017: Connecting a Better Way with Thom Singer

Pete Mockaitis
Thom, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at your Job podcast.

Thom Singer
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh well, I think we are going to have a whole lot of fun here.  And I am sure that you have much to speak about or write about – 11 books – that’s impressive.

Thom Singer
Yeah, a lot of them are small though, so it really probably adds up to like six regular sized books.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I was going to ask, you know what’s the secret to this massive prolific-ness?

Thom Singer
I don’t know, I just – I like to write and I just continuously write stuff and all of a sudden you know, it’s bookable.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fantastic.  And so I guess I am also curious to know, so yeah, we’ve heard the bio we’ve heard you got a lot of speeches and books.  Tell us, what do you do for fun outside of producing this wisdom?

Thom Singer
I’m the father of two daughters, I have been married 24 years.  We make our home at Austin, Texas.  And so I like to eat a lot of breakfast tacos.  And one of my kids is far away at college but you know I like to do things like going hikes with the other one or, my wife and I like to go out to dinner.  I mean we are just kind of regular, you know, people who just, the family is big deal to us.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fantastic and encouraging. I know you do a lot of travels, so that could be difficult.

Thom Singer
Yeah, I mean I do travel a lot. I think I did something like 32 trips last year for just over 100 nights.  And you can say, ‘oh wow that’s a lot.’  But the reality is most of it is like one or two night trips at a time. And so I don’t even think they even miss me. Now, every now and then and up and I have like two or three conferences or association, annual meetings or company things that stitch together.  And last week I was gone 6 days and then my wife had a 3-day trip to California for family reasons, for her family that touched into that. So it was like 9 days, and that was too much, but it doesn’t happen very often, and so we just sort of say, hey it’s the downside of the business we’ve chosen.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, no job, it’s perfect.  But so and now I would love to hear a little bit, you really captivated me when we met in Orlando a couple of years ago.  And you were talking all about connections; genuine relationships and you actually – I don’t know if you remember this but I sure do – you sent me a handwritten note afterwards just saying that it was cool meeting me and I thought that was so awesome.  So, thank you for that again.

Thom Singer
Well you are welcome. And you know, that’s the thing is that we live in this social media crazy world.  We are all nutso for our gadgets.  And the problem is a lot of people think that a Like, a Link, a Share or a Follow is equal to a friendship.  So you know they see someone speak and they send them a LinkedIn request.  They meet for two minutes over the shrimp at a conference and they connect with them on Facebook.  And they follow them on Twitter and then they say ‘Oh I know Pete, we are LinkedIn buddies’ or ‘I follow him on Twitter’.  And it’s like “well, do you really know him?  In that case, have you had actual conversation?”  You know meeting someone once Pete, doesn’t make him part of your network.  Meeting someone once makes them someone you have met once.  And there’s a huge difference between someone you’ve met once and someone who you’ve established at least a foundation of an ongoing relationship.  So I really believe that there is a lot more to the idea of connecting than just crossing paths and trading business cards.

Pete Mockaitis
That totally make sense.  And I am so curious then if once you’ve met someone, what are some of the very next steps associated with bringing that into a genuine acquaintance connection
relationship?

Thom Singer
Sure, I mean you have to realize that,  like I said, meeting once doesn’t really do much.  The problem that I see so many people do is meet someone and send them that LinkedIn request but the meeting was only like two seconds long or two minutes long.  And so then people’s LinkedIn starts to become the soup of strangers and what happens is that…

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well said!

Thom Singer
It becomes like a phonebook.  You wouldn’t go to Los Angeles County where I grew up and go around in every city in Los Angeles County and pick up their phone book – because they still print phonebooks – you know bring them back home, stack them up and tell everybody I’ve got 14 million people in my network in Los Angeles.  People would say, “what do you mean? No you don’t.”  You’d say “Yes I do.  Look at all these phonebooks, I have everybody’s phone number, I could call them at any time.”  Well a list of names with contact information is not a network.  And I think that’s a mistake that we’re making in business, is we are thinking oh – and sometimes we don’t even meet them at a conference, sometimes we just go through and look who is my industry.  We searched them and then we LinkedIn request everybody with a pulses in our industry.  And we’ve created this phonebook of strangers and we go “I got 2,000 contacts.”  And it’s like, “well does anyone of them know who you are if I ask them tell me about Pete.”  And they would be like “Pete who?”

