095: Looking Ahead with Eliot Wagonheim

Pete Mockaitis
Eliot, thanks so much for being here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Eliot Wagonheim
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Really looking forward to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now I understand that the state of Maryland has designated you the honor of being a Super Lawyer.

Eliot Wagonheim
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
What exactly does that mean and how did you find yourself there?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, I’ll tell you. Well, let me ask you this: Do you want the PR answer or do you want the real answer?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, let’s get gritty and real.

Eliot Wagonheim
Okay. The real answer, Pete, is that it’s a game. Now look, I don’t mean anything against the people at Super Lawyer. What it’s supposed to be is peer review, so I think each state has this and so they send out these surveys to lawyers and judges with names and you can vote. And so you ostensibly get the honor of being named a Super Lawyer or a Rising Star by having been voted by your peers, and that’s great. I mean it looks good on your website. I think you have to be around for a while, you have to have a certain reputation.
But at the same time a lot of these awards in whatever industry are for PR value. I mean they’re a game, they’re maybe a way to stack the deck, they’re maybe a way to call people and say, “Please vote for me or please do this.” And people do it. And I’m not necessarily saying that with Super Lawyer, but with a lot of these awards, there’s a cottage industry of awards. And so I think that we’re really good at what we do when we serve our entrepreneurial community very well and faithfully, but it’s not to mean in all honesty that somebody who does not have that designation on their website is somehow inferior, if you know what I mean.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. And so, I guess I’m curious to hear though, is it fair to say it would be hard for a lousy lawyer to become designated a Super Lawyer, if peers have to vote for them?

Eliot Wagonheim
Yeah, I think so. I’m talking to you from the wonderful city of Baltimore, and Baltimore is often known as Smalltimore by the people who live here, which means that if you’re in Baltimore and you and I have never met, there’s no way that I couldn’t place two phone calls and find out who you are, where you went to high school and probably the girl you took to prom. I mean it’s a city, but people know each other well.
And so, especially here, if you have a poor reputation, word will get around very quickly and so you wouldn’t get the designation, you wouldn’t have the awards, the AV rating and the other things that I have, because it’s a body of work. And so that is fair to say.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, before we get into the meat of some of your expertise with the “Fire, Aim, Ready” mindset and philosophy, I’d like to just quickly say with a Super Lawyer and other designations, any perspective you can share about how you grew to become awesome at your job?

Eliot Wagonheim
Yeah, I think that it’s really adopting my clients’ mindset. So all I do is work with small and mid-sized businesses and a good number of them are entrepreneurs. What makes me good at being a lawyer is the fact that I’m actually an entrepreneur and business person who happens to be a lawyer.

Pete Mockaitis
I see.

Eliot Wagonheim
If I were a lawyer first, if I had that mindset first, then I’d approach my job in a different way. But the real key part of this is that I’ve got to be able to see the world through the eyes of my clients. I’ve got to see the world through the eyes of an entrepreneur, because too many lawyers adopt the mindset that they make their money by keeping exciting things from happening. I mean they’re there to protect people from risk, and so maybe the best way to protect you from risk is saying, “Don’t go out, don’t do anything, don’t interact with the world.” But if you have the mindset of your best customers, if you are them – if you think like them, if you talk like them, if you worry about the things that they worry about, if you have the aspirations that they do – then it’s easy to serve them. And so that’s what I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. And at the same time you’re also producing some content and some books and some goodness. Can you share a little bit about what’s your “Fire, Aim, Ready” approach all about?

