How To Make Your Pitch STAND OUT – Interview with Dorie Clark
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant and professional speaker who has worked with clients including Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, DHL, Fidelity, Yale University, and the World Bank. She is also a regular contributor to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, and the author of “Stand Out” and “Reinventing You”. Dorie talks on how startup founders can stand out and touches briefly on how they can let go of fear.
How To Make Your Pitch STAND OUT – Interview with Dorie Clark
Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Dorie Clark who is a branding expert, according to AP. She’s written not one, but two books. One is called Stand Out, the other one is called Reinventing You. She consults for companies like, oh, I don’t know, Google, Microsoft, Yale. She’s also a contributor for Forbes and Harvard Business Review. She teaches at Duke school and she’s a former presidential campaign spokesperson. My goodness, what an impressive background. Dorie, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. It’s really fun to be talking with you.
Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It
I always love to hear about the concept of branding. I was listening to one of your talks where you said that your personal brand is “your career insurance.” Which I think is such a great way to think about that. Before we dive into that, I want you to take our readers and listeners, if you will, back a little bit. Because sometimes people read the transcript and not listen to the podcast. How did you start out? What made you become interested in branding and how did you write your first book and all that good stuff?
I got interested in branding essentially because I needed career insurance. I came on board too late and so I started to learn about it and to try to help other people figure out how they could get a little bit ahead of the curve as compared to where I was. I started my career as a political journalist. I was about a year out of grad school.
I had been working as a reporter for a year and unfortunately, I had entered the profession at a pretty bad time. It was right around the tipping point where the internet started to just erode the newspaper’s profits, which had been very fat for a long time. Newspapers, we forget now, but it was a very, very lucrative business. All of a sudden, Craigslist was just going nuts, taking everybody’s business.
My newspaper laid me off. It was during a bad recession. It proved almost impossible to get another journalism job. I really had to reinvent myself and to try to figure out a new thing that I could do. I realized that it would be a heck of a lot easier for me or for anybody else if you have the kind of really strong brand that’s developed so that people are seeking you out specifically.
[Tweet “Branding is career insurance.”]
For me the true test, it’s not are you immune from vicissitudes or layoffs or whatever. You can’t control stuff. You can’t control what’s happening at a macroeconomic level. You can control necessarily what’s happening at your company. I mean, the poor people at Enron or Arthur Andersen or whatever. There’s lots of really good people that had no clue and no way of doing anything about it.
The real thing that you can protect against is, at an individual level, what is your reputation, what are you known for? If you lose your job or if you fall off the horse, how quickly can you then recover?
Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future
What motivated you to write Reinventing You? Was it this whole concept that you yourself had to reinvent yourself from a political journalist into a branding expert?
Yeah, pretty much it was. The genesis of Reinventing You was I started out with a blog post that I wrote for the Harvard Business Review. I didn’t really think of it as big official statement per say, but it was one blog post that I did based on my experiences. It was called How to Reinvent your Personal Brand. I thought, this will be interesting. I’ll share a few insights about the process
It turned out that it actually proved to be a very popular blog post. Popular enough that they asked me to turn it into a magazine piece. It went from about 700 words to about 2,500 words. It when it came out in The Harvard Business Review magazine, I got approached by several literary agents that said, “Hey, have you thought about turning this into a book?” At that point, I realized that it was an idea that had traction. I decided to go ahead and turn it into a book proposal and make that work.
Wow, what an amazing Cinderella story. So many people feel like they have a book inside them, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody tell us the story of a blog to a magazine article to a book, that they are calling you to turn it into a book. Which really shows, if you put something out there, whether you’re a startup with an app, or in your case, somebody putting out really great content, and it clicks with people, it will be successful organically.
That’s a great way of reinventing yourself, so I would guess that if you’re going to get career insurance and being a branding expert, that you would recommend people make sure they start putting out good content is a great way to enhance your reputation and your brand, yes?
I’m a big fan of that. It absolutely worked for me. The asterisk on this, the proviso, is that what happens to me in terms of publishing something and then having the agents come to me, it’s of course relatively rare. But what I did to tee myself up for that possibility, this was not you try once and then, “Oh, you got so lucky.”
I had actually written three book proposals prior to Reinventing You. None of them got picked up. No one was interested. It was part of a continuing process where this one clicked, but I was trying to put myself into the path of opportunity beforehand.
Thank you for clarifying that. Because it is helpful to know that you’re not just an overnight success. That you learned so much, just like entrepreneurs do while they have their startup. When they pivot, “That proposal didn’t work, nobody bought that one, let me try something else.” Oftentimes, people really don’t get the successful exits until their third or fourth or fifth startup. In your case, it was three. Bam, after that, you got the book.
I’m extremely curious to know how you got and what it was like to be a presidential campaign spokesperson. Let’s talk about branding and every day dealing with poll numbers going up and down and one wrong word and your brand is damaged.
I served as Robert Reich’s press secretary. That was my initial experience working as a high level press person on a campaign.
Absolutely. The initial transition that I made, so I lost my job as a political reporter and I kept hoping that I could get another reporting job. It was just not happening. Finally, after about six months of freelancing and trying to cobble together a living, I got a phone call from a guy that I knew. He was a political consultant, and it turned out that Robert Reich, the former US Labor Secretary, was running for governor of Massachusetts.
He entered the race really late and he didn’t have any campaign infrastructure. They needed to hire people very quickly. My friend knew that I had been out of a job. He asked me if I was interested in it and I ended up taking the job. I served as Reich’s press secretary. That was my initial experience working as a high level press person on a campaign.
After that, I figured that I might be able to leverage that into a role on the subsequent presidential cycle, because the New Hampshire primary, of course, is really central to the elections. Most of New Hampshire’s medium market is the Boston medium market. There’s actually only one television station in New Hampshire. All the others are the local Boston channels. I had relationships with all of those reports. I thought that’s an asset I can leverage.