So I believe before you connect with people, on LinkedIn and Facebook – I think Twitter is different, YouTube, all these things are different but mainly LinkedIn and I think Facebook – I like to make sure that I’ve had a real honest to goodness long in depth conversation with someone before I accept or send that connection.  So I like to have sat down and have a cup of coffee with you, a meal with you or a beer with you.  Or the digital equivalent, because sometimes you can do a Skype call like we are doing right now or you can, you know send lots of emails back and forth and it’s like we were together.  But I like that base foundation and I have a technical term for this; I call it the “Coffee, Meal or Beer Rule”.  And that’s my rule, it’s I don’t link to people and there’s exceptions but I don’t link to people unless we have a real honest to goodness 35-45 minute, hour conversation because at least, if we don’t talk for a year, I am going to remember that.  Whereas like a stranger, I’m like “who is Pete?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good and the ‘Coffee, Meal, Beer Rule’ or the CMB Rule but then not to be confused with the Coffee meets Bagel dating application which might your real connections.

Thom Singer
I don’t even know what that is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a different time.  Different time.

Thom Singer
That’s your generation, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
So yeah, I believe I was in the beer category, so there was probably a red wine if memory serves.

Thom Singer
Yeah you have good memory.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, so I am with you so far.  I got the coffee, meal, beer rule with regards to having a real connection. Because I’m on  the receiving end of a lot of Facebook or LinkedIn invitations and I frankly just don’t even know what to do with that.  It’s like I don’t know you but maybe you want to know me for a great reason or purpose or maybe you are a fraudster trying to get hold of my information.  It’s kind of uncomfortable.  I usually just kind of ignore them or they are kind of hanging out in purgatory, not requested, not deleted.  What’s your approach with them?

Thom Singer
So I ignore, if I don’t know who that somebody is I ignore them; if I think there maybe a reason like I will email them back and say hey, can we have – before I accept this call, can we have a conversation on the phone and lots of times – or Skype – and a lot of times people would say I don’t want to talk to you, I just want to connect to you.  And I am like ‘eww’, that’s just you know, ‘why’ and I will say it’s my rule, I can bend it when I want.  I will be really honest.  I make my living as a professional master ceremonies and keynote speaker.  And if somebody actually is a meeting planner or they come out in one of the industries I speak a lot if it looks like maybe they are fishing for somebody to hire to be on their agenda.  If they send me a LinkedIn request, I will accept it because clearly that could be the purpose.  But if a pet shop owner sends me one, I have to find out why, and if they are just collecting a lot of links, I don’t need to be on that.

Pete Mockaitis
That will do it, certainly.  So now I am curious to hear a little bit, you’ve got some great messages that you share associated with kind of putting down the devices and get into some real human engagement. Can you reflect on that a little bit and I don’t know if you know anything about the cognitive neuroscience or just the social milieu you but it sure seems like whenever you go and hang out with folks, there was even an Onion article like family gathers to look at screens together for the holidays.  And so I thought that’s very observant.  So what’s up with that?  Are there any kind do key tips you have to just stay plugged in or some rules you recommend people follow in order to make sure they’re actually talking to the folks around them?

Thom Singer
So I actually love the fact that you think I am smart enough to study brain science.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely, I do.

Thom Singer
No, I have no clue. I am an observationalist but I am a smart observationalist.  And that is that, like just imagine at a conference, right, you have 400 people come together.  And it used to be, you had to go to your industry conferences to gather state of the art information about your industry because it was the only place you are going to find it.

We fast forward to 2016 and guess what?  All the information you could ever want in the world is on your smart phone and on your computer, through this thing called the internet.  And therefore you have no reason that you have to go there to get information because you can look it up.  They are livestreaming a lot of these conferences.  That’s another thing that I do, is I host a livestream at conferences you know, that are simulcasting their event and lots of company, lots of associations are starting to simulcast their events.  It’s like a huge thing.  So you don’t even have to go if you want the information.  So the number of the other reason people go to live events is for the networking opportunities.  And so when they show up, they want to connect with other people.  They want to make those connections.  Maybe they can hire somebody, maybe they can hire them, maybe they could just you know have someone that they can share best practices with.  We all dream about creating this long term,and mutually beneficial relationships with people overtime that will help raise us up and we will raise them up.

