Podcast appearances and mentions of bernie brown

A Podcast To Kill ForHello, Homicidettes! Welcome to Murder, We Spoke. Listen to the nine-episode series that tells the story of the infamous Murder, We Spoke podcast trio – Bernie Brown, Paula Anderson, and Jane “Crescendo” Doe – on their deadly quest to become true crime podcasting legends.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/houseofmysteryradio. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/houseofmysteryradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Segment 2, March 2nd, 2024 One of the favorite venues of people in the Charlotte area is the historic Visulite Theatre.  This venue began as movie fans in the Elizabeth area of Charlotte used it to see the latest films.  Since then, it has become a music venue, host for private parties, & film festivals. On this segment you'll learn what's been happening regarding performances and parties the past few months & what's upcoming.  The head booker, Bernie Brown joins host Bill Bartee to discuss. Show Highlights: The different types of music & parties that the Visulite has hosted Brown has been the booker of the Visulite since the 1990s They have sold out shows & available shows upcoming The F3T brings the Visulite Theatre back to its roots in Film The venue's capacity is 540 Things You'll Learn by Listening: The Visulite Theatre is the location of the upcoming F3T 2024 edition.  This Charlotte showing that is being held at 1615 Elizabeth Ave. Charlotte venue on Thursday, March 21st, 2024.  The doors open with Live Art (Brian Hester) & Live Music (Moonshine Fudd) & several conservation & fishing clubs joining us. Tickets to the Fly Fishing Film Tour 2024-Charlotte edition are available here. The Carolina Outdoors is powered by the local, independent fly shop, Jesse Brown's.

(Segment 2, From 03.11.23) Few people have booked more talent in the Charlotte area than Bernie Brown. With thousands of live performance bookings under his belt, Brown, owner of the Visulite Theatre chats with Bill & Wes about the 80+ year old staple in the Elizabeth Neighborhood. Brown and his Visulite staff have been supporters of Jesse Brown's Outdoors for years and have let us in to their historic show space to host The Fly Fishing Film Tour for nearly 15 years. On top of that, Brown books performance for many other Charlotte venues such as The Blumenthal Performing Arts Center and The Levine Center for The Arts. To purchase tickets for the 2023 Fly Fishing Film Tour hosted by The Carolina Outdoors and Jesse Brown's Outdoors at The Visulite Theater click here. Tickets are also available at Jesse Brown's Outdoors and at The Visulite day-of the show. If you need another critically acclaimed film tour to add to your calendar, Brown also booked Banff Center Mountain Film Festival World Tour at The Knight Theatre for 2 shows on Sunday March 12, 2023. Wes will be on hand for both shows as the Host and Master of Ceremony which also means he will be handing out the raffle prizes. Show times are 1:30pm and 7pm. There are a few tickets left so act fast! This is an event you do not want to miss...especially when it is shown at The Knight Theater.

Mark and John had a great chat with Erica Mantone. We talked about her upcoming album release and what it took to accomplish this from start to finish. Her energetic and witty persona made it such a wonderful experience to share studio time. She is multi award nominated artist that was vital in resuscitating a Hollywood style Rock Opera staring some of the biggest names in the music world. She is extremely humble about all her notable accomplishments and isn't shy to give everyone credit along the way. "It takes a village to make an Erica," she selflessly proclaims. Her LP titled "I May Have Asked For This" is available on all major download platforms. www.EricaMantone.com for more information Mentions: Debbie Catalano, Gerry Devillis, Just Another Sunday Podcast, Boston Rock Opera, Linda Vienes, Gary Cherone, Mark Cherone, David Bowie, Boston Music Awards, Lisa Fisher, Eric Haines, Nate Leavitte, Dan Nicklin, Buffalo Tom Band, Will Dailey, Pearlables, Wooly Mammoth Studio, Q Division Studios, Blue Tone, Alison Krous, Apple, Spotify, Bandcamp, Amazon Music, iTunes, Pandora, Danny & Susan Cantino, Meghan Tracy, Emily Grogan, Robert Plant, Brandi Carlisle, Yola, Caroline Whiddon, Ronald Bruanstein, Me/2 Orchestra, Jenny Bergman Photography, Secret Bureau of Art and Design, Bernie Brown, Other Brother Daryl, Dan Nicklin and the late Dave Mirabella --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/musiciansandbeyond/support

(From 03.19.22, Segment 2) We have an event coming up very soon on March 23rd! That event is the 2022 Fly Fishing Film Tour that will take place at the historic Visulite Theatre! Jesse Brown's has hosted F3T at the Visulite for many years and we are stoked to be back for another! There will be live music at 5:30pm and the movies start at 7:00pm! Listen in to this episode to hear more about the theatre from Bernie Brown, Owner of the Visulite. Get your Fly Fishing Film Tour tickets here!

Please Subscribe For More Episodes!  Be sure to follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration: @odaatpodcast and @arlinaallen iTunes: https://apple.co/30g6ALF Spotify: https://odaatchat.libsyn.com/spotify Stitcher: https://bit.ly/3n0taNQ YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/2UpR5Lo   Link to Judy's Book:  https://amzn.to/3DTeXet     Hello Loves, Thank you for downloading the podcast, my name is Arlina, and I'll be your host.   In case we haven't met yet, I am a certified Recovery Coach and Hypnotist. I am obsessed with all things recovery, including neuroscience, reprogramming the subconscious mind, law of attraction, all forms of personal growth and spirituality. I have been practicing abstinence from drugs and alcohol since 4/23/94, and that just goes to show, if I can do it, you can too.   Today I'm talking with Judith Grisel. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience, she's a professor at Bucknell University and author of the highly impactful book “Never Enough: the Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction”   What is so interesting about her is that once she got sober, like a lot of us, she wanted to help others suffering from addiction, but she took it to a whole other level! She got her Phd in neuroscience to try to cure addiction! I'm so in awe of her.    This book is full of the mechanics and mechanisms of addiction which really takes the shame out of having mental illness because it demonstrates that anyone could fall prey to addiction. I listened to the audio version of the book, which, btw, I loved  because her voice is so soothing, but I also got the paperback because I wanted to really study some of the concepts she goes into. Plus there's a few pictures in it so there's that.   I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! With that, please enjoy this episode with Judy.   Transcript: Arlina Allen  0:08   Let's see. Judy, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I'm really happy to be here. Arlina is it okay to call you, Judy? Oh, yes. Dr. Chris. No, please. Thank you. Well, listen, I am so excited to talk to you. I have your book. I posted on social media, I was like, I have a big announcement. And I'm talking to the author of never enough the neuroscience and experience of addiction. those that know me know that I'm completely obsessed with the mind the brain. I know sometimes people think of those as two different things, but we can kind of get into it. But what I thought was so good about this book, right? And what I love about science in general, is that it has a way when we you understand sort of the mechanics of it, it kind of depersonalized us and helps us to answer or resolve the things like guilt and shame which she which seemed to me to be a block or a barrier to healing. So I thought maybe we could start first with your a little bit of your story. Like what is I know you've been sober for 35 years? Congratulations.   Unknown Speaker  1:29   It is long time. Yeah. really grateful. Yeah, I it's funny that you mentioned guilt and shame, because I, I could see in my own life, how initially, drugs end up including alcohol were sort of the self or guilt and shame that was just it is still sort of deep in my bones. I'm not sure if it's genetic, or environmental or what, but I am, well acquainted with self criticism, and just, I guess, feelings of unworthiness. And I almost didn't realize that until I had my first drink, which was right about the time of my 13th birthday. And I was a good drink. I mean, I had little sips here and there, but I got loaded for the first time at that age. And more than anything else, it was this great relief, because I suddenly either didn't care or was made, you know, kind of transiently whole in a way that was so profound, so people talk about it all the time. But it did literally feel as if that absence was running over and you know, with fullness, I guess and so, I because I was off to the races pretty pretty dramatically. I grew up in a I guess there's no such thing as a typical home, but I was certainly fairly advantaged and you know, had no big traumas. I guess that's also kind of a funny thing to say. But you know, in light of how hard it is to grow up, I think I was fairly on the easy half anyway. And, but I got this alcohol, I spent 10 years taking as much of every single mind altering drug I could find. I remember one time I found some pills and I just, you know, took them, I was kind of, and I still am, I guess a little bit all or none so I, I was definitely I went from none to all. And as a result, I was kicked out of my first school in 10th grade. It was a, you know, girls Catholic school, so they didn't go for the kind of thing I was up to. And then to colleges I was expelled from and I was homeless intermittently, often, I contracted hepatitis C sharing dirty needles. And I hated myself really, I did hate myself that was probably my bottom was as kind of self loathing, so that I was just a teeny bit unwilling even though at the time, right around the time my 23rd birthday, I thought, drugs and alcohol were the solution to my problems of the cause. I was sort of willing to go to what I thought was going to be like a spa, an educational spa, which they was treatment. This was in the 80s so I had no idea about drug treatment at all. I just heard the word treatment and it seemed to be something I deserved. So anyhow, I ended up in what was more like a hospital for crazy adolescence and, and there without drugs in my body for a few weeks, I got kind of scared at the disaster of my life. And, and I guess I wasn't you know, it's an interesting thing as we talk about how we have to sort of see it and be willing to change. I was barely willing, I feel like I was kind of plucked out of my situation. And I had just enough grace or openness. I am sort of an experimentalist at heart. And I, I think I figured they were all saying to me from going on too much, by the way. Arlina But anyway, I was saying, you know, if you want to live, you're gonna have to quit using and I thought, No way. There's got to be another way work around. Yeah, work around, there's a backdoor somewhere. So I figured I would cure my addiction was going to take me seven years, I was going to stay clean for that seven years. Well, I solved the disease of addiction, which is what everybody was saying. And then I would use and so I was open minded and totally, you know, arrogant ignorance, naive, I don't know. But I, I was willing to do seven years, I guess,   Arlina Allen  6:26   what was the seven years to get your degree? You know,   Unknown Speaker  6:28   no, I think I wasn't thinking that clearly. I figured that I started when I was 13, I was 23, I decided I wasn't really in terrible shape, you know. So it was like seven years of intense addiction. Somehow it seemed balanced to me, if I could clear it up in seven years, and then there was just no way you were gonna tell me, I was going to spend the rest of my life without drugs, which is what my life is completely about by that time. So yeah, I was scared enough to be willing enough to be open enough to try a different way temporarily. And I remember when seven years came, by the way, and went and I looked around my life was a zillion times better. It wasn't, you know, easy, by any means. But it was definitely better. And my curiosity had kind of come back. And so I, you know, kind of a data time is, you know, stuck it out. And so here I am, 35 years clean and sober, still have not cured addiction, still very interested in the role of science in understanding and treating and preventing addiction, but also recognize that there's a lot that science doesn't know. And so, yeah, I think, yeah, it's been a it's been a fun, rich trip.   Arlina Allen  8:07   It's fun. That's, that's awesome. I mean, we were people who insist on having a time that's for sure. I think that's so amazing that so so you became abstinent at 23. From then on, he became abstinent.   Unknown Speaker  8:22   I mean, I smoked a few cigarettes and I'm completely addicted to coffee, but I don't think that his account had other than nicotine, any mind altering chemicals, and I've been tempted many times, so it's not like I just said, you know, that's it for me, I guess. Yeah, just a long, long time.   Arlina Allen  8:46   You know, I knew that you and I were going to be friends when you talked in your book about like, the your love of weed. Oh, my gosh, if I there was a period of time that if I was awake, I was high. Right? I grew up in the church and the preacher's daughter. The pastor's daughter once told me she's like, I'm high. So often that not being high was as my altered reality. And I was like, Oh, my God, you're my hero. I want to be just like you. And I was. But in your book, you talk about how I see after I got sober. It took me a little over a year to go a single day without wishing for a drink. That is rough. But it was more than nine years before my craving to get high abated during that, and I think I'm so glad that you've mentioned that because I think a lot of people especially those who are 12, step oriented, are you know, they hear stories about like, the obsession to use is lifted, or they're on this pink cloud. And I think for people who don't have that experience, they feel They're doing something wrong. Right. But   Unknown Speaker  10:02   I think for Bill Wilson, right, it was just an overnight thing. And for many of us, it's sometimes slowly and for I was definitely have a slow variety. I, I really, and when I say, you know, for the craving to abate, I really seriously wish to get high for most days, those nine years. Yeah. And I, you know, the more time that went by the more, I could see what was at risk. So when I first got clean, you know, there's nothing to lose, because you're at rock bottom. But, you know, as a result of putting one foot in front of the other things got much better. So, you know, then I could kind of see that, and then I remember so well, I can almost taste it the experience of not wanting to smoke, and I can remember how all the sudden, I was okay to be in concerts that were indoors with good weed around me. Or, you know, I was sort of indifferent. Like I was like, I had been to alcohol. You know, I'm, I have served alcohol to friends. And I was kind of in that position, like, I don't care if you smoke or not. And then it got I had the craving come back. I was, I was joke about this, but right around menopause. I just knew that, for me, an antidote to the anxiety and just sort of the brittle angst of hormonal changes, I guess was going, you know, could be smoking. And, you know, anxiety is so epidemic, and I hadn't really had a ton of it until, and there was other things going on in the world, we can just say at that. But, anyhow, oh my gosh, and I think I say this in the book, too. But I, I, at the time, I was thinking maybe I'll get cancer and my doctors make me smoke. And then little I do you know, I mean, I was wishing for, you know, some kind of serious illness. So   Arlina Allen  12:23   our minds play funny tricks on us, it doesn't matter how long you're sober. It's just weird layer. If that was ever a solution in your mind. I've heard that dopamine is like the Save button. Right? I don't know if you've ever heard of Dr. Andrew Haberman, he talks about how in nature like a deer that will find water, they get like dopamine is released. And that's how they remember where the water is. And it's almost similar for us. Like when we do something that makes us feel good. Dopamine is then released. And it helps us to remember what made us feel good. And I feel like it's burned in my psyche that if I take a bomb hat that I'm going to feel good. And I have other solutions, but it's all it's I don't think that idea is ever gonna leave me, you know, 27 years sober. I was telling you earlier that my younger son went to rehab. And this all was predicated because we found a Bag of Weed in his room and duty, I had not held a bag of marijuana for almost 30 years. And when it was in my hand, this plastic baggie, it was like I was a teenager again. And my inner drug addict was like, well, maybe we should, maybe we could maybe maybe. And I was like, I was actually a little alarmed almost a little bit of shame. Like seriously, after all this time, after all the work I've done. It's still there. I mean, it's just so engrained in my brain, I guess.   Unknown Speaker  14:00   Absolutely. And I think the one of the interesting things about the story, you just told us that the ability of a drug to make to release dopamine is different across the population. So for some people, that marijuana let's say, or alcohol doesn't do much to that for me, and for other people. It's really a potent signal. And I think that is part of the reason some of us are more at risk than others and and also the reason why it's not a really reasonable argument to say, you know, why don't they just put it down because it is like a thirsty person finding water as opposed to somebody who's completely satisfied finding water, you know, you can take it or leave it. So I think that's true. And also the brain. You know, learning is absolutely persistent. So Pretty sure we will both be I guess subject to those kinds of, you know, triggers through our until we die.   Arlina Allen  15:11   Yeah, maybe, maybe this is a good time to ask you, you know, what is what's different in that? So you're you have your PhD in neuroscience. And you know, he got sober and went on this quest to cure addiction. What have you found that's different about the brain of people who get addicted so quickly?   Unknown Speaker  15:34   Mm hmm. Well, I guess the, what I want to say first is that it's not simple, I thought I was gonna be a little switch that we were going to discover, and I wasn't alone in this, I think this was scientific understanding in the 80s, we'll find that, you know, broken switch or molecule or circuit and fix it. It's definitely not that way. So the causes of addiction are very complex and intersectional. They involve differences in dopamine and other genetic liabilities, or protective factors that make the the initial sensitivity to a drug, different across different people. So some try a drug for the first time and absolutely love it. About a third of people, for instance, try opiates and don't like them at all. And they usually try them in the doctor's office, but they find them aversive. So obviously, that's a good protective,   Arlina Allen  16:40   meaning, meaning they don't like the way they feel. Yeah, so weird to me,   Unknown Speaker  16:45   largely genetic. I know. Right? So very big individual differences. And then there are sex differences. So women tend to appreciate drugs that provide relief. And then justice is overgeneralizing a little bit Sure, overall, tend to appreciate drugs that make them feel good. And so women don't want to feel bad, and drugs help with that, certainly, especially and men like to feel good. Another big factor, and probably the largest factor more than genetic liability is adolescent exposure. So kids, like your son and my daughter are tuned into Well, they have, they have a particular kind of brain that is the adolescent brain that is really prone to trying new things, really prone to not worrying is certainly abstractly worrying about consequences. So they're less cautious. And they, they want to buck against whatever they're told, they shouldn't do. And those three traits like novelty seeking, and risk taking, and not really caring about consequences are ones that help them to become adults, if they just listened to their parents until they were 35. No one would really like that. So they they're designed to kind of say, not this, you know, I'm making my own way, which would be good if there wasn't so many high potency, dangerous ways of escaping at their fingertips. So I think through most of our evolutionary history, these you know, kids having that tendency is is no problem. The other thing that kids have in their brains are different about is that, and we all know this, they are terrific at learning. I'm teacher, and it's crazy, because and you probably noticed this with your own children, but they don't seem to even be paying attention. yet. They are like sponges information really goes in. And if they were learning French, or if they're learning addiction, both ways, their brain is really quick to take the experience and build it into the structures so that it's lasting, and I can learn French, or addiction, but your chances are so much lower. So if you start using any addictive drug, before you're 18 you have about a 25% chance of developing a substance use disorder. And the earlier you start using, the higher the chance, I started 13 so you know it was basically more likely than not. And that's because 13 year olds are great at picking up new information, much better than 33 year olds. So they if you if you Wait, on the other hand till you're 21, your chances are one in 25.   Arlina Allen  20:06   Wow, I told   Unknown Speaker  20:07   my kids that and I tell my students that and they all ignore me. Why? Because they're high novelty seeking high risk taking, and they don't really want to listen to the, you know, concerns or worries. I mean, that's not how they're designed. So we're in a kind of a perfect storm for them. And that, that is the best predictor of developing a problem starting early is starting or like,   Arlina Allen  20:30   you know what terrifies me nowadays I have a nephew who's 26 years old. And he's had four friends died from accidental fentanyl overdose, because for whatever reason, drug dealers are putting fentanyl and everything. And you know, these are pretty well adjusted kids. I don't think it's I know that there's a certain percentage of the population who indulge a little bit who don't have a disorder. Or maybe that's Yeah, is that is that true?   Unknown Speaker  21:02   Well, it's, it's more true if you start at 26. And if you start at 16, as I just said, but I think the reason that nose and everything is because it is so is it a traffic, it's so so potent, that a tiny bit can get the whole town high. So it's really advantageous to traffickers. And also, because people are having access to more and more chemicals. And when they start early, especially their reward pathway, the dopamine pathway we've been talking about is kind of desensitized, so they can't, you know, have a cup of wine coolers that doesn't do the trick at all anymore, they need something a little more, because they're sort of immune to the that dopamine, squirt? So yeah, unfortunately, I think that's another reason it's not gonna. We, I think focus, we've also noticed lately that there's more and more overdoses from methamphetamine, and then from somebody who's been looking at the trends for a long time, it's always be something and there's always going to be more potent, whatever. So it's not the drug itself, as much as this very narrow ledge that more and more of us are on trying to, I guess, medicate reality. And and so, you know, I think, I don't know how that is for your nephew. But it's a terrible lesson to have to learn for all of us.   Arlina Allen  22:51   It's just, it just makes me sick. I mean, I think there was a report that was released, I think it was at the end of March, there was a 12 year period that they were measuring overdoses that ended in March, and I think they track like 80,000 deaths. And, and I just think about all the families like all the mothers, all the all the fathers and siblings, and just everybody that's affected by so many deaths, and   Unknown Speaker  23:19   and I think a 40% increase in those deaths over the last year with COVID. So the isolation as Alicia is, has made, and also the the higher, you know, the more likely you are to find fentanyl, and whatever it is you're taking at, which is just hard to prepare for I think, biologically. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's tragic. It's so tragic.   Arlina Allen  23:50   And then and then so my mind naturally goes, Well, what can we do about it? You know, it's like, we can understand, I love how, you know, science will sort of break down the mechanics. And once we understand, you know, alcohol is addictive drugs are addictive. I mean, there's a reason why they're illegal, right? It's because they're so harmful. But, you know, and then we can get into the causes, right? Like you mentioned, it's a very complex issue, you know, we you mentioned, do you that you didn't have any big trauma growing up, but I feel like, you know, we were sort of in that generation where we were not like things like ADHD and anxiety and depression weren't really talked about a whole lot. And we really didn't know how to treat those. And so our parents handled us with a lot of tough love. I got a lot of tough love and you know, from reading your book and listening to your interviews, it sounds like you were raised with that as well. And then your Can we just talk a little bit about your dad, like I wonder what it was. We talk a lot about science and it sort of leaves God out a little bit. But in my experience, it feels like there are things that are sort of serendipitous or magical about the unusual things that happen that lead us to a life of recovery. Like, what was your dad's role and your recovery?   Unknown Speaker  25:23   Um, yeah. So, so much in that question, especially, I guess I want to start by saying that I agree that we did not recognize trauma, and anxiety and all mental illnesses, wait, their response was, was so different, I think. And in my house, it was to push through both my father's parents were immigrants. And he dealt with life by controlling everything he could. And that worked great until he, you know, met 13 year old me. And I was absolutely out of control, by definition, and   Arlina Allen  26:11   he would have been terrifying to me.   Unknown Speaker  26:13   I was terrified. And I was I was, like, determinately, out of control. I mean, that was my goal to be absolutely out of control. And the more both my parents tried to kind of constrain me, the less manageable I was, and I guess I, I don't think I'm unique in this. I mean, I've raised three children. And so it's something built into the teenage neurobiology. And I had it probably in spades. So his way of life because   Arlina Allen  26:45   you're smart, smart kids are harder to race.   Unknown Speaker  26:48   I don't know. I'm also, one thing I like about myself more than if I have any smartness is, is that I'm, I guess, strong willed. And so I don't know if that actually goes with intelligence or not, but I'm not the one who's following so much. And so I wasn't named, I wasn't influenced really by too much of what people, you know, just like you said, you know, you try to get the information out. Drugs are dangerous, but it doesn't really have an impact my kids have grown up with man, they've been sort of forced to look at graphs and things. And, you know, they'll say to me, my daughter said to me the other day, you know, I know all this. But and that is sort of how I was, and I didn't know that much. My mother was giving me a reader's digest reprints you know, of how lead would damage your ovaries and stuff. But anyway, you're like,   Arlina Allen  27:49   Oh, good, I will get pregnant.   Unknown Speaker  27:51   No, I didn't. Yeah, wasn't on my radar at all. But anyhow, my father, because I think it was so painful to be around me. And to watch me his strategy, which is kind of in our family, I guess, was just denial that he even had a daughter. So during a period, after they kicked me out of the house, right about my 10th birthday. He, he would, and he would say that he had two sons. It was just too much for him. And this is kind of the way he is. So it's, and I think it's fragile. That's what he was. And he was raised to be fragile, because it was a lot to worry about, because they were poor immigrants and you know, a million ways to not make it and I think that's common for a lot of people today. So my father was just able to block it out. And we have a family friend who I dedicated the book to father, Marty Devereaux, who is this kind of an unbelievable, interesting person. He's in his 80s. Now, we're still good friends, but he is a psychologist, and has a lot of experience with addiction and also a Catholic priest. And he told my father, and don't my father's not really Catholic. I mean, he was raised Catholic, but that doesn't mean too much these days. So anyway, he   Arlina Allen  29:19   Where was he from? Marty Devereaux?   No, I'm sorry. Your said Your father was an immigrant. Oh,   Unknown Speaker  29:24   he was born in Atlantic City. But his mother was from Slovenia, and his father from Switzerland. And they met in Central Park. They were both, you know, one was a baker one was a housecleaner. And they sent two sons to college and wow. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's a pretty typical American story. Yeah, yeah. But um, anyway, Marty said take her out to dinner and bring her flowers like on a date. Well, I have No idea what how my father did this because he's, he's just not the type to waste any money on flowers, or two. And I was when I say I think I tried to convey this in the book. But when I imagined myself now at that moment, I was pretty deplorable. I was probably quite smelly and dirty. I was, at this point, sort of living in a one bedroom apartment with many people. And I was pretty gross. So anyway, this is when you were 23. I was not quite 23. So his takeaway? Yeah, so we he picked me up and you know, so not only was I gross, I was completely belligerent. I, I thought that my parents were terrible. And I didn't want any part of their fascist, you know, existence. And yet, I deserved a nice dinner, of course. So my big dilemma, I will not I really can still almost feel this was how we were going for early bird dinner, because it's my dad. And I'm very frugal. Yeah, he is wealthy and frugal. And   Arlina Allen  31:27   that's how I get wealthy.   Unknown Speaker  31:28   Yeah, I mean, this is sort of the first thing I guess. But anyway,   Arlina Allen  31:32   and that was a dad begged my dad, maybe it is a dead   Unknown Speaker  31:35   thing. He was also an airline pilot, so just not extremely cautious. He still is. And he's, he's in his 80s today, and we have a great relationship. But anyway, I was so stuck, because when he was picking me up, maybe quarter to five, but I had to figure out between 11 when I woke up and six hours later, how to be not too high when he came, you know, high enough, but not too high. And of course, this is harder and harder to achieve at this point in my life, because I could either be passed out or getting ready to be I mean, it was just hard to find that place. So anyway, he picks me up, he takes me out. And he said, and we talked about this still. Dude, I just wanting you to be happy. And I guess I should say, he doesn't remember saying that. But I know he said it. Because it was the most unlikely words that could ever come. And this is sort of what you were getting at, I guess where did those words come from? They're not my dad. My dad was worried about my teeth and the way you know, a lot of things but not my happiness ever. No, probably it's hard for him. And I had of course, no. No adequate response to that because I was absolutely miserable. And it went right into my heart. I fell apart. Yeah, it was a funny like tears   Arlina Allen  33:10   in my eyes. Just to think that the hard ass dad was so sweet, right? When you needed it the most. I know,   Unknown Speaker  33:17   you know what he tells me now it's funny. He, I was so out of it. I guess I don't remember the flowers. But he took me in his very clean car and my friends I guess to the beach to go for a swim that same day, that same after dinner. And we got to fill the sand. And that's what he remembers as his biggest stretch. And what I remember as his biggest stretch is him reaching across the table with his heart and saying, I want you to live basically. I mean, he sent me how I think he he met a lot by that. And my mother was not invited to the dinner. I hadn't spoken with her in a long time either. But she had been researching treatment centers for years she had had a court order actually in Florida, there's an act where you can commit somebody because of their addictions. And they thought over that a lot. But anyway, next thing I knew they flew me to a treatment center, which of course I had no idea what I was getting into and saved my life really. That place did. So I feel really fortunate that I had that opportunity to wake up a little bit as I think for the chances are that my father wouldn't have said that my mother wouldn't have had the resources to know what to do and I would have died on the streets probably not too much longer.   Arlina Allen  34:52   I feel like that really speaks to you know, people just didn't have solutions, right and they get so far straighted that their only choice is to disown right. Like I had that same experience with my mom, she disowned me on a regular basis, like she was an immigrant from Mexico. And although my father was, you know, his, his people have been here a long time. Like, they didn't know what to do with me either. And, you know, my dad was always the sweet and nurturing one, but he was, you know, he's former Marine, he was a government guy, he was kind of a hard ass, and in a lot of respects, but, you know, our parents, you know, just, it's just speaks to the love of a parent, you know, you want to save your kids. You know, you see your kids are suffering and like, my mother just didn't know how she was so frustrated that she would disown me on a regular basis. But I think when I think it's the contrast between like, a little bit of sweetness goes a long way, because it's not what we're used to. It's so shocking. Like, shocking to the system,   Unknown Speaker  36:00   let's thought about it a lot, because I do think there's a, I had a boyfriend at the time who died. Oh, overdose. And his parents were extremely sweet. So it's hard. And you could say they sweeted him into his last big use, but um, I don't know that there's a recipe I think if if there was one thing that, that I tried to do with is to show up and be honest, and I think it was so painful for my parents, both of my parents to just grapple with what happened to their little girl, that their tendency was to not show up. And I don't blame them. I mean, it's it's tough. It's tough raising teenagers sometimes because they're not that it's almost unrecognizable, you know, from the sweet nine year olds, or the 99 might become, but I think what we're called to do for each other is to tell the truth, not their truth. You know, I don't you know, you're speaking from him first himself. He said, Yeah, I was. I mean, I think this was true for him, I think, really at the core, and somehow he had the grace to find it. What all he really wants and all, probably any parent wants their kid to be well, and whatever well looks like for us. And I think the fact that he could say that was kind of miraculous.   Arlina Allen  37:42   Very, yeah, that was absolutely. sneak up for Marty, right?   Unknown Speaker  37:47   Yeah, yeah. Exactly. No, I   Arlina Allen  37:50   think yeah, it's, it's just, yeah, my mom was, she was really tough. And I remember growing up, she's going through her second divorce. And all my hair started falling out, like a lot I was under, and nobody knew what was going on. And you know, when it ended is one day, she let me curl up in her lap and cry. I had a good cry. And then my hair stopped falling out after that. Wow. Yeah. And I think it was like, there needs to be this balance. Like I feel like as a parent I attend like we tell our kids that we love them all the time. And I almost feel like maybe we maybe it's a little too much sweetness. You know, I have I have the the hard ass edge me because I think I inherited that from my mom. But you know it when you get something different from your parent, it is kind of jolting. It is kind of healing, it can be life changing, if it's different. So if you're sweet all the time, when you show up with boundaries that can be jolting. When you're a hard ass your whole life and you show up with a little bit of sweetness. It can be start, it's like a pattern interrupt, you know that. It's just kind of interesting. And I wanted to ask you a little bit   Unknown Speaker  39:09   of a story, by the way. But your mother obviously was disappointed, you know, and her own struggles, but that she was able to be with you. And warning I think that is really a bridge.   Arlina Allen  39:28   That was it made me feel you know, like the talk about original wounds, like I don't matter, or I'm unlovable because I'm either too much or not good enough. Right. Or maybe that I'm alone, you know, those original wounds, and I feel like I had all those but my mom, you know, in that moment, it's like those, like that moment that your dad had like they were willing to do something different. Like they had a glimmer of hope, like somebody gave them hope and they decided to do something different. And that's kind of what But you said your dad reached across the table with his heart, you know, and it was like, there is something that's transmitted, like when people are really vulnerable and honest and coming from their heart. That's so healing. Right? And I feel like that's a lot of what recovery has been about for me is that just that willing to be vulnerable and have a degree of humility, it's a lot of times kind of, like forced humility. It's like, like, I have to get honest about what what's really going on, so that I can get the solution. But you know, as a parent, you know, we're talking about our kids, and how do we reach our kids, because I think that's, you know, in this day and age, a lot of us that have had addiction issues, you know, we're worried about passing it down to our kids. And we thought we were talking earlier about leading by example, right, we need to lead by example for our kids, and it's so hard to know, I felt like we're walking this fine line. Because, you know, kids commit suicide all the time, like, you know, and the, there's all these ideas, like kids are like, a very aware of anxiety and depression, and being socially awkward, and there seems to be, you know, and as a parent, it's like, you want to encourage them to get help and take responsibility for their feelings at the same time, you don't want to push them too hard, because that is the ultimate threat is that they will commit suicide. Right. And it's, and I know that they're taking drugs to medicate, I took drugs to medicate. And I used to say that, you know, drugs, drugs, were my savior for a long time. If, if I had to feel, you know, especially those young years 1415 if I had to feel all the feelings, because I didn't have any coping skills, I don't know that I would have survived. So, you know, I know you've been trying to cure addiction, and what are some of the things that, you know, besides leading by example, for our kids, how can we, how do we, how do we fix this duty? How do we,   Unknown Speaker  42:08   I think we show up for each other is to start I don't know. But I, I do feel, and everybody says this, I guess every generation notices this, but I do think it is an inordinately challenging time to be growing up. I was saying to a student in my office, not too long ago, you know, if you're not anxious, you're crazy. Because and crazy is probably not the right word for Psychology at it. You know, and here I am a psychologist, I'm not all that correct times. But I think that you at least if you're not anxious, and you're growing up right now, you're somehow blind and deaf, or in denial, yeah, or in a massive denial, which I don't even know, I think that I think what's different, and what shifted for my dad, and what continues to be something that I work on, is to respond to all this pain, the natural response is to sort of curl up and close in, and to hide, and to take ourselves away. And as addicts you know, I still have a great capacity for denial that I have to check all the time. But I also found many tools to use. And that's why drugs are so compelling, because it was like, boom, you know, you've got a 10 foot wall now, between you and any realities, are safe and cozy, and delightful. And I think kids find drugs, you know, to do the same thing, but they also are stuck in a way because face it, that it's a tear, it's a hard time for any of us to be on the planet. And there's not a lot of great models of going through that awake and an honest and I guess, you know, I just try to put myself in the position of a nine year old, knowing, you know, probably on Instagram and every other thing, you know, how much suffering there is or is about to be. And then seeing the many ways, drugs and other ways that adults around are medicating and escaping. And even though you and I have been able to put down drugs, I think, at least for me, I guess I can still do want I naturally want to distance myself. And I don't I think that is a way to kind of abandon the nine year olds. I don't know how old you were when you're here was five out but I think as about maybe than nine or 10 Yeah, the metaphor is put our heads on each other's laps and, and just cry, you know, cry or or whimper or hope or try or touch each other I think in touch each other in the in the true spot where there is anxiety and depression and fear because if we can't do that and there's so many opportunities to escape I you know we're in a kind of a vortex going down the drain here because the more we escaped the worst things grow around us because we don't have to deal with them. And then the young people see oh my gosh, it's, you know, this is a crazy house. This being Earth. So I, I think or your family, I suppose but I, I guess we're both your mother and my father were able to do was recognize, you know, the truest piece of themselves and their children and respond honestly. Yeah. And that sometimes that might be kindness, sometimes that might not be kindness. But I think it's honesty, that's the, the, the thing we're really lacking or, or, you know, maybe the, the lifesaver would be Yeah,   Arlina Allen  46:44   I think in that moment, there was, you know, a high degree of empathy. Bernie Brown is a shame researcher, she talks about empathy is the antidote to shame. Right? I've heard people say that, you know, this is a disease of isolation and connection is the cure. And you know, I really feel like connection is one of those one of those solutions to all this, like, we need to connect with each other. We're, you know, as human beings, we actually really need each other.   Unknown Speaker  47:15   Oh, my goodness, yeah.   Arlina Allen  47:17   Yeah, I need to be around easily cope with stress   Unknown Speaker  47:20   is by social support. And there's tons of evidence that social support, not only mitigates, but also reverses the effects of stress. And it is, you know, surely a big part of, of getting better as individuals and also as communities and families, I think, recognizing that and it's tough because my parents kicked me out your your mother disowned you. And partly for me that facing the consequences of my decisions was helpful. But I do think that's harder because fentanyl wasn't around. You know, you you don't want to face them in the ultimate, you know, right, way too early. So I guess as parents we, we try to block a very tough line these weird. Yeah, it is hard.   Arlina Allen  48:23   Yeah. But I'm glad to hear that there's evidence that shows that social support mitigates and reverses stress, that's amazing. It kind of confirms everything that we knew, right? Like, we got sober we got social support, we, you know, had lots of people who had done it before us so learning by example, I hear that hope I've heard hope is hearing other people's experiences, which is why I do the podcast right? You know, people that listen, go Okay, you know, we can talk about the mechanics how, how the brain works, and all that and how it's affected by alcohol. And you know why it's a bad idea. But then hearing about like the turning point, like when your dad reached out to you, and you were at that place where I'm sure you had you were sick and tired of being sick and tired. Ready, just ready enough, you talk about just having just a tiny bit of willingness. It's a little chink in the armor. How long were you in that? That rehab in the 80s   Unknown Speaker  49:29   I was in for 20 days, which seemed like nine years and then I was in a halfway house for three months, which I calculated at the time so I know this is true was 1/27 of my life or something. I forget how I did that or something like that. I had some kind of crazy mula totally a rip off. I was so furious. But I, I was, like I say at the turning point, and there's been so many times, you know, I know where things are. Lena, we're talking about openness. And I think one way I could be honest, is to say, even after setting addiction for 35 years, and having all this personal and scientific experience, I still need to be open to all I don't know. And certainty is a lie, you know, certainty is the biggest illusion. And so here we are kind of trying to get through. And I think that is what I first had in my I was very certain until I'm in the treatment center. And I'm asked to try a different way. And I was troubled, because on one way I went, and I could see my way was not going great. Like it was really not going well. And I could see that without the drugs, you know, for a few weeks. But to do an another way that was extremely vague and chancy, and, you know, just seemed really crazy. To me. I was just stuck. And that, like you say this, just a tiny bit willing to say, I don't know. And, okay, you know, and this is a still, I think where I am I one of the things I love about recovery the most is that it is always different. And, you know, I thought that drugs were gonna give me this great, you know, every day is a big surprise, you know, who knows if it's the cops or that whatever. It just turned out to be adrenaline, but it was a grind, it was not really novel or interesting. And in fact, 35 years later, I'm I'm just astounded by how much mystery there is, in any day. It's just breathtaking. So I guess that I have to show up for that, you know, I have to not buy into the lie that I know exactly what I'm doing. Right?   Arlina Allen  52:20   I think the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know, a lot. You know, yeah, that is a I do love that about recovery is that every day is kind of new again, you know, and that we don't have to, and there's so much interesting research going on. Now I know that, you know, and I didn't I feel like we're running out of time, but that there is so much research now on helping people with chronic addiction through things like psychedelics. It's just like, you know, I I practice abstinence. So that's, let's face it, my life is fine. Like I don't, you know, need that. But for the chronic alcoholic who meets some criteria of like, you know, post traumatic stress disorder, and things like that. I know, Johns Hopkins is doing some interesting studies about that. That Yeah, there's still so much to learn about, about the brain and addiction and how to help people. Where do you see the focus of your work in the next, I don't know, five to 10 years?   Unknown Speaker  53:28   Well, can I just respond to this thing about the psychedelic so   Arlina Allen  53:33   Oh, sure. Yeah, cuz Yeah, you wrote a lot about it, and you're But well, I read some about   Unknown Speaker  53:36   And I think it's congruent with what other people are writing to that it may be those drugs may be a useful tool. But it reminds me that they go back to what you were saying earlier, the the benefit of those drugs is in their ability to help us connect with something bigger than ourselves, you know, which could be the love of other people. And I think that it reminds me that every drug is only doing nothing new, it's a total we have the capacity to do ourselves. So the way the pharmacology goes is that drugs work by exploiting pathways we already have. So in a way, this opportunity for transcending ourselves to connection with others, maybe helped by psychedelics, but those are not the answer. The answer is transcending ourselves by connecting with ourselves in something bigger than ourselves. So I would say that what I'm working on now Well, I there's so much that I am excited to do I wish I could stay up later, but I've got my research lab going. I'm studying sex differences in addiction. I'm also studying initial responses. to drugs and I'm interested in the genetic difference, individual differences that are mediated by an interaction of genes and say stress or other kinds of environmental influences. But I'm also hoping to write another book and I have this is funny because I'm, I don't really consider myself the book writing type, I'm kind of like the short, quick, get it done thing. And the first book took 10 years. So I don't have that a 10 years. I know so sad. Because I was busy, I was raising children and I was trying to get grants and we're, you know, grade papers and all that. So I can't do that, again, I don't, I have three books, so I'm probably not going to live long enough. So three books I want to write and I have a sabbatical coming up. And I'm hoping that I will have an opportunity to spend the year getting at least one of those out either on the adolescent vulnerability to addiction or on sex differences in the causes and consequences of addictive drugs, or just a kind of more philosophical take on. Because so a response to the opportunity that everybody alive on the planet has today to take substances and just as you were saying, sometimes for some people, those and some substances might be beneficial, and sometimes not. And I think that understanding and sort of finding your way to a personal ethic of how, what drugs in my life requires and appreciation of science, but also of you know, our honest assessment of who and where we are our development and what drugs are doing for instance, I this is just a little thing, but I read the other day that the marijuana industry is really exacerbating the droughts on the west coast. And that is a sort of a dilemma for this idea. And I mean, I I think there may be benefits also, but you know, it's not that our choices, if we know anything in October of 2021, we realize that our individual choices have impact on others, and so and on ourselves. So I guess I want to just consider that and not in a you know, there's a lot that can be said about it. So anyway, I'm excited about all those things. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I'm hoping to take a break from teaching it's been a tough year and a half with COVID Yeah, routines and yeah, yeah, I think we're all kind of hobbling through   Arlina Allen  58:03   Yeah, my heart goes out to all the teachers I know it's just been it's we're living in through unprecedented time so I really so grateful to all the teachers who've been able to hack it out and help our kids right it's it's really important work. You know, they I think they need as many people in their corner as they can get. So thank you for hanging it out and being available to all these kids. But I am so excited about your your book projects. I will personally be rooting for the one about adolescence.   Unknown Speaker  58:38   Me too, that one almost could write itself the data, you know, in the last 1520 years are overwhelming. And so it's really a good time to get that out. And, and adolescents are like sitting ducks today. And that is not their problem. That's all of our problem.   Arlina Allen  59:00   Oh yeah, they're our future. Right? I remember people saying that about us. Listen, thank you so much for your time today. When you get done with that book. You come on back and we'll talk about that one too.   Unknown Speaker  59:13   Okay. Arlina Thank you for having me. It's been really nice. Yeah, such   Arlina Allen  59:16   a pleasure. We'll talk soon thanks. Bye bye.

(From 09.17.21, Segment 3) The Outdoor Guys bring on Bernie Brown to unpack the history and future of the amazing Visulite Theatre! The Visulite Theatre is a historic venue that offers a blend of culture, community, and art. It has been around since 1938 and is the chosen location for many live events. Jesse Brown's Outdoors has picked to host the Fly Fishing Film Tour, also known as F3T, at the Visulite and we can't wait! Tune in to find out more about this special theatre and the Fly Fishing Film Tour! F3T tickets and graphic tees are available!

