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How To Find the Opportunity In Any Obstacle

Episode 96

I’m not one of those people who believe everything happens for a reason. However, I do believe we can choose how we respond to obstacles in life and that every obstacle opens the door to an opportunity. In this episode, I go deeper into this topic by telling a story about how my dog made the best of a bad situation because she didn’t know any other way to respond. I also talk about how this lesson can help you find the opportunity in any obstacle.

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Obstacle Voice of Influence Podast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast! Alright, so I’ve got a story for you and this one is about our dog, our dog named Belle.

My husband has always really been into dogs.  I knew this coming in to the marriage that if I was to love my husband, I would have to love his dogs.  At the time he had one and it was actually part of the thing that maybe I fall in love with him because, I mean, he has this dog trained so well, George is his name. Anyway, I’d talked about that in my book but, I have to love dogs because I love my husband.

Well, about five years ago or four years ago something like that, my husband was like kind of looking through, he’s always kind of paying attention who’s selling dogs, what dogs need a home, you know, this sort of thing and he points some out to me every once in a while.  And I suppose he was trying to like warn me up the idea of having two dogs and not just one, and I was never that big of a fan of the idea.

But then he found this one dog and this dog needed a home.  A groomer had kind of rescued this dog and it was about 6 months old and he looked at it and he’s like “This dog is a good dog.  I can tell this is a good dog.  I need to go check this dog out.”  And I’m like “OK, fine.”  So he goes to check this dog out at the groomers.  He brings the dog home to kind of you know see what she’s like with our kids.

Dog comes home and she’s super sweet.  She’s humongous because she’s like a great Pyrenees poodle, we decided, and I don’t know if you know anything about dogs but that means she’s really big.  At the time, she wasn’t that big, but now, she’s probably 90 pounds.  So, anyway, Belle is what we ended up deciding to call her because she had a name and it was not a name we could use because another dog in the family had that name.  So we named her Belle.

Well, a few months later, I’m not exactly sure when it was, but a few months later, Belle was able to get out of our backyard and so she would run away and just have a grand dog time in our neighborhood.  Just running through everybody else’s backyard and across the street and then always going to freaked us out because we thought, “Oh my goodness this dog is going to get hit by car,” we just knew it.

Well, this kept happening. My husband kept finding all the holes that he needed to pin down in our backyard and we had everything kind of figured out, we thought.  And then she got through again.  She pushed away underneath of our fence of our backyard and she took off.  We didn’t know where she was but it was pretty late at night, I don’t know, maybe 10 o’clock or so and the kids were already in bed. We don’t know what’s going on.  We don’t know where she’s at.  It’s really hard to find a dark mostly kind of grayish black haired dog.  How do you find a dog like this who is so fast in the night like that?

So we opened up our front door hoping that she would just come back in because she had done that before. So I’m like scrubbing our floor or something and working and all of a sudden we hear breaks and a thud and a dog screech, and our hearts just about popped out of our chest.  We ran outside and the dog was not there.  The dog had moved.  So, Aaron talked to the driver of the car and had found out that she had hit the side of his car.  She’d actually run into the car itself.  The car didn’t run into her, she ran into the car and then she took off.

Well, she took off behind our house where there’s like this river behind our house and so we didn’t know what’s going to happen to this dog because she could get eaten by a fox or something like this because we’ve seen with a fox behind our house before and oh my goodness all of the things! We were just feeling horrible about it and the next morning, we told the kids and they felt really bad and they were outside yelling trying to get Belle to come back home and I felt so bad for them.

Well, the kids went back to school and went back behind our house and thought “I’m gonna have to find this dong.  She’s probably out there lying on the ground some place.  She could be dead, who knows.”  But when I got to the back of our fence, she was kind of barking, crying at me.  And it turns out that her leg was broken.  So, I had to lift this dog, who at that time, I don’t know she was 50 pounds or something like that.  I lift this dog up.  I carried her all the way, take her to the vet.  I just couldn’t believe that she was so alive, neither could Aaron, of course. The kids, of course, thought that she would be but I just couldn’t believe it.

Well, this dog, we love her so much.  I should say, everybody else loves her so much.  I try.  I do try sometimes.  But anyway, dogs can be a pain when you’re the one has to kind of, I don’t know.  Anyway, so the dog gets a cast on her leg because her leg was so broken and of course she a puppy still.  She was at the time, maybe 6 months to a year old, I can’t remember exactly.  So she’s wanting to bite at her cast all the time.

Well, you know, what happens when dogs aren’t suppose to bite things, they get a cone around their necks, the cone of shame.  Have you seen this?  You know, what I’m talking about.  It’s that plastic cone that goes around the dog’s neck and it goes out beyond their face so that they can’t actually bite anything so that she couldn’t get to her leg and bite her cast off.  Well, we thought it was pretty funny at this point where she had the cone of shame. She didn’t act like was ashamed at all.

This dog is so funny. I mean, there are so many lessons to learn from this silly dog.  But she wasn’t afraid at all.  She just was like “whatever, I got this cone on.  It’s not a big deal.  I’m just still trotting around even though I have a broken leg and I’m still the happy go lucky dog that I am and what not.”

Well, one day, I looked in the backyard and Belle had bird feathers all over the inside of her cone of shame.  That dog took her cone and trapped a bird underneath her cone down that thing and just ripped it to shreds and ate it up because she had this cone on her head. Oh my goodness and there was just such a mess.  I have a picture of her.  I’ll find it and put it in the show notes.  It was so funny.  I mean, it was terrifying for me, but it was so funny because this dog had figured out how to take an obstacle and turn it into opportunity.

She didn’t look at her cone and be like “Oh my goodness,” like all the dogs would do.  We would look at something like that or something that is supposed to be full of shame.  This supposed to make you feel horrible.  We would feel that way.  We would feel like wanted to hide.  We wouldn’t show anybody that.  We don’t want to have to deal with it.  We felt bad about it.  You know, maybe we would go hide in the corner, stay in our homes, whatever.  Not this dog.  She doesn’t know what shame is.

And so what did she do, she just “OK, well, this is what I got.  This is what I got to work with.  Let’s make something happen.”  And she sure did.  She made something happen.  She trapped the bird and ate that thing up.

Well, I love this illustration and obviously, I took a whole 9 and half minutes to tell you this story because I really do believe that we can find opportunities in our obstacles. It maybe trite to say that in some ways, but when you’ve actually gone through stuff, when you’ve gone through really hard things then you start to look around and you realize, “You know what, I made it through that.”  And how did I make it through that?  I found a way.  I found opportunity even in the obstacles and then it’s not so trite anymore.

You start to realize that “You know what; this is actually really, deeply true.”  There are things that I’ve experienced in my own life, family situations where an illness in the family has caused me to really take a hard look at myself.  It has really had me thinking, and multiple illnesses and things that have happened, you know, when you start to realize how short life is, when you start to realize how old you are and that life isn’t just this infinite expansion of opportunity that there are serious obstacles in the way then you could do a few different things.

You could go hide and you could find a way to push it all away.  How do we usually do this?  We do this with food.  We do this with alcohol or drugs.  We do this busyness.  We push away the things that don’t feel good, those obstacles we don’t have to think about. We just push them away because we don’t want to deal with it.  But you know what happens when we do that.  You’ve probably seen that before in yourself.  You’ve probably seen that before in other people.

When we push away the hard stuff, it has its way of working its way really deeply inside of our souls to a point where you start to really kind of have gaping wound on the inside, things that we haven’t really dealt with that really start to eat away at us.  It’s not healthy.  It’s not good.  It’s painful to actually look and stare obstacles in the face.  It can be painful to say, “Oh my goodness, I have this cone of shame on.  I’m dealing with this horrible broken leg.  How am I gonna go chase squirrels now?”

But that’s not the only way to look at.  There’s also other ways to look at.  You can look at it and say “OK, so what do I have to work with now?  How do I make it work with what I have now?”  And not only that, this is one of the other things that has really hit me, sometimes obstacles like place on us limitations that now we have to deal with those limitations.  And I’ve done this before where a limitation is placed on me and so I think “Oh my goodness, I can’t do it then.  I guess these walls have been put up.  These limitations had been put up.  Apparently, I’m not gonna able to accomplish what I need to accomplish. I’m just gonna give up.”

Instead, what we can do is we can say “OK, this limitation could be a gift.”  How could it be a gift?  It could be a gift because it’s helping me make decisions.  “OK, I can’t go that direction so I’m gonna have to go this other way.  So this other way has to work for me.  It must be the direction that I’m supposed to take.”  Instead of looking at this “Oh my goodness, there’s this obstacle on the way. There’s this branch in the middle of the road, this big huge tree in the middle of the road.  I’m not gonna be able to take that road now.  I always wanted to take this road.  This is the path that I wanted to take but I guess I’m not gonna be able to.”

So you can just turn around and go back home. Or you could say, “Alright, so this isn’t the path, let’s look around whatever options are left?  Well, it looks like I could go this way or we can go that way.  Well, at least now I know that this is not the way so that gives me fewer decisions to make, fewer choices.  I can make a decision on my own.  I don’t have to be drawn just by what I was wanting to do in the first place, instead I get to make a decision now based on the circumstances that I have in front of me.”

How do we turn obstacles into opportunities?  A lot of people take tragedy in their lives and they actually find meaning and purpose in helping other people avoid that tragedy sort of like the Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  I think I remember a story a long time ago how some mother lost her son or daughter to a drunk driver and she started MADD.  She started Mothers Against Drunk Driving and turned it in to her purpose to help other people avoid it.

Now, when I say opportunity, I don’t mean that it something that you would necessarily want for your life. When you start out your life and you’re looking forward, you’re not saying to yourself “I really would like to experience tragedy here so that I could find purpose in helping other people avoid that tragedy.”  Of course, you’re not saying that.  Nobody is saying that.  I’m not even saying that you should think that.  However, when you do confront tragedy, when you do confront the hard stuff of life which so often just hits us and we can’t even control then we have to take a step back and say “But what can I control?  What can I do now?”

Yes, there’s been a stake in the place in the ground.  There has been a fork in the middle of the road, a tree that fell down in my path, a cone around my neck.  There’s a serious obstacle right in front of me.  Am I going to crumble and just fall to the ground?  Am I going to back off and just say forget it?  Am I going to avoid the pain and the tragedy?  Am I going to avoid having to deal with it or am I going to look at this straight in the eye and say “OK, now what am I going to do with this?”

For a while you may need to mourn.  For a while you’re going to need to grieve a lost opportunity.  For a while you might be sad. It might be three seconds, it might be three years of grief depending on the kind of obstacle or tragedy that has hit you.  But all the while, you can have this internal belief that there can be meaning that could come from it.  There can be something important that can come from this struggle.

You see, this is really about having a growth mindset.  It’s about saying, “You know what, I acknowledge that I’m not gonna able to just have what I want all the time.  I acknowledge that life is hard and I can’t avoid the pain that this life is going to bring me.” But the question that ends up coming is what am I going to do with what I have?  What internal resources, what external resources, or what belief do I have that I can drop them that will help me to move forward, that will help me to find a new purpose, a new path.

There are a lot of things that I’m doing now that I never in my life would have thought I would have been doing.  But I came up against obstacles.  I came up again needs in my family, in my life, in my own personal sense of self, things that were difficult then I had to take a really hard look often after years of pushing things away or trying to be distracted or being in depression or things like this.  I finally came to sense of purpose and meaning that I could still find having gone through the battle, having gone though the struggle, having encountered the obstacle and those things kind of marked my path.

They sort of gave me direction toward the next step that I needed to take, to the point where now I’m doing something in Voice of Influence that even though I always wanted to do something like what I’m doing now, I never would have thought that I would have started a business.  I never would have thought that I would be offering strategic advice, offering the opportunity for teams to really gel and align to a company’s vision.  I never would have thought about, “Oh my goodness, this is what I wanna do when I grow up.”  I had no idea that that sort of thing even existed for quite a while.

But those obstacles that kept coming into my road, kept directing me to the next step, to the next place along my path.  And I think in the end, we all have to just admit that this is a hard, hard thing, walking through life.  It’s not easy to figure out how to handle everything.  It’s not easy to know how to prioritize or what decisions to make for your family or what decisions to make for your company, how to help a team member through a really hard time.

But in the end, I think we have to just go back to asking “What is the opportunity present?  What is the opportunity?  You’re not saying to yourself, “Well, everything happens for a reason.”  I’ve said this so many times, guys.  I’m not saying that that everything happens for a reason.  I don’t think that that’s how we should look at it.  Instead, this hashappened so, now, what I’m going to do with it. Now, what am I going to do?  I don’t think we have to look at it as destiny. I don’t think we have to look at it that God is trying hurt me or allowing really bad things to happen to me that sort of thing and that it’s all for a reason, somehow it’s for a reason. I don’t think that we have to look at it like that.

But I do think that when we do come up against hard things, when we do encounter tragedy, when we do encounter obstacles, when we sort of have this cone of shame around our neck that is supposed to be something that’s really shameful, maybe instead of walking around in shame or hiding in shame, we can shrug our shoulders and say “OK, so what are we gonna do with this today?  How do we I still make this work?”

That’s what my silly dog Belle taught me.  How do I still make this work even though I’m a silly old dog that ran into a car?  (I do not understand how it happens) But how do I make this work?  What am I going to do with this now?

Friend, please take the obstacles that are in your path and ask, what is the opportunity here and go make your voice matter more.

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Setting Ego Aside to Achieve Exponential Growth with Johnathan Grzybowski

Episode 95

Andrea Wenburg interviews Johnathan Grzybowski of Penji about setting aside ego and exponential growth. They also talk about getting good graphic design at affordable prices.

Johnathan Grzybowski is the Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder of Penji, an on-demand graphic design service that is fast, simple, and affordable. Penji was named “Top Start-Up to Watch” by Philadelphia Magazine and has been mentioned in major publications like Success Magazine, Huffington Post, Forbes, and INC. Prior to Penji, Johnathan founded multiple marketing-related start-ups and worked for Apple. He is also the host of the Blind Entrepreneurship podcast. In this episode, Johnathan discusses why he started a graphic design service he says he’s the “least qualified” person to do graphic design work, what he believes helped Penji take off so quickly, what it’s been like to grow his company to nearly 50 team members in such a short period of time, how he helps his team members adopt the company culture, how he came to realize he needed to keep his ego in check, the two questions he always asks during the hiring process, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Johnathan Grzybowski Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

The Penji Process

As mentioned by Johnathan, Penji is an on-demand graphic design service. It offers unlimited graphic design, which means you can submit as many requests for design as you can. They also provide unlimited revisions to ensure that you get the exact design that you need.

And all that for a flat, monthly rate. You don’t have to pay for each project you need. Their plans are inclusive of the designs and revisions. Their design team consists of professional web designers, illustrators, app designers, and many others ready to take on a design job you may need.

They have made their design process straightforward. In just four easy steps, you can get your design anytime between 24 to 48 hours. Here are the steps:

●    Create

When you sign up for any of Penji’s affordable plans, you’ll get access to their platform. This is where you’ll submit your design requests and communicate with the designers. You’ll be asked to write a brief description of your project. You can attach references to let the designer know what you have in mind.

Your request will then be automatically assigned to the best designer for the job. What this means is that your project will be given to the designer most capable of creating that specific design.

After the turnaround time, you’ll get your first draft. You’ll be sent email notifications about the progress of your project.

●    Review

You’re then asked to review the draft and send them for revisions if you’re not entirely happy with it. Penji has a unique point-and-click revision tool that allows you to tell your designer exactly what to change. They have made their system simple so that you don’t have to go through a lot of back and forth emailing with your designer.

Wait for 12 to 24 hours for the designer to make the revisions.

●    Download

Once satisfied with the design, you can download it directly from the dashboard. You don’t have to wait for emails to come with your design. In addition, you get full ownership of the designs and use them whenever and however you want.

Who is Penji For?

Johnathan tells us that Penji is ideal for agencies and marketing companies. But they also cater to individuals and businesses of all shapes and sizes. Here are a few examples of who Penji is perfect for:

Agencies

A majority of Penji’s clients are agencies that are focused on creating strategies. They’d rather give the small tasks to Penji to give them more room and energy to do just that. When they have an overflow of work, agencies will benefit from Penji as they no longer have to hire additional staff. When the workload is manageable, they won’t have to let go of people.

Marketers

People in the marketing industry will understand how important graphic design is to get ahead. For marketers that need a constant supply of design, Penji is perfect for you. You don’t have to pay for every design that you’ll need, Penji can create them for you. From social media graphics to promotional print materials, you can send requests for it.

Bloggers

Almost everyone you know today has a blog. What used to be a hobby has now become a full-time endeavor. And to stand out from the crowd, stock images won’t do anymore. What every blogger needs are eye-catching images to emphasize their content and make them more relevant.

But as we commonly know, graphic design can be expensive. For bloggers, Penji is a dream come true. You can have amazing graphics for each blog post—all for a fixed monthly rate.

Startups

For startups that need effective branding identity as well as design assets, Penji is a smart choice. Hiring an in-house designer can put a strain on its limited resources. With Penji, they can get all their branding visuals without breaking the bank. They won’t have to rely on websites that create templated designs that look similar to everyone else’s.

