Becoming Superhuman

Who doesn't love a good story? Like a story of overcoming adversity, of perseverance, of triumph? We like those who buck the status quo, who disrupt industries, and who despite being pioneers and trailblazers, who make it all seem within reach. These folx, who we call visionaries, are able to see past the present into a bold and daring future. They ask courageous questions, push people out of their comfort zones, and demand people be willing to sacrifice for their vision. There's just one problem. Most of the time, these stories are made up, grade-A, horse shit. “The visionary” is, quite possibly, capitalism's greatest illusion and we, apparently, never seem to get tired of it. Here's what I mean... Next up, on the cover of Forbes… Who will be the next genius, "visionary" to grace the cover of Forbes? Sadly, that honor has become a bit like the Madden Curse as titan-after-titan industry is revealed to be a fraud or greatly exaggerated. Whether shown on Forbes, Fortune, Time, or Bloomberg, there is a disturbing trend of people cast as visionaries, who turn out to be sociopaths and liars, being showered with praise. SBF & FTX Sam Bankman-Fried (or “SBF” as he's apparently known) was on the cover of Forbes in October 2021. He was the founder of FTX, a crypto-currency exchange, and Alameda Research, a trading firm. At one point he was worth of $26 BILLION dollars. In October is was $10.5 Billion, and then... Less than a week ago, FTX filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy and sent catastrophic ripples through both crypto markets and financial markets. Turns out, the whole thing was being run like a ponzi scheme. Oh, and rumor has it that SBF is in the Bahamas with millions of other people's money. What a visionary! Remember Elizabeth Holmes? She threw on a black turtleneck, artificially deepened her voice, and pretended that her solution worked. That was enough for her to be hailed “the next Steve Jobs.” Forbes now has her net worth at $0 and she was found guilty on 4 out of 13 charges. Behold, the visionary. Has anyone actually met Zuck in the Metaverse? The answer is no. That shit is stupid. It looks like Second Life circa 2007, but where no one has feet. After countless privacy violations, subjecting users to psychological experiments without consent, flooding the world with unrestricted misinformation, helping foreign nations to disrupt our elections, engaging in a pattern of obviously anti-competitive monopolistic business practices, and most recently guiding his company to losing more than a $700 billion loss in value — in about one year — by betting on a stupid vision of wearing VR goggle to simulate a cubicle, Zuck is a special kind of “visionary” billionaire. Don't worry though, only 11,000 people were laid off. He got lucky and built a social network at the right time, ripped off features from everyone else, bought up any compe

NOTE: This is a longer one and if that is intimidating, overwhelming, or cause for you to sit this one out despite being interested in the topic, I'm going to encourage you instead to try the podcast version (Apple Podcast | Spotify).You can also skip over the whole post and jump straight to the framework -- though the story is what will give it context. — Some people love public speaking, others can't stand it. But, anyone who has ever done it, wants to be good at it. They want to be light and funny, entertaining and informative, and perhaps most importantly transformative. They want the audience to walk away changed, seeing the world through new eyes, ready to tell someone about it. The obvious problem for most is something we call “stage fright.” It's this natural tension that unleashes our fear of freezing up and looking like “a total loser.” Everyone starts pointing, sneering, whispering, and even laughing. You can feel the judgement creeping down every hair on your back. It is embarrassing, possibly even shameful. Everyone thinks stage fright comes from general anxiety about this nightmare unfolding. The truth is that there are three things that cause stage fright, and none of them are anxiety -- though all three can cause anxiety. If you can wrap your head around what I'm about to share with you, not only will it help you avoid freezing up but it will change how you speak in front of groups, no matter how larger or small, for the rest of your life. I'm going to tell you how a single moment 8 years into my speaking career changed everything. These are the events that led up to me falling apart on stage and how to make sure it never happens again. The First One I did my first speaking engagement in August 2010. I had been hired to talk about social media, for 90 minutes, in front of 200 people out in Los Angeles. Again, this was my FIRST speaking engagement. Luckily, I was passionate about the subject matter and knew what I was talking about. I reached out to one of my peers and he gave me some advice about breaking the talk into smaller chunks or acts. I broke the 90-minutes into three 30-minutes segments. I was ready. When the time came for my talk, I was nervous. I waited anxiously in my seat waiting for my time slot. When I heard my name called I felt butterflies turn to panic. Can I really do this? My heart was racing, beating out of my chest, and my only relief was the knowledge that my blazer was covering the sweaty armpit stains on my dress shirt. I walked up the stairs on the side of the stage, and I'll never forget what happened next. As my foot hit the stage and I shook the hand of the person who introduced me…I felt an immense wave of calm wash over me. It happened in an instant. I was in my zone. Not everyone has this happen but I did. I loved it and I was hooked. The First Season After that, I took any gig I could get and for the next 6 years, I spoke in front of thousands of people, all across the country and even internationally. I was giving talks on a variety of social media topics running exclusively on coffee, passion, and subject matter expertise. I was comfortable, funny — at times — and deeply invested my audience walking away with practical, tangible information. My audiences responded well, I got overall good feedback, and I thought I was great speaker. The First Awake

I have a new online course coming out soon called Hyperfocus that is a complete productivity system for people with ADHD, and I have a question for you. Should I price it at $497 or $499? On second thought, don't answer that, I have another question… I'm only planning on offering 3 licenses in the first 6 months, do you want to join the waiting list? No, no, no, wait…don't answer that. I know what I really want to ask you. Why are these obviously scammy sales and marketing tactics still a thing? Transparent Tactics Go through the directory of all online courses and all online product downloads, and they often have a price ending in 99 or 97.Look at most online courses or webinars and you'll notice that despite being online and infinitely scalable, they often have limited seats and even more limited time to sign up before the deadline.Watch any advertisement on Youtube for making money and you'll notice they all follow the same script about someone going from rags to riches when they discovered this one simple trick. With all that has been written about these marketing and sales tactics there's no way that people are falling for it, right? I'm not so sure, however, my gut tells me that even though 99% of us can see through the BS, that 1% still makes it worth it to continue playing these games. 99 For nearly a century, companies have been setting their prices at $4.99 instead of $5.00. For anyone left who doesn't know why, it's because of a psychological trick that takes advantage of our tendency to read prices left to right. By seeing a lower number at the left, the price appears lower in our minds even though we rationally understand the real price after rounding. Something $997 is really $1,000. Something $4.99 is really $5.00. We all know it. And yet, we're still doing it. The trick is all laid out for us to see. As consumers, the most we can really do is be annoyed. As businesses, however, we can choose to respect our customers enough to round up and be honest about the price, choosing instead to focus on making the product or service worth the actual, honest price. No tricks. Limited Time Only Since at least 1984 when Robert Cialdini published Influence, possibly even earlier with the invention of the department store “sale,” or possibly even before that, scarcity has been a tool to move people into action. We know it, but sometimes we still can't help ourselves. When we see that Amazon listing shows “only 1 left in stock” we spring into action. Unfortunately, we don't know if that's even true, as clever marketers everywhere realized that there doesn't actually need to be real scarcity to use the tactic. So, we continue to get campaigns that push and press on us to take action now before it's too late. Immunity One of the things that I've gotten from a decade in marketing is a greater awareness of the tactics attempting to be used on me. Once I see the trick, it's harder for me to be fooled by it. Part of Becoming Superhuman, as you learn and think, is developing an immunity to manipulation. For me, I've found that companies that take the alternative approach of being honest, are somewhat refreshing. I think a lot of customers are looking for a little more honesty in the world. This is why, for at least the last 8 years, my prices have been flat numbers: $5, $50, $500, $5,000, etc. As I release my products and courses in the future, I plan to mak

For every stack of fluffy, buttery, golden pancakes, what immediately preceded it was an ugly, first pancake. It's almost inevitable that the very first pancake of any batch is going to be ugly, and poorly executed. The pan isn't hot enough, or perhaps it's too hot. Maybe you greased the pan a little too much, or maybe you went a little too light on the non-stick spray or butter. In any event, while it probably tastes just fine, the very first pancake is usually not your best work. I have been away from Becoming Superhuman since September 5th. I consciously chose to eschew this project — temporarily — to instead focus on my role as father and husband with the arrival of our second child. Sleep and sanity have both been noticeably diminished. After a little more than a month completely off, I am back, and this is my first pancake. Starting Again, Amidst Uncertainty Life, thankfully, is rarely monotonous. Unexpected challenges or setbacks appear without warning…like the various leaks my home seems to spring on me or the appliances that break at the worst time. Exciting opportunities come crashing into your office like the Kool-Aid man, often when you are down to your last dollar or when you are double booked every hour on the hour. And, new ideas materialize from nothingness, leaving you to decide whether to hold on tight and pursue it, or let it fade back into obscurity from whence it came. All of this, while often stressful, does keep things interesting. Unfortunately, the process of putting all of these variables back in order can be quite difficult, especially if your underlying circumstances already keep you busy. If you're anything like me recently, you may be wondering: how do we get back up to speed from a cold start or manage our energy and momentum amidst uncertainty? Here's the four steps I'm taking to get back up to full speed following a month off. Step 1: Consult the face in the mirror I have ADHD, and (undiagnosed, but likely) low support needs Autism. I share this because as I explain my strategies for managing energy and momentum, it's important to note that my advice is tinted by the unique way that my brain processes the world around me. I am open about my conditions and hope that doing so helps de-stigmatize the labels that are too often used to marginalize and malign, consequently leading people to mask their needs. Those who do not feel safe to set boundaries or ask for the accommodations they need, may stop searching for solutions. By shedding the stigma of these labels, we give everyone the freedom to truly investigate how their own minds work and hopefully find ways to drop the mask, show up powerfully and authentically, and find methods for pursuing what's important to them. This is important because the first step to developing strategies for getting back up to speed or managing our energy, is to understand ourselves. I cannot give you the full list of questions to get to know yourself as it could fill an entire book. I'll just encourage you to become intensely curious about how your brain works, what factors impact your energy and focus, and what purpose is at your core? Step 2: Honor your totems and routines To trigger a work session, I like music without lyrics. Some people like silence, or the Top 40, or TV in the background. I like to work late at night following a short nap after dinner — I like the darkness and quiet, and my mind is at its sharpest. I prefer working for LONG uninterrupted stretches of time because I know that taking a break after 20 minutes or an hour into my work is almost guaranteed to destroy my focus. Some people like to work first thing in the morning when their energy and focus are at its peak. They may need to take frequent breaks to maintain or strengthen their focus and may prefer to break their work up in

What's your favorite movie of all time? Until recently, I had a number of movies vying for the title of “Jeff's favorite movie.” I wouldn't fault you for thinking it's Spider-Man: No Way Home. I love that movie, it's easily my second favorite movie of all time. Dead Poets Society made a huge impact on me at an important time in my life. Countless other movies have made it into the top 3, at various points of my life. Recently, I came across a movie that resonated with me in every possible way. It was exciting, engaging, thought-provoking, and emotionally touching. Immediately after the closing credits started rolling after my first viewing, I knew it was my favorite movie of all time. The movie is called Everything Everywhere All at Once. Whether or not you've seen it, we're going to extract an important lesson from it. I'll give you all of the context you need. However, I think we should start somewhere familiar… Who are our Leaders and Heroes? Quick! Think of a superhero. Chances are, most of you reading this thought of one of the following: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron-Man, or possibly Wolverine. These are some of the most popular characters as well being some of the longest running publications. When we think of Leaders, a similar phenomenon occurs — we often think of men, first. In both of these cases, we have an unconscious bias that is largely a result of the availability heuristic (”rule of thumb”). The availability bias shows we are generally more likely to recall things that we see frequently or that stand out. In many cases, these biases can lead us to make incorrect conclusions as Daniel Kahneman points out in Thinking Fast and Slow. However, in the case of gender in leadership and comics, the stats are clear, men overwhelmingly dominate. Most of the prominent and celebrated leadership positions we see on a regular basis are dominated by men, even when considering any recent progress for gender parity. The Fortune 500 has reached an all time high for women CEOs…at 44, or 8%. Meanwhile, comics continue to have a representation problem that goes back decades. All of this is undergirded by the cultural norms handed down to us by the society we live in. While the sum-total of everything above is not the exact definition of the patriarchy, we are dancing in the same disco. via GIPHY The Leaders and Heroes we see When we have such a strong support system for placing men at the apex of society and in leadership or idolized roles, we naturally begin to analyze their traits assuming that it must be something in their behavior or habits that explains their success rather than any structural advantages created through violent opposition to equity. In a capitalist system, this means that we will find ourselves seeing success among those who are stoic or unfeeling, willing to be aggressive, willing to win at all costs in service of maximizing shareholder value. If you live in the US, you are also living in a country whose entire commonly shared history is a collection of stories that glorify war and conflict while glossing over the untold suffering caused by these conflicts. Is it any wonder that our leaders are influenced by a culture whose “real heroes” went into battle and whose fictional heroes are to be revered and modeled because they indulge our power fantasies of invulnerability and justified, righteous violence? It is here that we find ourselves waist deep in the conversation about culturally accepted understandings of masculinit

“Hey Jeff, what's new?” Oh, nothing much. Same old, same old. Do you ever do that, or is it just me? People ask “how you are” or “what's new in your world” and you skate right past it into “just another day in paradise.” Not today! I do a lot behind-the-scenes and often don't talk about my projects until they are published. This is odd since I've long been an advocate for documenting your process and sharing your work along the way. So, today, I'm going to follow my own advice and share what I've been working on. Nearly all of these are works in progress and not ready for prime time, so please take these with a grain of salt and be kind. Here are 10 things I'm working on right now outside of the work I do with my clients. My clients always take precedence over the following. These are the projects I work on late at night when the emails stop coming in and my mind is free to focus on passion projects. 1. A Website that'll knock your socks off Websites are never “done.” There's always something to add, update, refresh, or retire. My current website hasn't done a good job of showcasing my work as a speaker and workshop trainer. It's hard to navigate and especially not good at surfacing the “best of” content. The new site addresses many of these shortcomings with a much improved design. If you're brave enough to poke around an unfinished staging site, I'll give YOU a sneak peek. You know, because I like you. View the staging site. 2. A Game-Changing Podcast Network: Shareable.fm I've mentioned it here and there but it's just about ready for launch. I'm in discussions with the guys over at TurnKey Podcasts to be my partners for the network. There are a few details that need to get ironed out and there's still a bunch of pages on the site with placeholder copy. Shareable.fm is a podcast network built for podcasters BY podcasters. It's first and foremost a network that supports podcasters with help clarifying their message, growing their audience, monetizing their shows, and streamlining their production. The benefit for non-podcasters is the creation of a collection of podcasts with shareable content. Podcasters win and listeners win! Could we be the next Gimlet? The next Wondery? Who knows? Only time will tell. Sign-ups for podcasters start soon. 3. Something you gotta tell someone about: Shareable Season 6 The last episode of my podcast Shareable was on February 4th. I'd been on hiatus since then. I put the show on hiatus for two reasons. I had taken on too many projects (see: this post — the one you're reading)I wanted to change things up a bit so the show didn't get stale. As of last week, Shareable relaunched for season 6 with a new format, now hosted on Shareable.fm (see above), and with a production process that is hopefully going to be more scalable and sustainable. If you haven't yet listened to Shareable or {gasp} not yet subscribed, now is a great time to do so. Check it out. 4. Ever want to be a Superhero? Check out The Superhero Institute The Superhero Institute is a coaching certification training. Completion of the training curriculum entitles coaches to promote themselves as authorized, certified superheroes. They're also given a listing in our directory of superhero coaches (the Superhero Universe). Up until recently however, most of this was just an idea. I've been working in the background to build the site required to put this idea into motion. Again, if you're brave, here's the staging site.

