Never Fly Solo With Waldo Waldman
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Every day of our lives, whether in our personal lives or in our careers, we work our way towards conquering fear. Conscious or not, conquering fear is an essential part of paving our path toward success because if we live our lives continually held back by fear, we never truly accomplish anything. Keynote speaker and leadership expert Waldo Waldman is the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Never Fly Solo. Waldo joins John Livesay to talk about the critical importance of conquering fear and choosing passion in our lives. Let Waldo and John help you choose to put passion before fear.
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Listen to the podcast here
Never Fly Solo With Waldo Waldman
Our guest is Lieutenant Colonel Waldo Waldman, who is a decorated fighter pilot and expert on leading through crisis, a Hall of Fame keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a New York Times bestselling author. He has amazing stories of how he took his childhood dream and challenges of both being afraid of heights and claustrophobia that still allowed him to become a pilot in an F-16. He talks about the need for appreciation for being the fuel of performance and how we can all start using that to fuel our life. He talks all about what it takes to become a wingman and how we all need one. Finally, he said that passion trumps fear. Enjoy the episode.
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Our guest is Lieutenant Colonel Waldo Waldman and he’s been inducted into the National Speakers Association, the Speaker Hall of Fame. He’s also known as the Council of Peers Award for Excellence. The award that honors those who have reached the top echelon of platform excellence. It’s been bestowed in less than 200 speakers worldwide since 1977, including Colin Powell, Zig Ziglar, and Ronald Reagan. Waldo is also a certified speaking professional, the highest earned designation recognized in the professional speaking industry. At least 7% of the professional speakers hold this exclusive designation. He’s a decorated fighter pilot where he’s led missions worldwide. He then went on to earn an MBA. His leadership and real-world business experience provided him the insights and skillset to consult with the largest and most diverse companies in the world. Waldo, welcome to the show.
It’s great to be here, John.
You and I met through some mutual friends, which we’ll get to in a bit but you’re known as The Wingman. Growing up in your family, who was the general? Who was the wingman between your mom and dad?
My dad was the Flight Lead and my mom was the General. She cracks the whip, was the enforcer, and sets the standard in the family. I grew up in an old-school, conservative New York household. My dad was a mechanic. My mom raised me and my identical twin brother, the ultimate wingman, and then my older brother and sister. We’re a tight family but blue-collar. My parents didn’t go to college, old school ethics, morals, conservative upbringing, hard work, integrity, get an education, and differentiate yourself. That’s what my parents always preached because they grew up poor. My grandparents were from Poland and Russia. They came over during World War II and experienced a lot of poverty. My parents worked their way up and were fortunate to have four crazy kids running around.
You have an amazing story of origin about this a-ha moment you had when your dad took you and your twin brother to the airport. Would you tell us that story?
My dad was a mentor in many ways to my brother and me and the family. He’s a workaholic. That’s why my mom tips the rain and doing a lot of the home disciplining and all that. My dad always spends time at work. One day, he took me and my twin brother, Dave, to Kennedy Airport on the first tour. We’d never been there. I’ve never been on a plane before around ten years old or so. I jumped onto that tarmac and heard the rumble of the jet engines. I watch those floating 747 in the sky. I smelled that JP-4 jet fuel and I was hooked. It was a defining moment. When it’s time to get on the flight line, he’d popped my twin brother and me into the jet 747. We sat in the cockpit. I remember it like it was yesterday, John. I’m sitting there and playing with the throttles, the switches, and making fake radio calls on the headset. I said, “Dad, what is this place for?” He said, “It’s the cockpit, Rob. It’s where the pilot flies the plane.” At that moment, I knew that I didn’t want to fix the planes like my dad, who was the mechanic on them. I wanted to fly them. There’s a lot more to that. He said, “Rob, you’re afraid of heights, it’s probably not the best career choice for you.”
Never Fly Solo: Lead with Courage, Build Trusting Partnerships, and Reach New Heights in Business
You have this amazing story of one of the things that you have to do is jump off a high diving board with a 35-pound bag strapped to you. Tell us about that moment because you’re talking about overcoming your fears.
I always grew up afraid of heights as a kid but I had this maniacal passion for becoming a fighter pilot. I wanted to be in the air. What forced me to think about what I needed to do with regard to my education, my relationships, and working hard at school because we all know that being a pilot is not easy. I wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. To get into the Air Force Academy, you needed to have high grades, top of your class, well-rounded fitness, X, Y, and Z. It pushed me. That goal compelled me to stay focused and work hard. Unfortunately, the culture of my family was they embrace that environment.
It was relatively easy to have that guidance to stay on that path. I got accepted to the Academy, freshman year, I show up, everything is going great until we go to swim class. That swim class was this 33 feet high fiving board stare me down. I looked to the instructor and I said, “Excuse me, sir, do I have to jump off that thing.” He said, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Waldman, you do.” You don’t even graduate the Air Force Academy unless you complete the water survival training and jump off that diving board with a 35-pound pack on your back. I remember thinking as my mouth got parched dry and I freaked out that this was not in the marketing brochure.
That reminds me of Goldie Hawn when she’s in the movie about getting into the military and she’s like, “Where’s the glamour? Where’s the resort? Where’s the spa?” That little bait and switch sometimes when you think you’re getting into the one thing and it turns out to be something else. That happens a lot to people when they take a job, for example, or they get into a business relationship with somebody that wasn’t “in the brochure” or that’s not in my job description. Waldo, I want to double click on that because what you said there is worth so much for everybody reading. At that moment, you have a big decision. You can get mad, take your toys, and go home or you can reframe it and get back to your original purpose of how maniacally passionate you were to have your goal.
Passion trumps fear. When you look at what’s going on in your life, if we’re dealing with the economic downturn with COVID-19, the turbulence, challenge, stress, we’re facing 33 feet high diving boards, every single day. We’re facing missiles, headwinds, and turbulence. When I got into the F-16, I wasn’t jumping off diving boards, I was in the war in combat being shot at every single day. The fear was there but the key to peak performance, which is what I discussed, being that wingman and a trusted partner, realizing that you’re not flying solo and realizing that people depend on you. They’re not dependent on your philosophy as much as your performance, not your attitude as much as your actions. We, as leaders, emulators of excellence, partners, parents, friends, or whatever, we have to say, what is it that I need to do to jump? How am I going to step out of that comfort zone and realize that life is not in the brochure that on the opposite side of fear is growth? This was the key that I learned at an early age and it stayed with me. We could talk about my claustrophobia, combat, and all the turbulence.
Before we get into that, you mentioned that your dad said, “Rob, this is the cockpit, but you’re not good for this because you have a fear of heights.” How did you get to be called Waldo if you were born with the name Rob?
[bctt tweet=”The opposite side of fear is growth. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
My last name is Waldman. You could see the correlation there but every fighter pilot gets a call sign. You use it as a differentiator, as a brand builder. My brand was built in the Air Force when I finished pilot training. They said the great Waldo and I had a couple of nicknames as well but Waldo Waldman stuck. When you’ve been in combat and war, you normally get to choose your call sign. In the Air Force, there are a couple of other etiquette things you have to follow. It usually involves a lot of drinking and public embarrassment for you to earn that call sign. I’ve been called other things but I got the cool call sign or the one that I liked. It’s a cultural thing and you’ve got to earn that call sign. You’ve got to earn the respect of your peers, your wingman, your trusted partners, the men and women who you work with every single day. It happens in business and in life every day. We may not have a call sign, but our brand, name, reputation, how we show up, how we care, and prepare our critical assets and attributes to winning these days.
How we care and prepare because I am a big proponent of preparation, especially in the world of pitching and selling. In this story, we’ve got a picture of this determined young man who’s got a fear of heights overcoming that. From listening to one of your talks, it’s extremely competitive, not only to get in but to get that one slot. You said somebody else had slightly higher grades and that slot was taken. You have those key life-turning moments like the hero’s journey, you’re a hero. What’s going to happen next? Do you give up on your dream or do you say, “I’m going to go do something else and figure out a way to make still my dream happen.” In your journey, you did teach. Tell us what that was like.
For people that may not have context on it, when I graduated the Academy, I was fortunate enough to be ranked high enough to go to pilot training and there’s a wash-out-rate for all these training like at work but 33%, 1 out of 3 people normally wash-out or fail to make it through any of the higher-end aviation programs in particular and route to being a fighter pilot. Pilot training is competitive and stressful, as you can imagine. I graduated number two in my class. The number one pilot, Andy Toast, got the fighter slot and I wanted the fighter. He got the slot but I got my second choice, which was to be an instructor. That’s going to be teaching men and women how to fly in pilot training. I didn’t want to fly a big transport plane, the big cargo jets, tankers, and big Boeing. I wanted to be an aerobatic, high-G maneuverable aircraft. The next best thing was to be an instructor. I was high enough in my class to be an instructor.
What happens is we compete after the 3 or 4-year instructor toward duty for the next assignment. The higher you are ranked amongst your peers, the better your chances of choosing the jet that you want. For me, I wanted that F-16 and there were few slots. I made a commitment to work hard and be the best instructor I could. When it came time after 3 or 4 years to compete, I would maximize my chances. What happened was what happens in life en route to any journey that’s compelling and worthy of achieving is I almost died in a scuba diving accident. What does that have to do with flying? Long story short, I went scuba diving for the first time right towards the end of my last 6 or 8 months of my instructor tour and I almost died, 35 feet under the water, I had a panic attack, and the lungs filled with water. It was the first time I’d ever done.
I wasn’t well-trained and I freaked out. For those that are reading that ever had an anxiety or panic attack. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, John. It’s an enlightening and fearful experience. I got out of the water and said, “I’m never doing that again.” A few days later, I’m back in Oklahoma, where I was an instructor, flying a training mission, the weather was terrible, and socked into the clouds. I couldn’t see the sun and the ground and I had that same panic attack that I had a few days prior. Instead of being 30 feet under the water, I’m now 30,000 feet in the air. I realized in a moment of terror that I had claustrophobia. That’s not the best thing for a pilot to have when they’re flying.