Penji Pricing

Penji has three available plans. These are:

Pro Plan

For individuals such as bloggers or independent marketers, the Penji Pro plan is a solid choice. For $399, you’ll be getting unlimited graphic design and revisions. You and another team member can use it and have a daily turnaround. If you pay the subscription rate per quarter, you’ll only be charged $359 per month. A yearly payment will get you a 15% discount, which means you’re getting the service at only $339 per month.

Team Plan

For medium-sized companies and organizations, this is the plan for you. Penji’s Team plan includes all of what the Pro can offer and more. You can send requests for web and app designs, as well as custom illustrations and infographics. You can add four additional users for a total of five. The Team plan is $499 per month, but if you pay quarterly, it will be down to $449, and $424 if paid yearly.

Agency Plan

As the name suggests, Penji’s Agency plan is created specifically for agencies. It is ideal for businesses that require no less than 10 hours or more of design work per month. For $899 per month, you’ll get all that the Team plan offers and more. You will have two designers assigned to you, plus ten users and prioritized support. This gets you double the output, which is excellent for crunch times. You’ll also get discounts if you pay quarterly or yearly. You pay only $809 per quarter or $764 per year.

Penji Services

Penji covers a wide area of design categories. Take a pic from the list below:

  • Digital and print ads
  • Web and app design
  • Logos
  • Magazines, books/eBooks, newsletters
  • Social media content
  • Business cards
  • Brochures
  • Billboards and other outdoor advertising
  • T-shirts
  • Catalogs
  • Custom illustrations
  • Postcards
  • Restaurant menus
  • Banners
  • Landing pages
  • Stickers
  • Leaflets and flyers

 

If what you need isn’t on this list, don’t worry. They can custom create them for you. That’s how versatile their graphic designers are.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have Jonathan Grzybowski with me and I’m so excited.  We just have been chatting a little bit beforehand; you’re going to really enjoy him.  He’s the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Penji and on demand graphic design service that is fast, simple, and affordable. Penji has been named as “top startup to watch” according to Philadelphia Magazine and has been mentioned in major publications like Success Magazine, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Inc.  Prior to Penji, Jonathan founded multiple marketing related startups and worked for Apple.  Jonathan is also the host of Blind Entrepreneurship podcast.  

Andrea:  So Jonathan, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, thank you so much for having me.  Excited to share as much value as I humanly possibly can.

Andrea:  Oh my goodness.  Ok, well, we better get started.  So why don’t you tell us first of all, a little bit more about Penji?  What is it?  How did it get started?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah.  Well, to get started thing has been like a freak accident to be perfectly honest with you.  Penji is an on-demand graphic design service.  Businesses hire us to do all the graphic designs that they need.  Some companies hire us because they need some type of ancillary design team.  Maybe they have designers in house, but they just have so much work that they just don’t want to do it themselves anymore, or maybe they have some of the projects that are a little bit above them, so they give us kind of the dirty work so to speak.

It’s expensive to hire a graphic designer, and it’s really hard to hire a good one.  It also takes a lot of time.  So, what we want Penji to be and what Penji is, is we want people to go on our website, feel, I guess enough trust that we’re able to do the work, and then we need to be reliable enough to complete it. 

So, you sign up for Penji, you get access to our team of designers that are all in-house.  We don’t freelance or outsource.  They’re all in-house graphic designers, and you can submit a design project and receive it in under 48 hours.  And you could do that as many times as you like throughout the course of the month.

And when it comes to actually finding it, we were an agency for several years and we had our ups and downs, lost clients, gain clients.  But every time we lost a client, they always said, “Hey, you’re not able to deliver results, but your design is kickass, and it’s really good, and it’s something that we really regret that we’re not able to work with you because the marketing side of your business sucks.”  Or “the development side of your business isn’t good.”

So, we explored that a little bit, and then we started testing it out and saying, “OK, this person said it and that person said, and more people said it, what’s the problem here?” 

So then we started interviewing our closest friends, interviewed close to about 200 people, and we asked them the same question.  We said, “Hey, what is the biggest problem that you’re having in your business today?”  

“OK, well, it’s graphic design.” 

“Alright, well, let’s figure that out.  If we built this type of service, would you buy it?” And there’s a bunch of other questions that we asked too, but that was kind of like the main ones.  “What is the problem that you have and if we built this, would you buy it?”  And the problem overwhelming, believe it or not, the people that we talked to, they all had a problem with graphic design or some form of variation of marketing. 

And then they said, “Well, if we build it, would you buy it?”  And again, that answer was yes and then we use that as like the basis of our initial customers.

Andrea:  Wow!  OK, so were you a graphic designer in the first place?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  If you asked me to design something, it would be the worst possible graphic design you will ever experience on the planet.  The answer is no, I’m not a graphic designer.  However, I was an agency owner that did all the graphic designs, even know he knew that he was awful at them and I did it for years.  And it wasn’t up until we started to grow when we really found some really good graphic design talent.

But for the most part, I did the graphic designs, all of the graphic designs for our business for years, and I’m the least qualified person to do so.  So feeling that internal struggle that I had and being able to translate that to like an actual business alongside my co-founders, it just was the perfect marriage and the exact business that we were meant to build.

Andrea:  So what was the agency before that?  I mean, what were an agency for what?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  We did SEO.  We did social media marketing, advertising management, web design and development, and app design and development.

Andrea:  Yeah, stuff like that.  OK, gotcha.  Alright, cool, so what you realized was that this was the big, big huge need and you’re just going to fill it however you had to fill it.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, exactly.  Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Andrea:  Wow!  Yeah, interviewing 200 people is a lot too.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I think you have to if you really want to like there’s so many startups out there that are just like have this idea, and I need a $100,000 to do so.  And then my first question is how many people did you talk to in order to make sure that this is a valid idea?  

“Oh, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.” 

OK, well, I don’t even want to talk to you until you start putting any effort because if you get discouraged at like let’s just say 50 people and they all say that your idea is crap then how are you going to be able to see this idea to fruition?

Andrea:  So true.  Alright, so you guys got started with Penji then and from what I understand it took off pretty quickly.  How and why?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I think, to be perfectly honest, I think luck is definitely on our side for sure.  I definitely think it has a lot to do with our skill as well of course.  But I think it was solving the problem.  

We’ve created something that had a huge need in the marketplace, and we are at the right place at the right time.  We started, as I mentioned before, our initial customer base was the people that our friends, like the people that we interviewed.  And a lot of them said, yes, that they need it, and then we kind of just grew from there.  

We said, “OK, well,” and this was before we even had software, by the way. So this is like two years ago, two and a half years ago.  We had no software.  We just knew that like this is something that we thought we could do.  So we had like 10 customers.  We’ve got those 10 customers pretty quickly and they’re paying us like I think it was $2.99 at the time.  And so we’re like “All right, we got ourselves some stuff here and the service is not what it was.”  

So, it was like a diet Coke version of what it is now.  And then we got our initial customer base, and then we asked for referrals that we built this awesome platform that now allows us to communicate and scale our business. And then fast forward, we used variations of like cold outreach.  

We were heavily connected.  I know you’re in Nebraska, heavily connected toward geographic region, which is right outside Philadelphia, so like a 30 mile radius of Philadelphia.  I can confidently say that there’s a large majority of people that are in our tri-state region that know what we do and know who we are, and we’re completely OK with them just knowing it, even though we have customers all over the world. 

But we’re trying to dominate our local sector first and then figuring out how to do it and then being able to scale it in other cities later on and in advertisements in SEO.  To some people that are maybe listening and think that SEO is dead, they couldn’t be more wrong.  A large majority of our traffic is generated and conversion is generated through SEO, which is higher ranks on Google.

Andrea:  Sure.  OK, so when you’re growing that fast and you’re having to put together a team, how many people are on your team at this point?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I’d say like around a little under 50.

Andrea:  Wow!  OK, 50 people really quickly.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  We’re hiring more people, so it’s like 45-50.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  And you continue to have to hire I’m sure as you grow.  So what’s been one of the biggest challenges in the short period of time in recruiting and then also just getting everybody on board with your whole process, your company DNA and that sort of thing?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, it’s a great question.  When it comes to hiring, I don’t think we necessarily had an issue when it comes to that.  We’ve partnered up with a lot of great organizations that are in our area, one of them, particularly, is Hopeworks.  We’re in a technically an underserved community, which is a Camden, New Jersey.  And they help kids, youth, students, and residents kind of teach them job-related skills in the world of tech.  And so, we’re able to work with that organization in order to help these students and residents obtain jobs and we hired them.  So that’s definitely one area.

Andrea:  Really cool.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah.  We’re really proud of it.  We are definitely a community conscious organization, and we consistently believe in our community, and we believe in our people. 

But when it comes to our scaling, I think we’re a cash flow positive business.  We’ve never received an ounce of funding.  We don’t need funding.  We don’t want funding at this moment.  When the timing is right, maybe we’ll think about it, but we don’t need it.  So why go after it?  With that in mind, when you’re growing this by yourself, you have all these systems and processes in place that work really well for yourself because you’re the only one that’s doing it, you’re the only one that’s looking at it.

And then when you actually have to hire people to do the job, you really have to think about it like, “OK, if somebody has no idea even what the English language is and they’re learning it for the first time, would they be able to understand what it is that I’m trying to say to them?”  And being able to cookie cutter it for that individual that is for that job that was probably one of the hardest things to do just because you have so many processes and systems in place that work really well for you.  Now you have to be able to amplify that times a million.  That’s definitely one of them.

And then the last thing would be leadership.  I think it’s incredibly difficult to lead a team without having to ever really led a team before.  This is like my first “I’ve only had really one another job outside of this.”  So you really have to rely on reading, interviewing, talking to people and then just trial by fire.  There’s a lot of mistakes that we made, but I’m really proud of where we came from.

Andrea:  Wow!  OK, so, yeah, leadership.  Leadership is huge.  I know that you’re not the only leader at your company.  What is the leadership structure?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  So, I’m the CMO.  I do a lot of the sales and lead generation for our business, and I get the message out there as much as I possibly can.  We have my co-founder, which is a CEO, and he does the day-to-day operations in order to make sure that everything runs smoothly and is cohesive, but it’s safe to say that my job, in particular, is the lead generation and sales.

Andrea:  Gotcha.   So when it comes to making decisions together, and I know you co-founded it, when you’re working like this and you’re working so fast on something that’s growing so fast, and you’re with somebody else, you’re bound to come up against things that you disagree with each other about.  I mean, is that safe to say?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, all the time.

Andrea:  OK, so how do you handle those things so that you can move through it and come to decisions?  How do you actually decide?

Jonathan Grzybowski: You really have to just completely check your ego at the door, and that is like so freaking difficult because you’re an entrepreneur because you feel like you have some form of ego that you could do it better than somebody else, right?  That’s always like the stature why you start a business or at least like, long story short, it’s ego, right?  You have to be able to check your ego at the door.  You have to be able to understand that, you know what, this person has put in this place for this particular reason.  And even though you may not agree, write down the thing that you said that you want to push forward, and it may not be right now, but make sure that you at least remember the decision that maybe like your co-founder made and be able to reach back out to them and say, “Hey, you know, I see here that the thing that you tried to push a couple of weeks ago just isn’t working correctly.  Do you mind if we give this thing a try instead?”

I think that has worked really well, but there are tons of disputes that we have even on like a, not so much anymore because we just have more dialogue and conversations, but at the very beginning, it’s just like, “I want my idea to go through.”  And he’s like, “I want my idea to go through.”  And now we’re butting heads.  

But I think at the end of the day you also have to understand that each of the ideas that are being presented are coming from a good place.  But I think where a lot of things butt heads with partnerships is that reluctant attitude of, like, always being right.  You constantly want to be the right, and you want to be like, I guess the star that comes up with the silver bullet so to speak. And I think, personally, it’s like giving him full reins of “This is the company that you’re leading, and you need to be able to do that. And as a co-founder, yes, I do have a say but this is why you’re in this position.  You focus on your job, which is leading the company.  I’ll focus on getting a crap ton of sales and growing the company through sales.”  And having, too, clear defined roles, I think is also very challenging to maybe do at first.  But you really just have to understand, like, what your strengths and weaknesses are.  He can’t do some of the things that I can do, and I can’t do some of the things that he can do, and I’m OK with that.

Andrea:  Was it pretty obvious to you when you started who was going to do which role?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I would say, yeah.  I’d like to say that, like, I’m a millennial, so if you couldn’t tell.  And I would say that I’m, like, to give a millennial reference, I am like a level 19 Charmeleon that is on the path to becoming a Charizard.  To put it in layman’s terms, I’m just not there yet when it comes to my intellect and my ability to lead.  And I think that he is incredibly intelligent in particular, and I think that he’s just the better suit.  So I’ve come to terms with that. I’m OK with that.  And there’s going to be a time where, you know, maybe he takes to X degree, and I’d be able to come in, and I’d be able to help with the latter half.  So again, it’s just that open conversation and that transparency you need to have with your team.

Andrea:  Yeah, I love that.  I mean, it’s a hard conversation.  It’s a hard thing to figure out when you first getting started, there’s so many big bumps in the road.  Was there like a certain point in your life when you just really realize that, “Oh my gosh, my ego is getting in the way.  I’m done with this.”

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Oh yeah.

Andrea:  What was that for you?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  It’s not done with it because, like, you still have to have it, you need to have some type of backbone.  But, you know, I just think of like self-reflection is really important, like why do you constantly get into these silly arguments and you really have to like think about like what started it, right?  And then once you’re able to determine and have that conversation with yourself and look at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, “You’re the reason this argument started because your damn ego.” It takes a really long time to understand that and you really have to be OK with it and I think that’s why a lot of relationships fail.  Beyond this business is just relationships in general.  They fail because you’re not able to look at yourself in the mirror in the right light and then you end up just destroying whatever the good things that you have because you just want to be right all the time.  I’m OK with that.  I’m OK with not being right.

Andrea:  Yeah.  That was a hard thing for me too.  I think that is something that you kind of figure out sometime in your 20s probably.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah.

Andrea:  It’s just not the end of the world to not be right.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah.  And then is it right to like if you think about that, like at the end of the day, say you’re right.  Like “OK, what are you gonna get out of it?  Do you feel better about yourself?”  Maybe for a little bit, but I don’t know, I started asking myself really serious questions, like, “What is the point of this?  You know, what is the point of this argument?  Where does the point of this conversation?  What is the end result going to be?”  Large majority of the times these conversations are just there to destroy the relationship and if you see that going down that path, you need to be able to have the foresight and to say like, “Hey, like this isn’t going the right way that I wanted to, like I need to stop.”

Andrea:  OK, that’s great.  I like that.  I’m still kind of in awe of startups and how you have to grow in scale so quickly.  I’m particularly interested in how the people that are working, you know, for the company, how they’re dealing with customers, how you are making sure when they are dealing with customers that they’re using, you know, the voice of your brand and that sort of thing?  Is that something that has been a challenge that you’ve found a certain sort of solution for in your company?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  So the question was more so along the lines of how are you able to have a consistent brand image throughout the entire organization?

Andrea:  Yeah, especially when it comes to, you know, the frontline people working with customers.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I’ll be honest, I don’t think we had that much of an issue with it and this could be _____, I’m not sure.  But at Penji, we’re a really tight-knit family, and we don’t call our team members employees, we call them team members, as I’m saying.  We don’t necessarily say that I’m the boss.  We discourage them from calling us bosses even though they do it as a joking matter.  But we just are a very well-oiled machine.  We don’t let our ego get in the way when it comes to leading.  And that, I think, has transpired in the way that we’re able to communicate with our customers, with our members. We have guidelines that we give our team, and it’s up to them to figure out like what their voice is.  And I’ll give you, like, an example.  We have a call every time somebody becomes a customer of ours.  We call them up and we say, “Hey, you know, welcome to Penji, welcome to the family.”  And like my swagger in doing that is going to be completely different than somebody else.  And so you kind of have to just say like, “Hey, this is the goal that we want to obtain from this particular conversation.  It’s up to you to make it your own.”

Andrea:  I love that.  I really do.  I love that.  We do a lot of work with customer service in helping customer service teams own their voice and that sort of thing.  And it’s so great when you come up, and you find a company that is so willing to let their people have a voice and own their own voice.  There’s something really significant about that.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, I mean, the reason why you hire people to take over a particular job is because you believe that that particular individual is better than you or they could at least do just as good, if not a better job than you can.  And so, like, who are we to just shun that particular individual from being able to accomplish that?  It’s as simple as that.  We had a conversation about this.

In Philadelphia right now, there’s a thing called Philly Tech Week.  And my business partner and myself, we’ve had opportunities to speak.  We didn’t even realize it until like a couple of days ago, like the core message that we’re talking about is like we’re treating humans like humans.  It sounds so silly to say that out loud because you’re like, “Oh yeah, duh,” but it’s really difficult.  People don’t do that.  People don’t treat other humans like human beings.  They treat them as employees.  They treat them as sales.

