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Persuasion & Negotiation Archives - Page 8 of 10 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Aug 10
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331: Making Things Work through Context Creation and Candid Communication with Josselyne Herman Saccio

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Josselyne Herman Saccio says: "It's not that the content of your life is giving you stress, it's the context in which you're viewing it."

Josselyne Herman Saccio opens up about creating your own context and communicating honestly for a more productive workplace.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What most people get wrong about communication
  2. The danger of scapegoating
  3. How to get productive outcomes out of your team

 

About Josselyne

Josselyne Herman-Saccio is a communication expert with Landmark, a personal and professional growth, training and development company that’s had more than 2.4 million people use its programs to cause breakthroughs in their personal lives as well as in their communities, generating more than 100,000 community projects around the world. In The Landmark Forum, Landmark’s flagship program, people cause breakthroughs in their performance, communication, relationships and overall satisfaction in life.

 

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Josselyne Herman Saccio Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Josselyne, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Josselyne Herman
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think we’ve got a lot of great stuff to dig into, but first and foremost, I need to hear about your experience as a pop star in the ‘90s.

Josselyne Herman
That is like ten lifetimes ago, but it was a dream come true. It really was. I had always wanted to be a singer since I was four, so to be able to accomplish it and travel around the world as a pop star was literally pinch me every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s cool. What were you singing? What was the story?

Josselyne Herman
What was I singing?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, I was in a group called Boy Krazy with a K. We were kind of like the New Kids on The Block, but the female version or a precursor to the Spice Girls. They were modeled after us actually.

Pete Mockaitis
…

Josselyne Herman
We were singing pure pop. It was definitely bubble-gum pop all the way down, but we had a number one record in 1993 so that was definitely an accomplishment.

Pete Mockaitis
What was the name of the record and the hit track and could you sing maybe one line for us?

Josselyne Herman
Of course. It was called That’s What Love Can Do. As soon as I start singing it people go, “Oh, I know that song.” But it went, “That’s what love can do. I don’t know what to break your heart in two,” like that. It was one of the songs that was the most played song on the radio of 1993.

Pete Mockaitis
Congratulations. Well, that’s what’s so fun among many things about you is that you have a wide array of experiences. Your IMDB profile was illuminating, as a producer, a manager, a casting director, a non-profit founder, wife and mother of three, and some animals in there too. How do you do it all?

Josselyne Herman
Yes. Well, I have it all; I don’t do it all. There is a distinction because if you want to have it all, you’ve got to have a great team of people around you and you’ve got to have people that are willing to support you in having that kind of life and I do, both in my business, my non-profit, my neighborhood endeavors, my family, everybody works as a team and as a community. We get it done as a unit, not as individual ….

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Maybe you can start us off by giving just a little bit of perspective for how have you gone about thinking about who you have chosen to bring into the circle and to partner with?

Josselyne Herman
Well, whoever I end up … work at my company or to work with me in my non-profit, they’re always like-minded people, people who want to make a difference, people who want to fulfill other people’s dreams. It’s pretty easy to have people operating as a team if what you’re up to is big enough. If you’re only up to something at an individual level, you don’t really need a team.

But like right now I’m dealing with something with my family where my mother fell and broke her pelvis and she’s 87. As a family, we’ve gotten together and we’re covering all the different shifts at the rehab and helping my dad, from my 12-year-old son to my 22-year-old daughter and my 16-year-old son and my husband, my sister, and her husband, and her children. We’re all just as a family, taking on whatever needs to get done so there’s never any holes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. That’s great. Well, you do a lot of work with Landmark, so can you orient those who are unfamiliar with the organization or the Landmark forum in particular? What’s it all about?

Josselyne Herman
Well, Landmark’s like a global organization that really works to support people and empower people and enable people in fulfilling in what matters to them. We’re like a coaching company.

People do our seminars or our programs and we provide high-performance coaching for people who want to have an extraordinary life, not just go through life, but actually accomplish their dreams and make a big difference in whatever area that turns them on and lights them up and inspires them.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember going to the Landmark forum when I was in college. It was pretty cool. It was a powerful experience for me. I appreciate what you do and what you’re up to. I remember the forum leaders were kind of like, “Ahhh,” at the time and here we are just chatting.

Josselyne Herman
That’s right. Just human beings, I know. It seems like, “Oh my God, do they ever go to the bathroom? Do they eat? I don’t know.” But yes we do. We have real lives and we’re real people.

The difference is we’ve spent years mastering those distinctions that you get in the Landmark forum or the rest of the … for living. Those distinctions are designed to produce the kind of human being who can be with anyone at any time under any circumstance and have power, freedom, self-expression, and peace of mind. That’s not too bad.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I remember a couple of them, and then hopefully others have just sort of taken root and even if I can’t consciously summon them. But we did this one exercise – there was some – it was intense. There were – I remember we did this one exercise.

Pete Mockaitis
All we did was we stood very close, maybe like a foot away from another person and just staring at them in the face and looking at their eyes. It was. It was powerful. It’s like there’s nothing to be afraid of or intimidated about. We’re just two human beings in space nearby each other right now. But no one does that, so it was really noteworthy in terms of the effect it had.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, that’s The Be With exercise.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, that’s in the advanced course, which is I think one of the most profound opportunities to actually discover what it’s like to just be with people without all the stories or the fear or the … we add to being with people.

It’s really – it’s something that you can practice with all people because we don’t do it as you said. Go home with the person that you live with and just actually just be with them without having to fill the space with talking.

That might not work on the radio or in a podcast, but as you go to actually be with people, it’s quite remarkable because you can see yourself in all people and distance between you and people and all that fear and all that story and all that kind of whatever stops us from being with people fully gets disappeared in that exercise and people get a real experience of being someone beyond their individual thingness.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. You’ve got a few areas of expertise. I’d like to dig into a few. Can you tell us how can we be superman or superwoman without experiencing a whole lot of stress all the time?

Josselyne Herman
Well, it really is the context … decisive because – I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that term before, but some people have, some people haven’t. But if I hold my finger up and I say, okay, the context is body part. What’s right there is what?

Pete Mockaitis
A finger.

Josselyne Herman
Exactly. If I say now the context is number, what’s right there?

Pete Mockaitis
One.

Josselyne Herman
Is a one. If I say the context is now direction, it might be up. It’s not that the content of your life is giving you stress, it’s the context in which you’re viewing it or holding it or experiencing it.

If the context is “Oh my God, I’m overwhelmed,” then it doesn’t even matter if you only have 5 things to do or 55 things to do, you’re going to experience it inside of that lens. The context is really what … your experience of life. I have a lot of content, but it doesn’t occur for me as stressful because I’m operating inside of the context of having it all.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting, as opposed to “I’ve got to go do this next thing. Ah!”

Josselyne Herman
Yes, exactly. I also deal with everything in my calendar rather than my head which helps because you can’t actually double book yourself in reality. You only do that when you’re using your thoughts as a test for reality.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. I’m with you there. Then how does one go about establishing that context? You just say, “I’m having it all?” Is that all there is to it or what’s done to make that context real and cemented and take root and effect?

Josselyne Herman
Well, one thing is people – the first step that I would recommend people do is get clear about what really matters to you. What is the picture of what you really want? Not necessarily something connected to your past or what’s practical or what’s doable based on your credentials, but what do you want.

If you can create that picture and actually look at what it looks like, you can see what it looks like, then you can begin to design your actions to fulfill on that versus being limited to what you think is doable based on your path.

A lot of it has to do with what’s your vision for your life, for your family, for your company, whatever you’re dealing with. Like for you with what you’re doing with this podcast, what’s your vision for that other than just going through an interview because it’s in your date book? It’s like okay, but what are you really creating with the messages that you’re putting out there in the world for your listeners?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. It’s easy I find to sort of slip in and out of that a bit in terms of I am transforming the experience of work and unleashing energy and happiness for professionals everywhere versus I’ve got to get this thing out before the publish date.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, and if you aren’t in the context that you say you’re up to for other people, then it’s inauthentic. If you’re transforming the experience of work and this is your work, that would be kind of like do as I say, not as I do, right?

Keeping that real for yourself – I know in my office, I make sure that the environment is one of team and support and integrity and fun. If it’s not that way in my office, I have everything to say about whether I can bring that to my office. I’m not looking for it from my office; I’m bringing it to my office so that people have that experience when they work with me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Any other perspectives in terms of keeping that context real? You’re getting clear on what you want. You are sort of returning to that frequently. Anything else?

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, I would definitely keep it written down because the world just kind of happens and your life just kind of happens and you end up, like you said, going in and out of just kind of going through life and living it on the other side of that. It’s easy to fall into that default going through life, getting through this to the next thing, to the next thing.

But the second thing I would recommend is really to brainstorm with other people. Don’t try and do it all in yourself in your head. Your thinking is limited to your own brain. Borrow other people’s brains and really look at what your vision is and how it can be accomplished, not just from what you see in your linear vision, but non-linear about it and actually work with people to get their perspective and ideas for actions that you can take. You don’t know what they might see that you don’t see.

Pete Mockaitis
When we’re borrowing other people’s brains, do you have any best practices associated with leading those people to say yes to the borrowing and some of the best questions to surface the perfect wisdom?

Josselyne Herman
Again, it depends on what you’re dealing with. The context is, again, decisive always. Whatever you’re out to accomplish. First share your vision. If you don’t share your vision, then nobody can contribute to accomplishing it for you.

If you can share it with people and what you see possible if that vision got accomplished, then people can have a space to contribute to you their ideas and their perspectives and what they see. All of the sudden your vision is malleable and it’s not like a thing that you’re going to do. It becomes something that is morphable into something else based on what other people contribute.

Maybe it grows, maybe it shifts and you’re not stuck with something like an agenda. You’re really committed to fulfilling on whatever is possible out of that vision being realized versus the pathway. It’s not like, “Fly this airline, fly this airline.” It’s like, “No, I want to go to France. How am I going to get there?” So what’s your France?

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Maybe just throw an example in here. Let’s just say that someone is looking to get a job they love. They’re currently not so pleased with their current work environment. They’re thinking “What I really want to do is work in a field where I am creative and have an amazing team around me,” and that sort of thing. If they’re going about borrowing people’s brains, what’s that look like and unfold in practice?

Josselyne Herman
I would first start by saying, “Do you know anybody or do you know anybody who knows anybody who’s hiring in a creative field?” Or you could say, “Listen, I don’t really know what kind of field I want to go into, but who do you know that I could talk to to brainstorm on what kind of fields are available?”

You start to do some recon, but inside of – nothing like solid that you’re trying to get – it’s not like, “Oh, let me talk to you right now about getting this job right now.” No, it’s like, “Let’s have a conversation to explore and discover what might be possible in this industry or that industry.”

Then all of the sudden you’re free to really look rather than driven to make something happen. That creates a very different kind of conversation with people because they know when you’re trying to get something from them and you know and everything is constrained in those conversations, so it becomes a much more open space to create something than having to force something.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, thank you. Well, when you talk about conversations, you’re bringing back all kinds of memories here with Landmark and the conversations that we engaged in. I’d love to just dig into some of your take when it comes to communication skills, powerful conversations. What are most of us humans getting wrong when it comes to doing this in our daily lives?

Josselyne Herman
Well, I think mostly we react to things and then we’re on automatic and we really aren’t creating our responses. We’re reacting either from some imaginary threat or maybe a real threat, but most of the threats are imaginary or we’re trying to prove something, or produce a result and look good.

That gives us a quality of life that is very distinct from the kind of quality of life when you’re actually out here living life and dancing with whatever’s happening and just kind of free to be and free to act on whatever matters to you.

When people get triggered – I’ll just give an example from my actual life, so it’s not conceptual. Recently I noticed that in my office I was not looking forward to going to my office. That’s very odd for me because I love what I do. It was like I realized it was that the person who was working for me wasn’t doing what I expected them to do in the job and I wasn’t pleased with the way it was going.

I was pretending that it was all fine because I didn’t want to have to deal with hiring somebody new and training them. That was the truth of the matter, so I was just kind of functioning as if this was going to work out. But that was really a lie.

I knew it wasn’t working and I was just tolerating a mediocre work environment, which many of us do. We just kind of survive life. We don’t really live it. We survive it. We get through it.

I sat down with her and I said, “Listen, this is – my inauthentic way of being is that I’m pretending that this is working when it’s really not. These things are working, but there’s more things that aren’t working. It doesn’t seem like this is your future, like this is what you want to do because the way you’re being and acting isn’t really working in the job. You’re not doing what I hired you to do.

I have to micromanage you. It’s got to be horrible for you to have me on you like that. It’s not working for me either as your boss.”

I got into a kind of conversation with her and it became clear that she really wasn’t loving what she was doing and she really wanted to do something else. I said, “Great. Well, what do you want to do?” I asked her what she wanted. I really brainstormed with her on how could we set her up so that she could be doing that and I could find a replacement with somebody who actually wanted to do this job.

Within two weeks, I hired somebody else. She trained them and I got her another job. I negotiated her deal.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, that’s a way you can have win-win scenarios in communication. It doesn’t have to be like you end things on a bad note. You can really stand for people to have the life of their dreams, even if it’s not in your office.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Now that seems so – it seems like, but, of course. That just makes good sense. It’s not working for you. It’s not working for them, so let’s change it up and get it so it does work.

Josselyne Herman
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
But in practice most people don’t quite go there with that level of honesty and candor and I don’t know, vulnerability, all that stuff. What do you think gets in the way there?

Josselyne Herman
I think looking good, like we’re so driven to look good and be the – well, “I’m the boss and you’re the employee. You’re not doing good, so now you’ve got to fix it.” I don’t really look at things that way because I’m more interested in having things work than being right. I think a lot of people are driven by default to be right, make something wrong.

When you can’t make something work as a human being, if you can’t make your relationship work, you’ve got to make your partner wrong to justify why it’s not working. If you can’t make your office work, you’ve got to make your employees wrong or your boss wrong or the job wrong somehow to justify why you’re not really rocking it.

From my perspective that’s one of the biggest things is when people … that they have a loss of power in having things work around them or having things thrive around them, the default is to find a scapegoat of why, a reason why it’s not working. Then you’ve got to be right about that and justified about that.

That’s a killer. Forget about work, just look at – turn on the news. Look at what’s happening. This is our world. This is what it is to be a human being by default.

It really is like a new kind of person to be somebody who goes, “Okay, this isn’t working. Where am I not being straight or lying about something or pretending something?” Being responsible for how things are, not to blame, but you have a say in how it goes.