How much do you know about neurodiversity? How about race, gender, sexuality, class, or ableness? I wasn't “officially” diagnosed with ADHD until college, in the late 90's. At that time, much less was known about ADHD, and far less was shared openly. The methods of treatment on offer could be boiled down to a handful of medications, all of which seemed to have the same goal of “correcting” my brain to be more “normal.” It wasn't until many years later, after several unsuccessful rounds of medication that I found what worked for me: embracing the gifts of ADHD, acknowledging and communicating my weaknesses, using systems to stay on track, and putting myself into environments that worked along with my strengths and weaknesses. The real story, however, is about the 20+ years between my first realization and the present day. Discrimination, Gaslighting, and Erasure Throughout my life, people have told me -- to my face -- that “ADHD is not real,” suggesting instead that I was merely lazy or undisciplined. Some have acknowledged that ADHD is real but usually speak about it as little more than a punchline about short attention spans. “Oh man, I'm so ADD right now. LOL” Throughout my formal education, teachers would note my inability to sit still. So many of my teachers would say the same things. These phrases haunt me to this day. “Jeffrey is very smart if he would only just apply himself. I'm afraid if he doesn't learn to sit still or follow directions, he'll never reach his full potential.” At work, I would receive praise for my creativity and strategic insights, my willingness to stay late, and my ability to perform at a very high level with little preparation. Yet, I would also receive warnings with threatening undertones that if I didn't start showing up on time, checking my email more frequently, or managing my tasks with greater consistency, that disciplinary measures would be taken. Time and time again throughout my life, people have wanted the benefits of my mind without any of the drawbacks. When I've chosen to share the things I struggled with, I've often been met with dismissive comments, being told I'm making up excuses, difficult to work with, or asking for special treatment. All of this made me question whether or not I really was just lazy, undisciplined or stupid. I chose instead to hide who I am, under the mask of normalcy. This is my story, but this is a story that is far more common than you may realize. The Five States of Awareness While this post has so far explicitly focused on my neurodiversity, the following framework applies when thinking about and discussing other intersectional identities including race, gender, sexuality, class, ableness, and more. One of the first steps in creating a kinder, safer, and more equitable world, is to understand the impact of various states of awareness. You simply are not in the conversation for positive change until you locate yourself on an awareness spectrum. Here's how I think of it… Unawareness For the sake of this framework, I'm going to use Unawareness as the most neutral point possible on the continuum. This is a person who is 100% completely oblivious and unaware about a particular issue. In my case, this would be someone who has never heard the term ADHD in their life. While this person may cause harm, it would be completely unintentional. The moment this person is made aware at all, they have a choice of which direction of go but can no longer be considered unaware. Passive Awareness This is a person who is passively aware of something, has heard about it but doesn't really understand it, or seek to understand it because it doesn't affect them personally. Because of this, they may not understand the challenges or problems associated with this issue and as a result may unintenti

As a business owner, entrepreneur, or even someone responsible for your company's marketing, it's your job to make some noise. It's your job to let people know you exist and explain what you do, why they should want it, and how they can get it. And yet, after 15 years in the business of helping folx who want that, it's time to let the secret out: most don't do it. I'm not even saying they don't do it well, I'm saying they don't do it, at all. This represents one of the biggest opportunities in marketing today; doing something, literally, anything at all. Because too many people and companies are so busy trying to pick what to do, arguing about where they should do it, and worrying about how they'll do it, they spend years never publishing a single thing. So today, I'm going to give you the formula I've used to —so far— produce: More than 1,270 blog postsAround than 300 podcast episodesAround 450 Youtube videosAround 44,600 TweetsAround 1,800 Instagram postsHundreds, maybe thousands of Linkedin and Facebook posts 1. Pick a thing to do It's easy to look at someone who publishes a lot and think that's where they started. They didn't. Trust me. They started at the beginning…just like everyone else. They probably started doing one thing and once they found a rhythm, they just kept adding things. It's either that or they found a way to maximize output without dramatically increasing input — more on that later. Some choose Youtube as their thing. Some like podcasting. Others are writers. Pick a thing. Just one and do something…literally, anything at all. It doesn't really matter. Pick something that sounds fun. 2. Build a system Now that you've picked a thing, lay out a simple structure. Answer these two questions: What topics will you talk about? Pick roughly 5 big topics and then 3-5 subtopics within those. Congratulations, you now have a focus of your content. Don't stray from that. How often will you publish something? Anything less than once per week is probably not enough. Anything more than twice per week is ambitious. As for what day and time you should publish, it's not that important at this stage. Just pick a schedule that gives you enough time to create and schedule the content. 3. Follow the system and hit Publish This part sounds easy but it's actually what this whole post hinges on. You gotta show up, do a thing and hit publish. As easy as that sounds and even though it is literally the only thing you really must do for this to work, it's the thing almost no one does. It's why most podcasts have less than 10 episodes.It's why so many blogs haven't posted since Obama was President.It's why so many businesses keep turning to new consultants and new tools only to find themselves without a podcast, without videos, and with the blog turned off on their website until they “get their ducks in a row.” This is where rubber meets road. If you've gotten this far, you must do this work and avoid detours. If you can't do this, then you can't have the sweet level up that comes next. 4. Level Up It's only after you've been consistent for some reasonable length of time that you can progress to the next steps: Efficiencies and Calls-to-Action Efficiencies Smart marketers don't work harder, they work smarter. They repurpose content.They recreate content in other formats.They use technology to automatically distribute their content and recycle it.They find ways to smooth out the creation process with templates, formulas, and production schedules. You can't optimize and scale a process that doesn't exist in the fi

In May of 2008, noted technology-genius and Billionaire weapons dealer Anthony Edward Stark, was kindnapped from a weapons demonstration at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan, and held hostage. At a press conference following his escape, Mr. Stark reflected upon his role in the world and in a surprise announcement swore that he would never sell weapons again. After years of being a primary accomplice in a system that made the world a more dangerous place, Mr. Stark sought to use his powers to protect people and try to make the world safer. While Stark Industries carried on, the focus of the organization changed. Business continued, but with a different perspective. All of this was brought about by a traumatic and sobering event in Mr. Stark’s life that triggered a turning point. Putting aside the obvious anti-Islamic undertones, the glorified pro-military propaganda, and the myth of lone, heterosexual, playboy, white male, super-genius that’s coming to save us…I think we can learn something from Iron Man. The Mission Pepper Potts had been working for Tony Stark for years, complicit and supportive of him as he created and sold weapons of mass destruction. When he changed course, she was initially reluctant to help. Many of us have been present and complicit in the presence of things that (sadly) seemed normal: racist jokes or comments casual misogny and misogynoir homophobia or transphobia Maybe we were unaware of our role in it or maybe we didn’t want to confront our role in it. Maybe we didn’t want to make our peers uncomfortable while they were making others uncomfortable. Maybe, later on, we were even quiet or uninvolved when we saw a particular group losing their rights or going through a struggle that we, personally, would likely have avoided, thus giving us the privilege to ignore. And when we were called in to do the work to fix it, many of us did what Pepper Potts did, we quit. It’s often only when we’re confronted with the truth that we decide to push through the discomfort of change and step up to do the work that needs to be done. We no longer have the option to be complicit or to quit. In fact, we never really did. The Neighborhood A lot has happened recently, and more bad news seems to hit the front page every day. I see a lot of people falling back into the usual day-to-day. Will we take note only to then go back to false safety and comfort? Will we quietly move past and move on from these flagrant assaults on people’s rights, these egregious calls-to-violence, and these impending acts of discrimination and oppression. Will we give in to apathy and helplessness because it’s just easier than confronting our past, changing our present, and fighting for our future? Showing up at work and pretending that none of this is going on is a political decision. It is aiding and abetting those who perpetrate these harms. Many of the people doing this fall into one or more of the categories of the in-group. Here’s the thing…the protection racket of being a part of the in-group is only valid in so long as the rules of membership never change — but the rules change and the goal-posts always move. So instead of putting our heads down, retreating to the safety and comfort of our business as usual, and waiting for this whole thing to blow over, what happens when we come to find out that our business as usual is no longer safe? What happens when there's nothing left to retreat to; when there's no neighborhood left to protect? I guess what I’m wondering is, what will it take for everyone to gain some perspective, focus on what is really important, and take bold, dramatic action? Is the best we have to offer a return to the status

It is far easier to say what you want than it is to create the conditions to get what you want. I've been consulting clients in some form or fashion for the last 14 years and over that time, I've noticed something. Whenever I'm doing an assessment or an inquiry with a new client — which is the basis of most of my work as a strategist — the initial responses I often get back are not deep and thoughtful, but rather something entirely predictable. This is not a criticism, it's an observation. It's not until we go several more rounds of investigation that we actually extract something meaningful and unique. What usually follows is a realization of just how much work needs to be done to execute these new and unique insights. The project is either then abandoned in favor of the easy route: doing nothing and preserving the status quo, or it is implemented in a watered-down way so as to render it a fruitless exercise. Let me give you some tangible examples and then let's work through an alternative approach. Hiring Are you hiring right now? What kind of candidate are you looking for? When given the opportunity to envision their ideal employees, most owners, and managers will list off a garden variety of predictable traits, such as hard-working, responsible, loyal, ambitious, high attention to detail, creative, professional, great positive attitude, and so on… All businesses want this because, obviously, why wouldn't they? But if we're just going to paint the picture of the perfect worker robot, we may as well throw in that the ideal candidate also chooses to work for free, and shouts company praise from the rooftops every weekend. Let's agree to be honest. A job is a transaction. The worker sells their time to the company in exchange for a fee. In return for that fee, the company expects a certain set of deliverables and job responsibilities to be fulfilled. That's the transaction. The Transaction and the Price So, if we want people to give more than the minimum, we have to provide something in return, don't we? When we say that we want someone loyal, what are we doing to earn that loyalty?When we say we want someone hard-working, 1) how are we defining “hard work” and 2) what actual reason are we giving them to work hard?When we say we want someone ambitious, does that mean we are willing to take someone on whose ambition exceeds what our organization can offer, or will their drive make them a liability? Do we even know how we'll feed and satisfy that ambition?When we say we want someone creative, or with a positive attitude, what are we doing to create an environment where those attributes can continue and thrive past the date of hire? Every trait we are looking for comes with a price, and most often that price isn't baked into the salary. Even when some of it is, there's only so much a salary can pay for. At a certain point, the candidate's wallet may be satisfied, but their spirit is left to wither. There's very little at stake to describe the ideal employee, who would be the perfect embodiment of these wonderful and idealized things. It takes a bit more courage to ask yourself if the company is worthy of this sort of person. The important work that comes next is identifying the real traits of someone who would be a perfect fit for your company -- outside of the obvious. We have to dig deeper and identify the real attributes that we can actually afford. Brand Values When I ask a company about its values, I either look up to see the word integrity painted on the wall in a fancy cursive font, or I'm given a list of the same words used as Brand values by such notable companies as Enron, LuLaRoe, or Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. There's obviously nothing wrong with integrity, innovation, or excellence. The problem is when the exercise is trea

When was the last time you revised your resume or went on an interview? Whether you realize it or not, you were engaged in a storytelling exercise. Your resume is a storyWhat you say in the interview is a storyYour web and social media presence is a story Anytime we communicate toward a destination, we are storytelling. We are engaged in acts of storytelling multiple times per day Giving feedback is storytellingWebsite copy is storytellingBuilding a movement is storytelling None of these stories exist in a vacuum. There is no objective story. Each story is framed, consciously or unconsciously, by how we tell those stories. Stories at 30,000 feet Good stories often include all of the following: characters, conflict, resolutions, progress, and tension. When we tell stories without these elements, we are still telling stories, they're just far less interesting. To forever improve your ability to tell a story, make sure every story includes these three elements: Problem (Conflict)Solution (Action)Results (Resolution) If you want to learn some other ways to tell stories, I suggest some of the following frameworks: The Red Thread Framework from Find Your Red Thread by Tamsen WebsterThe Storybrand 7 from Building a Storybrand by Donald MillerThe Golden Circle from Start with Why by Simon SinekThe Idea Introduction Pattern from Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff Framing at 30,000 feet The story is defined by what we choose to focus on within those three elements. This is the frame. What problems are we choosing to focus on? Have we adequately described the problem?How do we explain our solution? What should we give the greatest importance to?What are the intended results? Did we choose something ambitious enough, or not enough? The frame is the unique perspective through which the events of the story are seen. Changing the frame, changes the story. Changing the words, changes the frame. Stories begin at the Destination The best first step of crafting our story, or choosing our frame, is to know where we're going. Great stories are designed to build toward a destination.Not-so-great stories wander aimlessly, in search of a destination. Before writing your resume, walking into the interview, or giving that feedback, make sure you know where you want the story to end and what theme you want to come through loud and clear. This is where the frame becomes clear. Reframing Reframing is the act of taking an existing story or idea, and changing what you choose to focus on in order to see the end result more closely match your intended outcome. Now that we've covered some of the theory and process, let's go into some examples. It's time to write your Resume Let's look at a few of the ways you can subtly reframe your resume to tell a better story. First, start by deciding what your theme is. What should someone walk away with? Is it about people-first leadership, revenue growth, or cost-savings? Is it your work ethic, your quick thinking, or your willingness to color outside the lines? Once you have this, let it serve as the north star to guide everything in your resume. Next, I'm going to give you three things you can do to shift how someone understands the story of your resume. 1. Shift Activities → Outcomes It