The problem is we get to the event and we sit with our co-workers and then the other thing is we always buried on our phones.  We stand by the coffee and doughnuts and looked at our phones, well nobody wants to bother you if you look busy.  So they go home and they go “yeah it was a good event but I didn’t really meet anybody.” So you have to take the ownership. What I do when I speak at the conferences, is I tell people, you know let’s talk about the elephant in the room. If you pull your phone out during the break and you are in a conversation with two or three people or you are standing around and you start surfing your phone, what do the other people think of the person who does that.  And it never fails.  Someone in the audience will go, well that’s rude or disengaged.  I go, absolutely.  And then we talked about how when someone is standing with you and they are looking at their phone, we all think that they are being disengaged or rude.  And then I look at the audience and I say, “what do you call it when you do it?”  And I get that uncomfortable laugh.  I do it, I am guilty of it. You are guilty of it. We all are glued with these gadgets and you know if it buzzes in the pocket, then we have to take a little sneak peek next to our cheek, right?  We looked down and we go, ‘oh’ you know ‘let’s see who that was’.  When we do it, we call it being efficient.  We call it multitasking. We call it necessary to run our business.  And so I challenge the audiences that I speak to and the companies where I do sales training on the fact that you absolutely have to realize it if you,people around you call it rude and you call it efficient – who should we listen to?

Pete Mockaitis
Well said, that’s a good challenge.  As well as fun to remember phrase, “A sneak, a peek at that which is near your cheek.”

Thom Singer
Yeah because people take the phone out of their pocket and hold it right next to their ass and they look down next, thinking no one is going to notice.  Oh I am reading an email.  You know.  And as you get older you have to put it farther and farther down by your leg because you can’t read it up close because your eyes are going bad, so you need longer arms.

Pete Mockaitis
Well that’s fun to imagine there.  So we got that, the picture associated with some events or conferences, kind of mingling opportunities.  Now I am going to kind of zoom in on a typical workplace environment.  So you’ve got a whole program you do associated with being influential at work, so I’ll just ask – what are key things you want to do to be influential at work?  I guess I am thinking in particular that there’s a lot of times when there are rules associated with project management or software developments or with lot of kind of dotted line and informal kind of relationships that need to coordinate, collaborate to get things done but it can be sort of tricky when you don’t have the power or authority per say to kind of discipline or hire-fire, raise,penalize another person, to get into kind of you know get onboard and cooperate and collaborate with you, so I would just love it. What are the pro tips for pulling that off?

Thom Singer
Well the first thing to remember is if you are working on a team, whether it’s at work or wherever is, but if you are working on a team you have to realize that the other people want to feel significant.  When I do one-on-one coaching or small group coaching with people and I can spend a lot of time with them where I can kind of push them and push them and push them, eventually tells me the same thing when I say, “what do you want?”  They may not say it right away but they will get to it if I push them through.  Everybody wants to be significant.  Now they may not use that word but if we really dissect it, that’s what people say they want.  They want to make a difference.  They want to matter, they want to be significant at home, at work, in their community, in their faith community. So if you are part of the team, everybody wants to feel significant. But here’s the trick, you can’t be significant alone in the field.  It takes other people to decide if you are significant.  And so the other people want to feel like they matter.  So if you want to matter, the first thing you got to do is to make sure that they know that they matter.  Because otherwise we are all throwing up walls, if we think everybody is judging us all the time and everything else.  So one of the best things you can do is when you want to be influential at work is, you know, make sure that other people feel praised, that the feel that they’ve done a contribution.  Because that’s just going to make them come back to the table and all of a sudden, if you look at who is beloved in an office place, most of the time it’s people who make other people feel significant and people who behind the scenes are helping other people succeed.  So it doesn’t matter, when I go into an office place and say who is the most popular and most loved person on your team, it’s almost always the same person.  No matter who you ask, and maybe two or three if it’s a bigger team.  But there’s always a certain class of people, they’ll say ‘Ah you know, I just absolutely love her.  I love to work with her. I love being assigned a project with her’ and then you go and you watch what this person does and they are making the other people feel significant and they are helping the other people do their job without taking the credit for it. And so if you want to be significant at work, if you want to make a difference, if you want to be effective, you know when is the last time you made sure another teammate felt really, really good like they really contributed?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so golden. So tell me then, what are some of the best practices in terms of putting those good vibes out there?  I suppose you know saying thank you helps and letting others know – you know actually it was Thom who did all these fantastic work on the PowerPoint or whatnot.  What are some other sort of best practice things we can do in order to spread those good vibes?

Thom Singer
Well, I mean it’s really simple as what you just said.  It’s giving credit when credit is due.  It’s you know showing up early and staying late for people.And it’s doing what you say you are going to do for them and then you know making sure that other people look good.  Too often we find people in our workplace or in an association or whatever, that sort of secretly undermine other people.  Someone’s that chair of an event like “well I just don’t think this event is going to bethat good but don’t tell anybody I said that.”  And then they tell 30 people that, and of course anytime yousay anything bad behind someone else’s back, it gets back to them.  And sometimes people say, ‘But I only told my bestie, bestie friend.’  Well your bestie bestie friend might have a big mouth and you don’t know it.  So my attitude when I hear someone says something, youknow, negative or judgmental about me, I just sort of laugh because it’s like, ‘yep they said that and I bet they have no idea I was going to hear it.’  But guess what, you hear it.