Eliot Wagonheim
“Fire, Aim, Ready” is a mindset of starting with the end in mind. So this is where I came to it from. When I was in law school, one of the first things they tell you about being a trial lawyer is to write your closing argument first. And the reason for that is in closing argument you can say whatever you want, if. And the “if” is, if those statements, if whatever argument you’re making is actually based upon evidence that was introduced during the trial.
So if I say, “He couldn’t possibly have committed that crime; he was in Las Vegas at the time the bank was robbed in Wyoming.” Well, that’s fine but I can’t say that in closing argument unless I introduced evidence or testimony that said that he was in Las Vegas at the time the bank was robbed in Wyoming. So if you write your closing argument first, you imagine all of those things you want to be able to say to the jury, and then you have to go back and reverse-engineer it and say, “Well geez, if I want to say this stuff, then what’s the evidence? How am I going to set myself up for success in my closing argument?”
And it’s the same way in business. So I know this is a long answer, I apologize for that, but let’s talk about hiring somebody. If you’re going to hire somebody and you’re excited about it, you have a need that’s going to be filled, they want the job, it’s a happy conversation, it’s great. But what if before you extended your hand across the table you looked them in the eye and you said, “Hey, here’s why I’m going to fire you. I’m going to fire you if you lose the McCormick account, I’m going to fire you if your customer satisfaction rating is below 95%, I’m going to fire you if you’re over budget, I’m going to fire you if you’re behind schedule.”
Now that’s not a warm and fuzzy conversation, but nobody leaves that discussion without an idea of exactly what the expectations are. So, that’s how you start with the end in mind – you think to yourself, “If this doesn’t work out, how do I avoid the conversation where I say, ‘Hey, I’m going to have to let you go’, and the person at the other side of the desk says, ‘Why? I thought it was going so well’.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful. And not to get too far down this rabid trail, but that was actually something I want to ask you about, because you work with folks to enable them, empower them to do cool, exciting things. And I think one thing I see folks… They’ve got sort of a teammate who’s just not engaged, interested, cutting the mustard, maybe even talks of sabotaging things. I was thinking, “Why don’t you just get rid of that person? It seems like there’s not a lot of hope, that coaching isn’t doing anything.” And then say, “Well, you know, we don’t want to get sued.”
And so it’s like, I don’t know, I think a fair number of teams have some paralysis associated with doing what they need to do to get to a world class team kind of a place, because of this fear of wrongful termination suits or whatnot. So, what was fun, I know you were just using that as an example, like set some fantastically clear expectations right upfront about beginning with the end in mind. But while we’re on the topic of terminations, can you tell me, is that fear overblown and are there easy things teams can do to protect themselves so that they can replace troublesome team members when necessary?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, I think that it’s not overblown, but it can’t lead to paralysis. So I get it – the fear is very real, but there are ways to meet it head-on. So the first one is obviously clear expectations. And let’s say you didn’t do that. Let’s say that right now you’re in the middle of a partnership, relationship, just like you sketched out, that’s not working, where the other side’s not pulling their weight.
You can still have that conversation. You can sit down and say, “Look, we’re going to have to part company, unless… This is my issue. Unless we have these things, I’m going to keep coming back to this place where I think the partnership isn’t working. So this is what I have to see happen – one, two, three, four, five.” And you see if you can put each other on a path to go there, because here’s the key: There is one reason and one reason only that employees file suit against employers. Just one. And that reason is righteous indignation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Eliot Wagonheim
Okay? So you can say, “Yes, you owe me money”, but you know what? Filing suit is a pain and as the plaintiff, the employee I worry about being black listed, there might be attorneys fees that have to go around, litigation is not cheap, it’s not swift, it’s a long drawn-out thing. And a lot of times I don’t want to bother with it, except if I get to a place where I feel morally outraged, I feel, “Pete, you can’t do this to me. How dare you do this to me?”
And sometimes I’ll get to that place because I think that you did this to me, whatever that was –demotion or you let me go or you kicked me off the team, whatever – because of my race or my religious background or my physical ability, etcetera, etcetera. Maybe that’s where I come to it from. Maybe I come there because Pete, you promised me that if I just did these three things I’d be fine, and now you’re firing me and you lied to me. I lost this other opportunity, I have to go home, I have to tell my wife I don’t have a job anymore, I’m worried about paying the mortgage. You lied to me.
Now, in order to diffuse that situation, what do you need to do? You need to have clear communication, you need to make sure to the extent possible that nobody’s blindsided, and if they’re really on a precipice, if they’re looking at being kicked out of their house or they have to tell their kids they can’t go to this school, they have to transfer – see if there is something to make it easy to help them transition out, because the more you can do to eliminate the possibility of righteous indignation, that’s the more you’ve done to insulate yourself from being named as a defendant in costly litigation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Well, I don’t know if you knew we were going to go there.

Eliot Wagonheim
No, but that’s okay.

