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Loyal Learn to Win Fans – We are thrilled to announce that this is our final episode of Learn to Win and want to share a warm THANK YOU joining us on this learning journey! We took this last episode to reflect on a few of our favorite insights, and share some clips of the Future of Mobile Learning and Training. Join us for this episode and hear from these guests on the future of learning: – Paul Zak, Immersion (Wearables)– Maxime Ros, Revinax (VR) – Tiffany Prince, Talent Development, Learning Technology + (AI) Consultant  – Steve Cunningham, Readitfor.me (MicroCourses) ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPTION BELOW: Todd: Hello, everyone. Todd staples here with the third part of the 50th episode, and the final episode of the learn to win podcast. I am so excited for today’s show because we are reflecting on 50 episodes that we’ve done over the past year. And not only that, but we have some big news! Scrimmage—the company that has sponsored the Learn to Win Podcast that I’ve been working with for the past year—has been acquired by a fantastic company and a phenomenal team. The company is called ACTO. We’re not going to get into too much on this episode, but we do have Parth Khanna the CEO of ACTO on the episode today to join Derek. And I reflecting on the past 50 episodes and everything we’ve learned to have a discussion about the future of mobile learning and training. This final episode is just like the last two where we reflect on specific guests, specific topics and technologies that we’ve talked about and how they are going to be the future of mobile learning and training. We talk about using real time data to measure people’s openness, to learning and to identify your absolute top performers, so those people can be modeled and emulated throughout your organization. We discuss the role of immersive learning experiences using augmented reality, virtual reality, and how that can create higher engagement and better retention longterm, so the people who need work in certain areas get the right content and the right training at the right time. That works best for them. We talk about trust, which is a huge issue. The more data we start to share with each other, with the company we work for, with applications that we use, the more trust is becoming the commodity of the future. I’m really excited for this episode and I’m happy to welcome Parth Khanna to the show and I’m so appreciative of all of our listeners and people who have watched our videos. It’s just been a wonderful journey. I’ve learned a lot, and I hope that things that Derek and I and the guests we’ve had on the show have shared with you have made an impact. Thank you so much for giving us your time and attention, and let’s cut right into the show. Derek: So I am super happy to welcome you to the final installment of the learn to win podcast. And today we have a very special guest, my friend and fellow entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of Acto, Arth Connor, Todd: Parth, I echo Derek sentiments. Welcome to the show. It’s so great to have you here and talk about the big news a little bit. Parth: Thank you. It’s my honor to be here and it’s our honor to be joining forces that scrimmage. And together really redefining what life sciences industry is capable of. Derek: Thank you, Parth. It’s an honor and humbling to be both with you here. And in general, as we start to build this next version of our combined company, it’s very exciting. Congratulations to you and the entire ACTO team and the leadership team on this next milestone. It’s very, very exciting.  So the structure and some of the interview clips that we’ve, we’ve done, which I’m going to ask for feedback on their future education training and around innovation, as it pertains to healthcare and personalized learning. Todd: So Derek thinking back on those 50 episodes, what were one or two of the key things that we need to look out for as we’re moving towards the future of mobile learning and training? Derek: Well, I’m super excited just regarding technology in general, but especially for how it’s informing. Learning and how people interact with content generally. So one of the topics we talked about was, was the role of biometrics, right? And I think back to the interview, we did, around being able to see people in real time, engaging and having their emotionality in response to. The content that they’re viewing or their physiological response to the content that they’re viewing. We’ve got a couple of different interviews on those topics. And I think that it’s fascinating to get to the point now where you can actually see people’s pupils, dilating, you see their heart rate changing, or observe it through the technology that they’re using. And that is going to change how we build content and how people experience content digitally. And eventually when we’re back in live and in person live experiences again. Parth: One of your guests that I found so fascinating in their insights was Paul Zack and the relationship between physiology and biofeedback and learning. And when we do know that these things