Again, it took a long time. It took about six months for me to be able to make the connections that I needed. Howard Dean was the candidate that I most want to work for. I had to really finagle my way in. I had a bunch of meetings that didn’t go anywhere, but eventually they did hire me.
That’s a great story of networking. A, you knew enough people that when an opportunity arose, somebody thought of you. You had brand awareness and then you delivered on your brand when the opportunity arrived.
So many of the founders are looking for how do I position my startup to investors in a way that it comes across as a brand with a culture that attracts the right team? Because that’s number one criteria for investor, is not the idea, but the team. The team is attracted to the leader, which creates a culture, which is what the brand is.
That’s why you’re such a great guest, because you’re a branding expert. Listeners need to know, how do I create a brand? When you’re talking to Microsoft and Google, what advice do you give big established brands like that?
When you have this behemoth like Microsoft that people already have fixed thoughts about, I think that the key thing there is you want to focus on segmentation.
It is an interesting challenge when you have this behemoth that people already have fixed thoughts about. I think that the key thing there is you want to focus on segmentation, because you’re never going to be able to succeed in changing everybody’s mind at the same time. People have different levels of awareness.
If you think about a tech company, as in your example, there’s going to be a different opinion in the general public of like, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of them,” versus tech super users who have really particular opinions about, “Oh, they’re amazing,” or, “Oh, they suck.”
You really have to start with that and to figure out, who are the distinct constituencies and what is the message we want to drive with each of them and what are the proof points that we need? What do we actually have to do?
A crucial thing that people oftentimes fail to understand when it comes to marketing and messaging is they think it’s just about spewing messages at people. But actually it can’t be because no one will ever believe it, no one will ever take it seriously.
[Tweet “Marketing has to be integrated with product, with operations.”]
Marketing has to be integrated with product, with operations, etc. If people think your product sucks, you actually need to change the product in such a way that it doesn’t suck and then you have the ability, the flexibility, to change the messaging because it becomes about, “Hey, have you tried this? Have you looked at us lately?”
I think that some people just think it’s like this generic spin doctor kind of thing. Actually, it’s taking a holistic look at everything that the company is doing and then making sure that a light is shined properly on those initiatives.
What I find fascinating is you used the word constituency. It’s a political word. You have taken your political expertise of branding a politician and who their audience is, if you will, that can vote for them in their neighborhood or region or state, and applied it to branding for startups and huge successful tech companies figuring out, we’re going to break down which segment are we talking to, as you mentioned.
The really techies, are they gonna be the first adapters to try something new from Google or Microsoft? Or if you’re working for Apple, the new apple watch. You have to segment out who’s going to be the first to try and who are the brand ambassadors.
Can you share any differences between the brands of Google and Microsoft? I think everyone has their own personal opinions. I would just love to hear what Google and what Microsoft want people to think of them as brands. What’s their idea goal and see if it matches what we each think.
The first caveat with that is I wouldn’t want to say in any way that I speak for Google or Microsoft.
No, no, of course.
Just in July, I was at Google’s offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I gave a talk about Stand Out.
I’ll also say too, I have consulted for Google and worked for them as a consultant in the past. Lately, my most recent connection with both Microsoft and Google has been as a speaker. I’ve come in and spoken to their organization.
My new book, Stand Out, came out in April. For folks who are interested in watching online, I actually, just in July, was at Google’s offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I gave a talk about Stand Out to that, which is available on YouTube. When I was on book tour, I spoke at the Microsoft campus in Redmond as well about the book.
Let’s talk about that then, because that’s even more interesting than what my question was. Instead of what is Google’s brand that they want people to think of, I’d love to hear what was it in your message from your book, Stand Out, that Google felt compelled to listen to?
How much more does Google need to stand out? Are their employees trying to get their idea to stand out? Give us a little trailer, teaser, to get us to go to YouTube and watch your whole talk. What was it that made Google say, “This book and this topic is right on brand for us.”
One thing that I have learned a bit about Google. I’ve actually spoken at Google, at different offices, three times. For Reinventing You, my first book, I spoke at their Mountain View headquarters. That’s actually available on YouTube as well. I spoke about Reinventing You at their London office and then the Stand Out one in Cambridge.
[Tweet “Google has a culture where they’re interested in retaining their employees.”]
Something that I’ve learned that I think is actually quite interesting is that Google, I wish more companies would do this, they really seem to have a culture where they’re interested in retaining their employees.Even if the employee gets bored or for some reason doesn’t want to do the job that he or she has been doing, they don’t just say, “Fine, leave.” They really are invested in these people, they want to keep them.
There’s a lot of the culture, in fact, and encouragement within the culture, for people to switch jobs and functions within the company. It’s constantly revitalizing yourself creatively by having the opportunity within the confines of Google to do a lot of different things. That’s kind of exciting. I think that is relevant to the message of reinventing you, that you’re constantly sort of proactively deciding, “What do I want to learn? What do I want to be doing and how do I go about doing it?”
For Stand Out, I think the message that seems to resonate there is that if you’re doing something within a company or outside a company, if you want to have an impact, which I think that most of the people at Google and probably many people elsewhere want to have, it needs to get recognized.
[Tweet “If you’re doing something, if you want to have an impact, it needs to get recognized.”]
You don’t want it to be, you’re doing this amazing thing and a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears about it. You want the word to be able to get out so that people can, A) understand your contribution, but B) so that the idea can spread. In Stand Out, I have a latter section of the book talking about how to build a following around your ideas. If you have something you’re doing that you’re really passionate about, I think that people are excited to spread the word.
Do you have to get them to believe in your vision in order for them to spread your word? I would think that there’s got to be something in it for other people to get them on your team. I keep using the analogy of a founder getting really great talent to come join his startup when they have other choices and some of the other choices might even pay them more.
It goes to this whole culture of, if you get into Google and Google puts you through such a arduous process to get in, I can see why they don’t want to let you go. Because obviously they feel like they’ve picked the best of the best.