Pete Mockaitis
But that’s very helpful, thank you. So now I want to hear, back to the “Fire, Aim, Ready” mindset. So that makes great sense – you begin with the end in mind, Steven Covey style, you’re really kind of capturing that, and so what needs to be true or proven or kind of gathered in order to get to that outcome. So I’d say, do you have any particular tips or distinctions for putting that into practice? I think in some ways that seems pretty fair and logical, “Oh yeah, sure, we should do that.” But maybe what are some missteps or underutilized best practices for really making that technique fly?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, you mentioned Steven Covey. It’s number 2 in Steven Covey’s. But usually people think of that as a bullet point. “Well, I want to hire a rock star recruit; I want to have this $10 million contract and get all the money that comes along with that.” But what I think of it as is storytelling. Not a bullet point, but storytelling. So you take this contract. I think before you sign a contract, you have to ask yourself, “Look, if I sign this contract, why would I be calling my lawyer in 6 months asking him to get me the heck out of this contract? What’s the story?” Sometimes it’s, “Well, I’m not getting paid.”
But sometimes it’s also, “Well, they didn’t give me the supplies that I needed”, or, “They didn’t let me get started when I needed”, or, “They kept switching project managers so there was no communication”, or all of these things. What do I need to be successful? What happens if those things aren’t there? Why would it become a nightmare for me? So if you tell yourself that story, write it down. It doesn’t have to be formal; you can put it on the back of a cocktail napkin. But you have those stories, then you look at the contract and you say, “Well, how am I protected from these outcomes? Can I get out if one of these things happens?”
Same with hiring. What do you want to do? When you want to hire a rock star recruit, the chances are that that person is not going to come to you because they saw a banner ad on a website or… These people have jobs. A lot of the people you really want, they have jobs. They might be looking kind of, but they’re not actively looking.
So what you need, your ideal situation would be for one of your employees to have a conversation with this recruit. And the recruits says something like, “What’s it like working for your company? Why would I want to work there?” And your employee lists all of these phenomenal things that appeal directly to the recruit. It might be opportunity for advancement, training to get a lot better in what you want to do, it might be they’re tech and social media and branding savvy, it might be they’re going to help you establish your own personal brand. Whatever is of importance to your particular segment, whatever constitutes your rock star recruits. That’s what you’d want your employee to be able to say. So kind of play the game. Write down your script for your employee of what you’d want that employee to say if asked by the rock star recruit, and then you reverse engineer your company to make those conversations not only true, but inevitable.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good. Alright, so, this kind of reminds me a little bit of the time machine tactic we heard from Stacey Dyer in Episode 92, so that’s fun. So you would then realize, “Well, I guess we don’t do training. Let’s start doing some training.”

Eliot Wagonheim
Right, right. What would it be if your rock star recruit was talking to your employee and said, “Hey, do you do training?” The guy goes, “Nah. He always says that he’ll give us training and I guess if I really pushed it he might say it’s okay, but really that’s just something on a marketing brochure.” You’re never going to get that recruit. They’re gone.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. That’s one fun example, is trying to get a high performer in the door. What are some other places in the world of professional employees just conducting their day-in day-out work life, where this thought process really yields fruit?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, I think it’s a continuing conversation. So I use calendar years but we always have multiple conversations during the year. But the calendar year is easy, so I can sit down, and I will sit down with my employees in December and I’ll say, “Alright, we’re sitting here in December 2016. When we have this conversation in December 2017, what do you want to be true? I know you want to make more money, but what do you want to be true? Is there something you want to be good at? Is there an interest you have? Do you want to have clients in this particular area? Do you wish you had gone to this convention? What can we improve here? Do we need another paralegal or secretary?”
So we really take some time and we don’t settle with, “How are things going?” “Good, how are they with you?” “Good.” We really take some time and we flush it out. “What would make this better? What would make it worse? What are the obstacles to your doing your best job?” And then we have these conversations, we check in on them a lot. And it’s not just, we’ll make another appointment on March 15^th of 2017.  Go to lunch, just talk about them, I’ll pull out the list that I have periodically. And we have weekly meetings, Monday morning meeting to go over our cases.
I’ll even pull this out and say, “Hey, we talked about this. Are we making any progress? What’s the next thing we have to do? What’s the first step in this path? Because I don’t want to look at you in December of 2017 and have a big blank on my face when the topic comes up on what did I do to make this happen.” So we have that. The other thing that I would absolutely, absolutely do when we go back to the wrongful termination stuff is I would eliminate annual evaluations. I hate annual evaluations.

Pete Mockaitis
And what do you do instead?