Pete Mockaitis
There you are, hearing it.

Thom Singer
And we are all guilty.  I’ll say something snarky and I’m like “oh shoot” as soon as I say it because I know that it’s going to get back to the other person.  So if you are going to say something snarky, as soon as you say you might as well think I had dang well be willing to own that because it’s going to get its way back.  And you know we all have that blow up in our face but that’s – the answer is be the opposite of that. Be the person who always trying to make the team thrive, and it doesn’t take very much.  You don’t have to be selfless, you don’t have to give away your own credit, you just have to everyday think – of the people I interacted with, of people more full when they leave interacting with me than they were before before.  Or are they more empty. If you sucked the energy out of the room, guess what, you are not going to be influential.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you.  That’s good.  More full than empty afterwards.  So… I’m just tuning that for that for a while.  That’s some fun by editing, you just go.

Thom Singer
Just because I said delusion there, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
No it was like more full than empty.  I mean I like that because I guess… here we go.  I really like that expression, more full than empty because that really puts a clear view on things for. It’s like I could imagine folks, in my exchanges, when I absolutely did feel more full versus those folks where I did feel more empty.  And in part of it is just a matter of their friendliness, their smiles and their enthusiasm, their thanks, their appreciation.  But the other part of it is just kind of like the energy, you might say, that they are carrying with them, like some people seem kind of nervous and impatient and that thing is nothing is quite good enough.  It seems as something’s about to collapse around there.  And that really makes me feel kind of empty after I have that exchange.

Thom Singer
Well it’s that and the other thing you have to realize is that anytime you deal with other people, other carbon based life forms.  The people on the other side of that engagement, they have their own stuff.  They have good stuff going on, they have bad stuff going on.  And you also have to turn that mirror back at yourself and realize “I have my own insecurities.  I have my own stuff.  Am I putting that on other people, or am I just owning the fact that I am a work in progress and just doing the best that I can?” And if you are worried constantly about your own stuff either outwardly or inwardly, it’s eating you up, it’s gonna put out a negative vibe.  And that comes back to haunt people.  I mean overtime people just start to say “I don’t like to be around her.”

Pete Mockaitis
That will do it.  And so we talk about being influential at work.  You mention that there are certain patterns associated with who is the most beloved and what are the variables there.  I guess I am curious then, does that sort of necessarily directly translate into being more influential at work?  I am more beloved therefore I am more influential.  Intuitively it seems like it would but I am wondering, are there any potential gaps that also need to be plugged to maximize influence?

Thom Singer
Well sure, and I mean beloved might be you know, not the right word because, I mean I used it but when you said it, it countered up like ‘whoah whoa fluffy, fluffy’ but the reality is that yeah we don’t live in a perfect world.  So yeah you can be the person that everybody likes and everybody wants to turn to but you don’t really carry a lot of influence because that has to be coupled with what is the history of your own work product, what is the history of the ideas that you’ve had succeeding.  So if there’s never one simple answer but you can look at it this way, you can be very good at your job and everybody can hate you and nobody will listen to you.  Or you can be mediocre at your job and everybody likes you and people at least give you the benefit of the doubt.  So in the end if you are great at your job and people like you, now you’ve got the whole banana.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh it’s great.  It’s one-two combo.   I hear, it’s like some folks have like extreme kind of competence, I am thinking about investment bankers right now, not to point a finger, I am sure there are many kind of investment bankers out there.  But if there’s a stereotype or an image, it’s kind of like, they are just like fantastically brilliant at doing the financial stuff and rocking and rolling their Excel and figuring out clever new financial instrumentation and then they’re may be nasty to others.  That’s a crazy stereotype which is unfair.  But if I were to counter up an image I think that’s what fits in that category.

Thom Singer
Well I mean I like to give you an example.  I’ve been following the career of a guy who is a professional speaker for a long time.  And he is one of the best people I’ve ever seen on stage.  But I never been around him.  But his reputation is, is that he is a jerk, he is condescending and he is very difficult.  Well I recently was around him in a social situation and a) his reputation led and so I was watching you know what he said and how he did, and he was all those things.  And the problem is, is that he gets hired because it’s not like that’s on his business card – condescending jerk.  However, you know if that’s your reputation, there are people who aren’t referring your business, people aren’t you know helping you succeed.  So you can be very successful and be a jerk but why if you could be very successful and be a person who is making other people feel more full?

