Thrive Loud With Lou Diamond
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Today’s guest is Lou Diamond, the founder and CEO of Thrive LOUD. Lou is passionate about helping businesses and performers thrive through all kinds of power of connecting. Lou shares with John Livesay how each person has their own world. So when you connect people, you’re bringing worlds together! Why is this important? In the world of sales and entrepreneurship, connection is at the heart of relationships. But not everyone clicks and connects with each other. How then do you increase the chances of connecting with your client? Join in to find out!
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Listen to the podcast here
Thrive Loud With Lou Diamond
Our guest is Lou Diamond, who’s an expert in helping people engage better. He said that when you connect people, you bring worlds together. We need to strengthen our connection core and learn how to move through fear into courage. Find out how he shows us how to do this.
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Our guest is Lou Diamond, who is a dynamic speaker and master connector who will energize and motivate your organization to explode your sales, retain your clients and build a thriving culture. For over 25 years, he has been a top sales performer, speaker and performance mentor. He’s a consultant bestselling author, podcast, TV host and the CEO of Thrive, helping businesses and performers thrive through all kinds of power of connecting. He’s consulted, mentored and presented to hundreds of companies, the world over and inspires the audience to feel like they can conquer the world and make tons of great new connections doing it. Lou, welcome to the show.
John, truly a pleasure to be here with you. I am excited.
Part of the reason I’m excited is I have the pleasure of spending some time with you. I know what a treat the readers are in for. Can you take us back to your own story of origin? You can go back to childhood school, wherever you wanted, that you said, “There’s a whole thing about connecting here that I like and most people aren’t doing.”
I’m not going to go to the womb because I am connected to my mom. That was by an umbilical cord and everything. I have always been the person that likes to bring things together. When I say things, let’s go with the noun, person, place or things, all these connections from people. Remember the Justice League, like superheroes bringing all the superheroes together? I think that’s always been a thing. I love knowing what great people can do and bringing them together in a work environment, as friends, in sports, competitions and dramas on stage. Facing all these people together to see how incredible the power is of a group, where people can bring those other connected powers together or those complementary skills that one can help from one another where others can learn from them. I have always believed that when you connect people, you bring worlds together. Each person has their own world and when you bring those worlds together, each individual that you connect with arrives from that connection. You grow and you move onward and upward from that experience of just one simple connection. I have been trying to diagnose it, even more, John. That is to almost double click down and say, “Where does it all start? What is the thing that draws people in a connection?”
There’s a chemical connection between two people who are lovers. We always see them from across a crowded room and attraction component. We all know that what happens when they first meet or when anyone first meets, that first conversation that you have, that has so much power, something resonates in that particular conversation. Over the years, in roles in sales, entrepreneurship, account management, I’m thinking of all the places that I interconnect with different ideas, businesses and people. What I have recognized is, wouldn’t it be great if we can decide what it is that makes us connect faster? What’s going to increase the likelihood that there is a connection? We all know that sometimes we don’t connect. We don’t necessarily see eye to eye. What can we do to improve the chance that we connect? It’s what I have been doing, helping people do that better.
Let’s zoom out and look at how important that is from the standpoint of, if you don’t have a connection with someone, they won’t give you the time of day to even listen to your presentation or your pitch. They certainly aren’t going to remember you, to give you any referrals. The flip side is, if they do connect, you are a welcome guest. They can’t do enough for you. That is at the core and it goes beyond basic rapport building, doesn’t it?
[bctt tweet=”Strengthen your connecting core.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Completely. I was talking about bringing those worlds together. I’m showing two circles. This is John’s and Lou’s world. When you first meet or your network, those two worlds just touch each other. That’s not really a connection, I would call this networking. You know that you keep someone in your network. A real connection or as I like to say in the business world, connect working or connect work, is you bring those worlds overlapped into each other. When you do that, you have penetrated and seen inside the world of someone else, almost stood in their shoes and understood what’s going on in their world. By the way, when those circles overlap, they are too. When that’s happening, you are getting a better understanding of how to help one another. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling something with someone if you are working on a team together in the work environment. Also, if you are the leader of your company and your different, amazing producers in your business, the people who help your company grow, if you have connections with them and they to you and your ideas, where you can go with this, John.
It’s so often that you recognize when things fail. Through your initial point, that connection wasn’t made, and they fall away. The effort you need to do to connect is coachable. It is actually something that you could do. That’s what I do. I help people understand what is called their connecting core and what they need to do to strengthen those muscles so they can connect with others and how to maximize the opportunity when they have a chance to connect. That’s taking and creating an engaging conversation, which is not just with you and me talking or your readers who are reading this. It’s also how you would engage a larger audience. It is a conversation that you are having. If you made your conversations more engaging, you would be badging on it’s so powerful and incredible. We also know that it’s the reason that we are continually successful, those who know how to connect.