This isn’t like, “Oh, it’s just this person that’s just untrainable.” No, it’s like this isn’t working. There’s something we’re pretending when it’s not really that way. People do it in personal lives. They do it in business. They do it at the level of society, at the level of organization, at all levels.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really a powerful distinction there associated with being more interested in having things work than being right.

I’d like to dig in a little bit in terms of I guess sometimes when things don’t seem like they’re working it feels like an intractable fundamental thing. Let’s just go somewhere. Right now we’ve got a precious six-month-old baby at home.

Josselyne Herman
Oh lovely. Congratulations.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. He’s a joy and we love him. It’s so swell. But one thing that’s not working is us feeling vitalized, energized amidst the challenges that come when he doesn’t sleep so well. In some ways it’s like, hey, what’s not working is that it’s rare that both of us are rested and in a pleasant mood with each other

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, I get it. I have three kids. I’m right with you. I’ve been there. I’m glad I’m over it.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. We’re kind and respectful and not snippy, but it seems like some of those magic moments are hard to come by when there’s just sleep deprivation.

Now, in some ways it seems like, “Hey, that just kind of goes with the territory with a youngster,” but in another way it seems like it’s not working. I guess not to overly complicate things, but it seems like at times there are tradeoffs or sacrifices or kind of fundamental realities that can result in non-workingness, but I have a feeling you might challenge me here and open up something bigger.

Josselyne Herman
Well, I’m not going to challenge you. I would look at it as supporting you because one fundamental thing that we deal with at Landmark, and this is not just a Landmark thing, this is a life thing, is without integrity, nothing works. It doesn’t matter how great you are, how much you love each other.

Without integrity – and I don’t mean morality, I mean without all the spokes in your wheel – things don’t work. You can’t win the Tour de France if you don’t have the spokes in your wheel. Now if you have the spokes in your wheel, it doesn’t mean you’re going to win the Tour de France, but it’s required to have an environment that allows for workability and high performance.

Sleep is one of those spokes. When you don’t sleep sufficiently, whatever that is for you, everybody has a different number, it does impact your performance in life and your ability to be extraordinary is impacted if you’re not eating or you’re not sleeping or whatever those kind of fundamental spokes in your wheel of wellbeing.

Without integrity, you don’t have workability and high performance is out of sight. You can’t even see it from there.

From the perspective of being a new parent, one of the things you’d have to look at is what does it look like for integrity to be present in your wellbeing. How many hours – for each of you it may be different. You’ve got to discover yourself because there is no recipe, like my husband needs six. I need seven for that to be well. We look at how you do that when you have a young child that is waking up and validly so.

There are a lot of actions you can take to accomplish that. You can swap nights so that one night one person gets less sleep than the other and the other night – so that you always have a rested person.

You could also have – make requests of other people, like, “Will you take the baby for this night grandmother or grandfather?” I don’t know what your situation is or a friend where you leave and that other person comes in. Go swap apartments. Go to that other person’s house while they take care of the baby for that one night because one night a week, you restoring that kind of wellbeing makes a difference for you.

It could be a function of naps. It could be normally you would like to go to sleep at midnight because that’s what you like, but it really doesn’t work. You might have to start going to bed when the baby goes to bed so that you can get those hours in in those two to three hour stints.

Another thing is sleep training, which most people, they have a very specific view on that. But my view changed depending on my child. My last child I was finally like, “Cry your head off. I don’t care,” and he did and he slept great. He would go to sleep at eight; he would wake up at seven. I was like, “Oh my God, I have so much time.”

But that was not like that with my first child. I was up making sure she was breathing with the mirror half the night because your brain goes crazy. You’re like, “Oh my God, she’s crying. She made a noise. Let me go-“

There’s all sorts of actions you can take. But I would look at it from a perspective of integrity. It’s not – then you don’t have to kind of suffer. You can get what’s going to work. It’s not like, “Oh my God, I shouldn’t be upset about this.” No, no, no, you actually need a certain amount of hours, whatever that is. If you don’t get it all at once and you get three at a time, then swap, then you’ve got to do that so that you get whatever that six is.

Pete Mockaitis
So the themes here when you say integrity is just sort of work ability in your definition here, so it’s like we’ve got the stuff in play that just needs to be there in terms of the basic ingredients.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, the definition from – from our perspective integrity is being whole and complete. This case it has to do with your wellbeing. In a bicycle wheel analogy it’s all the spokes being there. If you’re not eating all day, that’s – your wellbeing is not whole and complete.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Then in this specific instance, once we got clear on what it takes to be whole and complete, we explored options and some of the breakthrough possibilities are I guess considering new angles that extend beyond maybe constraints we just took for granted.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah. Like I know I can hear everything. I used to be able to sleep through an elephant stampede through my room when I was younger, but when I had kids, all of the sudden I hear them breathing literally from like 100 feet away.

I can hear everything, so I had to use ear plugs on the nights I would be sleeping because I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I heard them. Even though my husband was happy to take the night, I – it wasn’t working, so I had to get the earplugs so that I could actually sleep during the time when I had somebody available for me to sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well that’s good. Thank you. We went deep on that, much appreciated.

Josselyne Herman
My pleasure. Listen, without sufficient sleep, you can become like a crazy person. I mean like literally it is required for you to have wellbeing. You must get sufficient sleep. If you get less than sufficient sleep for a couple nights in a row, it catches up with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. I feel you there. Shifting a little bit back to the workplace environment. What are your top suggestions for professionals trying to get some of these great positive relationships and productive conversation and outputs flowing from themselves and their colleagues?

Josselyne Herman
Well, I think communication is the biggest key because without being in open communication, it’s very hard to get anything done with a group of people. Through communication, you can work out anything, including moving somebody to another company.

It’s like, if you withhold communication, things get tense. If you don’t say things, things get constrained and pretty soon you’re just not satisfied or fulfilled at work because there’s a lack of flow of communication.

I think that would be the number one thing that I would say people should keep in front of them is “Okay, what do I need to communicate? What do they need to communicate,” and actually be able to listen to employees or your employer or your team about what their vision is and what they need to fulfill and what they see as matters to them because it’s not just like a machine to get your vision completed.

It’s like, “Okay, now is this working for you? What’s missing? What could we elevate? What do we need to put in so that things work better?” I do that weekly with my team.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Could you give us another example or a story to make it all come to life in terms of “Hey, before this was going on and then we communicated in this way and then after, here’s what happened?”

Josselyne Herman
Well, I can tell you just what I’m dealing with right now with my mother. My sister lives in a different state, so we don’t see each other that much. We’ve been dealing with this sort of remotely and I’m a little bit closer to it geographically.

When my father would tell me, “Oh, this is what’s happening with her.” I’d be like, “What do you mean?” Then I’d start reacting to what my father’s telling me. Meanwhile, I’m not even talking to my sister. I’m talking to my father about his version of what she’s say – it was all discombobulated.

Then I finally just got on the phone with my sister. I said, “I need to know that we’re on the same page here about what we’re doing with mom because it sounds like you want something else.” She’s like, “What do you mean?” I go, “Well, what do you want? What is it that you want for mom?”

Then she told me and that was completely different from what I was interpreting from what I was hearing her and my father talk about. Then I said, “Okay, well here’s what I want.” Then we said, “Okay, well, let’s look at how we can accomplish this.” It became very, very similar what we wanted but we were in a story that we wanted different things.

She thought I wanted to take her out of this rehab center immediately. I thought she wanted to leave her there for a month. It was like just two ships passing in the night and not even making contact.

As soon as we … communication and made it real in our conversation and found out what was going on for each person, then we could get in collaboration to accomplish what we’re really committed to, which is my mother being well. That’s all we both want.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. So the hang up there is rather than just going there in conversation, “What do you want? What do I want?” is just sort of like assumptions and stories that we’re inventing about other people.

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, and most of our assumptions don’t show up for us as assumptions. They show up for us as the truth. We don’t think we’re assuming because we’re like, “Well this is what they are. This is what they want. This is how they are,” rather than actually getting in communication to discover what somebody wants or who they are and what their dreams are or what their vision is or what their goals are.

We assume, well we know this is what they want. They don’t have to tell us. We know a lot, but knowing doesn’t translate to being. The work of Landmark is all about accessing being.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, thank you. Well, Josselyne, tell me, anything you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Josselyne Herman
Make sure you schedule a date night.

Pete Mockaitis
Noted. Thank you.

Josselyne Herman
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Josselyne Herman
Gandhi, that’s one of my favorite quotes is “Be the change you wish to see.” But Willy Wonka is my other favorite, which is, “We are the dreamer of dreams.” That is one of my favorite quotes. I love that movie.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. How about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Josselyne Herman
There’s a book called Black Box Thinking, which is very powerful, which has people look at failures and look at what was missing rather than living in a story that they’re a failure and able to then impact their performance and elevate their performance in that area. I think that’s a very powerful way of looking at life.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Josselyne Herman
Taking a hot shower at the end of the day to complete the day and just kind of shut down.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you mean at the end of the day like right before bed or the end of the workday?

Josselyne Herman
Yeah, right before bed.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you.

Josselyne Herman
It actually, physiologically shuts your body down and has it ready for sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
Is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people and they quote it back to you?

Josselyne Herman
Yes, yeah. Well, being unmessable with is sort of my little phrase that I’ve coined and started a campaign around to try and get that in the dictionary, but that’s – people know me for being unmessable with and being a Barry Manilow fan. I know. I admit it. I’m not ashamed.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got it. Josselyne, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Josselyne Herman
LandmarkWorldwide.com is the website for Landmark. There’s tons of videos and articles. I’m in many of them or the interview is conducted … them, but all of their forum leaders and really powerful tools for people who are committed to living an extraordinary life.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Josselyne Herman
Well, I would say don’t wait until someday. There’s no such thing. This is it. This is your life. If you’re not fulfilled and satisfied, take on living life now because it’s not going to happen any other time. This is it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well Josselyne, thanks so much for this. This was a fun little blast in the past for me, remembering some Landmark goodness. I wish you and Landmark all the best in what you’re up to.

Josselyne Herman
Thank you so much Pete and to you too. Again, treasure that family, but make sure you get a date night.

Pete Mockaitis
Got it.

Josselyne Herman
Okay. All right. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Apr 23
0

290: How to Make the Impossible Happen with Steve Sims

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Steve Sims says: "Most people don't do things not for the fear of failure, but for the fear of being laughed at."

Bluefish founder Steve Sims shares the approaches that enable him to create legendary experiences for his exclusive clientele.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How Steve got the Pope to drop by and bless his client’s wedding
  2. The magic question that unleashes possibilities
  3. How relationships are like oak trees

About Steve

Steve Sims is is the visionary founder of Bluefish: the world¹s first luxury concierge company that delivers the highest level of personalized travel, transportation, and cutting-edge entertainment services to corporate executives, celebrities, professional athletes, and other discerning individuals interested in living life to its fullest. He has been invited to speak to MBA students at Harvard (twice), has spoken at the Pentagon, and has been featured in major media all around the world: From The Sunday Times and China Post, to The Wall Street Journal. You can learn more at stevedsims.com.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Steve Sims Interview Transcript

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

Steve Sims
It’s a pleasure to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve got so many interesting tales with your clients and extraordinary experiences that folks have had. I was most intrigued if I could hear the tale behind how you got a client to get married in the Vatican by the Pope.

Steve Sims
Yeah. I get some strange ones.

I had a client that just said he only planned on getting married once and he wanted to do it at the top-shelf level. I asked him – I actually flew into Europe and I asked, “What does that mean?” and he went, “I’d love to get married in the Vatican.” We then had to do it.

Bottom line of it is we had no idea what we were doing. In fact I will whole heartedly say that I have no idea what I’m doing 90% of the time. I just make steps to find what needs to be done quickly and in this situation I knew some powerful people in Europe, I knew some powerful people in Italy, so I just started reaching out.

I went out shaking the bush to find out if anyone had any leads, spoke to a very important family in Florence. I said to them, “Look, I want to do this in the Vatican, but like everything I do, I want to see if I can push it further. I want to see how far I can do it.” They said, “Well, what you need is you need someone to introduce you.”

Believe it or not, it’s very, very, very cheap to get married in the Vatican, but you have to have someone allow you to do it and that’s the problem. Along the way of getting people to allow you to do it, those are the people that cost the money.

It’s like most things. You want to go down in the Formula One race in Monaco with Ferrari, the tickets literally say on them one Euro, but you can spend thousands upon tens of thousands to get those tickets. The Oscars have zero price on them, but they’re very expensive if people sell them on. It’s usually the people that get you the ability to have a yes that are more expensive than the venue itself.

I spoke to these people in Florence. They said, “We know some people who know some people,” and we started on the ladder of getting in.

As soon as we knew we had the opportunity for the Vatican, we wanted to find out what chapel we could use. As soon as they show you what chapel we can use, you push it and you go, “Is there another? Is there an alternative we could look?” You just push it and push it until you basically in the end of the road and you get the best possible chapel.

“Well, this would be fantastic. I have to approach this subject and it may sound silly, but what are the opportunities of-“this is a better way of putting it, “What needs to happen in order for the Pope to actually do the ceremony himself?”

You learn the lesson very quickly in my job, never ask a question that they can answer yes or no to, unless that’s the answer you want. No is the easiest word in the planet. Every language in the world can say no. It’s short, easy, and nine times out of ten, the knee-jerk reaction for every question you ask that’s even slightly out of the realm of normality. Don’t ask a question where they can give a gut response with no.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well, I’m on the edge of my seat. You said, “What has to happen?” what did you hear? What happened?

Steve Sims
It was kind of “Well, you need to get permission.” I went back, asking people, “How do I get permission?” Then you had to do the walk of the Vatican. You had to visit the certain areas of the Vatican to make sure it could happen.

Then the chapel was chosen, the ceremony commenced, halfway through the ceremony, the Pope walks in and blesses them mid-ceremony and then leaves. The funny thing is, no photography was allowed for the event.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Intriguing. What were the steps that led to the Pope getting the message? By the way, which pope?

Steve Sims
Francis, the current one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the current pope. Okay, cool. Pope Francis, how does he get the memo and how is he inclined to say yes?

Steve Sims
Well, I’m a great believer in two things. No one ever got on the roof without climbing a ladder. I literally will have everyone be a rung of that ladder to get me to where I want to go. As we all know, ladders start at the bottom, which is one step.