Pete Mockaitis
I completely agree.  And that’s one of my things, it’s like even if at your core of cores, you don’t actually care about other people at all, it’s still in your best interest to treat them well in respectfully and with kindness because it will get you further!

Thom Singer
Yeah, if you don’t like somebody, you don’t have to let them know that.  My favorite story is when my mother passed away. My father had five women come up to him at the funeral or thereabouts and say ‘she was the best friend I’ve ever had in my entire life.’  Five different people.  Here’s the funny thing, one of them she couldn’t stand.  It was no secret inside our family that she could not stand this person because the person was just difficult, just like a razor’s edge.  However, she was always very nice to her and polite to her and took the time– because they belonged to the same women’s club – you know, to listen to her.  She didn’t like her, she didn’t put her on the A list but anytime they were together she was respectful.  And guess what, because the woman was so hard edged, a lot of people weren’t.  She considered my mother her best friend.  And I’ve always thought, what a great example.  Just because you don’t like someone,  it doesn’t mean they have to know it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a powerful story, it really does underscore that whole point.  Another powerful story that you shared in Orlando about the power of relationships and people supporting each other had to do with your daughter with some health difficulties.  Would you be able to share with us a version of that here today?

Thom Singer
Yeah, so my 14-year-old who is just delightful.  And before I tell you the story, medically she is fine. She is 14 years old and she is a straight A student and she is hardworking and she is just precocious as all get up.  But she is born with a condition where the bones in her scalp had fused together and the cure or the fix was, that they needed to do surgery where they would remove the bones that made up much of a cap, the top of her skull and if they didn’t, she would have a very seriously socially limiting handicap or her head would have like an elephant. No, that might be too much but like a deformity.  And it was scary, it was awful, it was horrible and we had to talk a bunch of different doctors and someone in our network, their first cousin was one of the top five pediatric neurosurgeons in the world and he was busy developing a new way to do the surgery to correct this problem.  And you couldn’t get in to see the guy really quickly because, I mean, he was popular and if you had any kids with cranial-facial abnormality and this is one of the physician teams you would want to go to.  And we were diagnosed late.  We had to make really fast decisions and it was really scary.  And when you think about the fact that they are going to remove your kid’s skull or a large part of it, it was horrible.

And somebody in our network, they called and said my cousin is you know one of this person and he is expecting your phone call tomorrow.  And you know, you couldn’t reach this doctor and you certainly couldn’t get on his calendar within three months.  And the next day I made a phone call and I always remember, his assistant answered the phone and said “Oh Mr. Singer, Dr. Mills is expecting your call.”  And two minutes later I am on the phone with one of the top pediatric neurosurgeons and my wife flew with our daughter to see him the next day and my other daughter and I flew out a few days later, and within five days of knowing about this doctor, he operated on her and corrected the growth patterns of her head.

And now at 14 she is beautiful, she is fabulous. The bones all grew back, everything happen the way it should of.  And you know, I always tell people, I tell this story not because you ever going to need a pediatric neurosurgeon but in your life you are going to need something and if you treat people well and you share your life with people, somebody is going to have an answer to whatever your worst problem is.  And that problem could be work related, it could be community related, it could be health related.  And when I share this story, people will come up to me all the time afterwards and say, we found our cancer doctor, we found our orthopedic surgeon, we found though our network of people because of exactly what you talked about.  And so you know we found the right doctor who could do this surgery because he was the first cousin of someone who we knew.  And when you start thinking in that terms, that you need something big like a pediatric neurosurgeon you know, and someone you know is their first cousin, I mean it is almost like you couldn’t write this, if it was part of a movie.  No one will believe it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah that’s powerful and it hits me all over again.  And I think the key thing, I heard from that is we say, when you also you treat them well and you share your life with him because I thinking for many it could be kind of private, oh you know, this is a personal family matter and you don’t want to burden anybody with this or make them feel bad.  Or if it is like a problem and you maybe work performance which it’s just like ‘Oh you kind of hoping nobody notices that I have this problem’ but you summon some, I guess some courage, some vulnerability out of maybe, just desperation or sheer absolute, the critical importance to push passed it.  And so you are able to share that fairly openly, it sounds like.

Thom Singer
Well in my experience, and it’s just my experience, people want to help each other.  People want the chance to help you find whatever you need to succeed, whether it’s a medical issue, whether it’s a career issue, whether it’s you know, you are dating and you are trying to find the right person and someone sets you up.  You know people want to help you with whatever the problem is. But if they don’t know, they can’t help.  So you got, I mean you have to let people know what your biggest challenges are.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfectly said, I love it.  Thank you.Well is there anything else that you want to make sure that you just share with this group or should we move over the fast faves section?