Hello and welcome back to Two-Eyed seeing, in this episode we are going to talk about an emotional topic that most of us do not want to talk about. This is going to be a little bit of a tougher topic for most of us, because it's just easier to not talk about it. That's the easy way out.  But we really do need to if we want to move forward in a more positive direction for all of us, so stay tuned. WHAT IS SHAME AND FEELINGS OF SHAME? In this episode, we're going to talk about shame and feelings of shame and what we're going to get into is why it's actually better for us in the long run, if we're willing to face up to shame and look at shame, and deal with it, as opposed to running away from it. If we are actually willing to sit with an emotion and actually feel it fully for the length of time that it takes. Stay Tuned, and learn further as we go into this topic and conversation, always leave a comment if you have queries about this episode.    IN THIS EPISODE: [0:51] Introduction and context for this episode  [1:27] Our perspective on negative emotions [2:49] Why do I choose to talk about shame? [6:44]  A deep dive into knowing where my does my shame come from [8:28] “Shame is  Strongest when you're not willing to willing to look at                it” - Bernie Brown [8:32]  Where does shame get its power? [8:51]  When is it more helpful to move through shame? [11:10] The impact of shame for us as an individual. [14.29] Direct impact to our immediate health and issues. [16:36] Healing that I've heard from a number of elders in our indigenous communities [20:25] My final statements and takeaways.   EPISODE RESOURCES WEBSITE: http://www.sarahconnorsnd.com/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/sarahconnorsnd.doula/

Are you running an old business but feeling like you're flogging a dead horse? Or are you running a new age business and pushing in the right direction where things can be done in a way that's leveraging your value but not your time? What is an innovative revenue model? Get more tips about new-age business models at dorksdelivered.com.au Samantha: An innovative model is very dependent on what you want, and I think this links straight back to your podcast: Business Built Freedom. Traditionally, we go into business for ourselves or one that's built around our expertise. We don't then look at moving forward, instead we kind of look back to how everyone else has done it.  It's shifting towards what success actually means to you—not what success should be—and towards building a habitat in your business that links all the way from your vision based on what you want to the financial statements, leadership, people, process and systems that you want. The next part of that is enveloping that in core values, safety and accountability.  The main issue around this structure is that we have not been taught how to do any of that. We've been taught how to maybe do our product and financial statements, but we haven't been able to talk about how to actually run a business. It takes 7 or 8 minutes to open up a business. Most of us spent years getting qualifications, I spent a decade learning how to be an accountant, but it did not teach me how to run a business. It's something that should be taught more at school and as a career. I am guilty of it. I've been a cowboy trying to work out how to get to where I'm at. I've learnt by touching fire, most of the time realising that's not a good idea. That's the problem. As technicians and as experts, we are taught not to make mistakes, but if you're building a business, you have to make mistakes and you have to make it safe to make them.  Failure leads to success. If you don't have any failure, you won't have success. If you're mining, it's very unlikely you're going to strike gold the first time you hit the ground.  Leadership Is the Most Important Part of Any Business Samantha: We mainly work around experts and dollar businesses that have products or services that are very much needed, like IT. The problem is they're built around one person, and then we don't even know how to look after ourselves. If you're building any kind of business, the leader is the most important person but the leader tends to come last a lot of times. First, you actually have to learn people skills. I know this because I've made so many mistakes. The good thing is I've learnt from those mistakes. I'm a very curious person by nature and I always ask myself "how can I make that better?" It wasn't until very recently I realised that if I'd look after myself, then my people and everything will follow. That was a really big learning experience. For me, it's to stop people who want to change—those who actually understand that it will take some changes and show that they actually have to change behaviour and skills to go forward. We think that we can just continue doing things the same way and then we can make those $ 2 million dollars.  Particularly in the expert style of businesses, we've got spreadsheets. I don't know how many spreadsheets that would say I would take this from here to here, and then you get to the end of the year and wonder why that didn't happen. It's because you actually have to make it happen and you have to have skills and you have to bring your team on board too. Nothing leverages a business faster than all in with your people. Safety, Trust, and Collaboration  Samantha: We have to learn how to make collaborative spaces. We have to learn how to trust. And the biggest thing to trust is to create safety.  You have to actually create safety to make mistakes, and I'm not talking about doing three times the wrong way—that's slackness. What I'm talking about is going and experimenting, rewarding that and finding ways to actually measure it. Actually say, "we're here and we want you to make mistakes," but you have to send rules and boundaries around that and actually then demonstrate it. The biggest thing about leadership is actually leading by example. You do not get your team to do something that you're not willing to do yourself or you haven't done yourself. If you want your team to go on a high-level change, be ready to change.  I think this is the biggest mistake I made, particularly when I was in a very large accounting firm. I was trying to change, but a lot of our leaders did not. A lot of the business structures that we have now are not built for that. They're built on expertise and ego and everything else. We have to start shifting this, and I'm on a journey to find out how to do that. There isn't a lot of instruction on this, but there are ways to have really safe conversations and communication. Building Relationships Toward a Heart-Centred Business  Samantha: If you look at what's happening in the thought leadership area around this—the ones I follow are Bernie Brown, Simon Sinek, and Jim Collins—they're all talking about heart-centred businesses into the future and how we shifted from muscle-style businesses to the industrial age type of businesses to brain-style businesses, such as IT and accounting.  We have to build relationships, but no one teaches us how to build relationships and how to build community. The way most people spend their time is in businesses, so businesses have to be safe. And by safe, I mean you can come in and bring your problems to work. There's a framework for you to have a conversation, such as if you're having a bad day, and someone else will pick it up for you. All of that sort of stuff doesn't happen. How to Quantify Value  Samantha: First of all, we have to acknowledge it. When I say success on your own terms, the concentration is I want to make money. There's no question about that. You need to make money so you can empower other people. Your profit and loss should be how much can I help and pay my staff and my family, and then your balance sheet should be what's my worth and what's my value, my asset value and cash flows, how you fund it. Surely you need to concentrate there. But you also need to say what success looks like and how I'm feeling, how I'm working, and how my staff are feeling. If you concentrate on that, I can guarantee counterintuitively the money actually follows. It follows where the good energy is.  That comes down to passion and why you do what you do. Listen to Finding Your Passion With Joshua Lewis We're talking about different business models and leadership roles. If you've got a lawn mowing business or you're a solo entrepreneur, it doesn't mean what you're doing needs to go if that's what you love doing. It does not mean that the asset that you're creating or the vehicle to your success has to change. That's a big thing. Own the Kogs  We were talking earlier about the way to shape a business and the way kogs can work in a business. I'm happy that I've written myself out of a job. I'm no longer the main kog, but I own the processes around the kogs and how everyone works together, which is a lovely position to be in. Samantha: That's so interesting because those processes that you're talking about are your asset. If you can repeat them again and again, you've got an asset, you have a business, you have a business asset; you don't just have a job or the people in your business don't just have a job either. Owner Alliance and Valuation Samantha: I started this work really early on when I used to do a lot of business valuation work. The biggest thing that would hit a valuation faster than anything is owner alliance, and most businesses up to the $10 million mark have a massive owner alliance issue. Now, that issue does hit you on the valuation.  If you've got somebody who the business is relying on, not just from a technical point of view but also from their mind they're not sharing, the valuation goes. What is interesting as you look forward now is those people are burning out. They're dying early. It's a health issue as well, and you've got to think why. Listen to Inspiring Wellness With Karen Pyke Samantha: Going back to your example, if you want to be a control freak—and that's okay—and you want to build a small business that makes lots of money, you can do that, too. The model of your business just needs to be built on what you want. So if you want control—although there is no such thing as control—or if you want that or you want the perception of it, build a model that suits you. This is the problem. We should have these big growth businesses. We should have a model. We should have an online model or whatever model. Don't get too stuck on that. Ask: What do I need? How can I explore that and find that?  If you want a business that's small where you control all aspects of it, you can still make quite a good coin out of that. It's just that your systems and processes and everything will need to be worked on. We often go, "we've got to go." Sometimes, the growth you need is internal as opposed to external. It's very hard to say this will be the model of the future. I think the business models of the future are going to be very much based on the humans who run them. Financial Independence, Retirement Early  You're familiar with the FIRE (financial independence, retirement early) movement. It's about finding out what are those key things in your life that you want to be doing that brings you to that retirement spot. Now, retirement to people is a lot of different things. Some people just think it's a number, 65. As for me, I'm retired now. I'm happy with what I do. Do I do too much of it? Sure. Does it give you the shit sometimes? Absolutely. But if you're retired, is everything just going to be roses? I don't think so. There are things that will still give you the shits. I look at the income streams that I've got coming in and the way that I've distributed the eggs in our basket—between real estate and the businesses that I'm running—and I'm very happy to say that if I wanted to stop doing what I'm doing, I could stop doing it. And that really empowers you to make the right decisions. You're not dealing with C-grade clients. You're dealing with people that you can be happier to work with. But how do you know if you've got a C-grade client or an A-grade client or if your business is running like a machine, you're running a new age business model or you if you don't have these processes in place? The other day, I went into a business that was still using timecards. It doesn't integrate into their systems like, they can't make sure that no one's doing something they shouldn't or they're doing what they're meant to be doing, etc. And that's where finding your A-grade client, your A-grade staff and focusing on your business are really important. The Transformative Business Model If we're looking at a business in a transformative stage, how do you apply the transformative business model? Samantha: The people who would be asking that question are the people we're looking for. How do we actually shift it? Honestly, it's one step at a time. When we start working with businesses that have got blocks, the first thing we ask is what type of person are we working with and what energy do they have? Do they want to change? We work with a lot of businesses and we start where you're at right now and we have a look at it. We always start with that process of finding out where you want to be personally as the leader because the business does not disconnect from the person. About 10 years ago, I didn't get that. You do not become a new individual when you walk through the doors of your office, and you certainly don't become a new person when you walk through the doors of your home. If you're dragging shit around with you, you're going to drag it all over so it's most important that you are happy and that you find joy in what you do every day. We need to start there, and then we build around that and we see where the next rock needs to go. Usually, it's around staff and actually starting to talk collaboratively with staff and then the changing skill sets. Once you get the staff going and they're coming up, then if you are still using fax machines, then your staff will tell you, they will then take it, and they will empower it. If you hear me say we need to start working on systems, processes, people, financial statements, and all of that stuff, the first thing it probably would cause is absolute fatigue. We've got to start undoing that first and then you've got to bring other people on board. Create a Collaborative Space Samantha: If you're a small business, that might not mean employees. Some of the business models of the future that we're working with are collaborative. So how do you work with the people around you? How do you work with your clients? How do you actually look at what your clients do and can they help you with it? But the first start to anything is what the hell do you want? Not many people ask that question. The way you said it actually is perfect. Why We Do What We Do  I went through a spot where I was wondering if "Dorks Delivered" is the right name for our business. Is it really relaying what we're trying to do? We were called something else many years ago, and we changed to talk to Dorks Delivered in 2009.  And then I read Find Your Why by Simon Sinek. I got whiplash from how fast I stopped and thought that I'm going to change everything around. Over the course after about 4 months as I was reflecting on absolutely everything that I was doing in life—why am I brewing beer, why am I automating the gardens, why do I have fish—what it came down to is I realised that personally, I love automating things and bringing back time. Why do I do it? Because I want more time. We only have that time once on this earth. I've got Our Shout Marketing, Dorks Delivered, and Business Efficiency Experts. I asked why am I running these businesses? And I thought that all of them are doing the same thing. They're automating a certain aspect of your business, like using technology as a fulcrum to better your business.  Ultimately, what we do isn't transactional with a business. It's transformative. We want to make sure that we're changing the way that they're using these tools, not just calling itself to say that this tool is a bit blunt. It may be to change from using a tablet to a laptop or laptop to a tablet or a desktop to a workstation or whatever the situation is. In reflection, I love automating things because it brings me more time and you have a fuller life. That's why I'm in business. Knowing your Why allows you to have that trickle down and impact the rest of your business and make sure that your staff are aligned with your ethos and ideas. It was only when I was reading through notes that I made in a diary when I was 12 that it all clicked. And I've always been automating things. I started building electronics at a very young age, started automating my bedroom, making it so that I could click a button on the remote control and the door unlocked.  When I was 13, I had all these things that I have been building, like an automated manufacturing line for technically the first business that I started. I was doing it because it was making me more efficient. It allows me to earn more money because I'm more efficient.  It was only by reflecting that I realised I've been automating my processes from Day 1. I was very lucky that I was given the opportunity to earn money through product development, instead of per hour, so I looked at the fastest, most plausible ways that I could create what they wanted me to create. Finding Your Why Is Hard but Worthwhile Samantha: When you're looking at that, one reason it's so uncomfortable to do is quite often people come up with something that is what they want, but not what they should want. If you've worked in a business for 20 years and you realise that your passion is actually being creative and finding change for people, it's really hard when you're in that. My passion, my Why, never changed.  The first time I saw Simon Sinek on TED Talks, I wanted to make sure that people do not compromise their personal goals for the business ones. It makes decision-making really efficient. Every decision you make from then on is around that. So you're an efficiency expert and if you know where you want to go and you don't even know how to get there, that actually puts you on a longer path. The other efficiency thing is we teach a lot, so getting people around you who are on your Why saves not just time but also a whole lot of energy. Finding your Why is hard. No one is saying that it's easy. It took you a long time. It's taken me a long time. But there is a process that you can go through.  About BlueprintHQ If someone is thinking about changing to a new age business model or at least wants to have someone check in on their processes, how do you go about that at BlueprintHQ? How can someone get more information or more importantly, maybe a health check on their business? Samantha: Jump onto our website and hit the free consultation. You can book a meeting with me for about 20 minutes. For me, it's really important to build relationships straight up. And I love talking to people and really connecting to see if we can help. Worst case scenario, on that call, I'll give you some tips and tricks and give you value that's so important to us. I just love talking to people. It's one of my passions in life. My husband and my kids hate it because I'll go into a cafe or anything and I'll talk to anybody. We have a podcast called Business Habitat. I would love for you to have a bit of a listen. We talk about this stuff all the time. We get a lot more into the behavioural issues and what needs to shift. We have really interesting people who have built businesses that are different from the normal. We're looking for really curious, interesting people. If you think that's you, give us a bell and we would love to have you on too. Listen to Business Habitat Episode 78: Building Business Freedom with Joshua Lewis  I'm going to be having a listen because I love seeing people do cool stuff, especially around Southeast Queensland and on a global scale which can help and impact businesses.  Recommended Books: Dare to Lead and BE 2.0 What would be the most influential book that you've read that people could dive into to get more information? Samantha: There are so many. I am a Brené Brown a freak. Her stuff is fantastic. It's all about being vulnerable. From a leadership point of view, I think her last book, Dare to Lead is very operational. It tells you what to do. And I just don't think you can go past Jim Collins' BE 2.0. It's so practical, and it has a bit of a mud map and a road map as well. What is freedom to you? What is business built freedom to you? Why do you do what you do? Samantha: So I can ride my horse in the middle of the day and not feel guilty about it. That's the hard bit there. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please make sure to jump across iTunes, leave us some love, give us some feedback. You guys drive the direction of who we speak to and the content. We've got to the Top 11 Business Podcasts. Stay healthy and stay good. 

BGBS 067: Margaret Hartwell | Archetypes In Branding | What's the Deeper Meaning? Margaret Hartwell is an innovation and strategy leader on a mission to empower purpose-driven change at the intersection of design, brand & culture, and technology. Her diverse accomplishments range from co-founding and establishing the innovation practice for Cognition Studio, a subsidiary of Certus Solutions, to authoring Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists. She uses a transformative approach to everyday innovation and employs skills and best practices from a range of disciplines: archetypal branding, transpersonal psychology, sustainable management, and design thinking.  Her experience spans 20+ years developing design-led businesses in the US, UK, Europe, and APAC. Industries include technology, social and environmental advocacy, health and wellness, media, entertainment and the arts, leadership development, automotive, telecommunications, packaged goods, and travel. She holds her MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School, her BA from UC Berkeley, and an advanced coaching certification from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She thinks in systems, strategies, and surprises. She creates in metaphor, music, and story and relates with empathy and curiosity. Recognized for a breadth and depth of applied skills and experience across multiple creative disciplines and business sectors, Margaret began her career as a designer as one of the founding members of Suissa Miller Advertising where she served in various roles from studio director to art director to vice president. In London, she was Director of Development for the London Design Festival and Head of Marketing for the Design Council. Returning to the U.S., consulting and coaching includes work with Saatchi & Saatchi S, PayPal, Jive, BVG, Inc., Flextronics, BFG Communications, Omegawave, Stanford Lively Arts, Verve Coffee Roasters, TwoFish Bakery, and the San Francisco Symphony. She taught "Live Exchange" in the pioneering MBA in Design Strategy (DMBA) program at the California College of the Arts, and is an engaging speaker/presenter/facilitator. Margaret has been called an information junkie with a childlike curiosity and is known for having an insatiable appetite for travel, trends, and technologies. She has been an actor, singer, improv player, photographer, scriptwriter, environmental advocate, and founder of a line of infant sportswear called zerosomething. She currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts. In this episode, you'll learn... An archetypal approach opens a door to a deeper level of connection to yourself, society, and any relationship. This helps particularly in the branding space because it is no longer about pushing your ideals, it's about relatedness. Once you recognize that failure is to be embraced, that is where your brilliance will shine through. These lessons become the tools you use throughout life. Archetypal strategy brings about a unique curiosity about life and people. It can apply to benefits beyond branding by helping people understand themselves and how they want to move in the world. Resources Websites www.margarethartwell.com www.archetypesinbranding.com www.liveworkcoaching.org www.thedowagercountess.com Clubhouse: @mphpov Twitter: @MPHpov Facebook: @ArchetypesinBrandingToolkit LinkedIn: Margaret Hartwell Instagram: @margarethartwell Quotes [33:20] The process of this kind of introspection and alignment of everything changes the way that people hold on to right and wrong. They're not as much about finding a solution, as opposed to finding a process that continues to reveal value…This is actually something that is going to grow along and with and inside and outside of us. [40:58] Branding is really about increasing the value of a relationship, much in the way that you would increase the value of a relationship with your family or a friend or your community. [56:33] It's hard to have the courage because we've been taught that we can't fail. And that's not real. Good relationships don't have conflict. No way. As human beings, you know, the more we can just say, 'Yes, awesome. That just came up; let's go there'…I think that's really where everybody's unique brilliance is, is recognizing that all those things are baseline, all those things are to be embraced. And if you just left them out of the right 'wrong box', then they're all actually just gifts and tools to be applied to however you want to live and be and do. Have a Brand Problem? We can help. Book your no-obligation, Wildstory Brand Clarity Call now.  Learn about our Brand Audit and Strategy process Identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh Determine if your business has a branding problem See examples of our work and get relevant case studies See if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level Book Your Brand Clarity Call TODAY Podcast Transcript Margaret Hartwell 0:02 I used the vulnerability and shame work in my startup in New Zealand a lot to build the innovation process that change people to that change their reactions, because using innovation tools requires you to let go of that kind of judgment. And then we're never going to get to the kind of creativity or the kind of satisfaction from the daily work if they were constantly protecting something, you know, shaming someone else judging someone else. So I've seen an architectural approach have all kinds of secondary and tertiary benefits to people's relationships to people's understanding of themselves and how they want to move in the world. So it definitely can apply and way more levels than just in your brand. And for me, it's moved a lot into the culture space. Marc Gutman 1:05 podcasting from Boulder, Colorado, this is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman is your brand the provoca tour. Maybe it's the activist. Perhaps it's the muse, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory, we are talking about meaning deeper meaning and connection. And one of my favorite topics, archetypes in branding. And before we get into this amazing episode, and I do promise that once you hear who the guest is, you'll agree that it is amazing. I'm asking you to take on the archetype of the advocate, or the companion or the cheerleader, and rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. And we want them to identify this show with the archetype of the podcaster. Don't we? Thank you for your reviews. I do appreciate it. Today's guest is Margaret Hartwell. Margaret Hartwell is such a great name. Sounds very harrowing, yet playful as well. And I didn't even realize that until I just said it. But that's how I kind of see today's guest. Margaret is one of my true real life heroes, because she's the author of a book and toolkit that has transformed who I see the world and how I interact with clients, her book, archetypes and branding. The toolkit for creatives and strategists is a must read, whether you're in branding, or not. archetypes, and archetypal analysis, are all about stripping away the noise in getting down to the essence, the core, and that's also the aim of today's interview. In addition to being an author, Margaret Hartwell is an innovation and strategy leader on a mission to empower purpose driven change at the intersection of design, brand, and culture and technology. By developing people centered solutions, she serves as a guide, mentor, an alchemist. Those are all archetypes by the way. To help senior executives in teams solve complex issues. She uses a transformative approach to everyday innovation employs skills and best practices from a range of disciplines, archetypal branding, transpersonal, psychology, sustainable management, and design thinking. All topics we touch on in today's episode. Her experience spans 20 plus years developing design led businesses in the US, UK, Europe and APAC industries include technology social and environmental advocacy, health and wellness, media, entertainment and the arts, leadership development, automotive, telecommunications, packaged goods and travel, and she draws upon and expands on toolkits from the design council UK, the grove society for organizational learning, IDEO Stanford D school in Jean Lukas work at the Darden School of Business, to name just a few sources of inspiration. Recognize recognized for a breadth and depth of applied skills and experience across multiple creative disciplines and business sectors. Margaret began her career as a designer is one of the founding members of swiza Miller advertising, where she served in various roles from Studio director, the art director to Vice President. In London. She was the Director of Development for the London design festival and head of marketing for the design Council. When she returned to the US she consulted and coached with Saatchi and Saatchi Pay Pal jive Flextronics BFG communications, Stanford Lively Arts, to fish bakery in the San Francisco Symphony. She has teaching experience as she taught live exchange in the pioneering MBA and design strategy program at the California College of the Arts, and is an engaging speaker, presenter and facilitator. Margaret has been called an information junkie with a childlike curiosity is known for having an insatiable appetite for travel trends and technologies. She has been an actor, singer, improv player, photographer, script writer, environmental advocate and founder of a line of infant sport were called zero something and she currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts. And this is her story. I am here with Margaret Hartwell, innovation consultant, innovation coach, and yeah, that's all great. We're gonna talk about that. But I know Margaret, from a book that she wrote called archetypes in branding, and I have it right here. And it is literally like it's well law that got like, the corners are like kind of, you know, dinged up a little bit. And things are like noted and ripped in here. And I like more than any other book. You can see here, Margaret, like, you know, and people that are on the listen to the podcast, I'm here at the halfway house studio, I am surrounded by books. And I believe that books have energy and power. And I just love books. And so I get a lot of books. And this book is probably the one that I reach for more often than any other book because it's, we're going to talk about this book, but it's because it has knowledge that you receive when you read it. But it's like a working book, it's a book that like, has like a purpose that I work with in my job, like, on a daily basis. Now I want to talk to you about that. So I'm extremely, extremely excited to have you on the podcast. So welcome. And as we get into this, like to me, archetypes are definitely about the universal, the the essence, but they're also like sort of mystical and magical. They're like a portal or a window to me, you know, in a lens. And so with that kind of definition at least and I'm sure you have your own. When you were like a young girl, were you into these types of like portals in Windows and translation like what was what was young Margaret like? Margaret Hartwell 7:58 Gosh, well, thanks, Mark, I really pleased and chuffed that I get to chat with you on your great podcast. And that's a great opening question. Because one of the things as I was reviewing the kinds of influences and and trajectories and defining moments and stuff is I had imaginary friends that I was asked by the kin urban, my mother was asked by the kindergarten teacher to have me leave them at home because it was taking too long for me to answer questions and to do things because I was doing everything in collaboration. So yeah, I think that was huge, because my sisters are eight years older than I am. And they're identical twins. And so I had to go to the magical mystery portal world to find my twin was like, hey, they thought each other. So I made up my own and I made three, so I outnumbered them. So, but um, you know, I think combining that with super bad eyesight. Also, this is where I went into books. So for me, I love what you just said about books too. I do think they're alive. And they they are portals as well. So you combine those things together. And yeah, it was it was pretty evident early on that I had a very favorite place in my imagination. Marc Gutman 9:22 And were you a creative as a child, or did you think that you'd have a creative career did you want to do something else? Margaret Hartwell 9:28 All I wanted to do was sing? Well, I should say all I wanted to do was anything creative. You know, let's paint let's work with clay. Let's sing Let's dance, let's act let's make diagramas just anything kind of maker ish was really, I loved it. And but music was my wheel. You know, that was really where it all came together in terms of what it felt like as your body as an instrument and playing the piano. No, and story. So you know, every song that we sing has huge story too. And I think that that became like a third way of going into the mystical in a way because music so amazing in terms of its portal. Marc Gutman 10:16 Yeah, absolutely. And so you're into music and you're creative. I mean, Was this something that was supported in your household as a child did? Or did your parents want you to do something else? Yes, it Margaret Hartwell 10:30 was supported in so much is that it was the child like thing to do, and that when you grew up, you should be a doctor. So that was, that was kind of what I was told is that, ultimately, that the arts weren't a career, they were just a hobby. And I tried to debunk that. But I did go to Berkeley and Gosh, studied medicine or pre med at the time. And it was, I don't know, it's kind of funny, I look back on it now. And I kind of see the paradigm. And the paradigm was is that it was kind of like cheating to go and do something that you were already really good at. They should do things that you're not so good at. And then you are a whole and complete person. So hard work meant everything in my family. I'm a third culture kid, Canadian mother and a Chinese father. That doesn't, you don't really see it so much. But I'm actually more Chinese than my sisters from what the ancestry 23andme says. But yeah, so you know, it's a great, my parents were awesome, don't get me wrong. I mean, they really supported everything that I loved and wanted to do. And they, they were just like any parent, they wanted to make sure that I was going to be self sufficient, and be able to make a living, and they didn't see how it all works gonna come together if I was just doing the arts. So they were very happy when I got my MBA. Instead of, you know, I'm not going to med school. I'm leaving for London, and I'm doing a Shakespeare program. And my father's like, Why? I said, Well, because every doctor, you know, needs to know how to speak. And I am big pentameter, right? And it just looked to me like you've lost your mind. And my mother says, Let her go. She'll get it out of her system. Yeah, no, never got it out of my system. Marc Gutman 12:28 But I just love imagining you and your sisters having arguments about who's more Chinese, I can see it now. It's the holidays. And so take me back there to Berkeley, you're in pre med, I imagine that you've at least convinced yourself you want to be pre med, you know, like we all do, we tell ourselves that, okay, this is my path. And then something's kind of welling up in you something is saying maybe this isn't my path. What was that decision like to, to go to London, Margaret Hartwell 12:56 but like barely passing all my science classes. Fear has a way of doing that to you. But yeah, I think I got three days the whole time I was there. And it was in kinesiology, exercise, physiology and psychology and photography. So, um, what was welling up, I was singing all during college, I sang in the perfect fifth and then in the golden overtones. And that was really what I loved to do. And so I was seeing that I was kind of dying inside. And I was getting unhappy. And I was kind of isolating myself at that point. And I thought What's going on? It was, you know, I always look back and go, whatever, the first kind of crises or existential moments of awakening, and I think, before going choosing to go to London, that was mine, where I just feel like why am I doing any of this? What what's the point? I mean, it was, wasn't that I was super bad at and I was really good at, you know, intuiting people's needs and really listening to people and all that, but, but to spend the time. So yeah, that was the moment of thinking, well, I, let's see what this is going to be like. And quite frankly, that's really what kind of changed everything for me. Because I just came alive in London, and not just from the tack on the you know, the tactics and the skills building that that the Shakespeare program gave me, but really from the interest in people, and in kind of the myth and metaphor just popped. And I think if I look back, I think that was probably where the notion for an archetypical approach, kind of which I would never have been able to put the words to, but that's where it kind of took hold is I was constantly looking around corners sideways and looking for meaning what's the what's the deal. Meaning here, how does it translate into other arenas or cultures or to different people? So and, you know, Shakespeare is an amazing primmer for that kind of symbology and metaphor. So, yeah, that's where it kind of took hold. Marc Gutman 15:20 So the question I always disliked when I was going through school, because I never really knew what I wanted to do was people always ask me, they always say, what are you going to do with that? Yeah, what are you going to do with that? And so I as much as I disliked that question, I mean, were people asking you that about the Shakespeare program? What are you going to do with that? So you're going to wonder why don't you have Shakespeare but what after Margaret? What are you going to do? Margaret Hartwell 15:43 Oh, totally. Well, yes. So I was told to come home to finish my degree at Berkeley. And because three years at Berkeley didn't mean anything. So my parents said, Wait, if you want to go back, you can go back because I what I really wanted to do was go to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, because musical theater then had become my thing. So what did I really want? You know, what were you going to do with that? Well, I was just going to keep studying. I love learning. I love being in school, I love, you know, playing essential. And that's what this program was, but came back and finished my degree. And my parents said, Well, what are you going to do with that? I was like, Well, I'm going to move to LA. And I'm going to try my hand at acting, and her shaking their heads completely. But at that point, being an actor, without a lot of credits, you either become an aerobics instructor or a waiter. And so I started teaching aerobics. And then I found my way into a theatre company. And at that point, I met somebody who was working on a commercial shoot. And she introduced me to my then former future boss in advertising. Unknown Speaker 16:55 So Margaret Hartwell 16:56 it was a complete like pinball of, I had no idea what I was gonna do with that. And I said, I have no idea. But you know what? I'm, again, I think I've always had a certain level of faith that whatever happened, you know, I came from a great background, and my family always had my back. And I could pretty much do whatever I wanted, anything was possible. So I went with it. And my parents were thrilled that I got into advertising. You know, finally, something that sounded like a job. So, Marc Gutman 17:31 absolutely. What was that first advertising job? Like when you were in LA? And who were you working for? And what was your responsibilities? Margaret Hartwell 17:39 So I joined suissa suissa group when we had 13 people. And I left after we had gotten the accurate account, as we said, Miller, and we've been sold to IPG, so the trajectory of this tiny little agency, I mean, when we got accurate, the headline said, you know, there's a snowball's chance in hell, that this agency is going to get this, but I was the designer on that pitch. So that's kind of where I, I was able, then at that point, to kind of parse out all my responsibilities, because in a smaller agency, I was running the studio, I was doing my own, you know, art direction for clients. I was also doing all the it, which is the joke of that of everything. But nobody else had the confidence to do it. So I was like, Okay, I'll learn this. And do that. So, yeah. So I was able, what was it like it was, it was like a total roller coaster, and really fun. I mean, la advertising in your, in your 20s and early 30s is super fun. People are unencumbered. And yeah, then it was a good support. It was it was a nice family. And I was able to have my daughter during that time. So as a single mom, that was a huge support network. So I learned a ton. And I think that's really where I learned about brand strategy. And marketing is from the creative side of advertising. Marc Gutman 19:13 Yeah, at what moment in that advertising journey? Did you think to yourself, oh, wait, like, I might be an advertising. I might make a career out of this. This might be like what the future holds for me? Yeah, Margaret Hartwell 19:25 I what moment was that? I think it was truly winning the accurate account. Because up until that point, I had just been kind of like a Swiss Army knife in terms of being our art director, designer, creative director all around whatever you need. And at that point, I thought, Hmm, maybe I really do have a knack for this for understanding people's needs and wants and finding a way to connect with them. So that there was some exchange that was mutually beneficial and so that there were a couple of great strategists at the agency to, and then ultimately, they were a huge influence. And so that when I left my agency, actually, I gotta be honest, I got laid off because it was at a really difficult time for the agency. And, and so I got laid off. And I thought, huh, what do we do when we're at our lowest moments, all change moments, we go back to London. So that's what I did. Marc Gutman 20:31 When was your first interaction with archetypes like, when did you those even become on your radar and something that you're like, Ah, this is interesting. I Margaret Hartwell 20:41 was actually in my coaching program that I took at the Institute of transpersonal psychology in Palo Alto. And we, it was goddesses and every woman, the Jean Shinoda bowling book, she also wrote gods in every man, and reading that brought all of you know, Edith Hamilton's mythology back because I studied that in high school, but never really never took hold. And Joseph Campbell, and I've been on the path with James Hellman, and, you know, and other kinds of, you know, I guess the suit, you know, the source code was a huge impact for me. But that's when I first found it. And then I found Carolyn meses work. Have you been across her? Marc Gutman 21:25 I don't know her. So the Margaret Hartwell 21:26 book, so she isn't a medical intuitive. And she wrote a book called sacred contracts, that has outlined very descriptions of a lot of archetypes. And she uses archetypes as a way of doing just like we would in branding as a shorthand for understanding people's drives and journeys and motivations. And that's a nice, so I found that book. And I thought, this is pretty cool. I don't know what. And I looked more into it. And she actually had a deck of cards. So I could backup that at the time, I was doing brand strategy work as a consultant, just kind of for hire. And so when I found these cards that Carolyn mace had done, I went to the guy that I was working with, who's actually my co author, Josh chin. And I said, you know, can I trial working with the right kind of client with these cards and lists? Let's see if the brand strategy process goes differently, or let's just experiment with it. And the feedback that we got was the cards were way too, whoo. And it just, it made them feel like, you know, somebody was trying to read their Tarot or something. And that it, that it wasn't validated. And it wasn't real at that point. So, so yeah, so Josh, and I, you can clap, well, maybe this is an opportunity. And he had had an agreement with his publisher for previous books that they had the agency had published. And they had been kind of after him saying, well, what's next? So Josh came to me and said, you want to write a book about archetypes and branding? I went, sure. Okay. Because it was working, you know, the, the process, the dialogue, the kind of different conversations that we were having, were actually unlocking areas that were resistances in a business, that by using this archetypical kind of world, somehow it gave them a 30,000 foot view, and they soften some of the ego identity attachments that people had about what their brand was supposed to be or how they were going to do things. So yeah, that's a long winded answer to your How did you first find archetypes? Marc Gutman 23:49 No, it's amazing. I want to know and it's funny that you say woo so you know as I mentioned, I love them and I'm a little like, you know, little dislike neurotic and like the little perforations on the cards bother him. So I bought some of your cards like the Korean version like back when you could get them real easily. And then I had someone at Etsy make me a special leather case because when I bring them out that's like I'm like this is this is some This is magic little bit you know, and we're gonna learn to go through the deck and I agree there's just something that you conversate because I don't think most client especially when you want to involve like the leadership team half the words like they don't have the words and so the conversation that comes up out of these is so amazing. But look, summon another team had already written kind of what was considered the book on archetypes, you know, and Carolyn Pearson and Margaret mark and, and they they wrote they wrote about 12 of them so like, why not? Like, why is that not just enough? Like, why did you create this amazing book with six because now it seems so easy and obvious to me, but like, also must seem really daunting. You know? Like, like, why didn't you think that there was a market for this? Well, first Margaret Hartwell 25:02 off, I mean, the here on the outlaw wow, you know, this is all the work is standing on their shoulders totally I give them massive props, they were at the forefront of bringing this, of course into the business and branding world. And so it just wasn't nuanced enough for me. I from I started out, you know, looking at things and they, they felt like they were bordering on stereotypes, or, like so many words that kind of find their way into their vernacular that they end up losing their meaning losing their unique essence and stuff. And I think that's true as culture evolves is that, you know, words go in and out of having meanings. So I didn't see any thing wrong with trying to, you know, nuance something a little bit, you know, nuanced the magician, to an alchemist. You know, why, why wouldn't you do that? And so I guess, I mean, then the next probably another theme, you know, people ask me, why do you do this? I think or why did I do anything? Like in my life, man? Pretty much my answers were Why not? Do it? So, yeah, it was a little daunting. And on the first to say that, you know, we're here with writing any book that gets published? Like, I go back, and I shake my head, like, No, no, I should put that there should have put that there. You know, there's always improved room for improvement. So, yeah, just, I've got a list on my computer of the next kind of set to flesh out with people. And I'm looking for a way to, to maybe do that in a collaborative sense. So, you know, somebody came to me and said, will you work with me, as a brand new practitioner, we work with me to find this as a unique expression of an architect for this client. And we did and we completely front fleshed out the connoisseur. And it was super fun and super cool to work together like that. But I love your cover. And that makes me You just can't know how much it means to know that something that I've poured my heart and soul into, has meaning for people. It's really, it's really lovely. And I love that they've got the little cover for it and everything. Marc Gutman 27:25 No, I mean, means a lot to me, it's meant a lot to people I've worked with and clients, and did you do the artwork on these cards? Is these your design creative, Margaret Hartwell 27:33 creative director, creative director, with Josh, he and I both, but we had an amazing team of designers. So the breadth of designers, you know, of course, you see different styles all throughout there, but we all know so so we're kinda It was kind of our, our backstop if you will, like, if this wasn't going to work, we thought, Well, at least we'll have something that we could say, well, I don't like green or, you know, like, I like that style of design that clients could say. So we're backing ourselves up with some some other layer of meaning or usefulness in the design world for that, hence, the different designs. Oh, Marc Gutman 28:14 yeah. And I find archetypes. So interesting. I've often just thought about, like, completely writing an entire agency process around our top the bottom, like just being like, like archetypes, I haven't gotten there yet. But when you work with clients, what's kind of your go to way of using archetypes? How do you like to start with the cards and the conversation? And what do you ultimately hoping they're going to, they're going to land on or discover, Margaret Hartwell 28:40 right? So I'm rarely hired to do the one thing to do just the archetype work. It's, it's odd how the first they'll come, because they want to do architectural work. And then we have the initial conversation. And it always kind of flushes out into something that's more what you would just call a big brand strategy, like the work that you do. So the archetypes are, I see them as part of the Gestalt of your brand strategy in a sense that you can't ask them to do all the heavy lifting. And also, I think that they're evolving. So as as stakeholders change and their relationships with the brand change, then they have to, they have to have a certain developmental path to them as well. So I usually include a developmental path for an architectural approach. But to your question about how do I, how do I usually start? It's kind of a classic design thinking process where I do a kind of discovery phase to understand where there may be gaps or potential alignments to be found. And then we go into really exploring what has been done before because I don't want people thinking that you Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. What What can we use moving forward? And and then they usually just it's a codification of truly what value they're providing what values they have, what is their mission, you know, and getting them to distill that. And at that point, I do it pretty much the same way that that I said, I do it in the book, which is that you you just sort with a facilitated question process. And I think that's probably, if I will, you know, say the secret sauce is because you can't just do this digitally and go, Oh, I've got my archetype. Now, there's a deep reflection that says, You don't even tell you because you're doing it all the time to it reflects back something that resonates like you're almost you can feel it in the room when it when it's happening. There's that term entrainment, which is that musical term, where a frequency will start to create another frequency at the same resonant vibration, that's what I feel when we're starting to get close in the sorting process and in the questioning process. And then before we actually decide is not really the right word, because we've been revealing things all along. But before we say commit, choosing commit to a process of including archetypes throughout the value chain, we actually dig into the value chain, and see whether or not this this archetypical expression can come to life. In all the different areas of the business in the operations in the you know, in the processes and the systems in marketing and sales? How can it become a organizing principle for both the brand and the culture? So those are the kinds of questions I asked. And it's really more about chunking them down into modules that I do in the different workshops. And I use a lot of other exercises to, to elicit this, the kind of resonance that you will. And a lot of them are design thinking exercises, I like to really see how an art we put it to the test before we choose and commit. So what would this how would this affect the customer journey? Right? Does does this affect your value proposition? How does this align with, you know, the strategic path for the business? Because that might shift things as well? Like, are they on an m&a track? Because at that point, we're actually dressing up something differently than we would if we were a startup. So those overlays, the developmental overlays of the business come into factor as well. Marc Gutman 32:57 Do you find it hard to sort of back up or back out if you've chosen a archetype? And you've gone through this prototyping, if you will? And you're like, that's not working design? Everyone just kind of says, Yeah, like, it's not working? Margaret Hartwell 33:11 Pretty much at that point. No, you know, what, I'm curious to see what your experience with the process is. But for me, the process of this kind of introspection, and alignment of everything changes the way that people hold on to right and wrong. They, there's not as much about finding a solution, as opposed to finding a process that continues to reveal value. And it's not so solution based. So it's not just one and done, you know, everybody understands that this we're going this is some actually something that is going to grow along. And with an inside and outside of us, we've actually changed the game. And it you know, it's not for everybody. Some people really want just a solution. And it's pretty amazing to watch them fight. Yeah. And you just go Okay, well, this isn't the right time. I'm not the right one for you. So that's okay. Marc Gutman 34:19 A lot of it. And, you know, I think about that, I mean, one of the challenges I have with clients is they are so like, solution oriented, even when it comes down to working with archetypes. And so they're like, like, okay, like, what are we doing here? Like, what are we trying to get to and right, and, you know, so I've, I have put some parameters around it. You know, I'll say things like, Oh, well, we want to find your archetype that makes you want your like the resonates with your why or the architecture that makes you unique in your space. But that's just kind of the way I've done it because I feel like you have to put these like these parameters, so the client can understand what we're Trying to get otherwise, it's harder for them, it's a little too little too woowoo, you know, and Margaret Hartwell 35:05 I totally agree. And I'm kinda like them down the edge to kind of calm down the cognitive dissonance if you will. And usually, I've done a poll pre education about the value of archetypes and how they, you know, increase your economic value, when you know what a brand lead valuation looks like, and how it actually translate into an intangible asset for your m&a if that's what you're doing. And then also just, you know, really looking at educating them in a way that gets them on the same page, so that they, they'd let go a little bit to kind of shake some loose, so and then you can do those things without that. The other piece that I think that's been really important lately, for me, is Bernie Browns work fitting out founded, seemingly, you know, a long time ago, but I used the vulnerability and shame work in my startup in New Zealand a lot to build the innovation process, and that change people to that change their reactions, because using innovation tools requires you to let go of that kind of judgment. And then we're never going to get to the kind of creativity, or the kind of satisfaction from the daily work, if they were constantly protecting something, you know, shaming someone else judging someone else. So I've seen an architectural approach, have all kinds of, you know, secondary and tertiary benefits to people's relationships to people's understanding of themselves and how they want to move in the world. So it definitely can apply on way more levels than just in your brand. And for me, it's moved a lot into the culture space. Marc Gutman 37:04 A common question I get all the time is Mark, can you help me with our brand? Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we'll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstorm comm and send us an email, we'll get you booked right away. So whether you're just getting started with a new business, or whether you've done some work and need a refresh, or whether you're a brand that's high performing and wants to stay there, we can help. After you book, your brand clarity call, you'll learn about our brand audit and strategy process, we'll identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you'll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We'll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for, build the brand you've always dreamed of. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes or head over to wildstorm comm and send us an email. Now back to the show. So my friend assha she's a brand strategist, she knew I was talking to you and she wanted me to ask you a question she she wants to know why some brand strategist like us use archetypes, then why some don't like what's your what's your thought on that? Like? We'd like sort of in what and perhaps, I think to broaden the scope of the question, What might those other brand strategist be be missing by not employing archetypes in their work? Margaret Hartwell 38:50 Oh, gosh, why do some users and some not? Well, I think there are a lot of people, regardless of what they do Alicia's in brand strategy, the think that there's a way, a way for the way. And that if you just do the way, then you'll just get what you want. There's like this linear, aided, you know, Zed kind of thing that you get. And they like they have a certain commitment to that kind of process. They give some confidence. They can replicate it, there's bits, it's something that they have identified with and studied with. But, gosh, I'm stopping myself, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it. You know, it's there was this guy who put archetypes in brain as he put it on his bullshit meter. And he said it was the sixth biggest marketing bullshit thing that ever was, and I just burst out laughing I and I thought it was great because it's like, we were right after Seth Godin work. And it was like, yeah, you made it right after so But I think that the gig is up for people in, in any form of consulting or business, or helping or creativity, maybe even anyone, that you can't bring your whole self to things anymore. And I think that archetypes, you have to do that. Now, what I mean to say, probably got my negatives caught up there. But the art and architectural approach, I think, just opens a door to a deeper level of connection with yourself, with your society with any any relationships. And I think understanding that branding now isn't is about is no longer push and telling it's relatedness. And we and I'm not saying anything that you are meant all of your listeners are already across. But it's an orienting principle to understand that a brand. Branding is really about increasing the value of a relationship, so much in the way that you would increase the value of relationship with your family or a friend or your community. So why do they not use them? I think they're scared of them, because they don't know how to flesh them out into a 360 degree, living and bodied way of being. And I will admit, I probably have a leg up here, because I studied acting, I mean, you I know how to step into a character and kind of feel what that is. Right? You know, I've done a ton of improv. So, you know, just the idea of sparking new thing of new ideas off of other people and being able to play in that space. I've studied a ton of psychology. So I understand motivation and behavior and how to move people in that sense. And I've also been in the art world and the sustainability world, where you understand that everything is connected on some level. And it's just, it's we're working in a system. So to answer your question, in the most long winded way, is that I think that people don't use them because they don't really grok the depth of them, and that they're part of a system. So they still see it as a separate, you know, branding is still something separate. I think it's like the thread that is, who we are, and who a company is. So that's why I think people who are naturally curious, and always continuously learning are the most successful brand. Practitioners out there for an archetypal strategy or for even if they don't use archetypes, because they're just, they're just curious about life and curious about people. And they look at the cross sections, which is what I think archetypes do. Marc Gutman 42:57 Absolutely. And that was a great answer. Not long winded. And you touched on this, but I just want to clarify, when when you're using archetypes in the archetypal analysis, are you starting off that way? and using it as a centering device? Are you doing it later? Like a lot of times? I'll do it later in the process, especially like when we're in a more typical brand strategy process like personality, voice and tone. That's where, you know, it comes up a lot for me, because I heard you speaking. Sounds like it could be very useful. Maybe in the beginning of the process, especially when you're talking about like purpose and why and why do we exist? Is that how do you approach that? Well, Margaret Hartwell 43:36 I've been criticized for always approaching everything uniquely, which is why I probably work harder than I have to. Because everything seems like it's some bespoke thing. Again, I have to say, I think I just feel my way, I wish I could say that there was a process but you can from the discovery, half an hour with with a company and a discovery session about what it is they're saying they want, what it is that they're doing, and asking them where they want to be revealed something that tells me then, where this needs to happen. And I've done it at the very beginning, just to kind of ground them into the notion of talking about what's going on in a story fashion with people that have specific drivers and motivations and then universal stories to them. I've done it in the middle, and I've done it with with each one of the little teams too. So that was an interesting one. Instead of doing it with the C suite. I went in and did the exercise with each one of the kinds of teams marketing and sales, Ops, HR, and even finance. So he did one with each one of those. And then I asked one person out of each one of those to come with me, and then we did it with the C suite Bigger. And those people were, were so that they were, of course, really engaged at that point. And loving the process, that they were the greatest kind of contagion excitement for the process that the C suite had to give up their Oh, boohoo on it all. And, and they were fed by the people that worked really were on the front lines, I don't like to use those metaphors. But you know that in the trenches with that with the company's purpose, and not just directing it, so I've used them at every different phase, it's this crazy, but it's really satisfying to walk back into a client's office and see the image of the car, somebody has it on their t shirt, or somebody is using it within a mug, or, or, or they're actually sitting there because we do some, some grounding work, I guess you could say, for creativity purposes, to get you in a place where you can hear your own creative news. And so they have a little technique that I teach them. So I'm watching them do it, it's pretty cool. It comes from Eric Moselle, who's a renowned kind of artistic and creativity coach. And so you know, it's a breathing process, but it it puts people quickly into a space of being able to channel the archetype, the story of that archetype. So, so yeah, it's it's everywhere. At the beginning, I think it was more that we use it right, we use it more in a kind of more traditional sense that it came, it came after, usually, after the collage, I used to do a lot of collaging, with people to try and get them to, to elicit what was going on visually for them, and also to hear how they would tell a story because we'd have them collage on a certain theme. And then they would have to tell the story back to the group, while listening to music telling me then which music actually worked for them, too. So it was it was a little bit more of a predictable process at that time. But then, I've seen it just it seems to work everywhere now. So lots of applications. Marc Gutman 47:14 So many. And that's and that's what's so great about archetypes, and archetypal analysis. What's it like? Being the archetypes and branding person being the expert? Like what's hard about it? Like what I mean, I imagine that a lot of people come to you for different things, you get a lot of probably comments and criticism, like the like, like the person that said, You were the six most bullshit marketing trend or whatever, like, exactly, yeah, I mean, what's what's hard about it, like, like being having put this work into the world, and so many people resonating with it and using it, which is great, but like, what, what don't we see about that? Margaret Hartwell 47:54 I guess, based on who I am, and I'm, you know, which is a overlay all unto itself to the work, I guess what's hard is that sometimes it does make me want to hide, like, I'm going to disappoint people, or that I won't be able to find it with them, or, you know, sometimes getting too egoic about and find it for them, you know, that somehow I will let them down. And I think that's been the gift and the challenge of having this work kind of fall into my lap, where the threads of my, all of my education and training and everything kind of came together is that the task now is again, to just recognize that, whatever is going to be is needs to be and to trust that we will get there together. And so to not get too attached, I think that's what's hard is that it's like having a baby in a way is like, Hey, don't criticize my baby. But do whatever, you know, good days and bad days, too. There's there's definitely people that like to criticize, and all I think back to is the way that Bernie Brown has brought the the quote about being, you know, kudos to the man in the arena, as like, Hey, I'm in the arena. Like maybe bloody but I'm, I'm in there, you know, one thing sincerely, to help and to, to guide in a way business to be the powerful force for change that I know it is, and I know it can be. So that's my whole driver of why I'm in it. So I just have to keep reminding myself that's what's hard. is even when you forget sometimes in the midst of it all that this is you have to return to your why, like you said earlier, you know, always Marc Gutman 49:55 so I imagine this is a lot like picking your favorite child But everyone, you know, and and, you know, I tell people, you know, I have three, I have three kids and I tell people, I don't have a favorite overall child. But I always do have a favorite at any given moment. And so yes, you know, do you have a favorite archetype? At this moment? Or what? What right now would you say? Is your your favorite archetype and why? Well, Margaret Hartwell 50:25 so I'll answer it from two different places. One from a play place, and one from a meaning place. Not that the two are, are not together. But what's happening in the world right now from a social justice perspective is soul destroying to me. And to me then, but I really, if we can awaken the strength of the activist in people that think that doesn't touch them, but it is shifting them. It's, I love the power of the activist. I love the confidence and the, the giving ness of it, you know, the, the infusion of doing what's really right for humanity. So that one's high on my, my favorite slash right now. I think from the play position. I cannot lie. You like big stories. I cannot like I like the provocateur, I cannot lie. I just, it's anything that wakes people up is totally my favorite thing. Marc Gutman 51:36 So what's your favorite? What's your favorite provocateur brand right now? Margaret Hartwell 51:41 Oh, Marc Gutman 51:43 that's such a tough question. But like what's like, just what's one that's on your mind? And that represents that archetype? Well, well. Margaret Hartwell 51:50 So this is where I think that what I'm going to name is, is actually a company where I think that the provocateur is either a secondary or tertiary. But the insurance company lemonade, has they're they're disrupting and provoking a different mindset around the insurance industry. Are you across their work? Marc Gutman 52:11 Yeah, I'm familiar with lemonade. Oh, yeah. Margaret Hartwell 52:13 It's I just think it's amazing what they've done with, you know, machine learning to get claims processed quickly, and, and that it's actually in the benefit for that the collaborative in a way. So I think that that's part of they've provoked people to say, I don't need to accept this. So I think I think there's probably a big provocateur in that company right now. But I wouldn't say that they're provocative or bland. I really think they're citizen brand. Citizen Jester, actually, cuz I just think they're fun. You know, funny. Marc Gutman 52:54 Talk a little bit about that really quick. I mean, you mentioned primary, secondary, tertiary, like, how do you organize that and use that as overlapping lenses? when you're when you're talking about archetypes? Margaret Hartwell 53:05 Yeah. Um, I do. Again, I know I said this in the book, but I do kind of think of it as you're wearing different clothes, you're still the same person. But when you go hiking, you're not going to wear black tie, you know. And so the primary and secondary and tertiary show up, like you just said, as lenses for I like to think of them as facets of, you know, like a, like looking at a kaleidoscope if you if you change the the orientation just a little bit, you get a completely different color picture and all that it's still the same Kaleidoscope and it still has all the same parts, you're just choosing to put one part of it forward with the intent of not being what kind of sycophant Would you like me to be, but with the intent of actually connecting? So what part of me is going to connect the most what authentic part of me, so if that's my tertiary, or you know, the fine, if that's the tertiary archetype, that's fine. Um, for I'm just thinking of a way that this was kind of quantified is that we had metrics, we established metrics for kind of how much of certain pieces of communication would be in the primary, secondary and tertiary. So we tried to keep a balance, we graded basically how the writing was netting out in terms of the stories so that we understood that we weren't over indexing on one or another. And that if we did find ourselves shifting around, or being uncomfortable with it, it was time to refresh Marc Gutman 54:47 of it. I love it. And so, you know, I started off the show, introducing you as an innovation consultant, innovation coach. What is that like? Like, what is like, what does that mean? And how does that show up for you? Because that's where you're focusing your time right now, Margaret Hartwell 55:01 I think I, basically, I'm a change person, I just am a change agent. And that's usually what I get hired to do is to do some kind of change with people, whether it's on a one to one basis, or on a company basis or a family basis, because I, I also do just coaching with people as well, executive coaching. So, you know, I have attorneys and CEOs that are looking for a different way of showing up and recognizing, much like you said earlier in the, in our chat, is that you kind of know, something is going on inside of you. And an architectural lens can help with that, and other kinds of connection as well. So, innovation is just a thing for me a fancy word for creative change. So I like to say that I instill creative courage in people. And that's what I do, and help to do. Marc Gutman 56:07 Why is it hard for people, your clients to have creative courage? You know, it's not easy? Margaret Hartwell 56:13 Yeah. Well, we've been fed a pretty steady stream of fear breaks, you know, steady diet of fear, recently, a lot. And I think that the, the macro world is also making us feel very, you know, insecure, and, and changing. And so it's hard to have the courage because we've been taught that we can't fail. And that's not real. You know, it's like, like, good relationships don't have conflict. No way. You know, like, yeah, and if you're a successful person, you don't fail. Sorry, the human beings, you know, the more we can just say, yes, awesome, that just came up, let's go there. I think that I'm just keep looking at your hat mark. And I think that's really where everybody's unique brilliance is, is recognizing that all those things are baseline, all those things are to be embraced. And if you if you just left them out of the right wrong box, then they're all actually just gifts and tools to be applied to however you want to live and be and do. Marc Gutman 57:25 And so we're in the midst of a pandemic, pandemic, hopefully winding down. But how have you been dealing with archetypes because I talked a lot about, you know, my box and my cards, and it's so magical to be in a room. So how have you translated this into a tool that people can use virtually? Well, Margaret Hartwell 57:45 I think I've mentioned to you that my favorite tool is Miro, how give them a shameless plug, I don't own any stock or anything. But to me, that has changed everything. The ability to collaborate in a virtual space on a whiteboard in that way with post its I mean, I can run innovation workshops in the same way that I did, you know, physically, it is what I had to get used to was using a couple of different monitors to make sure that I could still really catch into people's reactions and in their engagement. And so how is it changed the way I facilitate? Well, I, I'm much more cognizant of getting people to, to play specific roles for me, I don't because I'm needing to watch in a way where I can't sense it as much. I have, I always have a timekeeper with me, that's only doing that somebody who's looking at my time to Agenda sit, you know, saying, Hey, we only got five more minutes for this one, what do we want to move. And also great note takers, because I can't do all those things. Virtually, I can actually take notes, when I'm there physically, and going around, because somehow that works out because it's kind of part of the making of it all. But it can't seem to do that in a virtual space. So having good note takers and people who are actually listening, and putting in putting the stuff into the boards has been important. I found that Nero was an easy way for people to sort as well, because they just, I just put up all of the archetypes and then they would just pull into piles. And then we'd sword again. So that's what it is. I think I've worked only with Miro and zoom. And now they have an integration. Thank you safeer Marc Gutman 59:40 Yeah, I like mirror to mirror if you're listening, I don't like your pricing model, we have to talk about that. We're not gonna use time, it takes a lot of management on my time. Like, I don't need to be managing like seats and things. But what I also wanted you to mention, you kind of alluded to it, but I just want everyone to know that Margaret has also digitized all the cards and so you You can go to her website, we'll link to that in the show notes. You can grab a licensed version of those cards and bring them into Miro, so that you can play around with them, which I think is amazing. You know, and I think it really, look, is it as good? No. But is it the next best thing? Absolutely. And I think it's really made things amazing. So I just want people to be aware of that if people are looking to get into archetypal analysis, like how would you suggest they get started? I mean, you know, I'm assuming get your book and then what? Margaret Hartwell 1:00:30 Well, I would like to get them sooner than that, in so much is, gosh, be curious, be hungry, you know, be a hedonist at the shore gets bored of life and just study and look and observe and witness anything that you can. And then once you've identified that this is really a path for you in terms of, of brand, don't stop learning about yourself and learning about myth and story and narrative. You know, that to me, I think is deepening your, your resonance with the impact that different messages have is one of the best ways to hone your skill at on earthing and revealing a true archetypical brand rallying cry, if you will. So, yeah, that's what I would say. And then yes, of course, you know, read Margaret, Mark, read Carolyn mace, read Joseph Campbell, you know, just read, read, read, read and watch. I think films are one of the greatest ways of learning about, you know, what is alive in a culture? What are the influences, so I guess it's really more just about being really hungry, and for knowledge, and for input stimulus, and looking for the intersections and then making sure that they also somehow come together for positive meaning, and that you take responsibility for the impact that you create. So that the way I would say get in how to get into this business, you know, follow your nose, you'll be led. Marc Gutman 1:02:12 And if you're listening, I'll just say, Margaret's being humble. Her book synthesizes everything. I'll admit something right here on the show, I have tried to read Joseph Campbell's work like 100 times I get through maybe 30%. Each time at best. I want to tell everybody that I'm a Joseph Campbell person. It's pretty, it's pretty rough. So if you want to go through that, you know, some of that academia Be my guest. But if you want to have something that's quick and actionable, and synthesizes it with some beautiful artwork, as well, as great words, I highly, highly recommend the book, Margaret. Unknown Speaker 1:02:48 Thanks, Mark. Marc Gutman 1:02:49 What's Yeah, by the way, I keep seeing your name Margaret Hartwell on zoom. I'm like, What a cool name like Margaret. Well, like it sounds like like, like, maybe work like at the newspaper and a comic book or something like murder. I just love it. But what's next for Margaret Hartwell? What? What are you most looking forward to? Margaret Hartwell 1:03:07 Well, I'm looking forward to getting back with people. Gosh, I missed I mean, I'm kind of an introvert. I am an introvert. And I didn't realize how much I really wanted to be around people. So what's next is really enjoying being able to just connect with people in all areas of work and play and community and everything. I think your question was probably more in terms of what am I going to do next? Or where is my work taking me? Unknown Speaker 1:03:36 Am I right? That's one Marc Gutman 1:03:37 way to take it. Absolutely. Margaret Hartwell 1:03:39 Well, so strangely enough, I've gotten to travel the world with work, and I've just loved being able to do it. And I really am traveling hard, you know, three, four trips to China, New Zealand, Australia, it gets really hard. And I I've been getting a little tired of it. So my partner and I actually bought a huge Victorian in Salem, and we've been renovating it. So now the hope is that we bring kind of the world to us here. So that's one component of it. Because it's amazing how many people that have booked into our Airbnb have actually read the book, this wild lady, well, I guess Salem's kind of all archetypes, right? So that's kind of just in the background for fun, but it's really, I'm really keen to move into more of a coaching and teaching place at this point. I'd like to keep on, you know, maybe 234 clients, but teachings really amazing. I taught at the California College of the Arts, and it was one of in the design MBA program and I loved it and so I think the future is going to hold more Teaching and building out an online course right now again, when came out when the book was first published, but it was less than what I'd be proud of. So doing that building that out. And, and we'll see how the coaching goes really working with individuals, practitioners who want another sounding board or another input for bigger clients that they're doing this work with. Marc Gutman 1:05:26 And we'll make sure to link to all your contact info in the show notes, if anyone's interested in continuing that work with you. Margaret Hartwell 1:05:32 Yeah, I will say Mark if people want to, you know, if they want to follow me on Instagram, and then send me a message, just put the vgts or what does that maybe not backstory did GPS. There it is. What is it again? Mark, Marc Gutman 1:05:47 BG bs? No, no. Yeah, PGP Margaret Hartwell 1:05:51 got back. So yes, sir. Just put that in your message. And I'll send you an email to give you a discount on the the course when it comes out. So Marc Gutman 1:05:59 that's fantastic. Thank you for that. I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of people who are interested, Margaret, as we come to a close here, and we're running out of time, I'm going to think back, I want to think back to that. That little Margaret version of yourself that was singing and dancing and, you know, didn't have a care in the world. And what do you think she'd say, if she saw you today? Margaret Hartwell 1:06:24 She's probably say, See, I told you so. And that she, she had such faith, that being a hybrid divergent was okay. And that she just lived it and all that and expend a lot of time trying to get back to that place. So they are an archetypical perspective, the book, all of it came together. And that would be her closing shot. I think it's like, See, I told you, so he told you, it'd be okay. You'd get it all, all the creativity, all the fun people, all the arts, you know, all the meaning. It's all there. Marc Gutman 1:07:08 Then that is Margaret Hartwell, author of archetypes in branding, go buy the book, we'll link to it in the show notes. And look, I get nothing from your purchase, I have no vested interest or incentive in you buying this book. Other than I want you to open up your aperture, broaden your possibilities. And think, a little more human. One thing we touched on, but didn't really explain is that the book explains all this awesome archetype stuff. But there are also 60 cards in the back that punch out. So you can get a full deck of cards too. You can apply this in your branding work, professional life, writing personal life, there really are so many applications, go to Amazon and get the book right now. One nugget that stood out to me was when Margaret said, brand is about increasing the value of a relationship. And at the end of the day, that's it. Now how we get there isn't always simple or easy, just like real relationships. But I think what matters is that we show up. We keep working at it, because we want to because we care. And over time, the value of that relationship increases even when we make mistakes, put her foot in her mouth, or have a bad day. brands are no different. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. It was such a treat to talk with Margaret here her perspective and learn about what she's doing next. I'm not joking when I say Margaret is a hero to me. And I hope you got as much from this episode as I did. A big thank you to Margaret Hartwell. I want to be your BFF let me know if I can send you one half of a branding BFF locket and we can make it official. We will link to all things Margaret Hartwell in the show notes, her book, her website, her course. Well, all things and if you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast at wildstorm calm. Our b