Eliot Wagonheim
You just have these continuing conversations. Most people now… I’ll give you an example – my wife posted something on her Facebook last night and she was looking at 9 o’clock in the evening, 2 hours after she posted it, she was looking at her phone and she was kind of laughing. I said, “What are you looking at?” She goes, “Oh, I was just looking to see the responses and the likes and all that stuff.” That’s the mindset that we have, and it’s not just 20-somethings; that’s the mindset. So why is your workplace set up to give feedback after a year? People are looking for feedback after a bathroom break.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Eliot Wagonheim
So that’s one thing, but here’s the other thing. In all of my years as a lawyer, and I have been in front of judges and juries and arbitrators more times than I could possibly count on employment issues, I have never ever seen the personal evaluation, seen that annual evaluation entered as an exhibit on behalf of the employer.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding!

Eliot Wagonheim
Never, never. You know why? Because managers don’t know how to fill them out. So here’s the thing. You always have this question: On a scale of 1 to 5, write the employee’s performance. Right? So think of yourself as a manager. You don’t want to put 1; 1 being the worst, 5 being outstanding. You don’t want to put 1 because of if you put 1, you’re like, “Well, why the hell is he here? We should fire him if he’s a 1.” You don’t want to do that.
You don’t want to put 5 because for most managers only God himself gets a 5. So it’s perfection and whatever, and you still want to leave room to improve. You don’t want to put a 2, because 2 is still poor and you’re going to have an uncomfortable conversation as a manager if you put a 2. And you’re going to have to come up with all of these examples; and sometimes you don’t have them and sometimes your examples are because, “Well, Bob came in to my office and told me, “Hey, don’t bring my name into it, but I saw Susan do this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Eliot Wagonheim
So you can’t even bring that up. So you have examples but you can’t talk about them because you’re going to ruin your line of communication with Bob to find out what’s really happening. So you don’t want to put 2 ’cause that’s uncomfortable. So the vast, vast majority of times the employees are only given 3s and 4s – average to good. It’s safe, there’s no uncomfortable conversations, you don’t have to do an action plan or whatever, it’s fine.
And so here’s this employee and he gets 4 years, 5 years of good to very good evaluations, and then the hammer drops and he sues for wrongful termination and the employer has somebody raise their hand that says, “He’s always been a poor employee. He’s always done this. He never did his job well, he never did this.” And what does the employee’s lawyer do? He enters these personnel evaluation – 5 years of good to very good, and says, “Well, this is your process. Your company said he was above average. How is he all of a sudden a bad employee for the past 5 years?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is so enlightening for me. Now I got kind of spoiled because I came from a strategy consulting firm, Bain & Company, and they were just fantastic about reviews. It was like every case and every 6 months you’d have a review, and it wasn’t just an overall 1 to 5, but they had a level of expectation associated with something like 25 kind of key things they’re evaluating you upon, and then what they’re expecting from you at each 6-month interval for how that parameter should be going, and then are you meeting that expectation, slightly exceeding it, overwhelmingly exceeding it, etcetera.
So I know I’ve been spoiled and that’s not the norm in most places. But I loved how you just made that so real. I think you’re right in many places the performance evaluation system is kind of a joke, and it isn’t even serving the legal “cover your rear end” that they’re hoping for.

Eliot Wagonheim
No, it’s not. And Bain & Company is an excellent firm – it’s established, it’s fair to say, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s fair to say it’s got resources for training and for inside development. Well, and that’s true. So they can do that. But the vast majority of the entrepreneurs, small and mid-size businesses with whom I work – well, if they have managers at all, those managers are trained in doing whatever job it is, being an electrician or being a
graphic design or whatever it happens to be, software developer. But they’re not trained in how to be a manager and how to actually write and document these personnel evaluations.
So people take the easy way out. They don’t have an internally developed program by a specialist the way I’m guessing Bain does, but they borrow a form off the Internet or maybe a form from their last job. And so because of the lack of training, you have a manager that reverts back into the mindset that I described and you’re putting a loaded gun in that employee’s personnel file. And the gun’s pointed at you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. Well, that’s quite enlightening. And so, I’d like to hear then – so with this revised approach in the “Fire, Aim, Ready” world of management and coaching and chatting back and forth with employees, what are some best practices associated with engaging in those conversations? Maybe they are touchy or uncomfortable from time to time about performance and having them go somewhere.