I’m using that analogy to make it simple so people realize very quickly, if they haven’t already, there’s no super intelligence on the other side of this podcast. It’s just real – it’s an I can over an IQ. I won’t allow the fact that it’s never been done before to be of any significance to the conversation whatsoever.

I will ask someone that knows more than me, “How would you go about it? What would need to happen you would perceive for this to happen? How would you go about this step?” You ask five people that and you usually find they’ll be a commonality between say two or three of the answers.

Then you go, “Oh, can you help me? Can you introduce me to that person?” If I go in cold, they’re going to go, “Well, who are you?” I want to avoid all that conversation. “Can you contact them as someone that knows me and goes, ‘Steve Sims, startlingly good looking man, perfect face for podcast, can you help him?’”

Nine times out of ten I get other people to introduce me to that person and in fact I would say it’s probably my secret sauce, that way allows more people when I reach out to them they go, “Bobby was telling me that you sent people down to the Titanic and you do this for your own job. How can I help you?” You go, “Glad you asked that question. This is what I’m looking for.”

Sometimes you’ll get, “No, I used to be part of that, but I can’t now.” You go, “Fair enough, I appreciate it.” You may even turn around and go look, “You’re not involved in that now, but if I ever find something that would still be in your circle of influence, do you mind if I come back to you?”

Remember the relationship you make today, may not be one that can be utilized for two, three, four, ten years. But if you look at it for a quick gain, those are usually the weakest relationships. Always be open to see where doors open and keep those doors open.

I just literally got ahold of people that can make the right phone calls, make the right whisper in the ear. When I asked the Vatican to make the question, while they were doing that, I went to other people so that he would get the same request from about four different angles of credibility and respect so that I would be within that same model.

They say credibility by association, if I’ve got five people that you respect telling you I’m brilliant, then I’m going to be credible before you’ve ever spoken to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I guess I’m wondering, with the message, there wasn’t any sort of magic in it as opposed to – or brilliance in terms of the offer, like, “Hey, Pope Francis, I know you’re big on mercy and the joy of the Gospel and forming missionary disciples and if you go here-“ there’s none of that, it’s just people making the introduction, right?

Steve Sims
Exactly. A lot of the time – it’s hard for me – I may know what you have an interest in, especially when you’re working with a certain level. We can brushstroke this with major celebrities, business icons from Elon Musk to Pope Francis. When you’re up in that level, the easiest way for you to get a no, is to contact these people and go, “Hey, how much is it going to cost me?” Money-

Pete Mockaitis
Right. It almost kind of cheapens it, like, “Oh, he is not for sale, Steve. How dare you?”

Steve Sims
Oh, you can guarantee you’re kicked off the line in a heartbeat.  You need to do your homework. You need to either go in there.

In the situation in the Vatican, which is still one of the wealthiest cities in the world, the Vatican itself, and as a country, designate a self-governed country, but the bank of the Vatican is one of the wealthiest banks in the world.

You can’t go there and go. “Hey, I’ll make this payment. I’ll wire the-” They don’t care. You’ve got to go in there and either find something they want or find someone they’ll do it for. I have no idea what my people have done to have the respect that they did from the Vatican, but I made sure that the people asking the question had the ears and the attention of the people they were asking.

I’ll do that with anyone. If I need to get ahold of Richard Branson, Elon Musk, any of these people, I will make sure that the people that I’m talking with have that credibility and respect in the sandpit that when they reach out, they are listened to.

Now, during that I need to come up with what’s the win here. It’s very much easier with everyone else other than the Pope. But I may find out that they’ve got a book coming out, they’ve got a project coming out, they support a local school, they support a local cause, they’re big on a certain gala in their hometown.

You can research things and go, “Hey, I believe you’re part of this such and such gala once a year in Dallas, Texas.” They can go, “Oh, yeah.” “This is what I’d like to do. You know I want something, but I’m going to tell you quickly what I can do for you. I can help promote that. I can help sell out half the arena. Would that be of interest?” Give them a win-win quickly that shows you’ve done a bit of homework.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Thanks for taking us through that pathway.

Maybe we need to back up a smidge. Could you give me a little bit of context? You’ve got a company Bluefish and a book that talks about a bit of your escapades with that company called Bluefishing. What’s the background story here?

Steve Sims
As we’ve already said, if any – I doubt by now anyone listening to this has thought that I’m a genius. That’s good. I’m a bricklayer from East London that went from working on the door to becoming a concierge for not the rich and famous, but the richer and unknown throughout the globe.

I’m a big deal in probably the top 3% of the world. But my website doesn’t even have a phone number on it. There’s no way of contacting me unless you know someone who knows me.

Pete Mockaitis
I feel cool just talking to you now. “Oh, how did Pete do it?”

Steve Sims
Oh, there you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve just got to know people who respect Steve Sims. That’s what it’s about.

Steve Sims
Yeah, you know people who know people.

It just grew. Then a couple of years ago Simon & Schuster asked me if I would do a book. I’ve been offered to do a book. I’ve been in the media many, many years. We’re about 23 years old now, so we’ve been in every kind of publication worldwide you can think of, but we never wanted to do a book exposing the clients.

But this time they actually said to me, “No, no, no, we don’t want you talking about what you do for your clients. We want to know how you do it. How do you build up relationships? How do you create a win-win? How do you consult luxury brands and solopreneurs with the same passion and detail.”

It was a great opportunity at the ripe old youthful age of 51 to just go, “I’m going to talk about a bricklayer, how he gets to do this with Elon Musk and the steps it takes to create an irresistible relationship and how to solidify a message to be completely transparent, to be impossible to misunderstand.”

All of those elements, because I’m a great believer that you can download an app now for everything, from how to wash your T-shirt to how to speak in Chinese, how to calculate the weight of a bridge based on a scan from a picture. You can get an app for anything now, but you still cannot get an app that will teach you how to communicate one human to another human.

People have actually called me a master communicator. I am not a gifted or master communicator. I am actually not a very good communicator at all, but I am looking exceptional because of how bad everyone else is getting at it.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, well that’s a nice frame. Let’s hear it. We’ve heard a couple of the perspectives. Could you share a few more in terms of the core principles and favorite tactics?

Steve Sims
Do your research. If there’s someone that you really want to speak – I’m a great believer that it’s positioning. Everything in life is positioning.

If there’s someone that you want to meet, whether it be romantically, business-wise, mentorship… whatever, but if it’s someone significant enough that you want to get into a relationship with that person, that’s the key. I’m not on about getting a selfie outside a bar at 12:00 at night in Hollywood. I’m on about a relationship. If you want to get a relationship with someone, do your homework.

The internet has given us the ability for you to be able to Google anyone. It could be the principal of your local school, it could be the real estate developer on a new project, it could be the Pope himself.
You can Google what they’re interested in, where they’re seen, what they’re behind, what they support.

And then in doing so, you can actually make sure that now that you’ve seen that they go to a lot of horse events and that they have a great love of equestrian, you can start hanging out in those circles.

Then when you see them, you can make sure you go to the bar or you go to the restaurant, you sidle up next to them, and as you’re doing something you can go, “Hey, listen. That’s a nice watch. Oh, you’re so and so. Didn’t I hear somewhere that you’re a collector of watches?” Drop a nugget in. There’s nothing easier to get someone talking than when they’re talking about themselves or something they love, which in some cases is the same thing.

If you can get them talking about or say, “Hey, I saw you in a magazine and you were with a Porsche. Why do you like vintage Porsches? I saw you were doing something with this vineyard. I like whiskey. Why do you like wine?”

It’s going to be for two seconds while we’re getting a drink. Just do something like that to get them. It shows a commonality. It shows that you’re actually being completely open. You’re not trying to go, “Oh, I didn’t recognize. Oh I didn’t know who you were.” Don’t be an idiot. You stood there. You’re talking to the guy. They probably think that you’re sniffing around in any case, so say to them, “Oh, you’re so-and-so.”

Be very transparent but be entertaining. I’m a great believer in all communication has to have the three E’s. You have to be engaging. You have to be educational. You have to entertaining. If you can have those three, in any communication, whether it be a podcast or chatting up a person at the bar, if you’ve got those three things in there, then you’re going to do well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very nice. In the book you lay out a few particular elements such as the password. Could you unpack that a little bit in terms of what do you mean by password and then how do we get it?

Steve Sims
Yeah, this was a huge intelligent idea of ours. We started throwing parties in Hong Kong, me and this fellow meathead that I worked on the door with. We invited rich people to come to them because guess what? Poor people can’t afford to. Quite simply I invited rich people because I could make money out of rich people.

I thought to myself, but I don’t want to be inviting problems to the club. I don’t want some arrogant git turning up at the door and demeaning everyone and being disrespectful.

What we did was we came up with this really silly, and it is silly, little principle, this little game. What we would do, and this is back in the ‘90s, the age of the fax. We would fax them where the location of the bar was, what time the party started and the password.

What we thought was if you’re humble and solid enough, confident enough to quote a silly phrase, that’s the person we want. We want the people that are up for a laugh. We don’t want the arrogant person turn up going, “I’m on the list. Let me in. You’re wasting my time.” I want the people that are there for a bit of a giggle.

We used to make up the stupidest passwords. We had finish this sentence, ‘One fish, two fish, red fish …’ so people would walk up to us and go, “Blue fish,” and we’d let them in. That’s where the company name came from. That’s how deep we are. It literally came from a password that we used repetitively.

But we would also come up with one and say to people, “Name two of the Telletubbies.” You’d have the head of an airline come up to you or the owner of a bank and go, “Tinky-Winky, Po,” and we’d say, “In you go. Enjoy your night.” It was just a really good way.

We got people turning up going, “Oh, I don’t know the password. Let me in.” We’d stand there and we’d be like, “There’s no party here, mate. No, no. Sorry, you must be in the wrong place.” The whole party is going off behind us. There’s people in a line and we would just dismiss them and get rid of them. Then the next person would step in and go, “Tinky-Winky.” We’d go, “In you go. Enjoy yourself.”

We noticed that if we had a password, if we had a hurdle, if we had something that you had to do, even if it made you slightly uncomfortable, you were more committed and loyal once you were on the other side of it.

We’ve had passwords for many of our events. I’ve worked with Sir Elton John at his Oscar party every year. We have a pre-party on a Friday. We use the exact same thing. We have a password.

We got these people from all over the world in black ties and ball gowns that have paid a serious amount of money, a small car, to go to one of my events, and they’re not getting in the door still unless they’re humble enough to come and say this funny password and we let them in. It’s all a state of mind and a position.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fascinating. This reminds me. I had a client who will remain nameless. He was a psychiatry student. He would have parties in which at the front of the door, he would have a handful of pills and we would say, “Well, you’ve got to take one of the pills to come into the party.” Folks were like, “Uh, no thanks,” would go away verse the person who did were, they’re like, “This is an adventurous, bold person. That’s what we’re going here for.”

Now all of the pills were placebos and that could probably get him in some trouble with the review board, so he’ll remain nameless. But it has a similar effect for good or for evil.

Steve Sims
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Of the filtration there.

Steve Sims

Yeah, I’m a great believer on the filter. Even when we get people actually try and join any of my groups, like I have a very successful consulting practice. I interview every single person that I’m going to consult before I go into a consultation. I want to make sure it’s the right fit.

As I openly say, and I don’t want to offend anyone, “Assholes don’t get better with time,” so if you take someone into your company, even if you take them on board as a client, if they’re a dickhead when they come into your company, they’re only going to become a bigger dickhead during the company. Try to be careful of the people you take into your group, into your circle, into your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, very nice. Well, there’s a few more elements I want to make sure to cover. You talked about making yourself impossible to misunderstand. What does that look like in practice and how do people screw that up?

Steve Sims
There’s this word at the moment going around that I absolutely despise called authenticity. People go, “Oh, he’s so authentic.” That’s ridiculous. It’s like looking at someone and go, “Oh, he’s bleeding. He’s walking.” It should be something that we take for granted and we don’t draw focus to. But now authenticity, because we live in an insta-perfect life, authenticity is something we strive to find.

I’m a great believer in something called transparency.

I’m also a great believer that my stomach is far smarter than my head, so when you meet someone you look at the suit. Whether or not you think you do, you do. You look at the car, you look at the key ring, you look at the jewelry, you look at the watch, the shoes, the belt.

You look at the whole makeup of that person, even if it’s in nanoseconds and you look at that person to judge friend or foe, can I trust them, is this someone I want to hang around with, and that’s your mental perspective.

Then your stomach gets those little butterflies. The guy is talking a bit too much here and I’m not quite sure I believe what he’s saying. You get those little butterflies. I’m a great believer that forget your head, forget the visuals, if you’ve got butterflies, move away. Get away from someone.

I’m a great believer in talking to people, trying to use transparency in the communication. The easiest way to do that is to be – and I’m going to quote a sentence here from Brian Kurtz and Joe Polish, ‘There’s a difference between being easy to understand and impossible to misunderstand.’

If I’m speaking with someone and I say something along the lines of, “Hey, Pete, I’ve heard about your show. It sounds like a fantastic show. I don’t know too much about it,” don’t lie, “I don’t know too much about it, but I’ve had enough people tell me that I should chat with you in order to be on your show. Is that something that you’re open to pursuing?” Be as blunt and as bold as that.

Don’t go up and go, “Oh, Pete, I’m your greatest fan. What’s the chances, if you don’t mind, if it wouldn’t be an inconvenience.” That’s all fluff. I want to be crystal clear.

When I go up to iconic people that I’ve just started working with or I want to work with. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been at a party and I know someone has contacted someone else and introduced me, but I haven’t yet been able to speak to them.

I’ll go up to them and I’ll go, “Are you Roger-” and they go, “Yes, I am.” “My name is Steve Sims. I believe someone has already reached out to you. If it’s of interest to you, I look forward to making communication with you. But I just wanted to say I’m here. I’m actually going to go over and grab a drink if you’ve got the time, would you like to join me, if not, we’ll talk another time.”

Just keep things real, bold, and direct, and don’t waste the time. You’ll be surprised that when you’re that polite and very transparent, I’ve never had anyone go, “I’ll get back to you.” I’ve always, when I’ve approached it like that, I’ve had them go, “Well, I need a drink. Yeah, let’s just grab a drink together.” “Okay, fine.” Then we’ve gone over and we’ve ended up having a conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Yeah.