You had to overcome a fear of heights that you knew about, and then from a scuba diving experience, you realized you might have a little panic attack claustrophobia going on, which two big things that are heights and claustrophobia in that small cockpit. The thing that impresses me about your story and who you are as a man is a way you handle rejection. Number two, you have this choice. It’s no now but not no forever if you’re willing to put in the work for 3 to 4 years. A lot of people get to know in sales, particularly like, “I’m out.” It’s going to take you not to give up and keep going back. It might even take some time but you were committed. You’re like, “I’m going to be the best instructor ever so that I get another shot and had my dream coming true.” To me, that’s one of my favorite things about you and your story, because that is what inspires me to go, “If I’m committed like Waldo, then the no now doesn’t mean no forever.” You have a story to back it up.
Conquering Fears: Passion will always trump fear, no matter what’s going on in your life.
We all deal with rejection. We all have a dream. A jet we want to fly. A goal and something is going to bump into us. It’s going to be a headwind. It’s going to be a situation. It happens in our marriages, every day in sales, and it’s going to happen in your relationships, whatever it is. What I talk about is finding your why before you fly, the meaning to your mission. You’ve got to tap into what that passion is. What’s on the edge of that diving board? What’s at the end of that 3 or 4 years of training that’s going to compel you to keep stepping out of your comfort zone, to keep evolving and growing as a human being, as a parent, as a partner, and as a business person?
If we look at what’s going on with COVID-19 and the pandemic going on, the fears, and issues or maybe in your personal life. Also, some people reading have had cancer or went through a divorce, dealt with some intense rejection, going through some health issues, trying to lose weight, or whatever it is. You’ve got to have that compelling why and we’ve heard this before. It’s about taking action, investing, earning your wings, and saying, “I’m going to commit and grow.” It may not be now but I’m going to earn it. I’m not going to put my jet in the hanger and fall away in fear. I’m going to stay airborne. I’m going to keep getting in the cockpit of my life and eventually go for my dreams and hopefully have another shot, which I did at the end of that pilot training.
You talk about those moments of stress that sometimes we have to push up on the throttle when all of our instincts and our fears are saying, “This is a time to pull back.” Tell us an example of that in one of your combat situations. You’re good at taking your own story and then telling us how we can apply it in our own life. You’re trying to lose weight or you’re trying to whatever, and this situation that we’re all-in, how do we find that inner strength to push up on throttle when we want to carry our head in the cover sometimes?
It goes back to that passion, drive, and that innate goal that you have, a compelling goal that’s keeping you moving forward. If you’re an entrepreneur or if you’re in sales and want to get that big promotion, you’re vested in a relationship and want to take it to the next level, or you’re entering a bodybuilding competition and you say, “I want to overcome this insecurity.” Whatever it is, you need that to push you forward. I want to get back to the story about choosing my next aircraft because this was the first combat story for me. It was almost done and scuba diving, which was PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and some of that Post-Traumatic Sales Disorder after dealing with rejection or whatever. When it came time for me to finish that assignment and we compete for that next slot. I’ll never forget what my commander said, “Waldo, you did great. Congratulations. You’re at the top of your class. You can choose anything that you want.”
A big heavy tanker, C-17 transporter, brand new plane, four engines, big roomy cockpit, be bored out of your mind flying eight-hour missions and cool spots but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be challenged. He also said, “By the way, you can choose your F-16, Mach 2, weapons and sensors, going fast and breaking the speed of sound, getting shot at in combat on nine-hour night combat missions.” I chose that F-16 but it was difficult for me because I had to look and say, “I’ve been dealing with these panic attacks.” Because for people that don’t realize, I would jump into a plane and have these panic attacks for a minute or two at first, that I’d breathe through it. I got focused and had to overcome this claustrophobia, this anxiety that held me back. I got used to that discomfort and chaos. I built resilience in that cockpit in the trainer, where it was one-hour missions over Oklahoma.
I knew I would be stretching by volunteering that next assignment to fly that jet, but I didn’t want to have to look back on my life and say, “To my future wife or my son, your dad played it safe. He quit on his dream when things were right in front of him.” I chose that F-16 knowing well that I was going to be going into the tiger’s mouth, face my fears in combat, fly eight-hour night combat missions, deal with my claustrophobia, crush it and defeat it. That’s what I did. There’s a long story behind that because I don’t think your fears and anxieties ever go away. The noise of fear must be drowned out by the music of your life. Your relationships, wingmen, partners, friends, fitness, what you read, what you ingest into your ears and eyes every day, especially when we’re dealing with those combat missions and now with COVID-19 and the uncertainty of the day.
[bctt tweet=”The music of your life drowns out fear.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Part of the message that I want to share with you people and guys like you because you and I have spoken, you have such amazing experience, top sales, travel, this and that, and now you’re getting into this amazing niche that you’re in. Doing these shows, creating Zoom webinars, becoming a coach, building revenue, and more significance in your life is what pandemics and fears force us to do. That’s the key. When you get up out of bed, choose the F-16 or hit the snooze button. When you got a donut or a green smoothie, choose the green smoothie. When you’ve got the opportunity to have a truthful, loving, heartfelt conversation or a board and say, “I’m going to hold off on another day.” Choose the road less traveled. Don’t take the easy way out, which is what my dad always used to say. You’ve got to go deep in your life to find out that meaning and not give up on your dreams because regret is a big poison in people’s motivation.
You talked about the choices we make and all kinds of things, flying the dream or not, the green smoothie or the donut. Everyone knows that to be a pilot, you have to be top fit because of the demands flying all night. You got to be ready to respond and defend yourself. You’ve kept this fitness. You could hop in that jet with your fitness level. Do you have tips that are transferable from the same discipline and focus that has allowed you to keep your fitness almost like an Olympic athlete that stays fit even after their Olympic career is over?
I’m a driven person. I’m a performance consultant and coach. It’s how you’re performing. That’s the true metric. Once again, it goes back to why. You need a reason to lose the way and reinvent yourself. You need a reason to have the conversation, jump out of bed early, sacrifice, hit the gym, and watch your fitness. For me, a huge component of it helps me deliver my best as a person. It helps me create. When I’m in the gym, I get creative. My heart’s pumping, I feel good, and when I’m done, I come out with ideas. I’m inspired. I want to serve other people. I’m more energized for the day. I can be an example to my son and wife. It’s not just about fitness, feeling good, and living a long life. I want to be in an environment where I can give and be my best. If you’re slacking off, not in shape, and losing that energy, other people, your clients, family members, or your friends may be impacted by that in a negative or positive way. A contagious example. The example that you said is contagious. We had ended energy or fitness or whatever.
This concept of appreciation being the fuel of performance which is such a great visual. How important is it for people to feel appreciated that keeps them going? How do you recommend people incorporate that concept of yours?
When I overcame my fears and became a peak performer, I realized a lot of the time that I was going up was that my fee was able to dissipate because I knew I wasn’t flying solo. When we went up in the to combat, I knew there were men and women on my wing supporting me, having my six, or checking my blind spots. I needed them, they needed me, and we were able to create this collaborative culture of mutual support like, “This is how we are able to win together.” Part of the key to being a peak performer, building resilience, and courage in life is to realize that others need you. You commit more for others than you likely do for yourselves. Any parent that’s reading or anybody who truly loves another human being, you know that you would jump off the 50-foot diving board for somebody that you love, whatever it takes because you’re not thinking of yourself. This was how I was able to be a great instructor pilot and a solid fighter pilot.
I wasn’t a great fighter pilot. I was good. I was a great instructor because it was always about focusing on my team, wingman, who needed me, who can I support and help? When I distracted myself from myself, I got out of my head. When we distract ourselves from our fears, anxieties, panics, and just say, “Who needs me? Who can I help? Who can I serve?” Now, we’re no longer selfishly thinking about ourselves and worried about our anxiety. We’re just in service mode, that’s how we can be fully present in life. That’s why you’re such a great communication pro and storyteller because it’s truly putting yourself in the hearts, minds, souls, that drives people. Back to the appreciation, it’s the fact that you can have your team and support them but what I learned is that what happens on the ground is just as important or even more important than what happened in the air.
Conquering Fears: It always goes back to whether or not you have a compelling goal that will keep you moving forward.
I wouldn’t say abusive but not kind and appreciative of all those other wingmen, the maintenance officers, the backend people who were in my squadron who I needed to get my jet airborne and be a part of the squadron. I learned a lesson about chewing out a young airman about appreciation. I’d be happy to share that story briefly but realizing that we have to appreciate our teammates and all those other men and women who fly with us. When we do that, we lift each other, we make them want to be around us more and make them feel good about who they are, and then they’re going to give more in return. I learned a hard lesson because I was a butthead as a fighter pilot, I was great with my fighter pilot buddies but I took for granted all those unsung heroes in my squadron.
After your military career, you went on to get an MBA and you went into sales management for big companies like UPS and Panasonic. You took some of that appreciation as well as this wonderful phrase here about, “Lose sight, lose the fight.” I’m sure that applies in selling because if salespeople don’t have a vision of who they want and what their goals are, they’re never going to make their quotas. What were you able to take from being a fighter pilot around this losing sight, losing fight into your career in business?
You always had to stay visual with your wingmen when you were flying. Part of mutual support is always having your eyes on your teammates, on the target, your eyes were everything. If you lost sight of each other, you would lose mutual support. The key to flying constantly was staying visual. In combat and a lot of scenarios, I would mess up or my flight leads will mess up. It was common because there are many moving parts literally and figuratively. It was difficult to stay visual, but when you had the visual, when you had the support, you were unbeatable. If you apply that concept in life, keeping visual of your teammates. If you’re a sales manager of those people who was working with you and for you. If you’re in a relationship, keeping visual, and keeping sight of your partner, your children, what do they need, listening, connecting, finding out what other people’s goals are. Also, staying visual about what you want, what your compelling goals are, what’s driving you forward is so important, especially when chaos happens, missiles come, and you’ve got headwinds.
My challenge for the people reading is to continuously keep your radar sweeping for those key elemental relationships that are not just important in business but in your personal life. We all know that our comrade of courage, our wingmen, the men and women in our life who lift us up rather than dragging us down who see the good that we have, the greatness in us, especially when we’re feeling deflated and out of fuel we’ll appreciate us for our gifts. That’s how we can come out of a tough situation by staying visible with them, communicating with them, checking in with them, and truly creating this context of support. Stay visual and I write down my goals every day. I’ve got items on paper. I want to stay visual with it. If you lose sight of your goals, key relationships, the people who need you, you’re going to lose the fight. It’s not easy to do. You got to be diligent and intentional with those key relationships and key drivers in your life and stay focused on them.