This whole concept of, so you’re a startup or you’re in a big company like Google, how do you get your idea to stand out? Or if you’re a startup working on your pitch, how do you make your pitch stand out? Do you have any tips that you could give our listeners about, if you’re pitching an idea, or in this case, asking for money, what are your tips for standing out on a pitch?
I think your question John, is really to the point. I lay out a framework in Stand Out that is a three step process. I interview about 50 top thought leaders and tried to reverse engineer what their process was for how they got known.
My tech listeners are going to love the fact that you reversed engineered that, by the way.
That’s right. When in doubt, reverse engineer. That’s definitely how to do it. What I learned was that almost everybody followed this formula for spreading their ideas. It’s a three step process. I’ll lay it out briefly and then explain a little bit more.
The short version. Step one is building your network. Step two, building your audience. Step three is building your community. What I mean by this, step one building your networking, this is of course really important because in the early days of any idea, there’s a few things that are happening.
You need to have a group of people around you who are both smart and talented, but also people that you really respect and respect you.
Number one, the idea’s probably not refined. It’s probably not that polished. It may actually not be that good. You need to have a group of people around you who are both smart and talented, but also people that you really respect and respect you. They have to have your best interest at heart so that you can receive honestly their feedback to make the idea better. They’re the people who are rooting for you. They want to help you. They’re going to open their Rolodex, they’re going to try to do what they can to advance you to the next level. That’s number one.
That’s great. I just want to recap, because it’s so helpful. In this case, it was an idea, but so many pitches are not refined. You can’t just pitch something without getting some feedback from your network is my big takeaway there. Thank you. So, step two is the audience, how does that help you stand out?
Step number two, about building your audience. This becomes the place where you start to share your idea with the outside world. Clearly, your idea is not going to do a very good job spreading if you are only talking to the inside circle or the people that you know personally in your network. You gotta start sharing it.
This is the place where, it’s the public phase. You are speaking about it, you’re writing blog posts about it, you’re sharing on social media, writing books. Basically, what you’re doing is you are making yourself findable by other like-minded people who would be interested in an idea of this sort. You start to do this to get the idea out into the ecosystem.
[Tweet “Make Yourself Findable.”]
Make yourself findable. I love it. And while you’re on the topic Dorie, if you don’t mind, I just want to take a little subset into this. So many people, and all of us experience it to one degree or another, have a little bit of fear of what other people are going to think and what if it gets rejected and all that stuff.
When you’re helping people stand out and say, “Now it’s time to put it out there,” there’s decision, analysis paralysis, it’s not perfect yet, especially with a new app or something. It’s like, ugh! Do you have any advice for people of how to let go of fear or how to not worry about what other people think?
It’s a real challenge, obviously. We’re held back by the concern about what other people might be thinking or saying or whatever. I would say this is yet another reason why it’s really important to have that internal network as your first step. Because even if you don’t trust yourself, and it’s easy, frankly, if you’re getting negative feedback, to doubt yourself.
If you have put around you a group of people whose opinion you really respect and they’ve said to you, “No. You have something here. This is good. I believe in this,” then in the moments when you’re doubting yourself, you can look to the people around you to get that kind of extra boost of confidence you need.
That’s fantastic information. It’s almost like a force field from your network before you go out into your audience. Love it. The final secret is how do we get a community around us so that we can stand out.
The final step here, so you’ve been building your audience, you’ve been sharing the idea, getting it out there. What happens next? Ideally what happens is that your community, your audience members who have been listening to you, start to form a community.
Basically what that means, what that looks like, is instead of just you talking to the audience as this one way megaphone, they start talking to each other. That is what enables virality to take hold. They become ambassadors, they become messengers, they’re spreading it. You’re able to achieve experiential growth for your idea.
[Tweet “If you want virality, make sure people see themselves in the idea.”]
The key, and this is something that you were alluding to earlier, is that this is never going to happen if your message is too self-centered or self-focused. They need to see themselves in the idea, they need to feel the idea is valuable to them. If they do, then they will be willing to spread it.
Got it. If you want virality, make sure people see themselves in the idea. That’s fantastic. That’s the whole shift from push messaging to pulling people in. It’s all about the secret of virality. It’s so great. First, come up with an idea, make sure your internal network agrees with you, gives you feedback, adjust it. Then put it out into the world. In other words, make yourself findable.
Finally, if it’s really clicking, like your first blog did, you will find people that will want to share that because they see themselves in how to reinvent themselves or the need to stand out and that this is something they want to share with their friends.
Because they think it’s got a lot of value and that they’re going to be perceived as someone who’s got good content. Their friends might even thank them for sharing something and therefore you become someone who stands out. How did I do? Did I get that right?
Yes. Rock and roll, you got it.
It’s just so great. I really want to do it justice and then just connect the dots for the listeners who are founders as it relates to how does that relate to my pitch. It’s the same three steps. Practice your pitch with your network, and then start talking to investors, and then believe me, if the investors like the pitch, it will get a community. All the investors know each other, and your pitch will become viral.
If you follow Dorie’s book, Stand Out, and these three steps, it will make your pitch hugely successful and you will get funded fast because of what Dorie had to say today. Can’t thank you enough. That’s absolutely amazing.
Before I end the podcast, because it goes so fast with somebody like you with such great content, can you talk to us about the Forbes inner critic article that you wrote that talks about taking a pause and having compassion and being curious?
[Tweet “How to silence the inner critic?”]
I think this is a really important topic obviously, because for so many of us, we’re not compassionate with ourselves. People are incredibly hard on themselves. They see someone else doing something and they say, “I get it, I understand.” We just hold ourselves to such a high level of perfectionism.
For Forbes, I actually co-authored a piece with a friend of mine named Susan Brady, who is high-level staffer at the consulting firm, Linkage. This is a topic that she’s written about pretty extensively, about how to quiet and silence the inner critic. I think that part of why we wanted to address it is that it’s almost impossible, frankly, to accomplish what you need to accomplish if you’re the one shutting yourself down.