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, I joke around and I say it’s not warm and fuzzy to say, “Here’s why I’m going to fire you.” But if you develop a culture… I can look at any one of my lawyers and I can ask them that question, “Hey, why should I fire you? List out the things.” And we can have this whole list. “At what point do you think I would be justified walking into your office and saying, ‘You know I’ve got to let you go’?” And we’ve had those conversations, “Well, if I did this, if I missed deadlines, if I did that, if I did the other thing.” And all of a sudden you start sketching out what it takes to succeed, what are the expectations.
And then I’ll ask them the other question, which is, “Well, what would it take for you to say to a friend, when somebody says, ‘Hey, how’s your job going?’ What would it take for you to honestly turn to that friend and say, ‘Going with Eliot was the best professional decision I made in my entire life.’ What does that look like? What would have to get you so excited that even though you’re not part of a cult, that’s the first thing that comes to your mind? ‘This was the best move I ever made.’”
And we actually talk about that and get passed the kind of humming and hawing and the general stuff and really dig deep into it and take time to dig deep into it. And then we both have an idea of what it takes to not just not fail, but what it takes to succeed. And then you can start building programs and making progress and checking in, “Hey, I’m still not at the place where you’re going to turn to your friend or your dad or whatever and say, ‘This was the best possible position for you, your best decision in your professional career.’ So let’s figure out what else can I do. What else can we figure out?”
And a lot of times that has nothing to do with money. People will joke and they’ll say, “Oh, triple my salary!” But a lot of times it’s not; a lot of times it’s, “You know what? I need to get better at where I am…” I’ll give you a short example. I had a lawyer who worked for me and she was really good, but what she really got a charge out of was party planning.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Eliot Wagonheim
When it was anybody’s birthday, when it was the Christmas party, when it was any firm or client event or whatever, she loved that stuff! Everything about it – choosing napkins… She loved that stuff.
And she was a young lawyer and she was trying to build up a client base and I called her in, we were talking about this. And she didn’t want to stop doing this and become a party planner, but I said to her, “Why don’t I start introducing you to… And we can figure out a way to broaden your contacts, to people who own hotels and catering companies and wedding planning companies and all that stuff? Those are your people; you love these people. You live and die with their successes and they’d love to hear from you.” I bet there are trade groups out there that are for party planners. And so, associate with the people who bring you joy.
And then instead of them just saying, “Oh, here’s Kimberly, she’s a lawyer. Hi Kimberly.” It’s just kind of boring. They get to know you and they’re like, “Wait a minute. She’s not just a lawyer that does divorces, she’ll draw up a will, she’ll do a contract for a party planning company and then she’ll go do a worker’s compensation case. Kimberly loves us.”
And so you can start to have these conversations. So I did that, and I introduced her. We represented a number of hotels at a local beach community and then I kind of gave her some tips and made calls and even set her up in a course that helped networking, so she could make inroads, and she joined one of the associations. And so the next year… We checked in obviously between that, but the next year she had several clients, she was going to these events, she’d been asked to speak at one of their local chapter events, because that’s what she wanted to do. And she had such a spring in her step, because she loved the direction and I helped her sculpt her career to an area of interest for her.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so good. And what I love about this whole visualization process is, you’re displaying a fair bit of humility along the way in terms of, “What would it take for you to say this is the best decision ever, joining up with Eliot?” But at the same time it doesn’t feel super risky and vulnerable because you’re visualizing something that’s so big, it’s like you don’t take it personally if you’re not there yet, on the positive side or the negative, “Here, I’d have to fire you” side. It’s just sort of like we’re imagining these extremes, which could very well happen, but it doesn’t feel spooky, like, “Uh-oh, it’s about to hit the fan.” So I’m really liking that.