How do you feel about sales? Do you enjoy the initial qualifying meeting?Do you relish the close?Does every part of it make you want to run and hide? How we feel about sales is a product of our experiences on both sides of the sales equation: as the salesperson and as the prospect. Too often these experiences have been uncomfortable, manipulative, or lead to long-lasting remorse. We're all familiar with the meme of the used car salesmen -- a greasy, slick, smooth, fast-talker who's gonna do what it takes to “get a deal done today.” As a result, these experiences impact our future willingness to engage in the sales process. We get filled with fear, with apprehension, with dread. We don't want to become the person I just described. That would be awful. Bad sales experiences are a symptom of a much larger problem. However, I think the symptom comes with important insights and instructions for ways we can dramatically improve business, society, and ourselves. So today, we're going to explore sales, try to resolve the tension we feel around it, and provide a blueprint to save business and possibly the world. Instead of feeling like we're manipulating people, we can feel genuinely valuable. Instead of feeling guilty, we can feel proud. Instead of feeling gross, we can feel whole. This is the superhuman approach to sales. But first, let's start with a familiar story… or click here for the TL;DR Hustling for Sales The first time I remember ever formally having a role in sales was back in 2008. I had just begun working for a management consulting firm, and one of our many responsibilities was to cold call executives at companies to sell our consulting services. I did not like this. Some of my colleagues would boast about their 100-dial days. Others would talk about having made 50 calls before lunch. It seemed to me that we were in a competition to see who could bother the most people, all hoping to get someone to buy something they didn't ask for. As far as I could tell, it was manipulation. If I had to choose a word to describe how it felt to be in this role, I'd use the one I've heard thousands of times to describe sales: icky Change a few details of this story and this is how many people are first introduced to sales: interrupting or being interrupted, and either trying to get someone to buy something they didn't ask for, or being the target of such an unwelcome experience. The One Thing in Common So, what was it that felt so uncomfortable about those cold calls to me? I believe that all negative experiences in sales have one things in common: The customer doesn't want or need what is being sold to them. This is the single element that makes sales feel icky. What makes sales feel icky, gross, or uncomfortable, is when the salesperson knows this fact, and either through malice or coercion-by-quota moves forward anyway. Some justify this by believing “the customer really does have a want or need, but just doesn't know it yet.” They believe their job is to enlighten the customer about their own needs. This is — at best — self-deception. I want to pause here and ask you to reflect on this. Really think about it because the remainder of what I'm about to get into builds upon this single insight. The Second Factor Throughout my own sales experience and speaking with others who thrive or suffer through sales, I've learned the second important factor is belief. Do you believe in the product/service/solution you are selling? This can span from a practical belief in the basic utility of your product as one of many competing solutions in the marketplace to fervent devotion to your solution as the single best o

I'd like to return May 2022 for a full refund. I have the receipts. This past month was one of the worst in recent memory. The barrage of bad news kept on coming and I have no doubt that it will continue. Consequently, this blog/podcast/newsletter was less active in May (see afterword). So, now that I'm back and committed to resuming my regular writing cadence, what should we talk about today? I think the only appropriate topic after the last month is to talk about fighting good fights, and why we need more heroes in business.

The process of becoming superhuman is an important, life-long pursuit. A commitment to the process will never fail to impact your personal and professional success and well-being. Beyond that, it can also have a profound positive impact on the success and well being of others. A few years ago, I conceived of the Superhuman Framework as a method for unlocking your potential to grow, and address any challenge in your way. The first part of the framework is learning, which is our primary tool for growing our awareness about the world around us. Given recent events, I think it's time we look at how learning prepares us to actively contribute toward making a world that is kinder, safer, and more equitable. This post is about work. Also, this post is not about work. NOTE: While there is nuance that exists in the space between intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be using the word knowledge in this post as shorthand to describe the state of having information and understanding about a topic. The Relationship between Knowledge and Empathy One of the things The Coaching Habit says about what great coaches do differently, is they “stay curious a little longer.” This is because to be a great coach, you need to ensure you're solving the right problem and this is often buried a little deeper beneath what people immediately reveal. So, we ask questions and asking the right questions requires empathy. Done effectively, it allows us to gain insights into how the other person sees the problem but also to create the space where the real problems can even be safely revealed. We use our empathy to gather knowledge. Great leaders have the capacity to accomplish great things as a result of the size, innovation, competency, and cohesiveness of their teams. But a team will neither grow nor stay together without understanding and acceptance of one another. It will be neither the most competent nor innovative without diverse perspectives. Those with insufficient context and knowledge will lack the tools to empathize with those who have a profoundly different lived experience, and will fail spectacularly as a leader. We gather knowledge to effectively empathize. This relationship is cyclical. We must continually learn in order to better empathize and we must use our empathy to continually learn. Knowledge is Power and its Antidote You've probably heard that phrase before: knowledge is power. What you may not have considered is that knowledge is also the antidote to power. Power, which often implies some form of authority or control, can be wielded by those with greater access to information. Therefore, learning can be a defense against control or illegitimate authority. For example, those have read the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene are able to recognize the tactics when someone tries to use it against them. A basketball player who has watched hours of game footage is better prepared to recognize an opponent's tendency to go left or right and can be in a better position to defend. In short, knowledge isn't just power, it's also often your best defense against power. This is why those in positions of power often want an imbalance in access to critical information. Learning at full speed One of the unfortunate aspects of both school and our lives after graduation, is that neither is particularly well-suited for developing well-rounded people capable of critical thinking. In both cases everything is moving at full speed racing toward priorities that are not your own. In school, it's about fitting in, following directions, and earning the grade. Y

“That doesn't belong on Linkedin.” Business and labor are fundamental components of our lives. Work is one of the primary places we spend our time and energy. The dominant function it occupies in our lives is to provide the necessities for survival, and so it is something we consciously think about. Yet, at the same time, its ubiquity causes it to resemble something akin to background radiation, or the ocean that fish unconsciously swim about in. Work is simultaneously everything, everywhere, all of the time, while also being remarkably personal, tangible, and within our daily experiences. Talking about “what we do” is as natural as talking about the weather or what to eat for lunch. We often cannot imagine a world where business and labor are not primary factors any more than we can imagine our lives without food, water, or breathable air. We are used to it, conditioned to its presence and rules, and have developed a culture that reveres the very idea of work while giving it priority over other areas of life. It is far more comfortable, in many circles to talk about work than it is to discuss many other topics of consequence. Even when the opportunity is seized to discuss important topics, it often has to be nested inside of considerations for how it may impact business and industry with a no-so-subtle implication of which takes precedence. As Superhumans, we need to have the resilience to discuss less comfortable topics. As Superhumans, we have to stand for the things that are bigger than business. As Superhumans, we need to stand up to injustice anywhere and everywhere, and that includes Linkedin. Priorities I see concerning behavior on Linkedin all of the time. It looks like people hiring outsourced teams to spam their contacts.It looks like harassing black men and women in the comments.It looks like tearing down confident women.It looks like lying about success. And yet, these behaviors persist and I've yet to see someone call that out as “not belonging on Linkedin.” Typically, I see a significant “both sides” argument about any of this. At best, I see a few justified "call outs" of the offending person. May is both mental health awareness month, and the month in which it was leaked that the Supreme Court of the United States intends to overturn 50 years of settled law in order to rob women of their right to privacy and bodily autonomy. In the comments of posts about either topic, I have seen the same sentiment: “This does not belong on Linkedin. This is a professional networking site.” Women make up roughly half of the working population, and various issues related to work are among the leading causes of mental health issues. It absolutely belongs on Linkedin. I'll say it again...Priorities All businesses, every single one, are made up of human beings. These human beings do not cease to be human beings when they walk into the office or sign onto Zoom. Any issue that affects human beings is a work issue and therefore belongs on Linkedin every bit as much as hunting for new sales opportunities. Not only that, but I would argue that anything that affects how human beings show up at work, is substantially more important than business. Our right to bodily autonomy is more important than business.Our right to privacy is more important than business.Our mental health is more important than business.Our physical health is more important than business.Our dignity as human beings is more important than business. If we want to have better work environments, be better leaders, and ensure that the work we do isn't meaningless, then we have to pay attention to all of these conversations that impact humans. How can we not when it is directly connected to how we show up at work?

As humans, we are, presumably, always in the process of improvement. We seek to grow individually and collectively. We look for ways to enhance and optimize our material conditions in the home, in the corporation, in the state. However, we cannot always agree on what represents an improvement. In many cases, by improving in one area, we cause harm in another. We find ourselves routinely asking “do the ends justify the means?” Today, I want to interrogate what it means to improve in business by looking at a single, frequently-employed tactic. My hope is that by looking at this symptom, we are able to reveal the more significant condition it represents, and possibly present some methods to remedy what ails us. I'm willing to bet you can relate to this story. *Ding* The text message arrived to inform me that my bill had increased...by nearly 60%. I was upset. I was confused. Maybe more than anything, I was annoyed that I'd need to take time out of my day to deal with this. I wondered, should I call customer service or try to resolve this via live chat? I opted for live chat. "No Worries" "It is nice to meet you here in chat." "I'd be concerned too if I were in your shoes." "The pleasure is mine" "Thank you for sharing that with me. I appreciate it!" "As a bill payer myself, I know how important to manage our finances." All of this sounds great! I feel heard. I feel seen. I feel appreciated as a customer. Or, did I? The truth is, I sensed it immediately. The playbook has been upgraded. In addition to “nice” it now includes "empathy." Not human empathy but, empathy the tactic. At the end of my chat, the problem remained, I was given a number to call, and all I had to show for it was a morning derailed and wasted, and a representative, who was pleasant on the surface, but had no ability to help me. "Your call is important to us" So, how did I resolve it? I picked up the phone. I called the customer service line. "We're experiencing longer than usual call volume. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line (for an unspecified amount of time), and we will answer your call in the order it was received." How many times have you heard that? Can you hear the robotic male or female voice in your head as you read that? If you hear that message every time you call, wouldn't it stand to reason that the call volume should be expected at this point. Some of these companies make billions in profit each year and pay little in taxes. Could they hire more call reps? Perhaps.Is our call really important to them? Who can really know? All we know is that they've said it. I spent roughly two hours of my life across two phone calls, mostly on hold or being transferred. I want to believe the tone in the voice of the last woman I spoke with. She assured me that she would look into it, talk to her supervisor, and get back to me. Her voice sounded sincere, but regardless, after several rounds of escalation, she still had no ability to help me resolve the issue. Research has shown... So, if companies are going to waste our time in live chats, make us wait on hold with no end in sight, and don't plan to give anyone the authority to fix customer problems, then why include the facade of caring? Why bother with the veneer of empathy? Why not just leave the phone off the hook, and provide no resource at all...like Facebook does. Because they know it works. Since Edward Bernays published Propaganda, businesses have been at the forefront of an ongoing battle to control our wants, needs, and opinions. Once Milton Friedman outlined his theory of shareholder primacy, the final piece was set for this nightm

As a leader, do you believe that it is possible to fundamentally change the default culture of work? If not, why not? If so, how do you suggest we get there? The ultimate purpose of this blog is to give you anything and everything I can to enable you to become an unstoppable catalyst for change. One component of that is to analyze and explore heroic and lovable leadership. Our world is currently shaped in large part by the interests of business. It shapes nearly every aspect of our culture. Therefore, changing the culture of work is central to our capacity to change the world. We cannot change work until leaders everywhere address the elephant in the room: trauma. Our Story The world of business was designed — and is continually adapted — to benefit a certain small group of people. We have accepted that there will be winners and losers. Hierarchies are still the most common corporate structure. Power is consolidated at the top. Money and status flow upward. As a result, the business environment that we operate in, cultivate, or passively endorse is based on their values: control and domination. It is no accident that nearly every aspect of business has been explained through metaphors of war and conflict. The popular narratives promoted (read: propaganda) over the last 100 years are typically about cycles of boom and bust, wars fought and won or lost, and primarily feature a specific class of people presented as winners including politicians, military generals, and those who achieve outstanding financial success in the private sector. Yet, at the same time, talk to an individual among the general population, and we might hear an entirely different story. We might hear about layoffs, unemployment, disability, student loans, rising healthcare costs, wage stagnation, and debt. We might hear about how we treat veterans, the LGBTQ+ community, Black Americans, Asian Americans, Immigrants, and others treated as "others." While both groups of stories may be “true,” one group is considerably more personal. Each of us internalize the stories of our time and it creates a specific lens that tints and colors our perception of the world. The more traumatic the experience, the deeper the tint and the darker the lens we look through. Collectively, there are more of us who are traumatized in some form or fashion by a world and business environment that does not prioritize us than there are those who benefit from this paradigm. Stories Shape Behavior Humans are driven, by instinct, to avoid pain. As social animals, we fear isolation. Some will use this to their advantage. As a leader, once you understand this you can more easily understand and contextualize how people behave. All it requires is to ask yourself... What is this person protecting themselves from? Each person you interact with in business, as in life, is a collection of trauma and you get to interact with it. Lucky you! We often make the mistake of believing that people's actions are thoughtfully and rationally considered. In truth, we're mostly on autopilot, operating from the stories that color our perception. Trauma @ Work Bobby was taken advantage of in his previous jobs. He was young, inexperienced, and felt powerless to set boundaries or push back. So when his boss asked him to do things that made him uncomfortable, forced him to work uncompensated, or even handle his boss' responsibilities, he kept quiet. Is it any wonder that, nowadays, he reacts poorly at work when asked to do something for the good of the team? Joyce has never been onboarded properly at any company she's worked for. She's always had

What makes people take action? Is it something intrinsic? Is it something extrinsic? Are we motivated by punishment or by reward? Does motivation comes from profound words layered over a picture of a lion on an Instagram account about becoming a hustle billionaire? Is it wads of cash, lambos, watches, scantily clad women in bikinis or men with six-pack abs? Is it saying nice things, or buying pizza on alternating Fridays? What is the actual secret to unlocking a person's motivation? Tell me! Today, we're going to dive deep into this complex topic and explore the mysteries of what makes humans spur into action. Buckle up, we're about to get motivated. The Leader's Guide to Motivation Leaders and managers everywhere want to know, how can I get people to do what I need them to do? How can I get them to do what I want? The answer may surprise you. You can't. What you can do, however, is get them to do what they want to do. The truth is the secret to motivating people starts with a profoundly simple premise: Understand what THEY want. Note that I said focus on what they DO want, not what they DON'T want. Environments where people are constantly seeking to avoiding pain or discomfort is not one they tend to stay in. Coercion, threats, or intimidation are not solid long term strategies. By contrast, people tend to stick around when they have the ability to grow and pursue their own goals. Beyond knowing everyone's names, job titles and responsibilities, as a leader you need to know what they value, what they believe, what they care about, and what they want in their life. Equipped with this information, you can find where your needs align with their goals. If you can't figure out how to motivate someone on your team, then your problem is simple: you don't understand what they want. It's either that, or what they want will never align with what you need. If that's the case, you should work with them to find a role that better suits them while you look for someone who wants something that aligns with what you need. If not, then get curious and find out more about what they want. Motivation is quite simple. People move because they want something. That's it. This isn't complicated. Bottom line: Just remember that everyone is on their own path and your job as a leader is find where your paths overlap and point in the same direction.