You can’t move forward if you’re expecting perfection because no one is perfect out of the gate. That’s just the definition. It’s like somehow, we’ve seen these stories about a three-year-old that you sit him down at a piano and he can play Mozart. Everyone thinks, “I should be like that about pianos and about everything else.” Are you joking? No one is like that.
I think that we need to give ourselves a break. Of course, we need to do our best and try improve, but that’s a very different thing than saying, “If I’m not perfect then somehow I’m flawed.”
[Tweet “Can’t move forward if you expect perfection.”]
That’s great because so many founders are going to struggle and do struggle with the need to be perfect and that they think the pitch has to be perfect to get an investor to say yes. They think the app needs to be perfect to get a lot of users. You can’t move forward if you expect perfection.
I’m all about telling people to be progression-ist not perfectionists. Just focus on your progress. This whole concept of compassion as the way out of silencing the inner critic. If you’re criticizing yourself more than anybody else, you will not be successful. Thank you for that.
As we wrap up, besides the great books, Stand Out and Reinventing You, are there other books that have inspired you that you would think would be helpful for a founder who is looking to pitch investors to read?
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
There are so many really interesting, great books out there. Some ones that are favorites of mine to recommend, I always like Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, great networking classic. One that I feel like is talked about less but I think is very valuable is called Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer. The subtitle, it goes, Power; Why Some People Have It And Others Don’t, which is always a very interesting thing to be aware of.
Especially in the political world.
I’ll just wrap up with Robert Cialdini who wrote a classic book Influence; The Psychology of Persuasion. He is so impressive. I actually interviewed him for both of my books. I have sections about him and his insights in both Reinventing You and Stand Out. He’s somebody that, with the book Influence, was very influential to me and to lots of other folks.
Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t
We’ll be sure to put all three of those books plus yours, of course, in the show notes for people. Dorie, how can our listeners follow you? If someone wants to hire you as a speaker? Obviously people should go and buy your book. You have a website. Give us your Twitter handle or give us everything we can to know more about you and to track what you’re going to be doing.
John, thank you so much. I appreciate it. One thing that I’ll actually mention to your listeners, if they are interested in honing their skills for pitches and developing breakthrough ideas, is that I have a free 42 page workbook that I developed that folks can download off my website. It’s available right on the home page at DorieClark.com.
In addition to the free 42-page workbook, I have about 400 free articles that folks can access there. I’m on Twitter @DorieClark. I do a lot of speaking and consulting. Information about that is all on the website as well.
Great. Clearly, you walk your talk. You have put out amazing content and you’re generous with it. Obviously people see the value in that and you are someone who definitely stands out and makes a difference in the world. I can’t thank you enough for being on The Successful Pitch podcast today.
Thank you very much.
Links Mentioned
Dorie Clark: “Stand Out” | Talks at Google
Forbes Welcome
Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
Power by Jeffery Pfeffer
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Dorie Clark Website
Reinventing You by Dorie Clark
Stand Out by Dorie Clark.
Crack The Funding Code!
Register now for the free webinar
Author John Livesay at NewsChannel 5
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’
TSP035 | David Desharnais – How do you win Funding Deal Of The Year?
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
David Desharnais is the CMO and Senior VP at TraxPay and an advisor for several different investment companies. David has won a number of awards including the International Funding Deal of the Year Award and the Business Excellence Award. David explains how he and his team fixed a major problem in the finance industry and how he even turned his competitors into avid investors for the company.
Key Takeaways
- 00:01:50 – Why is David a ‘geek who can speak’?
- 00:03:45 – How did David go from being an engineer to an advisor?
- 00:09:10 – David talks about the team aspect in a company.
- 00:12:00 – How did David win the International Funding Deal of the Year award?
- 00:20:20 – TraxPay’s first round was $4m and on the second round raised $15m.
- 00:23:55 – David and his team got his competitors to be his investors.
- 00:25:00 – The difference between a first round pitch and a second round pitch?
- 00:27:15 – How did David win the Business Excellence Award?
- 00:29:45 – The same day David’s team announced TraxPay, Apple Pay was also announced.
- 00:31:25 – David highly recommends The Hard Thing About Hard Things book by Ben Horowitz.
- 00:33:20 – You can follow David on Twitter @DaveDesharnais.
Tweetables
[Tweet “Practice the pitch and Research your investors.”]
[Tweet “Co-branding is key to marketing success.”]
[Tweet “From near death to success.”]
[Tweet “A Geek Who Can Speak.”]
Links Mentioned
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Traxpay
David Desharnais LinkedIn
David Desharnais Twitter
Want the Transcription?
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’
Be an Olympic Startup – Interview with Todd Herman
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
Todd Herman comes to The Successful Pitch podcast with an impressive background. He has successfully exited two companies and he has the Spanish royal family and billionaires as clients. He won the award for The World’s Greatest Salesperson in 2010 and he is also a coach for professional and Olympic athletes. Todd talks to the audience on the importance of creating an alter ego to achieve your goals, why it’s important to take care of the little things, and so much more on today’s show.
Be an Olympic Startup – Interview with Todd Herman
Welcome to The Successful Pitch Podcast. Today’s guest is Todd Herman, who has so many credentials, I don’t know where to start. He has a very successful 90 Day Year program. You’ve heard of the Four Hour Week. Now, you’re going to hear about the 90 Day Year. Todd is also a performance coach to professional and Olympic athletes. He has clients like the Spanish Royal Family and billionaire clients. What impressed me also was he won Greatest Sales Person in 2010 for the International Ad Festival in France. We’re certainly going to ask him to talk about that and more. Todd, welcome to the show.
John, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Todd, I love that you are such an expert on what it takes to become an Olympic or professional athlete. Because our listeners on The Successful Pitch Podcast are all about learning how to pitch to get investors to say yes fast. There are so many similarities between being an [Olympic Startup] entrepreneur and being a professional athlete. I think when you frame pitching to investors as the Super Bowl of meetings, that you are the expert to talk about that.
Olympic Startup: No two groups have a higher threshold for risk tolerance than entrepreneurs and athletes.