Steve Sims
That’s the key. Whenever you get into any relationship, you’ve got to look at the relationship and go, “Look, is this a fad or is this an oak tree.”

I look at every relationship with those two questions. Is this person here to help me with this project or is this someone that I want to grow a relationship with. I can know a cool catering company in say Paraguay and know that more likely I’m not going to be there again and I can go, “Thank you so much. It’s been wonderful,” but there may not be any need to invest any further in that relationship.

Then there will be someone I meet that I’d go, “Hey, I really want to be-“ that’s when I look at them as an oak tree.

When I say an oak tree, an oak tree starts off as a little seed. It can be stamped on. It can be crushed. It can die of starvation. To become an oak tree, you have to water it, nurture it, prune it, protect it. So the time that it’s a 300-year-old oak tree and you can run a bus into it and it will still be standing. That’s a relationship.

Relationships are not by sending someone a Christmas card every year. You’ve got to prune them. You’ve got to massage them. You’ve got to feed them. You’ve got to protect them. You’ve got to put energy into anything worth its weight in gold. That’s why I say, when you meet someone, is this a fad or is this an oak tree. That’s how I look at every relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that perspective. As you relay that scenario in which you’re interacting with someone who is high status or influential or super busy or maybe annoyed that you’re approaching them, you have got a turn or a phrase about getting comfortable being uncomfortable. How’s that done in practice?

Steve Sims
Well, as I said to you in the beginning, I don’t know 90% of what I’m doing. I’ve had people ask me to close down museums and have Andrea Bocelli serenade them. I’ve asked people – asked me to send them down to the Titanic. Where do you start? The same as everything, you start at the beginning.

There was a period in my life where I was starting to do more and more of this stuff that I would sit there and almost do a little jingle on the spot and go, “Oh my God, what am I going to do now?” My insides, my little leprechaun is just dancing around going, “Whoa, what’s going to happen? I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

But then I suddenly got used to the fact that most people don’t know what to do. I got comfortable with hang on a minute, why don’t I ask people. “Do you have any idea what would need to happen in order for this to happen? Have you ever done anything like this and if so, what can I do to emulate it?”

I started asking questions. I found the more that I ventured out – it’s the classic elastic band – the more you stretch, you never go back to your original shape. I’ve been uncomfortable many, many, many times.

And my dad actually – and it’s in my book – my dad actually said to me many years ago and it’s probably one of my fondest quotes. At the age of 16 I had no idea, like all kids, no idea what my dad was talking about. I remember my dad just looking at me one day and just going, “Son, no one ever drowned by falling in the water, they drowned by staying there,” and then he walked off.

I remember at the age of 16 going, “What the bloody hell was that about?” It hasn’t been until my later years that I realized that if you’re not getting the answer you want, try a different question or try the same question with a different person, but if you keep trying to do the exact same thing you’re doing and you keep getting the same result that you’re getting, that’s where you’re going to drown.

Pete Mockaitis
You talk about asking three times. What’s the thought process there?

Steve Sims
Yeah, a lot of people, they will come to me. They will see me in the newspaper. They will read a book. They will see me on speaking gigs and they want to do something, but there’s a great deal of humiliation that stops most people actually getting to do what they want to do.

They will come to me, they may want to do something big and grand, but they’re actually scared of humiliation. In fact, most people don’t do things not for the fear of failure, but for the fear of being laughed at.

People come to me and they go, “Oh, I’d really like to just shake the hand of – I’d really like to meet-“ they want to do more than that, but they’re scared of it. You just go, “All right,” and you just let them talk. Then you go, “All right, why do you want to do that?” Literally just ask why and shut up.

Then they will go, “Oh, well, you know, this happened in my life and this happened and they were there and it supported me. I just felt that that would be a good chance to-“ “So there’s quite a bit of meaning to it. It’s not just a quick thought you’ve come up with.” “Oh no, no, no. I’ve had this dream for a while.”

“Okay, so you’re telling me that you’ve had this dream for a while, but you shaking their hands, is that really going to be the crescendo to the end of this movie? Is that going to be case closed, end of chapter? Would that really be significant? Is there something that we could do that would really get you excited and basically wake you up at 2 o’clock in the morning going ‘Holy hell, I can’t believe I did that.’?”

Each time you ask, you start to unlock them a little bit more and you get closer and closer. In the end, you’re prodding the …. When you’re there, you actually can just play with it and find out.

If someone’s really passionate about something, I hate to say it, but they’ll sell their first born to get it. Really dive in to what’s important to them. Never take the first answer because what people say and what they mean quite often are two different things. If it’s about the fantastical and the whimsical and the passion, nine times out of ten, they’re too shy to really expose to you what it is in case you’ll laugh at them.

And you know what I look like. I’m a big ugly fellow. A lot of people now openly tell me what they like because they know the amount of people I work with and they know how credible I am at doing what I do. But a lot of people for many years were very cautious and scared and apprehensive about basically what is unveiling yourself to expose what you’re really excited about.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful, particularly early on. “I just met you,” in terms of there’s a certain level of vulnerability or exposure that is just uncomfortable for folks so they don’t quite go there.

Steve Sims
Yes, yes, exactly. You’re right. You’ve got to help them. You’ve got to ask the questions. “Is this going to do it? Why do you want to do that? Hey, I’m here for you. Let me in. Tell me why you’re stood here in front”

I’ve had people they’ve had the whiskeys at night. They texted me at 1 o’clock in the morning or phoned me, left a message. “Steve, I want to talk to you about doing this because I really want to do it.”

Then when you speak to them in the morning, the drinks worn off and they’re a little bit more embarrassed about actually fully exposing it, which to be honest with you also is great news for me because it makes me look like a rock star when I’ve exceeded what you’ve first asked for.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Steve, tell me anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Steve Sims
No, I just want people to get out of their own way. Basically, get that saying that I said about drowning in the water, write it down on a piece of paper, and don’t be one of those people that drown by staring at things too much. Just keep moving. But nope, let’s continue with the podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
All right then. Tell me, can you share a favorite quote and maybe you already did, something that you find inspiring?

Steve Sims
That one was probably one of my most favorite. One of mine that I probably use most regular is I ask myself whenever I’m doing anything that’s copy or writing, ‘Is this impossible to misunderstand?’ I use that one. That’s more of a working quote that I use to myself a thousand times a day whenever I write to someone. Is my message to them impossible to misunderstand?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thanks. How about a favorite book?

Steve Sims
What? Apart from mine? I’m actually a funny reader. I don’t – books aggravate the hell out of me. Joe Polish sends me a load of books. I get very aggravated because as he says aggravated oysters makes pearls.

When I’m reading a motivational book by like Ryan Holiday or Tucker Max or Cameron Herold, or any of these people, Tim Ferriss. I get aggravated because I’m like, “Oh, I’ve got to do that. I’ve got to make some notes.” I find myself getting agitated.

So when I do like to read, I like to escape. I really like the Dragon Tattoo books, the trilogy that they did. I really like anything by Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I like to escape my world when I read. Otherwise, I’ll audiobook any of the ones I know I’m going to be aggregated by.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Steve Sims
I’m actually talking to you from the garage of my motorcycles. I collect motorcycles. My favorite tool is to jump on two wheels and escape. That’s my safe zone.

When you’re on a bike, when you’re playing golf, when you’re waterskiing, when you’re doing kickboxing, when you’re doing yoga, you can’t be thinking about anything else. That’s my meditation. That’s my escape. My favorite tool is two wheels going around the canyons.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Any other favorite habits?

Steve Sims
Whiskey, hugging my wife and barbequing badly.

Pete Mockaitis
Got you. Tell me is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people when you are hearing your message?

Steve Sims
Yeah, I’m a great believer, and this is usually my consultant gigs and my speaking, I’m a great believer in keeping things ugly. We’ve become too Photoshopped and we’re living in an insta-perfect world all the time.

Every time you see anything, you look at someone and you suddenly realize that the girl’s actually 12 foot tall and the legs are 9 foot. We’ve got used to seeing things that aren’t real anymore.

You’ll look at a real estate advert and you’ll see a beautiful apartment building and the apartment building just happens to have left out all the other buildings around it and shown this big sunset and a picture of the ocean in it and it’s in Minneapolis or Chicago. It’s not even near the ocean.

You can’t trust what you can see nowadays. I’m a great believer in #filterfree. Don’t filter stuff.

If you want to write something, try handwriting it. Instead of typing the letter, handwrite the letter.  A minimum, handwrite the envelope. Use text more. Use video texting more. But do things that expose you and your full content, not just shouting and yelling the message.

I once had a guy yell at me because he had texted me or messaged me on Twitter and I hadn’t responded. That’s not communication. Communication is two people in front of each other going, “This, this.” It’s a back and forth, back and forth. It’s not throwing a message out there and hoping someone responds.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Steve Sims
My terminology with that is keep things ugly, raw, and real.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And do you have a particular place you point people to if they want to learn more or get in touch?

Steve Sims
I’ve got a website with all my ramblings and rants called SteveDSims, S-I-M-S, that’s SteveDSims.com.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge, a call to action for folks who are seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Steve Sims
Yeah, do something that arouses you. I want you to something that you haven’t done that just excites you and just kind of like would make you wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning going, “Holy hell, I did that today,” and do it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, Steve, thank you so much for sharing this. It’s exciting, opening a world of new ideas and possibilities and boldness. It’s been a lot of fun and I wish you and Bluefish tons of luck.

Steve Sims
Thanks pal, appreciate it.

Dec 04
0

237: Crafting Memorable Stories with Dr. Carmen Simon

By | Podcasts | One Comment

 

Carmen Simon says: "As a communicator, you're a choreographer of your audience's expectations."

Carmen Simon shows how to become impossible to ignore by integrating the right components to influence our audience’s minds.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The three components of a good story
  2. Why causation in a story can be both sexy and tricky at the same time
  3. Why relatable emotions are more important than strong emotions

About Carmen 

Dr. Carmen Simon is a Cognitive Neuroscientist and Founder of Memzy. She has applied the latest neuroscience research findings to deliver workshops, design, and consulting services. Carmen is a published author and a frequent keynote speaker at conferences in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia. She holds doctorates in instructional technology and cognitive psychology, and uses her knowledge to offer business professionals a flashlight and a magnet: one to call attention to what’s important in a message, the other to make it stick to the audience’s brain so they can act on it. Carmen’s brain science coaching helps business professionals motivate listeners and stand out from too much sameness in the industry.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Dr. Carmen Simon Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Carmen, welcome back to the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Carmen Simon
Thank you. Thank you so much and welcome back, everyone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so fun. There’s only been about three guests who have done, well, exactly three, I believe, who have made a repeat appearance, so welcome. It’s cool to have you in the club here.

Carmen Simon
Thank you so much. And, you know, repetition is the mother of memory so repeated exposure with yet some statements that people remember.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is well-played. You know, Skype just informed me that your birthday is on New Year’s Day.

Carmen Simon
Oh, I wonder how it got that information. No, it’s actually equally cool birthday. I’m a Halloween baby.

Pete Mockaitis
No kidding? Well, maybe you just set said, “Forget this, Skype. I’m not telling you my birthday. I’m filling in, oh, 1-01.”

Carmen Simon
Yes, it’s relinking this with the concept of memory. False memories are very much of a cautionary topic for all of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was intrigued because our baby, the due date is January 1.

Carmen Simon
Oh, there you go. Always at the crossroads for new beginnings. That’s nice.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I guess you’ll be unlikely to share a birthday with our child, but you’re still close in our hearts. It’s so sweet of you to ask for our wedding photo, and I sent you one very belatedly as well. I’ll follow with my thank you notes which is very belated.

Carmen Simon
Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you and congratulations. Once again what beautiful pictures.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And I just learned that you were once an interpreter at the UN. Can you tell us a bit about that experience, that story?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, what a great job to run the nest on. It wasn’t the Nicole Kidman type but operating in similar environments. So, at the time there was the Bosnia war going if you imagine. Remember the embargo that was placed over Bosnia, so the group that I was assigned to was constantly monitoring those borders and we would constantly do these Danube patrols and I got to work with a lot of CIA and FBI agents.

It was an intriguing part of my life. What I retained from it, speaking of memory, is that when memory is concerned, culture plays such a huge role because all of us have such different mental models through which we process our reality. So, I’m sure that all of our listeners have a different mental model as to how you use to spend your Christmases since we’re talking about Christmas before our show. And what your Christmas used to look like was very different than mine.

What’s a traditional Christmas for you, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, well, midnight mass which is actually like at 10 p.m. or so and snickerdoodle cookies.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, there you go. So, if we’re doing the show to impart with our audience some practical guidelines on how to stay on other people’s memory which is the center of my research, what I remember from my interpreter days is that it was much easier to translate and be able to stay accurate to those people’s memories the more that I understood their mental models, so to the extent that I got to be in somebody’s shoes from Germany, or somebody’s shoes from Romania, or somebody’s shoes from France. The translation and the accuracy of those memories was much sharper.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, which languages were you interpreting?

Carmen Simon
I was interpreting English and French. Now, remember my roots go back to Romania so that’s another language that would belong in there. I could play in some Italian in the good old days so those were the languages that were operated back then at the borders.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s impressive. To have those languages, another feather in your cap as memory expert.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, it’s very humbling because as I reflect on what makes something memorable, sensory stimulation is definitely one of the variables that you can use to stay on people’s minds. And when you translate something you can stay on the surface or you can go a little bit deeper in order to understand what you’re talking about. And I’m noticing that a lot of people forget things simply because we do stay on the surface all the time.

I’m working on some presentations with some executives just this week, and they’re asking me to create slides for them that express things like business optimization or an improved sales model. And unless you’re getting to those people’s shoes, very much like what we’re doing back then in our interpreting days for France or for England or for Germany, it’s very difficult to come up with something that is fresh and stimulating our senses.

Because if you just go to, let’s just say, stock photos and you type in sales optimization, what do you get? Yeah, you’d get those arrows pointing up and people shaking hands because a new deal has been closed. But how memorable are those?

Pete Mockaitis
Now I’m thinking of people dressed up in their business formal wear and suits just like sprinting around a racetrack. I don’t know.

Carmen Simon
Oh, they go from the racetrack to the top of the mountains, I’m sure you’ve seen those.

Pete Mockaitis
They’re not dressed right.

Carmen Simon
And a blank computer screen and just getting very excited, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, so since we last spoke you started your own company, you’ve gone solo. It’s kind of like Justin Bieber or something, out of NSYNC. You got your own company now, it’s MEMZY. And what’s MEMZY all about?