are interrelated, but to be able to tie those two dots together was just fascinating. Todd: I just had a conversation with Paul a week or so ago. They’ve now taken their technology, which taps into any sort of Fitbit, Apple watch any sort of wearable and can track. Through your heart rate, how immersed you are in the content. And just recently they’ve created that as a real time measurement device. So you can literally see as you’re giving a training, as you’re onboarding people, as you’re showing a new advertisement or new marketing came in, you can see in the moment how effective that is at giving their attention and actually inspiring them to take  action. So let’s take a look at that clip now. Paul Zak: Really we’re looking at why. people were motivated to take actions at a distance. Like, can I talk Derek? maybe I’m a persuasive guy. I can get you to do something, but why do we respond to movies? Why don’t we respond to advertisements? Why do we remember when a great teacher tells us something? That’s kind of weird, right? That our brains are so, so somehow socially engaged with an experience that we’re like, Oh man, I got to do something. So, through about 20 years of research, we identified. The underlying neurochemicals and, brain areas that motivate action after experience. And in doing that, we identified this neurologic state. We call immersion. In which you are attentive to what’s happening around you, but you also emotionally are engaged by it. So you really care about it. And that seems to be a general evaluation mechanism in the brain. We’re always evaluating things. So I want to talk to you. Do you want to get a sip of water or what, you know, what am I doing? So all animals have this and we, what we’ve been able to do is then create software as a service. So anybody can measure this anywhere in real time. And that allows us to give people rapid feedback and create great experiences, which we all want. Derek: Absolutely. So, you know, a scrimmage, we all are about personalized learning, right? Obviously if you’re, if you’re reading someone’s individual reaction to an experience, whether it be educational or otherwise, you can see the impact for how that would apply, especially for driving just greater levels of activation engagement, continuous development, and really building curriculum in such a way that, you know, gets the desired goal either for that person or. Whatever the objective they’re trying to meet is right. So tell us a bit more about the technology itself and there’s a, how you’re measuring people’s emotive response or their level of engagement with content that is being produced. So let me go back on the neuroscience. Paul Zak: So when you have an experience, that’s fabulous for you, that experience is tagged in your memory with emotions. So, this is why it’s easy to remember, you know, major experience of your life birth of a child, a nine 11, then you know, things that are really outstanding, but it’s happened lower levels, not even peak experiences. And so once you take that with emotion, that experience again is kind of like a little, a little nudge in your brain. You want to do more of this and you certainly remember it more easily. So that’s kind of the key. So once we identified the brain processes that created an immersive experience, and we said, but you don’t want a bunch of PhDs in your office wherever you want to measure this because otherwise it’s too expensive. It’s too slow. And you’ve met PhDs, Derek, you know, they talk funny, they smell funny. You don’t want them in your office. That’s the last thing you want. Right. So. Could we actually automate all the signal processing so that we can measure immersion second by second. And that’s what we’ve done with a wearable sensor and a cloud computing. Derek: Obviously in the world that we’re living in now regarding working from home and everyone’s, you know, experiencing the world differently, the beauty of virtual reality and augmented reality, I think is really going to shift, or potentially could shift. And, the work that was even done, you know, going into the pandemic, where physicians could get trained on. Respirators and ventilators. but even just beyond that, in terms of how people, how procedures are facilitated, how classrooms are done, there’s so much more we can do to build, you know, immersive and virtual worlds we can actually interact in. And I think that’s something else that we’re going to see increasingly used over the next decade where people can literally be in simulated environments, experiences and practice, almost like in the matrix. Todd: So now that we’ve talked about immersion neuro and the neuroscience of how people are immersed in something, I want to cut to a shot from Maxim Ross, whose company immerses you into an experience using augmented reality and virtual reality and his technology literally puts the trainee in the operating room . Let’s check out what max has to say. Maxime: This is a continuum. In fact, if you take the, the learner journey, it’s it’s, there are other media or tools that have to be implementing into this flow on our journey. Yeah. So for hers VR, due