If your Linkedin inbox is anything like mine, it's a lot of this. Helping Experts Scale to $50k Helping Clients Grow Over $100 Million in 2021 ...hire me to scale to 6-7 figures I'm bored. The 10x Problem I'm tired of all the cold outreach that assumes what my goals are, and that those assumptions are exclusively about money. What's worse, is that I know just how easy it is to make these claims without anything to back it up. I've had Zoom calls with people, recently, where despite what their profile said and all those logos on their website, I could feel the desperation in their voices hoping that I'd sign onto their coaching program without even the faintest scent that I'd expressed ANY interest at all. But, as angry as this trend makes me, more so, it makes me sad. Look closely and you will see this problem everywhere right now. It's the abundance of coaches coaching coaches to coach coachesIt's the legions of 10x gurus and "contrepreneurs"It's the Crypto-NFT community trying desperately to convince everyone that all this crappy, uninspired, computer generated “artwork” and magic internet money will really be worth something, someday. No, really. We're gonna build a real island to mirror the fake island in the Matrix. One thing we love in this country is a good grift. The reason is simple. We've put money above all else. In a country where money equates to safety and survival, we're all scurrying to acquire as much as we can in an effort to feel safe. Because it's something we all need, it's something everyone is trying to sell you access to. The most unfortunate part is that our myopia has us only solving part of the problem, both individually and collectively. The Purpose Gap By now, I'm sure you've heard of the Japanese concept of Ikigai. I've never had a Linkedin message ask me what I'm good at, or indicate that they'd dug deep enough to know.I've never had one ask me what I thought the world needs.I've never had one ask me what I love. They just want to tell me about the system they are selling that they assure me, I can be paid for. Trust me, you are no more than one pixel away from someone willing to show you how to 10x your life, how to flip real estate, and how to “get in on it early.” The question is money, the answer is money. I have to believe we're more than that. Where do we go from here? Today, I don't have a clever framework to share. There's no deep-dive, no cheat sheet, and no email-gated download. All I have for you today is two questions. What if more people adopted an approach where money was only one component paired alongside what we are good at, what we enjoy, and what the world needs from us?What if we looked at the problems that money is seeking to answer and tried to identify other solutions? We can do better than this. Whether it's 10x, 20x, or 30x, 6-figures, 7-figures, or 8, it's all the same pitch, all the same rhetoric and it's profoundly uninspired. Furthermore, by staying locked into this one answer, we fail to address the underlying situations we're attempting to solve for. That's it. This is the unofficial end to this post/rant but if you want to stick around, I'll illustrate how answering those questions might change things. ... 1. Ikigai Pitches I'm going to give you two pitches for my new podcast networking Shareable.FM and two pitches for my book The Lovable Leader. One will be the standard,

A bias is a conscious or unconscious preference or shortcut for decision-making, that supersedes impartiality. We all have biases. To have a bias is neither inherently good, nor bad. Some biases are good or useful, others are not so good and far less useful. Most discussions of bias focus on the darker side of our conscious and unconscious decision making shortcuts. Since I'm not well-versed enough to teach unconscious bias, I will be taking a different approach to bias. However, I strongly encourage everyone to become fiercely curious about unconscious biases as a deeper understanding can help make us better, more well-rounded and inclusive humans. If you are interested in learning more about unconscious bias, I strongly recommend the book The Leader's Guide to Unconscious Bias: How To Reframe Bias, Cultivate Connection, and Create High-Performing Teams by Pamela Fuller, Mark Murphy, Anne Chow. It's also a good idea to search for and review lists of unconscious or cognitive biases. Today, we're going to look at bias from a different angle so you become a better leader and a better human...perhaps even a superhuman. Positive and Negative Biases My friend Tony Chatman, who is a phenomenal speaker and author, tells an amazing story about the utility that an unconscious bias can have. He recounts being in upstate New York, in rattlesnake country, and feeling something slither over his foot, while wearing sandals. Without making the conscious decision, he took off running long before he could assess whether he just experienced a garter snake or something more dangerous. That useful unconscious decision, might've saved his life or at least from a nasty bite. Thankfully, he's around to tell the story. Seriously, it's a masterclass in storytelling. I've heard it three times and still laugh out loud. That is an example of a useful bias. Some biases are not as useful. All of us, at some point, have been presented with a narrative about certain groups of people. We've either participated or been present while stereotypes are “jokingly” passed around. We've had past experiences or traumas that get planted in our brains and that show up as a reaction to certain situations or people. These biases can limit our own potential by reshaping our perception and causing us to prejudge others. That is an example of a limiting bias. Conscious & Unconscious Biases One of the most important ideas I've learned about bias is that awareness of our biases give us the opportunity to make different choices. Gaining a mindful awareness of our various biases gives us a remarkable super power: The ability to interrupt the bias in its tracks and make conscious choices rather than quick judgments based on various inputs we may not have chosen. Over time, this moves the bias into the conscious zone where we can choose to invalidate the intrusion and move forward. What's important to note is that not only can we do this through awareness of unconscious biases, but also through the process of deliberately and consciously installing valuable biases. For example, because of my ADHD, I have a tendency to lose small details. Even if a task only takes a few moments, if I put it to the side, it might be forgotten for weeks. So, I have consciously chosen to install a bias for completing small actions. If a task takes less than two minutes, rather than risk losing it to the black hole of “later,” I get it done and move on. These sorts of conscious biases can help us to recognize our patterns of behavior and design a preference for counterbalancing actions. Conscious Bias for Leaders Over the weekend, one of my favorite people to follow on Linkedin,

Stop me if you've heard this one. “I get you.” How about this one? “I understand.” Last one... I've been exactly where you are. In an effort to relate to others, many of us have learned these phrases. We think that it helps us to connect with and relate to others. On occasion, it does. However, sometimes, it has the exact opposite effect. Today, we continue to look for ways of becoming superhuman. In particular, learning the superpower of how to be a better human in the presence of other humans. Can you relate? Let's set the scene. You're a manager.You're having a one-on-one with a team member.They come to you with a problem. Something that is stressing them out.They are frustrated. So, what do you do? Obviously, you start by listening. Because you're a manager who cares, you really want the other person to feel heard. You want them to feel comfortable, and even safe. You want to let them know that it will all be ok. You think back to when you were in a similar situation. You want to let them know how you were right where they are, how you overcame what they're going through, and how they will, too. You look past all of the ways in which your situations are different and unearth all of the places where you overlap. Now that you're ready...you relate. “I hear you. I totally get it. I was in the exact same situation.” Intent vs Outcome In this scenario, you are intending to help the other person feel seen. You want to create a circle of trust. You imply: “you and me, we're not so different.” I'm not saying anything about this is inherently wrong. But, indulge the following question. Is there a possible outcome of this approach, that could produce the opposite effect of your intention? If you're having trouble visualizing it, try to think about a time when someone tried to relate to you, but you felt like they clearly didn't. The trust fund kid who tells you they understand what it's like to struggle when you're talking about your student loans?The parent who grew up in the 50's and 60's trying to tell you how they “get” the difficulties of growing up as if they too were glued to a smartphone, and trying to navigate a high school social life that includes TikTok and cyberbullying on Minecraft.The boss, who relates to the loss of your parent just long enough to ask when you think you'll be back at work? In each of these situations, regardless of the actual parallels, do you feel like that person actually gets what YOU are going through? In each of those situations, do you get the sense that those people are trying to relate to you, or trying to relate you to themselves? Should you relate? In an effort to make others feel seen, we sometimes do the opposite. We put the spotlight back on ourselves. So instead of asking ourselves whether we can relate to someone, we might want to ask whether we should? This is for every person who has ever responded when I am being vulnerable by sharing the reality of my ADHD, by telling me that they “get a little ADD sometimes” and then proceed to tell me about the time they browsed Reddit a little too long. That cute little anecdote doesn't make me feel closer to them. It doesn't make me feel like they can relate to what I just shared. It subtly invalidates the actual hardships 30+ years of masking ADHD has taken on my mental health and feelings of self-worth by turning it into some minor inconvenience. Every person's story is their own, and no matter how much you feel that you can relate to their story, that feeling is about YOU, not them. I submit for your consideration that maybe it's not about relating, maybe it's just about caring. What to consider saying

Imagine you've just been added to a team or a new project. Maybe you're the new CMO, maybe you're the new lead for a project team, or maybe you just join a new department as a subject matter expert. The team you've joined has been working together for several weeks, months, or even years. They have an established rapport. They've been going through various stages of the project together. What's the first thing you do? An Important Moment So, what was your answer? Whatever your answer sounded like, in my experience, the way people walk into rooms comes in two different flavors. Those whose presence enhances the teamThose whose presence fractures the team The difference between them is visible when you ask the question: who are they trying to make look good right now? If the answer is the team, then they are likely going to integrate into the team, and their ideas, challenges, and contributions will be recognized, appreciated, and rewarded. This person is joining the team and has set the proper conditions to enhance the team. If the answer is themselves, then they are likely going to immediately encounter resistance that they will be forced to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with instead of helping the team move forward. This person is protecting their ego and has set the proper conditions for judgment, resistance, and potential fracturing of the team cohesion. How to walk into the room My suggestion for how to walk into the room is virtually identical to sitting on the same side of the table, which is the key concept in my book The Lovable Leader. This is because the most important thing you can do when you walk into the room is establish trust. Two people can give you the same advice or criticism, but if one of them is a close friend and the other is a complete stranger, you're going to receive it differently. The difference is trust. You trust that your friend still has your best interest in mind. There is less of a defense mechanism being engaged. Similarly, when you make a first impression on a team, I would suggest you start with the following steps. 1. Prepare an opening statement Let people know about your goals and intentions. Share with people how you have been received in the past including things you do that might rub people the wrong way. Acknowledge and label all of these things so that when those issues inevitably arise, people are prepared and you've already addressed and contextualized those behaviors and tendencies. Hi everyone, I want you all to know that I'm really excited to be joining this team. I already see how much hard work has gone into this process. I hope that I'm able to contribute by helping us work through some of the strategic challenges we're having. Since this is the first time we're working together, I want to call myself out and acknowledge that I have a tendency to let my enthusiasm bubble over and that sometimes leads to talking over people or being a little too high energy. I know that I do this and I will try my best to keep it in check. If you notice me doing it, please mention it to me as it's something I want to work on because my intention isn't to take away from anyone's efforts or dismiss anyone's contributions. 2. Listen, Be Curious, and Validate When you first join a team, your advice isn't likely all that good. That's because you don't know enough to know what problems need to be solved. So, at best, you've got a few nuggets of wisdom sitting amongst a variety of suggestions that are either not relevant or solve the wrong problem. For more on this, read Michael Bungay Stainer's book The Advice Trap. Instead, listen to what's going on. Ask questions. More importantly, ask good questions. Good questions are ones t

Most of the companies that I've ever worked with, want to be a runaway success. They want marketing plans that result in uncontrolled virality. They want to be seen, adored, and showered with sweet cash. They want the hockey stick and to be the next big case study. Everyone wants to be above average, but if that were true, it wouldn't be the average. In reality, most companies won't have success-after-success, they won't go viral, they won't beat the average. Despite this reality, I think there is immense value in going through the exercise of imagining runaway, viral success. Today, I thought we'd check in on Marketing and answer two important questions: What's working right now?What happens if it works? Marketing your way to success Perhaps it's the way my brain works, perhaps it's the way I was trained on strategic thinking, or maybe it's just what is truly the most effective approach, but I believe we must start with the end and work backwards. Here's the opposite of what that looks like... The marketing team is joined by the executive team and all of a sudden it becomes an exercise where everyone tries to come up with the next BIG idea. This is primarily because people tend to think marketing is all about promotion and ads. They tend to believe that promotion and ads success, is all about creativity...and of course, everyone in this room is creative, right? So, people start chiming in about an ad they saw on tv or a billboard that made them laugh. Sometimes the conversation turns to the silver bullet, the growth hacks, and the first mover advantages. The room fills with tales of the most recent case study. “We could do something like that!” And seriously, what's more creative than copying someone else? In the midst of it, you imagine launching any of these campaigns, and you get a funny feeling. It's like there's no through-line, or that some critical questions haven't been answered. Why are we doing this? Is this who we are? Who is this for? What are the potential ramifications? Thinking Before & Beyond The Campaign In the room where this sort of brainstorming happens, we rarely find those who have done the necessary work beforehand. These rooms are focused on a short term win. They're focused on being seen as clever and brilliant marketers. They're focused on themselves and the campaign. If we look at what's NOT working right now, it is this: being the clever one to create the next big viral ad campaignchasing the newest social media trendtrying to force what worked in the past to continue working In the scheme of things, isolated campaigns are meaningless unless your metric of success is short-term attention. Successful marketing is rarely exciting. Typically, it's shockingly boring and methodical. It's stuff like picking the right time of day to post your content, identifying how to adapt to the recent changes in an algorithm, or choosing whether to call your lead magnet an ebook or a whitepaper. Sexy stuff, right?! The excitement only truly emerges when the work is nested inside and supporting a larger idea: the Brand. It's not about attention, it's about the right kind of attention, from the right people, for the right reasons. It's not about whether people SEE IT, it's about whether people GET IT. What is currently working? It bears repeating but there is no silver bullet or universally successful tactic. There is however a process to uncover what may work for your specific situation. So hat is currently working is the same thing that worked before: design a great strategy for your unique situation. Here's where I reco