Carmen Simon
MEMZY is all about using brain science research to help organizations create memorable content. So, if somebody is reflecting on their own messages, and they’re thinking, “Boy, we’re going to have a hard time expressing this and staying on people’s minds,” then it’s very useful to look at evidence-based guidelines to see what you can do in a more precise kind of way.

Because surely you may have some techniques that you’re using right now to create something that’s memorable. But are you sure that those render dividends or is it are you using those techniques simply because they may have worked in the past?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing. Intriguing. Well, now we’re back in Episode 11, if folks want to check out the original conversation that we had, and so there might be a couple things repeated, which is just fine for memory as you’ve made clear, but I also kind of want to chart a little bit of new territory. So, I understand that you’ve got some recent research about what it is within stories that make them more memorable than perhaps other stories.

Carmen Simon
I do. I just got so tired of hearing people saying, “Stories are memorable all the time.” Like whenever people talk about memory, and you tell them, “Hey, it’s good to make something memorable,” they immediately say, “Shouldn’t you share a story?” And, of course, the intuitive answer is, “Yes, definitely share a story.” But just because you do don’t think that that story will always be memorable or always be memorable long term.

So, through the research I did just that, I invited some people to first submit a series of stories, and I asked them to complete the sentence, “I will never forget,” and then fill in the blank. And some people went on for a few paragraphs, and some people went on for longer, some people went professional, some people went personal. Where do you think most of the people went though, personal or professional?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m guessing personal.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, most of the people who submitted their stories went to a personal space, and that was intriguing to me as a finding, too, by the way, because when your audiences are going to recollect their memories and, hopefully, you’re in there somewhere, they’re going to reach for the memory that comes to their minds more easily, that comes to their minds without much effort. And our personal memories quite often are probably a lot more effortless than the professional ones to recollect.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. And so, then what did you notice in terms of like the themes or patterns associated with the stories that folks will never forget?

Carmen Simon
Most of the stories had obviously some sort of an emotion or some contrast between a state versus another state where they ended up those weren’t necessarily surprising. What surprised me is when I gave these stories to various people to then read, and I asked them, “What is it that you remember from other people’s stories you see?” That’s when I wanted to see, “What’s the overlap? What’s stays in our minds from other people’s stories naturally without you trying too hard?”

So, two days later after these people read the initial stories, they received a survey that asked them, “What do you remember?” And I asked them a subsequent question, too, I said, “Now, please try a little bit harder,” exactly for this reason I’m mentioning that the brain is a cognitively lazy organ, and when we are asked a question, especially if we’re not immediately vested, which these people weren’t, we’re going to take the path of least resistance.

So, if I asked you, “What do you remember from your last day at work?” You might probably give me one or two things and not really try that hard. Is that true? Like what do you remember from your work last week?

Pete Mockaitis
Last week? It’s so funny. My temptation, talk about lazy, was to just get the mouse and move right over to the calendar and have it do the remembering for me.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, I’m not surprised. That’s what I noticed that that was one of the initial findings is that immediately, for question number two, which is where I’m asking people to, “Please try a little bit harder,” obviously those are more revealing answers than their original answer.

So, then the practical guideline that I would have for everyone listening to this is that, one, make sure that if you do have a story, it comes to your audiences’ minds easily, and then you reinforce is in some way if you want to stay there for a long period of time because those surface details are going to be gone very, very quickly. We tend to stay on the surface when recollecting things especially if the reward or if the goal for them to remember is not all that well-stated or not that strong.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, now I’m thinking harder per your prompt. And the first thing that comes to mind is we had a podcast guest, Frances Cole Jones, and she sent an email out to her whole list which had her sporting the How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast T-shirt, which I began sending to guests as a thank you. So, spoiler alert, Carmen.

Carmen Simon
Nice. Well, see that’s a very smart technique, by the way, because if you want to make stories more memorable, and just any other type of communication more memorable, a good way to do it is to send something that would then trigger people’s memories in some way when you’re not even in the room, so you’re doing it right.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Well, I guess what made the reason that’s so memorable, it’s like, “Well, shucks, I’ve sent out many, many T-shirts,” and I’ve seen some people post on Twitter, like, “Hey, thanks for the shirt. It’s cool.” But it’s like, “Oh, there’s something quite public into the whole email list. What a treat just in terms of being a generous, kind promotional move on her part that is supportive of what I’m doing over here.”

Carmen Simon
Congratulations! Congratulations!

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Yeah. So, okay, so then we talked about state changes and we talked about I guess noteworthiness is what I noticed. So, what are some of the other ingredients that make them memorable?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, we’re talking about the cognitive ease, so make sure that whatever you’re sharing with your audiences will come to their minds easily.

Pete Mockaitis
But what makes it easy versus hard?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, exactly, so then we have to ask the question, “Well, what happens if we don’t have the chance to ask somebody else to try harder to remember us?” because we don’t always have that luxury. And then the question still becomes, “What comes to people’s minds so effortlessly that they don’t even have to think so hard?”

And one of the items is one that we touched upon a little bit earlier which is this strong sensory stimulation. Like, for example, there was one gentleman who contributed a story when he remembered going to Kenya to fix some electricity-related devices. And he was invited at this family and he had brought them a bottle of Coke. And that family, and according to their tradition, whenever you got a gift you had to then share it with everybody else.

And he remembers in details going up the hill to this hut and it was something that was built in mud, you know those mud huts. He remembers distinctly the mother and the father and the small kid, and even the grandmother that was sitting on this piece of log and she had glaucoma. And he remembers the holes in this kid’s clothes that were stapled so that there wouldn’t be holes anymore.

But the emotion that stood out for him was the fact that these people only had a bottle of Coke, which they had not had for maybe a year before, and they wanted to share with him, and he didn’t even like Coke and it was a warm bottle of Coke. But yet they convinced him to drink some of it, and you take a few sips and then you pass it onto the next person who also take a few sips, and he thought that was the greatest gift he had ever received from a family who pretty much had nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that’s powerful. And so, then the Coke is right there. We got the red, we got the white visually, we’ve got the taste itself wrapped up in emotion.

Carmen Simon
Exactly. And then you can almost see like those holes on the clothes that are stapled shut, and you can see the mud hut, and the way that he was expressing it was so visual that later on when I was looking at people’s responses, and I knew that a few of them had read his story, those details were remarked in people’s responses. That’s such a luxury for anyone these days to stay on people’s minds days after you have shared this stimulus. That’s huge.

And the advice then that I have for everyone listening is to look at your communication and ask, “How strong of a mental picture are you painting in your audiences’ minds?” Because, quite often, we become forgettable simply because our communication is so darn abstract.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s excellent. And so, then I’m thinking right now, as you talk about some clients working with like business process optimization, I guess that seems pretty abstract, but if maybe we’re talking about, I don’t know, logistics or delivery, if you tell a story of a customer who was blown away by receiving that package, I don’t know, like the very next day and they were able to, I don’t know, redecorate the house or serve a patient in the hospital, like something I guess visually that they’re then doing with that product and how the speed made a difference. I’m just sort of grasping here. But I imagine that goes a lot farther than saying, “We’re dropping our average ship time from 2.1 days to 1.4 days.”

Carmen Simon
Yeah, and you can still show both. I’m not saying then sacrifice one at the expense of another. In fact, a question that I get quite often when it comes to storytelling is, “What’s the difference between storytelling and facts?” And we can’t really approach the question that way because facts can still be parts of stories.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Carmen Simon
Facts are, I would define them as zoomed-in stories because if I were to categorized all the findings from the research, a story is based on three components. There is a perceptive component in which we can include that sensory stimulation I was sharing with you; we can include a strong context because when I said Kenya you can kind of knew where to go; and we can include action across time. So, all of this are perceptive things, things that you can sense with your senses.

Another component is a cognitive one, and facts go in there and meanings and abstracts, so that’s where business people thrive. We enjoy the fact and we enjoy extracting some conclusions from what we say, and those are great. But quite often I think at the expense of the perceptive, we don’t help our audience’s brains to build these strong mental pictures and then we wonder why people forget those facts because they didn’t really know how to imagine those.

And then the third one is, of course, the affective component which is where emotions and motivations and aspirations would go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you give us maybe some pro tips to enhancing each of these dimensions?

Carmen Simon
Yes. For the perceptive one, definitely go towards the language that stimulates the senses and keeps us alert. So, the more you can make people see what you saw and hear what you heard, and then almost enable touching what you touched, then that strong language would definitely reside in people’s memories a lot stronger.

And, also for the perceptive, don’t forget the action across time. You cannot have a story unless things progress across time, and in business content, hardly anything ever happens. In fact, it’s surprises me when people say, “Oh, just come to our organization and help us tell our story better.” And then I’ll ask, “Well, so what is your story?”

And they will say, “We are founded in this year, and we have this many customers, and we have noticed these trends in the industry, and as a result we have developed this amazing web architecture.” You know, everybody has an amazing web architecture these days, “And we have done this and this other thing.” But there’s’ nothing really in a progression across time that is a mandatory component of a story.

Like if we were to talk about business stories, for instance, I remember the woman who invented spandex. For all the women listeners, I’m sure that everyone has heard of the product. And when she’s interviewed and you go online and you read her stories, you hear how, at first, she started in her own apartment, and how she was trying on things in the bathroom, and how she was experimenting things in the kitchen, and then she tried to get a meeting with somebody at Neiman Marcus, and the meeting was going poorly until she convinced one of those executives to go with her to the bathroom and try this product on under some white pants.

And from then on, she wore those white pants for three years to convince many other people to buy into the product. So, see how things just progress across time. First this happened, then this happened, and as a result this other thing happened. So, we go from A to B to C and each is a consequence of the previous stage, and that’s the mandatory component of a story.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, so I’m interested. When it comes to, say, like a business telling a story, a lot of times it’s about growth, “We had this many units or this much revenue, and now we have these many units and this much revenue and it’s much bigger.” And so, but in a way, those aren’t really actions. It’s just sort of an output or measurement. And so, how would you maybe make that translation?

Carmen Simon
Yes, so if we’d go from that list of facts, because if you’re saying, “In 2016 we sold these many units, and in 2017 we sold these many units, and therefore we have grown by this percentage,” that’s almost kind of an action because you would have to make it show, “How did you get to point B as a result of point A?” Was it somebody that you hired?

Because, imagine if you said, “In 2016 we sold this, and then we hired this amazing VP of sales. I mean, this guy, he used to work for such and such. And then he sold his company, and then he did some other things. And then he moved to the US, and despite his accent he created all these relationships, and did this and this other thing. And as a result, then here we are 2017 with an increased in this.” So, see how now you’re showing how B is a result of A.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly, “Or that individual customers were so delighted that they shared stories like so and so from Mississippi who put this on her Facebook and sort of shares of that nature just naturally resulted in so many more people buying it, and thusly we have this number of units now.”

Carmen Simon
Yeah, and you would have to be careful about showing causation which it’s a tricky thing because causation is what we would consider, from a storytelling perspective, a plot. So, you’re saying if your customer has posted such and such on Facebook, and then somebody else saw it and as a result they, too, purchased the product. And then they went to another customer, and as a result of that then this is what happened.

And sometimes, especially when we deal with technology-oriented things or science-oriented products, people are so afraid of causation that they will only stick to just a list of facts, inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions, and because we’re saying the audience has such a cognitive lazy inclination anyway, they may not often make that leap. So, not only are you less persuasive but you’re not really sharing a story.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting. So, then, the key distinction there is that, you’re saying, be careful of causation and don’t sort of say it’s because of it, but share what happened. Let’s see, set me straight here, Carmen.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, well, causation is sexy and tricky at the same time. Causation is what enables you to fully stay truthful to a story in a sense of A caused B which then caused C, but then having the boldness and the accuracy to make a causation statement, that’s where it’s at.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Carmen Simon
Do you have what it takes to stand behind your causation? That’s the question I would ask anyone listening. Because, for example, some of my clients are from the biotech industry, and when they try to sell a specific product to a doctor’s office they have to be cautious about saying, “You will get this product, and as a result, for sure, this is what’s going to happen.”

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So, you don’t say it.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, it doesn’t mean that you always have to share a story, by the way. So, if that’s your field and you’re afraid of causation, you don’t necessarily have to go there, but then don’t claim you’re telling stories.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it’s just about saying that it caused it as opposed to sharing a sequence of events that imply it.

Carmen Simon
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. I’m with you. Tracking along. Thank you. Okay. So, then how about the affective component?

Carmen Simon
Yes, so the cognitive we have no problems with because facts and abstracts definitely dominate. For the affective component, I think one of the biggest insights that I got from this study were that just having the presence of emotions still doesn’t guarantee memory. Sometimes that’s another statement that I hear made very frequently, “Oh, if you want to have something memorable, and especially a memorable story, you definitely have to always have emotion.” Not true.

For instance, people will say, “Oh, stories like 9/11, or the Space Challenger disaster, or Oklahoma bombing, those, of course, will be memorable.” Not that fast. For example, in some of the groups that I had designed in my study, people read a 9/11 story, people read a Space Challenger story but they also read stories like, “I will never forget the time when my co-worker complimented me on LinkedIn. It was just such a touchy message, I had posted this, and then they reacted like that, and then I said this. And that just meant a lot to me in my career,” or something along those lines.

Or, “I will never forget my cousin’s wedding because this is what happened.” And those things were a lot more memorable than the world’s history stories, so to speak, even though the emotion was not as strong but it was more relatable, you see. So, if you ever have the choice, and you’re looking at your content and you’re thinking, “Boy, my content is kind of dry. I could never match the emotion of a disaster or something that just happened. Everybody paid attention to it.” Don’t even worry about it because relevance quite often trumps emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting. So, could you maybe help us tie this all together in terms of maybe sharing a couple examples of messages or stories transformed sort of before from one of your clients, and then you did some tweaks and reframing and communicating it differently to an after that had such a greater impact in memorability?

Carmen Simon
Well, let’s look at this one that I’m working on this week, and it’s not finalized but I think all of our listeners are going to be able to relate to it. So, the before version comes across like this. “Welcome, everyone. We’ve had an interesting and challenging 2017. It’s prompting me to remember why is it I’m working at this place anyway. And I’ve worked here because of some professional opportunities that we all have. It’s also the right timing because the technologies that are happening in the field are just at the right intersection,” and so it goes, and so it goes from fact to fact to fact to fact which is just assumed in story as we said.