Every time that we interact with people, we treat them as they want to be treated.  Do you want to receive a cold email?  Hell no.  Do you want to receive an email that says, “Hey, I really noticed that you love to Philadelphia 76ers, and they just won yesterday, amazing!  That’s awesome!”  You’d probably want to have that conversation versus like a sales call, and then maybe you can open up a conversation about sales or maybe you don’t.  It’s completely up to you.  

But I think that at the core what we do, and I think that what makes us successful and separates us from faster, I guess, startups that are able to succeed than others is that we’re really understanding of, like, who the people are that we’re working with and what their strengths are and what they bring to the table and letting them run.

And I just want to throw one more thing out there that I think could be really good to the audience is every time we hire somebody, there are times where we aren’t a good fit for this particular individual.  And there’s a time where they’re not a good fit for us.  And what we do is every time we bring on a new and new team member, we asked them two questions, what is your dream and how can we help you get there?  And there are times where we just can’t help that individual, simple as that.  There are times were like “This is the perfect fit, and this is exactly who we’re looking for.” And those two questions, in particular, give us a great understanding of what motivates that individual.  Do they want to make a $500,000 a year?  OK, well, you know, maybe that might be a little bit unrealistic, but let’s see what we could do.  And then maybe they just want to be able to provide a better life for their family, then that’s great.  We could definitely help with that, but at least we have an understanding of what motivates that individual from the beginning.

Andrea:  Yeah, those are really great questions, and I can imagine that it gives you a sense of who they are, what they care about, also to make sure that it’s in line with what you care about.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Exactly.

Andrea:  So what does the company care about?  I mean you said being human and treating people as humans, do you have a mission?  Have you actually outlined these things for your…

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, we have.  I would say that like if I were to give like a mission/vision statement, so to speak, it would be helping those who help others.  We have a lot of initiatives that help our community and that helps those who help others.  I just think that that is, like, the core philosophy at the end of the day, it’s just helping those who help others.

Andrea:  That’s very cool.  So then you probably get a sense from the beginning then on if your team members or potential team members would be able to resonate with that, if they care about that, and if they’re in line with that?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, absolutely.  And we ask questions specifically around that too.  If they don’t care about their community, then there’s a strong chance that we may not be a good fit for them.  And that’s OK, like, they can go and be successful at another company.  It’s just they may not be successful with ours.

Andrea:  So, who are some of the big influencers that have really spoken into your life, whether that be, you know, people that you’ve read or YouTube videos or whatever, like, who are some people that you’ve followed that have really influenced you, and your style, and, yeah, your voice of influence?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  I have been asked this question quite a bit, and I have never figured out a good enough answer for this question.  My family, my mom, and my dad are very blue collar individuals.  My mom is a lunch lady.  My Dad is a truck driver, and so you can probably put the two together that I didn’t come from money.  I grew up in a relatively poor neighborhood in Philadelphia.  And so, I don’t necessarily can look at those particular individuals as like inspiration because, you know, they worked really hard, but they’re not where I want to be.

And so, like, a lot of the things that inspire me, believe it or not, is kind of just like a self-motivated underlying tone of just having a better life for the people around me and having a better life for my future family, if that even comes up.  That’s kind of like the thing that motivates me.  

There are books that have inspired me, but I really try my best to kind of have my own voice and my own style. I definitely think early on in my career, there are people that I watched and listened to that I kind of just took everything from them, and I became like a carbon copy of those particular individuals.  But now, a little bit older, I’m realizing that, you know, I need to be my own self, and people need to either like it or love it or hate it.  That’s fine.  But at least I’m me at the end of the day.

Andrea:  Hmm, cool.  So Jonathan, is there anything in particular that you would want to encourage Voice of Influence listeners with?  Any kind of parting words of wisdom that you believe are really important when it comes to somebody wanting to build their voice of influence?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah, I would say, you can be an influencer, you can have a voice of influence, it could be to those people that are very specific and near and dear to your heart, which is right around you.  Or if you want to be more, so like a voice of influence to a general audience, you really have to look at yourself in the mirror and have a good understanding of what are your goals, and what is the plan that you want to take in order to become whatever it is.

In the very beginning for me, I thought to myself like, I want it to be the center of influence.  I wanted to be this like thought leader when it comes to millions of followers and all this and all that.  And I realized that like, you know what, if that comes, so be it.  If it doesn’t, I’m totally OK with it.  I don’t need that.  

What I do need is to be the voice of influence to the people that are trusting me with their lives, which is being a team member of a startup.  Startups are risky to work with. I definitely think that we’ve broken that path of riskiness now, but you know, there is a point in time where it was risky to work for us.  And I think that if you’re able to just have a conversation with yourself and have a better understanding of what you want to accomplish once you’re on your deathbed and be able to, you know, not to be morbid, but be able to look back at your life and be like, “You know what, it was all worth it.  All those risks were worth it.”  I think that’s how you could be the center of influence.

Andrea:  Awesome!  If I remember right, you have a deal, or what should I call it?

Jonathan Grzybowski:  Yeah.  Deal is fine with me.

Andrea:  Sure, OK.  You’ve got a deal for the listeners.

Jonathan Grzybowski:  At the end of the day, anytime you’re able to share your story, you have to be able to ask for a sale, and I think that’s the most important thing.  And so, this is our ask for a sale, if you like, whatever it is that I said, if you need any form of graphic design support, we want to be your go-to solution for graphic design.  So if you could head over to penji.co, enter the coupon code podcast15 and you’ll get 15 percent your first month of Penji.

Andrea:  Awesome!  Thank you so much for being here with us, Jonathan.  This is a really delightful conversation.

Jonathan Grzybowski:   Yeah.  Thank you so much!

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How to Build a Fun Feedback Culture

Episode 94

When you carry influence, there will be opportunities for you to speaking into the lives and others and others might see this and you being critical of them. As people of influence, we need to find ways to turn feedback into a situation that actually builds people up instead of making everyone as if they need to defend themselves. In this episode, I provide three tips for making a feedback culture normal and natural in your organization. Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

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How to Conquer Busyness with Kathy Bourque

Episode 93

Kathy Bourque is the author of Conquering Busyness: A definitive guide to stop the overwhelm, get intentional and accomplish great things. In this episode, Kathy discusses the inspiration behind the book, the difference between being productive and being effective, the roles your mindset and values play in being an effective leader, why we shouldn’t be people-pleasing perfectionists, her tips for owning your processes and priorities while still maintaining the responsibilities required of you and your position, what an “excuse clause” is, the a-ha moment about the story she was telling herself that changed her life, the importance of getting your fears out in the open, how decision fatigue impacts our daily lives, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Kathy Bourque Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me my friend Kathy Bourque who just wrote a book called Conquering Busyness.  And so, I’m really excited to talk with Kathy today about her book and learn more about what she does.  

Andrea:  So Kathy, it’s great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Kathy Bourque:  Well, thanks for having me.  I’m so excited to be here and to talk with your audience.  I love this!  Thank you!

Andrea:  Oh, you’re so welcome.  So let’s start with Conquering Busyness.  What got you interested in writing this book?  Why did you write this book?

Kathy Bourque:  Well, a few reasons.  The long story is I was in business for myself for 18 years, owned and operated a franchise.  And about five years in, my husband and I realized that it wasn’t breaking even as quickly as the franchise people told us it would.  So fast forward, several years, and I find myself in a bigger organization working with a lot of leaders and managers, and it just made me realize that everybody struggles a lot with what I was, which is the stories we tell ourselves and how we think we’re so busy all the time.  And so that’s why I titled the book Conquering Busyness.  It really is so much more than productivity.

Andrea:  Yeah, you mentioned a difference between productivity and being productive and being effective, can you talk about that?

Kathy Bourque:  Right, right.  I’m in healthcare right now and so we constantly measure productivity.  But when you find yourself running around in circles, whether you’re an entrepreneur, whether you work for someone else, many times, you can be super productive and still be running around in those circles.  It’s because you have these things bombarding you on a daily basis that you need to really work with your mind and figure out, “OK, what’s important?”  And when you’re dealing with people, especially so as a leader or manager, how to have those conversations that are crucial and serve you and really digging deep to figure out what it is that you want to stand for and accepting only those things that serve you and move you ahead.  Does that make sense?

Andrea:  Yeah.  I mean, I even wrote down this little sentence that you said, “To be effective, your actions need to be in line with your thoughts and values,” which sounds like kind of what you’re just saying.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh, absolutely.  I tell a story in the book, which is just hilarious when I actually give it in speaking, but it’s like if I’m sitting here thinking, “OK, I’m gonna be a runner,” you know, because I’ve always believed in that Van Gogh quote that “If you hear this voice inside your head saying you’re not a painter, then, by all means, paint in that voice will be silenced,” which is true to a point and I’ve lived my life by that. But if I’m sitting here telling myself, “OK, I am going to go run tomorrow a 5k.”  And if I can walk, most people, if you can walk, you can run.  It’s just moving your legs faster, right?  But if your mind sitting there telling you “What are you doing, you can’t run, you’re gonna kill us,” you know, stuff like that, you’re never going to be successful.  So, you really have to work on your mindset, which athletes know.  So, I’m just trying to bring that same kind of thing to leaders with mindfulness and working on their mindset.

Andrea:  So, what is it about these thoughts and values and mindset having all that in place that help somebody be more effective rather than just being productive?

Kathy Bourque:  Values will really help you create the foundation to be more confident in what you’re saying and what you’re doing and therefore, you’re not being a people pleaser, which is another thing.  I call myself a self-recovering people-pleasing perfectionist so that you can say yes to the things that are going to help you be more effective instead of just saying yes to everything and taking too much stuff on.  And then that’s where, again, you might be able to kick it all out.  But if it’s not in line with what you want and where you want to go, even as a department in a company or as an entrepreneur, then you’re not being effective.  You know, it’s kind of like, are you spending your time on the right things?

Andrea:  And I think this is a really important point because when you are a people-pleasing perfectionist, that P3 that you called it in the book, I thought that was funny.  You talked about this, but it’s almost like you have this force acting on you to do the things that you feel like you should do or to just sort of respond to people instead of doing what you intend to do.  Is that kind of how you put it?

Kathy Bourque:  Absolutely.  Being intentional is the key to the effectiveness piece when we are in that constant state of reaction, your intentions fly out the window, right?  It happens like almost every Monday.

Andrea:  Yeah.

Kathy Bourque:  On my drive to work, you know, I commute and on my drive to work, I’m sitting there thinking of all the things I’m going to get done.  And my husband and I talk about this all the time and he works from home, but he still has the same thing.  You know, you get a phone call, you get an email, all the dings and dongs that we face every day and then your intentions go right out of the window.  So it’s being very, very firm but flexible, I guess with yourself that you realize, “OK, this is a big deal to me and I need to kind of shut out everything else so that I focus on this.”

Andrea:  Well, how do you decide what is the most important thing to focus on?  How do you choose your priorities rather than having them placed on you?

Kathy Bourque:  Well, for personal purposes, and that’s why this goes back to your values.  Definitely defining your values and making sure that they’re your values, because I talk about how a lot of people when I work with them on values will start saying things that they’ve either been told they should value their whole lives.  And we don’t even know this.  We don’t realize this because, you know, you started at young age just kind of learning from your family, from your culture, from maybe your religion, any of those things, what you should value. And so many people don’t even stop to ask themselves, “Hey, do I really value this?”  And I think once you do that deep work of being OK with, you know, this is what I value.  So one of the things I struggled with when I first had my son, I was a late in life mom and I really was struggling with the whole work-life balance.  And one of my friends said to me, she’s like, “You know, you have to take care of you first so that you can be a better mom.”  And it’s that whole airplane analogy, right?  Put your face mask on first before you put that on others because if you’re not alive, you’re not going to be able to help others.

Andrea:  Right?  So, in other words, part of the, part of the process of prioritizing has to be, who do I have to be in order to do what I want to do to help other people.

Kathy Bourque:  Right.  Absolutely!  And one of my favorite quotes in the book is, “you think your problem is from out there, you’ll try to solve it from out there, but take the shortcut and solve it from within.”  Because when you are on that hamster wheel of pleasing everybody else and then also wanting to do such an amazing, you know, that’s the perfectionist piece when you want to do a perfect job all the time, which I am a huge believer in doing things the right way.  But if you’re taking on too much and then you add that on top, what you do is you keep grinding and you keep hustling and there’s just so much more to it that you need to do to be truly effective.

Andrea:  I think it’s really hard though to decide what you can sort of put to the side or how you can prioritize even though you have…maybe you’re in a job and you have people that are in charge of you, or you know, that are looking to you for help all the time and you feel this constant need to be there for people to provide what they want.  Do you have any tricks that you use with clients or thoughts that you have about how one could still sort of own their own process and their own priorities in the midst of still really needing to still do the things that other people are expecting them to do?

Kathy Bourque:  Oh, well, yeah for sure, and you know, it is hard.  I’m not going to sit there and say, “Oh, I’ve got it all figured out.”  Well, I think I do at times then I struggle with this.  You know, they say you teach what you need to learn the most and that’s definitely me because I struggle with this every day.  But the way I handle it, is for one really, and this was a bad one for me, Andrea, I’m not going to lie.  I always think I can do things much much quicker in a very short amount of time.  And in my position right now, we put on a lot of events, and I think I drive my administrative assistant crazy sometimes because I’m like, “Oh, that’ll only take a day or so,” and it takes us five, you know. So, I think being very realistic on timeframes, how long it takes you to do something so that if your boss comes to you and says, “Hey, I need this and I need it today by noon or whatever,” you can realistically give an answer “I’m, you know, more than willing to help and I understand how important that is to you, but realistically I can’t get that done by noon.  Can we look at by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning?”  Or “What else are you wanting me to take off my plate in order to get this done?” And so many times, so this is again where knowing what you value, the crucial conversations that we need to have, people are afraid to have them because they don’t want to be perceived as mean.  But you can have these conversations in a very kindhearted, loving way that still sets really good boundaries for yourself.  So just being very honest about what you can handle, how much you can take on that sort of thing.

Andrea:  You know, it reminds me of another point that you brought up in the book about imposter syndrome and that sort of we’re trying to portray this sort of persona of whoever it is that we’re wanting to be.  And that when we do that, we have that sort of, “Oh, they’re gonna find me out, they’re gonna find me out.  Try to hide it, try to keep that from anybody from being able to see it.”  And then I want you to tell us what you said in the book about how to deal with that and how that totally relates to what you just said.

Kathy Bourque:  Well, I’m not sure what part you’re pointing to, but imposter syndrome is huge for high achieving people because we always have big goals, right?  And so, my whole mantra has always been, “step outside your box” and I’m great at saying yes to something and then I just internally scramble going, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know how I’m gonna figure this out.”  So one of the things I do talk about is using the excuse clause. And in the book, I talked about this signup for a golf tournament and it was with a bunch of hospital executive leadership when I sat on the board of directors, and I really wanted to play this course and really wanted to see what it was like because it’s up in the Sandhills.  And after I said yes, the entire time up until like a week beforehand, I had been trying to talk myself out of it, “You can’t go.”  “People say you can’t golf,” you know, all these things. I finally just said, I’m doing it the day I go up to one of our chief nursing officers and she’s, “We’re talking about it.”  And I said, “Oh my gosh, you know, when I golf, I only golf with my girlfriends.  We don’t keep score.  We only golf like nine holes at the most.  I don’t know if I can even make 18.  I’ve got only twice this year.”  And she’s like, “Wow, you just got all your excuses out of the way.”  And I’m like, “Uhh.”  And then once I did, I just enjoyed it for what it was and had such a blast that day. So, I think just getting all of your excuses out there, if you verbally have to say them like I did, it works because once you’ve said it all, you know, “OK.”  And that’s why procrastination is such a big thing for high achievers too, right?  We wait until the last minute so that if it flops, we’re not to blame, right?  So the same for the excuse clause, it kind of gets you off the hook if you don’t do as well as you are wanting, but you’ll find that.  Then once you do it, whatever it is, that’s how you grow in confidence, that’s how we do achieve those big goals.

Andrea:  Yeah.  It’s like there’s a barrier in the way and it has to do, it’s dark.  It’s something that you don’t want to tell anybody, but then once you finally do, it sounds like what you’re saying is that once you finally do kind of just call it out, then you’re able to move through it.  You’re more free to be able to move through it.  And I guess what I was thinking was when you were talking about actually admitting to the person or your boss or whatever, who might be giving you something more to do when you actually say, I need more time because this, this, and that, or when you actually are honest about it.  It’s sort of a similar concept of calling it out and being able to say, even though it’s saying, look, I’m not able to completely get it done, but let’s figure out how to, you know, how we can do what you’re wanting me to do without having all, I don’t know…what am I trying to say?  Yeah, I mean, it’s being honest and through that honesty, you’re able to actually have that conversation that’s going to get you to where you need to go.  So, anyway, that was the connection that I was making in my head anyway.