The concept of what I hear you saying is, it’s a skill that we can learn like driving a car as opposed to, “Some people are lucky. They are conversationalists or extroverts. I’m not that person. I don’t even think I can ever improve my ability. I hate small talk.” Do you have a process that you can share with us of what people can do?
John, you are nailing it. For the readers, they need to know John just took a swat and nailed the bug while we were doing this. He just did a full swing. Was that what you were doing?
That’s what I was doing. I live in Texas. There are a lot of bugs here.
Connecting can be coached. You can learn these skills. You want me to give you the basics of the muscles that I train people through.
Thrive Loud: If you think about super why, it’s your superpower. It’s the reason you were put on this planet.
If we were talking to a fitness trainer they were like, “First we work your calves and then your biceps and then we whatever.”
You heard me say this, that we need to strengthen your connecting core. The core in my world is the muscles that you need to strengthen so that you have the ability to connect. You do not need to be the most loquacious person like John Livesay or a very outspoken, energetic, highly motivated type of guy like Lou Diamond, who you would like to see these Type A personalities. You can be an introvert. You can be someone that doesn’t care to have to go out and do this. The skills that I help people master is very into what you specifically are and helping to unearth your specific, special superpowers that everybody wants to connect with. It’s called the SAFE. Each letter represents a different muscle in the connecting core. Instead of a six-pack, it’s a four-pack. I will work backward.
After the pandemic, I would be happy for two packs.
I’ve got to tell you, some people went fitness crazy during the pandemic and some people went the other way.
Some people learn a new language. Good for all of them.
I will work backward on the SAFE just because it’s easier to tell the story. The E is the power of Empathy. As I mentioned before, that’s the ability to stand in the shoes of another and see things from their perspective. You do not need to be the most outgoing, showy speaky person in the world to understand this. This is one very important muscle. This is the muscle of listening, within the power of empathy. That’s knowing how to be a true, proactive listener, not just passive listening. This is active listening, where you are focused incredibly on the target. Focused listening is what we need to work on. There are other components to that muscle too but at the core, you need to ask great questions that start conversations, that build relationships with who you are going to do business with. This is the part where you are asking those questions and listening to how to respond.
[bctt tweet=”The purpose of a connection is to help.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When you restate what someone has said, they feel like you care enough to get me. Ironically, it works almost every time like, what I heard you saying was or it sounds like you were stressed or whatever the issue is. I was having a conversation with my mom and I restated what she said. She goes, “That’s what I said,” Then I started laughing and I said, “I know. I was just restating it to let you know that I heard you.” You know moms, it usually works great.
I think you know this and I happened to be a certified coach. It isn’t my main gig that I deal with because I do coach top performers. I have learned this a long time ago, you cannot coach family members. It just doesn’t work, ever. There are too much going on. Having the power of empathy and being an active listener are very important. The next muscle, which I love to talk about, is a fearless mindset. Now a fearless mindset, John is not void of fear. A fearless mindset is knowing how to move through fear into courage. You talk about those individuals who be like, “Lou, I’m not the chattiest, outgoing person, how am I going to be a connector with everybody that I go through?” We will make it clear that some of those are fears that are just holding you back. Knowing what those fears are, even to have that powerful conversation with someone the first time you meet them, is to say, “What I can get when I gained this?”
I go through a whole exercise of how you can flip fear on its head and understand what it is and embrace it. For example, I’m afraid to go speak to this person because I don’t feel comfortable just introducing myself. I always like to flip it. If they came over to you and started talking, would you be willing to talk? What’s wrong the other way? Always take a little contrarian view with it. The whole key thing is, it’s important to know what those fears are, giving them a name and moving through them. My fear most often is mediocrity. To me, mediocrity is a failure for some reason. I’m like, “I’m just average.” I can’t even deal with average. I want to be a superstar. I want to be above average. When it comes to mediocrity, I was flipping around. That’s still better than half the people in the world. I’m going to have mediocre days but I’m also going to have great days.
One of the biggest fears is rejection. How do we flip that one?
Let me make it clear. People are afraid of the word no. True story because I know you work with salespeople and you know this is true. Some people will leave an item on their sales pipeline list. They haven’t even reached out to this person in 3, 4, 5 weeks. They haven’t called them. The reason why is they think that there’s still a chance that those people may say yes because they are afraid to hear this person say no if they pick up the phone. I want to make it clear. If you pick up the phone and call the person and say, “I’m not interested right now,” that is a win for you. I love the word no because no is going to enable me to focus on the yeses. “No, faster,” is what I tell everybody when it comes to that particular fear of rejection. You will be able to focus on winning more yeses because you need the noes.
