Creativity In An Age Of Artificial Intelligence With James Taylor
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Artificial Intelligence or AI has been taking over varied industries and has become undeniably helpful in today’s fast-paced life. Today, John Livesay interviews James Taylor, founder of C.SCHOOL™ and host of The Creative Life Podcast and TV Show. James talks about creativity and innovation and the use of AI in different professions. He then shares with us his proven five-step creative process that includes preparation, incubation, insights, evaluation, and finally, elaboration. Be inspired by James’ creative mind as he discusses each step and how important it is to do it in the right order.
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Listen to the podcast here
Creativity In An Age Of Artificial Intelligence With James Taylor
Our guest is James Taylor, who not only has his MBA, but he is a Fellow Royal Society of the Arts, FRSA. He’s an award-winning speaker and an internationally recognized leader in creativity and innovation. For over many years, he’s been teaching entrepreneurs, educators and corporate leaders, writers and literally rock stars, how to build innovative organizations and design the creative life they desire. As the Founder of C.SCHOOL and the host of The Creative Life Podcast and TV show, he’s taught hundreds of thousands of individuals and over 120 countries through his online courses, books, videos and keynotes.
After advising some of the world’s most creative individuals and companies ranging from Grammy-award winning music artists and best-selling authors to Silicon Valley startups, James designed a framework for creativity that helps individuals and organizations achieve exponential growth. Some of his clients have included Apple, Sony, Johnson & Johnson. He’s an in-demand creativity expert. He’s been on hundreds of media outlets. He was a subject of a 30-minute BBC documentary about his life and work. James, welcome to the show.
It’s my pleasure. I always love spending time with you.
[bctt tweet=”Green colors activate idea flow. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You were always in a different country. I love your passion for sharing all of your insights into what it takes to become a great keynote speaker. I always like to ask my guests what’s your own little story of origin. Your mission is to inspire creative minds. You must have always had one yourself.
I believe we’re all born with unlimited creativity. The problem is as you go through schooling, education and you start work, it gets knocked you a little bit. I see my job is just reigniting that creativity that’s in all of us. Whether that’s the creativity to sell better, to create new products, to change the world, to run companies or countries better. I’m definitely there to re-ignite something I believe was already in you anyway. You need a little bit of help.
Tell us your own story of origin. We talked before that you sold guitars but didn’t play them.
I come from a musical family. My father is a very esteemed music jazz artist. My grandfather was a musician as well. My wife is a professional jazz singer, so I come from the music industry people. My very first Saturday job was working in a music store selling guitars. I don’t play guitar. It taught me the first lesson about selling, which is understanding the customer. It wasn’t about me. It was understanding not so much the technical things a customer wanted, but what did they want that thing to do for them? What transformation do they want?
I was very good at selling very high-end guitars. A lot of the time, it was to the market. They’d have a big 40th or 50th birthday with a zero on the end. I was able to help them reconnect with that thing that they had when maybe they were college and helped use that to sell them a $5,000 guitar. That told me as a fourteen-year-old about the power of selling. I remember reading books by Robert Cialdini and all these wonderful sales experts and that got me initially interested in sales and selling. From there, I moved into the world of managing music artists professionally. I manage a number of Grammy-Award-winning artists.
I’ve managed a band called Deacon Blue, which sold about six million albums. I managed the Rolling Stones. That helped me start to understand how the music industry works about building big global brands, scale, that people can feel passionate and they can feel connected when you can build a tribe and excitement around. In 2010, I received a call from a gentleman in California and he asked if I would move to California to help him grow a technology company. It’s a totally different game. That was the initial start of things.
[bctt tweet=”Breaking down silos is the key to growth. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
What do you see if anything in common between a startup and a musician that’s at a level of winning Grammys?
They’re very good knowing what they do well from that. They’re very good at connecting ideas with people. It always intrigued me spending time with these phenomenal Grammy-Award music artists. They could flip between this quite quiet person sitting there, coming up with ideas, thinking creatively, and then suddenly they would go on stage, it was the same person, but it was like them multiplied by ten. I was always interested in this. My living as a professional keynote speaker, companies bring me in to speak on big stages all around the world. I’ve spoken in 25 countries. I noticed that even looking at the creativity of those, there are a lot of similarities between people like top rock stars and the stuff that I do as a speaker and also when I see great CEOs.
I was speaking at an event in Amsterdam and there was a vice president there. He came up on stage. He is one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever seen because he looked around the audience. He could sense this audience was from a group within this company. They were primarily all MBAs, smart people all in their early 30s, mid-30s. He didn’t speak to them about climbing up the corporate ladder, stuff that you might have spoken to maybe someone that was a little bit older, a different generation. He spoke to them about how this company and growing this company could be a vehicle for helping all those people in the room achieve their own personal development, their own genes, their own freedom as well. I thought, “To be able to make that room feel like that, that is phenomenal.” I see that in great leaders. It doesn’t matter whether they are rock stars on stage or great professional speakers or whether that CEO up on stage is inspiring their team.
Speaking of your career, your most popular topic is super creativity, augmenting human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. First of all, I want to applaud you for putting those two things together because a lot of people think innovation is all about technology and certainly artificial intelligence technology and creativity is a human thing like you’re going to write a song, paint or write. You’ve been able to combine the two. I don’t see anyone else doing this. Talk to us about how you said, “I think there’s something here that artificial intelligence can help us become super creative.”