to the immersive aspect, give you the emotional or engagements, allowing the learner to, to learn better. In fact, make, make the content chick dance memory. Derek: So one of the coolest things about AI in my opinion is the way that the computer, the machine learns about the individual or the participant that’s interacting with it. So when you think about Alexa, you think about a Google home and the questions that you asked, the interactions that you have with it, or if you’re interacting even on, on search, it starts to collect information about what’s relevant for you, or what’s a challenge or need for you. So in the context of learning. The data is going to start getting better at making recommendations on here’s a course or here’s a skill area that may be helpful for someone to work on. There’ll be technology that recommends that, that next step. And it can actually help to facilitate in the conversation with their clients or with their partners on how to be more present and to show up in a powerful way for that audience. Parth: Derek what’s really interesting is taking that notion of AI, helping us identify the right learning behaviors. And arriving at that conscious competence is to take it to the next level, which is using AI to now and push out the right content the right time, and also targeting that content to a person gaps. And again, big data and AI first and forth almost allows us to study a person’s learning behaviors and identify the gaps. And, one analogy that I love sharing is. Let’s say I have a, I have vitamin B12 deficiency, because I, I don’t eat my fruits and vegetables. What would be a remedy in that situation? You would give that person a supplement for vitamin B 12 the same way. If I’m a learner and there’s a certain competency that I’m not growing in, I would give them that targeted content to supplement that area. For example, in the context of pharma training, we talk about. Clinical fluency, being a difficult area for a lot of pharma reps where they have that deficiency. So give them content for clinical fluency. And now the power of AI is to be able to not only know, That clinical deficiency is the clinical fluency is the deficiency for this particular rep, but to be able to in a timely manner, Paul says that content. So it has a maximum impact for them. So really is a new horizon and a new world, for, for folks in learning, and how AI can be leveraged Todd: Part of the, I totally agree with that too. And it just makes it more interesting for the learner. Right? That’s what it’s all about. It’s making it engaging. And relevant and, and only what they need, like your example of the vitamin B deficiency. We did a great webinar with Tiffany Price who does a lot of consulting and she’s got some great points at AI. So let’s cut to that now to hear a little more about what we learned in the past season about exactly what you’re talking Tiffany: With artificial intelligence what is different with this wave of technology is the fact that it’s not only going to disrupt. The blue collar workers that we generally see disruption at that level. We’re also going to see disruption at the white collar level and across the board across society because of the proliferation of artificial intelligence because regardless of the economic situation, we’re still going to see that AI and machine learning transformation within our organizations. I was looking over a very recent articles in ATD and training magazine looking at. Artificial intelligence, not just to say, Oh, it’s a shiny new toy, but how do we leverage this technology to do things differently and upskill people in a way that we haven’t even thought of before? So don’t just use it as a classroom or an e-learning, you know, replacement let’s holistically, strategically think differently in how we can upskill re-skill and engage our folks. Honestly, I think even in this kind of, environment, we need to do a better job about growing our employees and seeing potential and then bringing them in the organization. And then they will need to rescale up-skill regardless because everything is going to be moving. You know, the bar is going to be raised constantly with technology being rolled out in our organization. So understanding where those gaps are, is going to be important, understanding where those maybe their experience level is not as much as you would like, but is there an opportunity to part partner with them in the organization so they could learn on the job? So, those are just things I want to throw out there. And I think it’s up to us as learning and development professionals to kind of help the business, understand how critical that is, that we have those opportunities. And again, we’re flying the plane as we’re, you know, building it. Right. So, and especially right now, that’s going to be the case I’m thinking for the next year or two. Nate: Yeah. And what scrimmage is doing. As it relates to this is actually using AI to help identify those skill gaps or what has worked previous employees on X, Y, and Z. And how can we tailor this person’s actions based on other people’s success? If that makes sense. Parth: What I find