You’ve given us so much to think about in terms of accountability, what’s our personal commitment based on our why, executing and taking action, whether it’s getting fit or being a good wingman for the people in our lives. I wanted to recap it. You’re in great demand for companies wanting to have you come in and teach this whole concept of never flying solo. When we find the inner courage to be our best selves, we transform the way things get done. You’re also working with certain executives and one-on-one coaching. Who’s the ideal coach that you do your best client that you do your best work for?
We all know that when you’re strapped into a cockpit flying Mach 2 and pull 9 Gs, it’s difficult to see the big picture all the time. We all have blind spots, we have insecurities, things that were unfamiliar with, and we’re innocently ignorant with certain areas. A wingman builds our picture and improves that perspective. We call it checking six in the fighter world. Check six means if you can imagine, if you’re strapping into your jet, we’re sitting in our seat and 12:00 is out front, behind you is the 6:00 position. That’s the spot that’s vulnerable. It’s where the missiles come. It’s where the enemy sneaks up on you. In an F-16 strapped in, barely able to move, you can’t see that spot but if your wingman or wing ma’am is at your left 9:00 or right 3:00, if they’re a beam U, they can look over your shoulder, look behind your jet and see what you can see. Tell you to take action and hopefully, you’ll be approachable and coachable enough to take that action necessary to avoid getting shot down.
[bctt tweet=”Lose sight, lose fight.” username=”John_Livesay”]
That’s a metaphor with life and why people need a coach, mentor, or good friends who are brutally honest with them, not a yea-sayer who’s going to say yes to everything, but somebody who’s truly going to tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear. I coach sales leaders, transitioning managers, or going into executive positions, high potentials, and some CEOs who are looking to have somebody tell them what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. Create insights, give assets and tools on how they can be better than they were yesterday. That’s what drives me more than ever.
I love coaching people because I’ve invested in a lot of coaching myself because you can’t see the picture while you’re in the frame. You can’t see the missiles while you’re in the jet. It’s important to have that either formally or informally. You can hire a coach, you can invest in a coach and get training but there are also a lot of great coaches out there on the web. You can read shows like this. You’re their wingman or coach. They’re investing in this time by listening to us. We can finish on this note with regard to coaching is that I believe your coaches should be your friends in life and your mentors should be your friends. I have a saying, “Make your friends your mentors and your mentors your friends.”
You’ve got that mutual respect going on. If people want to reach out to you for either coaching or booking you as a speaker, what’s the best place for them to go to?
My website is YourWingMan.com or Google Waldo Waldman. You’ll find me there and I’m also all over social media, Waldo Walden. As far as coaching, if you want to email me at [email protected], even me or my assistant will get it. We can have a conversation. I want to give a gift to your audience. My book Never Fly Solo was in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It’s $20 on Audible, the audiobook, but I’m going to give it to you for free to your guests in particular during the pandemic. People need some good fuel, energy, and passion. If they go to YourWingMan.com/NFS, put your name in there, I’ll send you an audiobook, and you’ll also get six videos on building resilience in life. I’m creating trusting relationships and partnerships with people so that when you strap it to your jet and a missile comes, you won’t quit. You’ll stay resilient. You’ll keep pushing it up and serve those who need you and love you.
Thank you, Waldo. What a generous gift. I can’t wait to listen more and watch all those incredible videos. I want to thank you on behalf of the whole country for your service and for being such a great guy.
Conquering Fears: People need a coach, a mentor, or good friends who will be brutally honest with them instead of being “yaysayers.”
Thank you, John. It’s been a pleasure and I’m thrilled to be your wingman and develop a relationship with you as well.
Thanks.
Important Links
- Lieutenant Colonel Waldo Waldman
- Waldo Walden – Facebook
- [email protected]
- YourWingman.com/NFS
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Entertainment Secrets For Entrepreneurs with Jennifer Lier
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
The key to success is confidence and pursuing your goal in life no matter what it takes. Jennifer Lier, the President of the country’s premier motivational keynote speaker booking agency, National Keynote Speakers, shares her life story from being a shy girl to blooming into a pageant queen and a successful entertainer. Through her experiences in the entertainment industry, Jennifer teaches invaluable entertainment secrets for entrepreneurs, showing us how to present ourselves in a way that entertains and draws people. As a performer, artist, and musician, she shares what creating a great website and pitching things efficiently can do for you. Jennifer also recounts how she got into keynote speaking and shares some tips on how to become one.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Entertainment Secrets For Entrepreneurs with Jennifer Lier
Our guest is Jennifer Lier. She has an illustrious 25-year career in the entertainment industry. She’s a highly sought-after vocalist. I personally heard her sing, it’s amazing. She’s a headline entertainer, model emcee, on-camera host and was one of the most requested Marilyn Monroe impersonators in the country, which is quite a story in and of itself because her hair is black. At the age of nineteen, she lost over 100 pounds and also conquered her fear of speaking and singing in front of people. Back in November of 1990, Jennifer realized her childhood dream and debuted on the world’s most famous stages of Vegas as a singer in a popular dance band. She went on to win the coveted title of Miss Nevada 1995 and received a talent award at the Miss America Pageant. She continued on to headline over twenty shows around the world including Legends in Concert, the world-famous Follies Bergere.
Her diverse talents led her to incredible opportunities and experiences performing with celebrity icons and being a spokesperson for some of the country’s most recognized companies. When she transitioned out of the entertainment field, she became a partner in Level 10 Speakers, which is a Las Vegas-based bureau delivering both speakers and entertainment to the Vegas market. While still a partner in Level 10 Speakers, she became the Director of Special Events and Director of Corporate Partnerships for Polaroid Museum, which is a hip meeting and event space where Jennifer built from nothing to consistent and profitable training events, weddings and special events. She is the President of National Keynote Speakers, the country’s premier and motivational keynote speaking and booking agency. She enjoys a wonderful life with her husband, Dan. They have two children and she still finds time to volunteer in her community. Jennifer, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, John. It’s wonderful to be here.
Entertainment Secrets For Entrepreneurs: If you really want something, you need to go after it and settle for nothing less.
I’m going to let you tell your story of origin. You can go back as far as you want. You can start at nineteen when you had this dramatic weight loss or you can go back further as to what caused it. Whatever you think would be a good place to start where we can flesh out some of those details I touched on.
It’s interesting how life turns out. Sometimes kids grow up and they have a great household, great parents, they’re supported and they want to go to school. They know exactly what they want to do. They want to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher or whatever. Even times that people are born lucky with a well laid out plan, sometimes we’re not and I wasn’t. I did know that I loved to sing. I didn’t have any guidance or understanding, I did think it was a pipe dream 100%. I was shy. By reading my bio, you’d never know it. By knowing me now, nobody would ever know, but I was painfully shy. To the point where in school if I had a question, I would not raise my hand because I was shy and embarrassed to bring attention to myself and have to speak out loud to ask the teacher a question. I suffered for it, I did through school and I didn’t have the courage to ask for help when I needed it. I didn’t join into things that I thought would not benefit me. I didn’t have that. I wasn’t born with that.
I spent a lot of time at home after school when I was growing up and I was young. I loved music. I would spend hours in my room singing to albums that my mom had. I was young, too young to buy my own stuff. I’m talking five, six, seven, singing to her albums of Barbara Streisand, The Eagles and all of these great artists in music. I would listen to them over and over again. I wanted to be able to hit those notes, have that phrasing and have the harmony skills of The Eagles and the musicality that they had. I grew up loving this music and wanting to master it. It was my happy place. I wasn’t good at school. I stopped. I was terrible. It didn’t compute with me. I liked some things, art was awesome, but everything else was painful for me to be able to do. The music brought me so much joy.
I had a few friends. I wasn’t a lot of friends’ type of person. I might have one or two. I would go out and do my thing, go outside and back then we were active. There were no video games so we were always outside doing stuff. We’d love to more play with the boys. I loved to bike and I loved to throw a ball around. I was that girl. I wasn’t girly, even though I wanted to be. I didn’t look it and I was always plump. I felt more boyish, unfortunately, even though I did try to be more girly. As time went on, I had no plan for my life. My parents weren’t that type that put you into every class, sports, nurtured you or cultured you into where they thought that your talents lie. They weren’t that.
I barely graduated high school, like the skin of my teeth. I didn’t know I was graduating until I went to. I missed the day because I used to ditch school all the time. I was never enticed. I hated school. I missed the day where they handed out your slip for graduation. I had to go to the counselor’s office and I’ll never forget there’s a stack of papers. The counselor was not there. They’re like, “Go in the office. There’s a stack of papers, you should be able to find it in the basket.” I was like, “Okay.” I’m looking through the stack of papers and mine was not there. I’m like, “I did not graduate.” Mine was the last paper in the stack and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was like, “Thank God.” As I’m looking at the papers, I’m thinking about what I’m going to tell my parents and everybody else that I hadn’t graduated. I’m like, “I have to do my senior year over or go get my GED.”
I got graduation barely. I think it’s because my teachers liked me and they gave me D’s instead of F’s. That’s how I got out of high school. I think there’s something to be said with that, building rapport, making sure that you have a great attitude. Even though I was shy, I was always nice and helpful. Because I didn’t know how to step out, I knew that if I could help, I would be able to be included. I’m saying that for a reason because that benefited me later on in life. These are a couple of skills that I was able to go, “That worked for me. Note to self. Put that in my filing cabinet.” I’m 100 pounds overweight as I graduated high school. I was home alone because we’re not an active family. We didn’t do stuff. My parents pulled home and watched TV. It was like the ‘70s, early ‘80s family. They didn’t go to the gym. They weren’t active. They didn’t put me in sports. We watched TV and ate and that’s what I did.
I was an eater though. I was an emotional child. I ate when I was sad, when I was happy, when I was bored, when I was angry. I didn’t know how to express it. It was difficult and I was lonely. I didn’t have active parents in my world. What happened was I watched TV and that was my dreamland. I ate while I did it. Needless to say, I ended up having a lot of weight challenges. When that happened and I graduated high school, I was not getting along with my parents. I was told to leave a week before graduation and they said, “As soon as that’s over, you need to get out,” and so I did. At eighteen years old, I had nowhere to go and I was scared to death. I had no ability to figure anything out for myself. At that point, I was like, “I don’t know what to do.”