We all see the stories about artificial intelligence. It’s going to take away everyone’s job. It’s going to be the terminator. Our robots will start taking over the world. That side doesn’t interest me so much. What I’m more interested is about how it changes the future work, what potential it can offer us as humans to augment ourselves. We often meet these terms, creativity and innovation. The way I think about it is there are different sides of the same coin. Creativity is about bringing new ideas to the mind. Innovation is about bringing new ideas to the world. Without creativity, there is no innovation. There are no new products and services. Creativity is the engine of innovation. It starts from there.
If you want to create that next winning company that makes a winning project or product service, it comes from that creativity of you as an individual, but more broadly within the team, the team that you’re working where you assemble to do something together. Where I’m interested in is where I see examples from lots of different industries is you’re going to get lots of jobs disappearing. That’s going to happen. You’re already starting to see that start to take hold.

Creativity And Artificial Intelligence: Creativity is bringing new ideas to the mind. Innovation is bringing new ideas to the world. Without creativity, there is no innovation.
I’m more interested in the people who are in the world of work. How they can start to use some of these technologies like AI and machine learning robotics to augment them, to allow them to do things that in their work, their skillset, their job that they might have thought unimaginable before. The companies I’ve been speaking for, they’ll range from some of the world’s top law firms, accounting firms, sovereign wealth funds, some of the largest financial and banking firms in the world, consumer products, companies, educators, fast food companies, aerospace, all different industries. Within all those industries, you see this happen more and more. Even to explain it from a very simple perspective of myself, my job is to be a keynote speaker.
Companies bring me in or associations bring me on to get on stage. I’m normally, like yourself, either the opening keynote speaker or the closing keynote speaker of a big conference. That’s not often the way. I think about how I use artificial intelligence to augment me in what I do. A few years ago, the way that most speakers had a conversation with the client was they would do a pre-event call and they would say, “Tell me who’s going to be in your audience.” They say, “We have people that are aged 40 to 50. They’re senior managers. They’re 80% men, 20% women, and they would do that.” That’s just the demographics. That’s not that interesting.
I’m more interested in the psychometrics of that room. We can use artificial intelligence. The way that I use it is before I even go in the room as part of my work on understanding the audience in the room, I will use AI to analyze the audience. I will essentially use different ways of doing this. You can use the same technology. If you’re selling and you’re going out and giving a pitch, analyze that key decision-maker in the room. It’s almost exactly the same process. This is how it works. I use IBM Watson, which is one of the many wonderful artificial intelligence systems or programs out there.
All I have to do, if I’m speaking to a large conference, most conferences will have a Twitter handle. I’ll go and give it to the artificial intelligence. What it will do is it will spider all of the accounts where the people are following and tweeting about this conference, for example. It will then give me across 72 different factors, a visual representation of the psychometrics of that particular audience, those people that are going to be attending. It tells me what their needs are, what their values are, what their wants are.
What I can do is I can give the AI my draft keynote presentation and it essentially analyzes that and it can overlay the psychometrics of my presentation with the psychometrics of the audience in the room. It could tell me what I need to work on, what needs to be boosted up, what needs to become down. The way we use this, let’s say, I was giving a pitch to a CEO in New York. The CEO, like many senior executives, didn’t do social media or if they did do social media, someone else is writing it for them. It wasn’t them who’s writing it. What they had done is they’d written an article for one of their trade magazines. All I had to do was I gave the AI 1,000 words that this person had written.
I could use 1,000 words that someone’s spoken. If they’ve done an interview or written, give it to the AI. It automatically told me the psychometrics of that person in the room, that key decision-maker I wanted to influence. I knew having looked at that that this person is authority challenging. As I give my pitch, I want to come across a bit more like a contrarian in my views. I could see that they valued practicality very highly. As I give my pitch, I’m going to say, “Here’s how my service product can be practically applied to help grow your business.” I could also see they valued trust highly, 99% super high.
[bctt tweet=”Caffeine reduces your creativity. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You might call them case studies. You would call them case stories, which I love. You would tell case stories. You would tell examples because this is going to use more social proof. Robert Cialdini, that trust indicators, social proof and that will help that person feel that the key decision-maker in the room when you’re giving your pitch is going to feel like magic. It’s going to feel like, “This person understands me. He understands this challenge or this issue I’m thinking about, what I’m thinking about in the challenges I’m having in our business.” It’s not magic. It’s data.
You’re speaking their language. If somebody cares about trust being a key factor and that is going to be specific to their personality, whether they want to have proof of your authority or whatever it is. You’re addressing all those issues in advance. Is this something that you have to subscribe to IBM Watson to be able to access and create this analysis from Twitter handle?
If you go into my LinkedIn profile, James Taylor. I have a post there, an article which basically states exactly how it works and how to do it. This is something that you can subscribe to. There is a free version. You can go and test it if you want to go and try out. You can give some written words written by a key decision-maker or somebody who wants to influence. It’s fun. Do it on yourself first of all. If you take this onto the next stage, let’s say if I work in a car showroom, where are we going next with this is if I can take that data. Let’s say I’ve got all of my customers’ social media handles. I’ve had a series of correspondence with them so that is in the system. That will then create the psychometrics for everyone in my customer database, my CRM.
You can start to do very interesting things. Let’s imagine you can have the new Apple glasses that are going to be coming out. Unlike the Google glasses, but much nicer, much cooler. They will be connected to different artificial intelligence. You can connect that to your CRM and you can wear these glasses. Let’s imagine I’m a fourteen-year-old guy in a music store selling guitars. Five people come into the store. I’m wearing my glasses. It’s connected to the CRM of the company, so I know the psychometrics.