There’s a study that just came out a little while ago that my wife shared with me. It’s all about risk tolerance. They found that of groups of people that are out there, no two groups have a higher threshold for risk tolerance than entrepreneurs and athletes. It’s funny because I think that threshold tolerance was like 79 or 82%, something like that. The only group that actually rated just slightly higher than them were generals in the military. Fair enough, okay. We’ll all bow down to them.
For me, because I really dance between those two worlds and going back and forth between working with entrepreneurs on high performance and how can you actually get the maximum amount of value that’s stored up inside of you to show up on the field of play. Everyone uses this word, potential. In my world, in my business, that word is not allowed to be used because I don’t believe in potential.
Potential I think is a crutch that a lot of people like to lean on to basically excuse away a lot of their bad habits or behaviors. What I look at, and the only thing that really an investor is going to look at as well when they’re taking a look at a successful pitch is, even when you watch on Shark Tank people are like, “We like the grand idea that you have there. That would be considered potential. But what’s the real performance? Tell me the numbers.”
Even when you watch on Shark Tank people are like, “We like the grand idea that you have there. But what’s the real performance? Tell me the numbers.”
Even with athletes, I want to know what are your numbers. Don’t tell me what you think you can do. I want to know what’s showing up on the court, on the field of play. The great thing about dancing between these worlds of athletes and entrepreneurs is they’re both manic people that are doing crazy things.
You’ve got crazy ideas to think that you could actually go out there and somehow be the number one sprinter in the world or that you could somehow go into a meeting and walk out with $5 million for this idea that started rattling around in your head months or years ago on your couch. Now, you’re asking people for money. It’s crazy people but I love working with them.
I really like what you said there about the idea that you have for your product is your potential that you have, but what really counts is your ability to execute that idea, i.e. what are your numbers? Investors are saying, “We’re not going to fund anybody who ‘doesn’t know their numbers’. We’re investing in people who know how to execute.”
Todd, you’ve had two successful [Olympic Startup] businesses with great exits so you clearly have been down this path. I want to go back even further. When I was watching a short video you did about a life lesson you learned from your dad, can you share that with the audience?
Sure. I was yelling. I grew up on a farm and ranch in Western Canada. I live here in New York City now but I’m still at my core, a farm kid. We were walking out of a steak restaurant. On the way out, just like most people, I had some meat stuck between the teeth. So very natural for me to snag a toothpick.
When I walked out the door, I tore the toothpick out of the cellophane and then I’d tossed the cellophane on the sidewalk as we continued to walk towards the car. My dad is a man of very few words. Always led by example more than anything else. Very respected in the community.
He stopped, walked back, grabbed the cellophane. He always, just like most good farmers, had a breast pocket with pens and a notebook that he used for the farm. He grabbed the cellophane and he stuffed it in his pocket and kept on walking. I thought to myself, “Wow, that is a perfect example of how you win at life. It’s by taking care of all the little things.”
Olympic Startup: That is a perfect example of how you win at life. It’s by taking care of all the little things.
Most people always focus on the big stuff. But in my experience in working with high performing people is they are fanatical about making sure that details are well taken care of. A friend of mine and someone that I’ve been able to do some work with, Brian Fetherstonhaugh, who is the CEO of OgilvyOne. One of the greatest advertising agencies on the planet.
We were going through and we were doing a presentation together. The gentleman who had put together the slide deck had come in. Brian and myself and his assistant were sitting there. Just watching someone at that level go through that presentation was such a fine tooth comb and picking out just micro little punctuation errors or just the slightest little alignment issues. That’s the CEO.
Most people would think that they wouldn’t care about those things but someone who’s operating at a high level does care about that impression. Because just like the people that are listening are going in to present a successful pitch, glossing over all of those things will be picked up on by people who have a tremendous eye for detail, which are typically people who are very successful.
[Tweet “People who are very successful typically have a tremendous eye for detail. “]
I love that you brought that up.
The analogy is just take care of the cellophane in your life because it matters.
It does. I love that you brought that up, about the details on the slide because I’ve had investors tell me, “If you have a typo on your pitch deck, that’s it. That’s a no. Right off the get go.” What I love so much about that story about your dad is A, you’re a master storyteller. I’m constantly working with my clients to teach them how to become a master storyteller.
You’ve described how old you were, you described that your father is a man of few words and that he literally didn’t say anything. By not saying anything, he said volumes. Then that life lesson that you took and continue to take with you and teach other people.
We’re going to tweet that out, “If you want to win at life, take care of the little things.” That’s a great phrase and a great tweet for the first 30 minutes or whatever we’re going to be talking together. I love that.
It’s so many things. Take care of the little things and be a storyteller. You encapsulated all of that in one quick story. Amazing. Fantastic. As I promised in the intro, I want to hear about how you won Greatest Sales Person in France. Because let’s face it, when you’re pitching, you’re selling yourself and your idea to investors. There must be a great story there.
[Tweet “Win at life by taking care of the little things.”]
That’s actually how I got involved with Ogilvy because Ogilvy and YouTube are partnering up to do this search for the world’s greatest sales person. That was back in 2010, beginning of 2010. Now, I have some successful businesses. The price was going to be a fellowship at Ogilvy.
I wasn’t really doing it to get a fellowship at Ogilvy. How I found out about it was a good friend of mine actually on Twitter sent me a tweet and said, “Hey, Ogilvy, who I know that you absolutely love …” Because David Ogilvy’s book, Ogilvy On Advertising, is one of the first books I give people when it comes to just learning how to communicate or sell or market yourself. It’s still a great bible today on that subject.
She said, “They’re doing this cool thing. I think you could win this.” I went and saw their very tongue and cheek funny launch video for it. What they asked people to do was to submit a two minute video of how you would sell a red brick on YouTube.
I love it.
My whole shtick with the red brick was that the red brick was used to help build empires because the Sumerians who invented the red bricks used it to build pyramids.