I will lump them together in the essence of time. There is authenticity and your super why. If you think about super, why it is your superpower. It is the reason you were put on this planet, I shared with you. I was put on this planet to work with incredible people and help them thrive through connecting. Everyone has a superpower. It’s unleashing that superpower when you let someone know what that is, just as I have right here with your readers. They are already connecting with me because we love superheroes.
Thrive Loud: The greater connector you are, the lesser ego you have.
This goes back to when I was a kid. I want to be in the Justice League and bring those people together. We love hanging with superheroes. We want to be with superheroes. We know that when we speak to a superhero, we are in cool company because that’s the person I want to hang with. Nobody wants to connect with a dud. We want to connect with a rock star. The other part and this bring it all together. This is the linchpin of connecting. You know this to be true. That’s the A. You couldn’t be as empathetic as possible, have the fearless mindset, unleash all your superpowers but John, if you do not have an authentic bone in your body, you are disingenuous. You are untruthful. We all know that is what you remember people for and you will not want to connect with someone. You will want to distance yourself and disconnect with anyone that is not being authentically who they are and fake in that regard. Bringing out authenticity, being open, honest and coming from the heart is what draws us in and keeps us together. Without it, that whole connecting core is not worth flexing at all.
Sometimes being a little vulnerable. Let’s say you are at a networking party and you haven’t been to once in a while. You overcome your fear, move into courage, go up to somebody and you start talking because you flipped it and go well. I would talk to somebody. They came up to me. If you said something like, “I haven’t been to one of these events in a long time. I’m surprised at how nervous I am. It’s like a skill. I haven’t had add muscle. I haven’t had an exercise in a while.” I’m talking to that person. I’m going to say, “You are not alone. It’s weird for all of us.” That’s a nice way to start a conversation, I believe.
Starting a conversation, John. I know you are a fellow speaker as well, that is how I opened my conversation with a new company. It was the first in-person event in a very long time for many of us because of social distancing and the pandemic. I started out and said, “What do I want to say? I always do this. How am I feeling?” If I’m pumped up and excited, that’s usually where I lead with. The reality was, is that one, I missed it. I missed being in front of people. I said, “I want you to know I am legitimately and honestly happy to be here.” Also, I’m unbelievably excited because this is the first time that I can reach out and I was allowed to touch people.
As opposed to looking at a screen of a myriad of people like we have in Zoom for 2020. I highlighted that. I think every single person in the room was also like, “I totally am in the same boat. We have a speaker here that’s talking to us.” That’s connecting right out of the gate with your authenticity from the start. That’s the thing that draws people in. If you are not that way, I won’t be in the room with those people. That’s quick. Those connecting core and those muscles, there are lots of exercises to do. If you flex those muscles every day, think of where you can take things, think of how you can develop your relationship.
I could see you do a half-day workshop or more on the super why.
The best exercise or the one I love doing the most, I would say I agree with you, is the superhero exercise. It’s the one that the audience loves the most because it’s a lot of fun. The most engaging and powerful I have ever walked through is, we call it the FOBIA workshop, Fear Of Being Immediately Authentic. That’s the fear muscle. We walk through the fear. We have had tears and real breakthroughs. For people, it’s probably the most powerful, not as much fun as the superhero but definitely a lot of fun. We do those and I love those workshops. They are great, engaging.
[bctt tweet=”When you connect people, you bring worlds together.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I think you said something there that I want to underline which is how important it is to use it like a muscle. We know we have to brush our teeth every day, whether we feel like it or not. We have to look at these muscles of empathy, listening, overcoming some fear and recapping or refining what our superpower is. We are going to get better at it but we can’t just do it once a month and think, “I’m still not good at this.”
I want to let you know and I know, John, your personality would obviously be a natural connector as well. You adapted it. I have been doing this for a very long time since those little days of always bringing those people together and connecting the dots. It is something you can always work on, improve upon and get better on. When we will get to the plug section, I’m going to give a challenge to your readers of things that they can do. It’s something that I’m working on now. We have decided what you need to do to not only improve the way that you connect and do exactly what we were talking about and flex those muscles but you also can grow your world and your business just by doing something for ten minutes a day. Imagine, thinking about that ten minutes a day and the ability of what that can do and all the opportunities in and not only that but also business opportunities they can do and bring you to more connections.
That’s called an open-loop and storytelling so we will come back and close that.
What about people who feel like they need to get a lot of credit for making an introduction or making a connection? What are your thoughts on that?