Eliot Wagonheim
Yeah, and you know, turnabout is fair play. And I’ve had employees say, “Well, let me ask you this. We talk about what it would take for you to fire me, and what would it take for me to say that this is the best job I ever had. What would it take for you to say that, ‘She’s the best employee I ever brought on. I thank God every day that she joined my company.’”
I said, “Okay, that’s a fair question. These are the things that keep me up nights. This is the stuff I hate to do and I wish I could offload. Maybe you’re not right for all of them, maybe that’s not your skill set, but if you want to know what would make my life better, it would be finding solutions for this.” And because of that conversation I’ve had employees say, “Oh, I like doing that stuff. Why don’t I do that?” And maybe they can’t do everything, but they can really pitch in to an area where they had no idea I wanted somebody to pitch in.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, I want to cover maybe one more piece before we shift gears and hear about your favorite things – you in your firm have gone about eliminating the billable hour. What’s the philosophy there?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, in all fairness, originally I had said we eliminated the billable hour, but then clients keep bringing it back. The philosophy there is from a logical standpoint. What a billable hour means is that a contract on which I spent 6 hours is by definition twice as valuable as a contract on which I spent 3 hours. And that’s just not true.
You want to know as a consumer, if you’re spending $30,000 for a car, you want to know you’re getting a $30,000 car. If you’re spending $60,000, you want to know that the car that you’re spending $60,000 on has a lot of features and a lot of things over and above the $30,000 car. That’s because it’s a product. But it wouldn’t make a difference to you if they had problems at the plant, if the machinery was outdated and the machinery was slow, and it took them more time to build the $30,000 car than it did the $60,000, ’cause the $60,000 car was built in a spanking new plant with robotics. Why would you pay more for the $30,000 car just because there were manufacturing problems?
And that’s the billable hour. The problem with the billable hour is that people don’t want to buy hours; they want to buy deliverables, they want to buy their stockholders agreement, they want to pay for representation or litigation, they want to buy their by-laws and their contracts and all that stuff. They want good results, they want to be protected, they want to be able to sleep at night. But it doesn’t make sense for them to just say, “Well, it’s going to be 5 hours.”
Because I got news for you – I can do a contract in 1 hour that would probably take a less experienced lawyer 2.5-3 hours. It doesn’t mean the one that I did in 1 hour is of less quality; the reverse is true. But if you stick with billable hour it’s a false metric, so that’s why I wanted to get away from that. What I wanted to do instead… And let me just tell you this. Take it away from law.
If you imagine that you’re building an addition on your house – maybe you’re building a sunroom – and you’ve got 2 contractors. You tell both contractors what exactly you want, you give them the plans and the specifications. And the first contractor comes in, looks at it, he takes all of his measurements and he says, “It’s going to cost you $65,000. This is what you’re going to get – you’re going to get a building, I’m going to build your sunroom in accordance with the plans and specifications for $65,000.”
And the second contractor comes in, looks at your plans and specs, does all the measurements, pulls out his toolkit and he says, “I’m going to use this tungsten coated hammer and I’m going to use that, and I’m going to use this cordless drill has 195 foot pounds of torque – I’m going to use that; and this saw, this saw could cut through a steel girder, and I’m going to use that. And so I’m going to get started and we’ll just see how long it takes me and at the end, with all of these great tools at the end I’m going to give you a bill and whatever is on there, you’re going to pay it.” There’s no way you’d hire that guy.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Eliot Wagonheim
But that’s what lawyers do. They say, “Hey, I went to Harvard, I really know what I’m doing, I’m going to look into your project, I’m not going to tell you how much it costs and at the end of the project whatever it is I’m going to give you a bill and you’re going to pay it.” Why would you do that?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like healthcare as well. You have no idea what it’s going to cost you.
I had a buddy who actually… His name is Mitch. Shout to Mitch, he’s awesome. And he was playing soccer and he had an injury – he gashed his head, and so it’s bleeding kind of a lot, as heads tend to do. And so there was a nursing student at the University of Illinois and he’s like, “Hey, so what do you think this is?” She’s like, “Oh my gosh, you’re probably going to need maybe 4 staples.” And he’s like, “Okay, now I know what I’m looking for. I could shop around.”
And he called the hospital, it’s like, “You’ve got to come in here right away.” He was like, “Well, I will, I’m just trying to see kind of what you think, ballpark, what 4 staples is going to run.” And it was fascinating, the mindset.

Eliot Wagonheim
That’s amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
So point made – we care about deliverables, the outcomes, the results; less so about how fancy you go about getting there. So I think this has applications in numerous spheres. So how do you think and operate in and work in that way? You said you get some clients keep bringing them back, but how do you just operate in the alternative world?