IF this, THEN that. In the case of automation applications like Zapier, Automate.io, and of course, IFTTT, it represents the deliberate initiation of a sequence of desired next steps. In the case of social interactions, both digital and IRL, it can represent a spectrum of different events. In our pursuit of Becoming Superhuman, we should analyze these triggers, and the subsequent actions. Today, we're going to look at the presence and impact of triggers and actions in our lives. NOTE: If you are someone who jokingly and antagonistically uses the phrase “trigger warning” to belittle people who have an emotional reaction to certain people, places, phrases, or events I would encourage you to read this entire post. While you do, try to engage your empathy muscles. Even if you don't walk away learning to be more understanding of others, you will still gain a new tool for your own personal success. OMG, me too! In some cases, the trigger is something that spurs the action of retelling a particular story. In these cases, the triggers serve as the play button for a routine or shtick. For Example... IF a parent brings up a story about their child to another parent, THEN the other parent draws from a particular set of stories about their own children.IF someone brings up an embarrassing, but funny, story from work or childhood, THEN others will likely join in and share their own story from a short but memorable repository.IF someone brings up a restaurant they liked, THEN others will join in and share their own recent dining adventures. We do this unconsciously, as a shortcut, in order to create a connection. These stories and shticks aren't deliberately curated but rather cobbled together after reading people's past reactions. When we told that story last time, someone laughed, so we tell it again next time.We told that other story a few weeks ago and it fell flat, best to leave it out of the repertoire. The triggers in these cases are non-threatening, and our subsequent actions are generally agreeable. From a bad experience to outright trauma In other cases, the trigger is something that automatically causes someone to remember and experience an unwelcome memory or past trauma. In this case, the trigger is perceived as threatening and provokes a stress or survival response. The subsequent actions can range from total retreat to explosive and violent reaction, or anything along that spectrum. These triggers can take so many shapes. For Example... IF you offer someone help, THEN they react negatively. You may not realize that the mere offer of help makes them feel weak, helpless, or even untrusted by those who offer the help. This could be a result of their education, past employment experiences, or upbringing where internalized messages from childhood bubble up to the surface.IF you make a comment about someone's hair, the way they talk, or mispronounce their name THEN they react hurt or angry. You may not realize that this individual has endured years of similar incidents and micro-aggressions have intentionally or unintentionally marginalized them and left them feeling like an outsider or other.IF after accepting someone's Linkedin connection request they immediately start pitching you, THEN you respond with a snarky, sarcastic, or even hostile message. They may not realize the various beliefs, past experiences, or values they have encroached upon. That last one was about me. Three days ago. Unreceptive What inspired me to write this post was a watershed moment that happened to me just three days ago. I am in the midst of promo

Most people are great at talking. Less so for listening. So today, I'm going to share a quick lesson that can dramatically improve your listening skills. This will move you one step closer to becoming superhuman. Learning this skill will benefit all of the relationships in your life including, but not limited to, your boss, those who report to you, your peers, your spouse, your kids, and your friends. Like I do with all lessons, before I give you the how-to guide, we need to start with some context. The Rush to Judgement When most people listen, they are waiting for their chance to talk. …and it shows. If you do this, don't feel badly. I'm not calling you out. I'm pointing it out. We all do this, at times, but once you're aware of it, you can choose to do something differently. So, let me ask you something. Have you ever wanted someone to just sit there and let you talk it out?Have you ever wanted someone (typically a close friend or family) to just nod along and not challenge you, regardless of how unreasonable you might be?Have you ever wanted someone to listen to the entire story before offering their opinion? Well, if you're a human being, chances are, you've had all of these experiences. We all need different things from people at different times based on our emotional state or the stakes of the situation. I'll ask you one final question: wouldn't it have been nice if you had the option to choose that before you started talking? “How would you like to me listen?” Here's the new skill: give people the chance to tell you what they need. For instance, when someone comes to you complaining about something, try this… “Hey, just so I know, how do you want me to listen in this conversation? Would it be most helpful for me to let you vent? Do you want me to give advice or play devil's advocate, or is it something else?” There are a lot of ways to phrase this and different circumstances will call for different versions of this. The key point is that you want to resolve two open loops: What do they need?What's my role? These are two sides of the same coin. By knowing what they need, you put yourself in the best position to serve them. By knowing your role, you give yourself an option to play more roles in your relationships than “the advice person” or “the devil's advocate.” This practice helps you to become a more well-rounded person who better serves those around you. @ilanadegann Reply to @sunny___sunflowers ask and ye shall receive! #anxietea #mentalhealthmatters #supportsystem #supportingfriends #mentalhealthhealing ♬ original sound – ilana This practice goes a long way

Today, I'm going to explore the concept and practice of unsubscribing, and I want to go beyond emails and look at the various ways we can choose what we want to have access to our time, attention, and money. There are two types of things you might unsubscribe from and myriad reasons why you might want to. Let's get into it by starting with an important question we're frequently forced to ask. “How did you get my ____?” Using myself as an example, every person on my email list has explicitly opted-in to receive my emails. I don't buy lists. I never add random people to my email list. Everyone got here by entering their name into a form and then confirming their subscription in their email. This is known as a double opt-in. However, because some people opt-in to my list through guides, ebooks, and other content that is not hosted on my site, like this, this, or this, I get the occasional nastygram insinuating that I'm a spammer. I'm not, but I understand the confusion. As I see it, there are two types of subscriptions and the dividing line between them is consent. On the one side you have products, services, and communications that you explicitly granted access to your email address or credit card.On the other side, you have unsolicited, products, services, or communications that you were subscribed to without consent. Then there is the fuzzy space in between the two made up of the things we sign up for but forgot about or weren't entirely clear we're signing up for. This is where some people on my email list get confused and while I'm not quite sure how to resolve it, I continue to work on it. “How do I get off this f***ing ______?!” By law, every email marketing communication must contain a clear and obvious way to opt-out. Most emails, like the ones I send, have a clear link at the bottom that says unsubscribe. If you subscribe to Christopher Penn's excellent Almost Timely newsletter, which I strongly recommend, you would see the following GIF. He makes it profoundly easy to get off his list. There are lots of reasons why someone may want to opt-out or unsubscribe from something. Maybe they changed their mind or lost interestMaybe they learned something about the subscription that is in conflict with their valuesMaybe they can't afford it anymore or just don't have the time for it Unfortunately, services don't always make it so easy especially since there is money involved, and in some cases, a contract. Instead of an unsubscribe button, you may need to call a customer number, pay off a balance, or go through lengthy escalations to recoup money that should have never been charged in the first place. It can suck. The good news is that in nearly all cases where consent was given including content subscriptions (unsubscribe), social media (unfollow), and paid subscriptions (stop payment), there are typically, relatively easy, ways to get off the list to stop future communications and charges. Unfortunately, stopping the flow of unsolicited mail, spam email, or fraudulent credit card charges, we're stuck with a game of whack-a-mole that may never cease. “This is not the world I envisioned” Nearly everyone has unsubscribed from an email. Nearly everyone has cancelled a service. But, there is another unsubscribe that many of us fail to consider. We can cease to give our time and attention to toxic or harmful ideas.We can cease to be in bad relationships, either at home or at work.

Everyone thinks, works, and manages their time and energy exactly as I do. Don't they? Of course they don't but that doesn't stop managers everywhere from having those unspoken expectations. Unfortunately, they also inevitably get upset when those expectations aren't met. I talk to managers…it's kind of my thing. I wrote a book based on many of those conversations. What I've discovered more than anything else in dysfunctional teams or relationships, is a mismatch of expectations and reality. The easiest way to deal with this is through communication, as early as possible. If you can gather information before someone joins your team, that is ideal. This way, you don't set someone up for failure by neglecting to understand where they would best fit. If you can't, the next best thing is to do it soon after someone joins the team. Creating User Guides Whether you're putting together a piece of IKEA furniture, trying to figure out a new piece of software, or setting up some new piece of technology, instruction manuals are often your best friend. But unlike so many of the products we buy, people don't come with instruction manuals. That is, not unless we create them for ourselves. Everyone is a little different and no one is a mind reader. That is why I recommend all teams create user guides for one another. Every member of the team should do this. This helps to create transparency across the team so each member of the team knows what to expect from each other. These user guides are self-assessed operating manuals for how we like to be treated and how we work best. For myself, I've created an extensive user guide for my peers and team members based on my enneagram profile, my DISC profile, my Myers-Briggs profile, feedback from my peers, and my own descriptions and explanations about my preferences. Today, I'm going to give you a quick and useful template for each member of your team to create their own user guide. This way, everyone can be on the same page about communication and working styles. 10-Question User Guide I recommend using the form I've created. It will take roughly 6-10 minutes for each person to fill out and will format the answers into a user guide. Below, I’m going to give you the 10 questions, a brief explanation of why these questions are useful, and then I will share my own answer to these questions to illustrate the point. 1. Are you more Introverted or Extroverted? Having each member of your team answer this question provides use

The thing about opportunity and our relationship to it, is that it is entangled in our relationships to safety, security, and scarcity. When you don't have enough, it feels helpless.When you have too much, it feels overwhelming. This includes new business leads, passion projects to pursue, and relationships to nurture. Because our culture lacks a clear point of having enough where we can cease fearing for safety and security, we always feel like we need more. We feel as though we are always operating at a deficit. The race to find enough to survive can induce panic. This is why even having too many opportunities can be stressful because it often feels irresponsible to turn away an opportunity when you feel like you probably don't have enough. It is on this point where we pivot between two states of busy. Busy chasing new opportunities.Busy working to take advantage of our existing opportunities. In Search of Balance Where most of us want to be, is having enough good opportunities to thrive and enjoy life without taking on too much, and without fear of not having enough. It's important to know that if you're having trouble finding that balance, it's less to do with the presence or absence of opportunities, and more to do with the system we're a part of. None of us should have to fear for survival, and none of us should take on more than we have time or energy for out of fear that we still don't have enough. Without any guarantee of food, water, shelter, or healthcare, we're all racing to survive. So, how can we find balance amidst these externalities? Advice from the Trenches Let me start by saying, I'm not an expert on managing the flow of opportunities to achieve balance. I do have a few checks and balances but today I'm going to share some raw thoughts that I've been mulling over recently as I've dealt with managing more opportunities than I can handle. P.S. That isn't some kind of humblebrag or flex, not long ago, I was on the other side of opportunity—not having enough. 1. Identify Hard Boundaries I take off Fridays. Period. Full stop. Fridays are my day to watch my daughter, play with blocks, and watch Encanto or Moana for the 387th time. This is a hard boundary. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. This hard boundary helps when I'm feeling like I have too much opportunity or not enough. Regardless of the situation, that Friday is for her. Thankfully, I have the ability to do this. So please don't mistake the point. The point is to figure out where your boundaries are. It could be: The type of opportunities you will or won't entertainHow many hours you will dedicate to a certain activity every week or monthThe lowest billable rate you are willing to negotiate Whatever it is, the point is that the more hard boundaries you have, the less you have to think about those things later. This is helpful because you'll notice that whether you have too much or not enough, it's the thinking that causes your suffering around it. 2. Overcome Paralysis with Process Whenever I get stuck — which happens A LOT as someone with ADHD — I find that focusing on a process is the best way to get things moving. For instance, are you not turning enough leads into sales? Now might be a great time to rebuild your sales process: create some automated emails, setup your automated scheduler, create a few PDF sales resources, and template your proposals. The next lead that comes in is sure to have a better experience than the last. Have you fallen off podcasting, blogging, or posting to social media? Now might be a good time to do some planning and building to support your content strategy. Do some competitive research, start brainstorming topics, write out some headl

No matter how or where we work, there is a culture that exists. It is the answer to the question: “what's it like here?” In large companies, there is likely a status quo. This dominant culture is significantly more visible and endorsed than the myriad of subcultures. As companies grow, so too do the number of variables and thus, culture becomes something harder to control or influence. The smaller the company, the fewer the variables and therefore the easier to control, influence, manipulate, or design. Regardless of the size of the company, the culture is a subjective experience. When we talk about company culture, the dominant narrative is to only talking about the aspects that the companies promote themselves or, occasionally, the aspects of a work environment where there is the greatest agreement in subjective experiences. However, it bears repeating that culture is both an individual experience as well as the various places in which individual subjective experiences overlap. Culture isn't monolithic. I know...so far, I likely haven't introduced anything new here. Much has been written about company culture, including what it is and what it isn't. Today, I want to prepare you with an idea that you may not have considered. If culture answers the question “what's it like here,” we may do well to consider what we mean by “HERE.” The Culture Here Most discussions about company culture and work culture focus on the environment. So, when we ask, what's it like here, we look around and assess. We form opinions about how others treat us, and whether or not they value us. We judge our compensation and benefits. We think about how much work we're assigned, and the expectations others place upon us. But what does your work culture look like when instead of looking around, I ask you to look inside? I'm not asking you to ignore the external culture, I'm asking if you're ever curious enough to examine your internal culture? Have you considered that you are also your own work culture? How do you talk to yourself? Are you tuned in to the voice that berates, undermines, or shames you?Do you give yourself adequate breaks? Or are you pushing yourself to the brink, teetering on the edge of burnout?How are you compensating yourself? Are you eating right? Are you making time to go to the gym? Are you making time for friends and family?What are your values and are you honoring them? Are you letting the work dictate your values, or are you working from those values?Have you defined a mission and purpose? Or are you working without direction, inspiration, or meaning? All of the very same factors you're looking at in your external work environment, are equally important when examining your inner work environment. Further, I would argue that it may be the culture you have the most control over. We may not be able to control our external environments, though we can often exert influence. We can, however, tend to our internal environments. We retain the right to examine what our work means to us. When we look inward we should be able to change what we say when we answer “what's it like here?”