Using facial recognition as they come into the room, I can automatically see, “That customer is coming in here. They have a high FICO score. They have a low credit rating. This customer here is being on this webpage a number of times and spending a lot of time on that page about this product. This customer here has spent $10,000 within the past several years.” As a salesperson, who do you go and speak to? It’s all showing a heads up display like a fighter pilot would have. This is happening and I worked with a lot of companies that are starting to build these out across their businesses.
This is the super creativity bit because the AI is not going to write your pitch for you. It’s not going to give you a sales presentation, but it will make you a better presenter of your ideas. Sports teams use AI to analyze their players. Insurance companies use AIs to analyze their brokers. I believe every salesperson should be able to use a tool like this in order to analyze that prospective client, that prospect that they’re going for. When you go and give that pitch, it is absolutely landing on a very emotional level with that person as well. That’s the human bit. The creativity comes from us being able to create story arcs and be great storytellers. They all have side things that you’re brilliant at doing. We augment that with these technologies, which helped provide more data on the analytical side.
[bctt tweet=”Without creativity, there is no innovation. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
You use the AI to give you insights into the data that’s going to emotionally resonate with somebody and turn that data into a story. Would that be a good summary? You said something that I want to capture because I’d love to tweet out. It’s something about artificial intelligence is our mind and creative is the world. Do you remember what you said there?
Creativity is bringing new ideas to the mind. Innovation is bringing new ideas to the world. Without creativity, there is no innovation. Creativity is the engine of innovation. That’s how the two things exist. They cannot sit side by side. Usually what you tend to find is creativity exists more around individuals and teams working together to generate ideas, assumptions, tests, minimal byproducts, those things. Innovation tends to come around to what we call the five-stage of the creative process towards the end. It ends up as being slightly more process-driven, but they go well hand in hand together.
You teased us about the five steps to a creative process. I know that’s a core part of your keynote on this topic, but you’ve been gracious enough to give us a little snapshot of what those five steps are.
The creative process is about how you generate, develop and execute on ideas. Let’s say you have a product and you want to start generating new ideas to get that product to market, or you’re looking to go fundraise. We need to get creative here on the pitch that we’re going to be putting out there into the market or the types of investors that we want to be bringing this deal to. The first stage of the creative process is what we call the preparation stage. This is about generating ideas. It’s about taking and absorbing as much information as possible.
It’s where you’re doing your classic market research. That’s the very first stage. The second stage where a lot of people I see go wrong is they do their research and immediately hope to stop generating ideas. The second stage, which is called the incubation stage, is where you need to put ideas to the back of your mind. It’s almost like forget about it. Go and do something else, switch to another project. You’ll bring and continue working on things in the background. I was going to be looking for patterns, looking for opportunities all the time, but you have to put it to the back of your mind.
One of the fascinating things is even, for example, the colors that you have around you can affect your levels of creativity. There was a study done by the University of British Columbia up in Canada. They found that the color red is the best color to have around you when you do work, which requires high attention to detail. For example, if you’re doing your tax returns, you want to have that color red around you. What they found is the best color to have around you if you’re looking to generate ideas is the color green. One of the reasons we get some of our best ideas when we’re out walking in nature when that color green is all around you. Think about for yourself, do you have that color green around you in your workspace? Are you going out for a walk and talk to me? Are you going to the parks? Places where that color green is activating that part of the brain. You’re basically incubating all of this and this is the stage you’re mulling it over in the back of your mind.

Creativity And Artificial Intelligence: Caffeine is very good at focused work, but not so good for unfocused, open-minded thinking.
I want to give everybody a little story on that because you and I were having a conversation. I said, “I want to show you something to plant the seed in your brain, knowing the way you work.” I didn’t call it incubating, but that’s basically what I was talking about. It’s like let me show you something and I’ll know that will be in your subconscious and that might generate some ideas.
In the US military, at West Point, they teach a version of this. They call it preloading, which is about two hours before you go to sleep at night, ask yourself a question about that challenge that you’re trying to come up with. You sleep on it. You print it at the back of the mind and often when you wake up the next morning, the idea is almost fully formed sometimes. It’s strange. I’ve heard about this. Why is it that I’m a successful X, Y and Z? Fill in the blank.
The brain is a phenomenal, amazing thing. We go to this third stage, which is the insight stage. That’s the a-ha moment, the light bulb moment, however, you want to describe it. When it comes to creativity, it’s the shortest part of the creative process. It’s the bit they make the movies about, when you see the fast action scenes, a big light bulb seems going on. Most creative work is not necessary like that in terms of those moments. There are a couple of things you can do to increase those levels of creativity. One is to understand yourself when you are at your creative peak each day. John, for example, for you, when ideas come easiest to you or you feel that natural idea-generating flow, what time of day does that tend to happen?
First, in the morning, I let myself be open before I even get out of bed or even open my eyes and say, “What am I grateful for? What am I open to receiving? What’s my intention for the day? Are there any insights?” I literally asked myself that question. Are there any insights that I’m open to hearing? It’s amazing. Sometimes it starts and unless you said a few minutes later, I’ll be in the shower. That’s what that joke is about, why do I get all my best ideas in the shower when I can’t write it down? Before all the world comes in and starts with the emails and we’re reacting to everything or the news or whatever it is that distracts us. I’m a big believer of what you’re talking about here, James, which is letting yourself have some time, a little gap of what wants to come up. What is my intuition telling me? What do I want to say or do? Even preparing for this. I started thinking about you and our previous conversations and all the wonderful videos that I watched you do. I’m like, “What would be a great question that would help James get his message across and see what would come up during the conversation. I plant that seed.