Eliot Wagonheim
Well, I think one of the things we haven’t talked about which is right down this alley is in terms of sales and marketing. So I wanted to hang cabinets up in my garage for tools and stuff. And so my garage has concrete walls and I needed a drill that would go through the masonry, that would go through the concrete. And so I went to Home Depot and if you’ve ever been in there, they have a whole isle of drills and they’re bright colors, they’re orange and they’re yellow and some are chuckless and some have this torque and some are cordless and some have this battery life and all that stuff.
But when I started thinking about it, the fact of the matter is, I didn’t want a drill; I wanted a hole. People don’t buy drills; people buy holes – that’s the solution I want. Tell me that it’s going to create this hole, that’s what I’m buying. And so when you think about that from your marketing standpoint… I was called in recently by this firm that does business valuations. And you get a business valuation for a number of reasons – maybe you’re giving stock or somebody’s buying in stock, and so they need a valuation to know how much value they’re getting, what the purchase price has to be, what the tax consequences are; maybe for estate planning purposes where somebody dies and there’s a bequest.
So they called me in to talk about this. And so I was looking at their proposals and their proposals were talking about all the different ways you can do this valuation and their methodologies. It was all Greek to me really. And I only took one Economics class and it’s better all forgotten. But they went pages and pages about this and then of course the bios and their approach and their schooling and training and certifications and all that stuff. And it was only on two thirds of the way through that they got to the hole – that they got to, “We can arrange to do a valuation that’s going to meet your needs for tax purposes and this is what our clients have to say and these are some of the stories in which we had a positive impact.”
That’s really what they should have lead off with, so that people can see themselves, they can see their solution and what you’re offering. And then if they’re interested enough, then they’ll dig into your approach, they’ll dig into how you do it. But first you’ve got to tell people and let them know that you can address their problem. And so that’s what seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes is about. That’s starting your process, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s hiring, whether it’s getting a partner, whether it’s signing contract – starting with the end in mind and the end in marketing is for your best customer to believe that you are the best solution for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Understood, thank you. Alright, now I’d love to hear about some of your favorite things. If you could start us off by sharing a favorite quote?

Eliot Wagonheim
I was thinking about this, and I keep coming back to Life of Pi. I don’t know whether you saw the movie, but it was just a terrific movie – really great cinematography and everything. But there was a line in that movie and it said that, “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is to choose immobility as a mode of transportation.” And I really believe that. And I talk to entrepreneurs so often as Lord I know you do, and there’s always that voice saying, “Other people can do this; I’m not sure I can. Or maybe somebody else is smarter, or maybe this isn’t the right time, or it’s just not for me, I’m not meant to achieve what I always envisioned. Maybe it’s best to not try.” And while doubt is fine – it helps you prepare and a healthy dose of fear or maybe better than just unbridled and unchecked optimism – too many people let that become their philosophy of life and then it becomes immobility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a piece of research?

Eliot Wagonheim
My favorite study is something called “The Listeners and the Tappers”. Have you ever heard of that?

Pete Mockaitis
About un-learning and how tricky it is. Go ahead.

Eliot Wagonheim
Part of it is un-learning. Yeah, I think it’s the most valuable tool for parents, for anybody who teaches, who talks to other people and want to make a message understood – parent to student, coach to team, employer to employees, team leader to team. And the way it worked is there was a graduate study in 1990 where you had pairs of students – a listener / a tapper; a listener / a tapper; a listener / a tapper. And the tappers had to take a song that was obviously going to be common, it’s going to be known generally – it could be Happy Birthday, could be the Star Spangled Banner, whatever. And then they just tapped on the desk. So it was like this; I don’t know if you can hear it.
So the listeners had to guess what the song was. And so they did this one series of experiments, and do you know what the success rate for the listeners was?

Pete Mockaitis
I forgot.

Eliot Wagonheim
It’s 2%.

Pete Mockaitis
Two, yeah.

Eliot Wagonheim
Two. And what made that interesting was not just that the listeners couldn’t readily call this out. It was the attitude of the tappers was, “How could you not get that?” And the reason the tappers were like that is because in their minds they heard it. So once you hear that song, it’s hard to un-hear it. And so they couldn’t understand, they couldn’t put themselves in the mindset of the listener; they couldn’t understand why the listener didn’t get it.
And so when you’re talking about something – if I’m talking about a legal topic or an entrepreneurial topic or you’re lecturing within your wheelhouse, it’s easier to be a tapper, but the best communicators are those that can communicate with the mind of a listener so that they don’t keep hearing the song. They ask the questions or they answer the questions as the listener would have. And they don’t use lexicon that the listener wouldn’t know. They teach. But the worst communicators – and we’ve all had them in school or a team lead or as a coach – are those that assume so much knowledge because they’re just tappers and they can’t see the listener mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Eliot Wagonheim
I’d have to go with Essentialism by Greg McKeown.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. We had Greg on the show, and he was fantastic.

Eliot Wagonheim
He’s terrific, I really love him.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m moving, so I actually am literally like, you know, all these clothes in my closet that probably don’t need to go. So that was Greg McKeown, episode 38. If any listeners are curious, so good. And how about a favorite tool?