As the moment I graduated, I called a girlfriend of mine and I asked her if I could sleep on the couch and she said, “Of course.” What I did was I went to her house for as long as I could, slept on her couch. That didn’t last and I slept on some other people’s couches and that didn’t totally last either. I had a car and I ended up sleeping in my car when I need to. At the same time, I’m looking for a job. That was my journey at that time was trying to figure out how to get a job. Through that time, a girlfriend of mine had said, “I know you love to sing.” She was a pageant girl, she was a girl who was small, little skinny blonde with blue eyes. She had that ability and she had people around her. She said, “I know you like to sing. I’m working with this woman. She’s a dance troupe coach. I think you should go and see her. You never know what will happen.” I was like, “All right.”
I meet this woman. She’s like, “Let me hear you sing.” I said, “Okay,” so I sang for her. She said, “What are you doing with that?” I said, “I have no idea. I’ve nowhere to live. I’m looking for a job. I’m trying to figure out how to get to college, even though I barely graduated high school.” She said, “You have unbelievable talent. If you lose this weight, you can do this for a living.” Mind you, I didn’t say that I lived in Las Vegas. My parents moved us from LA to Las Vegas when I was twelve, so I grew up here in the city. For her to say that to me, it was literally making all my dreams come true. I’m like, “What? Nobody ever told me that. I always thought it was a pipe dream.” All the years of singing for myself for hours when my parents were gone after school and pretending that I’m singing to thousands of people.
[bctt tweet=”Be likable and coachable. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’ll never forget, I was singing Linda Ronstadt. I was a freshman or sophomore. First of all, that was the mid-‘80s about that time. I’m thinking, “Why am I doing this? Nobody knows Linda Ronstadt now. That was several years ago. What am I doing?” Ironically, later on in my life, it came to pass. That’s the reason why I was doing it. Jumping back to where this woman was telling me to lose weight, she said, “Come live with me. You can clean my house for your rent and I will help you on this journey.” I said, “Okay, great.” They literally cleaned out a walk-in closet, put a single bed in there and I slept in there for a year. As I lived with her, she eventually fired me from cleaning her house because I was terrible at it. I did find a job and I was working at a men’s clothing store. My journey progressed and I lost the weight within a year. I was singing karaoke bars and sneaking in because I was only eighteen, nineteen.
Somebody said to me as they heard me sing at one of the karaoke bars in this contest because I would go and grab $100. I’d win a karaoke contest once a week. I’d cycle around Las Vegas to grab some extra money and $100 was a lot of money back then. They said, “You’re amazing. You should go and audition for this band that needs a singer.” I did. They hired me and they were the dance band that I was talking about. I’m nineteen years old. I lied about my age. I wanted it so bad, I was hungry for that. There’s a reason why I’m telling this story because I know people who are reading your blog, I would have done anything for that job. I would have done it for free. I had been doing it for so long, going up to that point to be able to cut my teeth and learn the craft. The guy saw that I was comfortable, that I was hungry, that I wanted it so bad. He hired me and he knew I was lying about my age. There, my journey began.
From there, I did that. It was the most popular dance band for several years. I was still trying to figure out my college situation. Somebody said, “You should try out for Miss Las Vegas going to Miss America.” Losing 100 pounds, I wasn’t in the best shape. I looked good but not exactly swimsuit. That was my next risk to go do, that I won this Las Vegas one, once in Miss America. I had an amazing, exciting time. I started performing in high-level production shows here in Las Vegas. I traveled the world singing and performing with other producers that had shows around the world. I did remarkable stuff. One side note, when I was 28, 29 years old, Legends in Concert came calling me, which is a popular show here in Las Vegas. They said, “We heard that you’re a great singer.” I had done a couple of little small shows with them as a singer/dancer, not in a starring role. They said, “We have a request for a Linda Ronstadt in one of our shows. Can you do it?” I said, “Yes, I can.” That’s something to be said about following your heart, doing what you know and not knowing where it’s going to lead you.
Moving forward, I was in entertainment for many years. I’ve done many amazing things, work with celebrities. I did television, did high-level productions, spokesperson work. What that did to me is it showed me what vision, dreams, hard work and tenacity. If you want something, you need to go after it and settle for nothing less. It’s about doing the things that you don’t want to do. Now that I see what a lot of speakers and people wanting something in their life that is older, we forget what we had when we were young, when we would do anything for that. Oftentimes, I have speakers in this realm that come to me and they want to build their speaking business. They say, “What do I need to do?” I’m like, “First of all, you need to speak more, speak whenever you can. Whether it’s free or not, you need to do it,” and a lot of people could do that. It’s interesting because I’m thinking, “That’s how you get good.”
Entertainment Secrets For Entrepreneurs: For businesses and speakers who are looking for something, look where you’re not thinking.
If you want this, you go and make it happen. If you don’t do those things and you don’t want it bad enough, you’re not going to do the things that you don’t want to do. Oftentimes, people are successful in their 40s, 50s and 60s. They’ve already risen to a certain level and they go, “What do you mean to do something for free? What do you mean start over? What do you mean to be at the kindergarten level?” A little twist at that point as far as where they are, but they’re not there in the speaking world because in the speaking world, they still have to start over. Oftentimes what happens, somebody who’s great at what they do or in their job or their careers, “We can speak to our group.” It goes well. They get a standing ovation. It feels amazing. They’re like, “I am a speaker and I want to do this,” and they come to me, “I’m ready.”
I’m like, “No, you’re not. There’s a skill. Make sure that you’re learning the skill, learning the craft.” This is a craft and there is time involved and investment. There’s money involved with investments. There’s work, promotional material involved with the investment. It’s the same thing in entertainment. It is similar, which is why I’m good in this business, both on the client side and the talent side. As a performer, artist, singer, musician, you need a great website, a great video, a great one sheet, a great everything that lists what you can do, social speaker. When you’re talking about people who are reading this that need to know how to pitch things, make sure that your stuff looks as good as what you’re pitching yourself and your fee is. If you’re a $10,000 speaker, make sure your materials look $10,000 worth.
That there’s consistency in the brand across the video production, it’s for sure all of that is what you’re saying. You don’t suddenly get to Carnegie Hall or performing at the Hollywood Bowl just because you’ve sung a couple of times. Yet some people think, “I should be able to be on this big stage without any experience.” You said something that I want to tap into because it’s near and dear to me as well. I rarely talk about this because it doesn’t usually come up. When I was ten years old, I remember my mom took me to buy clothes for school. They said, “Sorry, but you’re going to have to wear the husky size,” and I was devastated. I wasn’t a particularly athletic kid and I was doing a lot of emotional eating that you described as well. When I was bored it was, “You want to eat something? You didn’t get an A, let’s eat for that. You’re lonely after school, let’s eat comfort food.”
For me, I started swimming and then got on the swim team. That’s when the weight started to come off and I ended up becoming a lifeguard. That journey of husky pants, a chubby little ten-year-old boy to suddenly you’re wearing a Speedo like you’re wearing the swimsuits in the Miss America pageant. It’s a journey that unless you’ve been there, people don’t understand how challenging it is to let go of your image of yourself at ten years old, in your case at nineteen. I think that gives us a lot of empathy for people who maybe don’t fit in right away. It’s because you look a certain way now, doesn’t mean you’ve always felt like you fit in. I wanted to acknowledge your courage and thank you for sharing that vulnerable part of yourself. I think that’s how we all relate to each other. It invites people in to know that. This likeability factor you talked about, is that everything, whether it’s a teacher liking students or doctors liking your patients.
There’s something to be said about that. I knew I was deficient in certain ways. I’ve seen people who are highly-skilled and they’re amazing at everything and a little cocky. They don’t have the graciousness or the heart to go along with that. In every situation, maybe they know they’re skilled and they know how to do it in most situations, but if they’re anything less than either tired, hungry or whatever, they’re not as nice as they typically are or can be. I always knew that. I wasn’t great in everything. I was a little deficient. I was good in a lot of things. I wasn’t great at anything. I knew that I could make up for that in my heart, with my heart, my personality and be able to take that a long way and I did. I wasn’t the best singer in Las Vegas. I wasn’t the thinnest, which was a big thing. I didn’t have the best body. I wasn’t the best dancer, but I was solid and good at everything. On top of that, I had the best attitude and that was everything. People’s association with me is, “Jennifer’s the best. She’s willing to show up and do anything. She’s willing to come.” I was the fourth in everybody’s mind when somebody needed someone or something. It’s about being your best always, whatever that is for you.
I was up for a speaking engagement with a couple of other speakers they were looking at. The speaking girl came back to me and said, “They picked you because they like your energy.” People go, “What?” It’s not because of your video. It’s not because of your book. It’s not because of the testimonials. Likeability factor is synonymous, in my opinion, with, “They liked your energy. They want that energy in the room. They want to work with you.” Before and after the talk, all that stuff could never be underestimated. A lot of people unfortunately think, “If I have all this information about how great I am, that people will hire me and they miss the whole likability factor.”
It’s the intangible that sets you apart from everybody else. I’m working on figuring out a way to teach that to people. I’m working on dissecting that because people come to me like, “How can I be more like you?” I’m like, “Let me think about that.” I want to be able to teach that because I do think that gives an advantage to a lot of people in every single industry no matter what you’re doing. Obviously in sales when your clients love you, in leadership when your team loves you and to be able to understand that. It’s not about being everybody’s friend.
It’s about being able to have the hard, difficult conversations and do it with kindness and care. It truly is about caring about other people. I think that that’s the foundation of it, which is probably what happens with you too because I’ve watched you speak and you care about the attendees that you’re speaking to you. You want them to succeed. It’s not about you being up on stage delivering this and getting a fee. It’s about you giving your valuable content of, “This is what I experienced. I want you to be able to do this. I want you to take this back to your industry to do that.”
[bctt tweet=”What more can I be doing to grow my business? ” username=”John_Livesay”]
I wanted to add to that. You were kind enough to come to hear me speak and then you went the extra mile and this is where your likability factor goes off the chart is you said, “I have some feedback for you.” That goes back to what you were saying about how coachable are you no matter how old or successful you are in any career?