I will ask that question that you are referring to the sense, “I want to get compensated for making an introduction.”
Do you think people should close the loop? If somebody makes an introduction to me, it was strictly like, “This is somebody you might enjoy knowing. You may or may not have some business potential together.” We had a great conversation. I decided to go ahead and just go on the initial email where they were introduced and reply all go, “Thanks again. Your instincts were 100% right. We had a great chat.” I think people appreciate that because they go, “I’m going to keep making introductions.” If you make an introduction and it’s avoided, I go, I wonder if they ever spoke. If I run into them and they say, “My best friend” and they forget that I introduced him, my feelings will be hurt. There’s a wide range of introducing and forget, no expectations or I need to be acknowledged for it. It’s different personalities.
Thrive Loud: Reach out and spend just about 10 minutes having a conversation with someone in your world that you don’t get to speak to that often.
I have the big belief that the greater connector you are, the less ego you have as it relates to it. If you are trying to bring two people together, this is a selfless act. You have to recognize that you are the one who sees the value in the connection and part of your job in that connecting might be addressing how you guys can be good connectors. I joke about this all the time, John. I used to show this image when I spoke. I talked about how I see people.
For some reason, I have never been talented to draw. I would say I’m creative but I’m certainly not artistically creative. When I see people, I almost see logos or icons of the things that I recognize with them. It’s almost like there’s an orb of things around them, maybe the school they went to or the business they work for, the sports teams they work for, the cities they come from. I will see those and I will be trying to match them up and not actually within like, “You know this individual because you both ended up going to school together. You may also have worked at the same company. You are both in the same field.” Sometimes, though, I recognize, let them figure out where those worlds can connect because you can’t always force a connection.
I like to sometimes just say, “I hope you guys connect.” If you are a good connector, you are already connecting with these people frequently anyway. You will learn that, whether that connection has happened. It’s probably good form for those that were introduced to say, “Thank you so much for introducing me. That was a great conversation.” Whether they do or not, I do recognize this is a busy world. Who knows where their world is at that point? The key part is it also identifies opportunities for me. Maybe I can help those people continue to be better connectors if they were not connecting where they should, I do think that. I will tell you, from my perspective, if I don’t need the gratitude or the ego for where it comes in, there are companies that hire me to bring in sales, people or make the connections.
While I’m being managed on that, I do believe that your job on this planet is to try to make as many connections. If you could help someone make a connection, in the Jewish religion, it’s like making a mitzvah. It’s an honor and high regard when you bring people together. It shouldn’t be something that you have to make sure, “You should have thanked me for that introduction.” That’s not enough. That’s taking your ego and making it all about you and not about them. It’s certainly not being empathetic.
There’s an art to making your introduction. When you take a minute to write a couple of sentences of why you think these two people would enjoy talking, give them a launching pad to have, “I didn’t know we both went to this school or we both are into whatever sport let’s say,” makes a big difference. Let’s close the loop before we run out of time. Tell us your last little secret.
This is a great tip that I want people to start doing. In decoding all those connections, as I mentioned at the beginning if you were to drill down and say, “Where did that connection start?” I mentioned, it started with a conversation. Here’s a task, if you want to improve the way that you connect and the way you grow and watch certain opportunities come back, here’s what I want you to do. For the next 22 days, I want you to reach out and spend just about ten minutes, having a conversation with someone in your world, in your network that you don’t get to speak to that often. It could be a friend, a family member, an old business colleague or whomever it is, you figure out who it is. It could be another podcast host that was on your show a long time ago for whatever it might be. Twenty-two days of finding at least ten minutes to reach out and have a conversation with this person.
[bctt tweet=”Unearth your specific, special superpowers that everybody wants to connect with.” username=”John_Livesay”]
Here’s what I’m going to tell you it’s going to happen. First of all, it’s going to be great to catch up with all these people. You can do it on the phone. If you can see them in person, that would be amazing but we recognize there are limitations. You don’t even have to do it with Zoom. I want you to listen with your ears and speak with your mouth. Have a conversation and check in with somebody that you haven’t spoken to, 22 unique individuals. You are going to, first of all, reconnect and touch base. You are going to feel good. Second of all, you are going to realize that opportunity in some other way. “There’s a social event and something. There’s this business thing I wanted to talk to you about. Lou, there’s a speaking conversation. There’s another group that I have been involved in.” In that short conversation, I guarantee you, you are going to unearth, maybe not 22 unique opportunities, but certainly, you will have them. Maybe 10, 15, who knows? Even if it’s just one, you are going to feel good. You are going to open up connections.