Eliot Wagonheim
My favorite tool at this point, I rolled out a “get things done” app called Todoist.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that was you?

Eliot Wagonheim
No, no, not nationwide; just in my firm.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, in your firm.

Eliot Wagonheim
I should take so much credit for that, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
That should’ve showed up in your bio.

Eliot Wagonheim
Yes Pete, that was me. It was just a hobby. That was great. But no, in my firm, because I was looking for a tool to be able to… We have these weekly client meetings and we go over all of the matters.
I thought I guess it’s possible for someone to say, “Yeah, I really have to call her” in week number 1. In week number 2 they report, “Yeah, I really have to call her”. And we wouldn’t necessarily know. So now we have all of our cases and all of the things we have to do and if I need somebody to do something or if I warn my secretary, “Hey, remind me next Friday that I have to do this”. It’s all on there and it gets crossed off and it really helps us keep things from falling through the cracks.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. And so now, what’s the habit?

Eliot Wagonheim
The habit is meditation. And I’m not a “crystals and aura” type guy, but I was curious about it. And there’s an app called 10% Happier.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh yeah, Dan Harris, episode 44. You keep hooking it up with the backwards.

Eliot Wagonheim
I know, right? Yeah, Dan Harris, and so it’s called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And so I started doing this – I come in in the morning before anybody’s here, and I’ll just… The way it’s set up, each day they’ll have a video, which is Dan talking to whatever teacher or trainer in that particular course there is for 2 to 4 minutes, and then there’s a guided meditation. And that meditation might be anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes.
And I didn’t know if it was doing any good; I still don’t know if it’s doing any good, but I realized that I liked it. And it’s mindfulness, so I can start thinking about, “Boy, I’m really irritated by this. Why am I irritated by this? What’s the real reason?” And so it’s interesting. Some I found better than others, but I like it and I think it’s something that’s worth while. So anyway, that’s what I started to do and I’m probably about 6 or 7 months in.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh cool, thank you. And how about, is there a particular piece that you share in your writing or speeches that seems to really connect and resonate with folks, and gets them sharing and nodding their heads?

Eliot Wagonheim
I think when I talk about looking at the world through somebody else’s eyes. There are two things – one is looking at the world through someone else’s eyes; the other is what we call around here “Rule number 1”. Everybody here knows Rule number 1; my kids know Rule number 1. And that is, make it easy for someone to do what you want them to do.
And so what that means, for example, one of the things I want my clients to do is pay me. So, if I only told them that I would only take cash and you have to personally deliver it to my office on Tuesday mornings between 8 a.m. and 10a.m., I am not following Rule number 1; I am making it hard for somebody to do what I want them to do. But if you take checks and credit cards and PayPal and you allow online payment and people can see their statements online and all that stuff, you’re making it easy.
So similarly, let’s go back to the billable hour. If I do my best job with an open line of communication… So I want my clients to call me just to bounce things off of me, because when something is really bothering them, I’ll already have my finger on the pulse of their company; I’ll already know what’s going on. Well, if I’m just billable hour and they get daimed $20, $30, $50 every time they pick up the phone and call me, they’re not going to call. So I’ve set up my business model at odds with how I’m going to do my best work. I’m not following Rule number 1. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great, thank you. I’m going to chew on that for a little while. And what would you say is the best place to find you if folks want to learn more and hear what you’re up to, where would you point them?

Eliot Wagonheim
To FARsightedbusiness.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Eliot Wagonheim
FAR is “Fire, Aim, Ready”, but it’s farsightedbusiness.com. And yeah, the books, the online course, everything can be found there. And I’m on Twitter @wagonheim. But farsightedbusiness is probably the easiest place to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Great, thank you. And do you have a final parting challenge or a call to action you’d issue to those seeking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Eliot Wagonheim
Yeah, I would say just in line with our talk, figure out what awesome means to you, tell yourself a story. Imagine yourself being interviewed. And somebody says, “How did you do it? How did you become this awesome at your job?” And you have to not just give platitudes but you have to give a detailed answer. What kind of interview would you give? What answer would you give? And if you write that down, then your challenge is tomorrow to take one small step towards making that interview possible.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it, thank you. Well, Eliot, this has been a real treat. I wish you lots of luck, and congratulations to your son – you’re off to the Eagles ceremony tonight – that’s pretty cool.

Eliot Wagonheim
Yeah, we are, that’s right. And I appreciate you moving this chat so that I could go. Hey listen, Pete, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much for having me on.