really fascinating is the concept of this unconscious competence, which is a lot of successful folks. They don’t know why they’re successful, and that’s really an opportunity for AI to help us understand and to help us go from unconscious competence to conscious competency. And as an example, you know, you might have a sales rep who right before their meeting is referencing certain paragraph on a document. Maybe it’s a brochure or sales literature, and that has some sort of messaging or some ideas that really are resonating with the customers. And the question is how do we capture that? How do we capture that insight? And that’s really where opportunity for AI to go through and crunch through learning behaviors of high performers and identify those patterns that can then be replicated across. Todd: I think using the machine learning and the AI is so valuable is  to figure out what your best performers do with their time. How are they consuming the training? Are they going through it? Very slowly and methodically or they going through it at a quick pace and then going back through it to reinforce that knowledge. So it’s really interesting. We had some great people on the show One in particular was Steve Cunningham from read it for me discussing how people learn. Steve Cunningham: …And what we realized was that the people who were buying it from us were people who were already successful. So had this huge customer list of people who are on the Forbes, billionaires lists and leading amazing entrepreneurial companies. And so the people who are already successful were the ones who are using it. And so that started a journey of understanding how. The world’s most successful people learn and it’s much different than how most other people learn. And so what I realized and nothing that I’ll say here is going to be new or revolutionary and kind of what I want to try to impress on people when I’m talking about it is it’s not so much whether or not, you know what I’m about to tell you. It’s like, are you doing it? And is this part of your practice? That’s what matters? Because you can talk to somebody about the principles from the seven habits of highly effective people but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is, are you continuing to practice those things? So with that in mind, that’s one of the things that successful people do is they have a purpose for whether reading. They don’t just mindlessly consume information. They have a problem that they’re trying to solve. When we first started to talking to companies, they would always talk about this thing called the Kirkpatrick evaluation model. And I don’t know if you’ve bumped up against this in your work, but it’s this pyramid and there’s different levels of effectiveness and they would always tell us, well, here’s how we’re going to evaluate your program. And depending on which level you’re at this, you know, you’re more valuable to our company. So level one is at the bottom of the pyramid and that’s reaction, which is, did people like the training, a level two is learning, which is the, did we walk out of the training with some new concepts? And so this could be, you know, watching a video, this could be attending and in live lecture or training or workshop, a level three is. Did it change your behavior? Level four is, did this produce the intended results, hopefully results that are beneficial to the business. So I had assumed from the get, go that while everybody’s talking about this, they must be doing all those things. They must be tracking all of these things. It took me a very long time to ask people like, well, tell me how you’re tracking all of that stuff. And as it turns out, most people are not tracking hardly any of that stuff and what I learned is that nobody tracks behavior, and I want to say nobody. But people who do track the hate, who say they track behavior, actually just send surveys out, asking people if they’ve applied, anything that they learned from that training that took six months ago, which is not anywhere close to tracking behavior. And if you don’t track the behavior, you’ve got no way to figure it out, produce the results that you’re looking for. And so that for us was, an opportunity to then start thinking about how do you, how would you do that? How would you track behavior to then track results and add, let us into. Just looking at how the world’s most successful people did it and looking in different areas of the psychology and biology and, other practices where it’s very important for people to create results. It’s like when you’re flying an airplane, it’s very important that the airplane lands safely. And so there are certain things that they do in that environment for pilots to make sure that that happens and then surgeries. And, and as it turns out, that is just what. Those types of behaviors is what the world’s most successful people do. Derek: So I just want to reiterate how awesome it’s been working with Utah and for our listeners and our guests who have joined us for learning to weigh in. It’s been really fun learning together and to share information and to share experts with people on all different