Kathy Bourque:  So, as you were talking, I remembered than probably more of what you were talking about with the imposter syndrome.  There is some sort of freedom that comes from letting it out, getting your fears out in the open.  They just lose their power.  It’s amazing.  And for the imposter syndrome, specifically, when I owned and operated my franchise, I did that.  So I’m a late in life college student.  I had went for two years back in the 80’s when I graduated from high school, but then I dropped out because I was in a restaurant position and they promoted me to management right away. And I tell you, once you start making money you’d think, “Well, what do I need to go to school for?”  So, fast forward, you know, 20 years later and I want to, again going back to step outside your box, I had ran for the board of directors for our hospital because I was very involved in our community here.  And, you know, it’s one of these things if you know a hospital, everyone is pretty well educated.  And here I was a college dropout and it was a huge story for me that was holding me back. And then working through that leadership development class, I was complaining about something and not speaking up.  And my mentor said, “Hold on, wait a minute, you know, you’re the one holding yourself back.  There’s a reason they asked you to be on there.  You need to get over that story.”  And it was the biggest a-ha moment I have ever had.  So, now when I speak with leaders and do workshops, I’m always like, how do you want to show up because it doesn’t matter anything else.  How do you want to show up?  How do you want to be seen and how do you want to be heard in the world?  So, yeah, that was one of my biggest ones. And quite honestly, at the time, the CEO knew I was going back to school and he said something in front of all the board and was like, “Well, how’s it going with your college classes?  And I was like, “Oh,” at the time I was mortified.  I just wanted to crawl under the table and curl up in a little bowl.  And about a week later, the administrative assistant came to me and she’s like, “You’re going back to school?”  And I said, “Yeah, I am, you know, I dropped out the first time.”  And she’s like, “Oh, I’ve thought about that.” And it’s amazing now when I did go back and got my degree, how inspiring I’ve been to other people.  There’s like three or four people just in my direct vicinity that have gone back to school and finish their degrees.  And so, it’s just a lovely, lovely thing when you can get those fears out in the open.  And it’s hard.  It’s hard for me too to ask for help, which was what you were alluding to.  It’s hard for me to say, “You know what, I don’t think I can do this right now.”  You know, I’ve always been a go-get-them type of girl and goes back to my whole.  I need to be more realistic with what I can do.

Andrea:  Yeah.  It also makes me think about this idea that if we were to own our humanity, the fact that we can’t do everything, the fact that we can’t be everything to everyone then it seems like the P3’s, the People Pleasing Perfectionist of the world that it’s really easy for them, for us to want to look like we’ve got it all together, that we want to look like we can handle it whatever you give me.  But when we own our humanity, there’s something different that happens.  It opens up a whole new way of living that can be more free.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh yes, and it helps you, you know, I’m always looking at through the lens of how it helps you deal with other people because I am very passionate about helping leaders.  But when you can own your own humanity, it’s that power of vulnerability that Brene Brown talks about.  It is an instant connector.  It helps you instantly connect with your people and with anyone that you work with on a team to be more collaborative because the minute they know that you’re human, it’s just like it opens a door.  It’s so funny. So, you know, before the show we were talking about, I went to a conference last weekend and there was a speaker and she was kind of like, she even called herself like the cruise director of the event.  And so she came up and spoke several times and then she also had a couple of bigger like learning sessions and I just was kind of turned off by her and I don’t really know what it was.  But then she stumbled in a speech and she kind of made fun of herself and started joking and it was like that moment just flipped it for me.  I was just like, “I love her.”  There is something that we love about knowing that everybody puts their pants on the same way we do.  So owning your humanity is big.

Andrea:  Yeah, totally.  I think that has to connect back to this idea of conquering busyness, this idea of we’ll shoot if we want to.  To be able to conquer busyness, if we don’t want to just run around doing what everybody else’s expecting us all the time and that sort of thing, we have to really own who we are, own our humanity, yeah.

Kathy Bourque:  Oh yeah, for sure because that whole grinding and hustling, it’s what’s creates the overwhelm with people is “You know what, I will take that on and I will get it done, and I will stay late, and I will come in early and I’ll work through lunch.”  That is just burning people out in my generation for sure.  So, you know, your listeners know I’m 50 and there used to be a commercial back in the 70’s or early 80’s that was Enjoli, which is a perfume.  And it was that, I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and take care of my man type of thing. Yeah, so we grew up with this very much wonder woman stigma or idea that I can have my kids and I can still work and I can, I can, I can, I can.  And that’s when I first came across the values work is when I felt like I was doing the whole circus with so many plates, you know, on my sticks and they all had to be at the utmost level, you know.  So they all had to stay at a 10 and that’s just not realistic and you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Alright, so you mentioned also…I want to get to this idea of white space and decision fatigue.

Kathy Bourque: Oh yeah.

Andrea:  So this is something that I definitely relate to just the idea that decisions themselves, that there can be a limited amount of decisions our brains can handle on a certain day.  Tell me about decision fatigue.

Kathy Bourque:  There’s some true science behind it and I’ve read about it quite a bit before, but there are times where I think, “OK, I am going to go into my closet tonight and I’m gonna lay out my outfit for tomorrow,” because I tell you the time I waste trying to get ready in the morning because I try on so many clothes and it’s ridiculous.  But if I’ve had a long trying day, I can go in my closet and have you ever just stood there and you’re like, “I just can’t do this right now, you know.” So it’s really with not only like how much are you taxing your brain right now and there’s a lot of science in marketing behind this too that you make the path very easy for your customers.  You make it easy for them to say yes because our brains can’t handle all that is being thrown at them right now.  We are on overload constantly.  And so if you do have big decisions to make, making sure that, you know, what time of day works best for you or doing them earlier in the day that sort of thing.

Andrea:  Yeah, that’s good.  And I liked this quote; the brain is what you’re referring to, “When it is too tired to think a new thought, it will always choose a familiar habits,” what does that mean?

Kathy Bourque:  Yeah, there’s a friend of mine that likes to say that’s one thought then, and so many times when we are too tired to think that new thought, we automatically just go to, however, we think all the time.  So our brains are on autopilot so much at the time and thank goodness they are, because it’s what runs our whole body in our systems.  And it’s the fact that you don’t have to think how to tie your shoes every single day, because talk about decision fatigue if you had to do that, you would be spent by the time you got to work. But definitely that…I lost my train of thought there, what did we say?  What was the question?

Andrea:  We were talking about decision fatigue when it’s too tired to think a new thought, it will always choose a familiar habit.  So you’re saying that you know because you don’t have to…

Kathy Bourque:  Right.  Yeah, so think about, and I don’t know if you’ve done this, but I am a habitual dieter and I’ve tried to get more to where I just eat healthy.  But for me, one of my big things is if I just come out of public speaking, public speaking takes a lot out of me.  I love to do it, love, love, love to do it but it takes so much energy that when I would come back to my office, because I have to speak a lot at work, when I’d come back to my office, the first thing I do is grab a piece of chocolate.  So it does not matter how well I’ve done on my diet or eating healthy or the no-sugar thing, it was like this habit because my brain had just expended all this energy and I was just done. So that’s where you just need to create the surroundings and the habits that really serve you, which again comes then from, you know, back in the beginning, finding out your values, finding out how you want to show up, how intentionally you want to be, and then setting yourself up for success.

Andrea:  I love it!  OK, so Kathy, this has been a very quick conversation but it’s been fun.  Well, first of all, I want to give you a chance to share any kind of parting thoughts that you would have with our listeners and then we’ll give them some information about how they can get in touch with you.

Kathy Bourque:  So the new direction I’ve been working on for a few years that I think made it to the book very briefly, but it is the fact that thoughts become things and you can think about it in any way you want, whether it’s you’re driving home at night and you’re thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner, or it’s the bigger decision things, “Should I move across the country for that new job?”  Your thoughts literally become things.  So in order to conquer busyness, in order to become super effective in everything you do, whether you’re running your own business, whether you’re working with others, you have to be super intentional and you just have to put some of the time into it to figure out how you want that to look. So I have a really good worksheet that I can give people if they want to go to my website, it’s kathybourque.com/voi for Voice of Influence we will give to your listeners.  But it really helps you in a quick, probably 20 minutes session where you just start to write out some of those guiding values and principles that you want to live your life by.

Andrea:  That’s great!  We love core values here at Voice of Influence.  So that sounds like a great resource and we will make sure that link in the show notes in case anybody has a hard time figuring out where those are.  So, Kathy, thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us at Voice of Influence.

Kathy Bourque:  Well, absolutely, I love the podcast.  I love what you’re doing.  I love what you’re putting out in the world.  That’s what it’s all about, right?  What we’re putting out into the world.  So keep up the great work.

Andrea:  Thank you!

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It Isn’t Bragging

Episode 92

This week’s topic of bragging is a subject I see come up quite frequently when I speak with people about who they are, their identity, and how they show up in the world. In this episode, I talk about what bragging really is, why it comes up so often in my conversations, why being self-deprecating isn’t ideal either, why we should strive to project humility instead of bragging or self-deprecation, the different between bragging and honestly sharing your excitement about something that is important to you, how we need to change the way we generally handle compliments, the importance of valuing the gifts of others as much as you value your own, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast where we talk about leadership, human dynamics, and service.  I’m really glad that you’re here with us today.

We are tackling a subject that I’ve seen come up quite frequently when I’m having conversations with folks about who they are, their identity, and how they show up in the world.  And that is the subject of bragging. OK, so what I often hear when we start to have conversations with folks about who they are, what they’re all about, their personalities, when we do the Fascinate Assessment or StrengthsFinder or the Kolbe with people, they tend to look at those and then come back and say, “Oh gosh, I don’t really like to talk about myself, and I don’t like to brag, but this really does kind of nail it.” And I was kind of chuckle inside because it’s really cute that people feel like it’s bragging to talk about themselves in an objective kind of a way.  

But there’s a reason why we do this and I want to suggest that it has to do how we view and what we value in ourselves and in other people.  So usually what happens is __, but first, let’s define bragging. 

Bragging is really about the attempt to make yourself bigger, more valuable, better.  And then there’s the other side of that and that’s self-deprecation. Self-deprecation is also tends to be something of pride.  There’s something prideful in it because it’s really about making yourself smaller or cutting people to the chase.  So I’m going to put myself down before you can put myself down, you can’t put me down, or I’m going to put myself down before you can put me down.  That’s what self-deprecation can tend to be about.

Now, there are times that leaders or speakers can use self-deprecation lightly in order to get a laugh.  But I always cushion that folks really shouldn’t do too much self-deprecation, that’s putting yourself down or making fun of yourself, because what does ends up doing is it puts in the mind of the listener that you’re also doing that about them, that you’re also looking down on them.  And so, you really get to treat lightly on self-deprecation.

But bragging is really about the attempt to make yourself bigger; self-deprecation is about making yourself smaller.  Now, what we really want to be shooting for as leaders, as people who want to have a voice of influence is humility.  And humility is really about being honest.  It’s about not really tying of value to your treats in comparison to others.  So because I’m like this, I’m better than, this other person who doesn’t have that quality.  So we don’t do that when we are using humility.

Humility is about showing up to offer the best of who you are and maybe considering how you’re being perceived which is a loving thing to really consider other people in what they’re thinking but not worrying about what other people think of you or your offering.  If you were to do that, then that would be more fear-based and if you’ve been around very long at the Voice of Influence podcast, you know that love and fear is one of those dualities that we talk about a lot.

So if you are acting out of or if your motive is based out of fear, then you’re not going to be able to be the best of who you are for others. Instead, you want to have a motive of love.  And we talk about this a lot.  I talked about this a couple of weeks ago in the podcast.  So if you want to learn more about that, you can go back to that one.  It was the episode 90, about High Stakes Conversations; you can go back to that if you’re willing to learn more about love and fear.

But anyway, so humility is really about being honest.  It’s about reality, about being clear, that’s different than bragging.  That’s different than self-deprecation.  In fact, someone with humility can celebrate and be honest and celebrate with others and say “Join in celebrating, I’m so excited about this.”  Sometimes that happens, and I’m one of those people that, I’m just kind of a sharer.  Obviously, I have a podcast, so I tend to share a lot.  But I also share a lot of things that are even personal things that are exciting to me or concerning to me, and I do that sometimes on social media.  And when I do, I have to be careful to figure out “Am I bragging, or am I being deprecating, or am I being honest?”

One of the most things that we can do is celebrate in just out of the moment that that happens inside of ourselves.  Like the other day, we found out that Voice of Influence got a registered trademark.  This is something that can take years, sometimes, to achieve and it’s not really an achievement.  I don’t think, it’s something that you’re able to get, but once we’ve got this registered trademark and we get to use the little ‘R’ with the circle behind the Voice of Influence, oh my goodness, I was so excited.  In fact, I was overcome with the emotion, and I just kind of started crying, happy tears, because I think it’s just surprised me, but I really felt this sense of both joy   and excitement, as well as the deep sense of responsibility it is to be able to utilize this praise as our own, _____ in United States. So, this sincere sense of celebration and joy just came out of me.

And like I said, I’m a sharer, not everybody is.  I’m not saying everybody should do this, but I would call it honest and humble.  And not everything I do is, but I would call it this because it was simply me wanting to share our joy and invite other people to share in our joy because we have had so many people along the way who have helped us and who have encouraged us even from when, you know, we were younger. So, even on Facebook, you know, your parents, friends helped you grow up and they’re watching and they’re paying attention.  They feel invested in who you have become and I know that about myself.  So when I shared this, I just was like “Oh I just wanna share this fun, exciting news,” and I want them to share my joy.  And they did, and we had such a response, just people congratulating us and all this sort of thing. 

Honestly, it didn’t really feed my ego.  It was an opportunity, instead, to just rejoice with others, to enjoy this moment with other people.  It was a chance for me to connect in that sense. And I really believe in connecting, especially to do it authentically, especially when it’s honest, when it comes out of you and you just want to connect with folks, or you just want to share something.  That is honest and true and not necessarily bragging. 

Somebody could look at that and say, “She’s bragging.”  But I can’t control how they perceive my post.  I can’t control how they perceive me.  I can consider it.  I can think about that and say “You know, if I say it like this, it might sound a little bit more like I’m bragging, so I need to be careful how I say it.” I’d very carefully choose the word, ‘share in our joy,’ and it was just this sincere kind of celebration. 

Well, that is different than saying, “Look at me, look at us.”  “Make us feel great.”  “Like and share this with others,” or whatever.  It wasn’t that.  It was just a sincere sense of celebration.  That is just a quick example of what humility can look like when it might be perceived as bragging to somebody else.  You really cannot control how other people think about you.  You cannot manage what other people think about you. What you can do is you can be honest.

So you know the subtitle of my book UNFROZEN is “Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You,” and I would say that that moment of sharing my joy about the registered trademark was a release of the real me.  I wasn’t holding back because, “oh no, what if I say this and somebody thinks this or that of me.”  It wasn’t at all.  It was, “I’m willing to share, because that is me.”  Again, I’m not saying that this is all about sharing and everything.  You don’t necessarily need to do that.  But if you do, if you were to talk about something that you’re excited about, that’s not bragging.

I think of people in my life in the past that I remember, like my mom having a conversation with a friend or whatever and they’re talking about their meal.  And “Oh, this was such a good meal,” they would tell my mom.  And my mom used to be so consumed with and just joy-filled with the idea of hosting people for meals because she loved to be able to cook exactly what other people love.  So she would pay very close attention to what people ate or what people drank and she would be sure that she had it on the table the next time or had an option that’s different the next time depending on if there was something that they like or didn’t like. And she took so much care in providing that for other people and then she would have somebody say to her “That was such a great meal.”  And she “Oh, it wasn’t that great.” 

You know what I mean?  I mean, haven’t we all done this?  I certainly have.  “Oh, it wasn’t that big of a deal,” or “Oh my goodness.”  Sometimes I do this, and it is the most offensive thing that can be because people are trying to give you a compliment and then you shut them down with “Do not tell me that I’m good at that.”  And I’ve done this a lot, so trust me, it’s everybody.

But we don’t want to feel like people are bragging on us or that we are bragging.  We don’t want to be perceived as a person who is bragging, but what if it really was a good meal?  What would be the humble way to talk about that?  If somebody were to give me a compliment and said…I used to do this all the time with singing and someone might say, “Andrea, that was a great job singing,” you know this and that.  And I would have such a hard time accepting that answer, and so I would either just kind of duck and say thanks or I would “Oh yeah, I messed this up,” and “I messed that up, but thank you, and I still kind of struggle with doing this sometimes.” When people are trying to offer you a compliment and tell you something that is true about yourself, what we should do instead of, you know, putting ourselves down or making sure that they understand that we know that it wasn’t as good as it could have been, we need to simply say, “Thank you.” 

It’s not bragging to say thank you.  It’s not bragging to admit the strengths of your personality, the strengths that you hold inside your gifts that you’ve been gifted with.  It is not bragging to admit that you are good at something.

So, when I’m going through an assessment with someone and they start to read it, they start to say “Oh my goodness, I don’t like to talk about myself and brag, but this is true,”  then that gives me a hint that maybe they actually really value that thing that they’re good at, and they don’t value the thing that they’re not good at. 

Don’t we all do this as well?  That thing that we’re particularly good at even though we might not recognize it, you know, there are possible that you don’t recognize what you’re really good at and you don’t see that as being a big deal. 