Thom Singer
I got my seatbelt on. Let’s go fast.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, let’s do it.All right, first of all tell me a favorite quote, something that inspires you again and again.

Thom Singer
Can I use a quote from my dad?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Thom Singer
So if my dad was still alive he would be 102 years old.  And yeah, so he was, I mean people are like if his dad would be 102, how old this guy you are interviewing?  So I will turn 50 this year.  My dad was 52 when I was born and he had a wisdom of a grandfather.  And he always said you know “Be slow to anger and fast to forgive”.  And I will tell you what, that have served me so well from my teenage years to almost 50 years old.  And that is be slow to anger and fast to forgive.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely, thank you.  Could you tell us about a favorite – a study, a piece of research or experiments that you find yourself referring to often?

Thom Singer
So that’s like when you were asking me about my study of brain science.  I have no idea. I mean I’ve read a lot of stuff and there’s a lot of great people out there doing very in-depth surveys and I applaud them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that works.  How about a favorite book?

Thom Singer
I am going to go old school on you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Thom Singer
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey.

Pete Mockaitis
Classic.

Thom Singer
The book has got to be 25 or more years old – 20 to 30 years old.  But it is a classic and anytime I coach any younger people or whatever, I tell them I realize the book is older than you, but go read this book.  Because time and time again The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People have helped me just succeed in my career.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.  How about a favorite website or online resource?

Thom Singer
I’m really partial to iTunes and I know that’s like the whole world.  But I love to have like the right songs on my iPad.  I found that like if you ever dealing with sadness or dealing with trying to get through the blues or whatever, having you know some songs that make you upbeat and that remind you of really happy times from maybe when you were younger, that’s really important and they are all in our fingertips with iTunes,  and then of course with Podcasts.  You know, there is so much that you can learn.  I got into listening to Podcast about 2 years ago and I started my own a year and a half ago, and I never could have done either of those things if it wasn’t for iTunes being right there on my phone.

Pete Mockaitis
So what are some key songs?

Thom Singer
You know I am going to embarrass myself if I tell you who my favorite music is.  My wife told me I am not supposed to say this publicly but I love the Beach Boys.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh okay, now I am on the edge of my seat.  Okay, Beach Boys.

Thom Singer
I grew up in Southern California and my older brothers were more than a decade older than me, so they grew up with the Beach Boys and they go to the beach and they blast the Beach Boys on. I was three or four years old and for some reason when I think of happy music, I think of the Beach Boys.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.  You mentioned Seven Habits, I’d like to hear from you – what’s one of your personal kind of game changing habits that’s been very powerful and get you where you are?

Thom Singer
Well you mentioned it in the introduction, you said we met in the conference, I sent you a handwritten note.  Now I am going to be really honest, I don’t send everybody I meet a handwritten note because I meet 40 people at the conference.  And so you have to make decisions, who did I have a conversation with that stood out?  And I will actually make the cards into a pile.  And after our conference I will send anywhere from 7 to 12 or 14 handwritten notes to people who I met.  And it’s not just “oh they are meeting planner, they can hire me.”  It’s “who did I have a meaningful conversation with?”  And I have found that has come back to help me decade later.  I had people tell me that you know we met at a conference and you sent me a note and I’ve kept it in my drawer and now I am the chairman of a conference and I am hiring speakers and you are my first call because I’ve had this card in my dresser or on my bulletin board, you know, or on my refrigerator.

So I have found that we live in this world where we are trying to find shortcuts.  People like to use send-me-out card.  “Oh I can have my assistant type the stuff in and it looks like it’s my handwriting.”  Nobody gets a send-me-out card thinks that’s handwritten.  They understand that you’ve taken a shortcut. And nobody gets a text that says “thx!” and they think “oh wow they really put in a time to show me.”  But when you take the time to take a pen to a piece of stationery and write out, you know re-capping what you talked about, just 4 or 5 sentences –those people feel you went the extra mile.  And so for me that’s been a habit that has made my career blossom.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve got to ask a follow-up here in violation of the fast faves protocol, so be it.

Thom Singer
It’s your podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
I don’t know; I’m breaking my own rules.

Thom Singer
You can break the rules as you want.

Pete Mockaitis
So what is the mechanism by which you quickly collect people’s contact information particularly their mailing address?  So you are having a chat with someone or maybe it’s  20 minutes as protocol coffee, meal, beer rule, and then you part ways, I guess you asked for a card or whatdo you do to kind of quickly get the info?