Despite what the critic inside your head says, your manager probably doesn't expect perfection. But here's what they most likely want… Your manager wants you to take ownership. They want you to identify a problem before they do and let them know how you plan to solve it. They don't want you to hide and wait for them to come to you. “I've noticed that this is taking longer than we'd like. I want you to know I'm on it and plan to communicate with the vendor more frequently so we hit our deadlines.” Your manager wants you to ask for help when you need it. They want you to attempt to handle things on your own but, they want you to acknowledge when you're stuck. They want you to identify what's in your way so they can help. They don't want you to pretend you've got everything under control. “I've tried to figure out how to break down these numbers but I'm still struggling to see the through line. I need 10-15 minutes of your time to help me see what I'm missing, and to point me in the right direction so I can take this through to completion” Your manager wants you to offer solutions proactively when you can. They don't expect you to have all of the answers, but they do want you to have at least thought about it. “I think I've figured out how we can deliver these projects to the client faster, and how we can set expectations earlier in the process. Can I book some time on your schedule to run your through what I'm thinking?” Your manager wants to know you're willing to learn and are open to coaching. They know that your growth and development is critical to solving future problems and accomplishing larger goals. When given the choice, they will probably always choose the person who has a greater capacity to grow and is willing to take feedback. “This project hasn't gone smoothly. I want to learn more about data and analytics. I'm open to any coaching you have for me and I want you to know that I plan on taking some online course to round out my knowledge. Management There are different kinds of managers. For the ones who see themselves as leaders, they want to see you grow and reach your fullest potential. They see themselves as a partner in helping you do that. The four things mentioned above communicate to them that you are engaged. Each give them an opening to help. Any good manager will want you to persevere. They will want you to confront your perfectionism and your doubts. They will want every opportunity to help you succeed for the good of the team, and, if they are a leader, for you to reach your potential. Show them your leadership. Care about your work, and care enough about your manager to communicate openly and transparently.Show that you can be trusted and relied upon because you communicate what you need.Demonstrate that you are part of the team that will help the team safely reach its goals. Communicating effectively with your manager is leadership and we need you just as much as we need them.

Today, I'm going to do a little Q&A. These are 4 questions, about Brand, that I found on Quora. I picked ones related to one another that when answered and combined, should help to give you a strong overview of what it means to build a strong brand, whether it's for yourself or your company. What is the importance of building a brand? Above all else, there are two primary purposes for building a brand. First, it carves out and defines a space for you in the minds of others. This helps them to quickly associate you with a certain idea. For instance: Volvo is Safety.Red Bull is Excitement.Brene Brown is Vulnerability. Once you have that association, you own that mind space until a stronger Brand knocks you out of place. The second reason why it is important to build Brand, is that it serves as a North Star to guide your decisions as a company or as an individual. Once your Brand is defined, it should guide your actions to create an association in the mind of those who interact with you. In short, the two big reasons why it is important to build a Brand are both mental models: One mental model helps the consumer/customer/employee/stakeholder quickly understand and recall what you're all about.The other mental model gives you shortcuts for decisions. What are good strategies for managing your personal branding? Perhaps the most important thing you can do to manage personal brand, happens at the start: establishing the brand. Many people build their personal brand by accident. They let the accumulation of their words and actions create a personal brand for them without first considering how they want to think, speak, and act to build a specific brand that is authentic and aligned with their deeply held values. You can either let your actions add up to establish your Brand, or you can define the end and then let your actions add up to somewhere in a deliberate way. Along the way, your best bet to manage a personal or professional/business Brand is to see every single touch point and interaction as a Branded experience. How you word your emails is a Brand experience.How you answer the telephone is a Brand experience.The clothes you wear are a Brand experience. EVERYTHING can be a Brand experience and even choosing which of those things to focus on is an expression of what's important to you. To get a grip on it: analyze one week of your life and look for any place where you are faced with an interaction or a decision that would send a meaningful signal to others about your values and goals. Then, at the end of the week, decide which of those decisions should be deliberately designed to align with what is most important about your Brand. As for me, everything I do is on Brand: my sneakers, my hair style, my email signature, my Linkedin headline, even the animated GIFs I bring into my Zoom conversations. By on Brand, I don't necessarily mean red (#f00f28), I mean an authentic representation of me: my values, my personality, my style, etc. How do you differentiate your brand in a crowded market? There are two big reasons to differentiate: Differentiation increases the likelihood of being remembered.Differentiation increases the likelihood of being selected among competing options. Therefore, the keys to differentiation can be found by asking two questions: What are some unique words or phrases you can use to describe the Brand?What is something that would be meaningfully different about the way you do things versus the existing and competing solutions in the market so as to resonate with a particular audience ? Simply put: pick a position that is unoccupied, for a specific audience,

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you like to enjoy some leisure time or hobbies.Maybe you like getting together with family and/or friends.Maybe you like to improve yourself by learning new skills or mastering your existing abilities. Maybe you’re like me…in fact, in this case, I bet you are. The Exercise Tell me, reader…what does the perfect day look like to you? Get out a piece of paper and write down everything you’d like to do in this perfect day. Make a list and next to each item, write an estimated amount of time you'd spend on each activity. For example… Sleep: 8 hoursMorning routine (coffee, shower, walking the dog): 1 hourRead: 30 minutesand so on… Make sure to focus on your perfect day, NOT the perfect 24 hours. For this exercise, imagine doing everything you'd want to do for as much time as you'd want to do it, even if that means 11 hours of Netflix. So, what does your perfect day look like? Was there enough time in a 24 hour period for your perfect day? When I do this exercise, I often come up with an answer between 26-32 hours. Maybe you're like me, with more to do than you have time for. Maybe 24 hours is just right. Or maybe 24 hours is more than enough for you. For those of you who have more to do in a perfect day than you have time, what gets cut first? Would you trim the time equitably across everything? Would you cut individual activities? Do you prioritize work, rest, relationships, or something else? Now riddle me this: how close it that to what your day currently looks like? To Work or Not to Work? I like to do this perfect day exercise periodically because it is an illuminating look at my current priorities. The act of listing out everything I'd do on a perfect day and then trying to make that day happen within 24 hours forces me to confront my priorities and my limitations. It also forces me to confront my current schedule and behaviors. My friend David posted this tweet on Friday. It resonated with me. “Yeah babe, I’m just going to go play some video games to relax”-opens up computer and starts catching up on work-WHY AM I LIKE THIS!?— David Martin

I want to share something with you in the hopes that it will inspire you. To start, I want to properly set expectations that this is more of a little push of inspiration than it is some grand, life-altering idea. Here goes… I want to encourage you to launch something before you're ready, and I want you to do it as soon as possible. I'm going to give you a few reasons why and then share some examples of projects I've launched before they were done, and why despite any of the shortcomings of those projects, I still think it was the best thing I could've done. A quick but, profoundly important note: I am not suggesting that you skip the planning and strategy process. I’m talking about after you know what you’re trying to accomplish and why, avoiding the trap of getting caught up in the nitty gritty details to the degree that you keep pushing out the deadline for launch. Why launch before you're ready? The first question you might be thinking is: why should anyone launch before they're ready? I will answer that by first asking you a different question: what is the risk of launching too late or not at all? In my super unscientific study, I've found that people are far more likely to wait too long or give up than they are to launch something too early. I've gathered this information over my lifetime of hearing countless ideas from friends and peers that never made it past the conversation phase. Even in the conversation phase, I've watched people talk themselves out of a good idea. In working with clients, I've seen deadlines pushed time and time again, with only the occasional hasty decision to move too quickly. Even in those situations where the client moved too quickly, any post-launch problems were usually quickly resolved. Again, super unscientific study here so, take it with the appropriate amount of salt. The point I'm trying to make is that we often doubt ourselves. We question whether our contribution is worth it. We consider all of the ways in which it could fail, and let it hold us back, ironically, avoiding to see the obvious failure of not launching at all. Here's my reasons why you should launch something “To the third grader, the fourth grader is an expert.” – I don't know who first said this and neither does Google but shoutout to whoever said it to me You have something to share with the world. Everyday you don't, is withholding a gift from someone. At the same time, in the midst of a sea of imposter syndrome, every day you wait for “perfect,” you are robbing yourself of the sweet evidence that you are making a contribution. “The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.” – Walt Whitman By launching your project, you are contributing a verse. If you are not yet swayed by the idea that you have something valuable to contribute or that someone could learn from you, then let me offer this: people will notice. While most people stay in the garage unwilling to release their beta, fearful of it not being ready, or of the criticism, or of the myriad reasons it might fail…you will have put something out into the world for people to notice. You can talk to them about it, ask questions, gather information and insights. You can engage the people who gravitate toward the concept and invite them to co-create the project. Your project is something to talk about, a conversation starter, an opportunity to learn. In my exper

Isn’t that typically what you do? I do it too. You’ve got clients or your boss, family, friends, and everyone else’s priorities. You’ve got to get it all done first, right? So, that big idea you’ve got…you’ll do it next week. If not next week, then definitely the following week, right? At least by the end of the month, or quarter. Worst case scenario, end of year…if you can find the time. Also, don’t sweat it, there’s always time to catch up on your exercise this weekend. The weekends are also a good time to catch up on sleep, right? With so much going on during the week there’s really no time for a proper night’s sleep anyway. Hey, while you’re at it, make sure to set aside some time to visit your couch to catch up on Netflix…your couch misses you. If you're still thinking about the stuff from this week that you didn’t get done, maybe set aside a little time, maybe just a few hours this weekend to catch up on everything. Maybe after the gym. Don’t forget to spend time with your partner and kids…and pets. You’ll fit it all in, right? How is this likely to play out? Chances are you’ll go to bed late on Friday and Saturday. You’ll probably wake up too early too. So much for sleep. Maybe you’ll make it to the gym, maybe not. So much for health. You might catch up on work a bit over the weekend. So much for recharging. That big project is now months behind where you intended to be but you’ve got so many responsibilities that you can only deal with on the weekend. This laundry isn’t going to put itself away. So much for making your mark. Who does this story benefit? This isn't just my story, at times. Too many of us put ourselves last at the expensive of our mental and physical health. Too many of us are putting our own aspirations on the sidelines week after week in order to get our work done. Who, exactly, is all of this for? Because it’s pretty obvious that it’s not for us. We believe a story that this is the way it is, and more importantly, that this is the way it must be. Why do we believe it? Culture is Malleable Things weren’t always this way. It wasn’t necessarily better, but it was different. At some point, there were no child labor laws.At some point, there was no 8-hour work day or 40-hour work week.At some point, there was no employer-based healthcare. All of these were changes in our culture. We can change it again. Can you imagine if… you could move from job-to-job because you no longer fear losing your healthcare.you could work 3 or 4 days per week, or only work half days, and still manage to afford a place to live and food on the table.you could decide to change your career path and go get new training.you could leave industries that are unethical or even dangerous to the survival of our species and not fear for your life because you lose your place to live, your healthcare, or your ability to avoid starvation. Does all of that sound crazy? Well, it's not. Culture Shifts in Response to Stimuli If you look closely, you'll see that the culture is always changing. Stimuli: Pandemic Remote work was already gaining momentum before COVID as new technology makes it easier for distributed teams to collaborate virtually. Pandemic or not, that was happening. The pandemic just accelerated

I want to share a different type of content strategy post with you today. There are plenty of posts out there teaching you how content strategy works, or how to set a killer content strategy for the entire year in just 1 day, or exploring content cadence and volume. Today, I want to show you how to infuse purpose into your content strategy and the good news is, it is completely compatible with traditional content strategy development. If you want to be able to connect your day-to-day content creation activities to something bigger, this post is for you. I'm going to share with you how I do it, including the steps I followed and questions that I had to answer. Purpose & Pillars Not surprisingly, having a purpose-driven content strategy starts with defining your purpose. If you find yourself having trouble locating your purpose, it helps to look for things in the world you'd like to change, or thinking deeply about what you believe. My purpose is to help make the world kinder, safer, and more equitable. I believe that many things in our world are sub-optimal or outright broken. I believe that in a world consumed by capitalism, many of these problems can be found in the spaces where we work. Therefore, I believe we need to change a lot of how we relate to our work. I believe that one way I'm able to pursue this, is by building a community around a set of ideas, and providing the tools for meaningful action. Therefore, I have focused my work and my content on helping people in the following three pillars: Unlocking Human PotentialLiving a Purpose-Drive LifeBecoming Heroic & Lovable Leaders The intersection points for these topics enable one to become powerful, prepared, clear. I believe those who are powerful, prepared, and clear, are capable of changing the world. I believe that by exploring why we work, how we work, and the impact of our work, we can make meaningful change in both our day-to-day lives, and the future of our society. If everything works perfectly, I would help every single person in my audience transform into an unstoppable catalyst for change. These three pillars allow me to talk about my topics with purpose. Whether it's Brand, Leadership & Culture, Marketing, Sales, Productivity, or Entrepreneurship, each topic is presented through the lenses of these th

I love the beginning and end of the year more than any other time. As a strategy-obsessed and goal-oriented person with countless projects, ideas, and ambitions, only January and December present an opportunity where I feel that I can truly breath, think, reflect, and plan. For me, the rest of the year is for executing the plan and adapting. Without the process I follow every January and December, I don't think I would be able to accomplish a fraction of what I've been able to over the last decade. So, whether or not you are like me in this regard, you likely have things you want to accomplish, and I thought it might be helpful to share with you what my process looks like. This is the blueprint for how I plan my year. Overview This is the outline for what I do each year. I'll break each of these down and give examples. My Three Words I start out the year picking my three words. Instead of resolutions which tend to get abandoned, these three words are themes that I keep in mind throughout the year. I'm not resolving to do anything. I'm thinking about who I want to be and choosing three words to remind me of these commitments. These words are something I tend to think about throughout the previous year as I notice areas I'm falling short, places I need to grow, or ways to enhance what's already working. As I think of words that may work for the upcoming year, I'll add them to a note for future reference. This year the three words are Author – Reduce – Delegate. I make myself a phone lock screen wallpaper so I see these everyday.

If you're not familiar with My Three Words yet, please read this page for more context. As I’ve done every year since 2013, here are my three words for the year. Author I wrote a book…and I’m really proud of it. It is being released on January 25th, 2022. I am now officially an author. I chose the word Author because after all the time and energy it took to write this book I damn well better honor that work by promoting it. I have a tendency to work really hard on something and then as soon as it is done, moving onto the next project. Not this time! Every single day of 2022, I will remind myself that I am an Author. I also see Author as a reminder that I am the one who is writing my story through my actions. I like the empowering feeling that being the author of my story gives me. P.S. You can pre-order The Lovable Leader now on Barnes & Noble and Target. Amazon coming soon. Reduce I take on too much. I pursue too many ideas. I’m overly optimistic about my capacity. As a result, my attention is often fragmented and scattered. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in a week. This year, I plan to live according to that reality. I’m going to actively focus on reducing how much I work on. This means killing off the lower priority projects that stop me from completing the most important work I could be doing. By reducing the number of things I’m trying to accomplish, I give myself the opportunity for depth instead of breadth. Delegate With 1 day for planning and content, and 3 days for clients, there’s not a lot of time for me to spend on setup or maintenance tasks, I don’t have the bandwidth for things that take too much time, and I have little chance of scaling beyond trading time for money. I’ve been building multiple streams of revenue, but nearly everything is only partially built. This is why I need help and it’s why I’ve hired help. I’ve never been good at delegating but this year I’m going to get a hell of a lot better. … So, this is what I'm focusing on this year. If you're reading this, I hope that you hold me accountable. What are YOUR three words? If you’ve never done this before, there’s no better time to start. Pick your three words and write up something to post on your blog or on Medium. Share it on social media and add the hashtag #my3words so other people can find it. Feeling shy? Don’t want to publish your own post to share with the world? Just post your three words in the comments of this post. Thanks as always to Chris Brogan for the inspiration to do this every year.