The truth is that you want that quality, that you want everybody else to have that quality too, so someone who is particularly stable. One of those people that’s like a bedrock in the community or a bedrock of strengths and stability in your company, you know, those people tend to feel like everybody else needs to be a rock as well.  And they provide everything they can, and they give, and they give, and they give, and then they start to realize that not everybody else is doing everything that they’re doing.  Not everybody else is taking care of everybody else like they are. 

Mom does this all the time, “Not everybody else is taking care of the house like I do,” or “Is caring for people like I do.” You know, when my sister and I were growing up, we were the ones that would have people over or invite people to do things.  Not everybody else is doing that.  “Do they not like me?”  “They’re not inviting us to go do something.”  “Why am I the one that always invites people over?” 

We value, we care about that’s what we’re really good at.  And the fact of the matter is that not everyone else is as good at it as you are.  In fact, most people aren’t.  You are a sliver of the population that’s really good at what you do, at what you are good at.  And everyone else, they have other things that they have to contribute, but it’s not the same thing as you. And the problem lies when we don’t value what everybody else has to offer because then we think of ourselves as being better at this one thing, which means we’re better in general because we value that more than we value what they’re good at. 

So you have to be careful when you start to realize that this is what you’re doing, and we all do this at times.  We really do think that we all do this.  But when you see yourself thinking that you’re bragging when really you’re just being honest about what is true, then maybe that bragging sense is not what everybody else perceives, but it what’s actually going on inside of you, because you actually believed that you’re better because of this thing that is true about you.

And what I want to suggest is that if you can see how other people contribute to you, and to your team, to your experience, and if you can value what they bring to the table, then you’re going to more freely give what you have to offer.  You’re going to have the opportunity to say “You know what, this is what I bring to the table and not everybody else needs to bring that.  In fact, I’m going to provide what I’m gonna offer what I do, what I bring to the table.  I’m gonna offer it.  I’m gonna keep offering it, and whenever everyone wants to partake, they can have some or they can enjoy my offering.”

But that also means that we need to accept the offerings of others.  And when we start to view each other not on a scale of “You know, I’m a 9 and they’re a 7 at this, so I’m better,” or “I’m consistent with this thing and they’re not, and so I’m better,” “My personality is like this and this is how I act in the world.”  And “Gosh, that feels really good because I really think that that’s important.”  “Too bad not everybody else is like that.” 

But we’re able to say “No, no, this is what I bring to the world and it’s fantastic!”  But this is what everybody else brings to the world.  These are the other things that people around me bring to the world, not as just as important.

There is no way to quantify the gifts that we bring.  There is no objective measurement of how important you are.  If we try to put an objective measurement on how important we are as human beings, then we’re going end up with this sense of bragging.  We’re going to feel like some people are bragging, and other people aren’t, and we’re not going to know what it’s like to be truly honest and authentic because we think that it’s all about bragging or not.

Now, there are times, there are people who get paid more to do what you do, or they have more benefits, or you might see objective things that are happening that would seem to value what somebody else brings to the table more than you.  But you need to take that out of consideration when you’re talking about this stuff. 

Instead, you need to go to a human level, on the human level.  What we bring to the table is all valuable and important.  The question is, are we bringing it or are you letting fear cause you to keep from bringing it because you’re afraid that other people will perceive you as bragging?

Don’t hold back out of fear.  Offer who you are, bring the whole you to the table.  We need you.  You are not the same as me.  I am not the same as you and that is a beautiful thing.  We need each other. 

If you want your team to feel like this, if you want your team to value each other, talk to me.  Send me an email, my email is andrea@voiceofinfluence.net.  I’d love to hear from you, so schedule a conversation.  Let’s talk.  Let’s help your whole team value one another so that you can work better together in service to others because your voice matters.  Let’s make it matter more!

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How to Master the Inner Game of Leadership with Daniel Kimble

Episode 91

Daniel Kimble is an executive coach, keynote speaker, motorcycle road race winner, and a 30+ year veteran of Silicon Valley. He is also the author of Unshakeable Influence: Mastering the Inner Game of Leadership and the CEO of Resonance Executive Coaching; a global executive coaching firm. In this episode, Daniel talks about the importance of mastering the “inner game” as an executive or leader, the difference between having a short-term mindset and a long-term mindset as a leader, the common symptoms leaders might experience if they’re not focusing on the inner game, why he believes we need to slow down so we can go faster, how a mindset focused on the wrong things limits our performance and the performance of those around us, the importance of the language we use when we speak to ourselves, his advice for helping leaders navigate the lonely road of leadership, and more!

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Daniel Kimble Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, I have with me Daniel Kimble who is an executive coach, keynote speaker, motorcycle road-race winner and 30+ year veteran of Silicon Valley.  He’s also the CEO of Resonance Executive Coaching, a global executive coaching firm.  He holds executive MBA degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, an executive coaching certificate from UC Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree in computer science from UC Santa Cruz.

He lives with his wife, Marianne and son Indiana, in the San Francisco Bay area.  And Daniel has a new book out, and I’m so excited to share that with you today.

 

Andrea:  So Daniel, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Daniel Kimble:  Yes, thanks for having me.

Andrea:  So tell us a little bit about your book.  What is the actual title?

Daniel Kimble:  It’s called Unshakable Influence:  Mastering the Inner Game of Leadership.

Andrea:  Okay.  So, Daniel, tell us about your book Unshakeable Influence:  Mastering the Inner Game of Leadership.  Where did this come from?  Why did you write this particular book?

Daniel Kimble:  That’s a great question.  It came from my years of experience helping leaders be the best version of themselves and really understanding what it takes to be the best version of yourself.  And the inner game of leadership in my view is the most important aspect to being an influential leader.  So you really need to focus on mindset and heartset in order to be influential and be the most effective leader you can be.

Andrea:  Yeah, sure, mindset and heartset.  So can you dive into that just a little bit more, because I love this idea of the inner game of leadership?  I certainly believe it’s important, but maybe you could share with us a little bit more about why, why does it matter that an executive leader is able to really master this inner game?

Daniel Kimble:  Who you’re being on the inside has the biggest impact on how you influence other people.  So the way you show up, the way you carry yourself, do you have compassion for others? Do you show up with discernment versus judgment for example, meaning that you care about them but you’re still discerning between different skill sets, et cetera?  And are you showing up in a way that inspires other people and brings out the best in them?  I mean that’s really mostly an inner game versus an outer game.

Andrea:  Hmm.  But then it shows up in the outer game.

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  It’s so much of what we experienced with other people and especially the leaders in our lives as nonverbal.  Approximately 60 to 80 percent of our impacts on others is nonverbal, and so we need to pay attention to who we’re being to maximize that aspect of how we’re showing up and how we’re impacting others.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I really enjoyed your book.  First of all, I loved your personal examples and you use a lot of models and other examples.  And it seems really practical but really speaks to the inner game but it’s bringing into that practical level.  And I know that you even started out the book with really a business case for why it matters and why people should focus on it.  And so I was wondering if you could share a little bit about why, you know, obviously it’s a big piece of what we’re doing but, why does it matter that someone actually invest or a company actually invest in helping their leaders with this inner game?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  I tried really hard to make the book practical and hands-on.  It’s a gap, I would say, in the marketplace in terms of books that actually show you how to be a master of inner game of leadership in a very practical kind of way.  And there’s so many missed opportunities if we’re not doing that as individual leaders and as a leadership team.  For example, people when they leave a company, it’s most often that they leave their boss or a poor relationship with their boss.  It’s the most common reason why they leave and it’s very costly when someone leaves the company.  It hits the engagement, hits the morale, productivity, et cetera.  It really_____ on leadership more than anything else.

Andrea:  And I know that that part of what you’re talking about in that section was had to do with the difference between having a short-term mindset and the long-term mindset.   What is the difference between having a short term and a long term mindset?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  Sort of what I touched on there is that it’s easy as a leader, especially in today’s world with investors, either public or private, putting a lot of pressure to meet short term financial metrics.  Definitely, I want to meet the short term metrics but sometimes the short term gets maximized and the medium to long term gets overlooked, I would say.  And the best results come from a medium to long-term focus.  And then if you’re doing that right there, the short term results would show up but it can be easy as a leader to focus too much on the short term, not enough in the medium to long term.

Andrea:   Let’s take a minute here and go back.  I want to hear a little bit more about your personal origin story.  We might even plug this in at the beginning, now that I’m thinking about it, because I don’t want to tell your story.  You tell your story in the book and that’s so important.  But can you share with us what got you into the leadership game in the first place?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah, it’s a very personal thing for me where, for all of my life, I’ve really been just sort of wired that way where I notice what’s happening inside of people, what’s happening between people, what’s happening in terms of what makes a great leader, what makes a great team, what makes a great culture.  I could see the issues as well as the things that were working well, like very, very clearly from a very young age.

One of my earliest memories as a kid is actually noticing my mom and a friend of her having a bit of an argument and I could tell exactly, at the age of five or six, what was going on in that conversation.  I just didn’t know how to articulate it to them in a way that could help.  But I could see that they were actually miscommunicating.  They didn’t really disagree.  They just weren’t able to communicate effectively.  And that’s been a key part of who I am for forever really.  It was always a natural draw for me to be on this line of work because I’m just wired that way.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So you noticed even in that conversation with your mom that they were not communicating appropriately.  They weren’t actually communicating.  What did you see?  You weren’t sure how to articulate it or how to help them, but you could just see that they were not, you know, tell me what you mean by that?  What do you mean by they weren’t communicating?

Daniel Kimble:  It’s like the words that they were using versus what they were really trying to say were two different things.  And those gaps between what they really wanted to say and the words that they were choosing was the root cause of what was happening versus them actually disagreeing.  And I see that again and again, like in leaders, teams, and cultures that such a common challenge we all face.  And again, for me I can so quickly notice that and now I have tools to help people quickly address those gaps and on how they communicate and shift to they’re being in such that they come across in a different way and be more influential and have less differences with other people because they’re communicating more effectively.

Andrea:  What do you suppose led you to that place where you started to be able to articulate and be able to help people in those situations?

Daniel Kimble:  You know I like that question.  I don’t know if I could point to any one thing, I would say it’s a lifelong journey for me.  I’m really seeing the gaps and then over time doing a lot of reading, a lot of practice, a lot of trying different things, helping other people try different things and seeing what works and what doesn’t work and just honing it over time is what I would say.

Andrea:  Hmm.  OK, so let’s jump back into the book.  What problems have you seen come up with your clients when they’re really not focusing on that inner game of leadership?

Daniel Kimble:  The problems or the symptoms that tend to be talked about are things like other people are not so keen to work with them or they, maybe, will say like he or she doesn’t understand me or doesn’t work well with me.  Some hits to engagement, some hits to maybe attrition or maybe some people are leaving the company given how this leader is showing up.  Those are the kind of the external circumstances that tend to show up in terms of why someone would start to work with me in the first place.

Andrea:  And do they recognize that like the leader themselves, is it hard for them to see that in themselves or what do you hope for when they start working with you in terms of their own awareness?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  I think a lot of times it is hard for people to see their own limitations.  That’s the one of the biggest challenges we, as people, have.  I do talk about that in the book as well.  You have to be willing to be vigilant, with yourself, honestly in order to be the best version of yourself.  And I would say, that by the time someone agrees to work with me, they have enough awareness to see the need and go forward.  The ones who don’t have enough awareness, probably, wouldn’t go forward.

Andrea:  Sure.  And do you have any suggestions for people when, maybe, they have a leader or they see a leader who is probably causing problems with the way that they’re leading and they would like somebody, like you, to come in and work with them, but they’re not sure, you know, how do they bring this to that leader’s awareness?  Do you have any suggestions for that person?

Daniel Kimble:  It’s a tricky thing to manage because I’m a big believer in that we need to be the change that you want to see in the world first.  And so my first answer to that question is to look inside of ourselves and ask, “Well, what can I do differently to help this leader be more effective?”  Or “How can I work better with this leader by showing up differently myself?”

Andrea:  Yeah, I love that.

Daniel Kimble:  And then the other piece of that, if you want to have a conversation with that leader, which is definitely under the right circumstances, probably a good thing to do if they’re having a significant negative impact, you want to be mindful of how you approach that.  So, I would say over time, establish a stronger relationship with that executive and get to know them, it’d be would be better.  Give them a chance to get to know you and slowly over time give them some feedback about how they’re impacting other people and see what the response is.  And hopefully, there’s some openness now or they could become some openness overtime to hearing it and doing something about it.

Andrea:  You know, I know that one of the things that kind of comes up for folks is they feel like they’re already so busy.  Why add something else to the plate?  But one of the things that you said in your book, and of course this is something that I hear or have said before as well, but it’s so important and I’d love to hear you talk about it a little bit more and that’s the idea of slowing down so that you can go faster.  What in the world does that mean?  Tell us more about that.

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  First of all, this saying comes from motorcycle racing that’s when I first heard it.  I used to race motorcycles and ended up being very good at it, and I share a lot of stories throughout the book and map that to leadership and that’s a sign that comes from that arena.  What it means as a motorcycle racer is that you need to slow down in order to go faster.  You need to learn the right lanes on the track, meaning the fastest lanes versus the ones that are the shortest distance in order to really grow the fastest you can go.

As a leader, it’s the same thing.  Maybe leaders feel like they’re going as fast as they can go but they’ve probably chosen the wrong lanes.  If you actually have learned how to lead in a different way, you can go faster.  We have to slow down in order to do that. If you slow down and evaluate what you’re doing, how are you doing it, and who you’re being and then change those things to maximize your leadership, now you can go much faster in a much more compassionate kind of way.

Andrea:  And have you seen that really play out with the leaders that you’ve worked with?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  When I’m coaching someone one on one, typically about three to four months into the process, they really start to feel like it’s paying off now.  They’re actually getting the multiplier effect.  It does slow down initially because any new thing that you’re learning, you do have to slow down to learn it.  But once you get that far enough along that learning curve, you get your time back and then overtime it multiplies.

Andrea:  And when you’re doing your coaching, I know that the book is full of so much, you know, even your coaching clients will be able to get a lot out of it on its own. But how much of the content that you share in your book tends to work its way into the coaching process?

Daniel Kimble:  All of it.  Everything in there is based upon my experience.  And definitely going forward, now that the book is published, it’ll be required reading for people I work with as a starting point and will start from a higher foundation, if you will.  And the coaching can go that much further but everything in there is based on my work.

Andrea:  Sure.  Do you incorporate all of it into every coaching situation, do you think?

Daniel Kimble:  Oh yeah.  There’s a lot in there.  So we wouldn’t necessarily cover all that territory with one individual executive but we pull the right pieces at the right time for that executive.

Andrea:  Sure.  And so it’s just based sort of on their needs and what they’re experiencing and that sort of thing?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  What they’re needing at that point in time and there’s a lot more stuff they can do overtime in the book too but wouldn’t necessarily do everything.

Andrea:  Uh-hmm. OK, so how does a mindset focused on the wrong things limit our performance and the performance of those around us?  I really liked the way that you put that “That mindset that’s focused on the wrong things limits our performance and the performance on those around us.”  Can you share both why it impacts us and why it impacts the people around us?

Daniel Kimble: Yeah.  It’s another thing that I pull from motorcycle racing, a saying called, you go where you look.  In racing, it means that where you focus your vision is where your bike will tend to go.  So if you’re focusing on the apex of the next corner, which is where you want to go then that’s what the bike will tend to do.  If you’re focused on the concrete wall on the side of a truck, it will tend to go that direction whether you like it or not.

And the same thing is true in all aspects of life to where we focus our mind is where we tend to go.  So as a leader you want to focus more and more on relationship, more and more on inspiring others to do their best work versus getting stuff done yourself.  Individual leaders oftentimes get promoted based upon their ability to get stuff done.  Now, they need to scale themselves as a leader by doing stuff done through others.  That’s a key transition and you need to focus on that versus getting stuff done yourself.

Andrea:  And so when you’re focused on the wrong things then they’re going to end up being drawing themselves to those things as well because that’s where you’re headed.

Daniel Kimble:  Right.  So for focus as a leader, for example, a common challenge for people who did get promoted up in the ways that I described, they’re often focused a lot on control.  And as a leader, you don’t have direct control over much of anything anymore.  You have to accept that.  So if you’re overly focused on control, you’re going to drive people towards burnout and maybe leaving the company.  Whereas, if you’re driving towards or focusing on inspiring other people by focusing on relationship, now they’re wanting to do their best work versus feeling like they have to do their best work.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I like that.  And I like your focus on this relational component and how important that is.  I know that you’d mentioned kind of page 67, 68; you’d talked about an exercise that you use called the bestfriend exercise. And I know that so many leaders really end up, I don’t know, being self-critical and it’s really difficult for them to not hear their own voice criticizing themselves all the time and beating themselves up because we should be better, “I know I could be better.”  So would you mind sharing with us a little bit about that bestfriend exercise that you do?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  It’s really a focus on changing our inner self-talk to be more positive and more supportive of us being our best self.  We will, by default how we’re wired as well as conditioning over the years, tend too much towards the negative.  We all have a negativity bias in us.  It goes back to our need to survive and also, to significant degree, the way we we’re conditioned as children, oftentimes, and if the exercise is intended to shift that mindset to be more positive.