As soon as I saw their pitch video, I was like, “I know exactly how I’d sell that red brick.” I was working on an important project at the time. I was like, “I’ll get to this later,” which what I teach all my clients is famous last words, because you will never get to it later. If you’re inspired to do it and it’s something that’s going to really make an impact, do it now.
I did some self-coaching there, got up quickly, threw on a sport coat, wrote out a mini little script. One hour later, I had the video done in the can and uploaded it to basically YouTube. My whole shtick with the red brick was that the red brick was used to help build empires because the Sumerians who invented the red bricks used it to build pyramids. It was also used to build roads to help connect us all because bricks were originally the thing that we used on roads. Ultimately, it has helped to revolutionize homes so that we’re no longer vulnerable to the winds of nature.
At the end of the day, all those [Olympic Startup] innovations started in the mind of one person. Just like them, you probably have an idea, a dream, a goal or something that you have never taken action on. If you buy this red brick, it will be a message to not only you but the world around you that you’ve laid your first red brick. You’ve taken your first step to a life of committed action.
I went on from there and then I said, “If you buy this brick, we’ll donate …” Because it was right around the time that Haiti had the big hurricane roll through and devastate the country. I said all the proceeds will go to the Red Cross at Haiti. Anyways, it will help rebuild that country as well. Metaphorically, it helps to rebuild the nation.
Anyways, that submission video got me down to a final three. Final three of us then were flown over to Cannes, France to the International Advertising Festival. I got a free trip out of it already, I didn’t even win yet. There was myself, a gentleman who was a Hollywood producer and then a lady from Japan.
Motorola Droid, who would use that? Batman would use it.
We all had to do a two minute pitch on stage of how we would sell the new Motorola Droid cellphone. Motorola was a client of Ogilvy’s. Now we were in the biggest theater in all of Cannes, the Cannes Film Festival, the big movies. We’re on stage, we’ve got two minutes.
Me going over there, I had never been to an advertising festival. I had no idea what to expect, what the demographic of the audience was going to be there. I actually prepared five different pitches based on different demographics. When I got there, I found out and realized after meeting a bunch people, that there’s going to be a big chunk of the audience that didn’t have English as their first language or really didn’t even speak English at all. All they’re going to hear is like, wa-wa-wa-wa.
I thought to myself, what is a character, a story, something that when I say a word, it’s the same word across every single culture? I was playing with the idea, Motorola Droid, just the word Droid. It’s a cool cellphone, it’s a technologically advanced thing. Who would use that? Batman would use it.
I started off my pitch with, “If you had the opportunity to design your own mobile device, the Motorola Droid cellphone would be that device. In fact, it would be the device used by Batman.” As soon as I said the word Batman, there was this crowd of Greek advertisers that were in front and I saw this one lady nudge one of her counterparts. She said, “This guy’s good.”
That’s when I knew that I had the audience pretty well. There’s like 1,300 people in the audience. At the end of it, everyone did live text message voting and then the result was I ended up winning this. It was a great experience. I ended up meeting Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook party. He came up to me and said, “Hey, aren’t you the World’s Greatest Salesperson?”
What a great title.
It went on from there. That’s how I ended up doing a bunch of work with Ogilvy.
Wow, I thought there was probably a good story there. But you gave us two good stories. I love it. I want to break it down, what you did, so that the people listening can really understand just why you won and why it was so good.
When you’re describing something … I tell people, “When you tell a story, give three points for people to take away.” You said, “If you have a dream, an idea or a goal.” It just flows so effortlessly out of your mouth but clearly you’ve thought that out. People are going to say, “I have one of those three things, so this is for me.”
That’s so important when you’re pitching. I constantly work with my clients and say, “You cannot wing your pitch to investors.” Clearly, you did not wing this. You had five different pitches ready, depending on who the demographics are. That’s of course the key to success, is know your audience.
Todd Herman, voted World’s Greatest Salesperson – Olympic Startup
Investors are not all the same. You have to customize your pitch to what their specialty is and what their hot buttons are and what they like to invest in. You nailed that, and on your feet no less, of what’s the word that resonates across the world that you don’t have to speak English. In that case, it was Batman. You became the Batman and won the award.
What a great story. Thank you so much. So much great information there, on how to pitch and how to connect with the audience.
To your point, there’s a reason why rules of three are influence. It’s the whole, “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Everyone knows, as soon as you say, “See no evil,” everyone else can repeat the next two things. You’re right, organizing information into threes is exceptionally helpful to the audience.
Now, the Batman thing leads directly into one of your key areas of expertise, which is creating an alter ego. Can you speak to that, Batman?
For sure. My first business that I started was doing mental game coaching with athletes. They weren’t pro athletes at that time because I was starting out. I was young. It didn’t take long before I started working with professional and Olympic athletes. How I got my name was I built up a name as being the person to go to build a secret identity or alter ego to boost performance.
[Tweet “Build a secret identity or alter ego to boost performance.”]
How that came about was I played college football. I was a national rank badminton player. One of the devices that I used for my mental game was not going out on the field of play as myself because Todd has his insecurities and his worries and his concerns about other people judging him.
That’s not going to serve me on the field of play where I need to perform. What most athletes do, which is what they get wrong, is they go on to the field and they carry themselves with them, as opposed to stepping into something else that’s going to perform for them.
People naturally see actors do it. They go out in that stage and they act as a character in order to deliver the results or the emotional response to the audience that makes the story believable. If we want to make your performance believable, why not step into it as someone or something else.
The concept of Olympic Startup is when you go into a pitch, there is a certain rule and there’s a certain framework around how to be successful in that field or in that room.
I’ve got this five step process. I’m in the midst of writing the book on it. I’ve been doing this for well over a decade with clients. As I started doing a lot more work with people in the corporate world or entrepreneurs, there’s a field of play that everyone steps on.
When you go into a pitch, there is a certain rule and there’s a certain framework around how to be successful in that field or in that room. Going in there with trepidation and concern and a lack of belief in what you’ve done, maybe you didn’t prepare properly, is not going to serve you by any stretch of the imagination.