topics and really appreciate it. All the people who’ve spent time listening to these episodes, and hopefully you’ve received a lot of value that you’re applying to your own, your own lives and your own learning journey. So looking forward to what’s next. Todd: Derek, it has just been a pleasure to work with you and learn from all of our guests. And even from our listeners, who’ve contacted us and engaged. I’ve learned a lot from you being on the show and it’s been just a really special experience over the past year to do these 50 episodes and share things with our audience. And,  I just really enjoyed it and thank everyone for tuning in and listening. Parth: Todd and Derek, thank you for having me on it was such a pleasure and to all of our listeners, be sure to check out the launchpad podcast on October 7th, we’re super excited about Acto instruments coming together and on that podcast, we’ll talk about the story behind both organizations and more importantly, the future of learning in life sciences. Todd: Parth it was great to have you on. Thank you so much for coming and I’m so excited to join you on the next stage in the journey. The post 050 – Part 3 – The Future of Mobile Learning and Training appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “What is school actually for?” or “why don’t they teach this stuff in school?” you are in good company. Join our guests Seth Godin, Michael Gelb, and Isaac Morehouse as they share ideas that every parent, student, and leader MUST know about school and education. 3:14 – The best method of learning with Seth Godin4:31 – Secrets of educational institutions with Seth Godin11:09 – How to ‘live free’ with Isaac Morehouse15:07 – Defining success with Isaac Morehouse16:56 – The importance of public schooling with Seth Godin – Getting people to WANT to learn with Seth Godin20:21 – How not fitting in at school can lead to a bright future with Michael Gelb23:18– Making connections while learning with Michael Gelb23:55 – How the internet connects us all with Seth Godin27:54 – Myths about education & parenting with Seth Godin Full Transcription: Hey everyone. Todd staples here with part two of our 50th episode celebration. Today, we’re talking about school and education. We’re going to review some of our thoughts from these 50 interviews we’ve had over the past year and specifically talk about three guests that we’ve had that are really focused and just brilliant in the world of school and education and learning. We discussed the new role that corporations and leaders have to coach and train and educate their team or their students and what they need to do to develop strong leaders of the future who are adaptable and visionary, take accountability for their actions, and work together to form human to human connections. Most importantly we discuss what it takes to become a strong individual, a strong leader, and a strong part of a thriving business so you can solve big problems by taking action. You’re going to hear from a number of people in this episode, most notably three of our guests who have decades of experience in learning and education. First, we’re going to talk to Seth Goden. Seth requires very little introduction. He is a business expert, a marketing phenomenon he’s written dozens and dozens of books, 18 of which are on international bestseller lists. Some of my favorites are the dip permission, marketing linchpin. Seth is going to talk to us a bit about his story and what school is good for and what it’s not. We speak with Michael gal, but legendary thinker in the world of creativity and genius thinking, Michael Galvas also written over a dozen books. His most notable one and most popular is called how to think like Leonardo da Vinci. He trains corporations and individuals on brainstorming, mind, mapping, creativity, and all the skills it takes to develop a great team and build companies to have a true impact on the world. Isaac Morehouse was one of my favorite guests of the season. He is a really interesting guy with with a background of being homeschooled himself and then moving over to public school. So we hear from Isaac. Isaac was brought up homeschooled. And then he also experienced moving over into the public education system and going to college and his ideas and his perspective on this are brilliant and humorous at the same time. Isaac has four kids right now. So he’s got a really interesting journey of from homeschooling. So listening to his journey, being homeschooled as a young child, and now being the parent of four and how his thoughts have changed and evolved over time of when it’s smart to homeschool, when it’s good to go to public school and how you can make the most of both, those experiences are really fascinating, really valuable. Let’s jump right in. Here’s the 50th episode part two, I’ve learned to win. the technology has changed such that, it doesn’t make sense to pursue education anymore. Education is compliance based and, accreditation based. It’s a piece of paper that proves. You put up with a lot of nonsense and paid a lot of money that is clearly going away. And the alternative is what would happen if you learned something, but