You are receptive.
I’m always looking for any little nuance I can do to improve. I can’t wait to implement what you gave me when I’m speaking on that engagement I just got for being like my energy. That coachability factor, I think for the readers the big takeaway is likability and coachability are what’s going to set you apart of why anybody wants to work with you.
Don’t be the one that thinks that they know everything.
No matter what you’ve done or whatever accolades you already have. I do want to ask you because I know there’s a great story here about your wonderful husband, Dan, who is also a speaker. I’d love to hear how you two met and then how that led to you running your own bureau, the National Keynote Speakers. How did that all transpire from you saying, “I have this expertise. I may not want to be working nights. If you’re speaking during the day, we’re never going to see each other.” Tell us a little bit about that story of the origin of becoming an entrepreneur and a founder of such a successful speaking bureau.
I met my husband on Southwest Airlines, so it’s the other love app, which is funny because I’ve flown as a performer. I flew for a living because I was always flying to events and shows. He was a speaker, so same for him. We were both flying back from Phoenix, so he was also a peak performance coach as well as a speaker. He was coaching Terry Porter, who was the head coach of the Phoenix Suns at that time. I was taking a master voice class in Phoenix. We were both on our way back to Vegas. I sat next to him on Southwest Airlines because you can sit anywhere. He always sat at the exit row, I always sat in the exit row. It was a no-brainer and then the plane was empty.
I went and sat on the aisle seat in the exit row and he was sitting in the window. There’s a long story there, but the short story is we met on the plane. I was interested. I wasn’t looking to date him. I wanted to hire him because I wanted to take my career to the next level. I was like, “Give me your card.” The funny thing was, and he tells a story because he’s like, “I wasn’t attracted to her.” I got on that flight and I looked like hell. I had no makeup on. I was exhausted. I didn’t feel good because something happened to my shirt so I bought this funky shirt in the Phoenix airport that had these horrible cactuses on there. I still even had the sticker that had M all the way down on the thing. It was just not my best day. My hair was all wacky and it was just not good.
I saw this guy and I was like, “I think I could fake a better impression.” I was headlining at the Rio Hotel and Casino at that time. I said, “Come see me there and let’s talk in between shows of like, ‘I need to redeem what I just did.’” Here I am in full makeup and costume and everything. He sees me perform and I knew I had him. He was like, “I see now what you are.” The short story is we became friends and we literally talked every day. He lived down the street, which we didn’t know. We went to the same gym he lived down the street. We were destined to meet somehow, some way. I think God was like, “If you guys can’t figure out the gym, I’m going to sit you next to each other on this airplane and go from there.” We started dating a few months later and got engaged a year later. We got married a year after that. A couple of years into it we got married. He was speaking, I was still performing. I learned about the business.
What was interesting is that I had already been doing corporate entertaining, meaning that for you speakers, a company comes to Vegas or an event city and they hire speakers for their conference and stuff. They also hire entertainment, so I would sing at their cocktail receptions or their galas or I would emcee. I already understood that world. I was like, “Who hires you? How do you get hired?” He told me about something called a speakers bureau. I got it and learned it. I worked with agencies and so it made sense to me. I understood what he was doing for promotion. He was great at his website, his social media when it was just starting then in 2008. I saw how he built his business and I saw how he ran his business. For a few years while I was still in entertainment in the corporate market, selling myself to entertainment companies and corporations that would come hire me through my website, I saw what he did and how he built his business. I also saw what bureaus did with him, where they lacked, where their holes were. I saw other speakers that we knew where their frustrations were, how they needed to build their business.
[bctt tweet=”It’s the intangible that sets you apart from everybody else.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I always kept that in the back of my brain because I wasn’t in shows anymore. I did stop doing shows. I want to be home at night with a family. We had two kids and I want to be home at night every night. Corporate work was easy. I only had to do it a couple of nights a week if I did and it wasn’t late usually, but I wanted to get out of entertaining because I was tired. It’s a lot of work and I thought I wanted to do something new. I wanted to do more. I had more to offer. While I was making that transition, the Polaroid Company came calling and they were opening a museum here in Las Vegas. They needed somebody to consult with them and so I helped them open their museum because they wanted to use it as an event space.
Once that was open, they needed somebody to run it and I was like, “I’ll do it.” I stopped entertaining. I went into the corporate world. I went into sales and marketing and building that business for them as corporate events, a place for meetings, weddings, cocktail receptions and such. I had a great time and loved it, but their partnership dissolved for their company around the country so I was losing my job. Dan said, “Stop pussyfooting around. You know this business. There is no bureau in Las Vegas, you need to open one.” I was scared because I really understood it, but I didn’t know it. I knew I had to learn all the speakers, all the clients, all the industries and all the topics too. I needed to understand, “People in technology or innovation, what do they speak on? What do you mean innovate what?” I saw I had to get well-versed in that and understand it.
Back in the day when I was doing a lot of entertaining, I used to do a lot of spokesperson work too. Companies would hire me in to learn their product and I would learn it in one day or two. I would become an expert in the product and be able to talk about that for a few days. That was my superpower. I think I was lucky in this business because I was able to learn the business quickly, learn the topics, understand it, get into the deep level and be able to talk about it and be able to sell that to clients. We opened Las Vegas Keynote Speakers, it started as, and it became successful in a heartbeat. We started opening around the country.
I had a presence in twelve other cities and it was phenomenal. I was like, “I need a national name,” and that’s when I came up with National Keynote Speakers to house everything that I had. It’s been wonderful ever since. It’s been growing steadily and in a place where people are having difficulty finding market share and getting new clients. I’ve had major bureaus come to me and say, “How do you get new business?” They’ve been in business for many years, so they have their clients that they’ve done great customer service with that they’ve kept. How do they get new stuff? I was like, “I’m not telling you,” but I said, “That was my ability to go in there. I’m looking in places you’re not looking because of my core background.” To people who are looking for business and looking for speakers, who are looking for something, look where you’re not thinking.
[bctt tweet=”Paint a picture of what is possible. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
Look in your own backyard. Are you in an event town, like a major city? Are you going to the Convention and Visitors Bureau and networking with them and saying, “How do you book? Who comes to you? Are you looking at any sales teams or any meeting planners? Are you networking in their networking groups? Are you reaching out to them? Are you giving value? Are you making your presence known?” There are all these different ways that I was able to build. I came from entertainment and I was used to that on the ground level, like boots on the ground world, rather than going, “I’m going to open my website and hope that everybody comes.” It’s different and so I was able to do that.
The concept that there wasn’t a bureau based in Vegas fascinates me because that’s where you heard me speak. There are many companies that are not based in Las Vegas and yet they bring all their people there because they have so many places that have conventions. I would think that there’s always every day a keynote speaker speaking in Vegas. It’s almost like Amazon going, “Let’s do books first and then we’ll do everything.” You went, “Let’s do Vegas, my backyard. I know it and now I’ve got that model down. I can do what Amazon did and scale that across the country.” I also want our audience to take away what you said, which is you asked yourself, “What is my superpower?” In your case, it was learning information quickly and becoming a subject matter expert. That’s what a good speaker has to do too.
When you’re brought in to a new client, you have to learn that industry, their niche, their competitive advantages. When you can speak to them, it’s customized and not seeing, talk to everybody. I’ll never forget when I spoke to a healthcare company and I got off the stage and somebody asked me, “How long have you worked in healthcare?” It’s all of that stuff and not everybody can do it. I think that if someone’s saying, “I don’t know what my superpower is or how do I find it? I’d love your opinion on this,” is your superpower sometimes is something that comes relatively easy to you. Because it comes easy to you, you assume everyone else can do with that too. People point out and go, “I can’t do that. How do you do that?” Look for those feedback comments. What are your thoughts on helping people find their superpower with those criteria?
Entertainment Secrets For Entrepreneurs: If you don’t give everything that you have with the excitement that you had as a child, you’re never going to go where you really want to go.
I think you’re 100% right. I love how you just dialed that down. Your superpower is something that comes easy. You think that everybody else can do it too and you realize, “No, they can’t.” I also think on top of that, being open, willing to learn and do something new. Getting out of your comfort zone and going, “I’m going to really see my creatives also.” This is how I start my day and every business interaction is, “How can I help? Not what can I give you?”
It’s that concept of coming from a place of service. Sometimes it can be something so simple like, “Would you mind buying my book and writing a review on Amazon?” It’s a little ask, some little thing sometimes, I’m looking for this kind of customer or here’s my ideal client, what tips do you have for my website or if you wouldn’t mind re-tweeting something I posted? It’s amazing. How can I help? Some people are hesitant to ask that because they feel like it’s too much of an imposition. I think if you realize that sometimes the help can just be, “I just need to call you when I’m having a bad day.”
There are two things: How can I get help? Also how can I help? How can I serve? My first underlying thing is how I can serve? This thing you were telling me that people want to learn how to pitch themselves better, their products, themselves. When you come from a place of how can I serve you that it opens your mind to a different place. It allows you to ask different questions, get the answers, and then you can speak into what they need. When you’re trying to figure out how can I pitch myself better? Ask what people need. Ask how you can serve. When you can talk about how you can serve somebody, it changes the conversation. It changes the copy on your material. It changes everything.
When you’re having the conversation with the client and you’re asking them more questions, because I’m on a call with a speaker a lot when they’re talking to a client. Sometimes it’s my first call with a particular speaker and they are talking way too much. I’m like, “Ask more questions.” They want to talk, people want to talk, they want to tell you about their problems and tell you about their company. Stop talking and listen. The valuable thing there is that they tell you what they’re looking for. When they tell you what they’re looking for or you can go, “Great.” You allow the client to talk and they really get into it in the beginning, but after a minute they get into it and they say, “John is having trouble here over in this capacity with this team because the team is really struggling with the production and the warehouses. Over here, we’re struggling with morale and this is happening.”