Thom Singer
Sure, lots of times this happens at those two-minute meetings at a conference, you’re talking and it’s like hey do you have a business card?  Yes.  You make the little finger business card exchange.  You say it’s great, it’s good to talk to you.  And then when I get back to my hotel room, if it’s somebody I really wanted to follow up on or thought well if I send them a handwritten note, he could interview me on a podcast he won’t even start of 18 months, like you. If I think I will make a note at the back of the card about who they are and what they talked about, why I sort of thought they were an A stack of cards.  Now every now and then it’s becoming more common I look at the business card and when I sit down to write and it doesn’t have an address on it because they are just putting email.

So if it’s somebody who really is someone who I think is, I should send them a handwritten note, they were special. I will actually go to their website, whether they have a personal website or a company website and I will see if the address is on the website.  And most of the time, there’s a P.O. Box or their address, it’s there.  If it’s not there, I do not stalk them. I don’t like go to homeowner’s records or I mean if I wanted your home address bad enough, I could find it.  I don’t.  In which case I will send an email.  And I usually will start of by saying, “I sat down to write you a handwritten note but I realized that your physical address wasn’t on the card.  So you know, pretend this is a physical note.” And sometimes I take a picture of my stationary and I will attach it and I will say, imagine that you got this in the mail. You know, written on it, it’s just a cover of the station –  I got one to send you a handwritten note because you are really special, it was pleasure to meet you, blah, blah, blah.  So you can only go so far and you shouldn’t be a stalker when it comes to trying to build relationships, but most of the time it is still on the business card, and the next step is that it’s usually accessible on their website.  And if not I will just move on.

Pete Mockaitis
And if they don’t have a business card, what’s your preferred data capturing mechanism?

Thom Singer
So if they don’t have a business card, I will usually write down their name on the back of one of my business cards. And here’s a tip for everybody.  If you use the back of your own business cards, turn it over to the face where your name and your contact information is and draw an X through it.  Because later on when you pull that business card out at your pocket, your natural inclination is only to look at the top.  And now you can hand it to somebody else and your contact information of the other person goes flying away.  But if you draw an X through the front of your card, you pull out the card and you go “can’t give you that one that one, that’s got Pete’s contact information on it.”

So I don’t, like when I meet on an event, I don’t like to like bump people into my phone or you know sometimes people say they don’t carry business cards, they just go ‘oh just google me.’  Well that’s great.  Well how in the world am I supposed to figure out how to spell Makatakatakatakalis. You know, it’s like how am I ever going to find that person.  So you know my recommendation is, don’t think you are so cool that you don’t carry business card.  People tell me all the time, oh I am young and techy, I don’t carry business cards.  Well is that for you or for the other person?  Are you trying to make their life easier or your life easier?  More often people go, my life because I don’t want everybody to follow up with me.  Well that’s very nice, you’ve just told me a lot of yourself.  So carry cards, give them to people and put your contact information on it.  Guess what, the amount of people are going to spam you are small.  And people will go, “well if I give out my card, they add me to their email distribution newsletter.” Unsubscribe.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fair.  It happens all the time, people say they follow up with me by saying, “are you on Facebook?”  And I am thinking, “does that count?  And why does Facebook have any part of our relationship?”

Thom Singer
Yeah. And have we have a cup of coffee, meal or beer yet?   No, I don’t want you on my Facebook, I don’t want you on my LinkedIn.  I will tell you what, I don’t care when my best friend eats a burrito, I certainly don’t care when a stranger eats a burrito, I don’t want them on Facebook.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.  Now, how about a favorite tool – any gadgets, software, things you use frequently.

Thom Singer
Yeah, my iPhone.  Let’s face it.  People can diss Apple all they want, the iPhone changed all of our lives and it’s the best tool out there.  And every other thing we use is a subset of our iPhone.

Pete Mockaitis
You get no disagreement from me there. How about a favorite time saving trick?  How do you get so much done?

Thom Singer
So this is so great.  This one is absolutely my favorite question when I’m on  a podcast and somebody asks me this question.

Pete Mockaitis
I thought it’s fairly original, I guess it’s not.

Thom Singer
Everybody asks this question.  I suck at time management.  I am just going to tell you right now that there’s all these people come on this shows and goes ‘oh I am so good with this and I have this app and I have this virtual assistant who combs my hair and I have all this different stuff’.  I absolutely stink at managing my productivity and my time and I wish I was better at it.  And I will tell you when I’m the worst at it is when I am on the road.  I mean I get so many emails that I don’t deal with and I have to apologize to clients all the time that I was on the 5-day trip. Sorry I am just getting to it.  And I will tell you I wish I was better at it but I suck at time management. And I am not even going to pretend that I am someone people should look up to.