Today we get to talk with Brenden from Master Talks, and we are going to talk about tips and tricks to help us with our public speaking, going live, and connecting with the audience.  Brenden has one unique goal - to help you overcome your fear of public speaking so that you can use your voice to better communicate your ideas to the world. Today we will discuss: Tips and tricks that will 10x your communications skills.   Understanding how communication is everything we do. Understanding the pros have done this 100’s of times, so don’t beat yourself up. The 3 biggest tips for your Facebook Lives and other presentations. So today, we are thinking big into our communication skills. Get in touch with Brenden Kumarasamy. https://www.mastertalk.ca/ https://www.youtube.com/c/MasterTalks/featured https://www.instagram.com/masteryourtalk/   Connect with Sean Osborn at Thinking Big Coaching http://www.thinkingbigcoaching.com https://www.instagram.com/thinkingbigcoaching/ https://www.facebook.com/thinkingbigcoaching/   Thanks for listening! It means a lot to me and to the guests. If you enjoyed listening then please take a second to rate the show on iTunes.  Every podcaster will tell you that iTunes reviews drive listeners to our shows so please let me know what you thought and make sure you subscribe using your favorite podcast player. Until next week, remember to always think big Episode Transcription Thinking BIG Podcast with Guest Brenden [00:00:00] Sean Osborn - Thinking Big:  I want to welcome Brendan to the show today. He's actually the host of master talk on YouTube and it is a fantastic YouTube channel, on public speaking. And I know I'm like a lot of people out there. Public speaking is probably one of the hardest things for people to do. Most people would literally rather die than get up and do public speaking. I remember the first time I had to get up and do public speaking and not in a corporate environment, I'm okay. In a corporate environment and, in conference rooms and stuff like that. But actual public speaking, I was terrified that I could not stop shaking. And it's one of those things. And one of my mentors actually had told me a long time ago that the person at the front of the room with the marker is the one making the money. And what he meant by that is the person that's up there at the front doing the speaking is the one that has the influence [00:01:00] on the people within the room. So again, I absolutely want to welcome you Brendan to the show and tell us a little bit about master talk and what, how you got started in doing that Brenden - Master Talk: Absolutely Sean thanks for having me. So I, like you mentioned, I have a YouTube channel called master talk where I help people through communication skills and how I got stuck. It was when I was in university, I used to do these things called case competitions. Think of it like professional sports, but for nerds. So other guys, my age were playing football or soccer, some other sport. I channeled that competitive spirit. To presentations. So for three years, I presented hundreds of times coached dozens of people in their communication skill. So when I graduated and I got a job in corporate America, I guess in my case, corporate Canada, some based in Canada, I just asked myself a simple question, which was how do I make a difference in the world? And that's when the idea for the YouTube channel came to be, because I realized a lot of the [00:02:00] communication information out there was really bad. You hear advice like, Oh Sean, you should be yourself. Making videos in my mother's basement. One thing led to another and the rest is history. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And did you see when you were in college? What gave you the idea? Did you see people actually struggling with trying to get up and doing to do public speaking presentations? What kind of, where did you see that? And clicking your mind saying, Hey, I can actually help people live better. I can help people do this and have them actually be more fulfilled and really more successful to me. You cannot be successful. In a corporate environment in much any environment, if you can't communicate and you can't get up, you can't speak, you just can't be very successful. I don't think, to me, it's, to me, it's one of the core values that I wish they taught heavily in school, which they don't. Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah. And I completely agree with you on that one, for sure. The way that I think about the Shaun is when I started doing these competitions. So just to give [00:03:00] you an idea, the tie in with the corporate world, this is what a case competition is. Essentially is a business gives you a problem and you have three hours to solve it and present a solution to a board of executives. So people do that for fun and university. It's an odd thing. And there's this weird international competitions where people fly out from 19 countries around the world to give these types of presentation. It's really bizarre. And it was the best three years of my life also. But to build on that think of me as the in-house speech coach for that competition. So when I competed the first year, I wasn't really good, obviously, I was kinda trying to figure out how to do this, but I entered the second year, much like sports. You start to take a more mature, more mentorship role. As you get older within an organization as new fresh individuals start entering the program. In this case, it was a presentation program. So I started coaching those people. And then over time, in those three years, I was the speech coach for pretty much everyone who was new to the program. And as I was nearing graduation, I was getting started to worry because the [00:04:00] technology consulting and jumping into the corporate world, I kept noticing a consistent theme of out of all the students. I coach, I probably coached me 50 people in three years and the consistent threat theme, but rather question, they kept asking me that never had a good answer myself was how did you learn how to speak? And I kinda just said I just learned, I'm self-taught and I've done hundreds of presentations, but because they kept asking me, I wondered what resources actually exist out there. It seems like people like to look this up and watch it. So I started watching a lot of my competitors, YouTube channels, who PhDs and the subject who, or who had decades of experience. And I just kept vomiting in my mouth. To be honest, it was too academic. Wasn't practical. And for the younger demographic, it was useless because they couldn't understand the complex lingo. So I got so frustrated that it started making videos basement with no budget and with the phone. And then a year later I ended up coaching a lot of executives and developing a practice out of it as well. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: And I actually absolutely love stories like that, [00:05:00] where. People get into business and they, or they get into doing something that they love. They don't know how they're going to do it. They don't have all the technology. They don't have all the stuff figured out. They don't have. But you wanted to help and you've found a way to help and you got better by, by doing that. Cause obviously your stuff is extremely professional. Definitely not done in the basement and definitely not done, so you just see you've gone from there. But if people don't start somewhere, we never off the ground. We never do it. So just going out, I love that because just going out and yeah. Doing it, get you better now. One question. So how do you think the difference between presenting live and presenting in front of a camera? The difference in that, especially now with, with what's going on in the world and, people are having to obviously social distance and there's not a lot of big live events and there's not a lot of big, public speaking things. I actually find it harder. To sit in front of a camera to do a [00:06:00] presentation, to do something then I do in real life. So when I'm in, when I'm on a stage and I'm talking with people, I can feel the room. I can feel the energy, it's either you do it or you don't. There's no going back. You're up there. You're live. When I'm in front of a camera, I absolutely frightened. To even start to push the play or push push the record. So w what do you see the difference in, difference between live virtual and live in real Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah, absolutely. I would say the biggest difference in the two, Sean is in the online world, you can't gauge your audience's reaction. So what does this mean? Let's say I was in person. I was giving you and your company, your family, a workshop on communication. And to say, joke, two things will have been in that instance. One is you'll laugh at the joke. I'll say, wow, Brendan's such a funny guy. We're number two. Which is much more likely you look at me and say, wow, this person should [00:07:00] really not be seeing any jokes, but either way I can gauge your reaction in real time and adapt my presentation. As my presentation goes on. I don't have that luxury in the online world, because if you're on a zoom call with all the cameras off, if you're presenting on camera and there's nobody there it's much harder for you to gauge how your audience is reacting. Especially when they're not in the room. So how are you supposed to navigate those types of situations? So a couple of easy tips. I was like to give out one, always keep your eyes on the lens of the camera. So one way I do that is I take a picture of favorite food or a favorite person that I like. And that always forces me to look at the lens in that way. It's a good artificial trick you can implement. Second one is get on a phone call with one of the people that will be sitting in that zoom call. So we have a feeling of who's going to be there, what their needs and expectations are, what do they aspire to be? And you can always picture that person. So it's a lot easier for you to present energetically for them, even if you [00:08:00] don't see them on the other side. Number three is always assumed good intentions from your audience, whether it's in person or online. This is a lot more important than it seems, but it's not something you'll get overnight. So for example, with me, when I started doing podcasts myself as a guest, it was really bizarre. Essentially what a podcast is a stranger. You don't know, asks you a bunch of questions about your life, does an unhealthy amount of research on you. And you have to answer as if you know that person. So when I started, it was very frightening for me, but when you get into those off off show discussions with the hosts, after you realized that. They're really just doing this to benefit their communities there. And everyone's just a really nice person. So my perception of my, the hosts that ended up, I ended up speaking to, and this analogy applies for any presentation that you do in the virtual space or really anything at all transitions very quickly from who's the Shawn guy to, wow. I really love what Sean's doing, what the thinking big podcast is really helping us communities think bigger and achieve greater goals. So I'm going to assume as if I've known him for five years and speak to him in that way. [00:09:00] It's not something you get overnight, but over time, that belief becomes true. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: And that takes a lot of time to develop. Now, one of the things that I actually do like right now, I actually do use a teleprompter, but not for words, I actually have you in front of the teleprompter. So I'm actually looking right at you and you're actually. Right behind your right in front of the camera. That's the only way that I can truly connect with the people that I'm talking to because I had where I had the camera above the, above the monitor and you always look up, you can't, it just was a natural I'm the type of person that I actually have to look at someone, in the eyes when I'm talking to them. To, you know what you said, it that's how you read how people are taking in what you're doing. And that's how you read how they, how they're interpreting what you're saying. But I personally, I have to do that. I can't, I hate it. So I do some podcasts, matter of fact, where it's just audio only. And it's just [00:10:00] dry it's absolutely dry. I know the people that listen to the podcast are only listening to it, but I get so much more out of the conversation when I can see the other person, when I can see you, Brandon, we're sitting here looking at each other, eye to eye, even though we're not in the same room. And I think that is very powerful for really any type of communication, especially public speaking, but. I see that's going to be a huge, or that is a huge problem for people that are trying to do video. I don't know why I'm so scared. Why get more scared in front of a video camera? Then in front of an audience, I guess I, maybe I used to be afraid in front of an audience and maybe I've just grown and I get used to it. But I'm terrified in front of cameras. I don't know. I try tricks. I tried doing different things, but getting used to and going live. So to me, I'd love to get your thoughts on how you go live on things like Facebook and [00:11:00] things like, YouTube and stuff, because. It's one thing to sit there and record something 20 times until you think it's good. And then you post it, but that I was, man, I'm telling you the first time I went live, I was scared to death. What do you do a lot of your, do you do much stuff live Brenden - Master Talk: I don't do a lot of live presentations. I do mostly speaking engagements that are alive online, but I definitely understand where you're coming from and happy to talk about the differences between camera and live because I get it. And I would say the big difference there, Sean is. For actually, let me give you an easy win here for the camera. There's actually an easy trick to present. This is a of my videos alone. There's a guy. There's yeah, there's a guy behind the camera. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Oh, wow. See, now that is a great, that is a fantastic tip. So you actually have someone there that you're actually talking Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah, exactly. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: That's a Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah. And don't get me wrong by the [00:12:00] first year. It was just me. One man show had no budget for anything. I was just a broke student to, this is before my production and my business ramped up. But when I started, yeah, it was just me and a camera hated my life. It was so bad. I didn't like the video making process. I couldn't talk to anybody. I was speaking to nobody. I just couldn't show up. I, but I still tried my best. And I did all right. My first, sir, when I brought Danny my best friend to do all my production and I just gave him a chunk of my salary to do all of that. Oh, it just became so much more enjoyable. So we'd have dinner after and lunch, it'd just be fun, a lot more relationship building. So that's my recommendation. Obviously you don't need to have a professional person doing this. You could have a friend, a wife, a husband, a family member, or just do that for you. So that would be one thing. Yeah, go ahead. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: So what so what are someone that's wanting to either get into public speaking or they're needing to get into public speaking with either, their job. I know you do coaching for corporate people too, but what do you, what are some of the best ways to start? Getting into being able to [00:13:00] do public speaking from a, I think from a personal development standpoint or not from the technical side of, Oh, you need to contact an agency to get, on stages and stuff from a personal development standpoint, what are the best things for someone to start to get the ability or to get the skill set to doing public speaking? What are the best ways to Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah let's go into two directions here. So one for people who don't want to be keynote speakers and for the others who do those who don't wanna be keynote speakers. This is my pitch to you. My pitch is understand that communication is everything that you do. It's not just about presentations, it's every interaction that you have, the people around you, the tough conversations you have with your family, the dinner conversation you have with your friends, the tip that you give the delivery guy when he comes and gives you pizza. Every interaction is all about communication. And once you realized that the only question left to answer is the following. [00:14:00] How would the world change if you were an exceptional communicator, how would the world be different? If you were top 1% speaker that answer's going to be different for everybody, for some it's about having this big YouTube channel and for others, it's just spending more time with their family and understanding how to interact with them in a more healthier way. Find that why and find that reason you'll be able to find communication work on a way that's comfortable for you. That's one side other side is you want to go pro that's a totally different conversation. If you want to go pro the big piece of advice I have for you is understand that professionals present the same presentation. Hundreds of times, Tony Robbins has been doing the same seminar for 40 years. 40 years, same seminar unleash the power within three days, workshop, you walk on fire. He yells at you the first day. Always the same thing. Repeat, repeat. So if your goal is to be a pro, you need to figure out one [00:15:00] topic that you want to be a grand master at. So the topic I ended up choosing for my life that I'm still trying to do well obviously I'm very far away from Tony, but I'm getting there is communication. I want to be, I want to be the number one person in that space. So for you, what is that thing? Focus in, dial in on that one, talk a master it, and then you'll, you can get paid to speak and be a pro. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: How do you think, so for me communicate, or, communication is really about connecting. How do you go about making sure that when you're communicating with someone, when you're talking with someone, because a lot of people sit there and talk, but not a lot of people actually connect. That's not something. How do you go about making sure when you're talking with someone that you're actually connecting with them? Brenden - Master Talk: Yeah. Once again I've a pro hack here solving the symptom versus the issue. I think most people, most humans struggle with this idea of how do I connect with everybody? Cause it can be exhausting to listen to people you don't actually [00:16:00] particularly like. So my advice, because that's more for advanced people. I would say the chapter one is to find your tribe and connect with them first, because those are the people that you're more inclined to, to have a relationship with, to, to have the same interests as them. And you'll also be more inclined to ask them the questions you actually want to have answers to. And lesson to them. So for me, just, you don't use me as an example here, but I'm just using it just to demonstrate. I love personal development conferences, Tony Robbins seminars, mine Valley events, Lewis house events, just like places where people want to get better. So the community there, I usually. Gel with pretty much anyone there in the room. I just get up, talk to anybody and I immediately liked them because we all have the same values. So it's all about picking the right events, but that analogy applies for anybody. If you're somebody who. Loves collecting buttons for some random reason. I highly encourage you to go to a button meetup. Talk about the different buttons they're collecting. It's a lot [00:17:00] easier for you to interact with those people and start conversations. And that's really how you'll get rid of your social anxiety and get comfortable talking to people. You have zero interests in common with. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: It's you have to be. Comfortable just communicating and talking with the people around you, let alone up on stage. Cause that's just a whole different level of sitting there. That's a great tip that really connecting with the people, people in the audience caring about the people who you're with before you can really get up and talk to them. What what are some of the best tips? What do you do? How do you prepare? If you're going to get up and you're going to do a presentation or you're going to do. A talk, how do you prepare for that? Now I understand if you're a pro you've done this, thousands of times it's the same thing, but if you're fresh and you're just getting started, what are some of the things that we can do to help that first time or help get up? What, or how do you prep for a talker or a presentation? Brenden - Master Talk: Absolutely. So [00:18:00] here's, if you do this one technique from boat to share, it will 10 X or communication skills overnight, especially if you want to be a keynoter and the technique is called the puzzle method. Sean public speaking is like a jigsaw puzzle. Those thousand piece puzzles in a box, he put together like a puzzle piece. So if I , family or something, which pieces would you start with first and why? Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Yeah I would start with the edges because that's the that's the easiest thing to Brenden - Master Talk: Exactly right. And you're absolutely right. It's not a trick question, right? You do the edges for us. They're easy. You work you in the middle. So the question we'd ask ourselves is why don't we do that in public speaking, we have a presentation, the boardroom in the classroom, in the conference room. So what do we do? Start with the middle. We shove a bunch of content chefs of shove. Then we get to the presentation. We ramble. We get to the last slide. And then it sounds something like this. The thanks. So that's [00:19:00] probably 95% of the presentations I hear, but there's an easy way to fix this. And the way you fix this is treat your presentations like a Chickasaw puzzle. Start with the edges. First practice, your introduction, 50 times, not three times, not five times do it 50 times. It's actually not that hard. Your introductions admit it. It'll take you an hour. Same thing with the conclusion. What's a great movie with a terrible ending. Last time I checked terrible movie. 50 times the conclusion and only two hours of practice, you'll transform your keynote and look at your presentation and go, wow. I can never introduce like that before. The way that I conclude in this. Speech is so marvelous, then tackle the middle. And then when you tackle the middle two simple questions, we're keeping it very simple today. The first question is what's your key idea. If you were to summarize your entire presentation in one sentence, what would that sentence be or better? [00:20:00] If you were to summarize your life's work in one sentence, what would that sentence be? And then the second part, which we'll spend the rest of your time working on is what is the best way of defending that key idea? Is it a quote? Is it an analogy you won't get it the first time, but as you continuously test and do it hundreds of times, dozens of times, or even just a couple of times, you'll have a pretty solid keynote just with that framework. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: man. That is some I'm telling you that is a. Fantastic tip D when I do presentation stuff that alone will help so many people. So I'm trying to pay attention to the camera. I'm trying to look at you, but I'm trying to write stuff down too. I'm taking notes right now. I'm taking massive notes. So what do you now, one of my problems that I'd run into when I do when I do public speaking, especially if I'm not prepared enough, is I am always afraid. Then I'm going to forget stuff. [00:21:00] So I will like, if I'm doing a presentation for, a company all just have a presentation of slides full of, 20 bullet points for each, each slide and it's just like communication or upload, but I'm afraid that I'm going to forget stuff. So that's why I always want it on the slides. And that to me just makes for such a boring. Blah presentation or speaking event that, w so what do you do you use a lot of like props for speaking like a, presentation type stuff in the background, or what is your preferred method to, I don't want to say map out your talk. Like how do you map out? If you've got a 15 minute talk or a 20 minute talk what type of tips do you have for In your mind mapping out where you're going through the, do the story. Brenden - Master Talk: So the way that I think about this, because every expert is going to give you a different opinion here. I usually don't like to prescribe. And the reason I don't [00:22:00] is because every speaker's very different with the way that they think about it. Like Joseph Campbell would talk about the hero's journey, Donald Miller, we're talking about that journey and how that hero moves across. Nancy's got her own thing for me. The big thing is I don't, I'm not a big fan of frameworks for him. The big thing is. If you want to do be a master communicator, you need to fail a couple of times. What does that mean? That means as you're presenting, you need to constantly have dinner with your audience. And I'm very big on the dinners. Like connecting personally with the people that you're seeking to serve to understand if the ideas are actually landing. Now, I'll give you a personal example. So when I started master talk, I was very insecure. Not because of my skill, but because of how young I was coaching executives double my age when I was probably 22 or 23. So it was very intimidating for me. So in order to compensate for the insecurity, I used to just gloat about my clients at the beginning to be shown as credible. And I say, Oh yeah, I worked for this client, did the CEO thing, and then an a, a six-year-old asked me the best question. I think I've gotten into my career. And the question was, what's the [00:23:00] CEO. And I said, ah, yeah, you're right. What is a CEO? That's a good point. And I realized from her question, That nobody really cares about your credentials. They only care about the value. If you deliver your value with confidence, people don't care how old you are, the right people. Anyways. So from that experience, I changed my tune from just talking about my clients. I left all of that out of the conversation and I replaced it with a personal story about how I used to struggle with communication, because I grew up in a city called Montreal and Montreal. You need to know how to speak French. So I went to a French school, so my whole life. I presented a language. I didn't even know it. So if I can master communication, anyone can, because that method. Oh, presenting was better at defending my key idea, which is convincing anyone that they can master communication in a purely authentic. But didn't get that the first time I got that the 25th time after the six-year-old kind of got me in with the right feedback. So you have to understand that it's an iterative process and how you tell your stories, but [00:24:00] eventually once you've done it enough times, you can jump up keynotes out of thin air. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: and one of the things that I noticed people, especially newer in doing talks is they will, if they've got a 10 minute talk or a 15 minute talk, they will spend 90% of it on the technical, the data the stuff, and very little time on the story. And. That to me that's so that was a hard lesson learned that people learn. People want to know based on stories. It's all about the story of, and how you can intertwine, the story with what you're trying to teach, but sitting there for 15 minutes, just giving them backed up to fact that per fact is just. And I see the thing is I see so many people do it and it's, to me, it's all about the story and all about the storytelling and how to me, the best speakers are the best storytellers. It's, that's just for me, [00:25:00] at least that's how I learn. And I actually pay attention much more to people if they're telling stories, obviously than not than just trying to shove facts down my, down my throat of whatever they're trying to teach. Brenden - Master Talk: And I agree it right. I think a good way of thinking about this, the whole content versus delivery thing. I want you all to think about your high school presentations and your high school teachers. How much do we actually remember from high school? I don't know about you, but I don't remember much. But why is that? The content is so good. The teachers are so educational, they're very well-educated. They have master degrees, so what's the problem. But the opposite is also true. When you think about your favorite speakers in the world, it could be Tony, it could be Bernie Brown. It could be anyone you put your finger on and go ask somebody in the crowd. You go, Tommy, what is it about this speaker that got you excited. Tommy's going to look at us and go. Was, I'm not sure, Brent, it was just a way that he made me [00:26:00] feel or she made me feel it was well, what's the lesson then Tommy, me, what did you learn from this speech? All I learned that I could do anything I want. So even the best speakers in the world, you don't remember much either. You only remember one or two key ideas, but it's those one or two key ideas that changes your life, which is still important. But the lesson is the following provided your key ideas. Solid. You need to spend 99% of your time on delivered to make sure that key idea lens. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Yeah. And that, so one of the things that, that I've been taught and not from a speaking standpoint, just from a communication standpoint, with your tribe and with your with the people that you communicate with is people need to hear, things five, six, seven times before they actually get it. Now, when you're doing, when you're doing a talk, do you actually what you were saying, do you actually go over. Maybe the same thing in different ways during a speech to get a point [00:27:00] across. Brenden - Master Talk: You got it? Absolutely. So I've probably presented the same keynote 350 times now. So give or take, and in those 350 shots, I've definitely experimented with different slides, different ways of thinking. But now I have a pretty robust. Standardized way of thinking about that specific Keno, but you're right in the sense that when they create a new one, let's see when I do my storytelling workshop, I reworked that a lot and I'm still reworking that one today. Cause I've probably done that one 75 times give or take. So I'm still refining that one, but that's the point I'm driving is every time you open a new slot, a new slide deck, you always have to keep refining. You have to keep applying the methodology. Of listening to your customers, listening to your audience and seeing if they actually understood the idea. But the beauty is once you get the hang of this, it's going to be much easier for you to take a presentation from zero to hero in a much shorter period of time. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Yeah, and I think so it's one of the things that, you know, and you touched on this is there's a lot of speakers that I've gone and I've listened to, or people that are [00:28:00] teaching, whatever it is. I don't necessarily remember all the stuff. They said, very little of the stuff they said, but I do remember. Key things on how they made me feel. And you had mentioned that and it's we don't, I don't remember details, but I remember feelings much better than detail. You know what, or if you had, three tips on public speaking, what are the three biggest tips for someone to, to do To start doing their public speaking. What are the three things that, that you absolutely. If you screw any of these three things up you're going to die. Brenden - Master Talk: So to keep it simple, apply puzzle, right? Start with the edges first, master your intro, your conclusion, dive for the middle. That's one. Number two, apply puzzle to one singular topic in presentation. As best as you can. So in your case, on let's, I was coaching you for you. The advice is simple. Make a presentation on your own podcast. What are you trying to achieve with [00:29:00] thinking big who's your core audience? What do you aspire for that audience and make a presentation out of that? Cause you can use that as promotional material and the beauty is that it's repeatable. You can spin it up as many times as you want. And after a couple of dozens of times, you'll be a master at communicating your own podcast to the world. And then number three is have dinner with your audience. I'm always astounded, whether you're a content creator or a business owner the lack of awareness and time that people spend actually interacting with the people that already listened to them. A common question I get is Brendon, how do I get as many subscribers as you and you, your YouTube channel, how to get thousands of followers, we need to understand. That when I asked the question back to, then I go, how many people listen to your podcasts to go? Like 50. And I go, okay, how many people do know? And that 52. Okay. And that's the point I want to drive. The third biggest mistake people make in public speaking is they don't talk enough with their audience. How are you supposed to make an elite level presentation? If you don't understand your audience at a level that they don't even understand [00:30:00] themselves, that's the secret. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: Oh, and that is huge. I'm telling you that is absolutely huge because most people will. I don't care if you're developing courses. If you're developing speeches. Most people will spend all this time developing a speech or developing a course without ever talking to their tribe because we think we know what they want. We think we know what they want to hear. We think we know what they want to learn. And without going in front of your tribe, without going in front of the people, listening to you. I will get it wrong every single time. I think I know what they want, but until I go out and talk with them, I get it wrong every single time. So that, that is absolutely huge. And Brendan, I really want to thank you for for being on the podcast and everyone make sure that you go and I'm going to put this in the show notes. The links are going to be all there. But go to master talks on YouTube, but I'm telling you it is a fantastic [00:31:00] channel tons. And tons of content on everything from public speaking to you. I know you just did one on online TEDx stuff. So let me ask you, so one question, what is the best way for someone to grow or get onto like a TEDx talk? W what is the best thing to do? Brenden - Master Talk: I would say the general piece of advice with Ted is prepared the speech before you get invited for the talk? That's the big thing I would focus on my, with my expertise is you need to start thinking about your Ted talk years in advance. Because if you start preparing your Ted at this, when you get invited for it, you won't nail it. You just don't have enough time unless you like quit your job. And all you do is the Ted talk. The people who actually nailed their Ted talk, I've done it hundreds of times. Most of them, not all of them. There's always exceptions to the rule, but the general idea with Ted is prepare for Ted before Ted calls. You. Sean Osborn - Thinking Big: that's. That's good advice. That is great advice again, [00:32:00] Brendan. Thank you so much for for being on the podcast and. Master talk, people go watch, mash, talk, go watch the videos. They're fantastic videos and I'm telling you they are. So I see a lot of content on YouTube. That's on, of not professional and all of your stuff is extremely professional. It's very good. It's very well done. So congratulations to that. It's I see huge things for that, because it is to me it's one of the most, I don't know if it's the most sought after or most underused. Type of skillset is the speaking and so absolutely necessary. So thank you. Thank you for putting that content out. It's wonderful content.