The recommendations that I’m making and the after example is going to include something along the lines, “Okay, we have had a challenging 2017, and it’s prompting me to reflect why am I working at this company. Well, it’s a wonderful professional opportunity. And what do I mean by this? I remember a time when I was looking for the intersection of just the right technologies, and I was working for this company and this other executive walked in and he said this to me. And then that’s how I reacted, and that’s when I realized that things were a little bit different, and then I read this other article.”

And see how I’m going with, “This is what’s happening,” and the more I zoom in and the sensory details are stronger, and he’s able to show pictures of his older executive office, so we can see him working for that company and as he moved to another company. So, now it becomes more become sensory intense and things that happened and then caused another thing and they caused another thing, and now we can abstract it out and say, “It was a great professional opportunity.”

Or in the initial, let’s call a story between quotes, he’s talking about coming to work to this company because he wanted to work with people he could trust. Notice how abstract that is. But in the after version, I’m prompting him to say, “Well, so who is that?” So, he’s showing some other guy’s picture and how he served as a best man at his wedding, so we’re killing two birds with that stone because not only is he now showing some sensory stimulation that’s stronger because, “I enjoy seeing the pictures of the wedding and the champagne and people dancing,” but the emotion is now present.

Because it’s one thing to say, “I’m working here with people that I can trust,” and it’s just an abstract concept, but another to see them hugging and see them in their suits and see them in such a nice human-like moment.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I really like that. And so, you’re bringing up the usage of visuals, of slides, which I think can really be helpful because I think sometimes I might feel, perhaps, a little bit awkward going too big and using my words to try to paint an imagery picture like, “Oh, someone fancies himself a novelist over there.” Whereas you could say, “And he was the best man at my wedding,” and then you show an image, and they go, “Oh, that’s the wedding.” And so, then, you can go a long way by bringing those visuals in, even of the desk, of the workplace, of the wedding.

Carmen Simon
So true. And the nice thing about being able to do that is then, obviously, those pictures are also going to add the extra words that are even unspoken so you can get a lot more done in a short period of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Well, I was going to go there next in terms of trying to make an impact with a story I think that’s a concern some might say, “You know, well, I’ve got exactly three minutes or five minutes of time to make these points. I don’t have time to go down and make a story especially with all these impactful affective details that you’re describing.” So, what are some of the ways to get some of that goodness in a shorter period of time? One is by using visuals or slides. Any other tips there?

Carmen Simon
I really like that question because you’re so right, people are concerned that they don’t have enough time to share stories. And for any of our listeners who are married, and sometimes they get their spouse’s reaction, it’s like, “Come on, get to the point. I don’t have time for all of these details.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve never said that. One year in, I’ve managed to not say that.

Carmen Simon
You just recently got married. You just give it a few years.

Pete  
Okay.

Carmen Simon
But executives and some other business audience may have a similar reaction, “Just get to the point.” And so, one of the ways that you could still want to share a story, but you’re afraid that you don’t have enough time, the advice would be to earn the right to tell the details.

And the way to do that is to respond first to people’s expectations. And as we said, facts are just zoomed-in stories, and if your audiences are indeed expecting facts at first then give those first. So, if I’m presenting to some executives and they do want to hear about the growth that has happened in the past two years and they want to see some charts, that’s my intro. I’m not going to start with, “It was a dark and stormy night, and the clouds were just approaching, and I knew something drastic was going to happen.” You see?

But if I share with you the right amount of information that you expect, then I’m earning the right for a few more minutes of some other details, and then I can say, “The reason that we got to these numbers is because of that one dark stormy night when you would not believe what happened.” So, as a communicator, you’re a choreographer of your audience’s expectations. See to those first and then you earn the right for a few extra minutes where you can fill in the details that would make it a story.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s excellent. Very good. Any other perspectives on the time perspective?

Carmen Simon
Yes. So, obviously, time would be correlated with the length of a story. What I noticed in my study was that there is such a thing as too short of a story beyond which it becomes forgettable. And the length that I noticed people that they remember stories, the sweet spot, was somewhere around 600 words which would be about two or three paragraphs, and I would always suggest that if you want to have a memorable story, write it down first and then make sure that you say it verbally so that you don’t sound as if you’re too scripted. You still speak it. It’s not a story meant for writing.

But 600 to about 900 words if you want to be a really polished storyteller because, otherwise, you won’t be having the opportunity to do justice to a context to those sensory details, or build some of those emotions in there.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, now, Carmen, I love it when you drop a number. That’s intriguing. So, 600 to 900 words is a sweet spot there. We’re talking about memory and stories and memorability and this good stuff. Are there any other kind of key rules of thumb or numbers that leap to mind?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, let’s look at this concept of the emotion just a little bit more closely because I think it’s so widely misunderstood when it comes to memory. Emotion, when you’re kind of disconcerting, come from three sources. It can come from the nature of the content, because if you’re talking about medicine or people in Kenya, immediately the nature of the content draws an emotion.

But sometimes, in business, we don’t have the luxury of that. We talk about, like you said, trucks or web architectures or predictive analytics. Sometimes there isn’t a whole lot of emotion inherently associated with our content. So, then, what do you do, because you still need some emotion to make something memorable?

And the other two sources can be your audience can be a source of emotion. So, if you’re talking to people who are extremely invested in a topic, who are either elated or upset, they bring their own emotions that then contribute to the formation of some memories, or you can be the source of emotion as the transmitter of that message.

For example, while I was listening to these people talk about predictive analytics a few months back, and they were the most excited about this product and this technology that I had ever seen. I could have listened to those guys go on forever about predictive analytics. So, as you’re pondering your own question or your own content, question the chemistry that you have with your own content because when that chemistry is there, then you can be the source of emotion, and immediately you’re going to have an increased chance at memory.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Well, Carmen, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about your favorite things?

Carmen Simon
Oh, my favorite things. Let’s see, anything related to memory. Since we’re talking about emotion, another reminder that I would have for our listeners is that what we remember is not necessarily the emotion itself. We remember quite often the transition from one emotional state to another. And the sharper the contrast the stronger the emotions.

So, for example, let’s just say that I shared with you that I fell off a bike and, obviously, that’s a negative emotion. But then if I said, “I fell off a bike and then got ran over by a car,” see how you reacted, and that’s when the memory got formed, because the first one, yeah, I had some emotion but the sharper the contrast between two emotional states that you’re creating for your audiences then the stronger the memory.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s potent. It’s so funny, I was imagining that you’re going to contrast by going to something really happy, but then you just went to extra, extra bad.

Carmen Simon
Yes, you can go positive and then double positive. Like if I said, “I went to Vegas and I won 50 bucks. And then I pressed a button and next I won 50 million,” that you probably created a memory just now because you went just super, super, super happy. But then you can go the other way of negative to quadruple negative, and that’s how memories are formed.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Carmen Simon
Ooh, a favorite quote. Let’s just see. Just the other day I saw this thing on the internet, and you know we believe everything that we read on the internet, but this quote just really resonated with me. It said, “You have survived a 100% of your worst days. You’re doing great.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is nice. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Carmen Simon
Ooh, let’s see. A favorite book that I just bought and just started reading is called Supercasting. I’m intrigued by this notion that the brain is constantly on fast-forward as you can imagine, and some people can predict better than others, what gets us to be better predictors.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say predict, you mean just in terms of what is going to happen next in your environment?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, intriguing. Thank you.

Carmen Simon
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite tool?

Carmen Simon
Oh, a tool. I have to admit that someone just ordered the iPhone X, and they returned it so that’s not going to be a favorite tool. I’m curious as to why that happened. I do like this flashlight that I just got that has different settings depending on how dark or so kind of almost light it is outside. Have you seen those flashlights?

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s sensing the environment and adjusting its light?

Carmen Simon
Yeah, yeah, small things. Small pleasures.

Pete Mockaitis
Nice. Thank you. And then how about a favorite habit?

Carmen Simon
A favorite habit is hiking at the end of a full workday.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful.

Carmen Simon
In search of a beautiful view, because you just can’t be hiking. You have to hike with a purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget you’ve been sharing recently at MEMZY that seems to really be connecting and resonating with your clients?

Carmen Simon
A particular…

Pete Mockaitis
Just something that you say or share in your work with clients.

Carmen Simon
Oh, yes, there is. The line that people seem to resonate with and remember is this notion that as we are exposed to content we forget about 90% of that stimulation, so it’s important to control the 10% they remember. So, that has become a favorite mantra, and quite often when people come back to me and they talk to me, they’ll say, “Let me share with you what my 10% message is to my own clients,” and that warms my heart because when they mention that phrase, “What is my 10% or my 10% message is,” then I know I’m able to stay on their minds and that’s a challenge that I share with all of the listeners today. What is your 10%? And are you in control of that?

Pete Mockaitis
And, Carmen, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Carmen Simon
MEMZY.com, M-E-M-Z-Y, and the Twitter handler is @areyoumemorable, and of course LinkedIn Carmen Simon. I’d love to stay in touch and I would want to hear what is your 10% message that you want to put on other people’s minds.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Carmen Simon
Yes, the challenge would be that of precision because we cannot ultimately control everything that goes on in people’s minds, and sometimes we want to overshare. So, I would say don’t attempt to get people to remember more but get them to remember less and better.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Carmen, this has been a whole lot of fun all over again. Thank you and good luck with MEMZY and all you’re up to.

Carmen Simon
Thank you so much. Thank you, Pete. You do the same.

Dec 01
0

236: Persuasion Pointers from a Legendary Infomercial Pitchman with Anthony Sullivan

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Anthony Sullivan says: "I'm going to walk in that room and I'm going to get this. Even if I don't get it, I'm going to die trying."

Infomercial star Anthony “Sully” Sullivan shares his best lessons learned about the art and science of persuasion.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Approaches to understanding the pain and being the cure
  2. How to make an entrance and take control
  3. Why you should own your nerves and not hide them

About Sully 

Best-known as the spokesman for OxiClean, Anthony is the pitchman of choice for dozens of innovative, practical usage consumer products including the X5 5-in-1 Steamer, the Sticky Buddy and Smart Mop. Star and Co-Producer of the Discovery Channel series “PitchMen,” Sully is also a regular guest of choice on a variety of television news and entertainment outlets including “The Today Show,”  “Good Morning America,” “Rachel Ray,” “The Tonight Show,” “Conan” and “Katie,” as well as news programs MSNBC, ABC, CBS, BBC and Fox News Channel.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Anthony Sullivan Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sully, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Anthony Sullivan
Thank you for having me. The whole idea of being awesome at your job just is, who does not want to be awesome at their job?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Well, certainly, that’s how we think and believe here, and so it’s fun to have someone who is legendary at a particular job of pitching products. But I’d like to, for a moment, hear a quick version of your backstory about coming to America, sleeping in a van, and selling mops. How did this unfold?

Anthony Sullivan
You know, every time I tell this story I think back to what an epic journey it was. I was about 20 and I was a little bit lost in my career, I didn’t have a career. I had bartended, I had my own karaoke show, I had delivered slot machines and pool tables, I had swept floors, I had managed a bar, and I was a little bit lost. And I was kind of weighing up going back to university to get a degree. I couldn’t find a passion, I say, “What am I going to do?” And my mom was trying to convince me to get into journalism. She said, “You’re a writer. You love to write. Why don’t you go to Cardiff University and get a degree in journalism?”

So, while I was hovering around, in between in kind of this sort of space where I wasn’t quite sure what’s happening, I stumbled across a friend of mine had a market stand. And being a market trader in England is a little bit looked down upon. Market traders are seen as somewhat maybe a little bit shady and very few people, at least from my background, kind of looked up to guys that worked at markets, kind of a flea market thing. And I never really went to the market.

Anyway, my friend had a stand, and it’s traveling market around in North Devon and he sold T-shirts and he had a speeding ticket, and he said, “Look, it’s Wednesday. Can you go down to the market stand? I’m going to go to court and fight my speeding ticket. Can you just go and watch my market stand?” I didn’t have anything to do, so I said, “All right. I’ll go down.”

So, opposite me is this guy selling these car washes called The Amazing Wash-Matic. And while I’m sitting there, drinking cups of tea, selling one T-shirt every hour because, you know, I was just literally watching his stall for him while he was in court, and I was mesmerized by this guy who was selling these car washes, and he would do a pitch.

It was the first time I ever paid attention to a pitch. I had seen people pitching products before but here I was for seven hours, it was a beautiful sunny day, and I watched this guy. And by the end of the day I could almost do the pitch because he must’ve done it 50 times, you know, I want to say five minutes, and so 12 in an hour. So, at least 50 times I heard it.

And I started to count his money. They say never count other people’s money, right? But I was bored so I’m like, “Oh, my God, this guy is selling five to six car washes every five minutes, and at 10 pounds a pop, he just popped out like 700 pounds worth of car washes, or $1500.” And I was just fascinated by his pitch. He said the same thing, over and over again, and every time he would finish, he converted it into a sale. And I’m like, “Man, if I have to stand out there in the market, I’d much rather be pitching than just sitting here waiting for people to come to me.”

So, I went over to him at the end of the day, I introduced myself, and he sort of was boxing up his lack of product because he’s sold it all, and he kind of blew me off and drove off. Anyway, I went back to my friend’s house that night who went to get his speeding ticket, his name was Phil. I said, “Phil, that guy, Mark, he’s unbelievable.” I said, “You got to tell him that I want to work for him. I want to do what he does.”

So, Phil, being a good friend of mine, went over, he said, “Hey, my friend, Sully, was watching the stand. He really wants to do this.” So, long story short, the guy teaches me how to pitch, and he was very, very clear to me, he said, “This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to write this down with a tape recorder,” I took an old-school tape recorder with me, and he dictated the pitch, or he did the pitch and I wrote it down on a piece of paper, I stuck it to my visor in my car, and I learned it word for word.

And he said, “When you know it word for word, come back to me and you can have a try at it and see if you’re any good at it.” Well, it’s kind of funny, so I literally learned it word for word. I stopped at a stop light, took my visor down, I read it and I put it back up, and I memorized it. It was about two pages of copy, which is quite a lot of copy to remember, but I remembered it word for word.