So, imagine if you have a presentation coming up and you want to really do great on this presentation.  How you talk to yourself makes a big difference in how you show up.  If you’re telling yourself you have to do well versus I want to do well, it’s a very different way to think about it.  So what I ask people to do is to look at from the perspective of, if you were talking to your bestfriend, what would you say to them to support them in that moment versus what your inner critic would automatically say and then change your self-talk to match that bestfriend dialog.

Andrea:  Could you give us an example?

Daniel Kimble:  So for example, just going the one I said, if you have a presentation coming up, you’re telling yourself I have to do well, I have to nail this.  If I don’t, I’m going to be in really bad shape and that kind of stuff.  Instead say, it’s a constant learning curve.  I’m getting better all the time and how can I best do this presentation in this moment given who I am at this point in time, right?

Andrea:  Sure.  Yeah, it’s so tempting to be hypercritical, I think. And, you know, we ended up comparing and then feeling bad about ourselves and all that.  This idea that we would be kind to ourselves as though we were being kind to our bestfriend I think is a really, really powerful one.

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  It’s based also on a self-compassion versus self-esteem.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Go ahead and share.

Daniel Kimble:  Self-esteem is kind of understood.  I think it’s a widely accepted term these days, at least in the United States, I think probably are everywhere else to some degree too and there’s some challenges with that kind of framing of it.  Self-esteem tends to be more conditional based upon how you perform at any given day.  If you believe that you did well that day, you tend to feel good about yourself.  If you think you didn’t do well that day then you tend to feel poorly about yourself.

Self-compassion is about treating yourself well no matter what.  Again, bestfriend exercise, how would you talk to yourself as if you’re your own best friend?  And it tends to create better results is the interesting thing.  So, inner slave driver doesn’t actually work.

Andrea:  Sure. Why shouldn’t we put people on a pedestal?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  That’s a rich topic.

Andrea:  Yeah, it is.  I like it.

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah.  I highlight some of those things on the book.  But it’s about if we’re putting other people on a pedestal or putting ourselves beneath that person and thereby letting ourselves off the hook, for me, not our best self.  Like that person or that set of people that we put above us they’re somehow superhuman and we’re not is what we’re telling ourselves.  But yet, they’re human just like we are.  They’re just as flawed as we are.  They just, maybe, have some skills or experiences that we don’t have, but we can definitely get there if we want to.  So, we actually give ourselves an excuse not to try harder to be our best self by putting other people on a pedestal.

Andrea:  I think that that is really fascinating.  I see it a lot and I like the way that you talk about it because it’s something that it can get in the way of so many things, like you said, being your best self. But then also you turn it around as well in the book and you talked about, what about when people put you on a pedestal?  And I’ll just read a little quote from the book if you don’t mind.  Is that okay?

Daniel Kimble:  Sure.

Andrea:   You said, “As we get better and better at mastering the inner game of leadership, we will become more prominent and more influential.  As a result, we will attract more people who will put us on a pedestal.  We need to be as weary of anyone putting us on a pedestal as we are putting others on a pedestal for the same reasons.  Elevating us to an exalted status will likely prevent them from being totally honest with us.  They will struggle to own their personal power while in our presence and as a result, they will be less effective.  And at some point they may find a reason to tear us down from that pedestal and suddenly go from believing that we can do nothing wrong to believing that we can do nothing right.”  I absolutely love that paragraph.  Where have you seen this happen?

Daniel Kimble:  It happens all the time in life, really, and in so many aspects, you know.  Bring it back to leadership in the business world; it’s easy to put a senior executive if we’re not a senior executive ourselves on a pedestal.  It’s easier if we are a senior executive, we will attract more and more people who will have a tendency to put us on a pedestal and then they won’t be fully candid.  They’ll be worried about saying the wrong thing.  They’ll be less effective because, again, they don’t know their power in our presence.  So it’s not good for anybody, whatever direction it goes.

Andrea:  I really love it because you’re speaking to the idea of helping other people find their voice.  So how do you keep them from putting you on a pedestal, I guess?

Daniel Kimble:  It’s a mixed thing. First of all, there’s only so much you can do because they have to own their own mindset, right?  But you can also influence them by helping them.  If you’re that senior executive for example, help them feel more at ease.  Your role by itself, no matter who you are as a person, isn’t intimidating to a lot of people.  So recognize that and try to meet them where they’re at as much as you can and put them at ease.

And the last thing you want to do as a senior executive is to in any way, especially, with your body language, your nonverbal communication, communicate that anything that’s “bad news” is something you didn’t actually want to hear.   You want to welcome that as much as you possibly can because so many people will not share that with you and you need that information.

Andrea:  OK.  Say that again because I think that’s really important.  You’re saying that that when other people have something to share that they don’t think that you want to hear that you should welcome that.  That’s kind of what you’re saying, right?

Daniel Kimble:  Exactly, because as decision makers in an organization, we need to have timely accurate information or else we’re making decisions based upon untimely and inaccurate information and then that’s how strategy decisions go wrong.  That’s how all kinds of bad decisions end up happening based upon and/or untimely information.  And so, people are conditioned, again and again, to be concerned about looking bad, feeling embarrassed saying something to a senior executive that might add some personal repercussions, you know, “bad news.”  But as a senior executive, we need to make sure that we are welcoming that because, otherwise, we won’t get it.  And then we’re making decisions based upon untimely inaccurate information.

Andrea:  So, essentially, don’t shoot the messenger

Daniel Kimble:  In any way, you know, your words matter of course, but who you’re being, your nonverbal is more important than that situation.

Andrea:  Hmm.  And you go on a little bit later to talk about giving people emotional gifts and I feel like that really ties to that, “Giving people an emotional gift when you interact with them.”  So can you tell us what that means and what it would look like in even that situation?

Daniel Kimble:  Really, yeah, there are many ways you can do it.  The one that comes to mind right away is body language, be open with your body language, make warm soft eye contact, smile a little bit, show openness with your arms and your legs, don’t cross your arms, et cetera.  Try not to frown.  Some people, by default, will just kind of have a frown on their face.  It’s not that they necessarily intended that but be aware of that if that’s your default, you know, facial possession and try to pick something that feels more warmth to other people.

Andrea:  OK, so I want to close this little piece.  This is a difficult one and this is that leadership can be such a lonely road.  I always had a mentor that would tell me that.  What advice do you have for leaders to navigate this potential loneliness?

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah, it’s interesting, almost a paradox.  But the more effective we are as a leader, the more lonely we are likely to be because there’s fewer and fewer people who appears to us in that sense of where we’re at in the organization.  And so what we want to do is to consciously, throughout our career, throughout our lives, be cultivating relationships with people who we do feel are good peers for us, ideally, outside of our organization.

Because we’re not necessarily likely we can trust somebody fully that’s in the organization, especially, for in a very senior role.  And have those kind of coach-mentor-peer relationships outside the organization that we felt like we can really share openly, candidly exactly what we think and feel and be willing to say in those settings like, “I don’t know what to do here, tell me some of your experiences to help me out.”  In a leadership situation, you don’t necessarily want to say that to people because you want to make sure that you’ve got the air of confidence, if you will.  You only want to be transparent of course, but you also want to be confident in what you’re doing.

So having those outside relationships goes a long way towards solving that loneliness problem.  As you become more and more effective as a leader, you get more lonely, you have to have other relationships to rely on.  If you don’t have that, the risk is that you’ll lose touch.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Is there any last thing that you would want to say, a piece of advice that we might have missed in your book.  I know there’s so much in there.  It’s so good, guys, you really need to go out and get it, Unshakable Influence.  And you can tell us where to get it here in a minute, but as far as, you know, is there any one more thing that you would want leaders to hear from you today?

Daniel Kimble:  I would say there’s so much in the book, but the key thing I want to leave people with is to try to view everything in your leadership life as a mirror back to you.  So whatever you’re experiencing, how can you influence that situation for the better because you have the most control over yourself?  And always look to how you can improve yourself to improve the situation versus trying to change other people. That’s the first place you want to look.

Andrea:  Very good!  OK, so Daniel, where can people find you and your book?

Daniel Kimble:  You can find me on my website resonanceexecutivecoaching.com. The book is on Amazon, it’s called Unshakable Influence: Mastering the Inner Game of Leadership.

Andrea:  Alright.  Well, thank you so much for being on the Voice of Influence podcast today and sharing more about Unshakable Influence.  We appreciate it!

Daniel Kimble:  Yeah, thanks for having me.  It was a great time.

 

END

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How to Take the Pressure Off High-Stakes Conversations

Episode 90

Why do high-stakes conversations always feel so intense? Is it really necessary for these difficult conversations to feel like they’re really so high-stakes? In this episode, I discuss the two questions above, what makes a conversation a high-stakes one, three questions to help you be prepared and ready to create the best outcome we can, the importance of understanding how you handle stressful situations and conversations, and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  This is where we talk about the intersection between leadership, human dynamics, and service.  And I’m really glad that you’re here with us today.  We are going to talk today about high stakes conversations.  Why do they always feel so intense and do they need to?  Is it really necessary to feel like these difficult conversations are really that high stakes?  What makes a conversation a high stakes conversation?

There are times when there really is a lot on the line, when you’re in negotiations, when you have to make a change and confront somebody about making a change.  There can be high stakes conversations, no doubt about it. But I do believe that after observing and being a part of so many different kinds of difficult conversations, they are quite often not nearly as high stakes as we make them out to be.  Sometimes, we build those high stakes conversations up so much in our minds that we end up showing up to them in ways that really aren’t helpful.

So, today we’re going to talk about how, to not necessarily lower the stakes but, to be prepared in such a way that those high stakes conversations actually turn out so we’re prepared and ready to create the best outcome we can.  The first question is what is really at stake?  Now on the surface level, there are going be things that are stake.  As we mentioned before, negotiations; it could have to do with money.  It could have to do with a deal.  It could have to do with whether or not you get the sale or whether or not you’re able to convince someone to get onboard with your idea so that you can move forward. 

So what is it on the surface level that is at stake?  What is this conversation about in an objective sense? Think about it in terms of chips, like poker chips.  You might be holding a few poker chips.  The other person might be holding a few poker chips.  There might be some at stake on the table and the question is where will these poker chips end up at the end of the game?  It’s important to know what exactly those poker chips are. So before you head into a conversation, think about what are the objective things at stake. 

The next question is what outcome do you want?

Now, this may seem obvious on the front end, but if you think about it, sometimes we’re not exactly sure what we want to happen.  So, we might have an idea of where we want those poker chips to end up, but the real question is why do we want them to end up there?  If you end up with all the poker chips, for example, if you end up with everything that you want, what will happen to the relationship or what will happen to the company or what will happen with buy-in?  What do you really want?  Do you want everybody to do what you say, or do you want the company to move forward?  Do you want your initiative to move forward?  Do you want your relationship to move forward? 

So, this is where we take the idea of those objective things, those poker chips.  And we say, OK, those are the things that are at stake, but just a layer beneath that is a sense of what the goal really is.  What is the ultimate goal of the game, to win?  What does the win look like?  So, get a clear picture in your head of what the win really looks like.  What does it feel like?  What do you want to accomplish out of this goal, out of this conversation?  What do you want to accomplish out of this conversation?

It’s really amazing to me how often people are really not sure what they want.  They have a sense of what they want.  They kind of see on the surface of what they want, but there’s so much more going on inside of them that they’re having a hard time clearly picturing a positive outcome.  So, get very, very clear on what would be a positive outcome, what are you willing and then think in terms of options.  If this option were to happen, what would that mean for the situation if option B were to happen?  What would that mean for this situation?  Think those things through.  Think through the different kinds of outcomes that could take place and what you’re OK with.

You might have an ideal situation, but you might also have a situation that you’re OK with.  So, make it really clear in your mind what is it that you want out of this situation but then also what are you willing what else would be a positive outcome even if it’s not the ideal?  Alright, so we have a sense of your poker chips.  You know what you’re dealing with here and then you also know what you want to happen.  

Now the question is what do you really have to lose?

Alright, we’re going to take this from that surface level and we’re going to go way deeper.  So you know on one sense that you have these poker chips or these certain things that are at play that could be lost.  But there’s more going on.  There’s always more going on inside of us because we’re human beings.  We have desires.  We have fears.  We have things that we really care about and so we have to kind of look down a little deeper to find out what it is inside of us that is at stake.

This really gets to a sense of your ego or that sense of value and purpose and identity: What do you really have to lose inside?  So, here are the two things that often come up.

  • Rejection
  • Failure

“If I am rejected, if somehow or another this thing that I’m offering or somehow in this situation I am rejected,” then some people are going to feel an intense sense of lack of value that they’re not enough.  They’re going to feel like they are being rejected as a person, not just because not just their surface kind of poker chips being rejected, but their whole sense of self can be wrapped up in the fact that they’re offering something or in the fact that they are having this conversation and they don’t want to be rejected by the other person in some kind of way.

So is it a sense of rejection that could bother you or is it a sense of failure?  Is it, “If I don’t accomplish my goal then I fail and if I fail then what does that say about me as a person and my value?”  Both rejection and failure have to do with our personal sense of value, and whether or not we believe that other people believe that we’re valuable or that we believe that we are valuable.  So it’s this sense of our own personal value that is at stake when these things happen, “If I’m rejected or if I fail,  what is the point?”  “So who am I?”  “If I’m rejected or if I fail, what am I really worth?”  “What do I have to offer?” “Why does it even matter?”  These sorts of questions are deep, internal questions that you may not even realize you’re asking on your thinking about your high stakes conversations, but you might know that they are present if you pay very close attention to how nervous you are or how intense you are in the pursuit of getting what you want.

One of the tools that I use with clients, either in groups or one on one is the Fascinate® Assessment.  It is a simple assessment, easy to comprehend, but yet super accurate.  You can take it quickly and it can make a huge difference with a small amount of effort.  And so that’s the one of the reasons why I use this assessment.  But this past week I was doing a workshop with a team and we were talking about one of the concepts in the Fascinate® Assessment, which is the sense of double trouble.  And what that means is that each personality is different.  Everybody speaks with a different kind of language, were perceived in different ways and then you put a couple of those different languages together and you come up with an archetype.

It’s sort of your unique way of interacting with the world, how the world sees you.  But if you get super stressed out then you can double up on just one of your languages or advantages is what they call them.  And you can get super, super dialed in on it.  And the way that I look at this is that our personalities are like a super power.  They’re going to show up big, regardless of whether or not we’re using them for good or for evil; or perhaps a better way to put that is whether or not we’re really helping people with our personality and the way that we communicate or we are causing problems with it.

And this particular assessment gives people a real clear sense of, this is what it looks like when you are stressed out and it’s not good for other people.  So, for example, the Innovation Advantage, somebody who particularly thinks outside the box and is creative and that sort of thing.  If they are totally stressed out, they just want to be left alone. It’s like this sense of anarchy like “Just leave me alone.”  Everything feels like chaos.  They cause chaos when they get stressed out and that sort of thing.

Whereas, someone with the Alert personality, which is a little bit more about being detail-oriented and that sort of thing, when they get really stressed out, they could tend to be more like a control freak and wanting to pin people down and get exact on their information in their processes.  And it could be really annoying to other people and it’s truly seemed like a control freak.

Well, we each have these different things inside of us.  You know, we might not have the exact same ones, but we all have a personality.  We all have gifts and talents, abilities.  But these things can also be used for hurting people, for causing problems when we are motivated in the wrong way.  So, one of the helpful things about this particular assessment is that it shows you how your personality can look when you get stressed out.  So when you start to see yourself doing these things, even though you don’t want to see that in yourself, even though I don’t want to see myself as being too powerful or throwing ice like Elsa, I don’t want to see that.

But when I do see that it is an indication that I’m stressed out right now to the point where I am being motivated by fear.  When fear is really stirring up inside of us, you know, you get to that inner brain, the place in your brain where it really starts to work with fight or flight and it takes over the rational brain, the frontal lobe.  It just sort of like become such a big deal, like “I have to get this figured out.” “I have to solve this for myself.”  “I have to get the right answer because if I don’t, I feel like I’m going to die.”  And it’s easy to laugh at, but think about it when you get totally stressed out, do you ever feel like, “Oh my gosh,” like you’re just going to die if something happens?

My example is that when I was younger, maybe early twenties, well before that, I really felt like I needed to be perceived as good, strong, and competent.  Those were kind of the main things that, “Boy, if Andrea doesn’t show up in this way then I don’t know what’s going to happen” because I was really, really concerned that if people didn’t see me like that, they wouldn’t listen to me.  They wouldn’t take my advice.  They wouldn’t want to be my friend, all those things.  And so my sense of identity was this kind of good, strong and competent persona, and I had to be her.  I had to be that Andrea.  If I broke out of that box in any kind of way, if the ideal Andrea turned into, “Oh wait, she’s not so good.”  “She got in trouble for something,” or “she is not so strong, look at her, she’s crying.” Or “She’s not competent.”  “Look, she just made a fool of herself.”  When those things would happen, I would feel like I was going to die.  It was that intense.