You’ve described beautifully from a very poetic standpoint that sensation of what you feel in the morning. We use that time in the morning, that half-awake, half-asleep that other people might be late in the evening or the afternoons after lunch. I’ll describe what’s going on from a chemistry perspective. What’s going on is you’ve been incubating this awesome thing overnight. You might be thinking about it. You’ve been incubating it overnight. In the morning, what’s happening in your brain is fuzzy. You’re open to unconventional thoughts. Alpha waves are rippling through your brain directing your attention inwards to remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere. Also, the brain that says, “That’s a stupid idea,” that hasn’t woken up yet.
This is one of the reasons many people get their best ideas and that half-awake, half-asleep in the morning. Don’t just jump out of bed but give yourself that time to say you’ve been intentional asking those questions, or in the shower in the morning, a lot of people get their best ideas. This is the reason, but the main thing is not everyone’s morning people. Other people get a later in the evenings or the afternoons but know for yourself what time of day you are at your creative peak. As much as possible, use that time to do your deep thinking, your creative thinking, your strategic thinking, move all your calls, emails, meetings outside of that time.
[bctt tweet=”In terms of creativity, there’s a lot of similarities between top rock stars, speakers, and great CEOs. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
We start to generate these insights. It’s funny because even what we eat and drink can affect our levels of creativity. There was a great study done by Martha Farah, who’s a neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She found that high levels of caffeine in your diet will reduce your chances of having ideas and insights. I was speaking in Bogota, Colombia and I told this story. I thought 2,000 people in the audience were going to kill me at this stage. Let me give you a little bit of background on that. Caffeine or coffee is very good for the preparation stage, the first stage of the creative process and the last stage because what we’re doing is, we’re looking to absorb what’s the new information. It’s a different thing. When you’re looking to be expansive in your thinking, it would benefit you to dial down your caffeine levels. Switch to tea, water, juices because caffeine is very good at focused work, but not so good for unfocused, open-minded thinking.
That explains it.
There’s stage for generating ideas. We go to this fourth stage of the evaluation stage. I’ve worked with some incredibly creative companies, creative individuals, especially senior advertising industry or some of the high-tech industries. Usually, the biggest challenge is not a lack of ideas. The biggest challenge is around evaluating those ideas and deciding which ones we’re going to pursue and test. That’s the evaluation stage. This is when you start to do things like more ideation, brainstorming sessions. I teach a whole different series of tools. They have to do that well. Also, to break down silos in organizations which is a challenge.
That’s the number one problem I see across every industry I’ve ever spoken, too. Everything is so siloed, no one’s communicating. There’s no database where they could share, the case stories of what’s work at other cities or countries. If you could help people breakdown their silos, then no wonder you’re speaking so often.
It’s also happening on different levels. You’ll see from a generational standpoint where Millennials are communicating in one way sometimes. The Boomers or Gen X are doing it in a slightly different way. Sometimes getting everyone in that same place. I speak a lot in the Middle East and South America where you have a different hierarchy in organizations than you would have in Silicon Valley or in London where it tends to be much more top-down or family businesses. The large family business could be like this as well. I also teach a number of tools there, which is about leveling out the hierarchy a bit so you get the best ideas from everyone in the organization. Not from a senior person that are always dominating the board with their ideas, which is very important. In the final stage is the elaboration, which is like Thomas Edison said, “Success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” This is the stage that you’re testing your minimum viable products, getting feedback and all these stages, they’re iterative. They go back and forth on this circular. You generate a whole bunch of questions, which then you have to go back to the preparation stage and find out the answers. That’s thinking of the five stages of the creative process.
Thank you for sharing that. To sum up, preparation, incubation, don’t jump right to ideas, insights, evaluation and finally, elaboration. That’s such a great framework for so many different things. We have a mutual friend who is a CMO at Domino’s Pizza. They’re using artificial intelligence to start predicting if you keep ordering the same pizza at the same day and time, the artificial intelligence can start predicting and start the order even before you’ve finished ordering again to help save the time and the delivery. I would love to know a couple of other stories how are lawyers using artificial intelligence?
[bctt tweet=”Creativity is the engine of innovation. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
There’s an event I was doing for one of the top ten law firms in the world and the particular challenge that they were looking at was the customer journey. That stage from someone first having contact with that prospective client all the way to a client for many years. How do you get them to refer other businesses to you to talk about that relationship? This tends to be a long and sometimes complex stage if we choose a couple of different areas that you’re seeing artificial intelligence being used a lot in taking away a lot of the more routine works. For example, there’s a law firm in California called Robot Robot and Hwang. It got started by a young gentleman called Robert Hwang. He trained as a computer scientist. He went and trained as a lawyer and started working for big law firms. He realized how mind-numbingly boring a lot of legal work is, especially the contract side. He would do his law work during the day, and at night, he would go home and he programmed an AI to do the work that he’d been doing during the day. By the end of the first year, he’d essentially replaced himself.
He went and started this new firm called Robot Robot and Hwang. There are three partners in this firm. He is the only human partner. The other two partners are AI. One AI specializes in mergers and acquisitions. The other specializes in intellectual property litigation. This is a very productive, highly profitable type of law firm and very fast-moving. If you have a law firm that you give your business to, asking the question, where are you using AI in your business? If they’re not using an AI, especially to analyze agreements, you might want to be a little bit worried about that because you’re going to start seeing this more and more. It’s a way of reducing risk in the markets. That’s one way. In a completely different way, more from the front end.