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we are here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In the execution of cross-functional initiatives, sales enablement is often the glue that pulls the efforts of multiple teams together. Responsible for landing corporate initiatives in the field, sales enablement must often connect the dots between leadership’s core objectives and how the actions of reps will support those objectives. This means that cross team collaboration is critical to the success of sales enablement. Enablement can help enhance collaboration by instilling accountable behavior within teams. To help us understand the importance of accountability in teams and how to build it, I’m so excited to welcome Eric Coryell, the author of “Revolutionize Teamwork”. Eric, could you please take a moment and introduce yourself and a little bit about why accountability in teams is so important to you in your work. Eric Coryell: Sure, glad to. My name is Eric Coryell. For me, accountability and team started with my first job out of college. I got a degree in economics, had no idea what to do with it and so I got a job as a buyer. I was a pretty decent buyer, but I was also pretty good at understanding what the boss wanted and saying the right things. I got promoted as a result and kept working my way up the organizational chart. Then as I got into a leadership role, being good meant you had to have teams that were good. And I discovered low and behold that the people who were working for me did the same thing that I did. They would say what I wanted them to say, and they knew how to play the game well, as opposed to what they really felt. At that point, I realized this isn’t going to get us to where we got to go. If we’re going to be an effective team and effective organization, I got to get them to say what they really feel and I got to get them to become accountable, not to me, but to the results and to each other. So, that’s when I started to play with the idea of maybe there's a different way around managing accountability. At the same time, this was back in the nineties, early nineties when we were all a relatively small company. Working with the big boys, the Baxter's and the Abbotts, and they were so large and so dysfunctional, we discovered the only way that we are going to work effectively with them is if we became functional. We went to this idea of cross-functional teams, way before it was a thing. Low and behold, those teams were pretty much a mess. And I realized that some of the same things I was learning about leading my own team applied to those cross-functional teams. The more I played with it and try things and fail more often than I care to admit, started figuring out what was required to get teams to become accountable. Then with every job I had from that point forward, I worked really hard at leading my team as a team. Most importantly, putting them in position to be accountable to each other and not me and found that in the long term, they were higher performing teams than those that weren’t. OF: Absolutely. That is a great introduction to your book, which centers on the importance of accountability. What does accountability really mean to you and why do you maintain that concept that’s often said of holding people accountable is actually a myth? EC: Most people will say being accountable means you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do in the time frame you said you’d do it. And that’s just kind of how we walk around and say, that’s what it means to be accountable. Well, who’s always done what they said they’re going to do in the timeframe. They said they do it. I think it’s at the moment when someone doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do in the timeframe, they said they do it. You’re going to find out whether they’re going to act accountable or not. Some people when they fall short of expectations, make excuses, they point fingers, they procrastinate the height, and those are all non-accountable behaviors. Versus those that are accountable, what they do when they fall short of expectations, is they take ownership and then they start doing something different till they get it fixed. So, to me being accountable means if I’m not getting the desired results, I start doing something different. That’s kind of the way countability is inside of organizations. But if someone does not act accountable, if they don’t get the desired results, then someone else needs to step in and start being accountable. In other words, doing something different until it gets the desired results. And that’s almost always the leader. It’s the leader’s job. If someone’s not performing or if results aren’t happening, the leader’s the one that needs to step in and address those issues and start doing something different until they get a result. So that’s what I was told as a leader, “Eric, you need to hold these people accountable.” Well, holding someone accountable, looks like this: you tell them what to do. You make sure they have everything they needed to get the job done. You incentivize them. You put measurements in place. You set goals. You give them feedback. If after all that they don’t get it done, you go in and you coach. Then you ask questions and you re-incentivize, and you beg, and you threaten, and you cry, and you pray, and you do whatever it is you do. If none of that works, if giving an ultimatum that doesn’t work, then you liberate them. That’s pretty much the process. That’s the act of holding people accountable, which I did for a number of years. Until one day I asked myself, at what point did I ever really hold them accountable? Well, you could argue I held them accountable and I let them go. But up until that point, who really had the accountability. What I realized was it’s the leader that’s setting expectations. It’s a leader, it’s an incentivizing and making sure that the job is going and giving feedback and coaching and begging and threatening. So, I’ve come to believe that that notion of holding someone accountable is really a myth. What I hear when someone says, “hold you accountable,” all I really hear them saying is I am taking the accountability from you and I now have it. I think that’s what we do inside organizations is we assign different levels of accountability, different people, right? So, you’re accountable to do this and you’re accountable for that. If an individual doesn’t meet that accountability, their boss has to step in and take it from them. If the boss doesn’t mean their accountability, their boss has to step in and take it from them and that’s kind of how we manage accountability inside organizations. OF: Those are some great points. I hadn’t thought about it that way where people often think of accountability as after the fact, rather than being managed ongoing and holding yourself accountable in a way and understanding what those behaviors are as an individual contributor in a team setting. With that said, what makes a team accountable and why are accountable teams so rare? EC: That’s a good question. Most typical, hierarchical structures have the leader that has the accountability. As a leader, I like that because I have control. But it’s also exhausting at the end of the day, I feel like all the world is on my shoulders and the team will only be as good as the leader holds everybody accountable. But there is another way to manage accountability and that’s to get the team to manage the accountability, such that if performance isn’t happening or if someone’s not getting the job done, the team starts to address those issues and it’s not always a leader. So that’s the notion of what an accountable team is. Accountable teams are different than most things, because in most teams, while we call them teams, especially inside a business environment, you have six people that report to me, I call it my sales team, expect them to act like a team. But the inherent things are not in place there to actually make that team function like a team, and especially not act like an accountable team. So, to get a team to become functional, which is really the first step. There are certain things that need to be in place. You need to have a clear, defined purpose of what’s the team here to achieve. You need the measurements and metrics that tell you whether or not you’re achieving that, obviously you need competent people and capable processes. I’ve yet to see a functional team that tolerated incompetence. And you need capable processes. Good communication, no decisions you can and cannot make solidifying roles and responsibilities. The most important thing to get a team to function is their needs be a shared fate. And by that, I mean, what happens to one happens to all, and that’s really the driving force that will go to a group of people that actually function like a team and inside business structures more often than not the only shared fate that exists on a team is everyone’s having to survive the boss. The conversations amongst everybody to be like, did you hear what you said today? What would you see what you did yesterday? And those will be the conversations that create the shared fate for most teams. It’s not a very healthy shared fate, but it’s usually all that exists. If you look at sports, there’s a shared fate we either win the game together or we lose the game together. There are certain environments that automatically almost create all those things. You have to take the time to create that you get these five things in place, however, and you will watch a group of people actually start to function like a team, but you can have a functional team and all the accountability can still rest with a leader. So, if you want a functional team to become accountable team, what makes teams truly accountable is if that team gets good and comfortable at dealing with their real issues together. And by that, I mean, the real issue is any issue that affects the team’s ability to achieve their purpose. Once we know what the team’s accountable for, if something’s getting in the way, a year real issue that if the team’s going to be accountable, they’re the ones that are going to have to start dealing with those issues. Good news is most issues aren’t real, right. If someone’s got bad breath, we don’t need to bring the whole team together and talk about their bad breath. It’s not going to affect your ability to be successful. But if someone’s not equally invested in the team, that’s a real issue. Someone’s not behaving by the values and standards, which we agreed to, that’s a real issue. Probably the biggest one is if someone’s not performing, that’s a real issue. If someone’s not uploading into the deal, that’s going to affect the team’s ability to be successful. When I grew up in business, I was told, “Eric, you praise in public and criticize in private,” but if you paid attention, most performance reviews are done in private. Then you wonder why you don’t have teams. If you look at a sports team, performance reviews are held in front of everybody. It’s totally normal, but in business we preach and do just the opposite. And in fact, I think most teams, when we get together for meetings, we actually collude to avoid talking about our real issues. We’ll work really hard to avoid those tough topics. We’ll talk about those issues in the meeting, after the meeting and the bars in the bathrooms and the hallways where it’s safe, you know, the one or two people we find safety on. I think most teams work really hard to avoid talking about their real issues. They do just the opposite, but accountable teams don’t. Accountable teams get in the habit if something’s getting in the way of them being successful, they don’t ignore it. They don’t talk behind each other’s back. They don’t sit around waiting for the leader of the boss, the coach, the parent, to solve their problems. Instead, they learn to talk to each other through those things, whatever they are. The second the team gets good at doing that, that’s when they start delivering high results. So that’s when you start to trust each other, you respect each other, you have each other’s back and it becomes more about the team than it does the individual. Well, the only way to get there is to get that team comfortable and good at dealing with their real issues. That’s the secret to getting teams to become accountable. OF: Yes. I love the concept that you just mentioned of dealing with real issues together. I actually want to dig a little bit deeper into that, what are some of the challenges or obstacles that you think stand in the way of building accountable teams and then how can team leaders help to overcome those challenges? EC: At the very heart of that issue is getting people to say what they really feel. I think most teams, the reason that doesn’t happen is I think on most teams, there’s what I call a psychological contract. By that I mean there’s an unwritten rule, it’s unspoken, but it’s a contract that exists on most teams. It says contract that keeps us from doing this, and the contract goes as follows. I will not talk about your performance. You just don’t talk about mine. I call it psychological. Very few people have ever had that conversation with a teammate. We don’t sit to our teammates and talk about you have to run me, but it is clearly a contract that exists on most teams. And I know it’s a contract because if I were to walk into a team and start critiquing someone’s performance in front of everybody that person’s going to feel portrayed, you just broke the deal. Even though the deal has never spoken and they’re going to have no choice but declare thermonuclear war. And here we go, I mean, how dare you talk about me in front of everybody. I’m not going to talk about you. And so, I think it’s that contract that really keeps this from happening. How to overcome that, I think two things need to happen. One is that shared fate, there has the shared fate is what creates the motivation for people to say what they truly feel because if my success is intertwined with your success, if my failures that are trying with your failure, I am highly motivated to have those conversations. But the second thing is trust. If I really trust your intent, if I know you’re sharing these things with me, just tell me, get better. If I know you’re sharing, as soon as we just help the team get better, I’m not so scared to do this. If I know you’re attentive, tell me, get better. If I trust your intentions to help the team and get past my ego pretty darn quick. If there isn’t that trust, if I don’t trust your intent well, my little ego flares in a heartbeat, I get defensive and have all sorts of it. So, making this happen really requires that meaningful shared fate, that feeling of what happens to want to help install, but it also requires getting that level of trust. And once you have that, then you can break the psychological contract because now we can go on and sort of having these conversations and we realize that we’re dealing with these issues for the betterment of the team. We are dealing with these issues for the betterment of each other. If you don’t do that, however, it feels like an attack and I tend to get defensive and I tend to feel it the way to play it safe as to avoid talking about these things. When in reality, that’s the least safe thing. OF: That is very interesting, that trust and safety are such core components to accountability and teams. A lot of that, as you’ve talked about, really comes down to the culture within teams. I think especially if a team is operating dysfunctional, it’s because they lack that culture of safety and trust. So, with that in mind, what are some actionable steps that professionals can take to really build a culture of accountability within their teams, and maybe overcome that dysfunction that’s really harming the culture of their team? EC: I think to overcome it, some of the stuff you need to do is purely structural. And I kind of alluded to a lot of these things before. There has to be clarity of what we’re here to achieve. Honestly, next to me, your team, start the meeting out, have everybody pull out a blank sheet of paper and have them write down what they think the purpose of the team is. Rarely, I don’t know if I’ve ever had it happen where the answers matched. So, the starting point is starting to lay the strong foundation. The first step is what are we here to achieve? Second step is how do you put metrics in place that tell us whether or not we’re achieving them, because if we’re going to be accountable, we got to do something different. We need to know when we’re falling short. Competent people, capable process. Honestly, most teams already have that. But the next thing I got to do is I got to build this shared fate. I got to do the things that will start to get the team to feel like a team. So often as a leader, you’re responsible for this and you’re responsible for that. You’re responsible for that. I have an issue with that. I talked to you. I have an issue with it. I talked to you and then I wonder why you’re not acting like a team. I got to change the mindset of you guys are individuals with different accountabilities that are ultimately here to achieve the team’s purpose. I got to start to do the things that build the shared fate. I’m going to co-locate their desks. I’m going to get them to respond accountable for achieving a set of metrics together. I can do a compensation; common enemy create shared fate difficult challenge to create shared fate. So, my job as a leader then is to dial up the shared fate. Those things to me are the structural foundation you need to put in place. They’re not hard to just take some time, energy and focus on the other side of the equation. I call it the behavioral changes that need to take place and ultimately to build trust. There’s some wonderful work out there. And trust Bernie Brown is extraordinary. All sorts of people who have done great work on trust. But I think on teams, probably the most important skill set is our ability to learn, to work through our issues together, whatever they are to learn, to talk them out, and that is the challenge. First of all, it was a psychological contract, but a lot of our behaviors, at least the behaviors I were taught actually destroys trust. So probably the most important skill set I get to teach teams is literally the importance that whenever anyone talks, everyone speaks only on their own behalf. And by that, I mean, when I’m speaking, I can only speak from my own frame of reference. There are two rules that I teach that make that a reality. The first rule is I don’t allow group pronouns to be used in meetings. I don’t allow people to use the word we, they, our, anybody. Everybody gets that so our teams avoid their real issues. You’ll hear someone say all the time, someone will say, “well, you know what our problem is, our problem is we don’t follow a process.” Well, who is “we,” who is, “they?” I don’t want to point out the individual. That’s not doing it. I don’t want to address the real issue. So, I throw a pronoun at it and teens tend to then avoid their real issues. So, my rule is, I mean, outside of media, of course use those words, “We won. We lost,” that’s great. But when I’m working through an issue, no. If someone says we, I just played the interrupt, say just exactly, who’s we, who’s they. Yeah, because I can say I’m not fun to process. I don’t see any one of you following a process. Like I said, the two of you aren’t on a process, just can’t say we’re not following a process. The second thing I do, and this sounds even crazier, but I don’t allow questions to be asked in meetings. Believe it or not. Questions are actually passive-aggressive and being a little bit extreme here, the only time I ever allow anyone else to questions, if they make a statement first. Because almost all communication breakdowns take place when someone starts with a question, because when I begin with a question, your mind will immediately start making assumptions around that question. Why are you asking that question? What answer do you want to hear? And the fact of the matter is the brain always thinks the statements. So, there’s always the thought what we tend to do is we take that thought, we twist it into a question for safety sake. You’ll hear someone asks a question like, don’t you think it’d be a good idea if we did this, as opposed to saying, I think this would be a good idea, but I’m afraid to say, I think this would be a good idea because I can get rejected. If I ask it as a question, that’s the terrible idea I could say, “yeah. I thought so too. I was just checking.” Right? I don’t have to own it. But I promise you that that’s where things fall apart. Because when I ask the question, it gets misinterpreted. A great example took place two years ago, my wife and I put up Christmas decorations all throughout the house and super late at night, super tired, I’m in the kitchen. Almost done, she walks in, she asked me a question. She goes, “don’t you think it’d be a lot easier if you did it this way?” I’m tired to begin with then I think to myself, well, no, I know how to put Christmas lights out at Christmas and I had this complete meltdown. When in reality, she had a really good idea. She just expressed there was a question. I made some false assumptions around that question. Right? So, the rule is you can make a statement. You can ask the question. If the data got a question, this has got to come after the state. So, the no issue would have said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea that may make your life easier,” statement. Now she can ask the question. Do you want to hear it? I can make a statement. I think this is a good idea then I guess the question, what do you guys think? I don’t know what you think. So, learning to get everyone to speak on their own behalf is the skillset that literally enables people to start working through issues without judgment because when I don’t speak on my own behalf, if I walk into a meeting and say something like, “Well, Olivia, we don’t think you’re doing a very good job.” What do you hear when I say that? You hear the wheel who’s we, you would talk about, we have my back. Oh my gosh. And trust is instantly destroyed, which is a very different thing than if I say, “Hey, I don’t see you doing a good job and that’s okay.” We can talk about that, but the second I throw a “we” at it, all sorts of things start to fall apart. You start to feel like, even terminal back trust gets destroyed. So, the secret is getting everyone to speak for themselves. I don’t allow someone to walk into a meeting and say, Johnny and I were talking, come speak for Johnny and myself. Almost every district of meeting is laced through the weeds, intervention starts with them. We think you’ve got a problem. These are full of it. It happens because we talk about these real issues outside the meeting, before it comes to the meeting, and then we bring them together in a wasteland. So that’s why it’s so important everyone speaks for themselves. And the last piece of the puzzle is learning how to have the conversations in a constructive way, every real issue, every issue that that’s going to get in the way of any team being successful is always the conversation about the gap that exists between expectation and reality. So, I expect these results, I’m seeing these results. I expect this behavior, I’m seeing that behavior. Every real issue has its source in that gap. The problem is the tendency for us as humans is to put it off, put it off, put it off to find the I’m sitting on so much frustration with my expectation and the time I come to have the conversation it’s “Let’s just start over.” So, teaching groups, how to learn to stop, slow down. Let’s talk about what our expectations are. Make sure we’re on the same page. What does performance look like? Let’s talk about reality. What are you seeing? What I’m seeing? And then the third source is, is talking about the impact of the gap that exists. We may agree there’s a gap, but we do disagree on the impact. A quick illustration. It goes back a year ago. My daughter was home at the time, and her room forever has been a mess. And it finally occurred to me, I’ve never really set the expectation that you keep your room clean. So, I sat down with her. I’m like, “Shannon, you’re old enough now where I expect you to keep your room clean at all points in time.” So, we are now on the same page in terms of expectations. Well, the next thing you know, we’re having the reality conversation because she starts telling me that it is clean. I’m like, no, that’s a mess. That’s a federal disaster. In fact, this is what a clean room looks like. So, I finally got to the point where she agreed it wasn’t clean, but now we’re having the third conversation, which is the impact of the gap because her next counter conversation, comments to me was well, so what, I keep the door closed. I don’t want my friends in the room. She literally goes, it’s safe. I mean, if I trip up, I fall into a bunch of clothes. Why is it a big deal? My room was clean. So, I’m like, why is it a big deal? My first thought was, well, I had to. So, you should, I’m not winning that argument. And then it occurred to me like you’re nine months away from going off to college, and if your roommate’s a neat freak and you can’t keep her room clean, that’s a problem. And quite frankly, my job as an adult is to send you off into the world as a semi-functional adult. And part of it is somewhat functional is being able to keep her room clean. So, she’s like, fine, what do I need to do to prove? Keep her room clean? I’m like, well, keep it clean for 30 days straight. Sure enough, she did. Then the room’s a mess again. But the point was is we had to work our way through each of those issues. And I will tell you every real issue has its source. So, as I get to work with teams, I can get any team through any issue. And as long as everyone speaks for themselves and as long as they take whatever that issue is and learn to break it down into those components. And with that, you can take on virtually anything. As teams start to take on these issues, whether it’s performance or investment or behavior, then trust gets built. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. It becomes second nature, but learning those skillsets is not natural. I was always told, ask questions, don’t make statements, don’t use I, all that kind of stuff. But what I’ve come to realize if you want to create an accountable team, it’s much the opposite. OF: You mentioned something important there about performance expectations and really making sure that those are very clear, and everyone knows what good is supposed to look like. So, in terms of metrics for accountable behavior, what are some of the criteria for those metrics that teams should adopt? EC: You make a good point. One of the big things is I go into a team and ask every individual what they’re accountable for, and they’re almost going to only talk about their own world. I’m accountable for sales in the North territory. I’m accountable for the sales in the South and the East or the West or whatever it is, right. If a team is going to be accountable, what needs to be clear is what is the team accountable for? So, by that saying, okay, look, you guys, you, as a team are accountable to generate X number of new customers, total sales margins of the job code, whatever that is. And I’m going to hold you accountable as a team to those metrics. So, if one of you is not upholding the deal, you need to start talking to each other and start dealing with those issues. That’s really the essence of an accountable team, but you’re not going to be able to do that unless you have really clear metrics. So, the metrics first and foremost have to tie exactly back to that purpose. So, at the end of the day, I got to look at those metrics and say, you know what, if they’re hit on those metrics, the team brings their accountability. So, having done this for longer than I care to admit, a few things that I’ve learned. First of all, I’ve ever seen a team successfully be accountable for more than like five metrics. So, my first rule is you should be able to clearly determine whether or not you’re achieving the team’s accountability with three to five metrics, in some cases, but no more than five. Using some metrics or some metrics. So, we’re going to measure activities and things that lead to the overall metric. So, you want to make sure that metrics you’re truly focusing on are tied directly to the purpose state. So very often I’ll color code the purpose statement in a certain section of the purpose statement, I’ll color code to the actual metrics so we can tie a one-to-one correlation between those things. That was probably the first thing. It’s got to tie directly. The second thing is you can’t have too many and this isn’t a little bit more subtle, but you got to make sure the team has influence over those metrics. Because if you’re going to ask a team to be accountable for something, you have to have very little influence over it. As soon as the metric starts going itself, they’re going to do this and it’s not our fault. So, one exercise I very often do is one, three, three of a metrics. I’ll get together with the team and say to create a little T chart. What’s in your control? What’s outside of your control? And that happens a lot in the sales arena, right? So, what’s outside of our control. Well with competition does commodity prices, and they’ll start studying all these things that are out of their control. Well, what’s in your control. Like, okay then why am I paying you? But what is in your control, our efforts, how we approach the customers, the sales system we use, et cetera, et cetera. So, once we get that up there, then we have to look back and say, is that enough of this metric truly inside of our control, where we can be accountable to it. If so, much of it is outside of our control, then I’m going to say it’s a bad metric. I just had this happen to me two weeks ago. So, it’s fresh in my mind, but working with a manufacturing team and one of their metrics has been cycle time. From the time a job gets released to the floor, at the time it’s off the door and they’ve been struggling with it for about a year, the root cause kept coming back and they had outsourced the parts they couldn’t control the players league. And when the player fell behind, they started to struggle. So, it was a bad metric from that perspective because they really didn’t have, they swapped out planters and they continue to be a problem. So, what they did to make that metric inside their control, as they started measuring the time it went to the floor to the time it went to the platers, stop the clock. Started the clock, when it came back to finish. Now they were in control of all those things. So, they had to tweak the measurement so that it was something that they were inside of control of. I think the third component is you have to make sure that they have a high degree of influence around those metrics. And then the fourth thing, is that it needs to be measurable on a timely basis. If it’s a metric that you can only gather data around, like an employee survey, something like that. Once a year, it’s really hard to be accountable to that. So, you really want to pick a metric that has a regular cadence to feedback. We got to find ways to generate that feedback. So even if it’s customer satisfaction feedback, we’re going to cycle it over a period of time, as opposed to just hitting everybody once a year. So, we’re going to get out and get data, and then we can use that data to get better. I’d say those are probably the four most important things to have good metrics. OF: Those are fantastic tips. I want to go back to something that you mentioned right at the start of this conversation, which was around cross-functional teamwork. Sales enablement professionals are often responsible for leading a lot of cross-functional projects. I’m curious to hear from you, how can accountability be built in that cross-functional team dynamic, where the team might not necessarily be working together daily, but they still need to come together to meet very specific organizational goals? EC: You’re going to get me on my soap box here. More and more organizations are going to that model. If you think about the hierarchical model, the hierarchical business model actually starts in the early nineteen-hundreds. When companies started to grow in size, we have to figure out how to organize them. We adopted the military model. It was the Romans, right. And the military of general's officers, soldiers, thinking, telling, doing, and we would specialize. So, we’d have a sales department, operations purchasing, whatever it was, but that’s not the way business flows in a slow-moving world. Back in world war one, we’ll work to that model, we could send all the information up to the top. They would make the decisions come down from on high until everybody went to the front line. People would do it. Today’s world is so much faster. We need the decisions to be made closer to the customer. We need that cross-functional perspective in that we can’t just work in these silos and make the best decisions. Every organization I know is wrestling with that. The cross-functional team idea is, the first step at doing that, the problem with cross-functional teams we realized that over to best service the customer, we need someone from sales, and we need someone from purchasing and maybe an estimator and project manager. We’re going to pull these people out of their apartments, put them together and say, be accountable to each other. The problem is at the end of the day, if I’m the inside salesperson, I’m reporting to my inside sales manager or the purchasing person, I’m reporting to the purchasing manager for the project manager, I’m reporting to you. So, while we are supposed to be accountable to each other, at the end of the day, is even being on there to look to my source of separation, which is my boss, which isn’t on the team. That’s where these cross-functional teams start to break down and I’ll call it a matrix organization. So, in order to get that to work, it takes a leap of faith. The leap of faith is very much what we’ve been talking about today. That is to get the team to become truly accountable. But that requires then that I am now accountable to my teammates and not to my boss. So, my performance review is no longer going to come from my boss. My performance review is not going to come from my team. I may still have a boss, but the boss is now a coach. The purchasing manager is making sure that all the purchasing people are using the best software, their personal development, all that kind of stuff. But those purchasing, those buyers are reporting to me. They are now reporting to the team. And that’s the only way the long term is to make this work. That you don’t need the managers. They’re still there, but they’re in a different role. It’s much more like coaching. Coaches don’t get to play the game, but I’m here to put the players in positions so they can be successful. I’m going to create a good playbook. I’m going to train. I’m going to do all those things necessary, so they go play the game and be successful. And that’s a different mindset for leaders. I think as a leader, it’s hard because they got to let go of control. And that’s probably one of the biggest single challenges in making this happen is getting the leaders comfortable, letting go of control, but there have to be just like a coach in a sport and they can’t go out and play the game. They’ll all tell me during the game, it’s pretty helpless feeling when I run out there and tell them what to do or do it for them. But I can’t, it’s no different at work. You create these cross-functional teams. All you can do is put them in a position to be successful and trust that they’re going to be successful. Well, if they’re not, the team has got to step up and take the accountability. So, you got to do these things we’ve talked about, but the purpose of metrics and all those things in place. And then if a team isn’t hitting those metrics, the team has got to get together and start resolving those issues. And they have to know how to have those informal conversations and work through those things. Ultimately, if a team can’t do that, the leader’s got to step back in and take it from them, but it’s not a natural act. In order to make this work, you got to kind of go all the way in and get these teams to become accountable to each other, as opposed to doing half and half where you’re a team, but then you report to different people. That’s a leap of faith and it’s not easy to do, but then it’s really what’s required to get those cross-functional teams to work. OF: That’s very interesting that you mentioned that it takes really a mindset shift, especially from the manager’s perspective and really being more of a coach rather than solely managing performance. So, I just want to ask one final question, and this has been a great conversation by the way, but I want to go back to something that you mentioned as really being the core ingredient of accountable teams, and that’s the concept of shared fate. So, let’s dig a little bit deeper into that. How do you create a shared fate and why is that so integral to the success or even the failure of a team? EC: You really touched on what’s most important. I’ll tell people, you know, not every group of people should be a team. You’ve got to decide, do I really want them to be a team? If you do, you need to build that shared fate, the stronger you need that team to be, the greater the shared fate you need it to be. So, let me illustrate it. This will happen in sales environments to where all the sales manager calls me up where for my sales team, I’m like why? And they’re like, well, teams outperform individuals. Not always but keep talking. Well, I got four salespeople. I got Johnny, he’s got the North and Beth has got the South and Mary’s got the East and Frank’s got the West. I’m like, okay, well, how do you think? Well, they get a base pay, but they all get a pretty big commission check based upon the sales. They generate the respective geographies. Like, you want them to be a better team. Well, yeah, simple. Take their commissions. Add them up. Divide by four, pan the same. Oh, I can’t do that. Mary’s my rockstar. Johnny’s brand new, Mary’s would be giving money to Johnny and that’s not fair. Do you want Mary helping Johnny or no? If you do, and then you need it. We do create a team and you need to create a shared fate. You may decide, you know what? I just want Marie to work with the Falcon giant, to worry about the North and go, in which case I’m going to say, don’t sweat the team thing, but if you want them to act like a team, if you want them to help each other, if you want them to be invested in each other, then the very first thing is you have to create a meaningful, shared fight. That’s what’s going to start to create those conversations and do the things necessary to get them to act like a team. Now, I also have to give them the ability to influence each other. Mary’s got to be able to go talk to Johnny and coach them up and help them out because I can’t just say you’re going to share in the commission, but you have no influence over that person. So, the key becomes, how do you build that shared faith? High performing teams need high levels of shared fate. A classic illustration is the military. I actually have a good friend. He’s a former Marine, accidentally Coleman ex-Marine. Once that was a mistake, and I asked them because we were talking about bootcamp. I’m like, well, what happens in bootcamp? And he said well, Eric it's different depending upon where you go, but it’s all to the same effect. I’m like, Oh, yeah. What’s that? He goes, well, I figured it out the second day. Like, well, what happened was all the Sergeant came in the barracks, woke us all up in the morning, dragged us all out to the beach and told all of us that we’d be going from here to over there as fast as we possibly could along the Mark obstacle course. It turned out to be a 90-minute physical gauntlet. We slammed at the point, we almost drowned. We ran forever. We climb these walls. We crawled under barbed wire and then we had to run around and around this obstacle course in the forest until they finally blew the whistle, and we got the finish and I finished first. I’m like, that’s awesome. He’s like, Nope. I’m like, why? He goes, well, they lined us up on the order of our finish and the Sergeant got two witches in front of my face and tore me apart. I’m like, why you won? But I also happen to pass up all my teammates who were struggling in the forest and I kept going and I figured out really quick it didn’t matter when I finished it, it only mattered when everybody else finished. And that’s what they did during basic training was they made your life increasingly miserable, so you figured out it was about the team and not you. And if you didn’t, they got you out because in the heat of the battle, you better have each other’s back or people’s lives are at stake. Everything they did was to build shared fate. We all lost our hair. We all wear the same clothes. We all eat the same food. Point being the stronger you need a team to be the stronger, the shared fate you need to create. So, in those environments where it’s high stress, high pressure, I have to do everything I can to build, share, and faith. Other things may not require that same level of shared fate, but there are lots of ways to do it. I really think it stems from how does the leader treat their team? As a leader, I would find a sales issue. I texted my sales manager or HR, should I talk to HR manager and then wonder why they weren’t acting like a team. It wasn’t till I started saying as a team, you are accountable for the sustainable profitable growth of this organization. And I expect you as a team to deliver on that. And I started talking to them in that way. Did they actually start acting like a team? Because now all of a sudden, the HR manager was equally owning the sales metric and she’d run over to the sales manager and say, here’s what I’m seeing. I got these ideas, and they started investing in each other. You can build that shared fate in a variety of ways. You can do it by making it hard to get on the team. When we come out of COVID and go back to the office, if you really want to build shared fate, take your entire team and say for the next day weeks, we’re all going to work together of this conference room, bring your laptop. That creates a sense of shared fate. There’ll be amazing, what that does, a common enemy creates shared fate, a passion around. She means something meaningful to us. Create shared fate. You can do a compensation. There are all sorts of ways to do it. In fact, a very good example, I always tell people, go home, watch “Miracle on Ice”, watch “Remember the Titans”, watch “Saving Private Ryan”. They’re all stories of these teams that did extraordinary stuff because the leader knew how to build a shared fate, whatever that was. That’s why that’s so important because without that shared fate, you’re really not going to have a team. My definition of a team is a group of individuals with a shared fate, the stronger you need that team to be, the greater the shared fate you have to build. If you’re not able to create one, then I would probably say, don’t sweat the team thing. Go get a group of individuals, go do some great stuff, but don’t worry about the team thing. Just know that the accountability is always going to be on your shoulders, which isn’t the worst thing, right? You have lots of control, but the downside is it puts a lot of pressure on you because the team’s only going to be as good as you are. If you wanted the team to perform to a higher level, then you’re going to have to learn to let go and put them in a position of becoming that team by doing all the things we were really talking about. OF: Well, those are some fantastic and very powerful examples. Thank you so much for sharing those. And thank you again for taking the time, Eric, to talk to our audience and share a little bit of your expertise in how to build accountable teams. EC: Well, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear.

Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we are here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In the execution of cross-functional initiatives, sales enablement is often the glue that pulls the efforts of multiple teams together. Responsible for landing corporate initiatives in the field, sales enablement must often connect the dots between leadership’s core objectives and how the actions of reps will support those objectives. This means that cross team collaboration is critical to the success of sales enablement. Enablement can help enhance collaboration by instilling accountable behavior within teams. To help us understand the importance of accountability in teams and how to build it, I’m so excited to welcome Eric Coryell, the author of “Revolutionize Teamwork”. Eric, could you please take a moment and introduce yourself and a little bit about why accountability in teams is so important to you in your work. Eric Coryell: Sure, glad to. My name is Eric Coryell. For me, accountability and team started with my first job out of college. I got a degree in economics, had no idea what to do with it and so I got a job as a buyer. I was a pretty decent buyer, but I was also pretty good at understanding what the boss wanted and saying the right things. I got promoted as a result and kept working my way up the organizational chart. Then as I got into a leadership role, being good meant you had to have teams that were good. And I discovered low and behold that the people who were working for me did the same thing that I did. They would say what I wanted them to say, and they knew how to play the game well, as opposed to what they really felt. At that point, I realized this isn’t going to get us to where we got to go. If we’re going to be an effective team and effective organization, I got to get them to say what they really feel and I got to get them to become accountable, not to me, but to the results and to each other. So, that’s when I started to play with the idea of maybe there’s a different way around managing accountability. At the same time, this was back in the nineties, early nineties when we were all a relatively small company. Working with the big boys, the Baxter’s and the Abbotts, and they were so large and so dysfunctional, we discovered the only way that we are going to work effectively with them is if we became functional. We went to this idea of cross-functional teams, way before it was a thing. Low and behold, those teams were pretty much a mess. And I realized that some of the same things I was learning about leading my own team applied to those cross-functional teams. The more I played with it and try things and fail more often than I care to admit, started figuring out what was required to get teams to become accountable. Then with every job I had from that point forward, I worked really hard at leading my team as a team. Most importantly, putting them in position to be accountable to each other and not me and found that in the long term, they were higher performing teams than those that weren’t. OF: Absolutely. That is a great introduction to your book, which centers on the importance of accountability. What does accountability really mean to you and why do you maintain that concept that’s often said of holding people accountable is actually a myth? EC: Most people will say being accountable means you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do in the time frame you said you’d do it. And that’s just kind of how we walk around and say, that’s what it means to be accountable. Well, who’s always done what they said they’re going to do in the timeframe. They said they do it. I think it’s at the moment when someone doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do in the timeframe, they said they do it. You’re going to find out whether they’re going to act accountable or not. Some people when they fall short of expectations, make excuses, they point fingers, they procrastinate the height, and those are all non-accountable behaviors. Versus those that are accountable, what they do when they fall short of expectations, is they take ownership and then they start doing something different till they get it fixed. So, to me being accountable means if I’m not getting the desired results, I start doing something different. That’s kind of the way countability is inside of organizations. But if someone does not act accountable, if they don’t get the desired results, then someone else needs to step in and start being accountable. In other words, doing something different until it gets the desired results. And that’s almost always the leader. It’s the leader’s job. If someone’s not performing or if results aren’t happening, the leader’s the one that needs to step in and address those issues and start doing something different until they get a result. So that’s what I was told as a leader, “Eric, you need to hold these people accountable.” Well, holding someone accountable, looks like this: you tell them what to do. You make sure they have everything they needed to get the job done. You incentivize them. You put measurements in place. You set goals. You give them feedback. If after all that they don’t get it done, you go in and you coach. Then you ask questions and you re-incentivize, and you beg, and you threaten, and you cry, and you pray, and you do whatever it is you do. If none of that works, if giving an ultimatum that doesn’t work, then you liberate them. That’s pretty much the process. That’s the act of holding people accountable, which I did for a number of years. Until one day I asked myself, at what point did I ever really hold them accountable? Well, you could argue I held them accountable and I let them go. But up until that point, who really had the accountability. What I realized was it’s the leader that’s setting expectations. It’s a leader, it’s an incentivizing and making sure that the job is going and giving feedback and coaching and begging and threatening. So, I’ve come to believe that that notion of holding someone accountable is really a myth. What I hear when someone says, “hold you accountable,” all I really hear them saying is I am taking the accountability from you and I now have it. I think that’s what we do inside organizations is we assign different levels of accountability, different people, right? So, you’re accountable to do this and you’re accountable for that. If an individual doesn’t meet that accountability, their boss has to step in and take it from them. If the boss doesn’t mean their accountability, their boss has to step in and take it from them and that’s kind of how we manage accountability inside organizations. OF: Those are some great points. I hadn’t thought about it that way where people often think of accountability as after the fact, rather than being managed ongoing and holding yourself accountable in a way and understanding what those behaviors are as an individual contributor in a team setting. With that said, what makes a team accountable and why are accountable teams so rare? EC: That’s a good question. Most typical, hierarchical structures have the leader that has the accountability. As a leader, I like that because I have control. But it’s also exhausting at the end of the day, I feel like all the world is on my shoulders and the team will only be as good as the leader holds everybody accountable. But there is another way to manage accountability and that’s to get the team to manage the accountability, such that if performance isn’t happening or if someone’s not getting the job done, the team starts to address those issues and it’s not always a leader. So that’s the notion of what an accountable team is. Accountable teams are different than most things, because in most teams, while we call them teams, especially inside a business environment, you have six people that report to me, I call it my sales team, expect them to act like a team. But the inherent things are not in place there to actually make that team function like a team, and especially not act like an accountable team. So, to get a team to become functional, which is really the first step. There are certain things that need to be in place. You need to have a clear, defined purpose of what’s the team here to achieve. You need the measurements and metrics that tell you whether or not you’re achieving that, obviously you need competent people and capable processes. I’ve yet to see a functional team that tolerated incompetence. And you need capable processes. Good communication, no decisions you can and cannot make solidifying roles and responsibilities. The most important thing to get a team to function is their needs be a shared fate. And by that, I mean, what happens to one happens to all, and that’s really the driving force that will go to a group of people that actually function like a team and inside business structures more often than not the only shared fate that exists on a team is everyone’s having to survive the boss. The conversations amongst everybody to be like, did you hear what you said today? What would you see what you did yesterday? And those will be the conversations that create the shared fate for most teams. It’s not a very healthy shared fate, but it’s usually all that exists. If you look at sports, there’s a shared fate we either win the game together or we lose the game together. There are certain environments that automatically almost create all those things. You have to take the time to create that you get these five things in place, however, and you will watch a group of people actually start to function like a team, but you can have a functional team and all the accountability can still rest with a leader. So, if you want a functional team to become accountable team, what makes teams truly accountable is if that team gets good and comfortable at dealing with their real issues together. And by that, I mean, the real issue is any issue that affects the team’s ability to achieve their purpose. Once we know what the team’s accountable for, if something’s getting in the way, a year real issue that if the team’s going to be accountable, they’re the ones that are going to have to start dealing with those issues. Good news is most issues aren’t real, right. If someone’s got bad breath, we don’t need to bring the whole team together and talk about their bad breath. It’s not going to affect your ability to be successful. But if someone’s not equally invested in the team, that’s a real issue. Someone’s not behaving by the values and standards, which we agreed to, that’s a real issue. Probably the biggest one is if someone’s not performing, that’s a real issue. If someone’s not uploading into the deal, that’s going to affect the team’s ability to be successful. When I grew up in business, I was told, “Eric, you praise in public and criticize in private,” but if you paid attention, most performance reviews are done in private. Then you wonder why you don’t have teams. If you look at a sports team, performance reviews are held in front of everybody. It’s totally normal, but in business we preach and do just the opposite. And in fact, I think most teams, when we get together for meetings, we actually collude to avoid talking about our real issues. We’ll work really hard to avoid those tough topics. We’ll talk about those issues in the meeting, after the meeting and the bars in the bathrooms and the hallways where it’s safe, you know, the one or two people we find safety on. I think most teams work really hard to avoid talking about their real issues. They do just the opposite, but accountable teams don’t. Accountable teams get in the habit if something’s getting in the way of them being successful, they don’t ignore it. They don’t talk behind each other’s back. They don’t sit around waiting for the leader of the boss, the coach, the parent, to solve their problems. Instead, they learn to talk to each other through those things, whatever they are. The second the team gets good at doing that, that’s when they start delivering high results. So that’s when you start to trust each other, you respect each other, you have each other’s back and it becomes more about the team than it does the individual. Well, the only way to get there is to get that team comfortable and good at dealing with their real issues. That’s the secret to getting teams to become accountable. OF: Yes. I love the concept that you just mentioned of dealing with real issues together. I actually want to dig a little bit deeper into that, what are some of the challenges or obstacles that you think stand in the way of building accountable teams and then how can team leaders help to overcome those challenges? EC: At the very heart of that issue is getting people to say what they really feel. I think most teams, the reason that doesn’t happen is I think on most teams, there’s what I call a psychological contract. By that I mean there’s an unwritten rule, it’s unspoken, but it’s a contract that exists on most teams. It says contract that keeps us from doing this, and the contract goes as follows. I will not talk about your performance. You just don’t talk about mine. I call it psychological. Very few people have ever had that conversation with a teammate. We don’t sit to our teammates and talk about you have to run me, but it is clearly a contract that exists on most teams. And I know it’s a contract because if I were to walk into a team and start critiquing someone’s performance in front of everybody that person’s going to feel portrayed, you just broke the deal. Even though the deal has never spoken and they’re going to have no choice but declare thermonuclear war. And here we go, I mean, how dare you talk about me in front of everybody. I’m not going to talk about you. And so, I think it’s that contract that really keeps this from happening. How to overcome that, I think two things need to happen. One is that shared fate, there has the shared fate is what creates the motivation for people to say what they truly feel because if my success is intertwined with your success, if my failures that are trying with your failure, I am highly motivated to have those conversations. But the second thing is trust. If I really trust your intent, if I know you’re sharing these things with me, just tell me, get better. If I know you’re sharing, as soon as we just help the team get better, I’m not so scared to do this. If I know you’re attentive, tell me, get better. If I trust your intentions to help the team and get past my ego pretty darn quick. If there isn’t that trust, if I don’t trust your intent well, my little ego flares in a heartbeat, I get defensive and have all sorts of it. So, making this happen really requires that meaningful shared fate, that feeling of what happens to want to help install, but it also requires getting that level of trust. And once you have that, then you can break the psychological contract because now we can go on and sort of having these conversations and we realize that we’re dealing with these issues for the betterment of the team. We are dealing with these issues for the betterment of each other. If you don’t do that, however, it feels like an attack and I tend to get defensive and I tend to feel it the way to play it safe as to avoid talking about these things. When in reality, that’s the least safe thing. OF: That is very interesting, that trust and safety are such core components to accountability and teams. A lot of that, as you’ve talked about, really comes down to the culture within teams. I think especially if a team is operating dysfunctional, it’s because they lack that culture of safety and trust. So, with that in mind, what are some actionable steps that professionals can take to really build a culture of accountability within their teams, and maybe overcome that dysfunction that’s really harming the culture of their team? EC: I think to overcome it, some of the stuff you need to do is purely structural. And I kind of alluded to a lot of these things before. There has to be clarity of what we’re here to achieve. Honestly, next to me, your team, start the meeting out, have everybody pull out a blank sheet of paper and have them write down what they think the purpose of the team is. Rarely, I don’t know if I’ve ever had it happen where the answers matched. So, the starting point is starting to lay the strong foundation. The first step is what are we here to achieve? Second step is how do you put metrics in place that tell us whether or not we’re achieving them, because if we’re going to be accountable, we got to do something different. We need to know when we’re falling short. Competent people, capable process. Honestly, most teams already have that. But the next thing I got to do is I got to build this shared fate. I got to do the things that will start to get the team to feel like a team. So often as a leader, you’re responsible for this and you’re responsible for that. You’re responsible for that. I have an issue with that. I talked to you. I have an issue with it. I talked to you and then I wonder why you’re not acting like a team. I got to change the mindset of you guys are individuals with different accountabilities that are ultimately here to achieve the team’s purpose. I got to start to do the things that build the shared fate. I’m going to co-locate their desks. I’m going to get them to respond accountable for achieving a set of metrics together. I can do a compensation; common enemy create shared fate difficult challenge to create shared fate. So, my job as a leader then is to dial up the shared fate. Those things to me are the structural foundation you need to put in place. They’re not hard to just take some time, energy and focus on the other side of the equation. I call it the behavioral changes that need to take place and ultimately to build trust. There’s some wonderful work out there. And trust Bernie Brown is extraordinary. All sorts of people who have done great work on trust. But I think on teams, probably the most important skill set is our ability to learn, to work through our issues together, whatever they are to learn, to talk them out, and that is the challenge. First of all, it was a psychological contract, but a lot of our behaviors, at least the behaviors I were taught actually destroys trust. So probably the most important skill set I get to teach teams is literally the importance that whenever anyone talks, everyone speaks only on their own behalf. And by that, I mean, when I’m speaking, I can only speak from my own frame of reference. There are two rules that I teach that make that a reality. The first rule is I don’t allow group pronouns to be used in meetings. I don’t allow people to use the word we, they, our, anybody. Everybody gets that so our teams avoid their real issues. You’ll hear someone say all the time, someone will say, “well, you know what our problem is, our problem is we don’t follow a process.” Well, who is “we,” who is, “they?” I don’t want to point out the individual. That’s not doing it. I don’t want to address the real issue. So, I throw a pronoun at it and teens tend to then avoid their real issues. So, my rule is, I mean, outside of media, of course use those words, “We won. We lost,” that’s great. But when I’m working through an issue, no. If someone says we, I just played the interrupt, say just exactly, who’s we, who’s they. Yeah, because I can say I’m not fun to process. I don’t see any one of you following a process. Like I said, the two of you aren’t on a process, just can’t say we’re not following a process. The second thing I do, and this sounds even crazier, but I don’t allow questions to be asked in meetings. Believe it or not. Questions are actually passive-aggressive and being a little bit extreme here, the only time I ever allow anyone else to questions, if they make a statement first. Because almost all communication breakdowns take place when someone starts with a question, because when I begin with a question, your mind will immediately start making assumptions around that question. Why are you asking that question? What answer do you want to hear? And the fact of the matter is the brain always thinks the statements. So, there’s always the thought what we tend to do is we take that thought, we twist it into a question for safety sake. You’ll hear someone asks a question like, don’t you think it’d be a good idea if we did this, as opposed to saying, I think this would be a good idea, but I’m afraid to say, I think this would be a good idea because I can get rejected. If I ask it as a question, that’s the terrible idea I could say, “yeah. I thought so too. I was just checking.” Right? I don’t have to own it. But I promise you that that’s where things fall apart. Because when I ask the question, it gets misinterpreted. A great example took place two years ago, my wife and I put up Christmas decorations all throughout the house and super late at night, super tired, I’m in the kitchen. Almost done, she walks in, she asked me a question. She goes, “don’t you think it’d be a lot easier if you did it this way?” I’m tired to begin with then I think to myself, well, no, I know how to put Christmas lights out at Christmas and I had this complete meltdown. When in reality, she had a really good idea. She just expressed there was a question. I made some false assumptions around that question. Right? So, the rule is you can make a statement. You can ask the question. If the data got a question, this has got to come after the state. So, the no issue would have said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea that may make your life easier,” statement. Now she can ask the question. Do you want to hear it? I can make a statement. I think this is a good idea then I guess the question, what do you guys think? I don’t know what you think. So, learning to get everyone to speak on their own behalf is the skillset that literally enables people to start working through issues without judgment because when I don’t speak on my own behalf, if I walk into a meeting and say something like, “Well, Olivia, we don’t think you’re doing a very good job.” What do you hear when I say that? You hear the wheel who’s we, you would talk about, we have my back. Oh my gosh. And trust is instantly destroyed, which is a very different thing than if I say, “Hey, I don’t see you doing a good job and that’s okay.” We can talk about that, but the second I throw a “we” at it, all sorts of things start to fall apart. You start to feel like, even terminal back trust gets destroyed. So, the secret is getting everyone to speak for themselves. I don’t allow someone to walk into a meeting and say, Johnny and I were talking, come speak for Johnny and myself. Almost every district of meeting is laced through the weeds, intervention starts with them. We think you’ve got a problem. These are full of it. It happens because we talk about these real issues outside the meeting, before it comes to the meeting, and then we bring them together in a wasteland. So that’s why it’s so important everyone speaks for themselves. And the last piece of the puzzle is learning how to have the conversations in a constructive way, every real issue, every issue that that’s going to get in the way of any team being successful is always the conversation about the gap that exists between expectation and reality. So, I expect these results, I’m seeing these results. I expect this behavior, I’m seeing that behavior. Every real issue has its source in that gap. The problem is the tendency for us as humans is to put it off, put it off, put it off to find the I’m sitting on so much frustration with my expectation and the time I come to have the conversation it’s “Let’s just start over.” So, teaching groups, how to learn to stop, slow down. Let’s talk about what our expectations are. Make sure we’re on the same page. What does performance look like? Let’s talk about reality. What are you seeing? What I’m seeing? And then the third source is, is talking about the impact of the gap that exists. We may agree there’s a gap, but we do disagree on the impact. A quick illustration. It goes back a year ago. My daughter was home at the time, and her room forever has been a mess. And it finally occurred to me, I’ve never really set the expectation that you keep your room clean. So, I sat down with her. I’m like, “Shannon, you’re old enough now where I expect you to keep your room clean at all points in time.” So, we are now on the same page in terms of expectations. Well, the next thing you know, we’re having the reality conversation because she starts telling me that it is clean. I’m like, no, that’s a mess. That’s a federal disaster. In fact, this is what a clean room looks like. So, I finally got to the point where she agreed it wasn’t clean, but now we’re having the third conversation, which is the impact of the gap because her next counter conversation, comments to me was well, so what, I keep the door closed. I don’t want my friends in the room. She literally goes, it’s safe. I mean, if I trip up, I fall into a bunch of clothes. Why is it a big deal? My room was clean. So, I’m like, why is it a big deal? My first thought was, well, I had to. So, you should, I’m not winning that argument. And then it occurred to me like you’re nine months away from going off to college, and if your roommate’s a neat freak and you can’t keep her room clean, that’s a problem. And quite frankly, my job as an adult is to send you off into the world as a semi-functional adult. And part of it is somewhat functional is being able to keep her room clean. So, she’s like, fine, what do I need to do to prove? Keep her room clean? I’m like, well, keep it clean for 30 days straight. Sure enough, she did. Then the room’s a mess again. But the point was is we had to work our way through each of those issues. And I will tell you every real issue has its source. So, as I get to work with teams, I can get any team through any issue. And as long as everyone speaks for themselves and as long as they take whatever that issue is and learn to break it down into those components. And with that, you can take on virtually anything. As teams start to take on these issues, whether it’s performance or investment or behavior, then trust gets built. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. It becomes second nature, but learning those skillsets is not natural. I was always told, ask questions, don’t make statements, don’t use I, all that kind of stuff. But what I’ve come to realize if you want to create an accountable team, it’s much the opposite. OF: You mentioned something important there about performance expectations and really making sure that those are very clear, and everyone knows what good is supposed to look like. So, in terms of metrics for accountable behavior, what are some of the criteria for those metrics that teams should adopt? EC: You make a good point. One of the big things is I go into a team and ask every individual what they’re accountable for, and they’re almost going to only talk about their own world. I’m accountable for sales in the North territory. I’m accountable for the sales in the South and the East or the West or whatever it is, right. If a team is going to be accountable, what needs to be clear is what is the team accountable for? So, by that saying, okay, look, you guys, you, as a team are accountable to generate X number of new customers, total sales margins of the job code, whatever that is. And I’m going to hold you accountable as a team to those metrics. So, if one of you is not upholding the deal, you need to start talking to each other and start dealing with those issues. That’s really the essence of an accountable team, but you’re not going to be able to do that unless you have really clear metrics. So, the metrics first and foremost have to tie exactly back to that purpose. So, at the end of the day, I got to look at those metrics and say, you know what, if they’re hit on those metrics, the team brings their accountability. So, having done this for longer than I care to admit, a few things that I’ve learned. First of all, I’ve ever seen a team successfully be accountable for more than like five metrics. So, my first rule is you should be able to clearly determine whether or not you’re achieving the team’s accountability with three to five metrics, in some cases, but no more than five. Using some metrics or some metrics. So, we’re going to measure activities and things that lead to the overall metric. So, you want to make sure that metrics you’re truly focusing on are tied directly to the purpose state. So very often I’ll color code the purpose statement in a certain section of the purpose statement, I’ll color code to the actual metrics so we can tie a one-to-one correlation between those things. That was probably the first thing. It’s got to tie directly. The second thing is you can’t have too many and this isn’t a little bit more subtle, but you got to make sure the team has influence over those metrics. Because if you’re going to ask a team to be accountable for something, you have to have very little influence over it. As soon as the metric starts going itself, they’re going to do this and it’s not our fault. So, one exercise I very often do is one, three, three of a metrics. I’ll get together with the team and say to create a little T chart. What’s in your control? What’s outside of your control? And that happens a lot in the sales arena, right? So, what’s outside of our control. Well with competition does commodity prices, and they’ll start studying all these things that are out of their control. Well, what’s in your control. Like, okay then why am I paying you? But what is in your control, our efforts, how we approach the customers, the sales system we use, et cetera, et cetera. So, once we get that up there, then we have to look back and say, is that enough of this metric truly inside of our control, where we can be accountable to it. If so, much of it is outside of our control, then I’m going to say it’s a bad metric. I just had this happen to me two weeks ago. So, it’s fresh in my mind, but working with a manufacturing team and one of their metrics has been cycle time. From the time a job gets released to the floor, at the time it’s off the door and they’ve been struggling with it for about a year, the root cause kept coming back and they had outsourced the parts they couldn’t control the players league. And when the player fell behind, they started to struggle. So, it was a bad metric from that perspective because they really didn’t have, they swapped out planters and they continue to be a problem. So, what they did to make that metric inside their control, as they started measuring the time it went to the floor to the time it went to the platers, stop the clock. Started the clock, when it came back to finish. Now they were in control of all those things. So, they had to tweak the measurement so that it was something that they were inside of control of. I think the third component is you have to make sure that they have a high degree of influence around those metrics. And then the fourth thing, is that it needs to be measurable on a timely basis. If it’s a metric that you can only gather data around, like an employee survey, something like that. Once a year, it’s really hard to be accountable to that. So, you really want to pick a metric that has a regular cadence to feedback. We got to find ways to generate that feedback. So even if it’s customer satisfaction feedback, we’re going to cycle it over a period of time, as opposed to just hitting everybody once a year. So, we’re going to get out and get data, and then we can use that data to get better. I’d say those are probably the four most important things to have good metrics. OF: Those are fantastic tips. I want to go back to something that you mentioned right at the start of this conversation, which was around cross-functional teamwork. Sales enablement professionals are often responsible for leading a lot of cross-functional projects. I’m curious to hear from you, how can accountability be built in that cross-functional team dynamic, where the team might not necessarily be working together daily, but they still need to come together to meet very specific organizational goals? EC: You’re going to get me on my soap box here. More and more organizations are going to that model. If you think about the hierarchical model, the hierarchical business model actually starts in the early nineteen-hundreds. When companies started to grow in size, we have to figure out how to organize them. We adopted the military model. It was the Romans, right. And the military of general’s officers, soldiers, thinking, telling, doing, and we would specialize. So, we’d have a sales department, operations purchasing, whatever it was, but that’s not the way business flows in a slow-moving world. Back in world war one, we’ll work to that model, we could send all the information up to the top. They would make the decisions come down from on high until everybody went to the front line. People would do it. Today’s world is so much faster. We need the decisions to be made closer to the customer. We need that cross-functional perspective in that we can’t just work in these silos and make the best decisions. Every organization I know is wrestling with that. The cross-functional team idea is, the first step at doing that, the problem with cross-functional teams we realized that over to best service the customer, we need someone from sales, and we need someone from purchasing and maybe an estimator and project manager. We’re going to pull these people out of their apartments, put them together and say, be accountable to each other. The problem is at the end of the day, if I’m the inside salesperson, I’m reporting to my inside sales manager or the purchasing person, I’m reporting to the purchasing manager for the project manager, I’m reporting to you. So, while we are supposed to be accountable to each other, at the end of the day, is even being on there to look to my source of separation, which is my boss, which isn’t on the team. That’s where these cross-functional teams start to break down and I’ll call it a matrix organization. So, in order to get that to work, it takes a leap of faith. The leap of faith is very much what we’ve been talking about today. That is to get the team to become truly accountable. But that requires then that I am now accountable to my teammates and not to my boss. So, my performance review is no longer going to come from my boss. My performance review is not going to come from my team. I may still have a boss, but the boss is now a coach. The purchasing manager is making sure that all the purchasing people are using the best software, their personal development, all that kind of stuff. But those purchasing, those buyers are reporting to me. They are now reporting to the team. And that’s the only way the long term is to make this work. That you don’t need the managers. They’re still there, but they’re in a different role. It’s much more like coaching. Coaches don’t get to play the game, but I’m here to put the players in positions so they can be successful. I’m going to create a good playbook. I’m going to train. I’m going to do all those things necessary, so they go play the game and be successful. And that’s a different mindset for leaders. I think as a leader, it’s hard because they got to let go of control. And that’s probably one of the biggest single challenges in making this happen is getting the leaders comfortable, letting go of control, but there have to be just like a coach in a sport and they can’t go out and play the game. They’ll all tell me during the game, it’s pretty helpless feeling when I run out there and tell them what to do or do it for them. But I can’t, it’s no different at work. You create these cross-functional teams. All you can do is put them in a position to be successful and trust that they’re going to be successful. Well, if they’re not, the team has got to step up and take the accountability. So, you got to do these things we’ve talked about, but the purpose of metrics and all those things in place. And then if a team isn’t hitting those metrics, the team has got to get together and start resolving those issues. And they have to know how to have those informal conversations and work through those things. Ultimately, if a team can’t do that, the leader’s got to step back in and take it from them, but it’s not a natural act. In order to make this work, you got to kind of go all the way in and get these teams to become accountable to each other, as opposed to doing half and half where you’re a team, but then you report to different people. That’s a leap of faith and it’s not easy to do, but then it’s really what’s required to get those cross-functional teams to work. OF: That’s very interesting that you mentioned that it takes really a mindset shift, especially from the manager’s perspective and really being more of a coach rather than solely managing performance. So, I just want to ask one final question, and this has been a great conversation by the way, but I want to go back to something that you mentioned as really being the core ingredient of accountable teams, and that’s the concept of shared fate. So, let’s dig a little bit deeper into that. How do you create a shared fate and why is that so integral to the success or even the failure of a team? EC: You really touched on what’s most important. I’ll tell people, you know, not every group of people should be a team. You’ve got to decide, do I really want them to be a team? If you do, you need to build that shared fate, the stronger you need that team to be, the greater the shared fate you need it to be. So, let me illustrate it. This will happen in sales environments to where all the sales manager calls me up where for my sales team, I’m like why? And they’re like, well, teams outperform individuals. Not always but keep talking. Well, I got four salespeople. I got Johnny, he’s got the North and Beth has got the South and Mary’s got the East and Frank’s got the West. I’m like, okay, well, how do you think? Well, they get a base pay, but they all get a pretty big commission check based upon the sales. They generate the respective geographies. Like, you want them to be a better team. Well, yeah, simple. Take their commissions. Add them up. Divide by four, pan the same. Oh, I can’t do that. Mary’s my rockstar. Johnny’s brand new, Mary’s would be giving money to Johnny and that’s not fair. Do you want Mary helping Johnny or no? If you do, and then you need it. We do create a team and you need to create a shared fate. You may decide, you know what? I just want Marie to work with the Falcon giant, to worry about the North and go, in which case I’m going to say, don’t sweat the team thing, but if you want them to act like a team, if you want them to help each other, if you want them to be invested in each other, then the very first thing is you have to create a meaningful, shared fight. That’s what’s going to start to create those conversations and do the things necessary to get them to act like a team. Now, I also have to give them the ability to influence each other. Mary’s got to be able to go talk to Johnny and coach them up and help them out because I can’t just say you’re going to share in the commission, but you have no influence over that person. So, the key becomes, how do you build that shared faith? High performing teams need high levels of shared fate. A classic illustration is the military. I actually have a good friend. He’s a former Marine, accidentally Coleman ex-Marine. Once that was a mistake, and I asked them because we were talking about bootcamp. I’m like, well, what happens in bootcamp? And he said well, Eric it’s different depending upon where you go, but it’s all to the same effect. I’m like, Oh, yeah. What’s that? He goes, well, I figured it out the second day. Like, well, what happened was all the Sergeant came in the barracks, woke us all up in the morning, dragged us all out to the beach and told all of us that we’d be going from here to over there as fast as we possibly could along the Mark obstacle course. It turned out to be a 90-minute physical gauntlet. We slammed at the point, we almost drowned. We ran forever. We climb these walls. We crawled under barbed wire and then we had to run around and around this obstacle course in the forest until they finally blew the whistle, and we got the finish and I finished first. I’m like, that’s awesome. He’s like, Nope. I’m like, why? He goes, well, they lined us up on the order of our finish and the Sergeant got two witches in front of my face and tore me apart. I’m like, why you won? But I also happen to pass up all my teammates who were struggling in the forest and I kept going and I figured out really quick it didn’t matter when I finished it, it only mattered when everybody else finished. And that’s what they did during basic training was they made your life increasingly miserable, so you figured out it was about the team and not you. And if you didn’t, they got you out because in the heat of the battle, you better have each other’s back or people’s lives are at stake. Everything they did was to build shared fate. We all lost our hair. We all wear the same clothes. We all eat the same food. Point being the stronger you need a team to be the stronger, the shared fate you need to create. So, in those environments where it’s high stress, high pressure, I have to do everything I can to build, share, and faith. Other things may not require that same level of shared fate, but there are lots of ways to do it. I really think it stems from how does the leader treat their team? As a leader, I would find a sales issue. I texted my sales manager or HR, should I talk to HR manager and then wonder why they weren’t acting like a team. It wasn’t till I started saying as a team, you are accountable for the sustainable profitable growth of this organization. And I expect you as a team to deliver on that. And I started talking to them in that way. Did they actually start acting like a team? Because now all of a sudden, the HR manager was equally owning the sales metric and she’d run over to the sales manager and say, here’s what I’m seeing. I got these ideas, and they started investing in each other. You can build that shared fate in a variety of ways. You can do it by making it hard to get on the team. When we come out of COVID and go back to the office, if you really want to build shared fate, take your entire team and say for the next day weeks, we’re all going to work together of this conference room, bring your laptop. That creates a sense of shared fate. There’ll be amazing, what that does, a common enemy creates shared fate, a passion around. She means something meaningful to us. Create shared fate. You can do a compensation. There are all sorts of ways to do it. In fact, a very good example, I always tell people, go home, watch “Miracle on Ice”, watch “Remember the Titans”, watch “Saving Private Ryan”. They’re all stories of these teams that did extraordinary stuff because the leader knew how to build a shared fate, whatever that was. That’s why that’s so important because without that shared fate, you’re really not going to have a team. My definition of a team is a group of individuals with a shared fate, the stronger you need that team to be, the greater the shared fate you have to build. If you’re not able to create one, then I would probably say, don’t sweat the team thing. Go get a group of individuals, go do some great stuff, but don’t worry about the team thing. Just know that the accountability is always going to be on your shoulders, which isn’t the worst thing, right? You have lots of control, but the downside is it puts a lot of pressure on you because the team’s only going to be as good as you are. If you wanted the team to perform to a higher level, then you’re going to have to learn to let go and put them in a position of becoming that team by doing all the things we were really talking about. OF: Well, those are some fantastic and very powerful examples. Thank you so much for sharing those. And thank you again for taking the time, Eric, to talk to our audience and share a little bit of your expertise in how to build accountable teams. EC: Well, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear.

Bernie is an Iowa farm girl transplanted to Raleigh, North Carolina. Bernie's Iowa childhood, her travels in the States and Europe, and her contemporary life in Raleigh influence her short stories and essays. She isn't sure where the urge to write ghost stories comes from. Their source is a mystery. Bernie has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She's also has a passion for influential women in American history and loves to sew. When you hear about one of her projects, you'll be as astounded as I was.Learn more about Bernie at berniebrownwriter.com.Questions, Comments or Suggestions?Email me at demonddoes@gmail.comor you can contact me on Twitter, Instagram or FacebookMusic by DJ PRhyme

Join industry professionals as they connect on what is working for their team and the challenges they face keeping mental health a top priority during Covid-19. Announcer 0:00Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We're glad you're here. Shannon Pritchett 0:17Welcome, everyone to our December, CXR connects last one of the year, which I'm hoping 2021 is more prosperous for all of us, today is going to be a little bit of a different conversation, the focus is going to be wellness in the workplace. But I don't have a lot prepared. Normally with CXR Connects, we give a lot of interesting data and statistics from our own research. This week, I'll be adding in others research, you know, much larger organizations than ourselves that specialize in this sort of field. But most importantly, I really want to hear from us. And I thought we can make this more of a communal conversation, as opposed to simply just having set facilitators. I think this year has been crazy for all of us. And what I want to challenge everyone on the call to do is to share and ask questions. A lot of you are joining this call, I know because you're hoping to get ideas. And some of you might already be doing a lot of good things with your teams that I'm hoping you can really share with other people, such as what are you doing to keep employees engaged, are just check on their mental health? Or what is your organization doing? Do they offer any employee assistance programs, etc, I think we can all learn from one another on today's call, and I'm excited to get started in doing so. Alright, so I have a few slides. Before we get started. Just want to remind everyone that we have tons of great resources on our website, we have a really robust exchange into the site today, you might notice a little bit of a fun gamification system we've added to the site. That's all I'm gonna say, I hope you go out and start playing with our exchanges. And then you will definitely notice it. Also, our benchmarking reports, we just added a robust report around sourcing that we've been working quite hard towards. So I would love it if you guys can take a look at that. And our 2021 calendar is getting posted on the web. So you can check out all the upcoming events we have in 2021. And recording of this and all of our other CXR Connects webcast as well as all of our meetings are made available in our CXR library. Alright, so I mentioned some of the exchanges, as always, we like to remind you to we can carry the conversation over in our exchange, there are so many different types of exchange that you can join. In fact, we have 25. Chris, I think the best one for this conversation would be for us to go into the CXR member and alumni. And perhaps we can post some resources in that after this call. So we don't have any exchanges dedicated towards wellness, but that doesn't mean that all these other great exchanges that we have are made are off limits. But I'd like to keep this conversation going in our alumni exchange. All right, so before we dive in, I want to start with a little bit of a fun exercise. So Barb brought this attention, exercise to my attention, and it came from Bernie Brown. And it was one of the Barb Can you put a little bit more context into what she does with this. Barb Ruess 3:32Yeah, she Yeah, so I was reading something from her actually listened to a podcast, I've read a couple of her books and, and of course in touch with what she was talking about. Like a lot of it's the whole zoom fatigue and how you know, you'll start things out and you're waiting forever to get there. You're like how you do it. And everybody says, Oh, I'm fine. And she was like, I quickly realized that we weren't really answer that question, honestly. So now she said she starts all of her team meetings with th...

Today's guest is a believer in authentic connections and heart-based leadership. He's spoken at TEDx five times and is an Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. With over 500,000 social media followers, he is a recognized influencer and here to teach you how to network authentically to build brand awareness. Please welcome Bobby Umar. Contact Info: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyumar/ https://twitter.com/raehanbobby https://www.facebook.com/raehanbobby/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bobbyumar/ https://www.nsb.com/speakers/bobby-umar/ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLei-DaVi2YC0vXcZ13AiJvYgBDKzfaecq https://www.instagram.com/raehanbobby/ https://www.youtube.com/c/BobbyUmar Hey, Bobby. Thanks for thanks so much for jumping on learning from others today. I'm excited to be here, Damon. Thanks. Uh, you have a pretty diverse background, you know, inc magazine, top a hundred leadership speaker. You've done TEDx a bunch of times, tons of social media followers, and that's how you and I met was on LinkedIn. Um, so. Before we dive into how you got there and what your, your secret sauce is. Let's kind of start with my guests, usual, two questions. And question number one is, you know, in your own words, what are you good at? And what can we potentially learn from you today? I would say my main expertise is what I call the power of connection and that's my hashtag. And they use the power of connection in three ways to help companies and individuals. One is a personal branding, which is the connection with the self. Number two is authentic. Network analyst should build it in the thirties. Um, Social media, digital influence and public speaking, which is the connection with the world. And so for me, helping people connect as individuals to other individuals or other groups, that's really what I do best. Okay. I'm going to have some follow up questions for you on that, but I need to know what are you not so good at? Hold on. Not so good at it, man. So many things. Yeah. I can't swim. I really never learned how to swim. I have not. Uh, I'm pretty, I'm terrible with the, the, the health management piece. I mean, I'm trying to lose weight and I'm trying to eat healthy and just, I find it very difficult at times. I think that's, that's a hard thing. Uh, I probably suck at, uh, definitely. Uh, time management sometimes. And sometimes I'm really good sometimes just like terrible, but it's more about the, you know, getting those small things in. And I just, like, I find like, okay, I'm stressed, I'm distracted. That's squirrel. That's, that's the thing I'm very distracted easily. You know, what's interesting is, and I've said this to our listeners more than once is that it's so funny to bring on experts and more often than not. They say that they suck at the small things. So they suck at time management, which is like the total opposite of what you assume, but it's just a reoccurring theme. Now, if you learn to swim, that also helps with weight loss. So there you go. Oh boy. Yeah. I could just float around everywhere. Yeah. All right. So, um, let's talk about, you know, the explanation of what you do is fairly broad. So let's kind of dial it in a little bit and maybe give us some examples of. Either like real examples of types of situations you've helped businesses with, or maybe, um, maybe if that's maybe if maybe your most common example is, is a little bit different than your most preferential type of arrangement. So like, you know, what part of it do you actually love and maybe what do you do the most of? Hmm. Yeah, I think when I go, I mean, I speak at companies and conferences and schools everywhere, but usually when I go in, they want me to take them through. Um, how to, uh, things like how to connect better and network better, you know, in person and how to have great conversations, how to communicate more effectively, uh, very soft skill type stuff. That's a very common day that I'll do another one that I'll often work on is what I call thought leadership, personal branding. So how do I understand my brand? How do I build thought leadership on our big content as you build that up? And so I'll take. You know, like small business owners, I'll talk to a bunch of custom custom with brokers, and I'll talk about how to build a brand using content and how to communicate effectively and use that brand to generate more business, a community. And those are examples of organizations where I'll go in and I'll help them out. Another time it'll be more around things like, well, how do I build a social media following? How do I communicate with that community? How do I actually. Um, you know, build followers, how do I engage them? Do I comment everything? Do I reply a lot of senior people don't know how to do that. They're very scared of social media still, like years later. And so I think that's something that they struggle with. And ultimately, because when people die, I usually go in and do team building or employee engagement stuff and talk about passion engagement, uh, better teams not working in silos. So I'll go in and. You know, work with companies and teams that are struggling within those areas of culture, culture, culture, gaps, work in silos. These are things that might go in and, you know, we'll do some activities with them to help them better bond and better communicate with each other. So what's your background that got you into this world? Well, you know, it's pretty diverse, you know, I w I was a engineer, uh, so it was kind of an analytics guy, a, you know, aerospace design engineer. So I'm a problem solver, but then I went to brand marketing and then I was also in performing arts. So I performed a improv comedy, musical theater. And so when I was feeling like, kind of lost and stuck in what I was doing, I dealt with my brand and I was like, Oh, Hey, well, what's going to come, come through here. And it turned out, you know, five things can come about one with Bobby, those people marvelous and nurture. Like my mom Bob was to perform a present like onstage. Bobby was persuading influence, which is kind of a sales thing. And then of those diversity, um, so all five of those things kind of led to me thinking, okay, what can I, what kind of have, can I create with this? And that's when you know, professional speaking kind of screaming at me, okay, this is the way to go. And that's kinda what I went with. And what I've been doing now for 15 years and that, that diverse background is really what led into it, because they're all part of what I'm doing now. Yeah. Yeah. Now one comment you mentioned was soft skills and. I, uh, I'm a huge believer in the importance of that, but until you said, I, I, I didn't really realize, I haven't really talked about it very often on the show. Um, why don't you give us explanation of, you know, what soft skills are. And I think what's super important is, um, Because I think soft skills have kind of degraded with technology. And so then maybe we can talk about that. So, you know, in your world, what are soft skills and like, how are they applicable to business? Well, I think the most direct way to talk about soft skills, the soft skills are the skills you're using to create an emotional connection. With people that you, uh, interact with. So whether they're your colleagues at work, whether it's your boss, whether it's your parents, whether it's your social media followers that you create content for, you're trying to create an emotional connection and emotional experience with that. And so soft skills. That's, what's going to get you there. So for example, you know how I communicate, it's the soft skills. And so my communication can have empathy. It can have storytelling in it. They can have, you know, a warmth and energy to it, which will then create a better connection with that person and create a more memorable experience. So for me, that's what soft skills. Now do you agree that, and this is a pretty broad statement, but do you agree that technology has caused, um, some of the authenticity and in soft skills to kind of dive a little bit in the last 10 years? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Um, I was actually going to, um, launch a brand new talk, um, uh, actually is going to be, uh, in a week from now in Poland, but, uh, it didn't happen, but it's been postponed, but it was going to be, it was going to be on. The future of connection now. And what's happened, is that what hypothesis thesis is that? There's a couple of things happening. One is, you know, technology has made it more difficult for some people to connect. In person. And so I think people struggle with that, but at the same time, there's also a disconnection too, because people who are actually, the people are struggling to actually, uh, in person to leverage technology, to connect with the world. And on top of that, we also have all those technologies. No we're using like at work, you may have two screens, you may have a laptop and a desktop. You may have a phone and something else, and we're trying, and then we have all these other platforms, you know, Slack, Trello, A sauna as well as Facebook and social media and LinkedIn, and it's, it's overwhelming. And so people are now struggling to just even find the right balance. So I think that, you know, the, the short answer is yes, I think it definitely has caused a challenge. People will, I've been challenged to connect in person before, but now with technology doing online stuff, they're also challenged that way to connect and authentic way. So I think it provides a lot of challenges for people. Uh, and to find the balance between the two. That is interesting, because I think I've thought of those two where technology makes people more in person. And I thought of that independently and then independent of that, I thought about, you know, the opposite, but I guess I haven't put them in context. It's like overlapping the same, that they're both, you know, the yin and yang of each other now with soft skills. How do you. Where do you start? Because I think that maybe the more extreme example that I, that comes to mind is you have an introvert. And so you're like, Hey, it's really important that you talk to people and have soft skills. And that they're just an introvert and they're like, Bobby, I don't want to. So is that something that you deal with sometimes and how do you do that? Yeah, absolutely. I did a webinar on how introverts can network more effectively. One of the things to keep in mind is that, you know, people. We have to understand the importance of people in our lives. So the internet and our social lives are personalized, but even professionally, if you're good at building relationships and building people's skills, it's going to suit you. You're going to get that promotion. You're going to generate those leads. You're going to actually have your close clients, whether you're doing corporate or entrepreneurship or whatever it might be, or even, even as a student, if you want to get ahead of the professor to be your buddy, you know, people's skills are really important. So, you know, one of those introverts I'll always say is that, you know, you have your own superpowers. So know what they are. You're good listeners. You're prepared, usually organize you're quite thoughtful and reflective. So take those things and use it to be a better networker. A perfect example for networking is I'll say, look, you know, prepare 10 questions that you think will drive a conversation to help someone get to know them better and also invest in who they are. And yeah, them practice them, rehearse them before you even go. And you have them all memorized. That's going to help you tremendously because you know, you're really good at that kind of stuff, all that prep. And so it helps them to figure that stuff out. You know, what came to mind while you're talking, this is kind of off topic, but yeah. Also immediately relevant at the same time, you know, you talking about everybody having kind of hidden values is. Years ago. I don't know if you saw the story. There was a, a woman that was like legally blind. And so she understandably had hurdles and types of implants. And so she started her own company as a sensitive document paper shredder. Because she couldn't read the documents anyway. Right. It's a, I think it's just a, I love those stories like that, where they take something that's super unique and then just turn it in as a positive. I mean, that's a total win right there with them. She builds trust right away. Now waters, you mentioned that all their audiences oftentimes get scared of engaging on social media. And I think that's fair, but what are they scared of? I think a lot of them are scared of technology and security is one thing. So they don't know how secure things are. And they're worried about things being a picture, being taken out of context or working things out of context, and it blows up in their face. I think that's one thing that they're, they're really concerned about. Uh, the other thing that they get concerned about is really trying to. Uh, they, they feel, they feel, um, that they're not technical. And so I think that worried that they're dumb, they don't want to look, they don't want to be vulnerable. I find it like kind of daunted because they were told or where they grew up. They were told to be tough and to be, you know, strong and to, you know, always put that best face forward. But, you know, nowadays, you know, leadership 2.0, you know, we all know that it's okay to be vulnerable. Okay. The asphalts. Okay. That talk about your struggles. Uh, but I think when I, when I engaged the older, older folks, they have a hard time saying, well, how can you say that? Even my mom's like, why don't we, why don't you talk about the way problems? Like, you know, she doesn't get it because she thinks it provides accountability, a support network. I, it makes me accountable. I love doing and relatable too. Yeah. Relatable exactly what let's talk about that a little bit more about being perfect on screen and the value in, um, You know, having those, I don't want to say flaws. I don't have a better word for those. So, you know, those unique characteristics, um, and one example I've joked about before, and it may very well may have been you. I can't remember. I think it was somebody from LinkedIn. I'm talking about a client they were working with and his. The presentations were like two polished in a short videos. And so they weren't relatable. And so the, you know, his advisor coach said, you know, when your next and your next screen pick your nose and he's like, he's like, why would I pick my nose? And he's like, just do it. And so like on his next thing is just like, you know, digging for gold for quick half second. And then he said that had the most engagement of any of his recent videos at any time because people hung on a little bit longer to watch what was next. I remember watching a speaker and she was talking and. Or the entire time of like the 10 minute speech I know that she never ever said, and I was like, Oh my gosh, let me just keep listening for the I'm. Like I, and I was like all the time and not once. And after a while, is it, this is so robotic. And I, by the end of it, I was like, okay, I didn't hear a single arm. Do you remember what she said? I don't even know what she said. Yeah, no doubt. You know what, you know, what my crutches, uh, aside from the obvious, um, you know, I think, I think, I think there's like a balance because ums are okay when, when you're just like moving forward. And so I think, I think it's like, what you don't want to do is overthink it and then have that kind of, um, you just want to have the forward momentum. Um, but one thing that I've noticed in doing conversations like this and having my editor work on the podcast and, um, I'll repurpose some of the content. And so sometimes I'll say, Hey, Go transcribe everything. And then I'm going to just scan it real quick and like find highlights of things that I'm making to an Instagram image or whatever. And so as I go through those, I say like a crap ton. I really like is my, um, and then you don't notice it until you go back and listen to minutes. It's like every, every 20 seconds, like, like, but that's me. There you go. There's there's there's my, and you were asking for like, you know, does one start to be better at these things? You know, the, the first thing is to really understand who you are driving your brand. So like getting, doing your own self assessment, as well as doing assessment of your feedback network. When people to, to tell you what they see, what they like, what they think are challenges for you, that information is incredibly invaluable. And so, you know, whenever I work with people, I would say, look, you know, diamond your brand, do the assessments and get people to give you feedback. It's a goal of mine for you to understand what your brand is and to help you figure out what you want your brand to go. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, why don't we talk about TEDx a little bit. We've had some other TEDx speakers. Why don't you walk us through the process? Because I think the process is a little bit unique to what people probably assume the processes. Um, so why don't you touch on the process and then maybe talk about, um, you know, what you thought your experience was like? Well, I think for the most part, I mean, uh, the first I've done five TEDx talks and the first four kind of came because I had really strong thought there's a brand. So people reached out to me and said, Hey, can you do one of the, okay. Uh, it's daunting though. Cause the first time I remember I did one and they said, okay, tell us, tell us the best idea of your life. Go deep dive in your personal story. Um, and minimal slides. And I love my PowerPoint. My middle slides do it, do it in 18 minutes. And I was like, Holy cow, that's really intimidating. And, and it's free. We're not going to pay you. So you know that first Ted talk, I spent hours and hours and hours on it and I rehearsed it 30 times. And, Oh my gosh, I was so nervous because many times, as you say, I'm. Oh, who knows, but like, you know, I was, it was about that and it went, it went well. I mean, at the time, but I was super nervous. And so I think that, you know, that is an important piece now in terms of the process, the fifth Ted talk in, cause I saw there was a fee and the theme was power connection, which again is my hashtag and my brand. It's like, Oh, I gotta apply for this one. So I applied for it. Got it. Um, so what'd you do, do you typically apply and do a full, full application where you talk about what your ideas? It has to be really simple and easy to understand, like in a couple of lines and then they want to know why it's important to the world. This is all important. You have to explain how it's unique. So, you know, taking you through the application processes, it's very important. You have to make sure it aligns the theme and they organize this, get it, and they get really excited about it. And then once that happens, then usually they want to meet with you and, you know, flesh out the idea a little more and see how, if you're open to making some adjustments to coachable, and then usually you get accepted to right away and they start training on the, on the old platform. And, um, they'll, they'll begin to give you coach and I've coached speakers too for Ted talks as well. And, uh, you know, they really focused on the storytelling and the rehearsal and just being yourself and not trying to be someone that you're not, I think that's an important piece. Yeah, for me, it's been a great experience. I mean, when I first did, I didn't know what it was, but now I see the brand relevance. It's certainly a, has been a big part of my brand in terms of what people know about me and what they like about me. So I certainly leverage it. And that's also why I encourage other people to go do one too. Cause I think everyone has a story and a really cool Ted talk within them. It's just a matter of trying to extract and find out what it is. Yeah. A couple of things I wanna touch on. Um, it's it's w one comment is it's interesting that you say that there's like, TEDx coaches or they walk you through, like, here's the process because now that you say that there is a very concise there's consistency in the presentation, and I've never thought about that before, about people on totally different talks about totally different presentations. There's still some element of consistency, um, in how it's presented, which now I assume is because of the TEDx people going here's the flow. And here's how these things happen. Culture there. Yeah. Um, I'm curious, you said the first one was something about, you know, best thought of your life, I think is what you said. Um, so what, what was that all about? What, what was the, uh, theme of the presentation? Like, is it best out of your life that you've actually executed? Was it best. Personal thing, was it best business thought? Yeah. They want to know what's the best idea of your life that you have that you want to share on the stage. And so, you know, when I looked through everything I was doing, I came up with connection. So I said, you know, I said, how do you create deep, authentic connection with people? And we kind of broken down the idea that my wife. Tell me, which was like, you know, how's it, you meet people. And within 30 minutes, they're telling you the entire life story and then talking about their finances and their sex lives and everything. How do you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. Uh, let me think about this. And then I combined kind of my own personal experiences along with what I saw from Bernie Brown, which had research around being vulnerable and being deep and creating that connection. Well, you know what, I'm going to talk about how I create the book connection. So I turned into a home when I called the five CS of connection. Got it. Yeah. Now I think one of the obvious questions a lot of listeners are going to ask is, um, Bobby, how do I get on TEDx? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the best way to help you is to tell you where people go wrong when it comes to I let this great Ted talk. So the first thing is your topic idea is always the thing that people screw up. So I want to talk about love. I want to talk the importance of sales. I want to talk about the problems of mindset. You know, those are such generic topics that everyone's talking about. That's not going to work. I'm a perfect example where it does work is there was a guy came up with how Ninja philosophy applies to sales. That's a great slant. Hmm. So are they have a unique idea or unique slant? So having the right idea, I would say 80% people would tell me their TEDx idea is not good, or it's not going to work. It need some, you know, it needs some changing on the subtle bit of massaging, you know? So I think that that's the first thing. The second thing is. Is building a strong thought, there's your brand. So people know who you are and they know your content and see you speak. That's how I got my first four. Cause people love my content. Love my stuff out there. So easy to be doing that too. And then the third thing I think that really helped is to get to know organizers that run TEDx on this because they're the ones that will know you and will think of you and maybe, you know, pitch you and give you a spot. Uh, which again, what happened to me the first four times days, the organizers looked like my stuff and brought me a spot. Uh, on, on their stage. I think that, and then that, I think that's another one. And then the last thing that's really important is you have to look at themes. Every TEDx event and conference has a theme. Sure. That your idea or your ideas. Cause I have two in my head that I still am going to pitch in the feature. You want to make sure it aligns to the theme really, really well, because that's also going to get, uh, get you there. And then the secret, the one secret I'll give you the last one. Which is most TedTalks, always aim for the 18 minutes. If you have a three minute talk that is goals, people are they're dying for those short ones. No, there's a famous Ted talk with a guy with the, with the, with the, the paper towel, right? He's like, just shake your hands three times, right. And use paper and use less paper towel. This will save, you know, millions of sheets of paper towel every year. It's a simple idea, but it was a great Ted talk. Right? So, so the 18 minute mindset, that's the people that are aspiring to be on. Those are the people that are stuck at 18 minutes, or whether they're trying to maximize the time they have. And that's nice and all, but an organizer would love to have shorter talks. And so if you have a shorter talk that's three or six minutes long, you actually have a much better chance of getting on stage. So generally speaking TEDx says, Hey, you have up to 18 minutes. Correct. Got it. Okay. Very interesting. Well, Bobby, I appreciate your time. I think this has been, um, you know, an interesting conversation. I like all the little things we touched on. I, you know, you and I are obviously connected on LinkedIn, but being able to chat in person, virtually in person, um, you know, there, there's a lot of common ground that I can appreciate and how you present things and, you know, the whole goal of just being authentic. And it's always refreshing to get another person to come reinforce that on the show. So. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. And I'll give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you. Sure. And thanks so much. I really appreciate that with YouTube. You know, people can find me on my LinkedIn pages and profiles where they can follow me. You that you can also check out my website  dot com and dyp.ca and on social media, I'm everywhere. So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook under the handle. Radon Bobby. Very cool. We'll put those in the show notes, Bobby Omar. Thanks so much. Thank you.