As part of my commitment to growth and belief in the importance of self-reflection, I’m adding a new component to this blog, newsletter, and podcast: retrospectives. The purpose of the retrospective is pulled directly from Agile Methodology. As stated in the Principles from the Agile Manifesto: At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. I’m adopting the retrospective to look back on what worked, what didn’t, and collect some thoughts on future actions. Starting with this post, the retrospective will be my last post each year. Now, every year my blog, newsletter, and podcast for Becoming Superhuman will start with My Three Words and conclude with the Retrospective. I encourage you to do this retrospective exercise for yourself either in private, or in public on your own blog or newsletter. If you don’t have a blog or newsletter and would still like to publish your retrospective, feel free to leave it in the comments. I’m always interested to learn more about my audience. This is the last post of 2021, it’s primarily an exercise that I’m doing for myself, but I’m doing it publicly to share my process. I hope you enjoy it. What I did well My second full year of solopreneurship has been a resounding success. Here are a few things I’m particular proud of. I’ve maintained a 4-day work week schedule. I use Monday as a planning and content day, Tuesday through Thursday to work with clients, and I take every Friday off to be with my daughter, reading books, watching cartoons, playing with blocks, dolls, and various singing and musical toys. I’m proud of the consulting and coaching I’ve done to help clients work through challenges in Brand strategy, marketing, sales, and productivity. This year also marked the start of really getting back into public speaking. Something I’m extremely proud of was delivering my Becoming Superhuman Keynote as the opening for a conference on Heroic Leadership to 500 high school students. 2021 has also been the year where my greatest professional accomplishment was realized. I began working with Page Two publishing to bring my book, ***The Lovable Leader***, into the world. Having gone through the entire editing, proofing and design process, I can honestly say that I’m unreservedly proud of the final product. The book will be released January 25, 2022. You can join the waitlist for the pre-order here. I read 27 books so far this year, which a new record for me. Finally, this has been an excellent year for content. My blog became both a newsletter and a podcast as I muddled through a few different email marketing solutions and finally pulled the trigger on an audio version. I’m proud of what my content platform has become. I’m also very proud of the content that I put out this year and think it represents some of my most useful and thoughtful insights and explorations. Not including this post, I’ve published 78 blog/newsletter posts in 2021. Here are some of my favorite posts from 2021:Leadership & CultureHow to change the world

All of the worst jobs I’ve ever had in my career were the ones where I worked for somebody else. The only times I’ve ever felt truly happy in my career are the times where I was working for myself. About two years ago I made a pretty fundamental shift in what it meant to work for myself. I decided to start a company of one. Today, I want to revisit with you why I decided to go the solopreneur route, why I intend to stick with it, and why you may want to consider it. Labor Exploration We go to work to make money. Ideally, we enjoy that work and find it meaningful, though this seems to be the exception, not the rule. Whether we make a living working a job, starting a company, or working for ourselves in a company of one, we’re all trying to make a good living. We want to make enough money to cover our costs of living, save for college or retirement, and have some left over for leisure. I would argue that among the options, self-employment provides the simplest path to making the best living. Not necessarily the easiest, but certainly the most simple. A Job If you have a job, your labor is an expense to the company. Therefore, it is in the company’s best interest to keep salaries and payroll low while trying to get as much revenue generating productivity out of each laborer. Even in a well-paying job, a good portion of the revenue that your labor produces is taken by the company to cover fixed costs, to pay the higher salaries at the top of the organization, or dividends and profit-sharing for shareholders and investors. In order to increase your salary, you are relying on someone else giving you a raise or venturing out to find a new position with the requisite salary. The new job will come with pre-set expectations and possibly a team that you did not choose. In a job, it’s mostly out of your hands, and an uphill climb. This is roughly what it’s like when you work for someone else. A Company When you start and run a company, unless you are a co-op, you must continually generate significantly more revenue per employee than they are paid, in order to cover costs and generate profit. Every dollar you bring in must first go toward covering the cost of overhead and labor. As a company, your labor costs are more than just salary and also include things like healthcare benefits and 401K matching. As you scale, your total labor costs will increase as do your requirements for capital in the bank to cover you in case the business takes a downturn. If you don’t have enough in the bank, when you lose a client or have a weak quarter for product sales, you may need to layoff one or more members of your team. As your labor force grows, your business becomes more complex. Now, you need a human resources department, an IT department, and you’re offering new benefits to keep team members and lure top talent from competitors. You may need office space to legitimize your business in the market, or maintain a place to bring the team together. Once you do that, you’re buying coffee and snacks, office equipment, and that ping-pong table your company culture so desperately needs. After all of that, if there’s anything left, you get to take money out of the company for yourself. So, if you’re looking at starting a company, you need to know that your entire company must first reach a point of sustainability and then profitability, before you are able to start taking a salary. Ask any owner and 99% will tell you that they get paid last. Even though you’re working for yourself, a lot of people get paid before you do. So, who are you really working for? Alone As the owner of a company of one, much lik

I've been doing Brand work off and on, in some capacity, for about a decade. Most of the time I didn't think of it or call it Brand work. In retrospect, it's obvious to me now that it was. Brand, for too long, has been placed inside of the marketing department and, over time, has come to be synonymous with visual identity (colors, fonts, logos, etc). So before we go any deeper into this subject, we all need to be on the same page. While visual identity is component of Brand, the discipline of Brand is about substantially more than that. Here's how I define Brand... Brand is anything dealing with what a company says about itself, what others say about it, how it actually functions across the business to deliver products and services, as well as the intersection between any or all of these factors. So, yeah...pretty much everything is Brand work. Fish 1: How's the water? Fish 2: What the hell is water? The aspect of this work that I find most fascinating is the process of constructing a cohesive and unified Brand. That is, a business where what they say about themselves, is backed up by what they actually do, and is aligned with what others say about them. So, how do we do it? Most brands are built, either as an afterthought, or an exercise in rationalizing their visual design after the fact. A better approach is to plant the seed of a single idea and see that it grows until its presence is felt in every aspect of the company. Regardless of how one goes about building a brand, I would argue that the process itself is, in many ways, the company's search for meaning. Raison d'être When I begin working with a client and start asking about their purpose, one of two things usually happens. They tell me the most literal answer possible: that their purpose is to make money.They tell me the most uninspired answer ever: which is to rephrase what they do as a purpose. Since every business, by definition, is required to make money, that is not its purpose but rather a condition of its existence. Since every business offers something in exchange for money, fulfilling that service or delivering that product, is not purpose, no matter how you rephrase it. The work of Brand, it's not a "wordsmithing" exercise to explain in flowery terms how a business makes money. It is not to hide the fact that businesses must generate revenue. The work of Brand is to communicate clearly: what a company does (solution)how the company is unique (differentiation)what the company values (purpose, mission, beliefs, values)what customers, employees, vendors, shareholders, and other stakeholders should expect When done well, this creates an entity with clear positioning and the exact same association in the minds of everyone who touches the Brand. Volvo didn't become associated with safety by accident (pardon the pun). It was a deliberate commitment to making safety a part of not only their messaging and marketing, but in how they run the company. They are one of the most widely cited examples in Brand conversations for a reason. So how do we find meaning in our companies? The Search for Meaning There's no easy way to do this, but here is a great place to start. Since all companies need to make money, let's take money off the table for a moment.Since all companies sell products, services, or platforms/marketplaces, let's take that off the table, too. The meaning of your company cannot be just the delivery of the thing you offer. Now, consider what you do, and think about all of the reasons you would still do it, if you had to do it for free. What benefit would it bring t

According to relationship researcher John Gottman, the magic ratio is 5:1. That is, the healthiest relationships generally have 5x or more positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Other studies have shown that human beings have a greater ability to recall negative or painful memories than positive ones. As I covered in The Attrition Equation, Prospect Theory would suggest that we are more commonly driven by fear of failure than possibility of success. So what does all of this mean? On the whole, people have a bias for negativity. An Optimistic Take On Negativity Bias Knowing that people have a bias for negativity could sound like a problem.You might want to know how we fix it.You might recognize it in yourself and want to change. I want to offer an alternative perspective: The negativity bias could be one of the most valuable assets you have at your disposal, both personally and professionally. Using The Inversion Method To Find Buried Treasure Every customer persona exercise starts with a guessing game or research into what people like. Every focus group and customer research panel tries to hone in on what people like about a product or service. I’m not saying these are not good things to do, but it paints an incomplete picture and potentially stops you from finding your most useful insights. The real insights can be found by flipping everything upside down. What people don’t like (or even what they hate), can be as much of a pivotal aspect of their identity as what they do like. But what’s even more important is that by saying what we don’t like, we often reveal what we do like. I’ll pause on that point for a moment. Did you catch it? By taking what people say that they dislike and inverting it, we reveal an insight that we may have otherwise never found. Problem: “I hate their ads, they are so annoying and cocky, and they don’t say what the product even is” Solution: Say what the product is in your ad. Don’t be cocky. Problem: “My boss is such a jerk, he never listens to my ideas and treats me like a servant rather than a colleague.“ Solution: Listen to people’s ideas, and alter your language to show respect and your actions to show care. Problem: “I’m exhausted all of the time. I feel like I do everything around the house and my husband acts like he expects it…AND I have to make dinner after a full day of work.” Solution: Share in the household responsibilities and take care of dinner several nights per week. Let your partner know that you appreciate all of their hardwork even after a long day. What people like or want is often cloaked by the negativity bias. So, if people are more likely to remember the negative, more likely to talk about the negative, why not use that to your advantage? The Magic Ratio is a Gift Here are some ways you might use negativity bias to your advantage… When conducting customer research, ask people more questions about what bothers them, what frustrates them, and what they hate, either about your products and services or the universe it a

The greatest leaders are fundamentally no different from you and me. They choose certain ways to behave, either through instinct or education, formal and informal. Great paragons of leadership forge new paths and bring about something remarkable, all because they have one thing in common: people are willing to follow them. Seriously, break it down: Isn't leadership simply the act of leading others toward something? If you want be followed, you must convince and inspire others to believe that you are worth following. It's all right there in the job title. But if you're like most leaders out there, you have a problem... A study by Gallup found that only 15 percent of workers say they are “highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace.” Furthermore, it's estimated that actively disengaged employees cost the United States $483 billion to $605 billion per year in lost productivity. So... that's not great. Not only that, there's a widespread issue with trust. The Edelman Trust Barometer comes out every year and reports on people's feelings about trust and credibility. It has shown that trust in our traditional institutions is consistently lackluster. Whether we're talking about CEOs, experts, or traditional media, the revered gatekeepers and trust signals are now being questioned more than ever. But that's not all! Job stress is also climbing: The survey of nearly 2,000 professionals, conducted by Korn Ferry, also asked professionals up and down an organization about the impact workplace stress had on them. More than three-quarters of the respondents, 76%, say stress at work has had a negative impact on their personal relationships, and 66% say they have lost sleep due to work stress. A small but significant number, 16%, say they've had to quit a job due to stress. The largest source of current stress: bosses. The survey shows 35% of the respondents say their boss is their biggest source of stress at work, and 80% say a change in leadership, such as a new direct manager or someone higher up the organizational chart, impacts their stress levels. Study after study shows that the problem is bad and getting worse. Much of this is brought on or at least exacerbated by technology. The world is changing around us because things are moving faster than ever before. Technology has allowed for more jobs to be performed remotely. Although this is great in some ways, it has produced a few notable consequences. Wages are driven down because less expensive global talent is available. Remote workers can also often feel isolated from their peers and disengage easily. Employee retention has become more challenging as new technologies have opened the communication and information visibility landscape. This means that your teams can find new opportunities, that your competitors have greater access to privately communicate with your employees. Do you have what it takes to keep your best employees, or will they be lured away? For many, leadership is just something that comes with their title. It's something they were dropped into and that they do without passion or purpose. To those people, I humbly submit that leadership is more important than an afterthought. An employee who feels disrespected, unappreciated, or disengaged at work brings that energy home with them. In some cases, they may not have a healthy outlet for those feelings. What happens at work doesn't just stay at work. The days of compartmentalizing each aspect of our lives is rapidly eroding, because our “always-on” smartphone culture has changed the boundaries where work and life are supposed to balance. We've seen the unhealthy effects of that behavior, and although our leadership cannot solve all of the world's problems, it can he

We can all agree that if placed in a leadership position, we’d rather be effective than ineffective. We’d rather people like us than hate us. In short, we’d rather be a great leader than a bad boss. The problem is too many managers still try to gain respect through fear. Too many managers get so caught up in “the work” that they neglect to tend to their people. Too many managers have had no training at all, and are left to follow the bad examples that came before them or react without thinking about the ramifications of their actions. This is where it falls apart. This is how so many managers become bad bosses instead of great leaders. It’s not controversial to suggest that a work environment based in fear and that treats us as a number, isn’t one we’d like to be in. With few exceptions, we would prefer to be somewhere where we feel cared about, trust our managers and team members, and have opportunities to do meaningful work. That’s why if we want to create work environments that are kinder, safer, and more equitable, we need a new path to follow. We need to make sure that every new manager has the training and mindset required to create thriving work cultures and replace the old fear-based model. We can do this…but it won’t happen overnight. It might take a generation, it might take two, but we can do it. Here’s how… Coming Soon In a little less than two months, I will be releasing my book The Lovable Leader. This book is the culmination of everything I have observed, studied, tried, failed, and succeeded at in my career thus far. The lessons are drawn from personal experience but even more importantly, from the vast bodies of accumulated knowledge on leadership, along with psychology, influence, trust, motivation, branding, and more… It is a handbook for new managers that puts trust, respect and kindness at the forefront. It is an easy-to-follow instruction manual for those who want to build loyal teams, resolve conflicts effectively, and accomplish great things as a team. Not only will this book show you how to be more effective, and more well-liked…but it will also show you how to be a great leader with all of the tools to create work environments that are kinder, safer, and more equitable. The book comes out in January 2022. Join the waitlist to be notified when the book is available for Pre-Order. If you are a fan of my work and writing on leadership,