So, I called him up, back in the day they didn’t have cellphones, I rang him at home, I say, “Hey, Mark, I think I’m ready to come and pitch.” So, he said, “Come down to the markets tomorrow at 12:00 o’clock and try your hand at it, see if you’re any good at it.” So, I get down there, and he literally, I showed up and said, “Hey, Mark,” it’s 12:00 o’clock. He throws me the car washing device, it’s called the Car Wash-Matic, I think I told you that. And then he just walks up, he says, “Good luck. You got an hour. Just knock yourself out.”

So, I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “Holy crap, I got to go. I’ve got to pitch.” And I had never pitched in my life. I knew the words but I’m like, “How do you get a crowd?” The only thing I failed to do, I’d never really practiced with the unit. So, I knew the words and I knew how to work it but I’d never actually put it all together.

So, anyway, this guy comes up to me, he says, “Hey, how does this thing work?” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll show you.” So, I’m like, all right, go into the pitch, I guess, so I did the pitch. I wish I had it on tape because it was probably the worst pitch in the history of pitches. Anyway, I got a little crowd, and I was like, “Oh, my God, I got a crowd of people here.” And before I knew it there were 10 people standing around watching me fumble through my first presentation with my first pitch.

Anyway, sold one, and I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Holy crap, I’d never done this before and I sold one car wash to the guy that asked me how it worked.” Well, in that hour actually I ended up selling seven.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Anthony Sullivan
So, Mark came back, and he said, “How many did you sell?” And I said, “I sold seven.” And he said, “Seven?” and I gave him 70 pounds, and then he looked at me, he’s like, “You sold seven in your first hour of ever doing this?” I said, “Yes. Is that good or bad?” He said, “That’s amazing. It’s like I didn’t expect you to sell any.”

So, that was my introduction to pitching, and it was great. I remember the transaction, it was like striking gold for me. I was like, “This is just… I’m loving this. All I got to do is talk and people will hand me money.” So, very quickly, I ended out in London. I took to it like a duck to water. I went from all over Devon to Cardiff to Bristol, and then people would watch me work. And I got asked to come to London to work in sort of big leagues, if you will, of that world, the big-name street markets like Petticoat Lane, Wembley Stadium, Black Bush.

So, I went from this little country market, country bumpkin because I’m from the boondocks of England, to working fairly high-profile markets with mobsters. I mean, I worked for Charlie Kray who’s one of the infamous Kray Brothers. I worked for Charlie for a little while. And then I turned the TV on one day, and this is the quick story, I got to shorten the story up.

But I turned the TV on one day and I see my first infomercial, and that’s when the lightbulb really went off, and I’m like, “You know what, I got to go. I got to get on TV. I need to get off the street,” because it was tough. It was London, it was cold, it was raining. It all sounds great when I talk about it, but there were a couple of days when I break even and be pouring down with rain, and it was a really sketchy crowd, and I’d have to drive and my gas money, and just making ends meet in the winter time.
So, long story, I met a guy who lived in L.A. and he was selling this mop called the Super Shammy Mop, and I tried to sell this in London and it didn’t go very well because for various reasons it just didn’t sell well in England. And I heard it was selling well in America, called him up and said, “I will come out for free, and I would work for free, just let me work in America.” So, he agreed, I jumped on a plane, sold all my belongings, everything I had, cashed in everything, gave my escort van to my brother, and told my family I’m going to America, to L.A. to seek my fortune and going to get on television. And everybody laughed. Everyone.

My mom taught I was crazy. My dad actually believed in me, he’s like, “You go, son.” But I think they all thought I’d be back. And my coworkers, my neighbors, my friends, my landlord, they’re like, “You’re going to go to America to sell mops. What are you, out of your mind?” So, I landed in L.A. in 1993, and I’d actually been to L.A. before surfing, my surf trip, so I did know the lay of the land a little bit. I’ve been to Hawaii surfing, and I started beating the streets in L.A.

And, obviously, as usual, nowhere could I get on television. Now, everyone kept telling me, “You need to be on TV,” and I was like, “Yeah, I know, but who do I talk to? I don’t know who’s going to discover me.” And people will come up and offer, “Oh, we need to get you on TV.” And I said, “Yeah, I know. How do we make this happen?” I was so eager.

Anyway, in L.A. I worked up and down the West Coast selling mops and it was great, Ventura County Fair, Costa Mesa, San Diego, Boat Shows, San Jose, Portland, I also went into Vegas a couple of times, I went over to Phoenix.

Anyway, I got a phone call to go to Miami, and they were like, “Hey, do you want to do the Miami Home Show?” And I was like, “Yes,” just so I could. I need to get out of up north. Now on the way down to Miami we stopped off, me and my partner at the time, we stopped off in Clearwater because we had a week off. And I drove past HSN, and I was like, “Oh, that’s the shopping network.” I’d seen it on television, and I’m like, “Oh, maybe that’s an opportunity.”

We went down to Miami to the Miami Home Show, had a great time, spring break, two young European guys, girls everywhere. Now I felt like I was back having a little bit of a better time. I mean, we had made some money and I’m still living in the van, and we ended up working the same Home Show at Tropicana Field where the race play now, the Lightning used to play there, Tampa Bay Lightning, and a buyer came up to me from HSN, her name was Nancy Cooney, and she watched my pitch three times, and I called her out. I said, “You’re going to buy something because you just can’t stand there and watch me? I’m not here for entertainment.” That’s how cocky I used to be.

She said, “No, I’m not going to buy anything from you now, but I think I want to put you on television. I think you would be great.” And she handed me a business card, and it said, “Nancy Cooney, Buyer, Home Shopping Club.” I was like, “Oh, my God.” I was so rude to her. And she gave me my first break, and she got me on TV, and they ordered 5,000 mops, and we sold 5,000 mops in 23 minutes. And I remember that was the very first time I got on TV, and that’s when I knew I wasn’t going home. The day I got off TV, I was like, “I made it. I did it. I got on television.”

And It happened fairly quick. When I look back on it, I mean, I was so impatient. I was in my early 20s. I wanted everything to happen. Within a year of coming to America, I was in front of 90 million people pitching my mops on TV. So, when I look back on it, sometimes I think it was a stroke of luck, was it right time, right place. Some people say – what do they say – luck is preparation meets opportunity. I’ve looked back on it and I’m like, “How did I end up in front of that woman at that time when she made a decision to get me on television?” And it all just fell into place. And that’s how it all started, and I haven’t looked back.

I’ve had a couple of challenges along in my career, I’ve had some bad years, but at the curve, the growth curve of my ability to learn and to, I think, grow in my business, there’s been a few peaks and troughs, peaks and valleys, but’s it’s been, “We’re going to have double-digit growth this year again.” I’ve met the late, great Billy Mays, and I’m extremely grateful and fortunate to have made a career doing something that’s quite odd. There’s not very many of us. I’m a pitchman and that’s what I do, and I guess I’m good at it.

At first, I’d be a little bit embarrassed about it when I first started out I’m working the markets and it’s kind of a lowly profession. My mom used to give me crap about it all the time. She’d be like, “You know you’re a market trader. That’s not what I sent you to school for. You’re better than that.” But in the minute I got on television she changed her tune, “My son is on television.” So, that’s how it all started.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating, and thank you for walking us through that there. And so, I want to talk about some of the learning then. When you talked about it’s a rare profession, not a lot of people do it specifically, I think all of us do persuasion all the time in terms of getting folks to say yes to agree to what we want them to do.

And so, I would love it if you could share with us some of like the top principles you think are particularly applicable to professionals? Like if someone is asking for a raise, or want someone to buy into a proposal, or get budget allocated for an initiative or project, what do you think are some of the top lessons you have picked up over time that totally applied to these kinds of context?

Anthony Sullivan
Obviously, I just finished my book and you can’t go to college to learn to pitch, there’s no degree. And I feel like sometimes there should be. It should be mandatory in a sales course, sales and marketing, to understand the dynamics and the architecture and the mechanics of what makes a great pitch. So, I tried to look back at, “What was the structure of the Wash-Matic pitch? What was the structure of the Smart Mop pitch? How did I sell 5 million Swivel Sweepers?”

So, I started to look back at it. And even today, we’re actually looking a new mop called the Hurricane In-and-Out Mop, and I’m actually working the pitch today, and I had one of my colleagues break out an iPhone just to tape me doing it, and I’ve never done it before. And I watched it back actually and I started to make myself smile, I’m like, “Man, I got that.” I’m watching myself and I started to go, “I’m relaxed and I just seem like I’m having a conversation with myself.” I’m like, “Man, I’m not even selling that. I’m just enthusiastically getting you to get interested in what I’m doing and just by sheer magnetism getting you excited enough about the product where you’ll give me money.”

And that’s why, when I’m selling product, I just said I’m selling it, but I don’t feel like I’m selling. I feel like I’m having a conversation where I’m getting you interested and I’m getting you to buy in.” And in the cover of the book, I wrote Control any situation, create fierce agreement and get what you want out of life.

The fierce agreement part is something I sat down with my co-writer and I am like, “If you are in a situation where you want a raise, or you want to get your kids to eat at a restaurant where they normally wouldn’t want to go, say, you want to get sushi and they want to eat mac and cheese, or you’re going to walk into a room and you want to get funded, or you need a loan, or you’re trying to get into college, you’re going to find yourself in a pitching situation.”

So, what I tried to do is like, “How do I apply the principles that I sell product to selling yourself?” And in the book, I have 10 principles and I talk about know your acceptable outcomes and obsessive preparation are things that I talk about, when to push back, to never be closing. But one of the things that really hit me today, I have this unwavering belief in the product that I’m excited about and I think the energy, there’s a certain energy where you can just pick up on my level of enthusiasm and authenticity for the product.

And I think before you even go into a situation where you’re selling yourself, you’re pitching yourself, you got to do a mental check and it’s almost look in the mirror, and there’s a scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where Matthew McConaughey does that strange thing where he bangs his chest. I almost think before any – and I kind of wish I put this in the book – you got to go in with this positive mindset where, “I’m going to get this. I’m going to do this. Failure sounds so silly. I’m going to walk in that room and I’m going to get this. Even if I don’t get it, I’m going to die trying. I’m going to leave it all in there so even if I don’t get it I still can walk out with my head proud.” Because you’re not going to get everything all the time.

I failed. I’ve pitched to a hundred people and every single one of them walked off. But then the next pitch, I have pitched to a hundred people and sold 25 units, so it doesn’t always work. But I do that smile, and that shoulders back, and that confident attitude is something that you can’t teach, and that’s something that I really feel that some people kind of do walk around with their head down, and they have that “poor me” attitude. You’ve got to shake that completely.

And Tony Robbins will talk about this, the passion and enthusiasm, the smile, it’s got to be there, “It’s going to happen. I’m going to win. I’m going to win. I’m going to get the job. I’m going to get the job. She’s going to give me the number. She’s going to give me the number. We are going to eat sushi tonight. The kids will eat sushi. This is going to happen.” So, it’s sort of like get your eye on the prize, and get your head in the mental game. So, once you got that organized then, I think, if you study the 10 pitch powers that I talk about in the book, and I can run through them real quick.

Pete Mockaitis
You know what, the way I’d love to do this, if we could, is, all right, so we start from a place of unwavering belief, we got this smile, the shoulders back, the confidence, you completely believe it, the passion, the enthusiasm, the eye on the prize, okay. So, it’s like we’re ready to start from that starting line.

So, maybe could you walk us through over the course of, I don’t know, five or 10 minutes. Let’s say we’re going to make a pitch at work associated with, “Hey, you should promote me and/or give me a raise.” Could you maybe walk us through, “All right, how are we going to rock each of those powers to make this come together in a compelling pitch?”

Anthony Sullivan
Absolutely. Take a raise, for example, it happens to me a lot. I have employees. My employees actually are pretty good because they know. I’m like, “Don’t come in, if you want to raise, you’re going to have to pitch me on why I’ll give you a raise.” And I’m pretty good at like, “If it’s a good pitch, I’m buying what you’re selling if your pitch is great.” So, I love it when my people come in to me and they pitch me.

The first thing I do, in the book I talk about, “Right, you’re going to walk into a room. You need to know your acceptable outcomes. You have to have very clear, defined, set of goals that you’re willing to, your price, you’re going to start right.” “I’m making 50,000 a year, I want 60. It’d be nice to get 57,500. I’ll settle for 55. If you continue to pay me 50 I’m going to quit.” So you got three. You’re going in with a very clear, defined objective that you’re right.

So, before you even walk into a room you know what it is that you want. You’re making 50,000, you want 60, you’ll settle for 57.5, but 55 will do it, “If you don’t give me 55, I’m leaving.” And you need to be prepared to stick with that and have the fortitude to say, “Well, I’m going to walk in and this is what I want and this is what I’m going to go for.” So, you go on for 60 but you’ll accept 55. I like that because it takes away, now, it’s very clear. When you walk in, the person on the other end of the desk is going to go, “You know, they know exactly what they want,” and right there, that to me is very compelling.

I talk about understanding the pain and being the cure, right? If I’m an employer, if my employee understands the kind of stress that I’m in and the pain that I’m suffering because our accounting department is overloaded and we’re not getting paid on time, I’m going to go walk in here with a clear plan, “Well, here’s the deal, we’re in accounting, the accounts receivable is 90 days. We got $600,000 uncollected. So, I’m going to walk in here,” now you’re going to walk in immediately with a pitch in how you’re going to improve your employer’s life.

It could be you’re going to make a harder, better coffee if you’re a receptionist. You’ve decided that you don’t like the phone system works and you’re going to answer the phone in a better way, “And, by the way, I’m no longer a receptionist. I want to call myself the Director of First Impressions because I believe that everyone who walks in the door is the first thing they see is me. I’m the lowly receptionist, but I don’t want to be called the receptionist anymore. My new title is I want to be the Director of First Impressions and this is what I’m going to do for you.”

And you’re going to literally start listing off, before you even get into the money situation. Obviously, you’re going to walk in and say you’d like a raise, “And here’s what I’m going to do for you.” Not, “I deserve,” and, “I feel,” and, “I’ve been here for a year, and I think it’s my annual review.” Bollocks to that. They’ve heard all that.

You’re going to go in and you got to start rattling off the 10 things, the 10 or 15 or whatever you think you can do to improve your odds. Write them down. Walk in with a piece of paper, you know your acceptable outcomes, and you start just going down that list of how you’re going to make your employer’s life better. You haven’t even got into the money situation yet, he just knows you want a raise.