If you let the client talk and do their thing and then you come back at the end and go, “Great, it’s so wonderful to hear. Thank you for talking and telling me about what you’re looking for. What I do is I speak to the fact that a change in overcoming adversity and we’ll talk about attitude and building morale.” You can speak into what they were saying and whatever your topic is at that point, whether it’s innovation or motivation, you can quickly formulate your information and your topic into what they need. This is the disconnect that a lot of people have. I saw this with entertainment. I know what I can do. I know my whole background. I know every scope. I know the scope of every single thing that I can do. The person who is hiring me, meeting for the first time, has no idea. If I don’t speak, describe and give them the pictures and the image of what’s possible, they’re never going to know. If they tell me what they’re looking for and I can say, “I can do this and this for you to create that and to have that objective.” They’re going to go, “You’re the perfect fit.” All of a sudden, I’ve got that job.
Give a picture of what is possible. You’re such a great storyteller, Jennifer, even describing what you were wearing when you met your husband, Dan, with all the medium size M’s on that sticker, that such a visual. It’s memorable. It’s funny and that detail. When someone says, “We need a singer of Linda Ronstadt,” you tell the story of, “I used to sing her songs in my bedroom when I was this year-old, young.” You get two great examples of painting pictures, telling stories that pull people in. That’s the secret of becoming memorable, and as I like to say, irresistible. You are certainly irresistible. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your wisdom, your passion and your story with us. If people want to find you, they can go to NationalKeynoteSpeakers.com. Do you have any final thoughts or inspiration you want to leave us with?
[bctt tweet=”Follow your heart and do what you know without knowing where it leads you. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
I feel this, and I say this every single day. If there’s something that you want to do, go and do it and do whatever you can to get there. Don’t let anything hold you back. Definitely remember how you were as a kindergartener. You wanted to try everything. Go and try everything to be successful. Whatever you’re doing, if it’s speaking, if it’s a product that you’re launching or you’re being an entrepreneur or starting a business, go and do it. We can always start over. We can always decide to turn around and go somewhere else, but if you don’t give it everything that you have as a kid, as that excitement that we had as a child, you’re never going to go where you want to go.
Don’t give up. It’s always too soon to give up. Rudy Ruettiger is one of my favorites ever. His saying from the movie, Rudy, “It’s always too soon to give up,” and I agree. Always ask yourself, “What more can I be doing?” That’s my favorite question. What more could I be doing to build my business? Your mind is going to answer you and you might not like some of the answers. It’s going to give you the answers that you need. Sometimes it takes us looking at ourselves like that, and so keep moving forward. Be like that kid that wants to go and live a dream and do whatever you can to get there. You’re going to do it. It’s going to get you where you want to go.
It’s wonderful, inspiring and tactical at the same time. What a great question. What more can I be doing to grow my business? You have given us a lot to think about and you’ve certainly inspired all of us. Thanks again, Jennifer.
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me, John.
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The Power Of Coaching with Michael Bungay Stanier
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary
The Successful Pitch guest today is Michael Bungay Stanier who wrote a wonderful book called The Coaching Habit. He says, “If you explain too much, you provoke too little.” He said, “The goal is to stay curious longer and rush to advice slower when you’re coaching people on your startup team.” He said, “If you don’t know what your trigger is to break a habit, then you can’t change it.” That, “45% of our waking time is spent on habits.” If you really want to change the way you coach people on your team and get coached by investors, you need to learn to break those automatic responses that you have of trying to fix everything. One key question he talks about is called the AWE question. Find out if that’s literally the most important question you can ask someone on your team.
Listen To The Episode Here
The Power Of Coaching with Michael Bungay Stanier
I’m very excited today because we have Michael Bungay Stanier, who is the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, which is a company that helps people and organizations all over the world do less good work and more great work. Box of Crayons is best known for its coaching programs that give busy managers the tools to coach in ten minutes or less. Who doesn’t need that? Michael left Australia 25 years ago to be a road scholar at Oxford University. He fell in love with a Canadian and that’s why he lives in Toronto. He’s also lived in London and Boston. He’s written a number of books. His latest is called The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. The book he’s proudest of is, End Malaria, a collection of essays on great work from leading thinkers that literally raised over 400,000 for Malaria No More.
Clearly, Michael knows how to raise money. He knows how to get things done in a short amount of time, and that’s exactly what you need to have a successful pitch. Michael, welcome to the show.
I’m so excited about this. I’ve always thought how the art of a great pitch is as much as anything to provoke curiosity as it is to besiege people with information. My humble and obviously largely ignorant position around this is people often explain too much and provoke too little. I think great questions can provoke something really interesting. I think we’re going to have a great conversation here.
[Tweet “Explain too much and you provoke too little.”]
When you explain too much, you provoke too little. You’re absolutely right. The whole goal of a pitch is to get people to say, “Hmm, that’s interesting. Tell me more.” Not to tell the whole thing in a ten-minute pitch or 90-second elevator pitch. One of the quotes you have in your book, The Coaching Habit, which really stood out to me because I’m a big fan of Jonas Salk. I’ve actually been to the Salk Institute. I got to be friends with his widow, Françoise Gilot, who was with Picasso before she was with Jonas Salk. She’s got quite an interesting life.
That’s a woman who knows how to pitch.
She does indeed. She was interviewed on Charlie Rose and he said, “Look, you have been with two of the most powerful men of the 20th century. What do you attribute that to?” She said, “Lions mate with lions. They don’t mate with mice.” She had a very strong sense of self, which totally ties into that’s what you’re looking for when you pitch an investor. You have to be just as confident. You don’t have to know everything, but you have to be able to have a strong sense of self to get someone to want to fund your idea or your startup.
Jonas’ quote here, which I just love, it’s a great way to open your book and our conversation is, “What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.” Clearly, that relates to what he did with Polio discovery. Also, it’s very relevant to the concept of pivoting in the startup world. Michael, what made you pull that quote and give it a whole page? I just love that you did.
The heart of the book, the heart of the work we do is actually trying to increase many curiosities in this world. I’ve been talking about training, promoting the power of coaching for a long time. Over the years, my explanation of what coaching is has got simpler and more and more humble. The first thing is I’m not trying to turn anybody into a coach, just trying to have leaders, managers, entrepreneurs be more coach-like, which is different. When people go, “What does that mean? What does more coach-like mean?” It’s about this: How do you stay curious just a little bit longer? How do you rush to action and advice just a little bit slower? We are all so wired to rush into, “Let’s get it done, let’s have the answer, let me tell you what to do.” There can be something so powerful about, how do we stay curious just a little bit longer. It means that where we end up is likely to be a little bit more interesting.
[Tweet “Stay curious longer and rush to advice slower.”]
That’s so fascinating because one of the things investors tell me all the time is, “We want to invest in people that are coachable and not just take our money but let us give them some advice and ideas.” This concept of being coachable and learning how to be a coach to your team is completely intertwined. That is really a very exciting way to look at that that I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talking about. That’s why you’re the perfect guest to really bridge that concept of, “If I want to be perceived as someone who’s coachable to an investor when I pitch, I want to be able to coach people on my team to be more productive and feel appreciated so we can impress the investor that we have a good team here.” The topics that you’re going to talk about from your book, The Coaching Habit, is really spot on in my mind.
I think it will be useful for folks.
I was going to ask you, one of the things that really jumped out at me is you talk about 45% of our waking hours is spent in behavior that are just habits. I thought to myself, “Wow, almost half my waking time is just…” I know I have some routines and a little bit of a rut here and there, but even the way I respond to people is a habit, isn’t it?
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
Book by Michael Bungay Stanier
You’re right. There’s a study from Duke University. I came across that first quoted in Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, which in a sea of terrible business books, this is actually a pretty good business book. It’s disconcerting when you think about it. On the one hand, part of why we are brilliant as human beings is we’re a habit machines. It’s what allows us to get through the day. Most of what we do is actually run by our unconscious brain because it’s the far more powerful engine, the big part of our brain. It just means that we don’t have to think hard about getting dressed. We don’t have to think hard about going to sleep. We don’t have to think hard about driving into work. We don’t have to think about any of that stuff. It’s kind of an autopilot.
It’s a blessing and a curse. It means that on the other hand, because the brain is all about, “How do I save energy? How do I be efficient?” We get to be efficient with that stuff. On the other hand, it does take us down ruts and pathways of behaving that may no longer serve us. One of the ways to be thinking about this is the building blocks of behavior change are habits. That’s useful for everybody listening and just as individuals, which is if you want to do something, you’ve got to understand the science of habit building.
Knowing that so many people listening in are in start-ups, are in small entrepreneurial companies, the other key thing to takeaway here is that what your organizational culture is, is a collection of habits. It’s the way we do things around here when we’re not really thinking too hard about how we do things around here. Everybody knows that one of the reasons people invest, one of the reasons organizations flourish is your corporate culture. You know the Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If you want to be building a culture that eats strategy for breakfast, in other words that will flourish, in other words that will have impact, in other words that will get investment, you’ve got to be thinking about your culture. If you want to think about your culture, you have to be thinking about your habit. What are your habits? Particularly those as a founding team because the founders’ habits so deeply influence the culture that that organization will have.
The culture is everything. That’s so important, even if you’re a small company, to have a culture that you can then decide if the investor fits that culture or not. If you don’t have that defined, then you really created a disaster for not only creating the right people on your team. One of the habits that you talk about breaking is the habit of trying to fix something when somebody comes to you with their problem that’s on your team. Also, the habit of not being comfortable with silence. Let’s break both of those down.
Let’s first talk about the kick-start question, when you want to start a conversation with one of your employees. It’s a drive by ten-minute check-in as opposed to this formal way of doing things. If you’re the founder of a company, your question, “What’s on your mind?” is really open-ended and it invites people to have the focus beyond them without you saying that you’re going to fix anything.
What’s useful about what you’re pointing at is part of our strong belief is twofold. First is coaching is at its best, not an occasional formal, “Hey John, come into my cubicle because we’re doing our coaching session together.” That just fills everybody with dread. I want people to be thinking about coaching as a way of showing up and being with each other. Every interaction can be a little bit more coach-like. We’re looking to go, coaching is at its best, it’s day-to-day interactions that you’re a little bit more curious and rushing to advice next and just a little bit slower.
The other belief we have is if you can’t coach in ten minutes or less, you just don’t have time for this coaching stuff. You’ve got to be able to get into a real conversation fast. Part of the baggage of coaching is everybody goes, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for this touchy, feely HR stuff. We’ve got to get stuff done.” Of course that’s true, you’ve got to get stuff done. But what you want to do is make sure you’re getting the right stuff done, not just getting stuff done.