Pete Mockaitis
Well I respect the humility.  And all is well.  How about a favorite nugget, or something that you share, it really gets the heads nodding, the note takers note taking, the Amazon Kindle book highlighted, retweeted.  What are some of your best gems that people really resonate with?

Thom Singer
So I just today gave a speech to a high performance team of residential realtors.  And the thing that really resonated with them as what most of my audience is, and I’ve been talking about this for years and all of a sudden like other people are writing.  They are not doing it because I did it.  They are doing it because its common sense in the vernacular of our universe.  It’s not like ‘oh let’s deal this from Thom’ but for years I’ve been  talking about the fact that we used the term, ‘oh my God I am so busy’.

You are walking down the street, in your hometown and you run into an old friend from college and you say ‘Mary, how are you?’.  Odds are the first words out of her mouth are going to be like ‘Oh my God, I am so busy’ then she’s going to tell you everything she’s doing.  Then she is going to say ‘So how are you, Pete?’  And odds are you are going to go ‘I’m so busy too.’  And I think it’s a huge problem that we are trying to compete with each other and sort of justify who’s busier as if we could somehow prove I am better if I am busier.  My calendar is more full; I am better than these other people. I think it pushes people apart rather than pulling them together.  So my recommendation is that instead of answering that question, ‘Oh my God I am so busy’, answer the question by saying ‘I am so fortunate.’Then rattle off all the things you are doing, same calendar but it draws people in; whereas I am so busy sets up like a total competition.  I get emails after I speak from people, and they are like ‘Oh my God, I left your speech, I get back to the office.  I’ve been at the conference for two days and I said every single co-worker how things been while I was gone and they go ‘oh my God you don’t know I was so busy.’  She goes all of a sudden I looked at him – because what I tell the audience is ‘I am so busy’ is faux badge of honor.  She goes I looked at them like ‘why are they putting on fake badges of honor,’ oh my gosh, you know you are busy, yeah but we are all busy.  So that’s the thing they gets the most re-tweets, and the most follow-up and has for years that I’ve been talking about it is, let’s not hide behind ‘I’m busy,’ everybody is busy.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.  How about a favorite role model?  Someone that you looked up to professionally, and why?

Thom Singer
So I am a professional speaker, right, and professional master of ceremonies.  And I came into this business inspired by a guy name Harvey Mackay, who wrote a book How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. And about four or five other New York Times Bestsellers. And I’ve had the honor to spend time with Harvey.  I had the honor to interview him for a cover story for a speaker magazine.  And so he is one person. And then another person who is just one of the best people on stage.  I had the honor to share the stage with him about four years ago, and get to see him at the National Speakers Association this summer.  There’s a gentleman named Mark Scharenbroich and Mark has been a speaker, I mean he is not so old that I’dI say as long as I’ve been alive, but since I was in High School and College, Mark has been speaking for 30 years or more.  And he wrote a book called Nice Bike and it talks about the community of people in the Harley Davidson world.  If you see somebody with a Harley and you looked at him, you go, ‘Nice Bike,’they know what you mean.  And he takes that into the business world and talks about the fact that what’s the secret language.  How do you get people to get engaged to be part of your community and what is your community. And he tells stories in a manner that when I watch him speak on stage, and I’ve had a pleasure of being in a conference with him. I’ve been in conferences where he spoken throughout my career and even before and I watched him on video.  The way the man tells a story, every time Mark Scharenbroich is on the stage, I think I am in the wrong business because I can never be as good as he is.  And he blows my mind.  And so my dream in life is to be as good as Mark Scharenbroich someday.

Pete Mockaitis
I will go and check him now, thank you.  How about a favorite way to find you if folks want to learn more about you and what you’re up to, would you prefer a website, email, Twitter?

Thom Singer
Smoke signals and carrier pigeons.  I think that the answer is going to be thomsinger.com, that will take you to my podcasts, “Cool things entrepreneurs do.”  For people listening to this, I figure you got to love podcasts, jump over and listen to cool things.  It will take you to my Twitter, it will take you to everything you could ever need to know or ever need to find about

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect. And a favorite challenge or final a call to action that you like to leave listeners with.

Thom Singer
Before the day is over, go out and make somebody feel significant.  Even if it is your barista at Starbucks who always has a smile on their face.  Go back in Starbucks and say you know what I am meant to tell you this morning, everytime you make my coffee, I am like a grump in the morning before I have my coffee, you just make my day better because you have such a good attitude.  If you did that to just one person, somebody’s day is going to kick ass because of you. And took you all of a minute.

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.  Thom, thank you so much.  It’s been a lot of fun and I wish you all the best for your continued success.

Thom Singer
Pete, thank you for having me on your show.