Here’s the best part. The third thing, after those 22 days, you are not going to stop. You want to make it part of your routine, to just reach out to someone every day that you haven’t spoken to in a long time. You won’t believe it. “I don’t know, 356 some odd people,” or whatever it is. Maybe you could figure it in the cycle. We did this just to check in on certain people. We started tracking it at a company. We had business people doing it. I wasn’t doing it like you’re going after a lead. Now, these were people you already knew. All of a sudden, we started to see a pickup in production at the company. We surveyed the company to ask if some people were feeling better. Even more impressively, a good percentage of these people recognize that they have made it a daily thing. They have alerts. They put in alarms, make sure to reach out to somebody. I have a window in my calendar every day where I do it. Reach out and go connect with somebody that you know.
That makes me feel better already, just listening to it and imagining it, all the receiving and the giving in. People want to reach you, they can go to LouDiamond.net or ThriveLOUD.com. Thank you so much for inspiring us to reach out a little more and become better and emotionally engaging others.
I’m going to say truly a pleasure to return the favor because you were an amazing guest on my program as well. I know my listeners will like it. Hopefully, yours did, too.
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Clarity Win$ with Steve Woodruff
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
We are at the age of information that it becomes too chaotic to ever come out of it and offer something that stands out. Helping you to cut through the noise is the King of Clarity, Steve Woodruff. He lays down the three ways that can break through in a world where everyone is listening to so much information, allowing you to log into their brain and memory; he breaks down having a story, a symbol, and a snippet of information. Proving how, as his book is called, Clarity Win$, Steve shows the importance of arriving a clear identity, focus, and message in order to be heard, remembered, and referred.
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Listen To The Episode Here
Clarity Win$ with Steve Woodruff
Clarity Win$: Get Heard. Get Referred.
Our guest is Steve Woodruff. He’s known as the King of Clarity. In a world full of noise and distraction, he helps businesses craft a message so clear that they can be heard, remembered, and referred. With over 30 years of business experience, he has consulted with companies ranging from solo startups to the top five pharma and he’s got a book called Clarity Win$. Steve, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me, John.
Take us back as far as when you started to realize that communication and clarity was something that was not happening and that you wanted to own this niche.
Several years ago, I’ve had an interest in marketing and branding for a long time. Working with a couple of small companies, I got to wear a sales hats, some marketing hats, and branding hats. Many years ago, I started my own business which was a matchmaking referral business in the pharma training industry. What I was doing was helping my pharma commercial training clients find the best and the optimal outsource training vendors out of a selection of dozens and dozens of agencies, companies, providers, and consultants. A lot of these providers did not have a good brand message at all. They were throwing the bullet points against the wall and seeing what sticks. The biggest complaint that I would hear is they all sound the same. I don’t know which one does what. That’s why I started my matchmaking company was to help deal with that problem.
I started sitting down with these companies and spending some hours, sometimes a half day, sometimes a full day. I found that within that relatively short time, I could help them arrive at a very clear identity and a clear focus and a clear message. Sometimes these are companies that had been in business for decades and never had a clear identity. I could fix that in a few hours because I was an outside voice looking in. That began my fascination with achieving clarity. At first, I called what I was doing brand therapy, but I realized I’d be competing with every ad agency on the planet if I emphasize the word brand. What I was helping people do, not only companies but also individuals, was to get clarity, get a clear understanding. That’s why I embraced the word clarity and decided that I’m going to own that term.
You and I were having a chat about how some people resist being pigeonholed. I always like to say that the riches are in the niches and it seems like you agree with that.
[bctt tweet=”Clarity is snippets, symbols and stories.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I quote that in the book. One of the things that I put forward and is probably my most provocative thought in the book is that you’ve got to learn to love your pigeonhole. Most businesses and people have this instinctive default resistance. We don’t want to miss any opportunities. We don’t want anybody to pigeonhole. The problem is that we will be pigeonholed. People only have a limited memory slot for any given amount of information. No matter who you are, every listener, every customer, everyone’s going to pigeonhole you. Your choice isn’t whether you’re going to be pigeonholed but whether you’re going to define the pigeonhole and whether you’re going to be in the right place. A lot of what I cover in the book is how do you design the words around your identity, your focus and your message so that you can occupy the correct memory space in people’s minds, the pigeonhole, with especially this wonderful benefit to it. That means they can accurately refer you because they know what you do and who you do it for. If they’re confused about what you do, they can’t refer you.