I know a lot of your readers come from a more sales perspective and you have things that we call conversational AI. I remember when I was getting started in my career and I was getting inquired for some of my music artists and we’d get ten inquiries a day for them to go and do shows somewhere. I could never quite work. I had to do telephone calls for all these ten people. Some of them had a very little budget, some had a good budget. Some of them it wasn’t right. It wasn’t a good fit. What we can use is a conversational AI to essentially help do the filtering process.
The way that this works, let’s say if you have a website, you have a service or product you provide and you have some online form. Normally what happens is people type in the form. “I’m interested in learning more about this product.” That goes directly to a salesperson. That salesperson picks up a phone and calls you, but it’s much better if you put that through an AI first. What would happen is you give the AI a name. If her name is Barbara and Barbara is your new sales assistant. When Barbara gets the email in, Barbara starts having an email conversation with that prospect. What she’s looking for is an intent, certain keyword phrases that she’s learned over the time that those things put together. Also based upon your email address, which you can tag that to your LinkedIn profile, that shows that your company is perfect for your size. The AI will then say, “Let me schedule a call time with one of our sales team, how is Monday at 2:00 PM or Thursday at 3:00 PM?”
It’s going to feel like a normal human conversation and that AI has access to your calendar so they can put that straight in that salesperson’s calendar. For those people that aren’t a good fit, AI can then recommend, “Here are some other resources, some other training, some other things. You might want to have a look at our blog post, or I’ll put you on our newsletter list,” or whatever the thing is. A salesperson doesn’t want to be doing a call with someone in the wrong stage of the sales process where they are very unlikely to buy.
If you could help salespeople save time on qualifications, then they’re going to be so much more productive and the revenues are going to come in because we are not wasting time on people who don’t plan on buying anytime soon or don’t have the money or whatever the problems are. I want to end this by asking you about why China’s richest man believes that creativity is the most important skill that any one of us are going to need to thrive in this age of disruption.

Creativity And Artificial Intelligence: Your job as a parent is to keep curiosity going in your children because that’s going to set them in a great place when they become adults.
That’s Jack Ma. He’s the Founder of Alibaba. Alibaba did $36 billion in sales in one day. This is massive. You’re having Black Friday or an Amazon sales, that makes that look like small numbers. Jack was very influential in his company in artificial intelligence. He was asked a question, “What skills should we be investing in our young people, in our teams, people at work in our companies, and our citizens and countries?” He said, “Don’t bother trying to compete with a machine on things it could do better, faster and cheaper. You need to focus on that one advantage that you have as a human, your creativity, your curiosity, your ability to innovate. That’s what you need to be focusing on.” That ties in perfectly to some of the things that I’m interested in about this connection between human and machine.
The number one question I get after having spoken at conferences and people come up to me at the end or people ask me on stages like, “I’ve got a son or a daughter and they’re eight years old. What should I be suggesting? What should I be telling them to do in order for them to get prepared for the future?” I say, “Give them exposure to as many different ideas, cultures as possible. Get them as being curious, being creative.” When I say creative, I don’t mean like liberal arts and music. I’m talking about creating a big science perspective as well. That thing that they had when they were very firstborn with of being curious asking why. Don’t let that go away. Your job as a parent is to keep that going in them. When they become an adult, they have that sense of curiosity in their lives and that’s going to set them in a great place.
The Japanese did that in Toyota seven different times. If anybody wants to get more of you besides hiring you as a keynote speaker, you also have products on creativity training. If anyone is interested in music training or speaker training. I’ve been wanting to recommend your speaker training. It’s so in-depth, specific and unique. People can find you at JamesTaylor.me?
That’s it. They can find all those things from there and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn a lot. That’s exactly how the AI things work that I mentioned. Those are great places to connect.
My big takeaway is we should not be afraid of AI, but we should embrace it and realize that it allows us to be more creative. Thank you, James.
John, thank you so much for having me on your show. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Important Links
- James Taylor
- C.SCHOOL
- The Creative Life Podcast
- IBM Watson
- LinkedIn – James Taylor
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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Raise Your Standards With Mark Evans
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There’s an old way, and there’s the new way of selling – which side are you on? It’s about time you raise your standards and get intentional with your sales. In today’s episode, host, John Livesay, is joined by Mark Evans, author and Standard Sales Company founder. Mark talks about the significance of building systems into your sales process and salespeople. He also deals with the subject of fear of rejection, the four types of people you interact with, and how to do follow-ups without being pesky. Discover how sales is not something you do to somebody and how to ask the right questions to start meaningful relationships that close the deal.
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Raise Your Standards With Mark Evans
Our guest is Mark Evans, the author of Raise Your Standards: The Definitive Guide to Building Seven-Figure Sales. One of the things that Mark is known for is his energy. People call him one of the most enthusiastic people you’ll ever meet. His love of sales and the game of business is infectious. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to have him on the show. He believes that in its very core, sales doesn’t have to be manipulative or sleazy. He thinks it’s the greatest job in the world and he helps companies and individuals reach the seven-figure sales mark and beyond. Mark, welcome to the show.
John, thanks for having me. It’s a treat to be on here.
You are welcome. One of the questions I always love to ask my guests is to tell us your own story of origin. Were you born happy and enthusiastic? Did you love selling as a kid? Take us back as far as you want and tell us how you get to become you.