[00:01:12] So today I'm talking to Diana. Diana, where are you at in the world?[00:01:16] Diana: [00:01:16] I am in Austin, Texas.[00:01:18] dane: [00:01:18] So what's your big goal for the call today?[00:01:20] Diana: [00:01:20] My big goal is to get more clarity on my direction for 2020 and beyond.[00:01:24] dane: [00:01:24] And if you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do.[00:01:28] Diana: [00:01:28] Hosts the most badass retreats and events ever.[00:01:31] dane: [00:01:31] So what is there that you really need help with? That was pretty easy,[00:01:38] Diana: [00:01:38] right? I got a call done. I think it, it's really about figuring out the path forward, right? So like, I have this vision of hosting retreats. Locally, nationally, internationally, and having kind of like, I guess like tiered offerings. Right?[00:01:57] So there would be like monthly meetups, there'd be [00:02:00] bigger days.[00:02:01] dane: [00:02:01] Yeah. I'm going to explain a business lesson to you very briefly, and I'm going to have you retell me everything based on the new orientation that I give you. Okay. So very successful businesses, and I'm talking like extremely successful businesses, the ones that are like the envy.[00:02:16] I have three things very clear. Like crystal clear. Yeah, very clear customer. They have a very clear result defined the customer wants, and they have a very clear mechanism that gets the result. So this is the spine of a business customer result mechanism. Yeah. So what you were just doing as you were talking about the mechanism, which were your retreats, so clear customer, clear result, clear mechanism.[00:02:45] So let's switch. So who's your clear customer for these retreats?[00:02:51] Diana: [00:02:51] So my clear customer are the next level of seekers. The people who want to optimize their health and wellness, who want to connect in community. The people who are, you know, doing the personal development, doing the work. So mostly probably people in there, late twenties to mid forties[00:03:09] dane: [00:03:09] is it safe to say people very passionate about personal development?[00:03:14] Diana: [00:03:14] People? Very passionate about personal development.[00:03:16] dane: [00:03:16] Okay. That's clear. Yeah. People very passionate about personal, not people that have read Tony Robbins people. Very passionate. Right. They haven't just read like a book. Well, how do you get more clear on what kind of path? Like what very passionate means?[00:03:32] What do they typically done?[00:03:34] Diana: [00:03:34] Yeah, so there are people who've already read the books, right. Done that. And that was like maybe their entry level. How many got, how many books? I mean, I'd imagine they've read 10 plus books.[00:03:45] dane: [00:03:45] Okay. On what.[00:03:47] Diana: [00:03:47] On soft development.[00:03:49] dane: [00:03:49] What are some examples?[00:03:50] Diana: [00:03:50] So it'd be like maybe like a path with heart by Jack cornfield.[00:03:54] So like some spirituality components, like some of the, maybe you are a badass by [00:04:00] Jen Sincero. I really love Marie Forleo's. Everything is figure outable. So there would be like spiritual development, business development, and like relationship development. So maybe even they started old school, like how to win friends and influence people.[00:04:16] You know, like that might've been something that they read when they were a teenager or younger and then have just continued on. So stuff by, Oh my God, I can't believe I'm blanking on his name right now. The brain guy, what's his name?[00:04:29] dane: [00:04:29] Which one? Like this dispenser.[00:04:31] Diana: [00:04:31] It does then see, you knew exactly who I was talking about.[00:04:33] Dispenza. Yeah, exactly. Top of mind. So dispense maybe stuff by Bruce Lipton. Marianne Williamson, Bernie Brown. Kind of those like next level influencers?[00:04:46] dane: [00:04:46] What do you mean by next level?[00:04:47] Diana: [00:04:47] You know, I mean, there are people who are like on a particular platform, right? Like people would maybe consider like Kobe Bryan and influencer or like they would consider people who are making impacts in some realms, but I'm talking to people who like have global mission to have humanitarian efforts.[00:05:06] People who are usually doing like give back causes and stuff like that.[00:05:10] dane: [00:05:10] Okay. So now the first draft, you said my customer are next level type of personal development. So let me tell you what I'm hearing. We'll see if this is a clear customer, and imagine you're in a room full of 15 baller business dues.[00:05:26] They're all guys and they come to you and it's your turn to talk about your business. Now imagine you say we do retreats and this and this and this and this. Right? You just slipped into mechanism,[00:05:37] Diana: [00:05:37] right? Rookie, right. Cause that's not selling a vision. That's not talking about who it's for. There's, yeah.[00:05:43] dane: [00:05:43] And that's okay, but that's a rookie move and rookies not a bad thing. I'm not trying to mean it as a bad thing. I'm just saying it's like you haven't been trained. Right. So, okay, now it gets to you. For some reason, I'm wanting you to really picture, you're in a room with 15 baller business dues and you're in there.[00:05:58] Okay. Yeah. [00:06:00] Like are you in a high rise? Is there windows around? Tell me about the room.[00:06:04] Diana: [00:06:04] Yeah. I would think that it would be like a really. Nice setting. I wish had been to the Fairmont in Austin. It would be something like that. So like a rooftop patio is what I would envision outdoors. Yes. We're in Austin.[00:06:18] Everyone likes to be outside. The weather is perfect, you know, it's like not too hot, not too cold. People are wearing kind of business casual, so they're fancy, but they're not like suit and tie.[00:06:28] dane: [00:06:28] Great. Okay. So now you're in this environment and it's quiet enough where everybody can hear each other. And it comes to you.[00:06:34] And as they say, so Diana, tell us about your business. You say, well, our business, we target folks who are very passionate about personal development, who have global missions, who think globally. Who've read at least 10 books and the personal development realm, things like Bruce Lipton, things like Joe Dispenza, about 70% of our customer tends to be female, and then 30% of men who would probably identify as a little more sensitive than the average male.[00:06:58] Also, these are our customers. Does that capture it?[00:07:02] Diana: [00:07:02] Yeah. I feel like there's still a little bit of an explanation of like, okay, cause I mean, I know that our point is to get people to lean in more as like, what exactly are we doing? You know? Like I have this vision of creating these life changing and memorable experiences for people who are very passionate about personal.[00:07:18] dane: [00:07:18] We're part one clear customer. Now we're going to add in the clear result they want. So what's the clear result that these folks want?[00:07:26] Diana: [00:07:26] Transformation and recalibration. So it's like, not necessarily like, Oh, we're fixed and we need to be changed, but it's like we're always working on ourselves. We're always refining and we're ready to have those kinds of transformational experiences.[00:07:42] dane: [00:07:42] Is that the language that they use. Like they'll say, I want to buy a transformation.[00:07:47] Diana: [00:07:47] Well, so it's funny because there's a big shift right now, right? Like people are shifting out of like, well, I want to like change and I want to retreat and I want to reset, and they're shifting more into this. Like I want to [00:08:00] create, I want to collaborate, I want to transform.[00:08:03] I don't know if that's everywhere, but I know in Austin, those kinds of forbids are pretty popular and pretty common.[00:08:08] dane: [00:08:08] Okay, so here, listen to this as a clear result. People that want to create their missions around others and collaborate. Yeah. You see how it's very tangible. It's clear and transformation is kind of like, that's probably the bi-product.[00:08:23] Hmm. I mean, that offer gives me chills. What does it do for you?[00:08:28] Diana: [00:08:28] Yeah. I liked that. I'm writing it down, so it's like people that want to create their global missions through collaboration,[00:08:34] dane: [00:08:34] make sure you've put in there around others.[00:08:36] Diana: [00:08:36] Could it be for collaboration and community?[00:08:39] dane: [00:08:39] Well around others, through collaboration and community, but get around others in there.[00:08:44] Diana: [00:08:44] Can you tell me a little bit more about that?[00:08:46] dane: [00:08:46] The loneliness that people feel working on their missions. So if you have another way to articulate loneliness, because collaboration is somewhat hard to picture.[00:08:56] Diana: [00:08:56] Yeah.[00:08:57] dane: [00:08:57] What does that mean? You know? But when you say around others through collaboration, then I picture I'm around those in a room collaborating.[00:09:05] Diana: [00:09:05] Yeah. I don't know why there's something about like global missions around others. I don't know why that is not. There's something in my brain that it's not like I'm getting the point that you're saying that there's something that's not quite clicking for nice delivery.[00:09:19] dane: [00:09:19] Let's picture this. So picture you're sitting down in front of someone who's read Marie Forleo.[00:09:24] They've read Jensen, Sarah, and they've read Bruce Lipton. Yup. And let's say it's a woman and she's 27 and the result that she wants is what?[00:09:34] Diana: [00:09:34] The result that she wants. Well, yeah, I mean, connection is huge for sure. I think that you really touched on something with the loneliness of society right now.[00:09:42] People are really, really wanting to create deeper connections.[00:09:45] dane: [00:09:45] So imagine saying you could create your business and mission around others.[00:09:50] Diana: [00:09:50] Yeah, true. Community and collaboration.[00:09:52] dane: [00:09:52] Oh yeah. That's so good over here, but we want you to be congruent with it.[00:09:56] Diana: [00:09:56] Yeah. I guess now that I say it a couple more times, for some [00:10:00] reason it seems like it should be like with others or in community or something like that,[00:10:04] dane: [00:10:04] but.[00:10:04] If you'd like to get a free one on one with me and beyond this show, you can find out details@startfromzero.com slash podcast[00:10:15] Diana: [00:10:15] the result is creating a global mission around others through community and collaboration.[00:10:20] dane: [00:10:20] You know what's interesting, Diana, is it's really nice to be ordinary, especially with language.[00:10:29] You're going to be around people.[00:10:31] Diana: [00:10:31] Yeah.[00:10:31] dane: [00:10:31] You're going to be with people. Now, if you said create your mission around others. Who are slightly like on the fringe of crazy in terms of personal development and get to get and get to create your global mission with other people that are fanatic about personal development.[00:10:51] So now you have like the start of a Facebook ad, you have to start a letter and you've got your targeting all down. You're targeting women that like Marie Forleo, like Jensen, Sarah, like Bruce Lipton. Identify as entrepreneur. And now your ad targeting is all figured out. So now you got your Facebook ads running and your Facebook ad says, for those that are fanatic about personal development, how many things don't you say when you're talking to someone who isn't right?[00:11:15] And then for those of you fanatic about personal development. How would it feel to know that any book in any topic, in any road that you want to go down, the person will be excited when you bring it up. There's a special loneliness with those of us that are fanatic about personal development, and that's a very, very peculiar cut.[00:11:36] Of loneliness. So clear customer, clear result, create their global missions around others who are fanatic about personal development because they love growing. That's ordinary language, and then community and collaboration. For me, those are really heady words.[00:11:56] Diana: [00:11:56] Yeah.[00:11:56] dane: [00:11:56] So will it the ordinary, let yourself be [00:12:00] ordinary.[00:12:00] I had a friend of mine and he's this like men's coach and he's like, dude, the stuff that we do is like revolutionary. Like it transforms a man and like they're just never the same. And I was like, humor me for a second and try this. What we do is not very special. In fact, I imagine the Mayans did it 5,000 years ago.[00:12:20] You know what we do is very basic. Very simple. It's just what happens is the results are so profound. It makes it feel like magic, but ultimately what we're doing is really fundamentally simple stuff. You see how that's more ordinary?[00:12:34] Diana: [00:12:34] Yeah. I mean that really just like saying what we do is simple, really creates this power around it for people to relate[00:12:41] dane: [00:12:41] is humility too.[00:12:42] It's a lot of humility. It's like, you know, what we do is real basic and you know, I've got aspects of myself that identify as worthless, unconsciously, right? That's not who I am. Just these identities that things that identify and when those are unconscious and not noticed and not active. The stuff I do is the greatest thing in the world.[00:13:00] But then it's like my sense of value comes on and I get more present to it. It's like, you know, this stuff really means a lot to me and I'm just happy that it's basic.[00:13:08] Diana: [00:13:08] Yeah. I mean, and I think that the reach that you get doing something like that changes because you know, people, like you said, everything's like all this big transformation and this and that, and that kind of becomes diluted in a way where.[00:13:21] Everyone's like trying to sell the next big thing as opposed to saying, Hey, it's simple. It's like you don't need to be healed. The healing is within you. Like that concept of not trying to sell a problem or not trying to like make people feel broken and instead teaching them that you know, you are what you've been seeking the whole time.[00:13:38] dane: [00:13:38] You are what you've been seeking the whole time. So, I mean, if that was your outcome for your events, that people were able to leave and embody that and say that that's a cool outcome for an event. Now, it doesn't matter if you're three day, six day, five day, it doesn't matter if you're chanting or like you're clear on your outcome for the events if that's your outcome.[00:13:54] But you know, Jaco, maybe they leave with clarity of their global vision and blah, blah, blah, blah. But that's neither here nor there. That can sort [00:14:00] itself out and it will sort itself out when you have a clear customer and a clear result. So now let's go to back to this clear result. Create your global vision.[00:14:08] Around people that are fanatic with personal development, a group of people that are fanatic about personal development, creating their global missions together.[00:14:16] Diana: [00:14:16] Mmm.[00:14:19] dane: [00:14:19] So now you're just real basic and simple, and you know what? You're clear. And so people will respond and they'll probably come the ones that are right, and you might grow pretty big and you'll be letting ordinary words do the work for you.[00:14:35] Diana: [00:14:35] Is that personal development. They're global missions together,[00:14:40] dane: [00:14:40] and you might say, finding and creating their global missions together, and now you're like, do you know you have a global mission within you? You can feel it, but you don't know what it is. Do you know what your global mission is and you're just afraid to say it out loud.[00:14:51] We've got an experience that we'll call it forth. It's invite only. It's by application. We only let people in that are the perfect fit. If you're curious if you'd fit for this, we'll let you know apply here and then you can effectively turn people away. That would just kill the event.[00:15:08] Diana: [00:15:08] Right? There's always those people who you're like, Oh man, that was an energy suck.[00:15:13] dane: [00:15:13] Yeah, and that words you put in the ad too. The nice thing about these events is we filter every person, so no one's an energy suck. So now you've got your ad and you don't even have to worry about what the content of the retreat is. So tell me what you're thinking about.[00:15:26] Diana: [00:15:26] Yeah, I'm doing a little bit of writing on this.[00:15:29] Like we filter these events, so energy.[00:15:36] dane: [00:15:36] If you'd like to hang out with people reading the star from zero book, listening to the start from zero podcasts, listening to the book on tape and build businesses with them and do it with people together. Visit start from zero.com forward slash starters.[00:15:54] Diana: [00:15:54] Yeah. It's really interesting, like starting to kind of put this vision together because we're creating [00:16:00] already. We hosted a huge event this weekend. It was super, super successful. Everything just fell into place so easily. The event went off without a hitch. It was really incredible. And so now my team and I are talking about how do we move forward, like what do we create next?[00:16:15] How do we create structure. You know, and then like verbiage and branding and things like that are definitely top of mind. You know, like those things are top of mind of how do we create a delivery and a momentum around it. I think that probably I need to do some market research. Yeah. And like get some more of those words, you know, like create 10 or 15 questions and.[00:16:37] Create some of those words around like, you know, what are you looking for in your life right now? When you come to events like this, you know, what's your goal? What results would you like? Things like that. Just so we can get[00:16:47] dane: [00:16:47] well, how do you feel about only targeting people who feel they have global missions, whether they're looking forward or they found it.[00:16:54] Diana: [00:16:54] Well, that's the thing is like, I don't think it necessarily needs to be just a global mission. It's like people who have a mission in general, you know, ideally we want to encourage people to have a global mission, but I don't know if everyone necessarily would resonate on that level.[00:17:09] dane: [00:17:09] It depends on who do you want to work with.[00:17:11] Diana: [00:17:11] Yeah. I mean that is a hard question cause I also. I think that one of the things we've been talking about is helping people who don't even know they have a global mission yet.[00:17:21] dane: [00:17:21] Okay. That's clear. So you just throw out global, you know, we help people find and create their mission around people who are fanatic about personal development.[00:17:31] Diana: [00:17:31] I'm not[00:17:31] dane: [00:17:31] sure. Instead of global mission.[00:17:34] Diana: [00:17:34] It grew up with people who are personal development fanatics finding and creating their missions together. Yeah. I like that.[00:17:45] He just got fixed yesterday and I had my hot on it class for this, so he's just like, mom, pay attention to me. I'm like, dude. You know how this come,[00:17:56] dane: [00:17:56] what result does your dog want right now?[00:17:58] Diana: [00:17:58] He wants attention [00:18:00] and he wants to go to the park and he definitely wants this cone off of his head.[00:18:04] dane: [00:18:04] Can you feel how bad he wants the attention.[00:18:07] Diana: [00:18:07] Yeah, totally sweet guy.[00:18:10] dane: [00:18:10] Right? So can you tune that same energy to feeling how bad someone might want this result, what that result might be that might have a similar burn?[00:18:20] Diana: [00:18:20] It's people looking for something more to life. That's really big. Like people who have been searching for. Something more. I mean, we had people tell us that all weekend.[00:18:31] They're like, I've been looking for this. I've been trying to find this community. I've been trying to make these connections. I'm so glad you're doing this.[00:18:39] dane: [00:18:39] Something more. What does more mean?[00:18:41] Diana: [00:18:41] It means beyond where we're at now.[00:18:44] dane: [00:18:44] So are you looking for something beyond where you're at right now? Otherwise, if you say you're looking for something more, we've already heard that from landmark.[00:18:51] We've already heard that from so many people that. You might get away with it and you can easily find out by spending if you want our bucks on a Facebook ad. But you know, in terms of finding your clear customer and clear brand, we're close. And in terms of working with your team, if you make searching for your customer iterative instead of like definitive, then like that can be the discovery.[00:19:12] You know, the most dangerous word in business, and you have any ideas what that might be.[00:19:16] Diana: [00:19:16] Now[00:19:17] dane: [00:19:17] guessing,[00:19:21] guessing the customer. So, you know, interestingly thing like, you know, like we did this thing with, when I was doing music, when I was running ads anyway, you know, still expressing music or whatever. But when we were running ads, we ran a specific sort of advertising funnel. And we were able to identify that my cost to acquire a fan, a music fan was cheapest with Joshua rated listeners.[00:19:45] It was most expensive with ed Sheeran. Ah,[00:19:49] Diana: [00:19:49] wow.[00:19:50] dane: [00:19:50] Which is interesting cause I've had more people say, I sound like ed Sheeran than Joshua Raiden. Yeah. But you know as so big and global, and probably everybody's targeting it.[00:19:59] Diana: [00:19:59] Right.[00:20:00] [00:20:00] dane: [00:20:00] But my cost to acquire a fan was like. 75% cheaper. Wow. So I invested my resources in acquiring those fans.[00:20:10] Diana: [00:20:10] Yeah, sounds smart.[00:20:11] dane: [00:20:11] But we had like 10 or 15 art and Jack Johnson, ed Sheeran, Joshua Raiden, and I do actually, I deeply resonate with Joshua Raven's music.[00:20:20] Diana: [00:20:20] Right? But it's like, how would you have even known if you hadn't done that really valuable research to find out that those are the people who are most likely to.[00:20:30] dane: [00:20:30] Well for the cheapest cause I could get an insurance fan for a dollar 50 I could get a Joshua raving fan for 40 cents. Wow. So if you make searching for your customer iterative, then like you're like, Oh, this is why picking the customer so hard. Cause you know Dane hasn't told me this yet because you haven't learned this.[00:20:50] Like it's just that, I don't know why people say pick your target market, but I've never heard anybody say iterate your way to your target market. And that's really why. One of the many reasons why I think business can be so easy and fun is so the businesses that I've started where I am like, let's see what happens versus the businesses I start where I try and say what I want to happen.[00:21:11] The businesses that I start where I'm like, let's do this and see what happens. Work really, really well. The businesses that I try to like declare what they do. Who am I to say that? Because the Cardinal rule of successful entrepreneurship is that we don't get to decide what works.[00:21:27] Diana: [00:21:27] Yeah.[00:21:28] dane: [00:21:28] So with that, then we're like, okay, since we don't get to decide what works, we're not going to try to say what works.[00:21:32] We're going to find out. So now when you go to your team and you put together a system and be like, okay guys, we're going to put together five different retreat concepts as a promotion piece on Facebook, and we're going to target 12 different customer avatars, and we're going to create 10 different marketing messages.[00:21:49] We're going to spend $300 on each. So that'd be $3,600 if we did 12 and we're going to see what our most profitable demographic, profitable message [00:22:00] is to build our retreats with. Now you're a business.[00:22:03] Diana: [00:22:03] I mean, and that's really the goal, right? Is to create something that is super, super powerful.[00:22:10] dane: [00:22:10] You get to iterate your way there.[00:22:11] Yeah. And so then where's the risk in business? I'm so happy you're talking to me now as you're starting this, it's going to make a big difference.[00:22:19] Diana: [00:22:19] Yeah, it really is. I mean, that's gonna like set some groundwork for clarity for sure.[00:22:24] dane: [00:22:24] So tell me the three key spines of a business,[00:22:27] Diana: [00:22:27] clear customer, clear results and clear mechanism.[00:22:30] dane: [00:22:30] Hmm. You might want to throw ordinary language,[00:22:36] Diana: [00:22:36] right?[00:22:37] dane: [00:22:37] This is a struggle. Okay. Let me pull up something. I'll show you, for example, how I evolved. Okay. So this is a part of the podcast. So in terms of starting the podcast, I'm crazy excited about it. I'm super passionate. Everybody should listen. It's the greatest thing ever. You know all this crap. All right, so here's what I wrote for Roy.[00:22:52] One of my drafts, this podcast is for starting entrepreneurs, folks trying to create financial freedom while juggling families, marriages, kids, careers and bills. I bring guests on who are starting from scratch, and I showed them how to start making lots of money as new entrepreneurs. You can listen to the conversations and hear what I tell them.[00:23:09] We have 15 millionaire students and counting who followed the same lessons. Success is a pattern, and you'll get to see those patterns through each episode.[00:23:18] Diana: [00:23:18] It's[00:23:19] dane: [00:23:19] powerful. And you know, I like it. And as I was reading it, I was like, it's too many words. Cause I'm like, you know what, if an experienced entrepreneur listens to this and they got back to the basics, they can make lots of money by hearing this stuff.[00:23:32] Cause not many entrepreneurs are aligned on clear customer, clear result, clear mechanism when, when they are Holy crap. Right? So it's not just for starting entrepreneurs. And then, you know, it's not just for people juggling families, marriage, careers and bills. Cause you're not a starting entrepreneur.[00:23:45] You've had your own business for awhile. So I'm like really searching for this and I'm struggling to articulate. So here's what I ended up coming to. It's like two lines. Watch me mentor people and tell them how to make lots of money without [00:24:00] compromising who they are. Wow. We have over 15 million students in counting.[00:24:04] Wow. That's all it is now.[00:24:06] Diana: [00:24:06] Yeah. That's titrated down and precise yet broad. You know,[00:24:11] dane: [00:24:11] it took some work,[00:24:12] Diana: [00:24:12] I bet, because you had some really great verbiage in that first one, but yeah. How do you titrate down that message and make it[00:24:20] dane: [00:24:20] clear an ordinary. Yeah. Hey, lots of money without compromising who you are.[00:24:26] Cause you know, I had watched me mentor people and tell them how to make lots of money. I was like, that's awesome. I'd love it. I was like, wait, there's going to be some jaded people that don't really, I got to capture the folks that feel like they have to sell their soul to be successful. Yeah. So let me capture those.[00:24:40] Okay. Without compromising who they are and without compromising who they are. That's my most favorite part, cause it was the hardest thing to have to still down to like five words.[00:24:47] Diana: [00:24:47] Yeah. I really liked that because that applies to everyone and people feel like, Oh yeah, I can get this type of mentorship and still be me.[00:24:58] You know, like I've paid for business coaches that I've been into their boxes.[00:25:05] dane: [00:25:05] If you'd like to learn how to make money and you need a path to do it, visit start from zero.com and you'll see a whole context of how you can actually get started. There's a three phase process that you can go through. If you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, go there. It'll tell you exactly what to do, where to go, and how to get started, and you don't need money for some of the options.[00:25:27] And if you do have money, you can buy some of the other options. It's all laid out for you with crystal. Clear clarity@startfromzero.com where do you go and what do you do? You'll find out there,[00:25:42] Diana: [00:25:42] you know, and follow their ideals and like fit into who they are as opposed to it being who I am. Wow. That's[00:25:49] dane: [00:25:49] great. Well, yeah, it's a pleasure to serve you. It's a pleasure to feel listened to and heard and to feel like things are landing. So where are you at right now? What are you thinking about? What are your next steps?[00:26:00] [00:26:00] Diana: [00:26:00] Yeah, I mean, it's like, so how do I really like, now that I've got these concepts about, you know, a group of people who are personal development fanatics, finding, creating their missions together. Yeah. We're throwing around this idea of using true you. Cause that was our event was, you know, I'm like, I do not subscribe to the new year new you bullshit.[00:26:20] Like it's a new year. I am still me. Like, you know, I'm not compromising who I am just because it's a new year. And so we called it new year. True you. And true you has really stuck. So it's like, you know, you are the truth. You've been seeking and like I want to start figuring out ways to implement that into this kind of.[00:26:39] Simple, clear,[00:26:42] dane: [00:26:42] true. You could work for like a conference name is powerful, but that's like the mechanism name. Got it. Cause the result they want that people don't say, I want to be a true you. Right. They say[00:26:54] Diana: [00:26:54] a person development, they want the community, they want the[00:26:57] dane: [00:26:57] mission. I don't even know if people want personal development.[00:27:00] They might just want to feel better looking for the next person on development. Hi.[00:27:03] Diana: [00:27:03] Yeah. There is a lot of that. A lot of shelf help out there.[00:27:06] dane: [00:27:06] So like. I think what they would like is to be, you have to find out less lonely and around people that have the same language, they use[00:27:16] Diana: [00:27:16] people that get up.[00:27:16] dane: [00:27:16] So you have the people who are personal development fanatics working on their mission around each other.[00:27:21] And you might have that too. People who are personal development fanatics that feel like the odd ball out wherever they go. A place for us to get together and hang out. And you might actually find out that the thing they just want is connection.[00:27:35] Diana: [00:27:35] That's true. I mean, that I think is so far in all the events I've hosted what most people are really craving.[00:27:40] dane: [00:27:40] Yeah. So I think your next steps are probably realistically like, do you have to go fast with this or can you let it grow like a flower?[00:27:48] Diana: [00:27:48] Well, it's definitely going to be a blossoming experience, so we've created a goal on how to kind of move forward from here. We're going to start hosting a monthly meetups, [00:28:00] do another day long event in the spring.[00:28:04] And then likely we're going to call it like a little staycation or something like that because I just don't really lean into the retreat. It's like we're not retreating from anything. We're actually immersing ourselves and going inward. So our goal is to do one of those in the early summer.[00:28:16] dane: [00:28:16] How many people?[00:28:17] Diana: [00:28:17] We haven't made it that far yet. I would imagine our goal would probably be 50 people. Maybe last, maybe like 40 depending on how big of a center or a house we can find.[00:28:27] dane: [00:28:27] So yeah, if you start leasing like one ad every week or every two or three days and it's got a different demographic or has the same demographic, but it's a little bit of a different message.[00:28:36] But the funnel is essentially personal development, phonetics, working on their mission and or just coming together to just be in connection. And not everyone's invited cause there's no vampires kind of thing. And if you'd like to see if you're a good fit, not everybody is. We can schedule a call and chat.[00:28:53] And then you just talk to each person. Do you have a price for the event?[00:28:57] Diana: [00:28:57] Like I said, I mean, we literally just had our first event this last weekend, and so we did our de frag from that, and we have some planning meetings for the next week set up. Then we're kind of developing from there. Oh yeah. So we're, I mean, like I said, it's partnerships.[00:29:14] I really, we haven't even started any dev on that, on what it would be. I'd imagine our high would probably be in the five to 600 range. We might have some mid range tickets around, like, you know, three to four. And I don't know if we would go much different than that besides like having a couple of scholarship options and those would be scholarship or support.[00:29:33] So they would come in and they would support staff us and in that they would get the scholarship to be able to attend.[00:29:39] dane: [00:29:39] How would you feel the most recent event.[00:29:41] Diana: [00:29:41] Facebook and like networking, talking to people.[00:29:45] dane: [00:29:45] What do you mean by Facebook? What'd you do on[00:29:46] Diana: [00:29:46] Facebook? Like invited people on Facebook and then wrote to them and text message.[00:29:51] We didn't do any paid ads. We've put no money into marketing[00:29:54] dane: [00:29:54] and how many showed up?[00:29:55] Diana: [00:29:55] We had 30 people show up for the [00:30:00] mastermind and then we had another 50 people show up for the party. So we have party only option as well, which worked out really well.[00:30:07] dane: [00:30:07] How did you sell it? What result did you tell them to get?[00:30:10] Or how'd you talk about it that had them interested?[00:30:12] Diana: [00:30:12] Yeah, so besides, one thing we learned for sure was having like a schedule out way in advance. It was, you know, kind of what we're talking about now. Like, you know, it's the new year and what is your true, you could come out, we're not trying to change.[00:30:26] We're working on refining. I could look at our copy. It's like, imagine kicking off the new year with a group of 40 specially curated conscious leaders, visionaries and creators. At a beautiful mansion overlooking downtown Austin, connecting deeply with your future self, optimizing times past and aligned with what you're calling in as we embark on the first year of a new decade.[00:30:46] dane: [00:30:46] Connection with correctable and clarity and vision.[00:30:48] Diana: [00:30:48] Yep. You have a big vision for 2020 and none of us can do it alone.[00:30:53] dane: [00:30:53] So it's simple connection with people and clarity of vision. And that said really well. You know, the most famous Roman emperors are the ones that gave people food and fun.[00:31:03] Diana: [00:31:03] Yeah. Food and fun.[00:31:05] That's definitely what we did. Food fun.[00:31:08] dane: [00:31:08] And you know, that might be enough as well. Food and fun with personal development fanatics. No, I personally go to that. A low commitment night. So you could do food and fun with personal development fanatics. That's it. That's all you say. I'm like, I'm interested. I'm all drive.[00:31:22] I'll come as a free evening for a dinner. Or you just come to a dinner and then at the end of the dinner you say, Hey, if you guys like this, we're going to do this for three or four days in event this summer. And sometimes it takes while for the clarity of this stuff to emerge. But now if you were to run some pretty cool ads around the area.[00:31:39] And it was food and fun with personal development fanatics and you were to hold a free monthly dinner that people could come to. And at the middle of that dinner, you invite people either to some sort of monthly thing, weekly thing, live event. That's probably how I would run it. And then you don't even have to have people apply phone[00:31:57] Diana: [00:31:57] calls.[00:31:59] Yeah, I mean that's [00:32:00] definitely the own cause thing. That's like that extra followup was for sure one of our sticking points that was like, okay, this is a little bit of a challenge. She, you know, like following up with people and you know, like this bandwidth wise, that takes a lot. I mean, it still happened pretty authentically.[00:32:16] We had five more spots for our mastermind lasted, so that would have been nice to have those fall.[00:32:21] dane: [00:32:21] Good questions. Do you have,[00:32:22] Diana: [00:32:22] do you think that model seems pretty viable, like having three times a year, day long, one time of year, three day, and then three monthly meetups in between?[00:32:33] dane: [00:32:33] I hesitate to offer an opinion.[00:32:34] It doesn't seem like, no. I usually like to get my answers from the horses mouth. Like you don't want to ask your team that you don't want to ask your friends that the only person you want to ask that is the person that's attending your event.[00:32:48] Diana: [00:32:48] Yeah, I definitely feel like I need to do more market research[00:32:51] dane: [00:32:51] because otherwise you've got a bunch of people in a room guessing.[00:32:54] Yeah. Okay, so here's what happened with the call first. You mentioned the goal to get clarity. Then we set the context for if you couldn't fail, what would you do? You answered instantaneously, I want to do events. Then you started talking about the events. You were like, we'll do this events and these events and this, and it's very easy and fun and excited to get into the details of the event.[00:33:14] But what happened was you were in the world of mechanism, which doesn't move a business forward. It just helps you paint the room a little bit better. So we gave you context for the spine of a very successful business, which is a clear customer. A clear result and a clear mechanism. Then we spent most of the rest of time on this call on who your customer might be and the result they're looking for, and then of course, we would try those out to make sure that's all accurate.[00:33:42] We talked about iterating the Facebook ads to find the most profitable music fan or in this case person for you. Then. I was realizing that I was giving you a bunch of theories to try and so I asked you about the reality of what worked. How did you [00:34:00] get people 30 you just invited them by hand. Well, if you had 30 by hand, you'll probably be able to get 50 easy without having to do any paid ads.[00:34:07] If you only want 50. So we did is we actually went and looked at what worked. When we looked at what worked, we started figuring out and talking about more about the results of what people want. As we got more and more clear on the results were like, you know, food and fun is a big thing. We don't want to underestimate that that's ordinary.[00:34:23] It's like, Hey, come have food and fun, but at the same time, very compelling. We also got clear on the personal development fanatic language. That's a very, very nice differentiator that I think you'll have using that language. Then we looked at the kind of funnel that could fill this, and we are looking at a Facebook funnel, ideally with a video that tells people if they're personal development fanatics to come to the monthly thing, food and fun.[00:34:50] It's invite only request an invite, and then at those dinners you just sell people into the. Event, and if you did that well and went all in and promoted the dinners effectively and then have the upsell during like the middle of the dinner, you could potentially have like a 50 to 150 person event, but that's kind of the arc of the show.[00:35:10] Did I miss anything or anything you want to share to that?[00:35:13] Diana: [00:35:13] That sounds about right. Yeah, that was a really good recap.[00:35:16] dane: [00:35:16] Nice. I like how this has evolved. Yeah. I'm very excited and I definitely want to come to a food and fun personal development fanatic dinner.[00:35:25] Diana: [00:35:25] Yes, please. That would be awesome.[00:35:27] dane: [00:35:27] The retreats are a little bit too much of a commitment for me.[00:35:29] Being in the mastermind would be much, but like I would always be a contributor to the food and fun dinner evenings for sure.[00:35:35] Diana: [00:35:35] I love it. Yeah. Maybe you could come and do some music. Those are always some of my favorite experiences with you. For sure.[00:35:41] dane: [00:35:41] Thank you. Yeah, it can be pretty rad. Is there anything else.[00:35:44] Diana: [00:35:44] Yeah, I mean, that feels pretty in alignment. You know, it's just about really working on the backend and dev and not guessing. You know, getting to a point where we have clarity on what our target demo wants and you know who they are and where they're [00:36:00] at, and how we connect them and what we're offering them.[00:36:03] In the form of their results as opposed to that mechanism.[00:36:07] dane: [00:36:07] Whoa. Yes. You'll go up to legendary status. Like if you look at some super big businesses, they're generally really good about just being super clear on results. Yeah. They'll have like a picture of someone that's like lost a hundred pounds,[00:36:21] Diana: [00:36:21] right?[00:36:22] It's like nobody cares that you're eating a diet and you're doing this. They just care the a hundred pounds. Yeah. So true. Awesome. Yeah, this is a great session. Thank you for your guidance and your wisdom and insights. Really nice to just chat with you and reconnect again after all this[00:36:40] dane: [00:36:40] time. So for years, people have been asking me, what's the big secret?[00:36:44] How do I do this? And the answer is simple. My life took off when I had mentors. Too many people try to do this stuff alone and get stuck and give up. Listen, if you haven't succeeded in business or entrepreneurship yet, it's simple. You haven't failed enough yet. You haven't been around enough mentors yet.[00:37:01] If you combine failure with mentorship, you will fly. I had someone say, why are so many people so more successful than me? How come I can't get this right? And they said, well, how many times you failed? He's like, well, a lot of times I'm like, have you failed more than 10 times? He said, no. I was like, you haven't failed enough yet.[00:37:16] You haven't been around mentors enough. Yes, failure is how you learn. Michael Jordan has missed so many game winning shots. You've got to get out there and fail and how are you going to do that if you're all by yourself all alone? Beating yourself up in your own thoughts. Listen, I'm going to give you access to my board of advisors, my board of advisors that I talk to sometimes every day.[00:37:36] I'm going to give you access to them every month, live for you to ask questions and get your mindset on straight. They're going to ask you questions that are hard for you to answer. Those are the kinds of people you want in your life. You're also going to get access to not only the board of advisors, but my entire community, the start from zero community, all the entrepreneurs that are practicing these things, building these businesses.[00:37:57] You'll get access to this community and this board of [00:38:00] advisors and much more with the new program we've launched called start from zero.com for slash starters and you can see how you can get access to my board of advisors and ask them anything you want. Monthly, you'll get automated accountability to stay focused.[00:38:14] You get a community of other people all building businesses with a start from zero methodology. And guess what? You get kicked out of this community if you do not take action. So it is serious people. So if you'd like. Access to that information about that. Go to start from zero.com forward slash starters and it's about time that we get together and strengthen each other and fail together and pick each other back up together and show each other each other's blind spots and ask the hard questions and drive each other to that golden finish line of a business that you don't have to work in a business that provides freedom.[00:38:49] So you can sit around on a Tuesday and watch HBO if you want. All right, start from zero.com forward slash starter.