The confused mind always says no and people won’t even tell you they’re confused. They will go, “Uh-huh,” and all the excuses come up. For me, I’m the Pitch Whisperer and I’ve used that enough and even trademarked it. If you google that, my name, website and book come up without you having to remember my name or the name of my book. This niche of being known for one thing and it also ideally generate some curiosity. People go, “I know what a horse whisperer is but what’s a Pitch Whisperer?” You’re often running explaining what that does and how that expands beyond just an elevator pitch to giving keynote talks on sales and all kinds of things. You talked about in Clarity Win$ that there are three-word packages that deliver results. Can you tell us what those are and maybe give us the story around them?
I see the best way to deliver a message is once you’ve got a clear understanding of who you are and where you’re going and what you do, you have to communicate that in three things. I call it snippets, stories, and symbols. Snippets are very brief. Typically, one sentence phrases that sum up precisely and clearly in human ready language exactly what you do, who you do it for, why you are differentiated. Those snippets are incredibly important for explaining yourself in any networking situation, in any sales pitch or in any circumstance. A lot of businesses do not have clear snippets. In fact, one of the biggest problems with that is there’s a lack of clear communication and alignment internally in the company because employees don’t know the snippets either.
Everybody’s saying different things and it’s like looking at an elephant blindfolded from the front and the back and the rear and getting different descriptions.
That’s incredibly common and that stories are crucial as well. I know you have an affinity for stories because the human brain is hardwired for stories. People are not hardwired to memorize bullet points, but we are hardwired for stories. When we tell illustrative stories that show what we do and who we do it for, that’s far more memorable than if we try to give factual explanations. The most powerful thing ultimately is the symbol and the symbol is that shortcut into memory. It’s usually a metaphor or a simile or some word picture. Pitch Whisperer is your symbol, King of Clarity is my symbol. When I was starting out my matchmaking consultancy in pharma, I’m having some difficulty explaining it to people until I finally said, “I’m the eHarmony of pharma training.” Lights came on immediately. I didn’t have to spend two hours explaining it. They know what the eHarmony is. When we can come up with these little brief things that hang on the memory hooks in people’s minds, we win. If we use vague, foggy and jargony language, we lose.
I have two examples I’d love to get your opinion on. One is I’m a cofounder at a startup that’s involved with a real estate in the blockchain. As the CMO, trying to get their messaging out to internal, external investors, the press and everything else has been a bit of a challenge because each of those industries is fairly complex. What we’ve come up with is, “QuantmRE is all about equity freedom where we helped turn homeowers into homeowners.” People go, “I don’t understand what that means but I’m intrigued and I want to know more because I have a mortgage. I am a home ower because I don’t own my house outright.” That little buzzy thing that’s slightly new with one letter being different, ower to owner.
Those little phrases, those little suggestive things, if we can get into people’s interest level, get into something that’s relevant within 30 seconds. If you started with blockchain, it would all be over. You have to move to something that people understand. I do something similar when people ask what I do with this clarity stuff. I say, “They call me the King of Clarity and I help individuals in businesses with the two moments of truth.” The first moment of truth is what we’re in right now where somebody says, “What do you do?” In a very short time, you’ve got to explain it in a way that makes perfect sense and that somebody gets it. If you do it right, that leads to the second moment of truth. When tomorrow I’m talking to my neighbor and they say, “I need someone to help me with my pitches,” and I say, “I know the Pitch Whisperer,” I can make a targeted referral if we can win at the first and second moments of truth. We can win because referrals are the best way to build business and the way to activate it is to get those word pictures into the minds of others.
[bctt tweet=”If you want to be known for 3 things, you are known for none.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You and I love doing that for people. I was on the phone with a client that’s hired me to come to speak to their sales team and they’re in the healthcare business. They had this new product that gives the best pricing of all the equipment that they have to buy. Before this product existed, I got them to describe what was life like before? They said, “We would just hope that we were getting a good buying discount, but we weren’t sure what the industry standard was and all this stuff.” They were trying to explain to me this. I said, “Just tell your prospective clients that imagine a surgeon was trying to operate in the dark. The lights went out.” That’s what it’s like trying to guess if you have the best price or not, “Our product comes along, the lights are on and you can clearly have laser beam focus on exactly where this price is compared to what other hospitals are paying.” They went, “Now we understand stories, analogies and symbols and how we need to start talking in our presentations with those as opposed to how it all works.” The other thing that I am interested in is you have a brain science practicality of why we need to be pigeonholing and that there are four marketplace dimensions. Please talk about brain science and the marketplace.
The brain science part is what is crucial to understand because our audience is the human brain. We’ve got to play by the rules and there are certain rules that the brain works by. One of those rules is that the human brain has to filter through a vast amount of sensory input every moment of every day and it’s growing. The amount of noise and distraction and input is growing every single day. It’s exponential. The thing that keeps us sane as human beings are this wonderful function called the reticular activating system, the RAS. When I give a talk, I often ask people if they know what that is and almost nobody ever does. I think, “What an opportunity we have here,” because once you know what the RAS does, you have the key, the secret to get in.