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My parents are both entrepreneurs. My wife and her side of the family are all entrepreneurs. My story started back my parents, when I was a young boy probably 3 or 4. They had always been a part of other family businesses and that worked out okay, but they decided to risk it all and start their own business. They moved my entire family, my three sisters and I, about four hours away to a town they had never been in, to a city that they didn’t have any connections with to buy this business. From a young age, I was working with them and that’s where I got my first exposure to realize that sales is critical. It’s the lifeblood of all organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses. At a young age, that was drilled down into me. It wasn’t just sales for corporate earnings or for a private jet. We weren’t close to that at all, but sales were what led to our family vacations and the tuition to my little parochial school in the town where we came from and basketball shoes. That’s where I got started and fell in love with sales as a young kid.
[bctt tweet=”Don’t just show up without preparation. Be like a chef. ” via=”no”]
I’m fascinated that you grew up with entrepreneurs and you married one. Sometimes for couples, it’s challenging if one is an entrepreneur and one is not or doesn’t have that background. They don’t understand the ups and downs, and the lack of a steady paycheck. It can be a big challenge for people to adjust to. What was your first sales job once you got out of school?
My family is in the printing industry and when I graduated, it was the week where the recession hit. I remember there was a Newsweek article or there was some news publication that probably isn’t even in business anymore that said, “Now is the worst time ever to get a job.” I remember thinking like, “This is something great to see after our graduation ceremony.”
To be clear, this is not the 1932 crash, correct?
Correct.
[bctt tweet=”Use video in your emails.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’m guessing this was back 2008?
Yes. It’s the 2008 Great Recession. I may be balding but I’m not that old. I graduated and I went to work at a company. This is the start of my new book that’s coming out. I went to work for a commercial printing company and within three days of me being there, they laid off 40% of their workforce. In that same conversation said, “Don’t worry. Mark is here. He’s going to help us.” I said, “Is there someone else here besides me?” That’s where I started and that’s where I got the idea of two types of different companies. One that have and build systems into their sales process, where they’re systematic and intentional with their approach, both in their systems as well as with their salespeople. Those that are scattershot, are showing up and throwing up all over the place, whether it comes to their sales systems or their salespeople in general.
That concept, the old way of selling, “Let’s just throw a bunch of spaghetti up against the wall and see what sticks.” It doesn’t work well anymore. Let’s talk about the three things that you have of mindset, the preparation and the actual work of asking the right questions and getting the yes. Let’s start with the right mindset. Many people, especially if they’re professionals, architects or lawyers, you name it, they don’t like to think of themselves as salespeople. How do you help people who have that mindset?
There’s an old saying that I’m sure you’ve heard as well as the rest of the ones have heard, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s around to hear it, does it fall?” The same thing can be said for companies. If you have a product, a widget or service and it can’t be sold, do you have a company or do you just have a hobby? That’s where I like to start the conversation off with people that say, “We’re not in sales.” You’re in business. I hate to break it to you, but sales are going to be the lifeblood of your organization. It’s going to be critical to everything you do. That’s where I start the conversation off. My book goes into four parts of what I consider the standard sales models. The first is mindset. You have to build your house on rock, not on sand. If you don’t have the proper mindset, whether it’s going to be in sales or whether you’re in any career, you’re not going to have a successful life and I truly believe that. The next part is prep work. John, are you familiar with a concept called Mise en place, a French cooking technique?
[bctt tweet=”Curiosity is a lost art.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’m not since I don’t cook American, let alone French.
That’s okay. You’ve probably experienced it. Whether you’ve gone out to a great restaurant in LA or you’ve gone to waffle house, not that it’s not great, but let’s call them two different restaurants. Both of those restaurants are using a technique called Mise en place. If you have an 8:00 PM dinner reservation, the chef didn’t show up at 6:30 or 7:00. They’d been in the kitchen all day. They’d been there since 9:00 AM or 10:00 AM prepping, cutting vegetables, getting the meat ready, and getting the sauces right. When you come and experience the restaurant, you get this amazing experience where the dinner service flows and you have a great meal. Many salespeople and many sales-driven companies are showing up and throwing up. They’re showing up with no intention and with no schedule. If we can do this in a restaurant and if restauranteurs, chefs and servers can be intentional with their approach, then why can’t we do that in sales? The second principle that I talk about is all about making sure everything’s in its place before you start reaching out, start emailing, start cold calling or whatever you’re going to do to make that happen.
The tweet will be, “Don’t just show up without preparation. Be like a chef.” People will get that because everyone knows a chef, if you’ve hosted any dinner party, don’t show up when people are arriving to eat. That analogy is fantastic. Going back to the mindset, I want to get your thoughts, Mark, on rejection. People have such a fear of rejection. Since that falls under mindset, any tips that you have in your book or in life on that?
I saw this study back a couple of years ago or so. I believe that about 90% of all the prospects that you meet, at any given time, aren’t ready to do business with you. Only 10% are ready to do business now. I was having this conversation with a client who was putting all of this weight into every single meeting. He was psyching himself out, to be honest with you. He’s trying to change almost his entire business model because 1 or 2 people have said no to him. We had this conversation, “Not everybody’s going to be ready that day to sign on the line that is dotted, especially the higher end and the higher level of service, widget or product that you provide.” You know this better than anyone, John, when selling luxury goods. Not everybody’s ready to drop six figures on something.
The next part of this is the actual selling and there are a lot of different steps to that. Do you reverse engineer it? Do you think to yourself before you even start building rapport, “How can I create a win-win?”