Hybrid Publishing In today's episode Laura Gassner Otting talks about Hybrid Publishing For Professional Speakers. Want to know about the difference between traditional publishing vs hybrid publishing for speakers? In today's interview James Taylor interviews speaker Laura Gassner Otting about: Hybrid publishing and great book pre-launch campaigns Getting momentum in your speaking career The three things you can maximize Please SUBSCRIBE ►http://bit.ly/JTme-ytsub ♥️ Your Support Appreciated! If you enjoyed the show, please rate it on YouTube, iTunes or Stitcher and write a brief review. That would really help get the word out and raise the visibility of the Creative Life show. SUBSCRIBE TO THE SHOW Apple: http://bit.ly/TSL-apple Libsyn: http://bit.ly/TSL-libsyn Spotify: http://bit.ly/TSL-spotify Android: http://bit.ly/TSL-android Stitcher: http://bit.ly/TSL-stitcher CTA link: https://speakersu.com/the-speakers-life/ FOLLOW ME: Website: https://speakersu.com LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/JTme-linkedin Instagram: http://bit.ly/JTme-ig Twitter: http://bit.ly/JTme-twitter Facebook Group: http://bit.ly/IS-fbgroup Read full transcript at https://speakersu.com/sl057-hybrid-publishing-for-professional-speakers-with-laura-gassner-otting/ James Taylor Hi, it's James Taylor, founder of SpeakersU. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Speakers Summit the world's largest online event for professional speakers. And if you'd like to access the full video version, as well as in depth sessions with over 150 top speakers, then I've got a very special offer for you. Just go to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yep, that's right 150 of the world's top speakers sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to launch grow and build a successful speaking business. So just go to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com but not before you listen to today's episode. Hey, there is James Taylor here and I'm delighted today to welcome onto the show Laura Gassner orting. Laura is a keynote speaker and author who helps audiences change agents, entrepreneurs, investors, leaders and donors get past their doubts and in decisions that consign the great ideas to limbo. she delivers strategic thinking well honed wisdom catalystic perspective and for my decades of navigating change across startups, nonprofits, political as well as the philanthropic landscapes, and it's my great pleasure to have her join us today. So welcome, Laura. Laura Gassner Otting Hey, James, it is great to be here. James Taylor So first of all share with us what's happening in your world at the moment. Why has your focus just now? Laura Gassner Otting My focus just now is that I have a book that came out in April, so six months ago from wherever anybody's watching this it was came out about five months ago, and I have spent the previous five months just basically, in an all out book launch promotional campaign. So what's got my focus is podcasts, media speaking, anything that I can do to get the book and the message in front of people. James Taylor Now, I was looking earlier, this is a speaker the challenge a lot of speakers have to think about is do they go the independent route or do the Self Publishers say or do they go with a big traditional publishers that we love penguins and random houses? Or do they do a kind of a high Britt type of solution and people like yourself. And I think like Phil Jones, for example, you've kind of found this really interesting hybrid space, which is like it's really worked for you. So tell us, you know, that's a big decision to make make you in deciding you could have, you could have gone with one of the penguins or big publishers, but you decided to do things in this kind of hybrid fashion. So why did you make that decision? Laura Gassner Otting So this is actually my second book. The first book I wrote was a book called mission driven. And it's about going from profit to purpose, how to go from corporate work to nonprofit work. So I spent my previous 20 years before getting into speaking as an executive recruiter for nonprofit organizations. And I was approached about 12 years into that to write this book. And I was approached by Kaplan publishing, which is like a big, you know, big, big house, but mostly textbooks. And that experience was sub optimal, I would say and it was sub optimal because the truth is, I was a nobody This is they were sort of pre cell into their, into their expense. So, you know, they pre printed 20,000 books, they sold them all out before the book was even written. I mean, that was sort of how they did it. And when it came time to write the book that I wanted to write, you know, batches of sort of your voice and confidence and, and living a full life, I decided that I was still a nobody. And, you know, I'm not Michelle Obama, I'm not Bernie Brown. If I go with a wily or Random House or any of these people, I'm not going to get their 18 right, like, I'm not going to get the best marketers, I'm not going to get the best cover designers I'm not going to get the best editors I'm not going to get the best advanced I'm not going to do and so I'm already gonna have to spend my money to, to to purchase outside of their process people to market the book and a publicist and designers and an editor and and so if I you know, you don't want to play with the B team, you want to play with the a team. So if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna do with the ATF to hire my own people. So I figured I'm gonna have to do that. Then I might as well keep the you know, massive part To the royalty. So with my book with Kaplan, I think I make 17 cents a book with the book limitless that I did through idea press, I, you know, I get, you know, $15 a book. So I spent money on the front end because I knew that I could move a good number of books. And I knew that the only way that I could move a good number of books as if I had the a team, if I had a great editor if I had a great cover design if I had a great publicist. And so, for me, the decision really came down to do I need the credibility from getting the stamp of approval of a Wiley or a Random House or whoever. And, and then the second question is, if I if I don't need that, then do how am I gonna? How am I going to move the books and you know, what's the sort of outside team that I'm gonna need to be able to do that? So for me, it was pretty obvious decision. James Taylor But it's worked out really well for me. I see. I see the book everywhere. I've seen it in a number of places and everything. I've been to airports. I've seen the book as well. And I think I think it's a really brave decision that you took as well. Because I've been to a number of speakers as the keynote speakers, especially, that have had the same experience with you maybe going through a traditional publisher, and as you've seen wasn't quite sub optimal. And you're thinking like, Do I go that way? Or should I just stick with the way that we know this kind of tried and tested routes? And so I commend you for taking that because it's really paid off for your your speaking business. And obviously, your as an author? Laura Gassner Otting Yeah, well, and if it is, it was an especially brave decision, because when I sold my executive search firm to the team that helped me build it, I also sold the mailing list of 50,000 people that the database, right, so I literally launched this book on day one with a mailing list of zero people. So how James Taylor did you build that list? I mean, that's worrying because I could you know, for something for most of those people that do this, that the hybrid model that you've done, they they have a they have a date many years ago in a big list and they're able to and that they're speaking to conferences, they can buy 1000 2000 copies of the book. So how did you go from Zero, building that list back up. Laura Gassner Otting So, um, you know, it's funny because I hired a publicist and the publicist said, We have never seen a pre launch campaign as successful as yours. How did you do it? Like, tell us a joke, because every one of our other authors, every one of our other publicists in our house, needs to know how to do it. And I said, honestly, I think I think I just showed up for people for the last 48 years of my life. And when I asked them to show up for me, they did and they did in a really big way. And so I, you know, I think we hear a lot about how we have to have all these, like, pre launch, you know, bonus buys and things like that. And, and, you know, I had a conversation with clay bear who I know, you know, and, you know, what he said to me is, look, nobody's going to go to your website and say, Well, I was going to buy one book, but now that I see that I could get this and then the other all by 100, right. That's pre launch bonuses don't really work that well. What worked was me calling people up and saying, Listen, I need you to buy this book, right? Like I put together a video, where it took me like 50 times to try to like do the video that was like, hey, today is the launch of the pre launch campaign and I need you to buy this book, because it's really hard for me to ask for something that I need. But finally, you know, the camera guy who I worked with on a number of other stuff was like, Okay, listen, let me just be super goofy. Let's take one take with you just being like a total goofball, get it out of your system, and then we'll do a real one. So he presses record and I start singing happy birthday to myself, because the pre launch day is February 15, six weeks before the book comes out on April 2, which is, you know, six weeks, right? Like that's exactly so what this thing is going to drop on my birthday. So I do this thing where I'm like Happy birthday to me and I start singing. I'm like, here's what I want for my birthday. Please preorder the book and here's why pre ordering the book matters. And I explained to people not just I want you to do this, but actually, pre ordering a book helps an author because it shows all the bookstores that this book can move which tells them that they should buy it and they should put it in a good place and people can Under, stay on that. And so when I did that super goofy thing, and then he hits, you know, he hits you know, turn to the camera like, please tell me you got that and he's like I did and then he starts packing up his camera and I was like, wait, like we have to do the serious one. He's like, No, no, no, that's the one Trust me. So I think what happened is I went out and I put it on social media and I talked to everybody I knew and I was just me. I wasn't Hi, I'm Laura Gassner Adi and I'm the author of limitless I was just like, Okay, this is ridiculous. I need you to do this one thing for me, please. People did. So I think being yourself I think asking for what you need. I think explaining why it actually matters. It's not just about book sales. It's about book sales in this pre sale moment, right, like people got it and they understood the logic behind it and then they felt like they could be part of the success like people want to be on on the boat with you. They don't want to just celebrate with you after be like, Oh, great. I'm waving to you. You know from the side while you're on the parade like they Want to be on the float with you? They want to feel like they're part of the growth and the victory and the success. And I think I allowed people to see all the behind the scenes in a way that made them feel part of it. But you James Taylor said two things. They're so powerful one was the why coming into the white piece, you know, obviously, like Simon Sinek start with why you can have coming in with that, why, why now, why why is this important? The second point, was that you, you're talking about campaigns, and I guess this is where you have a little bit of a superpower here, because you have come from the world of understanding or being more political camp, like political campaigns and donor campaigns, fundraising campaigns. And it's something I see a lot from me some speakers but definitely from a lot of authors who are maybe not listing speakers is they think in terms of promotions, not in terms of campaigning and over a longer period of time and how things stack and how you build up like like any good campaign will do. So. Did you have if I think I've been avoiding a couple political campaigns in the past and I Go into those offices campaign offices and they have a big board where they have that this is the message board. This is the thing that this this what we do today that witness that. So did you for your campaign for your book and trying to get this message out? Did you run it? Did you use experience you've had from politics and fundraising to kind of map out a campaign? Laura Gassner Otting Yeah, it's sort of interesting. You asked that because right, as we were getting on this call, I was literally just texting a friend of mine who's running for congress in the United States. My Local congressperson, Joe Kennedy is going to announce in two days that he's running for Senate, right. So there are as you might imagine, lots of people scrambling around in my district to run for Congress. So I have like five friends that are running for Congress. And one of them I talked to like a month ago and I already told her I was like on her campaign. I'm on her finance committee, whatever she needs. So yesterday, she texts me She's like, okay, it's starting I need to raise $100,000 today like on day one because that shows all the other people get out of the race cuz I got this right like you have to, there is something about that strong. On show of support early on, that places you in position where people say, Oh, I want to be part of that, because this is this is the winner like everybody wants to join the winner. So I it was important to me to think in that mentality that it's not just like a slow burn, like it's got to come out. And it's got to be something because like I said in the beginning, I'm a nobody, like people don't know me. So like my book, debuts at number two on the Washington Post bestseller list right behind Michelle Obama, but I'm like 9 million books behind her. But the fact that I get introduced now on stage as key and it's not just number two in the Washington Post bestseller list, it's number two on the Washington coast bestseller list, right behind Michelle Obama, right. Like I get introduced that way everybody in the audience is like, Oh, she's awesome before I even speak, right. So there's something about having, you know, like, you know, those speakers that get on stage and they're like, they tell a joke, and then the joke doesn't quite land or like, Come on, guys. That was funny, right? Like, you could like smell the desperation and it's terrible. The same way you can like feel the momentum of a winner, right and everybody wants to be part of that circle. They want to James Taylor feel like the big the big mo the big momentum. Laura Gassner Otting Exactly. And so I knew that if I was either I was going to either I was going to do this book and then I was going to like huffing around and create some cells in the back of the room. Or I was going to our I was going to have it launched in a way that the conferences wanted to be in the bookstore, right? And they're like, and after the speech, you get a book signing with Laura or the first 50 people get her book, like I wanted it to be a hot commodity. I wanted to be something that people felt special that they had. And so I wanted to make sure that I launched it in a way where it's sort of you know, you get one opportunity to launch Well, I guess you have to because you have the paperback but if you're a paperback author, then you get one. So I knew that I had one shot to just drive this as much as I could. And what I realized in that process was that it's it's, it's this moment that I'm calling wonder Hill, right? Like it's amazing that anybody wants to spend even five minutes thinking Talking about a really interesting that I wrote. And also, I've never been so exhausted in all my life like and I've had two babies and run three marathons, right? Like, it is wonderful and it's hell, it's wonderful. But wonder hell is that place where the burden of potential comes and like unpacks itself right smack in the middle of your ego and it's like, here I am. Serve me. And your burden of potential is only as big as your ego. And what I realized is that conference planners and and media people, and and, and publishers and anybody, they like somebody that doesn't say, oh, would you please maybe think about putting on your stage, they like people that are like, I'm awesome. I'm gonna rock it. I'm gonna come and I'm gonna transform your audience. You should be lucky to have me. I mean, obviously, I don't say to that. James Taylor Because they're there, especially in the event planner side that always trying to de risk things for them. They're usually quite risk, there's a risk averseness because they don't wanna get fired if they're booking a speaker. So they think like, As many proof points, as you have you mentioned, like the Wall Street Journal, being on that list just before Michelle Obama, and all those things that you're placing there, and they feel that this this momentum is this movement behind you. That's so it makes it you know, when they're comparing you with maybe two other speakers like, well, we need to go with Laura because it feels it just feels that this has to it. This one has the momentum. Laura Gassner Otting Right when I started my executive search firm, I had left a big, a big fancy brick and mortar, very traditional search firm. And I stole basically the next generation of leadership from all the other traditional search firm. So we were basically super awesome high brand search firm, but like a whole lot cheaper, right? Because I figured out a way to do it differently. I we were a virtual firm, I was paying my people differently. I was charging my clients differently. I left because I knew that I could do the work better and faster with more integrity and more profit than these big bloated you know, bureaucratic organizations. And for a while we were only getting like 50% of the searches that we pitched him I couldn't figure out why we weren't getting all of them. It was so logical to me. Like you either hire this group and you pay a premium or you hire us, which are the same people who did the work there. And you do it for a lot less. Why aren't you hiring us? And what I realized is that nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM, right? Like, you hire IBM, and they screwed up and you go, I don't know, we hired the big guys, and they couldn't do it. But if you hire like the little local, whatever, and it doesn't work, it's like, oh, well, clearly, you took a chance, and you made a wrong decision. And so I had to figure out a way to have a show up, as, you know, this sort of super impressive, there's no risk involved, we're going to do the work and we're going to be amazing. And I think that's sort of the same. That's sort of the same mindset that I'm bringing to the to the writing and the speaking is the like, I got you, right, like I understand you, I understand your audience. And not only is there no risk, it's actually going to be better than, you know, the traditional stuff that you've had before because that's really boring. So that means that I need To have the kind of publicist that was going to get me on the Today show when Good morning American profiled in real simple and Forbes and Harvard Business Review and all the like, you know, we live in this pedigree centric society where everyone's like, oh, okay, checkbox, checkbox checkbox, right? Like, you know, the reason that I'm able to walk into certain rooms because I was a presidential appointee in the White House checkbox, right. I didn't go to Harvard, but I have that, like, you have to have there. There are these. There are these like shortcuts that people have in their minds? And I think it's really important that you figure out who is my target audience? Who do I want to sell to? And what are the credibility markers that they're looking for. And once you know, those, then you can sort of build, then you can build towards having those and you don't have to have all of them, you just have to have the ones that your audience wants. So taking James Taylor almost a reverse approach to that. If someone's watching this just now, and they're they're looking at this, whether it's you're you're into what you're saying just now or any of the other guests we've had on summit, and it's 150 Have them in there. And they're kind of feeling overwhelmed, frankly, because, well, Laura, she got his publicist and she had this thing, this thing. And it feels, it can feel quite overwhelming, especially if you're just getting started. Maybe you're in that executive job just now and you're wanting to make that place and become that speaker. where someone is watching that is that is what's in their gut. That's what they're feeling just now. Where do they start? Where should they go? Laura Gassner Otting So the very first talk I ever gave, was a TEDx talk. So I was I I sold my company to my team. And then I had this like, super crisis of identity, like Who am I when I'm no longer Laura Gassner wedding CEO. Here's my business card. And so I just started writing a blog and I was just writing about stuff that you know, I was passionate about, and Tamsin Webster who has been one of the guests on this on the show. She is the executive producer of TEDx Cambridge. And she called me up one day. And I was driving in my car. And I had been I had been coaching her about how to leave her company and start her own thing. And so I saw the phone ring, and I knew she was in the throes of this. And I was like, Oh, no, I got to pick up the call, even though I'm driving, because she might be having an emergency. So I pick up the phone, my kids in the in the passenger seat. So I entered on speakerphone. And she's like, Hey, I saw this latest blog that you wrote, would you consider doing a TEDx talk on it? And I was like, No way. No way. No, how I have no interest in speaking that scares the hell out of me. I know. Thank you Goodbye, and hang up the phone. Of course, my kids in the passenger seat. And he turns to me, he's 15 years old at the time, and he's like, so Mom, don't you always tell me I have to do things that scare me. James Taylor She was shamed by your child, Laura Gassner Otting always telling me that life starts on the other side of the fear. Don't you always tell me if it doesn't challenge me? It doesn't change me. It's like so come on, mom. What gives? So six weeks later, I'm standing on the TEDx stage. No notes. No net theatre lights 2600 people go. So you don't have to start with like big money, big publicist, big whatever. I didn't have a speech already. I had a blog post. And it was interesting and it turned into something. So all of a sudden, I had this TEDx talk, which had really great footage really great. You know, it's a beautiful film. And then that got a little bit of attention. And then I got asked to give the keynote talk for the nonprofit symposium conference in Boise, Idaho, the Idaho nonprofit Center's annual like their statewide gathering, and they offered me 1500 dollars and an airline ticket and I thought, I've never been to Boise before. Why not? So I went and then after that, I got offered another gig and another gig and another gig and they came with more and more and more money. And that was the point where I was like, wait, this is a job. People do this. Tell me more about this job right get on stage. I talk about things about which I'm passionate and you pay me for them. That sounds awesome. But what I did is in each one of those, I invested a little bit of money to hire somebody to film them. You can get a pretty cheap film crew in Boise, Idaho to come film you speak for 45 minutes. And so I was able to take footage from this ragtag bunch of like four or five very early, very early speaking gigs, where they filmed me and got some audience reaction B roll, and I put it together in a speaker reel. And then all of a sudden, I was like the Wizard of Oz, right? Like, don't look at the man behind the curtain. She's only been speaking for like 14 seconds. But in this in the speaker, I look, I've been doing it for 10 years. Right? So that was sort of one flank of the Armada of trying to figure it out. And then the other one was, if I'm going to get paid to do this, like a professional, I should probably get trained to do this, like a professional. Right, so I invested more with Tamsin Webster to help me build out a team keynote I invested with Michael and Amy port to help me figure out how to develop you know, on stage presence and improv and performing, you know, all of this stuff. And so and then, you know, I got involved in speaking spill. And you know, and I and I just got to know, I started going to NSA conferences, and I just got to know other people and I got to study them and watch what they did. So on the one hand, I didn't wait till I was legit before I started filming myself as legit. Here's the secret. If you're giving a 45 minute or a 30 minute or a 20 minute talk, you don't have to have 20 great minutes, you need like three different one minute bits that are really good that you can then move into different things I gave a talk in, in Las Vegas where they wanted me to do the more junior people in the morning and the more senior people in the afternoon. So rather than go to lunch and sit and eat rubber chicken, I went back to my room I changed into a different outfit, and then I went back into the second one. So I have because I was in two different rooms with two different backdrops so suddenly I have two more speaking gigs. catch up on my speaker reel that make me look real. So these are the things you can do. You can do your dress rehearsal in one outfit and then your you know the soundcheck in one outfit and have somebody film it, and then do the actual gig and a second outfit, and then suddenly you have more gigs and more stages. So it's really a matter of like, make yourself look legit before you feel like you're really legit. You just need like three or four or five different bits. You don't need to nail three or four or five different keynotes, and at the same time work on figuring out how to nail a 45 minute keynote. So you have to do both at the same time. It's not it's not waiting and I think most people wait until they've perfected it before they hire the film crew. James Taylor So once once you were kind of getting out there you're now speaking you're traveling all over the place and doing your speeches. And the often comes a point with with speakers where the the start to then decide what kind of business model that they want to have in their speaking because there's so many, there's so many different flavors that you could so when you were kind of starting Decide, okay, this is fun. I'm enjoying this, I feel like I have a I have ability to be able to do some do some really high level. Now, what is the model, the overall business model? whether other speakers that you saw out there you said, I liked the way that they've built their business or there's particular parts or what what was the decision you made in terms of your kind of revenue streams how you wanted to what you want to speaking to do for you. Laura Gassner Otting So that's been a little bit of a moving target. Because I've you know, I've only been doing it, as I mentioned for a couple years, so I'm really still pretty new in this in this world. In fact, I, in fact, I gave that a bit three years now. So I gave that TEDx talk in September of 2016. So it's, I'm, yeah, you're I am three year anniversary of being a speaker. And I'm like, you know, making money now. It's like, so it takes a little time. In the beginning. I really thought that it would it would be like what I be speaking, I would sell from stage I get hired to coach, you know, I would do some writing. And I really wasn't expecting to write a book. And then I realized, the people who are there, there are several miles of people there people who just get on stage two, three times a week, every week, and they speak. And that's all they do. And that's, I think that's a really good business model for some people. I think I would go crazy if I did that, because I, I, I don't know how to bring the energy two to three times a week. You know, in the same way for that, I think that's kind of exhausting. I also have 15 and 17 year old at home. And so they're at that age where they don't really need me. But when they need me, I better be around. So I do want to be home a little bit, you know, a little bit more than I'm gone right now. Then I also realize that I'm not scalable. So, you know, when I ran my professional services company, I there was there was a lot of work that I could do, but we could only grow so much until I hired other people to sort of be proxy versions. Me, and if what you're selling from stage is you, that's kind of hard to do that, you know, unless you get big enough that you're like licensing how you do the work and I, I've already built that business, I don't want to build another business in that way. What I really realized that I that I like to do is I actually, I actually love media. I love those moments of the two things I love most I love doing live national TV, right? Good morning, America, today's show, etc. like asking questions of people on TV and having them raise your hand or not raise your hand and not tirely knowing what they're going to say but being pretty sure. And I love live coaching onstage bringing somebody up handing them the mic and being like, Here's 60 seconds, tell us your problem. And we're going to solve it together in front of like 5000 people, those without a net moments, yeah, where you have personal individual connection to real people, or where I thrive, like I come alive more in the QA and and in those live coaching moments that I would doing, you know, two, three For gigs a week in front of 100 people, talking to 10,000 people is so much easier than talking to 100 people. For me. James Taylor It is great that you you've kept going back to that. Who am I? Yeah, what what gives me joy? What gives me passion? Yeah, you talk about living a limitless life. Yeah, like how to live a limitless life with limited hours, I guess. And so you're thinking, Okay, I can do I mean as a speaker, where you are in your career just now. You can go so many different directions and do so many different things with your, your speaking business, your brand as a whole, but it's great that you are taking that time to be reflective and thinking, Okay, I love that. I love that life coaching thing. how can how do we build something around this and scale as well? Laura Gassner Otting Yeah, so for me, you know, I feel like you can do you can do three things. You can either maximize profitability, you can maximize impact or you can maximize your personal flexibility and I have always in Every job I've ever had, whether it was working in the White House or you know, working in a search firm or running my own or writing or speaking or any of it, I have found that if I maximize impact the things that I care about doing good work with good people, right? And if I maximize my own personal flexibility, so I have lots of choices, every time you walk into a door or room, there's like additional doors, then maximizing profitability comes but sometimes you have to make future money, right? And I think that's the same thing you can go with go back to your first question, you can go with a traditional publisher who's going to give you an advance and you can maximize profitability there or you can go with a hybrid and know that you are if you can, you can actually make more money later than you know if you if you try to get all the money upfront, I think future money is always bigger than than then then now money. So I try to maximize impact and try to maximize flexibility and everything that I do. And I think the way that I've modeled my speaking business is sort of the same. You know, you don't get paid money to do lots of media unless you're, you know, like an anchor on you. major TV, but what it does is it gives you social media following social media follow. And and people who are signing up to your list give you an opportunity, they give you an audience and then you can sell stuff to them. So if I create a course then I've got, you know, the reason James clear, had a best selling book immediately is that he spent seven years writing and building up an audience and he had 100,000 people on his email newsletter list who listened to him every single week and got great value from him. So when he went out and he's like, here's my pre sale my launch before my book, of course, he likes sold 20,000 books the day that he sent out the email saying my books coming out in six weeks, please buy it, he sold 20,000 books. That's incredible, right? I'd like to get to a point where I have that kind of leverage with what I'm doing. And you don't often get that by maximizing profitability and trying to squeeze every dollar out of every gig. I'd rather say you know, my, my speaking fees range from x to y, y is full fee. X is like not full fee, but it's full. It's some fee plus some amount of book sales or some amount of fun. lineups are some amount of whatever. Because you know, there's lots of ways where you can define value like my price is x, but my value I can get value from lots of different things. So it might come from, you know, a five cameras shoot it might come from, they're gonna bulk buy 500 books it might come from, I'm on an agenda, you know, on a schedule with Robin Roberts, who is the speaker right after me, who then sees me and invites me onto the Good Morning America. Right. So like, there are lots of ways to derive value from your speaking gig, which don't always come in cash. Yeah, James Taylor that's, yeah, that's and you can make those decisions if profitability, is it your number one goal, because you're right, Laura Gassner Otting I mean, longer term, Laura Gassner Otting right? There's like you need to make like, there's two different numbers, right. There's like the need to make number and the wants to make number and the need to make numbers, table stakes, like we pay our mortgage, you got to put food on the table. But beyond that, you know, are you going to get your ego in a bunch because they're paying you $5,000 and not $10,000 or $15,000, about $20,000 or whatever your fees may be or 1000. Maybe they're just flying you out there. But you know, the gig where I got introduced to Robin Roberts, who then put me on national TV, which then brought my book to number 121 of all of Amazon that day, right? I didn't get paid for that gig. They brought they flew me out there, you know, first class great, wonderful. They bought 500 books. I had those 500 books purchased through Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York. I didn't make any money from those book sales, right? Because I could have made a lot of money from those book sales. I didn't make any money from those book sales. But if you spend 500, if you buy 500 500 books, through Barnes and Noble, they'll put you in their window for two weeks. So all of a sudden, I'm not getting paid at all for this for this gig. But I go out. Robin Roberts gets my book. she invites me on national TV I do it through Barnes and Noble Barnes noble puts me in their window on Fifth Avenue for two weeks and suddenly I look like I'm the shit right? I look like I'm everywhere. I didn't get paid for that gig. So people who are in the early part of the career they're not entirely sure what to do and they feel like maybe they're not getting where they need to get to because They're not getting paid yet. I want them to remember that there are so many ways to get paid, paid for a gig. And they should think about what are all the ways that I could derive value from it? Who else am I going to meet? Who's going to hear from me? What kind of logo Am I going to have behind me on that beautiful film that I'm going to get that I can put into a real? Are there corporate sponsors that that have other events is this the, you know, regional event for, you know, a conference that they have nationally, and I can get into the, you know, into the deal flow? There's so many different ways when you're getting started to get to get paid for gigs. James Taylor And I think once again, that goes back to it feels all the time, kind of going back to your all those times you've spent as in campaigning, understanding campaigns, that's a classic kind of thinking how campaigning, you're thinking is like chess moves, how does that thing then relate to that thing? And how can I get it? And so you're always thinking in that way, you're not thinking, oh, I've got something out. I need to just do a quick tweet on it. There's a tactical way you're not you're not you're not going that way. So I love that way. So there's some final questions. We start to finish up here. You talk about traveling and flying, I'm going to put you on an imaginary long haul flight. And on that flight, you could be sitting next to any speaker, author, thought leader living or dead. You could be sitting next to and having a conversation on this long haul flight. Who would you like to be sitting next to? Laura Gassner Otting Oh, that's such a great question. Um, I would say Richard Branson, and probably for a couple reasons. First, you know that he's gonna fly really well. Right? He owns the airline. But also He's like, they call him doctor. Yes. Right. Like he, I believe that there's always a way to say yes to somebody. And if you have to say no, about one thing you can like say no, but I can introduce you to somebody who might be able to help there's always a way to get to yes. And I'm, I'm I am an unbridled optimist. And so I sort of I love his energy. I love what he's done. I think he would like if he I think he would love my book limitless because I think it really is. If you if you Richard. James Taylor Yeah, nice to meet Richard any virgin? You need to know you need to be bringing to Necker Island soon. Laura Gassner Otting Absolutely. I mean, look, I mean, my book is called limitless how to ignore everybody carve your own path and live your best life who has done that better than Richard Branson. So I just I just feel like I could learn a ton from him. And I think we would just have a we just have a gangbusters time. James Taylor Fantastic. And what if you do recommend one but not one of your own books by book by another author? Do you think any of our speakers watching just now you think it'd be a very impactful book for them to to read? What book? Laura Gassner Otting Do people really recommend their own books? Some people do James Taylor something, believe me, some people do. Laura Gassner Otting Okay, well, I hope the person who does is Michael Port because I'm gonna recommend his book, which is steal the show, I think, and here's why. There is the difference between giving a workshop which most people have done before they get into speaking is there's workshops or didactic They're earnest. You're teaching and and and and keynotes are performing, right, they're motivating, they're inspiring and the difference is playing big and I think what I learned from reading that book is a there is a difference and be how to actually onboard that difference so that I could go from like I need to tell you this information to ah, right it's just it's a it's a it's a huge difference and I think that's that would be I think the book I would recommend steal the show by Michael Porter. James Taylor I wasn't your speaker bag wasn't that bag you carry with you to all of your various speaking engagements you never never leave home without James Taylor a cover up. Laura Gassner Otting Pick up Laura Gassner Otting um, no I really I'm deodorant. I'm vain. You know I have liked I really don't have I really don't. I'm pretty I'm pretty easy. I just get on stage and I'm and I'm me. membership. Yeah, there's there's usually not any. There's beyond beyond like vanity. I don't I don't bring anything, because I don't. I don't have like super technical stuff. James Taylor Yeah, it was funny. I was just I was speaking earlier this week I was speaking in Rome in Italy. And the speaker was talking before me. She's really she was very good. But she was using some very interactive type of app technology at the same time. And she was getting the audience to do it as well. And when that stuff works is great. It's fine. But when it doesn't, when it doesn't work, and my heart was reaching out, oh, no, because it was just and it wasn't it really wasn't our fault. It was the internet connection in the hotel venue was being held. And so sometimes, yeah, simple can be Laura Gassner Otting so easy. I've only really started using slides in the last six months, like the big keynote I get from this talk, and my slides are like big, beautiful photos. They're not like lots of words and there's no bullet points. There's none of that because I'm not a teacher. I'm a, you know, motivator. And but I gave this the very first time I gave this talk. I gave it in Switzerland at St. John's University in Switzerland. And I was sort of like my trial to see if I could do it. And I'm literally three slides into the talk. And it's like, everything breaks like the battery's dead. I don't know. It's just not working. So I'm on stage. And I'm trying it. And I'm trying it. I'm trying and finally I just went, and I curtsied Hello, I, I actually, I went away. And I walked over to the to the stool, and I put the little slide remote down and I did a little curtsy. And then I went, and I kept going. And somebody came up to me afterwards. And he was like, That was amazing. I've never seen anybody so fluidly handle a technology problem. And you gave the talk so well without your slides. That was incredible. And I didn't have the heart to tell him. I actually don't normally use slides. It was easier for me but James Taylor most speakers will use the slides as their crutch they and they and once if it goes for whatever reason, they've got their last and then You'd like Michael talks about this a lot about really just knowing your what you do back and forth thinking about the blocking, like in like an actor would when you're doing and so so that was a great suggestion on the book as well. Laura Gassner Otting Well though I used to actually I'll tell you one thing I used to actually keep breath mints in my bag because I would vomit before I gave any talk ever. But to Michael's point, like I went from I need to teach you this information to this is the thing that I know in my soul and I believe so deeply that you have to understand it. And that was the difference. I don't get nervous before I speak anymore, because I'm actually speaking from my soul from my core rather than speaking from just my my brain. James Taylor Yeah, well, but any apps or online tools you find any particularly useful you're traveling a lot obviously as well but and you're doing a lot of social media. Are there any ones that you find particularly useful? Laura Gassner Otting Um, I mostly I use notion a lot and notion is just sort of like it's it's basically the way that I communicate with my assistant who lives you know, in a different state who I I've only met once. It's really just sort of like the board that we have. So every every speaking gig gets its own little you know, each column of like, you know, what dates are held and what's what's there. And it's a place to just put all this stuff so that I get everything out of my email box. And I don't miss, I don't miss the details. Um, so I use that that also has like a beautiful little social media calendar. So I can like put the posts that I want to have up and I can write them while I'm, you know, sitting on an airplane, and then the people who do the social media posts can go in and link to that and see it. And so it's just, it's, we just need one place where every would sort of come together. It's like the staff meeting sight. It's the big whiteboard in the conference room that we don't have, because we're a virtual company. So that's really the one that I can't live without James Taylor motion. And then let's imagine you woke up tomorrow morning, Laura, and you have to start from scratch. You have all the skills or the knowledge you've acquired over the years, but no one knows you, you know, no one, what would you do? How would you restart things. Laura Gassner Otting So I would probably restart things exactly how I restarted how I started them when I was 21 years old and ended up in the White House, which is take the Salt Lake, the smallest job you can possibly take in the biggest office, you can get to, like, we have this idea that we have to walk in as like the highest paid speaker and the top line person in the head of the agenda. And the truth is, you just need to be in the green room, you just need to be in the door, right? So like, if you're there, and you can, you know, you're like doing a workshop and you're not getting paid for but you can be in the same green room as Richard Branson, who was keynoting, you have an opportunity to talk to them, but even more you have an opportunity to listen to them, to observe them to hear from them to actually get to see how they do what they do. And you can learn and so I think I think that's why what I would do, I would just try to get my I would I would, you know, get coffee, just to be in the room where things happen. Laura, James Taylor thank you so much for coming out today. It's been fascinating. Watching your journey which feels like it's happening in a really short compressed period of time. I know. You've all the things you've done in your past which have helped you get to this point where the That experience and that knowledge of campaigning, but what you're sharing today about how you launch your book about getting the big the big momentum in your in your career, and also about the idea of moving from just being a teacher to being a motivator and it will be a huge value for everyone watching So thank you, Laura, thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to us hopefully sharing a stage and and maybe chatting over that cup of coffee in a green room together somewhere in the world. Laura Gassner Otting And that would be fantastic. Thank you so much. James Taylor Today's episode was sponsored by speakers you the online community for speakers. And if you're serious about your speaking career, then you can join us because you membership program, or speakers, you members receive private one on one coaching with me hundreds of hours of training, content, and access to a global community to help them launch and build a profitable business around their speaking message and expertise. So just head over to SpeakersU.com to learn more. #speakerslife #speakersU

  Almost everyone has a social media account, making it a good platform to have your message heard. Listen in on today's episode to know how you can use social media to influence others.   How do you use social media to influence I mean not just get yourself out there not to share a message but to really have an impact and influence the world that's we're going to talk about today I've asked Valerie Morris back for another amazing episode on influence and I really want to pick your brain cuz I've got lots of opinions especially about YouTube but how how do you use social media to actually influence people okay so the first thing that I always encourage people to think through is that first word in that that joint word or that joint phrase social media starts with the words social so we always need to remember in the back of our minds that we are truly social beings and we're interacting with other real people so when we're thinking about influencing people it's not that we're blasting them with our agenda it's that we're truly wanting to build a relationship with them and I think if we get that first we can really be successful in the future because if you bring the human the humanity into things it's going to solve so many problems that people have when it comes to trying to make a difference and influencing people with social media so should a person be on multiple platforms so they start on one and then what's your recommendation of somebody that you know what I want to have more of a voice I think the biggest piece of advice I can give people is to really start with what they know they can handle and so if that means just one platform great if that means five platforms more power to yeah you'll be living your life on social media if that's the case I usually recommend around two maybe three that they're really putting a lot of emphasis on and I like that because you can build a good audience there but you also then have other platforms where you can cross promote and be able to mention the fact that you've got these other platforms and so you can attract people from other platforms to go follow your YouTube channel you can let them know that they have it a friend of mine gave me this analogy of he was out fishing and they were at a youth camp when it was off hours and had all the fishing poles to themselves there were no other kids that were competing to use these fishing poles and so they each grabbed a couple poles and kind of set them up and they all had the bait in the water and he was like why would I only fish with one pole when I can fish and put bobbers in with four or five poles and we have a higher chance of catching a fish and it's the same thing with social media you know whether you're bobbers our traditional marketing strategies or you're using multiple social media channels the reality is if you have the ability to kind of fish in multiple ponds and put multiple bobbers out you have a higher chance so why would you just put all of your eggs on you know in the basket of billboard marketing when you could be promoting on social media as well and reaching people in a completely new way it just makes sense to use multiple channels to get your message out there so I have an idea to continue your analogy okay so let's say you've got five different fishing poles yeah maybe you could try it first to try five different types of bait or lure maybe five different depths or something but then which one bites right which one gets you the first biter which one brings in the biggest fish then you kind of can hone in like you know what this channel of social media really works yes or this strategy or this type of content because I really like that approach it's like you don't know it's always good to test things and to try things to try multiple different things but then you can't really be strategic it's not that if well I've got to keep fishing five different polls week for the sake of doing many exactly might as well do every one of them the most efficient way that's my spread I love it no I think I think it's great I mean you always want to be testing whenever you're doing anything on social media really anything marketing wise you want to be testing but digital marketing now provides us some great opportunities to actually see what's working and what's not and if it is working why it's working you can get so many clues just from the statistics and the data but you want to be paying attention to all of those different pieces and elements so that you do know hey this is the best bait and oh yeah this is the right pond to be fishing in with this bait it gives you clues as to what's gonna work in the future and with digital marketing today you really need to be paying attention to those things so whether you have one fishing pole out or two fishing poles or ten you want to make sure that you're paying attention to what's working and what's not so you can make smarter decisions in the future right isn't that the point we're all wanting to work a little bit more efficiently and a little bit more smart in the future so really talking about influence and and making a difference you mentioned trust yes how do you build trust through social media okay so no trust you know we've got some big key holder or key stakeholders in our world today like Bernie Brown who are really encouraging us to get vulnerable and I've been seeing more and more people talking about how can we just show our real lives here on social media like can we just be real your house is not this Instagram magazine worthy you know photo shoot where the setting all day long the realities you probably have a pile of dirty laundry or clean laundry that needs to be folded probably have dishes in your sink you probably have you know fights that you've had with your family in the last week the reality is our lives are not perfect but the more humanity we can show to people the better off we will be because when people realize that there's a real person behind a brand and that that person has real struggles that they're not perfect it allows other people to open up and be more real in return and they're going to trust you a little bit more if they know that maybe you've suffered the loss of a parent or a grandparent and you're dealing with that right now they're gonna connect emotionally with that and it's more likely to be gravitating towards you and your content than someone else who is putting on this perfect persona of hey my life is great all the time and only perfect people are allowed to interact with me we send those subconscious signals whether we realize it or not and the more we can open up and be vulnerable the more we're going to attract people who really are just like us so I have a story that I can share about my onyx and that illustrates this point and it also does opened me up to vulnerability because I'm gonna showcase a mistake that I made and the results I got from it yep and then I'll show a case how I changed and the results I'm getting from it so I've been a part of the National Speakers Association for about six years my local chapter here is amazing and back when I first joined the group I thought ah a whole bunch of prospective clients and customers and and I went with that attitude and little did I know and I'm so glad that I've I've joined that group and in particular because they're such a giving group everyone there is really there to serve each other I mean they're making most of them are multiple six figures lots of them even seven figures and yet they're they're just serving giving away their their advice for free and yet I showed up there hey you guys all need to buy from me no one else showed up like that with me sure and you know what I got some customers out of it I did get some customers out of the group but I also I didn't become a part of the group I wasn't family like they'll consider this tribe this group family and yet I totally felt like an outsider and I recognized it early on but they didn't have the right mindset so a year later you know what I'm gonna give this group a website for free and back then I had a web design company designed a website for the group you know what I did it because I'm one that I wanted them to say hey look what Nate did he's awesome we should buy websites from him and it's taken me a while I'll just be upfront that it took me a while to really understand the value of showing up to serve and is showing up to give without wanting anything return of course I want something but in the last year I've shown up to other groups where I've really just loved being a part of the group I love showing up in a community and I've given without expecting anything in return and I'll share one thing specific a friend of mine Michelle needed help writing scripts for some videos and I said sometime I just took took like six hours and I just helped her go through and read all the scribbs it's a painful process yeah it was enjoyable in the sense that I got to help her but it's not something that I typically enjoy doing I didn't expect anything out of it yeah well a few days later we were both at the same conference and she was dropping my name everyone about this about being a YouTube expert and I just I was so grateful that I showed up and served not expecting anything returning yet I just like I love I love being loved I love being loved my point into going into all that story is I found both with showing up to serve and then being vulnerable then I want to share my mistakes I've built some really close relationships I'm really good that you mentioned Burnie Brown yeah I've strengthened the relationship with my wife with my friends I built closer relationships than I thought were possible with with business associates in contact simply because I'm not afraid to show my mistakes I mean we're filming in a studio here this is an Airbnb that we use as our studio and we make it look nice but the reality is that you know we're not polished and perfect everywhere we do have mistakes and flaws and so I appreciate you bring those parts up so you really do think that that's important for making an impact I think it's essential for building an impact I mean if you're not willing to go deep with people and be real how are you gonna expect them to be real in return and if you're not out there building real relationships what's the point it's a pretty sad existence and so I don't know I personally would rather have a bunch of real friends than a bunch of fake colleagues when you think about just it kind of in summary of this topic you think about celebrity endorsements of the past and they still exist yes but we're into a big transition now of real influencers I mean take somebody like Will Smith Will Smith's a big celebrity but he's been creating a personal brand now he's got his own YouTube channel and he's doing so many things right compare that to I don't know I don't want to pick on another celebrity but just on another celebrity that's never on social media it doesn't actually connect if they heard a like promote a product or something and say hey youshould go do this activity or it's like okay you know but but Will Smith,Will Smith talks about it you know that makes sense. Oh totally I mean think about a reality TV has become this huge thing in the last few decades nowadays you get reality TV every moment on social media and so if someone's willing to embrace that and go with hey people are wanting to see the real part of your life you can really build a great audience and therefore it you have the ability to influence. Hopefully, you enjoyed this video. I've got two things I want to recommend first is Valerie's book on Amazon We're All Ears and then the other thing is if you really want to make a big impact on YouTube you've got to do keyword research I talked about that in other videos but I have a resource I want to give you for free it's my keyword research guide so go ahead and click on the link below you'll get that for free and that will really help you build your influence on YouTube.

The truth is that we're not always going to get praises and compliments, sometimes we're going to have to face critics. It may be in your personal life or career or in your community. We've got the internet, so it's a much worse now! In this episode, Valerie Morris is here to help us on how we can deal with critics. When you step out as an influencer you naturally attract people who love you you also attract a lot of critics and so on this video we've got Valerie Morris your expert on influence we're talking about how you deal with the critics so I know that you've got five different ways to deal with the critics I'm glad we've got a little tool belt or something so what's number one and we're  gonna need that tool belt for sure okay so the first tool is you're gonna hate this but it's to reside to it the reality is if you're putting yourself out there online you are going to get critics and it's kind of a scary thing to think through but I think if you go into it with that mentality of there are gonna be some people who don't agree with my stuff and there are gonna be people making nasty troll-like comments on my videos or YouTube is one of the worst harshest places yeah and if you go into that mentality knowing that it's going to happen you're gonna be a lot better off when it does happen and I think realizing where those people come from from a space of a lot of it's their own  pain in their own insecurities showing versus true mean criticism and you can really let a lot of that stuff kind of roll off your back but you got to come into that mentality of I am I'm expecting this and I'm going to take it in stride doesn't mean that you always will but I think it does help when you know it's coming well the question comes on my mind then because to really build a following sometimes you want to polarize you've got an opinion you want to polarize so that people will either agree with you but that but definitely invites more criticism more negative feedback absolutely yeah there's this concept in marketing that we don't really talk about very much which is this concept of repelling people and it's just as important as attracting the right people interesting so you want to make sure that you know if I have you know if I offer certain services that are a certain price point or above I don't want to be attracting all of the people who want to just spend five dollars on my advice I want to attract the people that can spend $100 an hour on my advice you know so you don't want to attract people who are looking for that free cheap deal when you're looking for people who really want to pay more for their services so it's an important thing to think through when you're creating your content or creating your message who am i attractive with this? is my language attracting those people who want that really really good deal? or am i attracting the people that I really want to work with? so it's it's an important concept to think through so the second tip here is to go to your tribe and this is really important because when criticism comes and not just criticism but mean criticism but when that comes you want to make sure that you have the people in your life who will speak truth to you so this is helpful before you post any content to make sure that what you're posting has some relevance and is an appropriate thing to say so I know some people who really they post some edgy things they're pretty controversial sometimes about the types of content that they're sharing and they have this whole network of people in the background who they share their content with first and say hey is this  okay and  it's their sounding-board so before it ever hits public eyes or ears there's been somebody else who has thought through so it's really important  to have a you know a tribe of people you can go to and say hey does this sound okay and I being too rude or am i being too edgy but then if you do post stuff whether it's controversial or not it's really important to have that tribe so that if negative feedback comes back you have someone you can at least go vent to and talk to and they can help provide you some really great perspective if it's something that you should take to heart and say well that's actually some criticism you might want to consider taking or they can help you blow it off and say forget about that troll That's really good advice I like that especially the one that I hadn't thought up before is showing my content to my tribe first because they're gonna make me feel good about it really I mean if there is something flawed in it they'll point it up but they'll do it in a nice way oh yeah all right tip number three I've looked at the notes I like this one tip number three so not all criticism is necessarily stuff you should ignore sometimes the critics have a point and I realized that you know if they're being really rude in the comments on your video or they're just being nasty you know in the comments on a post that's not the right way to say it but sometimes the heart of their message is actually a good point and so sometimes you can learn things from critics sometimes it's not a bad thing to pay attention to what they say now letting it ruin your day that's a whole other story don't let them don't let the trolls ruin your day but if you're noticing that something is coming up on a consistent basis or it's something that you feel like is really hitting a nerve with you that hey this might be true it's a good thing to then take back to your tribe and say hey you know what do I do with this information obviously I don't like how it was presented but it they might have a point and one thing I love our friend Bernie Brown says a lot is she only engages with people who are real people on social media so if they have just an avatar they don't put a real picture up you can't see what their real name is she refuses to comment back and so I think there's a point where you realize I'm not gonna engage in troll-like behavior you can still take the point to heart if it's legitimate yeah that makes sense that make sense - to learn from it like kind of say well if they were polite how would they have said this I think of a good friend who is a very successful facebook marketer was very very well she'd make seven figures I mean her business from it and she one of her outlets kind of going back to your point number two about sharing with the tribe she'll often just take a screenshot of some of her hater comments or something in look what somebody posted about me today and she gets so much love back oh I can't believe instead that you're the nicest person in you know and you know sometimes sometimes we we need that I really like that and then I guess I related to a second point not learning from it next one let it go makes me think of a Disney movie you know what's sad is I've never even seen that Disney movie I know never seen frozen before but I know the song but you know it's really  important when it comes to criticism to really just let things go the reality is the comments on your YouTube channel the comments on your Facebook feed on your Instagram photos the comments on your blog even the comments that someone take the time to personally message to you those do not define your identity your identity is not found in the comments that someone puts on your content and if you are confident in where your identity is in then you really should try to just let it go and I know it's hard I know some people that just they refuse to watch or look at any of their comments because they can't let it go but I think it's important to at some point you can't obsess and if you're if your channel and your content is growing at such a rapid speed the reality is you're probably going to have more comments than it's worth to pay attention to you have too much  great content out there and too much ofa great message to to put out there to the world to be wasting time on people who are just putting hateful comments so it sounds like when those moments we just put on the Taylor Swift song shake it off yep and we shake it off or you put on frozen and you let it go all right so we've got tip number five so tip number five is to look for the humanity and the reality is that there is somebody on the other end who is putting that hateful comment or criticism out there the world and most of the time there's something going on with them that's causing them to be really hateful to be really snarky to just have so much anger that they would put that kind of comment out there publicly and I think when you start to realize that there's humanity behind that and there's someone out there who's struggling it's a little bit easier to accept those hateful comments they might be really jealous of your success or your perceived success whatever the case may be they might be struggling with something that you have no idea and when you put that humanity in perspective it can really change your outlook on that comment and that criticism and really allow you to kind of see beyond and it might open up doors for deeper relationship and honestly transformative relationship as well thats interesting made me think of a couple things I mean one when my six-year-old son gets really upset he'll say some things that if I didn't know the context or knew you know I could get quite offended by it but I know the whole story sure so you know with with haters or whatnot that leave really bad comments it's like they might be dealing with cancer they might they might have just lost their job they might yeah so I think that's that's a good advice maybe just to try and picture them in the best I like that humanity I like that You know and one really great thing about social media I know it gets a bad rap but the digital world we live in gives us the chance to pause we don't have to  respond right away good point you know when you're out to lunch with someone and they spew something at you I know yeah well but when you're face to face you feel like you have to have some sort of instant reply with someone right then and there but when you're working with computer screens or phone screens in between things you really can take a big deep breath and not press post right away you can you can take a minute What I do I can write the sentence wait and delete it okay delete that one all right that  one's yes yes it's a good moment just take a big deep breath before you take any response. so those five tips are very helpful I appreciate you showing those in our if you want to know more about influence Valerie's book we're all ears you find it on Amazon be sure to subscribe we'll see you tomorrow.