“What’s on your mind?” is a way of saying, “Look, your choice.”
To do that, you’ve got to get into the real interesting conversations more quickly. That’s part of the role of the kick-start question, is to ask, “What’s on your mind?” Rather than in most one-to-ones where you just report out on that old stuff that everyone has been doing and honestly everybody’s a bit bored by this conversation. “What’s on your mind” is a way of saying, “Look, your choice. You get to actually do or tell me what you want to talk about, it’s up to you. But let’s go somewhere important, somewhere that’s exciting you or worrying you or consuming you, or filling up your life. Let’s go there, let’s have a real conversation.” That’s the power of the kick-start question.
Within that, you talk about the three Ps, the Project side, the People side and Patterns that you might see that could get in your way. That’s to help people if they say, “I don’t have anything on my mind.” Because some people, especially younger people, I don’t want to pick on any younger people, but the go-to response to “What’s going on” is, “Nothing.” One word answers. Even though you ask, “What’s on your mind?” they say, “Nothing.” Then you’re like, “What’s going on this project? What’s going on with your coworkers? What’s going on with this pattern of having trouble getting your projects done on time?” or something.
You can always frame context around it. “Hey, I know you’re working on this, this is your key deliverable this month. In terms of hitting it out of your park, because that’s my expectations for you, that you’re going to be brilliant in 30 days’ time. Let me just check in with you. What’s on your mind here?” If they’re like, “Nothing,” probably they have got this totally under control and it’s awesome, or they don’t know what’s going on, in which case maybe I need some sort of intervention. It actually leads us to the next question, which is number three in the book.
In the book we just say, “Look, if you have seven good questions, you can go a long way down the path to be a more effective leader and more effective manager.” Question number three is the focus question. When they come back to you and say, “Okay. John, here’s what’s on my mind. Blah blah blah …” What this is going to do to most people is trigger the advice monster. “Here’s my challenge.” They’re like, “Good. I’m about to add value here by telling you what to do, how to fix it, how to solve it, what your opinion is.” Here’s the problem, you’re probably solving the wrong problem because the first challenge that shows up is almost never the real challenge.
The second thing you’re doing is you’re effectively disempowering this person. This is a perfect opportunity for them to figure some stuff out for themselves, to expand their own level of confidence and experience and trying to do that, all in the meantime supported by you. You snuff the moment out. You step in to fill the void with your ideas and your solutions. That’s why the focus question is so powerful, because the focus question is, “Okay, if that’s what’s on your mind, what’s the real challenge here for you?” That is when we start getting into an interesting conversation.
Let’s back up one second within that focus question, because you’ve tapped on something that is so valuable. Investors are going to ask you when you’re pitching a question either during your pitch to see how you respond to that interruption or if you get defensive or not. Secondly, they’re definitely going to ask you questions after the pitch. One of the big problems I see, time and again that I coach my clients on not making, is make sure when you get asked a question by an investor, that you rephrase it to make sure you understood the question right. Because if you don’t answer their question, they’re going to think you’re avoiding something and not invest in you because they don’t trust you.
This whole concept of answering the wrong problem just because someone says what’s on their mind without being comfortable with silence enough to say, “I just want to make sure I understood your question to me.” After you answer it, really clarifying, “Did that answer your question?” I think that skillset you talk about of really getting people honed in on, “Is this what we’re focusing on? Are we complete now? Or do you still have more questions based on my answer?” That is what a good experience is for anyone.
That focus question, “What’s the real challenge here?” can be extremely powerful as a way of testing your own pitch.
You know this better than I do, I don’t have a whole lot of experience in Silicon Valley VC investment and that pitch process, I know a little bit but not a whole lot. Here’s my guess. If I’m an investor, I want you to make sure that whatever you’re building is actually solving a real problem. That’s the point of this thing. If you’re fixing something that doesn’t actually have a need, then there’s not going to have a big audience base for that. What’s the real issue that you’re trying to get to the heart of here? That focus question, “What’s the real challenge here?” can be extremely powerful as a way of testing your own pitch, your own proposal to say, “Yes, there’s a real need that we’re answering here.” If you don’t feel like you’ve hit the essence of what the real challenge is here, then maybe your pitch isn’t quite ready to go yet because you’re not going to hook some investor’s interest if you’re not really clear on the problem you’re solving.
That’s so true. In fact, the investors tell me, “The more you can show me that you understand the problem better than anybody else, the more I assume you have the solution better than anyone else.”
Exactly.
Let’s go to question number two. I love acronyms. Your acronym is AWE. You would be asking someone, “What’s on your mind?” Then they tell you, and then you can follow that up, and you said it’s a lazy way to continue a conversation, which is intriguing to most people because they’re like, “What? I’m not lazy.” But just having this prepared really keeps the doors open. Tell us what AWE stands for.
We make a proud boast in the book that this is in fact the best coaching question in the world. AWE stands for, “And What Else?” There’s always that moment of slight anticlimax where you make the announcement “And What Else?” is the best coaching question in the world. Everybody goes, “Oh.” I was hoping for something shinier and louder and brighter than that. “And What Else?” has a double impact.
First is, you can know for sure that the first answer to a question is never their only answer. If I’m on the other side of the table and I’m an investor, and I’m asking you a question of somebody and I go, “So, what is the blah blah blah?” Whatever they say, I’m not going to be interested in what they say. I’m actually going to ask, “And what else is going on here?” It’s when you ask, “And what else?” you get into often the better answer, the real answer, or you find gaps in people’s knowledge. What else can be a really powerful as a way of going, there’s always more, the first answer is never the only answer.
[Tweet “A.W.E.- And What Else?”]
In therapy, when someone comes in and says, “I’m here because my spouse and I are always fighting about who does the dishes.” You go, “Okay, and what else is the problem?” “The real problem is …” It’s never about the dishes.
The other thing that’s powerful about the “And What Else?” question is, it’s a self-management tool. When we train people and organizations to be more coach-like, one of the key things we’re changing is this difficult but simple behavior change. Stay curious a little bit longer. Rush to action and advice just a little bit slower. The problem is that that habit runs deep for many people. One of the powers of “And What Else?” is that when you ask that, you’re actually staying curious a little bit longer. You’re actually self-managing your own desire to rush and fix it, solve it and sort it out. It can be really powerful for that reason as well. That’s why we think it’s got this one-two blow that makes it such a powerful coaching question.
It’s that breaking that habit of, “Just let me answer that presenting problem and then move on.” You usually try to ask that question three times, no more than five. That’s going to take some practice to break out of that habit, before you come up with your advice.
It feels just a whole lot better to be telling people what to do. Somebody comes into your office, your cubicle, on the phone, whatever, and goes, “How do I …?” You puff up a bit inside like, “Awesome. I get to be smart. I get to be in control of the conversation and I get to add value. I get to assert my seniority. I get to show off how brilliant I am.” It’s awesome giving people advice. The only downside is this, A) nobody really follows our advice. They just don’t. They listen, they nod along. They act on it far less frequently than you think. In part, that’s because you are solving the wrong problem. You’re trying to fix the first thing that shows up rather than the real thing.
Thirdly, your advice actually just isn’t as good as you think it is. You’re pretty confident, but honestly it’s not that great. It might be sometimes, but often it’s not that great. Even though it feels better to give advice, in yourself, “I feel in control here,” it actually doesn’t play the bigger game. Asking a question is harder because it’s ambiguous. It’s uncertain. You’re empowering the other person. You’re handing control to them with the conversation. It’s less comfortable to sit in but often has a far more impact.
I’m a big fan of storytelling and using stories to really hammer home a point. You did a great job in your book talking about the AWE question when you talk about the three year olds being told not to play with a toy. Can you tell us that story?
It’s a great story about self-control. The way I remember it being told is, it’s either with toys or with marshmallows, but it’s basically to say to kids, “Here’s a simple task for you.” Either don’t eat the marshmallow or don’t look at the toy. If you can do that for like two or three minutes, you get a prize. You get another toy, you get another marshmallow. You get something that’s great. If you can’t resist, then you miss out on the toy or the marshmallow or whatever it might be. Three year olds find that incredibly difficult. There’s a really interesting correlation between the kids that manage to resist temptation as two or three year olds, ones that grew up with a greater sense of self control and therefore success in their future lives, rather than the ones that didn’t have that and maybe didn’t succeed to the same extent.
I remember with this story you’re telling in the book about the toy is even after some of them said, “I didn’t look at it.” You just ask the next question, “What does the toy look like?” Then they’re busted because they describe what the toy is. Asking that additional question really gets to the truth of the matter, which is my big favorite takeaway from that.
You have three things in here about being successful coaching yourself, being coachable: be lazy, be curious and be often. We’ve touched on the “be lazy” by the AWE question. We’ve certainly talked about “be curious” longer than you are willing to take action. Just this concept of “be often,” can you expand on that one?
Let’s go back to “be lazy” just a little bit because that’s such a provocative thing to say. We know that people in startups are working like crazy weasels. Nobody’s sitting and lying around on a hammock. You might be in one of those places where you’ve got hammocks and bean bags and stuff where it looks like you’re relaxing, but everyone knows you’re putting in hours and hours and hours. “Be lazy” is such an anathema to what most people are used to hearing or assuming that requires success.
“Be lazy” is about stopping rushing in to do the work for other people.
I’m sure most people have already figured out why we’re saying “be lazy,” which is about stopping rushing in to do the work for the other people. Not only does that leave you overwhelmed, exhausted, frustrated, too much work on your plate, a bottleneck for your team. But it also dis-empowers those around you. You’ve hired these brilliant people and then you don’t trust them because you rush in to doing the work for them. You diminish their potential. You diminish their impact while leaving you overwhelmed.
I’m not saying never be helpful. I’m not saying never give anybody advice anymore. That would be ridiculous. I’m saying, can you slow down the rush to move to action, the rush to move to advice? That’s the whole piece around “be lazy,” which is if you can just hold back for a minute or two. Let’s make it a challenge, 120 seconds. Can you go two minutes without telling people what to do, without giving them advice? Just see how that shifts the dynamic of work.
Being curious, we’ve talked about it. Our basic stand is that people are advice-giving maniacs. They don’t even know what the problem is, but they’ve got some initial ideas on how to fix it. How do you move to questions? In the book we say, seven good questions are all you need to really elevate your leadership game.
Being often connects to this piece we’ve talked a little bit about before, which is just to say, “Let’s not make a big deal about coaching.” This isn’t some sort of a formal conversation where you take off your normal clothes and you put on your coaching outfit, like, “Okay, I’m coaching you now and we’re going to do active listening and wear pastel colored clothes, whiff perfume in the air.” It’s merely saying, every interaction with somebody, be it one-to-one meeting, team meeting, email, chat, any of that stuff, you can lead with a little more curiosity.
The metaphor we use is if you’re looking to have impact in the way that you manage and lead, and the way you have impact is you help people have new insights about themselves and about the situation. You help them change their behavior so they’re doing things differently. Then you help them, through that, have increased positive impact. What you need to do is be lazy, be curious and be often. The metaphor we use is, “Drip irrigation always beats a flush flood.” Little interactions are far more effective in driving behavior change than one occasional big push, one big wave.
The same thing is true about expressing your feelings too. If you let it go like a fire hydrant as opposed to the drip system, then people go, “Where did that come from?” You have to keep it all going. You’ve really touched on the importance of breaking this habit of feeling like we need to fix everything right away. You have a formula that I’d love you to go through: when this happens, instead of, and the 60 seconds. Can you touch on those?
This is a new habit formula. You’ve heard me say that there are seven good questions in the book. Actually, the very first chapter is so focused on this habit building piece. If you don’t understand how to change you behavior through creating new habits, you’re always going to be struggling. You’re always going to be behind the 8-ball. I’m no original researcher here. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. People like Charles Duhigg, BJ Fogg, who is very well-known in Silicon Valley. He’s got a great website called TinyHabits.com. Leo Babauta, also based in California, ZenHabits.net, and a bunch of other people have all thought long and hard about the signs of behavior change and habit building.
We’ve taken what we think is the best to make a simple formula. When this happens, instead of, I will. It’s got three parts to it, I’ll break those down for you. The first part is, when this happens. What this is all about is articulating what the trigger is. The trigger is the context or the situation or the occasion, the moment that starts the old behavior that doesn’t serve you so well. It’s that moment. If you don’t know what your triggers are, it’s always impossible to change a habit, so figure out your trigger.
It’s why you end up going, “Oh man, I said I was going to stop eating a pint of ice cream at 11:00 at night and here I am holding a pint of ice cream and I’m half way through eating it. How did I get here again?” That’s because you’re not sure what your trigger is, so you’re not aware of that thing that sets you down that path.
[Tweet “If you don’t know what your trigger is, you can’t change it.”]
The second part is “instead of” and that’s where you get really clear on what the behavior is that you want to change. If you don’t really crisp on that, it’s very hard to think of an alternative. When this happens, part one, the trigger, instead of the old behavior. In that context, we’re talking about, “I tell people what to do,” would be the broad summary of what that’s going to look like.
Part three is you define the new habit in a way that takes 60 seconds or less to complete. That 60 seconds piece is part of BJ Fogg’s contribution to this work. It’s got great insight. If you define a habit that takes more than a minute to do, your big brain will basically find a way to hack the system and get you back to doing the old way. There’s always a reason not to spend more than a minute. Who has time for that?
The story he tells us, which is a great one, is trying to get to floss more often. We’ve all had that moment where we go to the dental assistant and she’s cleaning her teeth and she goes, “How the flossing going?” We confess to going, “I’ve flossed six times in the last 48 hours” to make up because I haven’t flossed at all up to now. Here’s the whole piece of 60 seconds or less. His commitment to flossing was, “After I’ve cleaned my teeth, I commit to flossing just one tooth.” Because he knows that if you floss one tooth, you’ve got this micro habit defined so that you’re set up now. You’re like, “I might as well finish off the job, because why wouldn’t I?”
So it is with the habit piece, the coaching piece, which is around, “How do you use this to build a coaching habit?” For instance, it could sound something like this. When I have my weekly one-to-one meeting with John and he goes, as he always does, “Michael, how do I …?” That’s part one. Instead of sighing deeply inside and then going, “John, let me tell you again how you do this, blah blah blah …” and explain it.
Part three. I will ask him, “John, let me ask you, what’s the real challenge here for you?” Now, you’re walking away not with an abstract commitment to be more coach-like, because that’s noble but largely useless. What you’re walking away with is a really specific way to use one of these coaching questions that can be so powerful. When I’m on my one-to one-meeting with John and as he always does, he asks me, “Tell me what to do?” instead of telling him what to do, which is what I’ve done for the last two years, I’ll ask him, “What’s the real challenge here for you, John?” Now, you’re into a completely different conversation and I get to practice being lazy, being curious, being often.
This whole 60-second flossing one tooth, the same thing is too in the analogy of, if I know I get triggered and want to eat a pint of ice cream at 11:00 at night when I start stressing out about my money, that’s my trigger. When that trigger happens, I’m now going to go outside no matter what the weather, and for 60 seconds, just walk. Then if I still want the ice cream, I’ll have it. You’ve broken the pattern, the habit of, “I get triggered by fears of money and then I eat. By just going for 60 seconds, I’m taking a walk.” If you can just get through that 60-second anxiety and then the fear is lowered, and you probably won’t need to eat the whole pint of ice cream then.
If pints of ice cream are your problem, there are all sorts of great alternative things you can do. You drink two pints of water. You call up your ice cream friend and go, “I want to eat ice cream, talk me out of it.” There are a lot of things. The secret thing is disrupting the mindless step towards the freezer to pull out the Ben and Jerry’s. You’ve given us lots of great examples on how to do that.
I just want to sum up how you were so resilient and use your sense of humor, two great qualities that investors look for in someone they want to fund. Let’s face it, people like to give money to people that they like and are fun to be around. It’s not suddenly you have to be a standup comic, you have to be authentic. When you were trying to get your book published, you realize that the team was the key factor between getting a yes and getting a no. Let me tell you that that’s the key factor in getting a yes or no with a startup. Any last thoughts of what people can do to show their resilience and possibly even sprinkle in some bits of humor into their personality?
One of the things that we talk about in the book is the TERA model. That’s at the heart of the newest science of engagement. Here’s what you need to know. This is happening in the moment when you are pitching. As the investors are sitting across the table from you, your brain and their brain, everybody’s brain is scanning the room and going, “Is it safe here? Or is it dangerous?” If the brains thinks it is a dangerous situation then it moves into a fight or flight mode. What does that mean? What does that look like? You’re in the defensive. Everything is black and white. You assume it’s you versus them. You assume that things are going badly rather than going well. It’s actually not a great place to be because it’s all about protecting you at all cost. If things are going well, if it feels safe, if it feels like a place of reward, you’re more generous, you’re more subtle, you’re nuanced, you hear better. You are able to be more agile in the way that you think. A better version of yourself shows up.
What does TERA stands for? Tribe, Expectation, Rank and Autonomy.
You can guess that when you are in a pitch mode, your brain is freaking out. You’re like, “It’s dangerous here. It’s not safe at all.” Honestly, that could be happening with your investors as well. It behooves you to do whatever you can to make it feel like a place of reward for you and for them when you’re in this pitch mode.
There are four key driving factors that influence that. We call it The TERA model. It’s another acronym. What does TERA stands for? Tribe, Expectation, Rank and Autonomy. Tribe-ness, the basic question the brain is asking you is, “Are you with me or are you against me?” Expectation, the brain is going, “Do I know it’s about to happen here or do I not know?” Rank is basically saying, “Are you more or less important than me?” Autonomy is saying, “Do I get to have some choices here or are you making all the choices for me?” That’s actually a really powerful insight to go, “How do I have a pitch session where the TERA quotient is high rather than low? Because that’s going to help me and it’s going to help my investors like me more. I’m going to like them. They’re going to like me. If they like me, they’re going to give me money.”
The question about humor, one of the most powerful ways to increase a sense of tribe-ness is to have people laugh together. If there is way of making people laugh early on, so much the better. One of the greatest ways of doing that is through self-deprecation because what that does is it shows how confident you are in yourself, that you can be a little self-deprecating. That’s not to mean you’re apologetic. It’s different. You don’t want to be apologetic.
For instance, sometimes when I’m introduced to giving a keynote speech or something like that, I’ve got a bunch of things in my bio that are status building, makes me sound more important than I am. I’m a road scholar. I was the first Canadian Coach of the Year. I’ve just been chosen as the number two coaching guru in the world. It’s all great. But also in my bio it says, “Michael was sued by his law school lecturer for defamation. He was banned from his high school graduation for something known as the balloon incident. His first piece of writing was Mills & Boone short story. He knocked himself unconscious while being at labor by hitting himself on the head with a shovel while trying to dig a hole.”
There’s a way that this makes the audience laugh at me. I’m fine with that because what that does is it increases their status, their rank, and diminishes mine slightly. I do that in service of a better experience. I know that if I’ve increased their rank, they’re more engaged with what I’m about to say.
I can see why you won Coach of the Year. I have the build you back up. What’s the best way for people to follow you on social media and your website and all that good stuff?
If you’re interested in the book, there are seven good questions and the secret to habit, the best place to go is TheCoachingHabit.com. Even if you don’t want to pick up the book, there’s a ton of downloads, videos, audiobooks, all sort of stuff that you can pillage there. If you happen to be interested in our programs at Box of Crayons, BoxofCrayons.biz. In terms of social media, I’m on Twitter @BoxOfCrayons and LinkedIn is the other social media place I hang out at. I’m actually the only Michael Bungay Stanier in the entire universe, so you should be able to find me.
Congratulations on that. Not many people can have a unique name like that. Michael, it’s been a pleasure. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your insights on the AWE question and the TERA model too, so we can bond with people and get over our fear of pitching in front of anybody with some unique tactics here. Thanks again.
It’s been a real pleasure, John. Thank you for having me.
My pleasure.
Links Mentioned
- J Robinett Enterprises
- John Livesay Funding Strategist
- The Coaching Habit
- Box of Crayons
- End Malaria
- Malaria No More
- Charles Duhigg
- TinyHabits.com
- Zenhabits.net
- BJ Fogg
- Michael Bungay Stanier LinkedIn
- @BoxOfCrayons
- TheCoachingHabit.com
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