In creating a win-win and creating that type of scenario, you’ve got to have that in your mind. You’ve got to go in with some intention, but I caution salespeople to come in because I’ve been in situations where what the salesperson thinks I’m coming in for and the solution that I want are apart. We’re almost like train tracks where this person is going in one direction and I want to go somewhere else or we’re completely apart. I do a little reverse engineering, but honestly, I just want to be curious in sales conversations. That curiosity is a lost art and a lot of salespeople could benefit from being curious about the other person across the table, the company, the solution and where that company or person is trying to go.
I love a story, so I’m guessing you have a time where the buyer and the seller had a different track, then you had come in for something. Give people a story so that it locks in, whether you’re buying a car or matches.
I’ve made every mistake when it comes to sales, so I’ve got lots of horror stories if you will. I believe that there are about four types of people and I consider them to be either bowls. If you’re type A, you go get them and take no prisoners type of people. You’ve got your party people, that’s someone like me, energetic. We usually got cocktail parties. You’ve got your fact folks. Those are usually your CPAs and your engineers. The I’s are dotted, the T’s are crossed, and then they want to show you the math behind all of it. Your people pleasers are the type of individual that even if you eat their lunch right in front of them, they won’t say anything. They just want everybody to get along. How we interact with those types of people can be successful in a sales conversation.
[bctt tweet=”Sales is the lifeblood to all organizations, especially small and medium-sized businesses.” username=”John_Livesay”]
One story that comes to mind is I was trying to sell someone who is an electrical engineering manager. It’s almost the definitive individual when you think of fact folk. I saw his garage 1 year or 2 later and it was like you could eat off of it. It was impeccably clean. For the better part of a year as I tried to sell a high-end engineering solution to his company, I was constantly going up to this individual and there’s a way to build rapport and relationship. I was offering him tickets to a local sports team and front row seats. I offered him these great events where we’d have a table where he could network with fellow engineers and fellow people. I didn’t realize that and it didn’t dawn on me until a little bit later, that this person going out in public and trying to meet someone who is a complete stranger is a nightmare scenario for this guy and for this individual. He said, “Mark, I don’t want to be in a crowd. I don’t want to be around people socializing and networking. That’s a nightmare to me.” It was only when I said like, “Yeah.” Instead of trying to push these tickets on them, how about I just provide the facts and the figures that he’s asking for? As soon as I was able to do that, the business became a lot easier. We formed a great relationship.
You also talked about the fourth thing being follow-up and most people don’t do it. I know in my own career, it’s a big key to my success. How do you suggest people follow-up without being pesky?
A lot of people don’t want to be that “used car salesperson” where they feel like follow-up is something scary. They don’t want to be a pest. If you have a solution that’s providing value to someone, it’s in your best interest to follow-up with them. You can change their life if you follow-up and have a good consistent follow-up process. There’s a stat that I read that said something like 20% of salespeople are following up more than 3 or 4 times, whether by call or by email. That same study said that only 80% of all buyers will only respond to or buy something after the sixth or seventh connection attempt. We got this massive difference between salespeople that are stopping at three connects and people that are only buying at 5 or 6. John, for example, how many emails do you get in a general day?
I don’t even know anymore. It’s a lot. I can barely keep track.
[bctt tweet=”As a salesperson, your one voicemail or email is not going to make a difference. Don’t be afraid to follow up.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Probably north of 100, 150 or 200. The average executive gets over 250 emails a day. If you, as a salesperson, are out there thinking that your one voicemail or your one email is going to make a difference and reach out, that’s not going to happen. People are busy. They have lives, kids, spouses and parents that get sick or they get busy going on vacation. I always tell people like, “Don’t take it personally. It’s not up to you. It’s not about you, so don’t be afraid to follow up.”
You’re also a keynote speaker. Who’s your ideal audience?
I try to speak to companies that are looking to go to becoming sales-driven organizations. Maybe in the past, they’ve had a couple of salespeople or not professional sales organization and they want to be proactive when it comes to the sales process. That looks like a variety of different industries, whether it’s software as a service, professional services like CPAs, commercial real estate or realtors. It’s about those individuals and those entrepreneurs that want to grow their business, but they just don’t know how to get to that next level, especially when it comes to becoming sales-driven.
How did you come up with the title of your book, Raise Your Standards?
[bctt tweet=”If you have a solution that’s providing value to someone, it’s in your best interest to follow up with them.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I struggled with a title for a couple of weeks and nothing was coming up at all. I liked the Raise Your Standards part. I have a business coach. His name is Craig Ballantyne and he is out of Canada. He’s a New York Times bestselling author for 3 or 4 times and he’s a great guy. I was beating my head up against the wall for 3 or 4 weeks and within five minutes of one of our first conversations, he said, “It should be Raise Your Standards: The Definitive Guide to Building Seven-Figure Sales.” After explaining what I do and how I help a lot of sales companies, I loved it, but at the same time I was like, “Craig, how could you do this to me? You’ve figured this out right away.”
That’s what good people who have experienced do. I figured it out quickly, but it was 30 years of experience that allowed me to do that fast. We talked that your book can help people not feel pushy, sleazy or even difficult. Is there something in the book using these standards that takes it from feeling complicated or sleazy?
The core thesis of the book is that sales is changing. There’s the old way of selling and then there’s a new way of selling. John, I love your perspective on the new way of selling and you preach an intentional type of sales process. What I’m talking about is your personal interactions. Sales don’t have to be something that you have to do to somebody. You don’t have to use manipulation and kitschy techniques in order to close a sale. All you’ve got to do is ask some good questions, build some great rapport, and understand where that person is trying to go. If you have a solution, a product or a widget that can help them, then it’s your duty to make that pitch to make that ask of them. The sales approach and the sales genre that I’m trying to preach is that you don’t have to change and be the guru in front of a private jet or in front of a Lamborghini. You can work with someone else in order to get a win-win and to create a good long-lasting relationship.