Starting a new bourbon brand is tough, especially when you are in the backyard of the biggest dogs in the industry. However, Kaveh Zamanian saw a hole in the market where he could bring new mash bills and new experiences to bourbon drinkers. As the founder of Rabbit Hole Distillery, he has faced some criticism but is taking it head on in this episode. We talk about the startup hustle, contract distilling, pricing strategies, their 5 year roadmap and more. Show Partners: This episode is brought to you ad free by Rabbit Hole Distillery. Show Notes: San Francisco World Spirits Competition - https://bourbonpursuit.com/2018/04/12/144-judging-san-francisco-world-spirits-competition-anthony-dias-blue/  “Bourbon & Thoroughbred Infused” Lean Management Training Certification Course from April 22-23, 2019. http://solarity.com/lean Pursuit Spirits on ModernThirst.com. https://modernthirst.com/2019/03/22/pursuit-spirits-video-tasting-with-kenny-of-bourbon-pursuit/ The week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Bourbon BBQ potato chips. Let’s start from the beginning. Talk about your introduction to bourbon. When you first met your wife, were you intimidated? What made you want to go down the path of opening a distillery? What did you want to change when you got in the bourbon industry? How did you get the ball rolling? Did everyone think you were crazy? How do you outline expectations to investors? Do you think it is challenging for someone from outside of Kentucky to build a distillery in Kentucky? What was your motivation for building the distillery vs. sourcing? Can you disclose who was contract distilling for you? How did you come up with your recipe? Can you explain the difference between malted grain and a regular grain source? How do you know your mash bill will be good years down the road? Talk about being added to the official Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Do you think you are beyond being a craft distiller now? Do you want to see TTB define the term small batch? What are you all doing differently that would entice visitors to come check our Rabbit Hole? When people see the name Kaveh Zamanian, do you think the general public has an unfair bias? How hard is it to build a brand or story when you had no connection to the industry until recently? Since you have a psychology background, can you give us a breakdown of the bourbon consumer? Who are your early adopters? How do you deal with negative feedback? Talk about your pricing strategy? How old is most of your whiskey? What keeps you from putting the age statement on the bottle? How do your products stand out in a crowded market? Talk about your relationship with Death & Co. Do you think there is any confusion among whiskey geeks about your product being for cocktails vs. sipping neat? What story do you want consumer to know when they see your product? What are your long term goals for the brand? Any intentions of selling it off? Tell us about your roadmap. What is going to be happening with the brand in 5 years? What can visitors expect when they visit Rabbit Hole? What is your connection with cigars? How did you come up with the name Rabbit Hole? 0:00 Just give me a mic check just so I kind of know what your level is. And sure like what you have for breakfast 123 I was at 0:07 eggs and bacon, nice eggs and bacon. What about you you? Are you fasting? Are you still still fasting when for 12 0:15 I go past it so I'll get angry towards the end. 0:30 Welcome back. This is Episode 194 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny Coleman and let's go through just a little bit of news. Henry McKenna was the rising and shining star once again at the San Francisco world spirits competition that just wrapped up this past week. If you wanna know more about it, go ahead and check out Fred's blog at Fred minute calm because Fred is a judge there. But if you want to know more about the competition, go check out our past podcast episode 144. It features the features 1:00 chairperson anthony dyess blue that really goes in and talks about what are these metals mean and what you can really expect from it you can get that in our show notes tim middle he was a guest back on episode 88 where he talked about bourbon one on one during our bourbon back to basic series he's partnering up to bring the first ever bourbon and thoroughbred infused lean management training and certification course it's kicking off april 22 and 23rd 2019 1:27 it will be hosted by the celebrity group the kicker is there's only 15 seats available so if business management and lean certifications are sort of your thing go get information and your tickets@celebrity.com slash lean now you may or may not have heard there's a little rumor going around that there are no more knob creek private selections that are going to be happening until 2020 we need a little bit more confirmation of the story but so far from our sources is that if you're on the calendar for a barrel selection and 2019 you're going to 2:00 Okay, however no new reservations are being made. At this time. I'm going to give a shout out and say thank you to bill and Timothy over modern thirst.com for inviting me over to talk about our private label pursuit series. You can hear more about our vision and goals for this label as well as in depth reviews of episodes five through nine on the video over at modern thirst.com or you can find it linked within our show notes. Starting a new bourbon brand is tough, especially when you're in the backyard with the biggest dogs in the industry. However, cabeza Manian saw hold the market, we can bring new mash bills and new experiences to bourbon drinkers as the founder of rabbit hole distilling. He's facing tough criticism, but he's taking it head on in this episode. We talked about the startup hustle contract distilling pricing strategies, their five year roadmap and a lot more. This podcast is also brought to you advertisement free from 3:00 Rabbit Hole distilling. Now we can't forget Fred. So here is this week's above the char. 3:08 I'm Fred Minnick in this is above the char. 3:13 That's the sound of kettle brand potato chips, bourbon barbecue. I saw this on Instagram the other day, and I thought to myself, I have got to get this. Now, I'm not normally a sucker for all these fast food, barbecue sandwiches. And when you see barbecue bourbon on on some kind of random baloney or you've got, you know, whatever. There's all kinds of stuff out there that's putting bourbon on the label. I mean, for God's sakes, there, there's a gene company, aging denim and former bourbon barrels and they're putting bourbon on the pants. So you're seeing it everywhere. But I was really intrigued by these by these potato chips because I love cattle. I mean, this is like my favorite potato chip company. So I had to get a bag 4:00 And I'm going to taste it live here well I guess it's not live but I want to taste it right here we'll see what it tastes like 4:08 first of all this bag is not easy to open 4:11 up right here we got to go with those little tear things there you go 4:17 all right here goes 4:19 now they're not the they're not rich they're like basic you know potato chips like a lays 4:26 smells. Smells like a like a barbecue Pringle. 4:31 I kind of had still really nice 4:37 oh man. 4:41 I could eat the entire bag of these. 4:44 You know, there's just a hint of like the bourbon flavor in there but there's enough that you can tell. That's this is actually bourbon. Like you know they they did they tried very hard to have that flavor and there and what a time a lot of times what I find with these with these 5:00 Fast food companies and these snack companies that try to include bourbon in their product, they kind of get the sweet part but they don't get that little hint of oak and there's a little hint of open there maybe. Maybe the BBQ kind of helped round that out but I definitely recommend this for some tailgating. It's quite fantastic and it's kettle brand potato chips bourbon BBQ. 5:22 Yeah, and I hope all I hope all companies that are trying to include bourbon in their, in their products, they actually try to give some detail to it like in terms of the flavor that make sure that you know, hey, it actually does taste like bourbon. So that's this week's above the char. This is going to be a rare when I'm probably not going to do many more potato chip tastings. But hey, you never know if you see some bourbon potato chips out there. Hit me up on Twitter, Instagram, and I'll be sure to taste them. Until next week. Cheers 5:57 Welcome back to episode of bourbon pursuit the official 6:00 podcast of bourbon Kenny and Ryan here at a downtown location that's relatively new, it's immaculate as well when you start walking through and you start seeing the still and you start walking around you see the all the liquid that flows into the pipes when you start walking when he's touring the facility to so rabbit hole starting to really make a name for themselves here in mobile. Yeah, it's been kind of cool seeing you know, we're locals and we saw the the construction side from kind of beginning to now what it is and like you walk into this place and you take a look around I mean, it's beautiful, like most distillery towards you know, it's an old decrepit building kind of like with own you know, it's got on camera Where is covered on a very timely and you're like, I don't want to walk through here. 6:45 Okay, but you come in here and it's like bright, modern, fresh, like really cool. Place and excited, you know, to dive into rabbit hole because not a lot of people you know, know the story, kind of 7:00 Find out what Kaveh is all out. You know, we're I'm really interested to get that side of it, because we've seen it from the outside. But we want to kind of get an inside look at what's going on here. Because I think they're doing some exciting things and stuff people will get excited that as well. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, as you said that there's always this this uncanny bias that's out there in the bourbon world too. And when people think of a new entrant in the market that everybody immediately as hesitation and I think that's really what we want to try to do today is trying to dispel some of those myths that people might have about the brand about the whiskey about everything that's sort of wrapped up into it. And we're gonna we're going to really dive in because we've we've had an opportunity to try some of these products before. And you know, I love the ride sharing finishes is really good as well. And we're going to dive in not only to that, we're going to dive into the business, we're going to dive into, again, some of those biases. So we're gonna, we're going to touch on every angle here. There's nobody more humble than whiskey fans, you know, they're just really, you know, they're really accepting and real. 8:00 You know, like, come on in. We'd love to have you tell everybody on Reddit and Facebook. Exactly. So, yeah, with that, you know, do your introduction. Yeah. So today we have copies of mania and he's the founder and whiskey maker have a rabbit hole distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. So Kaveh, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. It's a pleasure to be here. Comment. First of all, thank you for getting our memo about wearing gray. 8:23 We're all we're all. We all got that. So I mean, it was funny this morning. We showed up here, I look at Ryan, I'm like, God damn it. Like we're in the same show. We've got we've got t shirts, multiple polos, and all different colors, and then we show up wearing the same thing. It's like two concerts this weekend. And so I went through all my festival teasing. 8:43 But anyway, I appreciate that. That's what happens when you guys do what however many podcasts you? Right, exactly. You're going to have a match every time. It's here we are. I mean, it was funny. You say that. It's Ryan's like my second wife because well, even my wife says, I think it's news to 9:00 Now she's like, I think you talk to him more than he talked to me and I'm like, that's probably true. I go through the collagen. Yeah, that's that's true. It's it's a lot more. So you know, copy I kind of want to start at the beginning with you like kind of talk about your introduction of bourbon sort of, you know, really how you you got this bug and how it bit yeah, sure, sure. I think the the credit goes to my wife, my wife, Heather is from Louisville, Kentucky. We met about 16 years ago. And even though I, you know, I 9:31 was familiar somewhat with bourbon, I really didn't have the depth of knowledge that I did until we started dating. Being a Kentucky girl. She, she really, you know, basically showed me everything there is in terms of her first passion, which was Kentucky and second passion bourbon, started coming down here in Louisville, and really, 9:51 kind of got the bug very early on. I think part of what was really fascinating for me was learning about the history and the tradition of bourbon and Kentucky and 10:00 Particular. I was also really surprised at the time living in Chicago, how few bourbon brands were on the market. Now this is looking back, you know, 1516 years ago, we didn't have the level of excitement do we do now so that was really the early part of it. And you know, 10:15 being kind of academic and a practitioner my old 10:20 career, I started digging in learning anything I could learn about the history of urban and that was really there the early phase of it realizing what a what an exceptional spirit it is, what a beautiful kind of 10:35 part of Americana if you would, did not a whole lot of people know about and I was really struck by the fact that you know, you go to a bar at the time you have scotch center stage and you got American whiskey, if there is even any flying to the side and it was it was quite shocking, actually. What was that first bottle it was like, all right. This is like scotch midway bourbon. Here. I don't know have you actually stopped like oh going because I think I read somewhere. 11:00 you are a scotch drinker so if you if you kind of like switch the flip the script i guess you could say on it you know i i don't drink scotch not even close close to what i used to drink but but i'm experimenting with all kinds of stuff so i'm a big fan of you know all kinds of whiskey be an irish japanese scotch of course and even you get some interesting offerings now out of india as well so you know we got to stay on top of the game as far as palettes flavor profiles and things like that so we're still drinking but by and large i'm a bourbon drinker now and american whiskey so talk to me about the first time you met your wife was was she sitting there drinking bourbon neat and you're like oh this is pretty intimidating because i know like if i go back to my youth and i try to find a girl is drinking need i'm like i don't know if i can handle this one jesus you might be a firecracker she was actually drinking old forester with couple ice cubes and i don't think i've even had old forester back then i think i was i knew about beam makers and which first 12:00 was just kind of out and that was really about it and then old forester was a new kind of intro to me and that was really the beginning of it it was it was a little intimidating but it was also exciting because you know, finding girl that likes whiskey was was awesome it was a really nice kind of back and forth between scotch and bourbon and the end she went out Yeah, well that's that's usually how it works in every marriage. 12:26 So what kind of made you want to go down the path of starting a distillery? I mean, it's it's not an easy decision to say like oh, yeah, like it's one thing to be like, Oh, this is cool bourbon, you know, this is fun. It's one thing to be like I'm gonna take on 12:40 hundred year old plus industry and like think everything I can into it and like, watch out for me. Yeah, you know, it really was a was a consumer approach it first right so I got excited about to learn everything I could I as I said earlier, I was always surprised of how few people now few brands are out. There are few people especially outside of that kind of Kentucky, Tennessee. 13:00 Seat belt know about it. And growing up in California, it was a little bit of deja vu with what I experienced in the early days of Napa and Sonoma. Right. So, Napa Sonoma, you know, came on the scene with the wine industry. And now we know what they what it is. And in those days, that was basically the kind of the association that I had that I thought there's an opportunity here. And then the other piece of it is that I realized there's a lot of monotony in terms of the offerings, right. So at the time, you had four or five distilleries, essentially handful of distilleries making 95% of the products out there, if not more, and realize you got basically the same liquid in a different bottle different package. And that was really the the kind of aha moment that I can probably do something that's unique and stands apart and it's distinct and, and, 13:52 and it's also contributing to what's out there. So when you when you think about that, and you think Well, okay, there's and it's true. It's not 14:00 like 90% maybe it's founded like 90% of the market now is all the same big guys and they've got a lot of the same juice at different groups and different labels but what was it that you really said like okay this is what i want to change like what what was that first idea that you had that said i think this is how i'm going to make my my stake in the game because i'm going to change it doing x y or z what was what was that thought you know it was more of a process then then it kind of an event so it was a series of aha moments it started with with that recognition did you got a lot of monotony i think again having that reference to beer and wine i felt that here's an opportunity where that i can do something different and digging into the history realized back in the day pre prohibition in particular you had well over 200 300 14:47 distilleries here in kentucky and then just as many different types of recipes of bourbon so that variety really kind of went away through consolidation post prohibition so that was the beginning of saying okay now let's let's go 15:00 start playing around with different stuff. And I took a page from the craft beer guys, honestly, I think the fact that they're started experimenting with different malts and hops and grains and things of that nature was really the beginning of saying, you know, I can probably do something that's, that's a little different. Now, the beginning of it was pretty humble. We were just planning on doing a, you know, pot, still a small operation that grew into what it is now, but that's generally the way it started. Here's the first call you make when you're like, All right, I'm gonna start a distillery. Who do you reach out to and you're like, all right, helped me get down this path, like where did Where do you get that ball rolling? You know, that's one of the advantages of being unlovable. So, the folks that are really, really friendly in the industry. So one of the first folks that I talked to is a gentleman named Larry ever saw. Larry was the master distiller Pernod Ricard for years he built the wild turkey distillery. He was an MVP and easy of the same vintage and same class with Jim Rutledge and Dave Sherrick. So after I met Larry got an intro 16:00 to Dave and Jim. And, 16:03 and there's also another gentleman named Richard Wolffe, who was very early on a consultant. And these folks really embraced me took me under their wings. And, you know, we would just go around and talk about bourbon talk about whiskey. And their generosity really was the door that opened up taking me in the direction of Okay, now, not only just started reading some books, but maybe take some classes and go to different distilleries and, and learn what's the kind of inner part of this operation basically. Wait, yeah. So, you know, talking is one thing, but I think the other thing is, you know, Ryan, you know, Ryan's a big guy. Big Guy. big guy. 16:38 He's a big business guy. 16:41 But he's, you know, he loves business. You have to listen as I love business podcast. And so I guess the the other thing is like when you're starting to go down this path, how do you get that ball rolling? I mean, is it was it was it finding investors was it sourcing liquid like for you like, what did that look like? Yeah, yeah. So the 17:00 For me, the the first step was to find a distillery that would make my recipes for me because after that initial period of experimentation with, you know, with with these guys learning about it and playing around with different recipes. The question was, which route do I want to go? Do I want to go with the traditional route where a lot of new brands do which is sourcing liquid? Or am I able to find a distillery, they would essentially make my recipes for me, which is the contract distillation route. And this is now you know, seven years ago, when I incorporated the company, it was really hard to find a distillery they would contract is still. 17:33 So I was pretty bullish and determined that I don't want to source because it kind of went against what I just said earlier as far as having the same liquid. And after a few years of just scouring the state, I was fortunate enough to find it as somebody that would make those recipes for me. So that was really the first step. The initial seed money from a business standpoint was all personal. And once I got the contract in place, got a few family members involved in 18:00 Just very typical of most startups, you got family and friends that are stupid enough to put their money in front 18:06 of family, friends and fools. That's right. That's right. Ya know, and I mean, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to those guys who believed with believed in me and, and then after that, then we started really kind of getting serious about the scope and the scale of it, and started to having to go out there and raise money for the larger project. One question I always have for founders and entrepreneurs, like, I'm sure it's probably just like in any business, but talk about dealing with it where people discouraging you to do this or telling you like, this is crazy, like dealing with the nose like, because when you start a business, a lot of people tell you, you're crazy. And there's a lot of negativity and like, you can't do that, you know, there's a lot of small amount of thinking, how, 18:45 how was that? How did you approach that and how did you push past that to make this reality? Everybody starting with my wife, and everybody I talked to that I'm out of my mind, just candidly, i and i think you know, when you look at it from their vantage point 19:00 Makes a lot of sense, you know, I'm not from the industry side l am I going to go out there and make something work and on top of it, raise the money to do it. But I think the first person I had to really kind of gain her favor and approval was was my spouse without your family, you're not able to get something like this off the ground. Once she was behind my, in support supporting me, the next step was to go out there and start talking about what the vision is, and what the plan is more and more importantly, I think, probably what helped me get over the hump was these gentlemen that I mentioned as part of my kind of consulting crew, if you would, and being able to get that initial contract distillation to the allowed us to basically go out and say, Look, guys, this is for real. We're not just kind of dreaming here. And we got a recipe that's unique and we want to build on that. How do you 19:50 outline expectations to investors because it seems like if you have investors and board they're always going to put their nose in and be like, we need this x return. When you buy 20:00 This day, we need this. This is the way like how do you outline those expectations and then follow through with them? You know, you know, it's a challenge, I think you can lay it out as beautifully as possible. But it just as you pointed out reality and what your investors want are two different things. And the landscape changes, especially, especially in the bourbon business. I think part of it is also for me, it was luck, right? The timing is right. I started in 2012. That's when we incorporated rabbit hole. And it was a time when still there was a lot of ground to cover. And there's a lot of folks excited about what we're doing. And they felt that especially a lot of the Kentucky, folks that joined our group felt that they want to be a part of it. There's something meaningful here and then we got the ball rolling. But even in the last 567 years, the landscapes changed dramatically, right. I mean, you guys know, we have over 3000 distilleries now in the US. So there's a lot of new brands coming on to competitions, affecting everything. 21:00 As a result, that beautiful Performa that you put together seven years ago is not the same today, do you think it's easier for someone to outside the state of Kentucky to kind of build a distillery and kind of like, they always talk about Own your yard, you know, Own your your bag turf. And so talk about, like, How difficult is coming into somewhere like global or Kentucky where this is the birthplace or you know, talk about that, for us as an advantage, right? I think I wouldn't build a distillery anywhere else personally. And the reason being because 21:33 I want to be with the big, big guys. And I want to be essentially in the major league. So for us, Louisville, and Kentucky represents that. With that said, You know, I think there's a lot of great craft distilleries that have popped up around the country. And they're doing amazing things. I think for me, the distinction is are you able to make your own liquid and do it in the quality and consistency that you want? And really stand on your own as an authentic brand. The problem that I 22:00 And this is one of the issues that that I see is one of the, I guess, things that we got to watch out for is that a lot of these distilleries are relying on source products, usually from Kentucky, Indiana, or Tennessee. And once they go online with their own liquid, without that expertise that move on Kentucky has to offer as well as the seasonality and all the other things. It's a question mark how good that liquid is going to be? I mean, was that one of the big reasons why you said I'm going to go and build a distillery because maybe if you knew that you're going to go down a sourcing path like that was that's going to run out at some point and the products and the change I mean, I'm not going to name any names but everybody out there that's very affluent, the bourbon community they know who are you know, they had really good source MTP whiskey, they ran out and now they're struggling. Yeah. So is that one of the motivating factor behind doing it or is it just because like, just wanted to I wanted to own my own product. It's a combination of two I wanted to own my own product, but at the same time, I felt 23:00 that consumers are getting wise right we're not we're only a google away from the reality of who's behind the brand and what's in the bottle and i think if you are trying to build a sustainable brand you have to be true you have to be authentic because the iq level of consumers are a lot higher than it was 10 1520 years ago and it's just the reality of it so for me the vision was make sure you're authentic you're not bullshitting and you really design and build a place that people can come in and see it soup to nuts without any smoke and mirrors and that is going to be the model for sustainable brand you know speaking of the the google away and i don't know if there's an nda in place or anything like that but can you disclose the source of where you work contract distilling you know personally i have no problems disclosing that the distillery that we partnered up with they have an issue with it okay i don't think it takes a whole lot to figure out where we actually distribute our products 24:00 Industry though, like, Why are there only it seems like a distillery would want to know that, hey, my products in that bottle and I help them start just to bring more attention back to them. What Why do you think that is in this into? You know, it's a good question. I think that's because kind of the way it's been historically from me and we've had this discussion with those guys before. I'm in that camp. I'm in the camp that you just mentioned, I would be super proud of making that liquid because it's exceptional liquid. And I would want to shout it off top of the roof top, but for some reason, I think some folks are not it's still thinking about it in the way the old guards did. And they want to be very protective of that information because back in the day, there was a lot of horse trading right yeah. And you know, 24:40 what we're doing with rabbit hole is trying to in some ways pierce through that old way of approaching it. There's anything about bourbon, you know, they really embrace change. 24:51 That's right up their alley. First thing you think of, yeah, we're not going to change anything. It's been 100 years nothing's gone wrong. Don't broke 25:00 don't fix it. 25:02 And so you know, I kind of want to talk about the the juice and liquid itself, right? Because I think there's there's some people that might not know it's like kind of talk about first like how you came up with with your Nashville and your grain recipe and then you know what you're doing today with either the sourcing of the grains and everything that goes into the product itself. Sure, sure. Being a scotch guy initially, I've always been fascinated by with multi grains. Like I said, a big fan of craft beer guys. So started looking at different types of grain bills and mash bills and different types of Malta grains determine that, you know, multi grains are a little bit more expensive, but at the end of the day, they're really like a newbie new person. What's the difference between a multi grain and like a regular green scores? Yeah, so basically, multi process is a process where you, essentially it's depending on who's doing them all things, slightly different variation, but essentially you trick the grain to start butting essentially, but then you stop that 26:00 growth process. And what it does, it allows a lot more of that enzymatic reaction to do you want in the cooking process and the fermentation process, but also brings out some really interesting flavors. That's number one. The other thing is that and I'm not an expert in this by any means, but there's at least a couple of groups here in the country that are doing some phenomenal, interesting experimentation with different types of marketing processes where what they do is they're bringing forward different types of flavors with different types of Malta grains. So as an example with our for grain bourbon, which was the bourbon that we currently have on the market, it's 70% corn 10% malted weed Sam percent malted barley, and 10% honey malted barley, now honey malted barley is essentially barley, but again through this proprietary process that these guys use brings out some little bit more sweeter honey like notes if you would, and they have a whole range of other type of Malta grains like chocolate malt and so on and so forth, that we started experimenting with and for me 27:00 that first bourbon we have for recipes of bourbon right now by the way but the one that's currently on the market was really a nod to my affinity or lot for scotch because it's 20% malted barley and thought that here's a personal touch on it but also at the end i wanted to have a little bit more of an approachable bourbon softer that allows some new whiskey consumers to come to the full i'm glad you said the honey thing because i'm a fan of honey nut cheerios like regular cheers can just like get out when the burma goes through the cone kind of 27:34 gets a little drip off of it 27:36 one question i had so when you're picking your magic pill on like like deciding these are the flavors i want how do you 27:44 i guess how do you determine like because you're tasting at new make and like how do you know that those are going to translate years down the road do you have someone helping you to determine that are like are you just like this is honestly that's the risk yeah that's the risk you don't know what the heck's 28:00 going to happen three, four or five years from now. And with that recipe, I remember sitting in front of Larry, and we were just chatting about what I want to do. And he said, Well, you know, you've had a couple of weeks thinking about this, what kind of Nashville Do you want to, you know, run first, and I shared with him this idea, and he's just pause, which was probably the most frightening 30 seconds of my life, because I thought that, you know, this guy's gonna say this is this is crap. But he came back said, Look, this is this is interesting. Let's give it a shot. And that was the first run. But honestly, the most scary thing about this proposition was that because we laid down a lot of barrels to three different recipes, we didn't know how it's going to come out. And that's the risk and that's the gamble. And that's partly the stupidity because it's easier to go out there and sorts what you know, rather than not knowing how it's going to turn out a few years down the road. Sure. And the other thing is, you have also been recently added to the the official Kentucky bourbon trail so kind of talk about what that means to 29:00 To you into the rabbit hole family look it is a huge I go there I know 29:06 Katie a loves their money that's very true we all know that it's a huge feather in our cap first and foremost we got an app we got now a seat at the at the board, which means that we are able to contribute and have a conversation with the big players about what's happening in our state what's happening in our signature industry and more importantly have have a say in the matter right, which is fantastic for a newcomer to join his stellar team with the with the tradition and heritage is around the table is just surreal. And it has a huge impact for our team here at the distillery because now we're planning I think we're going to be hitting somewhere between 20,000 to 22,000 people coming through our distillery this year. That's huge, not just on the revenue side of it, but more importantly, the opportunity to showcase what we're doing and hopefully get some advocates in the process is really exciting. Yeah, I mean, you you are going to I mean it's a chance 30:00 Right. I mean, I don't know, do you? Do you like to be molded into a quote unquote craft distiller? Do you think that you're, you're beyond that now, you know, I love the word craft when it applies to attention to detail. I think whatever you're building as long as you're attending to those finer points, that to me is craft With that said, you know, we're in a category now we're producing basically 1.2 million proof gallons, that's approximately 20,000 barrels, right. So, officially speaking, we're not in that kind of a smaller distillery bucket anymore. But our every bottle is a small batch, right? So we basically harvest about 13 to 15 barrels at a time. And that's, you know, truly is small batch release. Almost every bottling that we do is small batch. So I like to think that from that standpoint, our attention to detail is still part of that craft movement. But we have aspirations to be PVA. We 31:00 We want to be a national player. We want to be the next big spirit company out of Louisville, Kentucky. Do you want to see TTP actually define the word small batch because even today, uh, Jim Beam light labels can technically be as small as like, you know, what would you want to see that sort of change happen? You know, I think it's an interesting point I would probably be for that would like to see TTP differentiate better bourbon versus finished bourbon or finished whiskies? I think that the camps out there are probably divided a little bit. I think that we can probably take a page from our colleagues across the pond, you know, the Europeans have been really dog it about provenance and making sure the integrity of whatever spirit it is intact. Now we are at a point where there's a lot of finished whiskeys are finished Bourbons out there. And to me once you put something in a secondary barrel that's not new American oak, it's no longer bourbon. Now, there's nothing wrong with it because we have a PEX finished bourbon did we're very proud 32:00 I'm very excited about but I think in order for bourbon to remain bourbon TTP does have to get to a point where there's a greater clarity between what is bourbon and what is finished. But otherwise, I think consumers will get confused because, you know, ultimately finished bourbon ends up being in this catch all category of distilled spirits specialty, where you can add flavoring you can do all kinds of stuff to it, that is not indicated on the label and the consumers don't know about it. So you're not adding any more honey to them. But after it's done, okay, we don't get anything, my friend, nothing, nothing's added. That's the whole point. Because, you know, 32:38 we take a lot of pride in what we're doing and making sure everything is essentially as is just simply distilling the grains putting in the barrel and that's it. No added flavoring, no added coloring, none of those gimmicky stuff. And so, you know, this is an awesome facility. I think I read somewhere like 15 million that was invested to build this is something like that correct? Yeah. Actually, if 33:00 you for the building 15 million if you had the equipment and everything soup to nuts $18 million keeps calling a good number 33:09 yeah there's there's a ceiling tile that has been replaced so you know it's just maintenance but you know the other thing is is if you're trying to make this you know full blown distillery and event destination what what are you trying to do different that would entice people to come and visit rabbit hole when they are coming to the kentucky bourbon trail yeah well aside from an attractive building from the outside what we're trying to create as an immersive experience i want folks to come in here first and foremost to get excited about manufacturing and we talk a lot about american manufacturing but manufacturing is not made sexy and why i wanted to make manufacturing sexy so when you come in here the design elements are there to get people excited about what we're doing here and what's happening in kentucky as far as the process of making great whiskey and then second of all i want them to have a fully immersive experience so when you go 34:00 When you are literally raised off the manufacturing floor, you have a full sensory experience, smells, sights, sounds, everything. So at the end of it, once you've tasted the products, you've experienced it you walk away with your head up high. Proud of not just Louisville, not just Kentucky, but really bourbon and American whiskey. I want bourbon to be front and center in every bar in America. I do not want it to see flanked to the side of scotch ever anywhere. Sure. So there's another maybe it's a tough question that's kind of really want to get with this. And this kind of goes you know about you and when people might see the name, you know, Cabazon mania, do you think people in the general public have an unfair bias? Because you're not a you're not john smith? You know, you're i remember correctly Iranian descent. Yep. So kind of like to just kind of like touch on that for us a little bit. Sure. Sure. Yeah, I think personally, I've never experienced any bias or prejudice with you. 35:00 is really, you know, it's a testament to again, the folks in Kentucky and in Louisville. Beyond that, honestly, if there's any reactions again, I'm not familiar with it. With that said, I think that in some ways ironically, it's actually in line with the history of bourbon and American whiskey. 35:19 The entire American whiskey is predicated on story of outsiders and the people that are essentially unsung heroes, right? So if you think about Mary Dowling, as an example, Mary Dowling was the first woman who owned a Kentucky bourbon distillery, nobody really talks about Mary nobody knows about or Bernie Brown who was an African American woman and the frontier in Missouri, not only making whiskey was selling whiskey, right? So we're there is another gentleman, jokey, jokey, Tucker, meaning this is a Japanese American, who ended up in Chicago and was on the forefront of all the stuff that we're doing in terms of science of distillation, with the impact of yeast on enzymes, and so on, and 36:00 so forth these are all people that you know have been part and parcel of the industry but nobody knows about so for me it's actually an opportunity to come to the fold and say look you know i'm proud of my heritage i am proud of being an american and more importantly i want to be a part of this movement that just like johnny appleseed we're going out there spreading the gospel and telling people about what an american spirit really is about yeah do you find it difficult because you don't have that connection to whiskey except recently you know through your wife like most people starting up in the distiller they have like some family lineage or something where there's there's one beam and every way like there's the beat the beat around here is he got it 36:43 yeah i mean you know look in kentucky you can't you can't be from kentucky and not have some kind of a connection to whiskey making right everybody traces their ancestry in one form or another two to whiskey and i think from that standpoint you know do i have a disadvantage 37:00 I don't know if it's a disadvantage because I think in a lot of ways, sometimes in any industry coming from an outside perspective, it is an advantage on its own right. So for me as an example, we decided to build it an urban distillery, we decided to build a distillery and design a package, it's a little bit different, because we wanted to bring a different perspective to the fold With that said, you know, we are building on the shoulders of giants here, the tradition of Kentucky is bar none. And we're really proud that we've been embraced to to be part of this, this group. So with that said, you know, 37:35 it's it's something that I think it's part and parcel of who we are, and I hope people get to know us and, and judges for who we are rather than what their perception is. Sure. So go ahead, right. Well, I was gonna say so you have a psychological background, right? Yeah. So can you talk about our give us a breakdown of your study of the bourbon consumer and the outlaw like what is that 38:00 the mindset of a barber consumer to, you know, analysis of you hear about No, no, I'm not doing it selfish. 38:07 Just for our fans out there? Well, let's see. I don't know about the bourbon consumer so much, as much as I think it's about what we're doing and what we're trying to create here. I think this goes back to maybe an earlier point you guys made, I think what is a differentiator for us is that I've been mindful of creating a space where we can create new things. But I think as a psychologist, I learned for years, most of the people again came to my office for one reason or another, we're stuck. You know, as human beings we need to create, it's all about loving work, loving your family, friends, or finding something you're passionate about. And if you don't have that, you fall ill I mean, it's a real traditional classic psychology kind of theory where we don't produce something do something you love. you're prone to falling, falling sick. So my passion 39:00 has been to do something that's new and original. And I've been fortunate enough to have the expertise to create a space where other young, vibrant excited people didn't want to be part of this if join me so we got a really different approach even to to make an whiskey we do not have a master distiller as an example. We approach it as a collective effort. This is really a lesson I learned from people like Larry and Dave and Jim. Well for master distiller so Master, it will tell you that's the cockamamie title, right. I mean, Jim would basically say, look, I never put a liquid in a bottle without my entire team having a consensus before it goes on. And I would never even consider not acknowledging the guy did make the grain selection to other folks have been part of the process to maturation. And that to me felt like it's it's something that I want to embrace because master distiller and a lot of ways is a is a term that designates an individual hero, and we want to highlight all the heroes in this process, obviously 40:00 It starts with my story. But what's happened? We have over 200 years of industry experience on our distillation team. These are guys that are all contributing, right and they all deserve kudos. So you're talking about disruption or people like in the new in any business you have the first it's kind of like a line or like a they call it the long tail like you had the first people that I'd say the bell curve, you know, you have your early adopters, early. 40:27 Exactly. Any of the people that wait to see okay, what's going on? So who are your first early adopters who they've been for rabbit hole, kind of the two people. My Chief Marketing Officer Michael immortality and Kaveh Talley or head of operations. There are a number one into hires for us. Michael was in Toronto he was at that time just finishing up 40:52 stinted Master Chef Canada, a couple of restaurants there and an entrepreneur and heart himself and 41:00 Call them up, came out here told me I'm bacha crazy for wanting to do this. And a week later he moved out. 41:08 Cameron tally Cameron was a master's in chemical engineering from U of l was at wild turkey. He actually was on the same team with Larry, you built the turkey distillery and I went to brown Forman for a couple of years. He felt that he wanted to spread his wings and do something different. So when we started designing, developing the distillery joined us to those guys were number one and two, they didn't really took a chance on me. And without them, we wouldn't be here for sure. Lot. Yeah, that's awesome. I was more wanting to know who had been those early adopters, Mars customers like know, is rabbit hole who's been embraced by Who are you like going after as those early disruptors? You know? Yeah, as far as consumers are concerned, I think that it's been a combination of, you know, like folks like, on the other side of the bar, right. Dave Kaplan and Alex de from death and co were folks that we talked two years ago. 42:00 Aside from the distillation guys, I wanted to make sure that folks that are on the front lines of essentially pouring and serving this product are behind us. So those guys came in and I wanted to make sure that that community is able to taste our products give us their not of approval, their feedback, whatever. That was really the beginning of it. And you know, there was people that liked it and there's people that were not too crazy about it. I think we had the kind of the range if you would, our ultimate goal has been to kind of go after some folks that are new to the fold. I think the toughest consumers initially especially being unlovable where folks that you know, we're kind of source if you would, the people that have identified their brand and they don't want to, you know, they have a high standard if you would, and it's really hard for them to embrace the name, a new name, especially a you know, an outsider coming in, do whiskey geeks annoy you or connoisseur 42:54 as somebody new imagine just like you know what, you have a product and you have a 43:00 focused, like you said, and I'm sure it's a thick skin. Well, you can't please everyone and you got up. At some point, I'd be like, well, this isn't this isn't the product for you. We're not going after you. So like, I guess talk about dealing with the negative feedback from you know, those connoisseurs who like maybe haven't given you a fair shot or whatever. Yeah, hundred percent. I think that the earlier when we released we had some kind of, you know, back and forth with some of those folks that were commenting on social media or other other platforms. You know, at the end of the day, just as you said, we knew that we're in it for the long haul, and that we're going to have critics. And there's nothing wrong with that we're not going to be everything for everybody. What we have to stay focused on is making sure we produce quality and distinct products. And and that's it and be who we are, I'm not gonna be able to be somebody I'm not and they're going to either like me or or they're not. And Either way, it's okay. For me. As long as you're drinking bourbon. It's okay. It's all good. 44:00 So yeah, kind of dovetail on to that. Let's talk a little bit about the pricing aspect. Because you know, you look at the economies of scale, that larger distilleries have had the luxury, they've got time. They've got stock. And you know, this is this is something that we see in a market where people are trying to whether they're trying to recoup funds of putting up a product that's either maybe not mass market ready or anything like that kind of talk about your strategy that went into pricing your product, because I think at the lower end, it's around 45. And then sometimes depending on the country, it could be somewhere around 70. So kind of talk about that. Yeah, the range of the product prices is somewhere in the mid to late 40s. And then for the Sherry cask is in the 70s. 44:47 We did a competitive analysis essentially with other emerging brands and other brands that are kind of in that same vein as we are and that's where the pricing really came to be. Now add to that the fact that we 45:00 The the grains, the barrels, the process in terms of even putting in the barrel and hundred and 10 proof rather than 125 put into that bottle at 95 proof rather than a lower proof barrels that are essentially not only charged but toasted and chard always would fire rather than gas fired. Those are all elements didn't went into our overall thinking of where do we position this? Now I'm really proud of with the products that we have out there. And I think that the price point compared to what's out there is fair and balanced. Now I know that not everybody is going to like that or agree with that. But I think once we tell the story of what goes in the bottle, what goes into liquid what goes into the products, then I think it's a different proposition. And I think we've had more and more folks come and say okay, now it makes sense. Yeah. While you're placing it over here. Let me show you my P amp L and you'll you'll figure it out. 45:54 Like this, like it's not just some random number thrown out there. That's right. That's right. But at least from 46:00 I understand most of the whiskey is around two years old. No, now we are initial release was little bit about two to two and a half years old. And let me tell you a little bit about the thinking behind it because I would have never released it. If I didn't have particularly Larry's kind of Thumbs up if you would, because I really value his expertise and input. 46:21 Our liquid given the combination of being distinct, and also the way it tastes, the time we felt that it's, it's a good time to release it for a small local market. So initial release was essentially just in Kentucky and Illinois, Illinois, being my hometown of Chicago, and then Kentucky being our hometown here, and then slowly regroup. So now the liquid in the bottle is basically approaching four years old, so about three and a half to four years old on average. And that's where it is, and we're by end of these This year, we're having basically four year old as an average moving forward. I think part of it was, you know, the reality that there's a little bit of a pragmatism into it. That 47:00 After five six years it's time to you know if the liquid is good go to market but go about it in a measured way. And part of it was the reality that we felt that as a team that it's it's distinct and can stand on its own. And so I guess one of the other things is Believe me, Ryan I we've gone down this path we know we know we know that new labels are expensive and you know, if we look at like what peerless has done so peerless started off with a two year right, and then now it's a three year and a day, they age stated as they keep going, is there something that's prohibiting you from putting the age statements on the bottle? Well, the age statement is on the back of the label, we don't put in necessarily on the front, but in the back label, it indicates exactly what how, how old it is. And, you know, 47:41 it's going to continue as long as you know, we have our products. I think age is something that's relative. For me, it really depends on who's making it what's in the liquid. There's a lot of variance between between products. And I think one of the things that for us is really significant and that is in the barrels. I did a lot of experiment. 48:00 mentation, looking at those that are gas fired not toasted and barrels that are toasted and chard and wood fire. I can't tell you and I would love for you guys to experiment with that and see it if you haven't already, it's night and day, you know a two three year old toasted and chard barrel with wood fire, the color is an your your listeners are not going to be able to see it. But it's closer to our gym, as opposed to what we have. So the flavor, the color, the their readiness, if you would as much closer to where we would like it to be. Then, if I was using a different type of barrel and maturation process, do you think that you're finding some appeal to those whiskey geeks? Those whiskey enthusiasts or what do you think is something that's an angle that people can really latch on to that they can say, you know what, let's give this a try. Yeah, let's go on the journey with you. You know, 48:52 I don't know if there's a particular angle other than being able to talk about our story and the story being is essentially 49:01 Trying to take a tougher path to create genuinely a unique product. Right? If you want a high right bourbon or a blend of high right bourbon from a GP all day you can go get it with a lot of different brands. If you want a product that's truly unique with grains that you've never seen before with the combination you've never tasted with the type of barrels we're talking about or type of Merrill Lynch me and so on and so forth. Then this is this is an interesting proposition give it a shot and see what you think. So I also kind of want to touch on your your relationship with with different company or Devin co What do they go? Is it definitely Oh, yeah, go Yeah, I was like, company might be a little too long. But kind of talk about your relationship with them and what they're bringing to the table for you to you know, this is an overused term, but creative partners was really 49:55 it the risk of being corny. They've been solid creative partners for us. 50:00 First was getting in some ways, the approval of people that we really respect in terms of their palates and taste and aspirations within the industry. And then secondarily, the realization that we actually work really well together. Right. So they've they came here, and we have had a lot of interesting discussions in sessions about what do we want to do in terms of making sure that more people discover bourbon. So for most consumers cocktail is the first entry point, right, given their age and circumstances, not everybody goes to a sipping experience out of the gate. So we wanted to have the best one of the best cocktail makers out there to really partner up with us to showcase our product. And that was the thinking behind it. That was also the thinking behind making sure that the products go in the bottle at a higher proof in order to make sure that the flavor comes through even if you mix it with other ingredients. So I'm gonna take this on a different angle because it's kind of funny that you know 51:00 We talked to a lot of master distillers, you talked a lot of brand ambassadors. And they all say you've got a tailor to those people that are behind the bar. Because they're the ones that are pouring your product or the ones that are doing this. They're selling it for you. Yeah, they are that they're on the front lines doing this doing this the hard work for you. However, on like, the wiki geek side, they're like, Okay, well, I'd rather have a product that I can sip neat. So do you think that maybe there was 51:25 there's some, some confusion or some butting heads and these whiskey geeks and say, like, okay, like, Am I am I more tied to a product that's really marketing themselves from more of a cocktail industry? Or am I getting a product that I can really like sip whiskey neat? You know, 51:41 for me, honestly, guys, if I think about consumers, be at the whiskey geeks or other folks. I'm on the wrong track. You know, seriously, because I'm going to be subject to the women women have, you know, people, people's opinion and perceptions, and some of it could be just fad. You know, I think 52:00 in any industry, if you really want to make a mark, you got to be true to what you believe in. And, you know, sometimes it's a gamble, it might not pay off. But I think that's kind of the way we're approaching it. At the end of the day, you know, we feel that the products have to stand on their own. And it's about celebration for us, right? To me, making whiskey or making spirits really spirits is the best of humanity. So if you look at around the world, every culture, every nation has its own version of a spirit, right? That's one of the things it's kind of a binding experience for us. So, you know, you know, 52:34 as long as you're sipping it as long as you're enjoying it, as long as you're consuming it in any shape or form. be adding cocktail or not, that's to me what's important. I don't want to be a snob about saying this is the only way you can drink our bourbon or, or should because, you know, it's all about bringing people together. And if you're able to do that and enjoy it again on ice or without ice with whatever mix or no mix. That's all 53:00 Hey by me sure so I mean you say you don't care what people think which that you have to have that to be an entrepreneur but what what do you want or the story of the people should they tell themselves when they look at your product and I see it on the bar like what because when you see a brand or some there's there's something connected to what do you think that is for you guys? So don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't care about what they think I'm not going to allow 53:26 people's comments on social media sure to change course Riley Yeah, exactly. But otherwise you're going 50 different direct hundred percent one day somebody is that this and then 100% it six times a day. That's right. With that said, I want them to see rabbit hole is synonymous with innovation, quality, and making distinct products that are genuine, that's what I want. I want them to know us long term as a company and a brand that we're here to make good good quality spirits, particularly quality whiskey. That's the main objective. 54:00 So speaking of long term and objectives and business again, you know, when we when we talk when we think about the money that's being put into distillery, your long term goals and aspirations. Is it is it you're looking at this as an opportunity for generational sort of continuation? Or is it saying, I mean, don't get us wrong, like, if if somebody wanted to buy out this podcast? We feel like we were like, all right, so like, right it's the check. Because a lot of people seen you know, like how Western Kentucky out and they're enthralled with and investors especially are like, let's get into bourbon game, build a brand and then let's exit so you know, cash and so what's your be hag? What's your big, hairy, audacious goal? Yeah, you know, if you're asked me what I want, I'm looking for a multigenerational legacy Brown. That's what I want. I want this brand to stand long after I'm gone. Now with that said, you know, 54:54 are we going to entertain or talk to strategic partners? I think it's likely because 55:01 Be it 55:03 on your own or with partners. The reality of sales and distribution in today's market is that the big guys have learned from the craft beer and the wine movement where they're not complacent anymore, right? They're putting a lot of dollars and a lot of support behind it. So it's tougher for an emerging brand or small brand to get the share of mind of distributor and ultimately the consumers every position placement in that back bar in some ways, you gotta fight for it. It's a battle, right? And that requires money. So we've decided to do something I think unique in this was the original idea when I was kind of in that entrepreneurial business side of it, where we designed a distillery where we have the capacity to be able to do what others did for me in terms of contract distillation, right? It does two things. One, it brings really genuinely people that want to do some interesting different things and I want to kind of give back just like they gave me the opportunity. The other 56:00 thing is that that revenue is going to be really essential for us is essential for us to be able to develop a robust plan so we can make sure rabbit hole can actually be out there and compete with the big brands so i can you know get to my vision of having a long term multi generational brand 56:18 so just those earlier about you know contracts selling the nda would do you make your deal people purchase you are they allowed to explain where the sources from we're very proud of anybody who wants to talk about what we're making for them and generally the variance is on what they want you know some folks talk about it some people are want us to talk about it some people don't but the other way around absolutely i don't have any problems in any of the folks that we're making whiskey for to be able to go down a rabbit holes making our whiskey for us right now talk about roadmap a little bit let's let's talk about what's what's what's the business going to look like here in five years what's the what are the products going to look like in five 57:00 years, kind of kind of see, like, give us an idea of what what's gonna be happening here in your home base as well as what consumers out there can expect to see on the retail shelves. Yeah, so 57:12 the different bourbon recipes that were talking about earlier, one of the things that we're going to be doing in the coming years is beginning to release different types of bourbon out there. So we have the four grand right now. We have a high right that's coming out sometime third quarter of this year. So that's like the next line extension if you would, that we have we are also doing some finished products. But with that said, part of what we're working on right now is a new packaging architecture because I really want to make sure that there is a distinct difference between our bourbon and rye whiskeys straight bourbon and rye whiskeys with our finished bourbon and finished whiskeys. I don't want to confuse the consumer so we're working on a different package. So we can clearly distinguish those types of products and begin to 58:00 Roll out some of these new bourbon recipes in the coming years. We're also looking at a cask strength release in the fall of 2019 this year and those are kind of the immediate stuff but long term I'm hoping in the next five to 10 years we are helping consumers just as it happened with beer and wine are able to get more and more educated know the difference between let's say we did bourbon versus high rye versus you know for grain and ask about well what's in this for grain so on and so forth really elevate even more the level of IQ of whiskey consumers was it would all be under like the rabbit hole name or brand or will there be like different brand names for all the all the Bourbons are going to be unwise are going to be under the rabbit hole brand and and that's really the premise now we are doing some other experimental stuff with different types of spirits you know that we have a gym did we are finishing in our rye whiskey cask and we are experimenting with some clear liquids as well. 59:00 I think that even though you know, rockers out, right, yeah, I was like fresh ears just perked. Yeah, we're going the other direction. We didn't start using vodka. But I think you know, vodka is is is a pretty versatile product. And I think if we can just like the gym, do something unique and put our own fingerprints on it, we're open to doing that. So that's kind of in the thinking phase right now as well. Yeah, I mean, I see that as a good connection with you have with with death and co you know, because you, you, you're

Bernie Brown is a series built on the very grit and determination that inspired the beginning of this podcast. A team of people putting their money where their mouths are, to force the creative life that they have dreamed of. Today, one of the shows producers, and it's lead actor, enter the chat cave to tell me the story.

Bernie Brown is a series built on the very grit and determination that inspired the beginning of this podcast. A team of people putting their money where their mouths are, to force the creative life that they have dreamed of. Today, one of the shows producers, and it's lead actor, enter the chat cave to tell me the story.

Flatirons Men's Pastor Dan Foote talks with Bernie Brown about what it looks like to be man enough spiritually.

Flatirons Men's Pastor Dan Foote talks with Bernie Brown about what it looks like to be man enough spiritually.