Think back to when you were a kid. I grew up celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah. I remember that the time from December 1 to the morning of December 25th, felt like an eternity. Now, I’m consistently surprised when my birthday is a week away. Age is one factor in this equation, but there’s something even more important. Anticipation Anticipation alters your perception of time. It creates an energy pattern in your body. It’s a form of excitement. Some people find it uncomfortable. I love it. Two days ago, Sony released their final trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man movie, No Way Home. Before the trailer came out, fans were eagerly awaiting news of when the next trailer would drop. There were fan-made trailers, fan-made posters, and endless blogs and vlogs analyzing every rumor and leak. I was one of the people who would turn giddy whenever something related to the film would trend on Twitter. At the same time, I tried to fight my urge to look into it, because I want to experience the magic of complete surprise in the theater. I wanted to indulge that anticipation. Goals Whether we’re talking about a service, a product, marketing, or sales, how often are you focused on creating something people would wait for? Do you even know how to do that? One of the problems, is that we’re living in a world where you’re constantly told that in order to keep up, you need to create 5-6 TikToks per day, post to Linkedin 4 times throughout the day, and bombard your audience across every other channel on the internet. You need to turn up the volume, right? But, the real winners are not the ones with the most volume or who apply the most pressure but the ones who can make something that is worth waiting for it. One option is to churn out as much as you can, hoping for a hit, only to then try and keep the attention until your next win. Another option is to slow down, and take the time to create something remarkable. Here’s my suggestion… How to be worth waiting for While you would think quality is the secret ingredient here, it’s actually third on the list. Whether it’s Marvel movies, Mochi donuts, clever Old Spice ads, or the agency with a wait list, the factors that allow for anticipation and a captive audience are this: Create something that cannot be replaced or substitutedCreate something that is not for everyone If you want a thriving business, you need to be distinctive to the degree that if you couldn’t start work for the client for a month, that they would wait, because you cannot be replaced or substituted. This starts with you brand work and then shows up in every aspect of how you deliver your products and services. If you are a one-of-a-kind, then there will be people willing to wait for it. In order to do this, you need to know who you are for. This means identifying that perfect audience and creating for them. I have countless friends who had no idea there was a new Spider-Man movie coming out. Likewise, I could not tell you much more about Harry Potter than it’s about wizards and Voldemort is bad. Obviously, all this works even better if what you’re creating is amazing. But more important than being good, is being unique, irreplaceable, and for someone specific. I’ll watch every piece of Spider-Man media that comes out regardless of the quality, because there is no substitute, and it’s someth

What is your dream job? I've honestly spent a little too much time wondering what that really means. Today, I'm going to indulge in a bit of my own curiosity. I'm going to try to analyze what makes a dream job, try to answer why more of us aren't working our dream jobs, and finally attempt to figure out how we can create businesses where more people feel that they are working in their dream jobs. Dream + Job A job, by definition, is the exchange of labor for money. Therefore, a "dream job" is the best possible version of trading your labor for money, right? Yet, whenever I've talked with people about their dream jobs, I've noticed that the answers rarely has anything to do with the money. They might say professional basketball player (like I did as a 13 year old).They might say actor.They might say world leader. While most dream jobs people pick typically pay very well, in most cases the reasons people give for picking a particular job as a dream job has more to do with the work itself, or the impact and outcome of the work, than it does the salary. To test this, ask if they'd switch to another job for the same salary and most would likely say no. Salary is a factor but I'd argue it's a relatively small factor, once people's needs are met. The Anatomy of a Dream Job Here's my hypothesis... If dream jobs do exist, everyone's dream job will follow roughly the same formula: do something you enjoy and/or that matters to you,with people who you don't hate and who, ideally, share similar values and respect one another,on a flexible schedule that works for your lifestylecompensated enough cover all of life's necessities (food, water, clothing, shelter, and healthcare) plus the time off and funds to indulge in leisure activities that you enjoy, Unless your definition of a dream job is to be a billionaire or to get paid exorbitant sums of money for doing absolutely nothing (same thing), then I'm willing to bet that this formula hits on all of the important points. Never Enough I can hear it now: "My dream job would be all of that, but with more money." This is one of the reasons why there aren't more dream jobs. It's because we're living in a world where there is almost never enough money to feel truly comfortable and there is virtually no safety net to fall back on. Without living wages or adequate social safety nets, dream jobs are more likely to be dreams than jobs. So, we frantically chase every dollar, hoping to quell the terrifying fear that a dip in the market, an untimely illness or injury, or an extended layoff will leave us hungry or homeless. Therefore, for the dream job formula above to work, it would need to be backed by a safety net that would allow you to move jobs without fear of losing your housing, healthcare, or going hungry. Under the current conditions, the only dream job, is the one that eliminates any fear of not having enough, or getting left behind as a consequence of the "free market." These jobs are few and far between. Real Math In a world with miners, janitors, and people who work in any form of customer service, it is mathematically impossible for everyone to work their dream job whether that is the "purpose, people, pay, and freedom" version or the "get money for doing nothing" version. Which brings us to the point of this post. A critical examination of dream jobs reveal that we can put it within reach and fix our broken culture of work along the way. Here's how... Dreaming of Better Jobs We don't dream of doing work. We dream about the lifestyle that a particular occupation affords above and beyond the necessities.We dream of the ways that we'd most enjoy spending our

One of the most emotionally challenging aspects of leading teams is delegation. On the surface, it sounds quite simple. Just assign the task to someone else. However, in order to delegate work to someone else, you must relinquish your control and put trust in someone else to handle the task. You need to confront your concerns about failure, or come to grips with whether or not anything less than what you could do on your own would be acceptable. You have to consider what it would mean to your reputation if you don’t do the work yourself, or the end product doesn’t measure up. All of this is remarkably difficult, and the primary reason why many managers routinely find themselves saying “I’ll just handle it this time and delegate it next time.” Sadly, next time often never comes. Mastering delegation is important. But that’s not what we’re going to talk about today because I don’t want to waste your time reiterating that you have limited time, can’t do everything, and need to leverage the strength of your team to increase your chances of long term success. Instead, I want to illuminate the three different types of delegators, in hopes that you can find their motivations inside of you. Delegation Motivation: Boss Style Motto: Do as little as possible. “The boss” knows how to delegate work, and their reasoning is simple: the boss is in charge, the workers do the work. At some point, this type of manager was probably encouraged by their manager to delegate more work…and they took it to heart. Here’s the message that they received. A boss has a neatly designed role with a pay grade. Anything below that pay grade is a waste of time and should be handed off. Workers do the work and Managers manage, right? Any manager motivated by their status and rank, who sees work as something to be done by their laborers, will likely adopt this delegation motivation. Over time, it becomes a game of “how-much-work-can-I-push-off-to-my-subordinates-and-get-away-with-it.” Their ultimate goal is to be able to do nothing, except tell others what to do. If they could hire a project manager to do that and report back in, well that would be even a little bit better. This isn’t so much delegation as an abdication of responsibility due to a superiority complex. Delegation Motivation: Manager Style Motto: We all need to work together to get it all done. A good manager sees their role as keeping everything in balance and moving forward. Delegation for the collaborative manager is about making sure everyone is supporting one another to get everything done. It’s a sort of puzzle to be solved. When one person has too much on their plate, some of the load should be moved from one resource to another. The best managers here see themselves as part of this collaborative process, sharing the same commitment to the work as they expect from their team members. This sort of delegation is motivated by balance and is undertaken in service of the work. Delegation Motivation: Leadership Style Motto: We need a team of leaders so everyone’s growth is a top priority. Leaders delegate for two reasons. The first is to create the conditions so they may have the space to place an intense focus on the highest priority items for the good of the team.The second is to give others the chance to shine. The work isn’t handed-off because the leader is lazy and doesn’t want to work. It’s not handed-off purely because a resource is available. The key difference is that work that is being delegated is not being handed down, it’s work that invites people

How do you give someone critical feedback without them getting defensive but instead taking it in the spirit in which it was given? Whether you are a manager who needs to deliver some suggested improvements for a team member, a spouse who needs to broach a difficult subject with your partner, or a parent who needs to course correct a child, it's never easy to deliver criticism. Everyone will struggle with it at some point in their lives. So, how can you do it effectively? Open to Feedback There are two types of feedback that people tend to be most receptive to hearing. I covered this more extensively in Coaching Toolkit: The Art of Feedback. Here's the high level overview... The first is the feedback that we consent to or ask for. People are much more likely to get defensive or push against unsolicited feedback. By contrast, even if the feedback is negative or critical, people tend to be more receptive when they ask for it. The second is feedback that they already know but need to hear in order to work through. This is found in questions such as: what do YOU think about it? We tend to be more willing to acknowledge our own truth and perspective before accepting it from the outside. In short, effective feedback is a function of whether or not the person receiving the feedback is open to it. This naturally leads to the question: how do I get someone to be open to or solicit my feedback? Critical Care What is the key difference between how we relate to taunts from a bully versus advice from a parent? In this extreme example, it should be evident, that the difference, is intent. The bully intends to harm you. The parent, presumably intends to help you. At the core of this difference in intent, is the degree to which each of these individuals cares about you. Ideally, we want those who are critical of us, to also care about us, or at the very least care about what we're doing as part of a team. Imagine a spectrum of caring from no care at all with a potential to harm, extending to deep care with the intention to see one flourish. Now place people from your life along that spectrum. Which of these individuals are you most interested in hearing feedback from, especially negative or critical feedback? Hopefully you can see that the closer you get toward care, the more likely you would be to accept or even embrace the feedback. Now ask yourself... Where are you on the continuum of care? Do the people in your world, at home or at work, place you to the left, the center, or the right of that spectrum? If you want to have people seek out your feedback, or at the very least consent to it, then you need to make sure they sense that you care. Care is at the core of critical feedback. Make sure that you are attending to it, before trying to give people advice. Because if you don't, you could be wasting your breath.

Companies all over the country are facing worker shortages in what has been dubbed “the great resignation.“ “People just don’t want to work” or so the narrative goes. Today, we’re going to answer the question of why people are leaving, and what we can definitively do to fix it. Read the post for full context or just jump to the solution here. Motivation In 1979, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, published their behavioral economics theory known as Prospect Theory which showed that people’s perception of gains and losses are processed illogically. The research showed that, on average, we process the pain from the perception of loss between 2-3x greater than the perception of joy from an equivalent gain. Losing $50 is perceived to feel 2-3x worse than gaining $50 feels good. This is why Prospect Theory is often referred to as “loss aversion theory” and has had a significant influence on modern marketing, sales, and communication. The second chapter in Jonah Berger’s book Catalyst is called Endowment. This chapter explores the idea that people tend to resist change, and tries to identify solutions. The book cites research that shows it takes an average of 2.6x the upside versus downside for someone to make a decision. This is right in line with the research from Daniel Kahneman who, by the way, won a Nobel Prize for his work on Prospect Theory. This means that, on average… someone would need to have a potential upside of $260 to risk losing $100 (example straight from the book)someone would need roughly 2.6x more features and benefits, with no perceived losses, to change internet service providers, cell phone model, or other products and servicessomeone would need a job offer that, on the whole, seems 2.6x better than the perceived downsides of leaving their current job Did you catch the key word? “Perception” In all of these cases, the gains and losses are subjectively perceived, rather than objectively defined. For example, a $260 upside versus $100 downside will feel very differently to someone living in abject poverty than it would to a billionaire. The subject changes the equation. People make decisions based upon their perception of the situation and that perception is shaped by their situation in life. All of the above information shows what it would take for someone to change from their current state. If a benefit fails to be perceived as being substantially better than the staying the same, or the potential loss, people will be reluctant to take action. … Understanding all of what I just wrote is critical if you want to reduce employee attrition in the midst of “the great resignation.” Let’s dig into it. “No one wants to work”

Let's talk about two made-up ideas. Multitasking is largely an illusion and over-committed is a misnomer. "Multi-Tasking" When you are multitasking what you are really doing is quickly task switching. The brain is virtually incapable of thinking about two things at once. You're not good at it, I'm not good at it, no one is good at it...and chances are it's really bad for you. We should stop pretending it's real. "Over-Committed" People who are very busy and have too many obligations often use the term over-committed. However, if you have made more commitments than you have the capacity to honor, then you are not over-committed, you are under-committed, because you have not actually committed to seeing it through to completion. If you were really committed to everything on your list, you wouldn't have taken on tasks that cause you to exceed your availability and threaten your prior commitments. Therefore, if you need a euphemism for having taken on too much, may I suggest saying you are overly ambitious, absentmindedly enthusiastic but, tragically under-committed. Does any of this resonate? For instance... Do you ever feel overwhelmed, overworked, or scattered?Do you ever feel guilty about not getting to everything, or neglecting those things that are important to you?Are you ever uncertain about what to do next? Yeah...me too. here's a big reason why it happens to me. The Tyranny of Possibility I struggle with taking on too many projects. I think my problem is that I fall in love with my ideas and see the glorious possibilities of every endeavor. I do this without being realistic about the time and energy it will take to execute, because I'm far too focused on the vision I have for its end point. I see the path and the destination clearly, but rarely do a personal feasibility analysis. So... I map out new projects, formulate new business ideas, and strategize new partnerships.I add new content projects, buy too many books, and track too many habits.I reorganize my task list, then my calendar, then my task list again. My ideas list continues to grow because I'm overly ambitious, absentmindedly enthusiastic, and (apparently) under-committed. I see the possibility of success in every endeavor...all I need is the time. Mapping The Perfect Day I recently did an analysis on how many hours I would need for my perfect day. Depending on how ambitious I chose to be, it could range anywhere from 26.5 hours up to 32.5 hours. In either case, it's more than I have available. It turns out, that the only way to get it back under 24, is to start deleting things. The things we really want require a sacrifice. We kill the lower priority projects so that the most important ones may live. Then, we kill the medium priority projects so the most important ones can thrive. It all makes sense, but when the moment arrives, I experience deletion hesitancy. Failure is not an option The cruelest irony is that taking on too much and under-committing to what is most important is perhaps the best way to fail at accomplishing your most important goals. Yet, at the same time, to delete an idea, or give up on a project feels like failure. It feels like an explicit acknowledgment of not being enough. But after careful consideration, I continually arrive at the realization that we will not be able to multitask our way out of this problem and we won't be able to add more hours to the day. In the end, we're left with only two options. Build a teamDecide what's really important and be brave enough to be truly committed But even if you build a team, you may find