The RAS filters for anything that’s new, anything that’s relevant and anything that’s funny or exciting or scary. It’s a fight or flight thing. This has to be great or it’s filtered out. Unless we can rise above the background noise, unless we can show very quickly that we have something new and interesting and relevant, we’re noise. That’s it. We’re not coming up against either a neutral or a sympathetic audience. We’re coming up against a filter that doesn’t want us, unless we can show that we’re worth listening to. That’s why the first fifteen to 30 seconds on a website or in a pitch or anything are crucial as we got to get through the RAS. That’s why I talked about snippets and stories and symbols because those are the shortcuts.
Those are the ways through the filter that get us into memory and that’s how the little guy can have the advantage over the big companies. They’re spending millions and millions of mass marketing dollars but are just plain making noise. Understanding a little bit of how the brain works, its filtering, its processing in a storage system. I tell people, “You can expect to get one pixel, one memory slot.” People aren’t going to remember five things. That’s why you’ve got to make it one thing. Even if you can do four other things, you pick the most important thing. Nobody can walk around and remember five different things about John, “He’s the Pitch Whisperer, but he’s also a copier repairman. He makes tires for large trucks. He also manufactures tissue paper.” If you’re trying to get known for three things, you’ll be known for nothing.
Clarity Win$: People aren’t going to remember five things. That’s why you’ve got to make it one thing.
If you try to be known for three things, you’ll be known for nothing.
James Carville’s advice to President Clinton was something like that. He said, “If you try to say three things, you don’t say anything.” The big temptation in all businesses is they want to say, “We do this and we did this and we did this.” That’s the worst thing you can do. You’re now a commodity. You’re now forgettable because nobody has the memory space for that.
People want to work with experts and specialists these days.
I want to do what I’m best at. What clarity is strategically saying is, “This is my sweet spot.” The pigeonhole is my sweet spot. It’s where I do my best work, my most profitable work, my highest impact work. That’s the work I want and I’m going to say no to the other stuff. That’s the hardest thing for people to do, to say yes and no.
Someone said, “Who you say no to is more important than who you say yes to.” When you’re taking on new clients. Most people are like, “I knew I needed to say yes to everybody,” and I’m like, “No.” I remember I was talking to a graphic designer and he was like, “I can do pitch decks, speaker decks, websites.”
I don’t know how many of those websites I’ve seen and collaterals where, “We do this, or our specialties are,” and then there are twelve things. Nobody can specialize in twelve things.
It’s the same thing with actors. The joke is when an actor would go to an audition and they say, “Can you skydive?” “Yes.” “Can you roller skate?” “Yes.” “Archery?” “Yes, no problem.” “Ride a horse?” “Yes.” They go, “I’ll figure it out once I get there.” That’s not the way to make yourself get referrals. That’s for sure. What my big takeaway so far from what you’ve said is when we have clarity, not only do we get the brain space but we get people to log us in as a potential referral because it’s easy to remember.
This is one of the things social media has been good for is it introduced the concept of hashtags. Hashtags are what we call metadata, information about information. It was a software term before it was a social media term. The hashtag is simply the associated texts that describe something. What I’m telling individuals and businesses is if you’re going to be put in a pigeonhole, you’re going to be stored there with hashtags. People are going to remember you with a certain number of words and impressions and feelings. Those are part of the hashtags. What you want to do is very clearly understand exactly what hashtags you need to own in the marketplace. Those are the words and the concepts you talk about. Can you do some other things? Yes and I tell people, “I operate on my very arbitrary 85% rule.”
If you’ve got something you want to do that’s maybe 85% of it, that’s what you talk about. You don’t talk about anything else. This is you. This is your identity. This is what you’re seeking. You keep the 15% in your back pocket. Once you get in the door and you’re talking to somebody about your main thing and they’re now feeling comfortable with you. They’ve moved up the ladder that you’ve defined of the five I’s to where they’re more intrigued by you now. If they say, “Can you do that?” You say, “I’ve got this in my back pocket.” If you try to make the back-pocket stuff equivalent to the 85% and add a few other ingredients in there, now you’re totally forgettable.
[bctt tweet=”The confused mind always says no.” username=”John_Livesay”]
One of the other chapters in your book that grabbed my attention was finding your superpower. Can you describe what a superpower is and how we can find it?