I talk about, in pitch power number 3, obsessive preparation. There’s a high likelihood that your boss knows. I know when my guys want a raise, “Can I get a meeting with you next Wednesday?” I pretty much know what’s coming of their mouth when they want that meeting, it’s a review and a raise. So, most people are going to be afraid, right? You’re going to walk in, it’s an intimidating environment, some bosses are super tyrannical. Practice. Go with your wife, your roommate, your buddies down at the bar and practice asking for this raise. Practice the eye contact. Practice in front of a mirror. I don’t give a crap. Like, get in, practice it.

And then I talk about breaching the forcefield. Make an entrance and take control is power number 4. When you walk in the room, I don’t want you to walk in the room like Billy Mays, “Hi, Billy Mays here.” But make an entrance, I talked about this earlier, shoulders back, smile, look good, firm handshake, shut the door behind you, take your seat without being asked, don’t be intimidated, sit down, take control of the room. I’m not talking about taking total control but take as much control of the situation as you can.

So, make it very clear, “I know you’re busy, Mr. Sullivan, but I just need five minutes of your time,” and sit down and make great eye contact, look good, and get right to the point, then you’re not sitting there flustering not knowing what you’re going to do. I talk about breaching the forcefield. I don’t know if this is so necessary in a job situation.

Reach across the desk, shake hands, make a comment on how great your boss looks today, or ask about how his kids are doing in school, some random bit of information or some exchange that is off-topic that warms the room a little bit, “Did you see the game last night? Great game. How’s your kids doing in school?” Something just to make it so it’s not all about the asking for the money. Get that relationship warmed up a little bit.

Power number 6. Facts tell, story sell. One of kind of the pillars of sales is the feature benefit part of it. Features and benefits are great but if you can weave a story into your pitch, “The other day when you came in and it was pouring out with rain and we didn’t have an umbrella or something and you slipped on the floor, and blah, blah, blah,” if you can weave a story and get some humor into your pitch, you can personalize it. And, all of a sudden, your ask becomes related to something that actually happened. Keep the story on point.

You know, I have 10 pals here, and I don’t know if I’m going on too long here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, no, keep going.

Anthony Sullivan
If you make a mistake, which is highly likely that you probably will, in asking for a raise situation, you might be so nervous that you’re sweating. Own it. You might not be able to get that confidence, you might feel like you’re being shut down, you can just tell him, “You know, I’m very nervous asking you for this but I’m going to have a crack at it.” Own the nerves. So, if you are a nervous person, don’t hide it. We will see it. You can tell who are public speaking who are terrified at public speaking.

Rather than sit there and just shake, own your nerves, “I’m really nervous today, boss. Just to let you know I have a great respect for you and I’m shaking in my boots, but here it goes anyway.” The person on the other end of the transaction will respect you for respecting them, and owning the fact that you’re nervous. If you’re going to ask your high-profile executive for a raise, it can be nerve-wracking.

One of my favorites is there’s a high chance that your boss is just going to say, “No, there’s no money this year. There’s no money in the budget. We don’t have a raise for you. You’re going to have to work.” If you really believe, there’s a couple of things going on there. Firstly, it’s easy for them to say no, right? “No raise.” What are you going to do? You have to bank on this happening, “No, we don’t have any money plus you’ve done a lousy job.”

This is when I talk about pushing back. You double down here. You sit there and go, “Right. Let me just start again,” and you push right back. Now, I believe that a lot of people who say no the first time are doing it just to see what you’re made from, “What are you made of? How badly do you want this?” It’s quite often a coach won’t start a player, right? They want the player to want to be on the field, so that no sometimes is not a no. It’s just they want to see what you got. If they say no, double down. Now, sometimes a no is a no is a no is a no, and you’re like, “You know what, this isn’t going to work,” and just bail.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say double down, do you simply mean repeat yourself or how do you…?

Anthony Sullivan
Yes, you lean in, repeat yourself. Just go back and say, “I don’t know if you really heard what I’m saying here, but let me be very clear,” and just go in again. Go for the second pitch because the pitch didn’t work the first time. Go in again and have a plan for the no. So, you’ve got maybe, “But, wait, there’s more” moment. “All right, look. I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” This is where your acceptable outcomes, “Okay, here’s what. I wanted this but I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this.”

So, I like to push back. I don’t do it all the time. There’s been plenty of times when I’ve been selling stuff and I’m looking at selling at this person who’s never going to buy. You just want to get them out of the room. And you won’t know that, I think, until you’re in the room, and then sometimes you just bail, right? The person is not engaged and this isn’t going to work.

And one of the last things I talk in my book is never be closing. I’m not a big fan of the close. I know you have to finish and you have to wrap it up, and there are times in a conversation, “Okay, so next steps.” But I’m not a big fan of the hard close. Like, did you ever see the movie Glengarry Glen Ross?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Yes, indeed. The ABC.

Anthony Sullivan
The ABC, always be closing. A action, B I forget. First prize set of Cadillac, second prize a set of steak knives, third prize you’re fired. I feel like closing is reserved for timeshare salesman who are, by the way, if you like to close that hard, are some of the best at what they do, they block the door, you can’t get out, it’s like you’re in a maze, they turn the AC all the way, the heat all the way up.

I believe if you pitch correctly, and you’ve taken the steps that I talked about, you’ve shaken hands, you’ve made eye contact, you’ve stated your case, you’ve pushed back, you’ve prepared obsessively, you’ve got your boss nodding, you start to see the signs of, “You know what, he’s going to give me a raise. I got this. It’s going to happen.” Let it happen. Trust the process. I’ve seen this firsthand. When I’m selling or pitching, I know when I’ve got them. I can tell you the moment when I’m in front of a hundred people. We call it under the ether in the pitching world when you have the crowd under the ether.

When I was really early back in England, I used to sell this two-foot extension handle to the Wash-Matic so you could reach on the roof of your car. And when I used to sell it I used to hold it up in the air as if I was showing it to them, and then I’d move it around to the left and I’d move it to the right, and I could watch the whole audience’s head, everyone would follow like a metronome. And I’d put it down to the ground, they would all put it down to the ground, and I used to say, I tell people, “You watch what happens when I do this.”

You’ve got them under a spell because you intrigued them, you entertained them, in a way you got them interested, you entertained them, and now it’s time to persuade them. In that moment, when you see the boss’ arms unfold, he might lean and go, “ All right. I really like what you’re talking about here. Let’s talk about this a little bit more.” And you’ll find that the barriers and the walls just literally start crumbling down in a situation, in asking for a raise, he might give you a raise right there and then. He might shake your hand and go, “You know what, I’ll get back to you in 24 hours with my answer.”

And that’s when it’s time to finish with confidence, “You know what, Mr. Boss, thanks very much for your time. I really appreciate it. I just want to tell you I love working here. You can count on me. I’m a team player,” and do the moonwalk out of the room backwards. Don’t turn your back on the boss, okay? You walk out of the room backwards. You don’t have to walk out bowing throwing roses down. Finish with confidence, eye contact, shake hands, walk out of the room, shut the door, say hi to the assistant. Finish with confidence.

And I run through this in the book, and I really feel that in asking for a raise, getting a job, you could’ve gone up to a beautiful stranger at a place, a public place, you’re like, “You know what, I really find that person attractive.” All these little principles can be used to get an upgrade in the airline to get in the First Class, to get an exit row, to get the last room at a hotel, to get a loan. Most people fumble through all those interactions and they wonder why they don’t get what they want. And I’m not saying you have to pitch all the time because it’d be exhausting, but it sure helps if you can do it, and it’s helped me a lot. So, that’s the long and short of it, really.

And I tried to put it all in the book, and I really wanted the book to be of value to people who are not in sales. Obviously, I think it is pitching. I use it to sell a product but if I can help one person get a raise, meet an attractive stranger, get the job of their dreams, get into college, get funded, sell a movie script. The pitching, you think about they’re always pitching movie ideas and pitching TV shows. Some people are really, really good at it, and it’s a great skill to have.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. Well, then, so now, tell me, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Anthony Sullivan
When I first started this career, I think, I thought this is just one lucky pitch on how to sell a car wash. And what I did, I took these principles and I applied them into different products. And I’ve been doing this for 25 years now and got a multimillion dollar facility down there in Florida, and people come from publicly-traded companies, come to us for our expertise in this. So, I know it works.

It works for a Nutrisystem when we’re selling weight loss. It works when I’m selling OxiClean. It worked today when I was working on my new mop. I have met some of the most amazing people in my life and got to do some amazing things just because I pitch them. And I’m working on a couple of things right now, and I’m going to pitch the hell out of people. That’s what I do, so, yeah, it’s fun to talk about it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Thank you. Well, now, can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Anthony Sullivan
I love the whole quote, “It’s not the critic who counts,” I’m trying to think of the whole. It’d Teddy Roosevelt, right? That’s one of my favorites. “It’s not the critic that counts. The credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena, whose face is marked by dust and sweat and blood, who errs, who strives valiantly, who comes up short.” I think I’m butchering the quote. It’s one of my favorites. I just feel you’ve got to keep going.

And one of my other favorite quotes is Winston Churchill, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” There’s been a couple times in my career when I wanted to quit. One thing, perseverance, just keep going. Stay in the saddle. I don’t know if you watched the movie, the documentary, the HBO documentary The Defiant Ones. Have you seen it?

Pete Mockaitis
No.

Anthony Sullivan
Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s about Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, and at the end of the documentary they interview a lot of very famous, successful artists, musical artists. And there’s a little two-minute clip at the end of it, and they all say the same thing, “Keep going. Stay in the saddle.” And I would say that to anyone out there, it’s like, “Do not let them grind you down.”

Winston Churchill, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” You cannot quit. And all the successful people who I had the good fortune to meet, Joy Mangano who is a good friend of mine, CEO of HSN who just went to work for Weight Watchers, Mindy Grossman is a good friend. Everyone who’s had that trials and tribulations and difficulties.

I just met Lance Armstrong last weekend. I don’t know if there’s a lot of people, detractors of Lance. I happen to be a fan of Lance. And there’s a guy who, “Pull yourself up off the ground no matter what, and move forward.” You’ve got to move forward. And too many people, I think, give up because it’s difficult, it is hard. It is difficult successful and you do have so many failures along the way, but stay in the saddle.

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

Anthony Sullivan
You know what’s funny? I was thinking about this the other day, the book that I picked up that I could not put down, and it’s like you’re not going to think of like Aristotle or anything, or Marcus Aurelius. It was Andy Weir’s book The Martian. You read it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the one the movie is based on?

Anthony Sullivan
You saw the movie? I picked that book up. I must’ve bought 20 copies of that book and sent it to people, and gave it to people. I was just completely immersed in that book. When the movie came out, I was like a geek. I was sitting in line to watch it, first person. And I watched it twice. It just captivated me, that book.

I also I think I’ve read every self-help book known to man. In my 20s I was like craving. The shortcut, I was looking for the silver bullet – The 7 Habit of Highly Effective People, The Power of Positive Thinking, and I think a lot of those books rubbed off on me, and I start reading them after a while because they all sort of said the same thing. These guys were all talking about the same stuff.

I like Malcolm Gladwell’s book, so I think Malcolm is super talented. I’m in the middle of reading George Hincapie’s biography right now, so that’s really what I’m reading today. I do it like a chapter a day. But I’m not a massive reader, but that’s my book comment for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that helps you be awesome?

Anthony Sullivan
I love to exercise. I’m an exercising fiend, and as I get older I’ve discovered that you’ve got to keep moving. And I do everything I can to at least get an hour and 30 minutes – and it’s probably excessive – a day in the pool, on the bike, or running. I kind of cut back on my running, and I’m actually entering a triathlon called Island House Triathlon in two weeks, and I’m about to hop on my trainer. But if I’m not working or pitching, I’m normally on my bike or in the pool.

Pete Mockaitis
Now when you say when you get older, you have to keep moving. I’m curious, what happens if you don’t? What makes it a necessity?

Anthony Sullivan
I’m 48 and I’ve discovered there’s three things that you kind of need to do to have a great physical, mental, intellectual, spiritual life. And one is, eat right, it’s really simple. People are, “What do I got to do? What do I got to do?” Eat quality food whenever you can. And I know you’re going to have a cheeseburger every now and then. If there’s an opportunity to eat quality food, there’s no substitute for it.

Exercise and to find something that you love to do and do it regularly, and get plenty of rest. Sleep. Sleep is underrated. Get your eight hours. You need eight hours, go to bed early. Nothing good happens after midnight. And I’m really trying to practice those three things, and I also try and surround myself with super positive people. I really believe that if you look for happiness, you’ll find it. If you look for drama, it will come to you. So, I try and make a conscious effort to search out the great things in life each and every day.

When I wake up, I took a look, it’s 70 something degrees in Florida today. It’s absolutely beautiful. So, I try and surround myself with great people and have a great community. And I love my little girl. I got a little six-year old girl who’s birthday is this weekend who lights me up, so I’m super excited to take her for a birthday party this weekend.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great. And, Sully, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Anthony Sullivan
AnthonySullivan.com my website. I’m super accessible. You can reach me on Instagram, SullyonTV, S-U-L-L-Y onTV. If you want a little funny video or a shoutout, just reach me on Instagram. I’m happy to do it. And you can reach me on Facebook on AnthonySullivan, and Twitter @sullyontv, that’s S-U-L-L-Y on TV. Yeah, I’m super accessible. I try to be as accessible as I can to inventors, to entrepreneurs, to students, to anyone who kind of wants a little advice. I’d love to get back and be of value.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Anthony Sullivan
You know, I think it is this era we’re living in, there’s never been a better time to be in business with the platforms that are available whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Kickstarter.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. Thank you. Well, Sully, this has been a real treat. I wish you lots of luck with your upcoming mop and book and all you’re up to.

Anthony Sullivan
Thanks. I hope your listeners will enjoy it. I really do. So, good stuff. Thanks for having me as a guest. And anything you need, just give me a holler and let me know.

Nov 08
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227: Becoming More Persuasive with Donald Kelly

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Donald Kelly says: "Out-hustle yourself and you'll always be successful."

Fellow podcaster Donald Kelly reveals keys to being more persuasive, building influence, and hustling everyday.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Principles of sales that everyone can use to become more influential
  2. Two strategies to overcome the fear of rejection
  3. Approaches for making an effective cold call or email

About Donald

Donald Kelly evangelizes effective ways for salespeople and entrepreneurs to find more qualified prospects, close more deals and make more money. He does this through motivating sales training, online courses, one-on-one coaching, workshops, seminars and dynamic keynote presentations.

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