I told the story in my book, but one of the times that I really sort of broke me out of this situation was that I felt it so intensely when I was in my early 20’s that I felt like all three of those things kind of burst out of my box all at the same time. And I wanted to literally go dig a hole and cover myself up with all the dirt and hide from everybody because I felt like I was so, not me.  I felt like I’d screwed it up and now that I can’t be me, now that somebody has seen me as not me, like who am I now?  I totally lost my sense of self because my sense of self was wrapped up in the good, strong, and competent persona.  And I really thought that was the real me.

Well, what happens when we get into these high stakes conversations is that all of that is at stake. Whatever it is that is your sense of self, your persona that you believe needs to be there in order for people to like you, in order for people to be influenced by you, in order for people to follow you, and in order for you to succeed; they have to see you in this certain way.  All of that is at stake in these high stakes conversations.

And so my question for you is what is that specifically, for you?  What is it for you that is at stake when you show up to these high stakes conversations and if things don’t go your way, what will happen to you inside?  Are you worried about rejection?  Are you worried about failure?  Usually, it’s one of those two things or some variation on those two things.  When you come to a conversation and your primary goal is to survive and to get what you need to maintain your sense of your persona then everything is at stake.  You’re going to come to that conversation with more intensity or perhaps with more fear or you’ll totally run away from it, but you’re going to be in that sense of fight or flight because you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t succeed.

So what do you need to do to navigate this?  How do we need to handle this?  Well, number one, we need to get really clear on all of the answers to those questions that I just posed.  What is at stake on a surface level?  What outcome do I really want to have and what would I be OK with?  But then also what’s in stake inside of me, because if you go to that level and you’re able to recognize that, “Oh my gosh, I feel like so stressed out.”  “I’m looking like a different version of myself than I really want to portray to other people.”  “I am feeling more intense,” or “I’m feeling more reserved than usual and I’m letting fear and the fear of my own self being rejected or myself failing.”  “I’m so motivated by that fear that it feels like this is a huge deal.”  “It feels like life and death are at stake.”

So many times we put those kinds of stakes on these conversations that would otherwise not need to feel like high stakes conversations. 

So how do we deal with it?  The real question is how do you move toward a motivation that is not fearful but instead is loving?  Now, I’m talking about focusing, turning your focus from yourself and self-preservation and survival and being able to get what I need to feel OK.  Instead of feeling like that to turning it around to what do I have to offer in this situation?  What do I have to offer the person that I’m maybe talking to?  How do I need to show up in a way that is going to be positive and actually contribute and help them?  Because if I show up as my best self, if I show up in the way that I’ve been gifted to show up, then I know that I’ve done my job because the other people need what I have to offer.  The situation needs what I have to offer.

And “if I can focus on offering what I have to offer instead of on surviving and making sure that I feel OK, if I can make sure that I’m actually focusing on the other people and the situation itself and what I can bring to the situation” then you’re taking yourself out of the equation.  You’re taking your own sense of value out of the equation and all of a sudden the stakes are not nearly as high because they’re not life and death like it felt like before.

And here’s how you know that you have gotten to the place where you are filled with love instead of fear in the situation, it’s when you are willing to sacrifice your own comfort. You’re willing to swallow your pride.  You’re willing to do whatever it takes to offer the best of who you are to the situation.  It’s when you actually take those steps, when you actually feel uncomfortable and keep moving forward, anyway, that you know that you are being motivated by purpose and love and that you are here to offer the best of who you are to the other person and to the situation.

And when you know that, you know that you have not, that not only does your voice matter, but you have made it matter more.  

These are some of the things that we do when we work with emerging leaders.  When we do executive coaching, we do training.  Everything that we offer at Voice of Influence has depth to it.  And so if you’re wanting to help your organization, if you’re wanting to help yourself move to a deeper level in a sense of freedom and influence that is beyond what you can imagine, there is a path and it is unexpected.  It is the unexpected path to connection and impact.

Contact us at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net to schedule a conversation about how we can help you, help your team be a voice of influence.

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Help Your Workforce Become Ambassadors for Your Brand

Episode 89

As you likely know by now, I’ve been focusing on customer service for the past several weeks and interviewing my fellow Smart Customer Service conference speakers. Today, I would like to give you my personal takes on customer service. In this episode, I briefly discuss three of the most important aspects to keep in mind while building a customer support team and then I go in depth about the main component that often gets overlooked when working on these three things.

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!  So over the last couple of months, we have been really focusing in on customer service here at the Voice of Influence podcast.  And the reason why we’ve been doing that is that I’m going to be speaking at Smart Customer Service, which is a national conference for customer service in Washington, DC on April 29th through May 1st. So, I’ve taken this opportunity to connect with other speakers at this event and invite them to participate in interviews for the Voice of Influence podcast for a couple of different reasons.  First of all, to share customer service insights from some of the nation’s leading experts then also to be able to connect with them personally.  I wanted to kind of get to know some of the people that I’d be speaking with and then also to promote the conference.

Well, today, I want to share with you a little bit more about what my take is on customer service.  So, I think that we all know that service isn’t all about the other person.  It’s about connecting with them, helping them solving their problems, making sure that they’re having a good experience with your brand, with your company or with your organization.  You’re wanting to be there for the people that you’re here to serve.  That’s what customer service is really all about. But there are a number of things that can get in the way of really doing it well.  And some of those things have been already talked about in the last couple of months. 

One of those things is branding and brand voice and making sure that customer service agents really know what to say, how to say it, and how to really communicate in a way that is in line with the company or the brand.  So that the person who is calling or the person who is interacting with that customer service agent that they would always have a similar experience and that they would feel like they are really connecting with the brand when they’re connecting with that person.  That’s one really important thing.

Another thing would be the idea of essential skills or the ability to communicate well, the ability to empathize, and the ability to write well utilizing those centralized documents or branding elements and bringing that into how they communicate.  So communication is really another big piece of it. 

And there’s always the issue of “Well, how do you keep people?  How do you keep customer service agents?  It’s a kinda hard job.” If you think about it, there are people who are listening to complaints almost all day long.  Now, there are some benefits, I mean, one of the things that you do all day long is solve problems for people, and so in that sense, there is something that can really be satisfying about customer service. But in general, it can be a really kind of a difficult job.  You’re always putting yourself out there to help out, but you might not always be able to be the one to make the difference.  You might not always be able to solve the problem, and you might not always know what the next thing to do or where to send people.  Or you might be dealing with somebody who’s really upset and they’re not necessarily mad at you, but you’re the one that sort of taking on the brands of all of the anger and frustrations of the person you might be speaking with. So, customer service agents also have to deal with that. 

It’s a rough job; I mean it’s not easy to really do and to do it well.  And so it’s difficult to keep people in those positions.  So companies are always looking for ways to encourage people and to keep them.  And one of those ways can be rewards and recognition, giving a raise, or keeping track of how well they’re doing on things.  So, these are all really, really important aspects of doing customer service and having a customer service team and training them well to be able to handle all these situations and all these needs, and to know how to handle all of the technical things as well. But I fear that we can miss out on something if we just do those things.  If we are giving them everything that they need but they’re not still staying, you know.  Maybe they’re still leaving.  They’re still not sticking around.  The numbers aren’t as high as you want them to be or your customers are still coming back with a lot of complaints.  Customer satisfaction still isn’t where you want it to be. Maybe you’re hitting the status quo and it’s working out okay for you, but you know that there’s another level.  Like you know you could take it to the next level, but you’re not just sure how to do it because you’ve been working on all these different things like centralization of information and rewarding your people and doing all these things that you can to give them the skills that they need to be able to do what they need to do their jobs.

But I tell you, there’s something that is missing and that’s something gets down to the core of a person.  And it hits on a human need that is so, so vital for us to connect with and that is helping your people to truly connect and genuinely connect with your company’s purpose and your customer’s need. So, when I think of customer service and all of the issues that are surrounding it, the struggles, the solutions, the main thing that I keep saying not being present, at least not to the degree that I think it could be is helping the workforce to truly connect with the company’s purpose, with the company’s values, their mission, or their vision to feel like they’re really a part of it.  So that when they come to work every day, they feel like they have meaning, that their work has meaning and purpose.  So they’re not just going to work but they’re going to meet a challenge, to bring the best of who they are to the challenges in front of them.

And my guess is that it if you’re listening to this episode, this podcast; you are probably the kind of person who really does want to see that happen for your people.  You want them to feel purpose-driven.  You want them to have a sense of passion inside of them and care about what their job is.  You want them to have meaning and to feel like that their work matters in the world.

So on the podcast, I frequently ask guests “Why did you start getting interested in your specific area of expertise?”  “Why do you do what you do?” 

Well, let me answer that question for you.  So, Voice of Influence is born out of my background in actually singing.  When I was young, as a child, my family would sing together.  We would go around to different churches in our small community and put on these little programs and I would sing solos and my sister and I would sing duets, and our family would sing all together.  And we had this just little thing going on where we would sing a lot and I sang a lot growing up, and that was kind of what I wanted to do when I grew up.

When I was in high school, I ended up choosing a college that was a big music school, and I was really excited to be able to use my voice.  And the reason why I was excited to use my voice is that I knew that when I got up in front of an audience that they would be moved by what I would sing, and I knew it because I’ve done it over and over again.  I just knew how to connect to the meaning of the song and then invite other people into that experience so that they could connect to the meaning of the song as well.  So that they would feel moved.

Well, one of my college professors, she taught me something about my voice.  You see, voice is something that is really kind of personal.  It’s different than playing the piano or playing a different instrument, because a different instrument, it could go out of tune on its own.  You know a key could break or something could need oiled and that’s something that’s apart from the person who is performing. But a voice, on the other hand, this comes from your own body.  It’s something that arises out of you.  There is a certain natural ability that people have with their voice.  They are able to sing high or low.  They are able to have a certain kind of tone or hear the pitch so that they can make sure that they’re on key.  All of these things are very, very personal because they come out of the person themselves.

And so when I was in college, I had a voice teacher who was sort of different than the ones I’d had before.  Instead of just welcoming me into her room and starting our scales and then working on our technical details that came up within songs that I was practicing, she would start off by asking me how I was doing. 

Now, why would she waste time at the beginning of every lesson to say, “How are you doing?” I asked her this one time and her response was something to the effect that “If people come into my office and they’re all worried about something else that’s going on, they’re not going to be able to use their voice freely.”  And I thought that was so profound. 

I see that and I see how people use their figurative voice, their voice of influence, the one that comes out of themselves in order to be able to have an impact on others. And this voice that wants to make a difference, this voice that wants to help, that wants to serve well, this voice is just as personal as the one that I was using to sing.  It’s personal.  There’s a vulnerability to using it and to practicing it.  It can make a huge difference in somebody’s confidence level and their ability to really use it well.

So at Voice of Influence, we believe that everyone has the ability to have a voice of influence, that every voice is unique.  That we’re born with the ability to do certain things and we’re born with the passion to do certain things but then we can also gain skills.  We can get better in other areas as well. 

We believe that every voice matters on a human level that every voice in your company matters and every voice that calls into your call center or works with your customer service team, that every one of those voices matters. But at the same time, we can do things to make them matter more.  We can grow.  We can become more of a voice of influence, not by forcing technique, not by saying, “We have to push it out.”  “We’re trying to get people to do things.”  “We’re trying to force our customer service team to say it this certain way or to drop people in and not to be forceful but to be influential, because it’s not only our voice that matter, it’s also the voice of the customer that matters as well.”

So if you’re wanting your customer service team to be an influence, to build their influence with your customers, then they need to know what it means to have a voice of influence.  They need to be able to have a sense of their own personal identity and connect to the purpose of your company and really know what it means to be a voice of influence.

Do they need that knowledge?  Do they need to be able to know what it is that your company does and how to help your customers and what their job is?  Of course, they need that. 

Do they need skills to learn how to communicate and to be able to handle the processes and the people well?  Of course they do, but they also need to be able to connect to the purpose of your company. 

They need to be able to awaken their passion and feel like they can be a genuine ambassador of sorts for your company.  You don’t want your people to pretend that they care.  You want them to actually care and that’s what your customers want as well. And if your people, if your workforce actually cares and they really do feel connected to the company, then they are going to be able to connect more naturally, more freely with your customers.  And then soon your brand promise and your scripts, your centralized documents; those are going to become part of your customer service agents.  Instead of having them be an external tool that they use, that they’re trying to put on for your customers, they’re going to become those things so that they truly embody the brand promise.  The things that you really care about as a company, they’ll embody that and be able to be a true ambassador for your customers.

Now, one of the questions that always comes up is, well, if we know that this is what we need to do, if we know that it’s important to build culture, to do a good job of communicating our purpose and our values to our workforce, then why aren’t we doing it?  Or why aren’t we studying the companies that do it really well that they’ve had success? 

One of the answers that I’ve heard and I’ve heard it a number of times is that the executives feel like that’s beneath them.  It’s beneath them intellectually to go down to that personal level and help their people to really connect with their company. But I don’t think that’s the only thing. 

I think it might be to serve this level thing that you might see in some companies, but I think that more often than not leaders wanted to help their people do this.  They see it.  They see that it’s a good thing.  They can acknowledge that at least in their heads.  But deep down, they really don’t think that they have what it takes to pull it off. 

Leaders struggle to think that they can actually help their people and really turn around the culture this idea of connecting.  It may not be something that they’re good at, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t willing to go there.  It’s just that it’s so scary because it’s not familiar.

But let me tell you something.  If you have any desire, whatsoever, to really almost empower your workforce, to help them to embody your brand, your brand promise, to help them really become ambassadors for your company; if you long for that, if you want them to feel purpose and meaning in their work, that is all it takes to start the process.  If you start out with that longing then I’m here to tell you that you can do it. 

You do have what it takes. You may also need to develop skills.  You may need to gain a sense of your own personal identity and your own personal sense of purpose.  But if this isn’t purposeful, if it isn’t meaningful to help your people find meaning in their work to connect with your company in a deep meaningful way, then what it is?  It starts with the longing and then if you really don’t feel like you have what it takes, if you’re not sure what next steps to take, then that’s something that we can help you with.

As I mentioned, I will be speaking at the Smart Customer Service Conference here in Washington, DC in about a week.  And in that talk, I’m going to be talking specifically about what your people need in their training in order to be able to truly connect with your company and your company’s purpose.  I’m also going to be talking about how to get buy-in, executive buy-in, as well as buy-in from managers and frontline service agents in order to make this kind of transformation.

If you’re able to be at my session, I would love to have you there.  Please tell me that you listened to this podcast, I’ll have a special gift for you.  If you’re not able to be there, then email me at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net.  That’s andrea@voiceofinfluence.net.  We will find a way to share that information with you because just like the people who work for you, your voice matters, and you can make it matter more.

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How Artificial Intelligence Will Impact Customer Relationship Management with Bob Fernekees

Episode 88

Over the past several weeks I’ve been speaking with other presenters who’ll be joining me at the Smart Customer Service conference in Washington D.C. starting on April 29th. Well, today I have a very special treat for you because I was fortunate enough to speak with the leader of the conference, Bob Fernekees. Bob is also the Publisher of CRM Magazine. In this episode, Bob discusses what led him to the customer service industry and why it means so much to him, the work he does at CRM Magazine, how the Smart Customer Service brand came to be, the changes and trends he’s noticing in the customer service field, his thoughts on A.I. and how it will impact the landscape of customer service and brand management, the details of his upcoming Smart Customer Service conference, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Alright folks, so you know that the last couple of months we have been focusing in on customer service, in particular, in leading up to the Smart Customer Service Conference in Washington, DC, April 29th through May 1st.  And today I have with me Bob Fernekees who is the publisher of CRM Magazine and is in charge of this conference.

 

Andrea:  So Bob, we’re honored to have you with us today.

Bob Fernekees:  Great!  I’d love being here, Andrea.  I love it!

Andrea:  Alright, so Bob, can you tell us, first of all, tell us a little bit about CRM Magazine and what you do there?

Bob Fernekees:  OK.  Well, I’m the publisher of the magazine and I understand that a lot of people may not know where the magazine is these days.  But it was the chief form of communication, especially in B2B 20 years ago.  We launched the magazine in 1998 actually as sales and field force automation.  Around 2000, we saw that things were changing and we changed the name of the magazine to CRM Magazine.

Sales and field force automation is still a thing, believe me, but CRM has grown well beyond the scope of just sales and marketing customer service.  But I’d say in the last 20 years, the big change has been that the customer service piece has really become huge.  And that’s reflected in the pages of the magazine or website Destination CRM.

And we actually started a second website, Smart Customer Service to support not only the conference, but really to give customer service people a dedicated place where they could get information.  Not much marketing automation or sales type of information, it’s 100 percent customer service focused.  So, we’re still going strong 21 years later, so it’s been an exciting ride and things have changed so much but I’m sure you know that as well, Andrea.  Things have changed, you know, unbelievably in the last 20 years in technology.

Andrea:  Oh, certainly.  So what are some of the biggest changes that you’re seeing now?  

Bob Fernekees:  Well, you know, it’s funny because every single year, there’s almost a theme of new technologies that are sort of bursting on the scene and really become just all over the place in terms of media coverage and messaging from vendors and things that people are concerned about.  This year, definitely I would have to say artificial intelligence and machine learning is sort of the big buzz.