Mark, what do you think makes a good question? We all know the difference between a close-ended question, yes or no or an open-ended question, but sometimes people feel awkward asking people a question. They don’t want to feel intrusive. How do you help people ask good questions?

New Sales Approach: Being in sales is like being a chef. You don’t just show up when people start coming in. There is an intentional approach and lots of preparation before you start reaching out to people.
When it comes to asking questions, that’s the core element of a good sales meeting and a good sales approach. The questions are where the magic happens. The level of depth, level of intention and level of thought that you put into your questions reflect on how you are approaching and how you are respecting your client or your prospective client. The framework that I like is thinking about what’s in it for the other person. Everybody’s tuned into the most, “What’s in it for me?” They’re trying to think of, “Where are they at currently? Where are they looking to go?” Those are the questions I tried because I firmly believed that if you can articulate the problem that your buyer or your prospect is having, better than even they can, they’re automatically going to think that you have some answer.
That’s the a-ha moment for many people. The better you can explain the problem, the better they think you have their solution, which in my mind requires some homework and some empathy. It’s not just, “It sounds like your problem is this,” but put some feeling behind it. “It must be frustrating to struggle with this particular problem and never figure out how to solve it or the same thing keeps happening and all that.” That is what makes people think, “You get me.” You have something where you say, “The first objection is not a real objection.” That intrigued me, Mark. Let’s say a couple goes into therapy and they said, “We’re here because we’re having trouble with our sex life.” The therapist is like, “That’s what you think is the problem, but there’s something underneath that.” How does that work in the sales world where you say, “Your first objection is not the real one.”
I had not heard that part but I liked that. That’s true and it’s an a-ha moment for me. John, if you’ve ever gone into a store even if you’re busy and even if you’re looking for someone and that helpful clerk comes scampering around and says, “Can I help you with anything?” Most people’s first answer is, “No, I’m just browsing. I’m just looking.” People naturally love to buy, but they don’t like being sold to. “I want to buy a new car. I love the thought and the thrill of driving off the lot, but I don’t like being sold at all.” That first objection often is real, whether it’s that therapy case. We put up these guards and barriers because we don’t want to let people in. We don’t want to be vulnerable and answer some questions. You’ve got to break through that.
Are you considered a Millennial or not?
I still fly into that, but I watch a lot of old movies and old books. I’m an old soul.
You’re what’s considered a digital native which is someone who grew up with computers as opposed to older people who had to learn it. You have whole expertise around how to stand out using video email. A lot of people don’t even know you can do it and they don’t even know what video to put in an email. Because this is your digital native, can you give us some tips on that?
One tactical that anybody who’s out there that is cold prospecting or trying to book appointments or book meetings with about anybody can benefit from is through video email. The average executive gets, let’s say 200 plus emails a day. Most of those are all text-based. One way I’ve found and my clients have found that’s effective in standing out in the inbox is a video email. The system that I use is called Vidyard. There’s a paid version and a free version. I use the free version, to be honest with you. I record a simple and easy video that can be converted into a GIF of me waving or me holding something up where I hold up my book and say, “John, it’s Mark. I’m the author of Raise Your Standards. I’d like to talk to you about X, Y, Z. We’d love to do this. I’d love to make an introduction.”
That little video stands out in people’s inboxes. Every time I send this or every time one of my clients starts using this practice, we see their conversion rates immediately jump. We see conversations come out of it. I use this to schedule a bunch of different appointments at a conference that I was attending, a big industry event. I was reaching out to different CEOs and executives and I became almost like this little mini-celebrity at these events. People are like, “I got your video. I loved it. It was amazing.” I’m still seeing the puddling effects or the ripple effects from that.
Give me the name of the service that you use.
There are two. The first is called Vidyard and the second one is a Wistia product called Soapbox.
Do people know that it’s a video in the email with the subject line somehow or you still got to get them to click to see the video?
They’ll see it when the actual video uploads. You can load it directly into your email, especially if you have Gmail or Outlook. In the email itself, there’s a little thumbnail like you would see any thumbnail. It almost looks like a YouTube box and you can turn that into a GIF. There’s motion like I’ll wave in it, I’ll move around or I’ll hold a sign up of that other person’s name. It will say like, “John, watch this video.” People naturally want to click. It’s clever. People can’t help but click on it.
What can sales teams learn from sports teams since you’ve written about this?
There are a ton that they can go with. Let’s start with the CEO, the entrepreneur who’s the head coach. I see a lot of CEOs who are the head coach and also trying to be the quarterback, the linemen, the person popping popcorn and the guy parking cars out in the parking lot. These small and medium-sized business owners are trying to be everything for everybody. The first thing is to start getting a team. Get your star performers and also start getting a good set of other coaches that can help you level up the entire team.
The book again is called Raise Your Standards. Any last thoughts or enthusiastic tidbits you want to leave us with?
In the end, sales are one of the greatest crews you possibly can be in. It doesn’t have to be something that’s manipulative. It can be a great career and at its core, it’s all about helping someone else.
Thanks for being with us, Mark.
John, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Important Links
- Raise Your Standards: The Definitive Guide to Building Seven-Figure Sales
- Vidyard
- Soapbox
- MarkPatrickEvans.com
- Vidyard.com
- Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course
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