A superpower is the thing that we uniquely do best. I believe on an individual level, that we all have superpower. I believe that most businesses have certain superpower. Something they are peculiarly good at because of the types of people that they have, the track record of what they’ve done. One of the most crucial things we can do is get in touch with our superpower. It’s one of the difficult things because we assume too much about our own selves. We take for granted what our strengths are and we often miss the boat. One of my favorite pieces of artwork says, “You can’t read the label of the jar you’re in.” When you’re in the jar, either your own head or your own company and you’re seeing the forest and the trees. Many times, I have found people and companies underestimate what they’re best at. They don’t realize what their sweet spot is.
Maybe they think because it comes easily to them, it’s not valuable.
That’s what happens. I’ve sat down with countless people and we’ve talked for a couple of hours to surface their strengths and surface their capabilities through telling stories. I have had to say many times, “Do you realize how rare this combination is? Do you realize how phenomenally awesome it is to have somebody that can do operations the way you do?” Inevitably they go, “No, I just do it.” Many times, you have to have somebody from the outside walk you through and sit down and work through what it is that you can do best and then how does that relate to market opportunity. Sometimes there are things we can do great but there’s no market opportunity. Sometimes we’ve got some great stuff but we’re not aiming it at the right market or where we need to be in an adjacent market. That’s where our outside perspective can be incredibly valuable in opening up these new opportunities.
One of the things that you do that is so helpful for people is to talk about facing the enemy. The biggest enemy is all the noise that you were talking about. You’ve given us some tools with the stories, snippets, and symbols to break through the filter of the noise in our brain. Identifying and putting your empathy hat on, what are the two or three noisy distractions that keep you out of your particular customer’s minds? Can you give us a story of how you work with a client on that particular question and what insights came out of that?
There’s a commonality of noise that the main noise that we’re up against in at least the corporate business is the plain flow of tactical busyness. It’s the endless demands. You might have something that can help people but for some reason, you’re not in front of them at the right time and the right way. They’re not feeling that pain. There’s so much stuff going on. That’s the hardest thing. What I have found and I have changed my way of communicating.
Given the volume of information, the hundreds of emails that people are trying to process each day and all the other demands, I’m trying to keep my communications, whether it’s phone or email or whatever, down to one very simple point. I’ve made the mistake of being too comprehensive in the past. “Here are five things you need to think about.” Nobody’s got time to think about five things, even if they’re supposed to think about five things. Joining a very small piece of information with a very clear call to action is one of the best ways to break through and get some response. For a salesperson, that’s crucial. We all, as salespeople, tend to try to say too much and we become noise inadvertently. Everything we say may be great. It may be very valuable but it’s too much. More is less.
It goes back to the concept that people buy emotionally and back it up with logic. Many salespeople think, “If I give them enough information, they will buy from me.” I’ve even seen salespeople get a yes and then still keep talking about three more things the product does. I’m like, “Stop talking.”
I’ve seen that many times on Shark Tank, which is one of my favorite shows to demonstrate what it means to learn to speak human, to translate whatever your stuff is into human language, business language, and to differentiate. A lot of them can’t differentiate well. I’ve seen exactly what you’ve talked about. “Stop pitching. We said yes already,” they keep on going. Every single person that comes on Shark Tank should probably have a two-hour clarity session before they go on there.
[bctt tweet=”Everybody’s saying different things, it’s like looking at an elephant blindfolded from all sides and getting different descriptions.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You’ve given us so much great information about how to break through the filter in our brain. How to do that with stories and symbols and snippets and get it clear and concise. These two moments of truth, that’s what gets us referrals when we’re that clear. The book again is all about clarity. Clarity in fact does win the day. Is there any last thought you want to leave us with?
It’s easy to get the book. I’ve made a direct link. ClarityWins.org goes right to Amazon, where people can order the book, either download or order softcover. I can be found at ClarityFuel.com. If people want to talk to me about having clarity sessions, half day, full day sessions for businesses and for individuals. What we do for businesses is the same thing that I do for people in career transition. It’s personal branding. It’s articulating a good message. It’s all the same process. Some of my best clarity sessions that I’ve done have been with people looking to change careers, who need an outside voice to evaluate their identity, to figure out their focus, and to figure out their message. I have seen remarkable results in a half a day with people that have walked in feeling utter despair. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Nobody’s hiring me. Nobody’s interested. Nobody’s reading my resume,” and walking out and saying, “I know what I’m supposed to be doing now.”
You find their superpower for them.
Find their superpower, narrow the focus and say, “You need to pursue this exact position.” Not fish on the whole pond. Go to this particular place where the bass are and throw this particular bait out that they like.
Clarity Win$ is the book. Steve, thanks again for helping us all get a little clear on this episode.
John, thanks very much. It was enjoyable to talk to you and to hopefully help your audience.
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