As with most technologies that especially really large, you know, large life-changing technologies, it will take many years for these technologies sort of work themselves through the system.  And probably in 20 years from now, they’ll kind of dropout of sight almost like when, the turn of the 2000’s cloud computing was a huge change in technology.

It couldn’t even be thought of before that because, you know, in the 1990s, late 1990s, most people were still using dial up.  You just didn’t have the bandwidth or the infrastructure to support real cloud computing.  But now it would be really odd if you heard, end users or vendors touting their ability to kept cloud computing.  It just becomes everywhere and that’s probably what’s going to happen to a large degree with the artificial intelligence and machine learning, you know, in a decade or two. 

Andrea:  So it’ll be so normal that we won’t even talk about it anymore.

Bob Fernekees:  Absolutely.  I guarantee that that will happen.

Andrea:  Sure.

Bob Fernekees:  And there are many, many different cases of that, but you know, just think cell phones, just think anything. And yeah that’s the way it’ll go but it’ll take a while.  

Andrea:  So do you think that AI will replace customer service to a certain degree or completely?  Or do you think that there’s always going to be a role for human to human connection in customer service?

Bob Fernekees:  Well that’s a really good question and we’ve done lots of webcasts and lots of content around this.  And I could tell you for the foreseeable future, AI, machine learning, you know, all the technology portions of it will do pretty much more of the same which is what the technology does great.  It takes low value interactions and automates them.  So that nobody really wants to talk to a human being, especially if they want to do something that’s fairly simple.

And that will just become, you know, web self-service on steroids where the AI or the machine learning portion of it will just make that so much easier, so much faster, so much more efficient voice, which was a big thing 20 years ago is coming back around with all the conversational technologies and natural language, you know, conversion.  So that people will be interacting instead of using a keyboard, especially since everybody is on their cell phones right now, a voice will become huge.

And so all of that self-service that can be conducted through AI or machine learning will be done, but there will always be humans on the other side, especially for high value or really complex or just the out-of-the-ordinary types of questions and issues.  Now, from what I understand is that, that will really make the life of your typical contact center agent a lot more interesting just because they won’t constantly be asking, “How do I reset my password?”  “How do I do this?”  “How do I do that?”  They’ll just be dealing more or less on more interesting, less repetitive types of service issues.

Andrea:   High value, as you said.  Interesting.  I just had a question in my mind, just a second.  So how do you see AI helping being almost like a brand asset more than even just as a quick answer to solve a problem?  Is there a way the AI is or can be even encouraging the brand connection with the customer or is it mostly going to be just “This is the way we do it.  We get it done fast and that’s what we’re offering you here in this moment.”  Is there any kind of way to connect with the brand anymore with AI?

Bob Fernekees:  You know what, I think that really forward-looking business leaders right now are looking at that piece of it, AI and brand, really hard because you know as the old song goes, it’s really, you know, a lot more…well, put it this way, selling on price the old way doesn’t really create value for a brand because everybody can sell at a lower rate up to a given point.

Andrea:  Uh-hmm.

Bob Fernekees  But when you’re using AI, and that’s the other great thing about the industry and the technology piece that we’re in right now, Andrea, is that it’s not customer service and marketing have blended together, customer service and sales have blended together.  So in many ways, there won’t really be those kinds of delineations.  Yeah, there’ll be outreach demand generation and those types of things but building a brand that will be done through sort of a mixing or melding of all three.  So when you’ve got AI into the mix and, you know, machine learning, you’ll really have brand managers trying to capture the essence of what their brand is to a prospect or a customer.

Now, it’s really hard to see when we’re talking about consumer product goods.  I don’t know enough about consumer product goods, I’ll say it right now, but to build a brand around, you know let’s say laundry detergent is really hard for me personally to conceptualize.  To build a brand around mountain climbing equipment, that seems a lot easier because, you know, immediately you can say that, you know, “Hey, delivering high quality content, or somebody climbing El Capitan is something that could really enhance your brand.”  I’m sure you can do that on a laundry detergent side too, but it’s just a lot easier when you think of a brand that’s much more extreme.

So yeah, I think, you know, AI will definitely allow all those things and it’ll be able to do trillions of computations to say that Andrea Wenburg would really enjoy receiving this communication from us and here’s what we think will be her next action and, you know, all those things that you can’t really do right now.  And it’s probably very hard for a lot of people to conceptualize these things right now just because no one else has.  But we’re headed into that territory where there will be lots and lots of clever users that no one has thought of before.  I mean, just think of Facebook.

Andrea:  Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.

Bob Fernekees:  I mean, you know, everybody knew it’s a great idea just because there was social media before that, but to this extent, probably not literally changing democracy.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.  Well, and I was even thinking about Facebook algorithms and how the other day I purchased a Growth Mindset workbook for my kids, OK.  And then the next day on both Instagram and Facebook, I’m seeing ads about another workbook by that same company that’s on resilience now.

Bob Fernekees: Right.

Andrea:  It’s a lot like what you’re talking about in terms of being able to predict what the next step would be for the customer.

Bob Fernekees:  Absolutely, absolutely. Now, I think the way that most companies, and believe me it’s getting way, way, way more complex, especially up to maybe two years ago, I think most companies did that type of ad serving, you know, in a very heavy-handed flatfooted type of way.  So that if you bought a Ford car and signed the deal last month for the next six months, you’d be seeing ads for Ford cars and it’s like “Ohh, I already bought one and I don’t know why I kept seeing this now.”

Now, you know, that’s just a technology in its infancy.  But, you know, now whether or not they predicted the needs of your children to get these workbooks, probably not, but they definitely predicted your likelihood of buying another workbook on a similar but different topic in serving you that ad.  And that’ll just get way more, way more creepy.

Andrea:  You know that’s an interesting way to put it, because I do think that people feel a little like creeped out by things like that.

Bob Fernekees:  Sure.

Andrea:  Yeah, they probably should.  But at the same time, it sounds like we’re going to be not creeped out by that in 20 years is what you’re saying.

Bob Fernekees:  Well, yeah.  Like I said, I mean, you know, there’s an episode of The Office where Dwight is trying to sell his car to Andy and he keeps saying, “Buy this car, buy this car, buy this car.”  And that’s kind of what we’re getting right now in terms of the immaturity of technology right now.  So, yes, it does sound, you know, it is heavy-handed and not real subtle.  But, you know, possibly in the future there will be targeted offers for things that you really need, didn’t know about but could really use that ad value to your life other than just buying the exact same workbook with a slightly different content.

Andrea:  Sure.

Bob Fernekees:  And, you know, in all the ramifications like how I could figure out how old these kids are and what they’re doing, you know, going along through every grade that they go into from now until they get out of school.

Andrea:  Sure.  Yeah, that’s interesting.  I’m trying to think of what the subtle way of doing that would be, but it would be something less obvious is what you’re saying.

Bob Fernekees:  Something less obvious but also could be completely, you know, obvious or it could be something like “Hey, you know, you bought a car and that one component of it, you know, that 100900 was bad and it could fail.” Well, you know, that’s just a recall issue but you kind of get what I’m trying to say that there could be some things that are like a lot more helpful to you and of value to you.

Andrea:  You were talking about forward-thinking companies and it sounds like they really do have to be forward thinking.  They really do have to be able to map out the customer experience and journey and what could possibly happen and all those sorts of things, so lots of innovation and forward thinking, like you’re talking about.

Bob Fernekees:  Yeah, absolutely.  I mean, I think one of the things that probably astounds people that aren’t, you know, sort of sitting in our seats where we get to see lots of different vendors and lots of different applications and end users.  So you’ve got a really broad view of things.  That’s an inch deep, but you do have a broad view of the customer service market.

And one of the things that really surprises me all the time is how much real thought, real effort, and real research goes into customer journey mapping and all of the different sort of strategic people process type, definitely the technology too.  But, you know, just sort of encapsulating the whole thing, obviously, you can’t just plunk technology and you really need a strong idea of how you want your customer to progress and all of those other things that go along with great technology, but it’s amazing to me.  And I’ve met such intelligent people that have really devoted a lot of serious research and I’m sure you have as well. That’s the part that is really encouraging to me.

And the other thing, having done this for quite a while and just seeing things progress, is how far people’s expectations have come.  I mean, it’s hard to believe that we used to do things the way we used to do.  It was the best you could do at the time.  But I think 10 years from now, we’ll be looking back on 2019 as a stone age, as how did we ever deal with having to dial a phone or, you know, just the simple things.  So it’s really encouraging and there are a lot of really smart people that have put a lot of time and effort into figuring that out.

Andrea:  So Bob, what drives you in this industry?  Like why did you get involved in the first place and what kind of, I don’t know kind of excites you about it or feels like it’s a purposeful for you?

Bob Fernekees:  Well, OK that’s a fair question.  Basically, I was involved in the professional broadcast video film industry on the publishing side.  I worked for CBS, but I also worked for magazines, you know, magazines that dealt with professional B2B broadcast video and film production.  So, you know, I kind of did that.  Me and another salesman actually split the cost of some sales force automation software.  I got really interested in at that point.

And around 1998, I guess it was, I heard of a magazine that was starting up.  I really liked the idea of it because that just, for whatever reason that’s what I did.  I felt like it was going to be a really interesting area to go into.  Like I said, the sales automation part of it really was eclipsed very quickly by much larger customer service aspects.

Marketing automation, people don’t really probably remember this, but really marketing automation, didn’t really start to take off until after 2010 in my opinion or maybe even a little bit earlier than that.  But you know, it’s relatively new, which is a really exciting piece of it as well but, it’s relatively new.  But that’s kind of how I got interested in CRM.  It was through Sales Force Automation which was the first iteration.

And when we launched the magazine, it did extremely well.  We changed the magazine to a name CRM Magazine.  At that point in time, I think there was only one analyst that was using “customer relationship management” as an acronym, so we kind of see where things are going. And for the last 20 years or so, it’s just been really exciting because there’s different  that kind of die out and the river changes course, and it’s just really an interesting way to just watch for patterns and see what’s coming up.

You know, we’ve jumped into technologies or different facets which haven’t exactly panned out.  Mostly things don’t pan out and then they come back in five years or so when there were more possible to do.  Like I said, when I started off cloud computing, I mean, there were people trying to do cloud computing in the late ‘90s and it was virtually impossible because they still tried it.  People still bought solutions, but trying to do cloud computing on dial up connections was, you know, hard.

Andrea:  Yes.  I’ve heard that sometimes it’s better to be the second one on the scene after the first person is kind of, yeah, yeah.  OK, so let’s talk a little bit more about the conference.  So what are the different aspects of the conference or the tracks and tell us a little bit more about it.

Bob Fernekees: Sure.  OK, so first of all, we’ve got the conference coming up April 28th through May 1st, Washington, DC.  It’s actually work distinct conferences co-located together.  So it’s a total of about eight tracks.  Now, you know, if you had a Venn diagram sort of the piece in the middle would be customer experience.  We’ve got speech tech.  Speech technologies are used in all sorts of things, conversational interfaces for one. We’ve got some great keynote speakers, which we’ll talk more about that.

But speech tech, huge with contact center, huge in many other different ways.  We’ve got CRM Evolution.  Brent Leary is the chair.  That’s three tracks.  We’ll be covering the breadth of CRM technologies and people and processes as well.  Geoff Ables is doing smart customer service.  Actually, it’s the first year that Brent is doing CRM alone, and Geoff will be doing smart customer service.  That looks like it’s going to be really exciting, super successful, and it’s a great place if you want to come and meet people.

As I was mentioning to you before, we’ve also got a digital experience as well, which is a newcomer.  That’s the fourth conference as well.  But just, you know, to stick with the customer service portion of it, the thing that we’ve done differently with, especially CRM Evolution Smart Customer Service, is that although we have speakers that are aspirational CMO’s of very large companies. We also got people that you actually read on our websites and in our magazine.

So lots of analysts, lots of well-known authors, industry gurus, thought leaders, and you know, you can put a name to the face.  It’s a conference where it’s very easy to talk to these people.  It’s not a large conference where, you know, the session ends and you can’t get near the speaker.  So if it’s a really good place to get out, meet people, and especially meet some of your peers and do some networking on the peer side as well.

Andrea:  Great!  OK, so who would you say it’s for just any company that’s dealing with these particular issues, or is there any more of specificity to the target audience?

Bob Fernekees:  Well, you know, that’s a great question.  We do everything in a broad way.  So we’re like horizontal.  It doesn’t really matter to us if somebody is in financial services versus government applications.  For us, especially for Smart Customer Service, 90 percent of the people that go to the conference are involved in customer service probably at the manager or the director level, really depends on the size of the company.  If we had a VP from Zappos, they’d probably be speaking not in the audience but there could be a VP from a smaller company and that’s kind of how those things go.

But, you know, it’s great for all sorts of call center or customer service or people that are dealing with customer experience.  And like I said, there’s so much research and information out there to go to the conference and to be able to ask the speaker, “Hey, you know, I’m seeing some conflicting information,” or “Here’s my company, here’s our situation.”  And to get some positive feedback with an expert because a lot of the speakers are consultants, analysts, people that seen a wide variety of different types of end users and also have an in depth knowledge of a wide variety of industry solutions and technologies.

So, it’s a great place to come and ask those types of questions.  In today’s day and age, you know, a lot of people don’t like to pick up the phone.  But I still think that, you know, getting face to face and making connections with people is just a great way to go beyond, you know, remove the digital wall and make a human connection and there’s so many different ways things can go from there.

Andrea:  I can definitely attest to the personability or the way that the speakers are ready to connect and help out.  Because having interviewed more than a handful of them, I know that they all really care and they’re sincere and they are smart.  And I just really enjoyed connecting with them personally and so I know that your attendees are going to really appreciate being able to connect with the speakers as well.

Bob Fernekees:  Yeah.  You know, as we were talking before, you know, one of the things that I really liked about this industry is the type of people and professionals that, you know, have made this career.  I definitely like working with people like this and just having them enhanced my life and definitely enhanced my professional life as well.

Andrea:  OK, Bob, so anybody that’s listening, if you’re on the fence, it’s time to sign up because it’s right around the corner here now.  And, Bob, if they can’t make it or even if they do make it, what kind of offerings does CRM have?  Do you have a magazine?  Tell us a little bit more about how they can connect with CRM Magazine and your other offerings.

Bob Fernekees:  OK, so, just right off the bat because I may not have mentioned this is that if you googled CRM magazine, you’d find our site.  Our site is actually called destinationCRM.  So you can go there, you can sign up for the magazine.  It’s free to anybody that’s qualified.  If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m sure you must be qualified unless you have a strange taste in podcast.  So just go there, sign up for the magazine, either site destinationCRM or smartcustomerservice.

You can sign up for any of our newsletters, any of our webcast.  By the way, we do webcasts once a week on different topics.  You’ll be notified if you sign up for one of our newsletters or promotions of what we’ve got coming up.  People really love those. We’ve been doing them for 20 years back in 1998 when there was no broadband and we were trying to do them live from a TV station through camera shoot when there was no broadband.  So that was an interesting thing.

So yeah, we’ve had some troubles with getting a little bit ahead of the technology.  But, you know, we’ve got that.  We got tons of white papers and we will have a bunch of the content on video that you can watch after the conference is over.  Most of it will be edited down.  So you’re getting more of a flavor or maybe some of the major bullet points, but I think we will have some long format video as well.  So there’ll be those opportunities, but there’s nothing like sitting in the audience of, you know, I’m thoroughly convinced.

Andrea:  Yes, I agree.  And you know what, if you happen to be there on April 30th, I’ll be speaking at 1:45 about transforming your call center from a customer service model into a customer’s ascension model for profit and purpose.  So I would love to see you there too.

So, Bob, thank you so much for being here with us on the Voice of Influence podcast and for providing this fantastic conference and connecting people to all these really important solutions around customer relationship management.  And we’ll be sure to link everything that you talked about in the show notes on our website.

Bob Fernekees:  Great!  Thanks so much, Andrea.  It was fun being here and I just think you’re doing a great job.  It’s pleasure meeting you.  I can’t wait to meet you at the conference in person.

Andrea:  Great! See you then.

 

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Are Your Analytics Helpful or Are They Noise? with Robert Lamb

Episode 87

Robert Lamb is a customer interaction expert with thirty years of experience. He specializes in transformational strategies for virtualized omnichannel customer contact. He has multiple technical certifications for designing, implementing, integrating, and developing applications for various technologies. Robert has consulted for over 400 customers and designed architectures implemented for over 150 clients. He’s also a published author, an in-demand speaker, and a frequent blogger on customer contact. In this episode, Robert explains how he got involved with this field, what he means when he says he “makes the complex simple” and helps businesses do the best for them and their customers, how his work specifically applies to call centers, the other contact options a company can utilize besides a typical call center, the things a business needs to consider when evaluating feedback and analytics for their customer interactions, his tips for businesses that are looking to have their customer service representatives be their ear to the ground when it comes to customer feedback, and more! Mentioned in this episode:

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Robert Lamb Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg