point that’s very important, is we’re not an alternative to the business to consumer online travel site. We’re a business to business tool that gets integrated into other systems. I don’t know if you’re familiar with AddThis and ShareThis who have social media bookmarking tools that you can configure and plug-in in minutes. We are the AddThis and ShareThis of travel. We’re a tool that gets plugged into CRM platforms, calendaring, contact management, ticketing and registration, other systems that are the systems that people use every day.
You have an example of a client, right?
Campus Management is our enterprise client. By plugging in once to three of their CRM and calendaring systems, we reach 1,200 customers overnight, 1,200 universities. All of the parents that are coming in for those campus visits, alumni coming into sporting events, homecoming, friends and family coming to graduation, all will then have access to our tool so that they don’t have to look up the address of the university. They’ll simply be able to plan their travel to that specific event.
Any last thoughts you want to leave us, either about The Game Changer book, your radio show or what you’re doing at Solutionz?
You asked what people can do to invest in themselves. One of the things that came out of building out the radio show and having all of that content is I wanted to provide a place for people to come. Without all of the clutter, noise and even the angst that we have seen certainly on Facebook and to a lesser degree, LinkedIn. It’s a quiet place that people could come to get support from others. Whether they’re corporate executives or they’re individuals, we built The Game Changer Community, which is a by invitation only, but still a free community where people can nominate others to join the community. We have all different contents that our members are sharing.
Thank you so much for sharing some of your blog material and even pointing over to other articles that you read that are relevant to the folks that we got there. TheGameChanger.network is where you can learn more about the book. You can learn more about the community. Thank you so much for mentioning the company because when you read The Game Changer’s story, it’s being able to see my hopes, dreams, my fears and getting some practical tools to help you identify the challenges in your own business. I talk about reaching your own summit, your own metaphorical mountain top, which in the book, I won’t spoil the end of the story, but a tremendous success that this team has.
Reach your own mountaintop. Chicke, thank you so much for sharing your enthusiasm, your knowledge and most of all how we can invest in ourselves.
Thank you so much, John. It’s been terrific.
Links Mentioned:
- Chicke Fitzgerald
- The Game Changer: A Business Parable About Transformational Business Design
- Solutionz
- TripProximity
- The Go-Giver
- Solutionz Live
- The Successful Pitch
- Better Selling Through Storytelling
- BoardProspects.com
- The Executive Girlfriends Group
- AddThis
- ShareThis
- Campus Management
- The Game Changer Community
- TheGameChanger.network
- www.Solutionz.com
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Business Elevation with Chris Cooper
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
It takes a brave leader to listen to feedback because often, leaders are scared to face the reality of the situation and forget how engagement must start with them. Chris Cooper, author, speaker, and host of the show Business Elevation, talks about an employee engagement program that allows employees to give anonymous feedback so they can be heard, moving the management to take action. In return, employees will become more engaged, productive, and loyal while the overall business becomes elevated. Furthermore, Chris gives us a peek into his book, The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not), which contains techniques and strategies focusing on what’s essential in getting things done.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Business Elevation with Chris Cooper
Our guest is all the way from the UK. His name is Chris Cooper. He’s a business engagement and elevation specialist, a speaker, an author and a broadcaster himself. I’ve had the pleasure of being on his show called Business Elevation. His real specialty is helping big brands to small and medium enterprises for the last few years. He’s got an employee engagement program that helps you measure and achieve a higher rate on engagement. He helps people make sure that they’re getting good employees and keeping their stress levels down. He’s written a book called, The Power to Get Things Done. Chris, welcome to the show.
John, it’s a pleasure to meet you.
You’re in the UK. I always want to ask people their own story of origin and I know you used to work for a big company called Mars. Is there anything in your background before that that led you into this world of business elevation and engagement that you want to share?
[bctt tweet=”If people are happy and engaged, productivity soars. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
There are a lot really. I was brought up in a steel town in the North of England. I didn’t have an opportunity to travel. My father was a steelworker and my mom worked for the local newspaper. My dad used to go to the steelworks and he was an electrical engineer. Sometimes he would look after a very large steel plant when senior management was away and manage workers and schedules and people doing the right sorts of things. I remember he never seemed to be very engaged with it. I don’t think he’d found his passion. I remember one day, I was probably about thirteen years old and my father took me on an open evening to the steelworks. I got the opportunity to look around because where I lived, the natural thing because the steelworks was such a big employer, was people went from school and they went to work in steelworks.
We went around this plant. It was like hell on Earth. There were molten metals flying around and it was dark. It was noisy. It was smelly. We went afterwards into a little room and had a few sandwiches and a few crisps. I remember this very tall man walking in and my dad suddenly straightening up. He must have been the CEO. My dad had never actually ever met the CEO. We don’t ever see him in pictures. He walked straight over to me and he said to me, “Have you enjoyed yourself?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “When you grow up, do you want to come and work for us?” I said, “You must be joking.” My dad was fuming. On the way home, he was really angry with me, “How could you do that? One day you want to go and work in the steelworks and you fancy say that to him. I’ve never even met him before.” I said, “Dad, you aren’t happy, why should I be? Why would I want to work there?”
The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not)
At that point, I realized that I wanted more than to live in a steel town when I was older and I went through my career. Eventually, I worked in the motor industry and then I worked for companies like Mars. I saw how people really engaged in the work in some companies, less so in others. When I look back on my career and I ended up becoming the Director of a very big company, looking after logistics for 5,500 pubs. Then I set up a procurement consultancy which grew quite quick. Many years ago, I decided that my passion is people. Looking back through over that career and over the several years of working, I think one of the things I’ve realized is that when people are happy and where they’re engaged on in their work, you achieve so much more. Therefore, it makes every sense that every employee should give the best of themselves but want to because there’s an environment that supports them and cares for them and enables them to realize their full potential. In that way we all benefit, the company prospers and the individual prospers. Hopefully, having a good life at work leads to a good life at home and it leads to good health. It’s an important message, John.
Your childhood story is fascinating. It reminds me of some of those movies we’ve seen of the steelworkers and certainly here in America with a generation after generation working for the car companies and factories and finally people saying, “Either the job is not there anymore or I want to do something else with my life.” I can get that in a big way. What I love with what you just said is, “If people are happy and engaged, productivity soars.” That’s such a great soundbite for what you’re doing. Let’s go back to when you were working at Mars, you told me that you heard hundreds and hundreds of people pitching you to buy their marketing services because you worked for a big company that had the budget to do that. What are some of the tips you have from hearing all those pitches that people can take away of how to get good a pitch, so they get people to hire what you’re selling?
I had the opportunity with Mars. I went to a sales job. I was a salesman and business development manager. I spent in marketing and training of people. I thought from the salesperson, “Wouldn’t it be really helpful to understand what goes on when people buy and how does the mindset of the buyer work?” I moved on having had a sales and marketing background to look after the buying of marketing services. I literally arranged sales promotional pictures, big PR pictures and in one instance for over £1 million. I got United Biscuits and all the advertising spend. I had the opportunity to arrange these events with the marketeers who are the clients. I would facilitate those events and we would introduce some suppliers. I manage the rosters of suppliers.
To answer your question, you get to a short list of maybe three suppliers. On one occasion for big Mars or big Snickers, we launched Celebrations. I launched that with a big PR campaign with a train that was branded with different celebrities and different characters and people getting married there and TV shows being filmed and all things. The first thing I think people have to do is it’s not just about the pitch. It’s about that relationship that you established beforehand. I know there’s this process where people formally can be asked to come in. Marketing can be quite an expensive and creative process, but what goes on outside the room is important. If you can establish a really good relationship and rapport with people outside of that pitch, that will also help to influence the buyer.
[bctt tweet=”People buy emotionally and then back it up with logic.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I also noticed the marketeers that sometimes it wasn’t always the most rational decision they got through. It was the one that struck the emotions of the marketeer and they can do something. If you think about a marketeer or many people in roles where they’re buying, particularly in marketing, they’re often only in a job for a couple of years. Quite often they were motivated by doing something different and doing something creative, as opposed to maybe continuing something that had been successful before. They want to make their mark in their job.
They’re looking for that creativity. Where I worked, it wasn’t always about costs because they did have some quite big budgets. You could give some options with some different cost options. The thing is it’s got to be creative, it had to connect emotionally. The other thing is that with companies often, we’d see these amazing people who would be the lead of an agency and they’re full of engagement and enthusiasm. On one occasion, I saw one jump up on a table and stopped moving on the table when the PowerPoint suddenly broke. It was all captivating. However, what we knew was that we also had to see the people who work for those individuals because sometimes it was the sales pitch, but afterwards you get the real team. You need to make sure that the team who support the projects or the activity and the campaign is also of good quality. We’ll be measuring creativity, we measure the quality of accounting. We’ll be measuring how well it was thought through and planned and how it could execute. Also, somewhere in the next two would be the price.
My big takeaway there is that people buy emotionally and then they might back it up with some logic. Whoever comes in with an emotional hook is more likely to get a yes then the emphasis on selling the team. It’s not just the razzle-dazzle people who sell it and then you never see them again, but painting a picture, if you will, of what it would be like to work with these people and why they would want to work with them. I see that time and again myself when I work with clients who are pitching themselves whether it’s an architecture firm or any firm that it’s really, “Do we like you? Do we trust you? We’ve got to work with you for a while. Are you going to be easy to work with? Are you going to have our back? Are you good listeners?” Things that people tend to not mention in a pitch, but what I hear you saying is these are all big criteria that people should address.
Business Elevation: Employee voice is important. A lot of companies don’t give employees the opportunity to share how they feel.
If we’ve not worked with them before as well, knowing that they’ve got some good case studies and good testimonials. One example I had quite a significant pitch. I was actually asked to give no credential to talk and to turn up without a PowerPoint and facilitate the session which was quite interesting to understand the training and development needs of this organization. About ten people turn up, some quite senior ones. What I did was I broke the ice with some storytelling and I told a little bit of fun stories about my past rather than going into detailed credentials. Some of them really connected with them.
I noticed it was somebody’s birthday as well. I made something of that and then opened them up. There was great rapport in the room, and then I could start to facilitate this conversation around training needs and working a route forward. As I walked out, I remember getting an arm around my shoulder from the HR director who said, “That went so well.” I got in the car and I have to say, I actually had a few tears because I just felt I was in there on my own. It was almost like I was being supported by somebody guiding me through the process. It went so well and it probably did my confidence a lot of good as well. I won that and then I won another big piece of work with them almost immediately afterwards. Engaging with the storytelling with a heart that you support is important. I even talked about a girlfriend who dumped me, which moved them but that was perfect and they related.
A little vulnerability makes people feel connected to you and that they want to spend time with you. I love the title of your book, The Power to Get Things Done: Whether You Feel Like It or Not. That’s a big a-ha for a lot of people because they’re like, “If I could get motivated to get this project done or do my expenses, things I don’t really want to do and I keep procrastinating.” What is your secret sip there? How do we get things done if you don’t feel like you want to do it or motivated but somehow that’s still not working?
[bctt tweet=”Having a good life at work leads to a good life at home, and it leads to good health.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When I left the corporate world to set up my own business, I hadn’t realized that there was an important support network, line managers, board meetings, events and finger-pointing at times. There was a whole mechanism that held me to account, but when you set up your own business, that infrastructure doesn’t exist. You have to create it yourself. Therefore, what you tend to do in a corporate job often is a good system, the things that are important to getting that job done. You may forget about your health or people forget about the relationships. When you set up your own business, the whole lot has to have some structure around it. What I realized in the corporate world is that in good companies like Mars, there is an infrastructure that is actually, you might not like it but it’s your friend. It helps you perform.
When you’re out on your own, you’ve got to create your own structure, what you have to do, if something’s really important. It’s very important to ensure that you create situations that mean that you have to act whether you feel like it or not. It’s almost like you’re sitting on a seesaw and there’s a very heavy weight on the other side. If you’ve got on the top of that yourself, you wouldn’t be able to press it down. It’s an elephant sitting on the other side, you need to put weight on your side to be able to lift the elephant. It’s important to get very clear about what’s important in your life so you don’t get too many things and take them very seriously, but then create situations that mean that you act whether you feel like it or not. I’ve quite a lot of examples if you want me to share any.
Please share an example of how we could create a situation or maybe even talk about how you were detoxifying dreaded tasks. A specific story would be great.
Business Elevation: A lot of leaders think they must get all the people, troops, and employees engaged; what they forget is as a leader, they need to engage themselves.
With that particular story and the thought came through for that is the detoxifying, sometimes something might seem just too big a step. For me, I started off by asking some of my clients to come along and I did some book study groups. From the study groups, I started interviewing a few people and another audience came and with social media then. That stepping stone gave me the confidence to move to my radio show and hosting that. Where I really thought about this was I remember my children, I’ve got two boys, Matthew and Daniel. We went to a wildlife park on the South Coast of England while we were on holiday. They had this reptile and book show, but I don’t like snakes.
We walked into this place and there were lots of seats. There were quite a lot of people in there. My kids tried and went to the front row but I managed to carefully guide them to the back without them realizing I was a complete coward. We sat on the back row. This guy from the front said, “Is there anybody out there who’s scared of snakes?” I ducked down and my kids started pointing at me, “Him,” and my wife was looking at me and they all started pointing at me. This guy said, “That gentleman on the back row, would you like to overcome your fear of snakes?” I kept my head down and then people started joining in and there was a little bit of a clap that started. I had to get up and I went out to the front. It was me in front of about 60 people. I basically passed around this snake, which was quite a nice-looking thing actually. I passed it around a few people but I had to hold the snake.
He passed it over to me and my heart was pounding, but I held the snake and it moved around in my hands. I thought, “It’s not as bad as I thought it was.” I felt reasonably comfortable with it. I gave it back to him and I started to walk off. He said, “No, stop. I thought you wanted to overcome your fear of snakes.” Suddenly, two people walked out with this huge box with a rope handle on each side, and they gently placed it on the floor. He opened this lid and there was this enormous Boa constrictor in it. He picked the thing up and pulled it over his shoulders and said, “That wasn’t a snake. This is a snake.” He said, “Are you going to pick this up?” People were like, “Go on.” I put this snake around my neck and held it. I’ve got this photograph of it looking at me straight between the eyes. I’ve never been scared of snakes in that way since and that really helped me. Therefore, if you break up tasks into little sections, it becomes easier or you can do like a friend of mine did. She is a Tennis World Champion from Denmark. She’s a speaker and she wanted to add more comedy into her speaking. What would your strategy be if you maybe talk some small steps towards being able to add more comedy into your speaking, John?
[bctt tweet=”It takes a brave leader to listen to feedback.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’d start to watch comedians and improv situations and maybe even try to get up and do a couple of minutes.
I think that’s a good strategy and it will be my natural strategy. Read about it, watch it on the TV or maybe do some improv, but what she did was she booked a 1,630-seat conference hall in Tivoli Gardens. She paid the money in advance which is about $18,000 and she advertised that she was going to do a one-woman stand-up comedy show because she’s a celebrity in Denmark. She sold it out entirely and then had five months to learn how to do stand-up comedy. That’s creating a situation that means you have to act.
Let’s go into your formula for success and Business Elevation, which is the name of your company. It’s also the name of your show. You talked about engaging leaders plus an engaged team, plus getting things done gives elevation to a business where absentee goes down, well-being and productivity go up and the turnover goes down. That’s a big problem out there especially with Millennials as a lot of them enter with a mindset of, “I’m only going to be here a couple of years.” The cost of turnover is so huge. You’ve got some solutions that you talked to me about that I got so excited that I want you to share with me what you are doing with something called an Engagement Multiplier.
I was referred to a gentleman called Stefan Wissenbach as a guest on my radio show. Being interested in this side of workforce engagement, we do programs around elevation which might be working with a leader to help them develop and grow their business and being a mentor to them, a coach to them. I may be doing team development with their team and helping them through that evolution. I’ve got many clients I’ve helped grow their businesses. In this area of engagement, what I wanted to do was have a methodology whereby we could actually survey and get some real data on the company. You could use a thermometer to take a test of the temperature of the company.
When I interviewed Stefan, I realized that he was onto something pretty amazing. He invested £11 million in terms of developing some software, which enables you to measure engagement. He created a great book and a great story around this book. It was heavily researched. He had a vision that he wanted to help eleven million people become more measurably engaged. In America, your engagement level is a bit higher than over in Europe. It may only be 30% tops of people who are really engaged in their business and then about 50% of people who are coaching and then the remainder would have had sabotaged your company or they’re definitely looking for a new job. If you could turn that around, what could you do?
This survey enables you to take a test for your company. What we’re able to do through the survey is to offer an entire survey for free. I know you love this as well. You could go to John and he will be able to help you do this but you can utilize this amazing online tool. There’s an anonymous dialog in there. Your staff will give their feedback and comments and share how they feel. Getting an employee voice is important. In a lot of companies, employees don’t get the opportunity to share how they feel. You can also respond anonymously. You’re looking at how engaged people are with your purpose, how engaged they are with your leaders, how engaged they are with the owners of the business if that’s different? How engaged the customers are and how engaged are they personally and sharing all sorts of wisdom and insight?
[bctt tweet=”Engagement starts with the leader.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You get this amazing report but you do this quarterly. What the company showed is that if you take this survey quarterly and you developed some action steps each quarter, someone like John or in the UK, someone like myself can help you by looking at that information and helping you with the action steps. Engagement shifts from maybe 60%, 70% in the company to 90% they found over a twelve-month period. In ten years, it’s the best survey tool I’ve come across. I love the principles behind it as well. I shared it with you and you felt passionate about it too.
One of the things that I think is really interesting about this concept is that the leaders have to have a level of courage to be able to hear anonymous feedback as opposed to just pretending that they think they know what people are thinking and feeling. Can you speak to that a little bit?
The company always talks about you want a business with brave, identifiable and caring leaders. Often, people are scared of what the reality of the situation is. They’d rather not know because we often don’t like getting feedback and knowing how people perceive us in case we come up in the survey. It takes a brave leader to be prepared and to listen to that feedback. I sat with the company as they went through their first survey. I was sitting with the CEO and the leadership team. I did say to him, “Remember, this is just a perception. Those people out there might not be relative but those people out there, that’s what they believe. Once we know that perception, then you’re in a situation to be able to do something about it.” Firstly, he was a little bit defensive and then he said, “Chris, you’re absolutely right. All that feedback is valid.” I’m not going to make it mean anything but now we’ve got that information we can act and he said, “This is the biggest no brainer. It’s amazing to have this. If we can do this quarterly and it’s not that inexpensive. It’s cheap as chips really for what it does for us. We understand some real data about our businesses.”
The problem of flying blind, if you will, is all the things like disgruntled employees and people feeling like they matter. The opposite is when they do feel like they have a voice and most importantly, I would imagine that the leaders take action from the survey. That’s when the real magic happens.
I’m thinking about the other company where we use the survey. Initially, there was a learning and development person and he said, “We need to go with something called best companies.” The board was about to go and they’ve got this new person on board and they changed their mind and went with this other survey and methodology. They just found it so unwieldy that within six months they came back to us with the learning and development person kicking and screaming and said, “We want to do one of those surveys that you talked about because it sounds more like it meets our needs.”
When they did the survey and within one hour of the results coming out, the CEO and this is quite a sizable business, he got the report. He scanned it and he immediately went to his PA and said, “I want every director in the company who’s available in my office in an hour.” They went through the report and started to put in place some actions actually. It was mind-blowing for them. This is astonishing. Very sadly, the L&D person lost their job as a result of refusing to budge and getting in the way rather than supporting what was really needed. That was a shame but they missed an opportunity because it’s proving so valuable for them.
It’s not enough anymore to just be dictatorial especially for the Millennials, which are the majority of the employees now. They want to be heard. They want to be acknowledged and they want to feel like they’re making a difference and that they understand the vision of the company. Clarifying any of those issues is going to help productivity, employee retention and engagement. I remember Starbucks starting out and Howard Schultz gave part-time employees health benefits when nobody else was doing that for part-time employees. Those people feel like they matter and so they go the extra mile. If you come in every day at the same time, they would say, “Chris, do you like the double whatever latte?” That person is so loyal to Starbucks. You can’t pay people to go that extra mile because their job is to take your order and serve it, but if they’re engaged and feel like you care, then that’s when you get extra service out of people. Would you agree with that?
I do agree with that. I think it was Starbucks where they used to have it. It’s one of those little cards and people would come in and you get a card and it gets stamped each time. You get a free latte or something once you bought seven. They decided to get rid of that and they just said to the staff, “You can give so much coffee, tea and whatever away for free to people when you think it’s most appropriate.” What they did is they gave the discretion to individuals to give the odd cup of coffee to somebody who may deserve it, who looked a bit harassed because they got the kids running around their feet or people who came in regularly. That autonomy and that discretion make a big difference. I know people about places like Zappos, they allow their customer service staff to send bunches of flowers and things like that to people if they think it’s important. That trust gives someone that ability to empower some of that and you feel more special when you can do that.
Besides hosting this successful show that you have, Business Elevation, helping people with their employee engagement, people hire you also to speak. Tell us about what speaking opportunities are best-fitted for you?
I speak about the power to get things done whether you feel like it or not. I do that fairly regularly and I’ve spoken at big companies like HSBC and various others. I also speak about engagement. One of the areas I like to talk about is Engagement Starts with You. A lot of people think we must get all the people, all the troops, all the employees engaged and what they forget as leaders are that they need to be engaged themselves. It starts before you get into the office. It starts with how you prepare your mind and prepare yourself mentally and physically so that when you step into the office, you are absolutely engaged. Therefore, you can spend your time in showing your team’s engagement is higher. Unless you’re walking the talk, then it’s not going to happen. That’s one of the keynotes that I love to share actually is engagement starts with you.
Time goes so fast with a guest like you, Chris. You’ve done so many interesting things and you have so many wonderful stories. Thank you so much for sharing. We all know a little bit more than we did on how we can get things done whether we want to or not.
Thanks, John. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Links Mentioned:
- Chris Cooper
- John Livesay on Business Elevation
- The Power to Get Things Done: Whether You Feel Like It or Not
- Mars
- Engagement Multiplier
- Stefan Wissenbach on Business Elevation
- http://ChrisCooper.co.uk/
- https://www.EngagementMultiplier.com/partner/johnlivesay/
- https://www.Amazon.com/Power-Get-Things-Done-Whether/dp/0399175849/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+power+to+get+things+done&qid=1554137130&s=gateway&sr=8-2
- Quantmre.com
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