People are investing at the end of the day. Yes, the idea is important and the numbers behind it are important. But they’re still investing in the entrepreneur. Because you and I both know that the odds of the thing that’s being presented actually being 100% the thing that show up in the marketplace. I’ve never seen that happen personally and I invest in products and companies all the time.
We’re investing ultimately in, “Do I believe that this person can actually steward this thing to completion? Can they execute or are they just an idea person who gets excited about something and then drops off three months later and now my money is gone?”
Building out this idea of stepping into a better heightened version of yourself on that field is the fastest way I’ve ever found to help people boost performance and the result that they’re looking for on the field. If you think about it, this is not about being fake. This is not about being unnatural. You are already doing it.
[Tweet “A heighten version of yourself boosts performance.”]
Because, who Todd is, I’ve got two little girls under the age of two and a half. I am very different with them than I am as Todd, the hard charging, spank-you-in-the-ass coach and adviser that I typically have an avatar as being. Who I am in business is very different than who I am in the home with my family. Who I am with my friends when I’m out for a drink or a beer watching the game is still another version of my personality just magnified to accommodate that experience.
It’s just that, when you get this, you become far more intentional and deliberate about who it is that you’re creating so that you can perform at the level that would be considered the highest levels, so that you get the result that you want.
I’m so glad you said that. I was going to ask you about it. You answered the question before I even could ask, which is, how do you have an alter ego and still stay authentic? You said, and we’re going to tweet this, “When you have a better heightened version of yourself, that boosts performance.” That is magic. That is gold. That allows you to still be yourself.
This word authenticity is a very big buzz word that’s out there nowadays. I challenge people all the time. I’m like, “Tell me what authentic actually means?” Here’s my premise, I don’t think anyone on this planet is really authentic. Because if people are authentic, the most authentic moment of your life was when you came out of the womb and you were bloody and you were shitting yourself and you were crying.
[Tweet “Here’s my premise, I don’t think anyone on this planet is really authentic.”]
If you want to be truly authentic that’s how you should be behaving right now. Not to be too explicit, but that’s the reality. That’s what true authenticity is. How do we all get our personality shaped? Yes, definitely being a dad of two little girls, there are just things that are baked into their DNA. My wife, Valerie and I, had nothing to do with that whatsoever. It’s just in them and you can’t explain it.
There’s environmental impacts. There’s social impacts. There’s the friends that we have that helped to shape that personality. Where does their authenticity begin and who they’re showing up in life as that personality begin as well? My challenge to people is, I just don’t believe on the word authenticity. All I care about is performance.
If you are a good person to me, I don’t care if you’re not being authentic in the moment. You’re just nice to me. What do I care if you’re being authentic? The result was my interaction with John was a good experience. Whether you were faking it or not, I don’t care.
Great. The other thing that you’re really on that I find so fascinating and useful is this whole [Olympic Startup] concept of positive thinking versus positive expectations. In Silicon Valley and the startup world, there’s this whole thing called the trough of despair that all startups go through.
You talked about in one of your blogs, about high performers tend to battle depressive states more than other people. Can you talk about that and what causes that and how can we handle those depressive states?
To use maybe a metaphor to help explain it, I think of life as having two classes of fish in the sea. There’s a class of fish that lives at the very bottom. It’s cold down there. It’s dark. Light doesn’t travel down at the bottom there. There’s an exceptional amount of pressure that’s down there.
Now, currents can come along and maybe the fish that’s living down there gets caught in the current and slowly that current starts to bring them to the surface. If that fish doesn’t escape the current and travel back down to where its natural environment is, they’ll get eaten by a predator at that level or eventually they’ll get to the surface and the sun will burn them or whatever the case is. They’re built to be down there.
Then there’s another class of fish that’s at the surface of the ocean and they’re colorful and they’re bright and they jump and they’ve danced at the very top. If they got caught in the current and get taken down to the very bottom, they would die because of the pressure that’s down there.
In my experience of working with thousands upon thousands of high performers at the Olympic level or entrepreneurs, whether it’s billionaires or whatever, they are the people who live at the bottom of the ocean. They can handle the pressure. They can handle the intensity of what it’s like to be in these situations.
[Tweet “High performers can handle pressure.”]
I think the real problem that people are experiencing is that there has been this one rule that’s set up in life that is, life is about being happy and joyful. I disagree because I don’t think that Elon Musk’s sole purpose in life is to be happy. He has said that he is here to solve really big problems for this planet.
You don’t give really big problems to someone who’s lens on life is to have just a fantastic lifestyle. I think that people need to be careful about the rules that they’re setting up in their head and making themselves feel bad because they don’t feel like they’re happy all the time, because they’re in a stressed out state. No, you chose it. Almost you didn’t even choose it, it chose you.
You’re meant to do this because you can handle it. I’ve said that to some entrepreneurs and friends that have struggled with it. One of them remarked back to me, “I’ve been living in just a state of worry and self-judgment for fifteen years.” He sent me an email the day afterwards and he was like, “I have never felt more free. You just lifted so much pain and anxiety and soft judgment off my shoulders. I felt like I was doing something wrong in life because I wasn’t that typically very, very happy person.”
The trough of despair is something that is very common. You’re meant to handle it and it’s okay.
Now, it’s one thing to be able to handle depressive states. I’m not saying that depression is an okay thing. But it is something that people who do big things deal with because our roller coasters are hell of a lot steeper. Which means they’re steep on the climb and that means the very top can be incredible. But they’re steep as well and they can go a lot deeper than other people who just aren’t taking on challenges like we would be.
The trough of despair is something that is very common but the idea that you’re a bad person for experiencing it isn’t true. It’s just the nature of the world that you’re living in. You’re meant to handle it and it’s okay.
Being a former swimmer, I love the analogy of the different levels of the water. I almost want to combine your two metaphors and say, if my alter ego is going to be a deep sea diver, I’m going to put on my deep sea equipment as my alter ego. When I have that on, I know I can handle the pressure in the analogy of the water. I won’t always stay down there. I’ll come up for air when I need to but when I need to get the job done, I’m going to be able to handle the pressure cooker. It’s really helpful.
Absolutely. To carry on with your analogy, if I’m going to give someone a tool then that they can put on and wear to help them manage that deep level of pressure that we go through. It’s the first thing I try to get all my private clients to get into, is meditation.
Here are the numbers. Ten of the top thirteen private equity traders in Wall Street here in New York City, the wealthiest people, will all credit the reason that they outperform everyone else, they meditate every single day. That helps them avoid the emotional highs and lows that everyone else in the market is going through.
Really, what meditation does is it flexes the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe of our brain is the part that allows us to stay focused, to concentrate and to mitigate the limbic emotional part of our system. Whether it’s two minutes, studies have proven, even if you do two minutes of meditation, it’s proven to help manage emotional states. Even just two minutes.
The misconception that people have with meditation is that, “I’ve tried meditation and I can’t get my mind to shut off.” Meditation has nothing to do with your thoughts going away. That’s the misnomer or the myths that’s out there.
[Tweet “Meditation is about being okay with what’s passing through your mind. Your mind is the sky.”]
Meditation is all about being okay with what’s passing through your mind and not getting attached to it. If you think about it this way, I’ll use a metaphor, your mind is the sky. The thoughts passing through it are clouds. What most people do is they get some self-judgment cloud passing through and they get entangled with the cloud, thinking that that’s who they are. I’m telling you, no, it’s not.
I love it.
Here’s the thing, we all think those thoughts. I’ve worked with the ultra-high performers on the planet. I can tell you, they deal with those self-defeating thoughts too sometimes. They just don’t get entangled in it and they continue to execute and take action.
That’s great. We’re going to tweet something out about, meditation is like clouds going through your head. Just keep them moving. Say next, next, next. Don’t get entangled in any one that would bring you down. Just go, next. Keep the wind going, keep the clouds going.
I think that’s so helpful because like you said, so many people are so afraid. “I can’t stop my thoughts. Oh, I don’t have to? I just can’t.” The goal is to just not get stuck on one and perseverate around it and go over it. Keep reliving it. How many times that we’ve done that?
Sorry to interrupt you, John. Think about when you’re just looking at the sky any way. Sometimes, you’re just looking at clouds and you’re like, “Oh, that’s an interesting shape.” The same thing can go with your thoughts. You’re like, “That’s interesting that that thought entered my head.”
[Tweet “Be a more observer of it rather than just identifying with the thought.”]
Be more curious about it. Don’t get entangled into it as, “That’s me. That’s who I am.” It’s more of like, “Oh, that’s an interesting thought. How about that? What about that one over there.” Be a more observer of it rather than someone who’s just identifying themselves with the thought.
I love that so much because I think that’s the key, is not being attached to any one outcome, especially when you go pitch an investor. You cannot be attached to that outcome because they’ll smell it. Just like a date or anything else, you can’t be attached. Is this the person that’s giving me the money? Is this the person who’s going to marry me? Is this, whatever? You just have to not be attached to any one outcome and you’ll be at your top performance.
Stay engaged in the process.
That’s great. You’ve already given us a hint of your book that’s coming and you mentioned the Ogilvy book. Are there any other books that you want to recommend to the listeners before we go?
I think a great book that’s out there, I don’t even know if it’s in publication anymore, but it’s Seeking Wisdom, from Darwin To Munger. It is a fantastic book on just thinking in the context of models. I’m a really big visual models person, whether it’s been diagrams, XY graphs and pyramids and stuff like that.
Seeking Wisdom, from Darwin To Munger
Warren Buffett has said that Charlie Munger is the fastest 30 second thinker on the planet. That’s because Charlie Munger has made it known that he has, I think it’s 96 different mental models that he’s memorized from tons of different disciplines. Whether it’s mathematics or physics or literature or psychology, so that he can think quickly.
He doesn’t get entangled in the whole subject matter. He goes, “What’s that about? What is the idea of confirmation bias about?” When I’m listening to John give me a pitch and he’s telling me why this thing is going to be successful, is he coming at it from a point of data or is it confirmation bias because he’s travelled down that road into this niche or this industry? He’s able to think far more quickly. It’s based in a real data and real science.
It’s a fantastic book. It’s just a really great read. People think that it would maybe be really dry but it’s such a great book.
I think another great book that’s out there that I actually would attribute a good chunk of maybe my messaging that I had, which was successful for the red brick video, is called Metaphorically Selling. Most people wouldn’t have heard of it. It’s not like a bestseller. The lady does such a great job of giving examples of how one speech without a metaphor and one speech with a metaphor connects.
Metaphorically Selling: How to Use the Magic of Metaphors to Sell, Persuade, & Explain Anything to Anyone
You were talking before about stories. Metaphors are just a micro story and a very short sound bite for people. Metaphorically Selling, I recommend that book. She should probably send me commission checks because it’s some of those darn books that maybe she has. It’s a great book and she’s a lovely smart lady that wrote it.
You’ve given us so much valuable insights into how to sell through metaphors, how to look at the numbers and not focus on your potential, not get stuck in your ideas, to get out of trough of despair. Is there any one final piece of advice you want to leave the listeners with?
Continuously take action. That’s it. That’s just the hallmark of how you get yourself out of the trough of despair. Just keep moving and not defining where you’re at with where you’re going to be for the rest of your life.
I want to be careful that we’re treating everyone as if they’re in this trough of despair. Just keep taking action. You never know what’s going to be around the next corner. You just don’t.
“Keep taking action.” It’s that simple. Thank you so much for being on today, Todd.
John, appreciate it. Thank you.
[Tweet “Keep taking action.”]
Links Mentioned
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin
Metaphorically Selling by Anne Miller
The 90 Day Year Entrepreneur’s Achievement Series
5 Steps To Change Your Life and Make It Stick with Todd Herman
Crack The Funding Code!
Register now for the free webinar
Check out John’s Latest Book
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’