learning doesn’t come from being lectured at learning comes from interacting. So the system we have in place is built on management and industrialism. And I don’t deny that either. And both of them are super important. We wouldn’t have the world we live in today. If we didn’t have managers. And if we didn’t have the efficiency of industrialism managers need compliant employees, but we’ve discovered that most companies, my employees are either computers or people who live somewhere far away. And therefore we’re not going to be here succeed and get to our standard of living by being more compliant than a computer. That’s fundamentally why we’re here then, because that’s exactly the message that we’re about and a scrimmage, as far as using technology to. Democratize educational access. Right? And I put the ownership with equity in the hands of the person should pursue whatever they like, whatever they need in order to fulfill their purpose or whatever, what they perceive to be the person to give him one time. That’s what we’re all about. with technology being as it is, I said, you really don’t need to know. Rope memory facts at all anymore ever. Like if you, if you change by learning them, I think that’s important, but you don’t need to know dates and math. You don’t, you don’t need to know the how know math. You don’t need to know arithmetic. They’re different how to solve problems. Right? Exactly. You don’t need to know that what’s 204 times. Exactly. Yeah. so. It has, it’s changed a lot and we, I have a four and a six year old in school, but what they need to know, I love the things that you boil down to, how to solve big problems and how to lead right there. They don’t teach that very often in school. well, they’re, they’re very hard to teach. Yeah. They’re important to learn, but they’re hard to teach and those are two different things. You know, a simple example is it used to take still does more than eight years to become a radiologist to read x-rays. Well, the first threat was once we digitize x-rays we can have them read by somebody in Sri Lanka, but the second problem is it turns out a computer can not read an X Ray better than a radiologist. Well, then what was all that school for? It’s not clear unless you became the kind of radiologist who has better than computer instincts and is willing to extend emotional labor to learn things that are hard. And that’s what we’ve got to expose kids to and help them learn from a really young. Right. Do you know a lot about the outcomes of educational institutions? We know the sat doesn’t predict future success or happiness. We know that people who get into a famous college do just as well in life as people who get in and go that. It’s just a filtering sorting mechanism. And mostly we know that it’s college has become more like high school with binge drinking, as opposed to this institution where you actually learn to learn. Right. And so it’s going to be up to people like us to figure out how to. Take it out of that. Yeah, I agree in that is a common theme that we keep seeing time and time again for the guests and the companies that we’ve engaged with in the podcast and that we have as clients. Is that those, the best thing you can possibly. if you’re hiring someone, whether it’s , someone for your team or a consultant or a contractor, it’s great if they know something, but what’s even better is if they have a passion for learning and that’s part of who they are as a person. And, you know, it’s obviously scrimmage is built around measuring that and understanding it. And then. Kind of modifying and personalizing learning plan so that you can have different learning plans for different personalities. You know, we had dr. Diane Hamilton on and her book that curiosity code, I believe is the title, measures people, curiosity, and people have wildly one side or the other, and they would. Take him politely different education plans to get that person to progress in their career. So I just think it’s fascinating. What’s happening in the world with, with LMS is with LR, with the LRS system, for tracking data and doing predictive analytics on learning behaviors. So you can modify that and really optimize the whole learning experience. I’m going to be agree. Cut. And that goes back to, like you said, even the neuropsychology of, of learning and retention. And then, you know, the back, the personalization, all the data is getting smarter at matching it to the biometric, the psychometric and where this is going. Right. And now know let’s just, we’re, we’re living in the time of COVID where everyone’s working. Remotely schools are closed. People are questioning the value of investments in education. I mean, we’re on the, on the bleeding edge of where things were about to evolve in the next 10 years. Yeah, this could be a massive, massive ship. Where’s your, where’s your head right now with all of that? I mean, I just saw an ad. My kids are watching a TV show and the ads are changing that they’re seeing during some of their TV shows and this was for a free public online school and they did a really good job presenting the fact that they’ve been doing this for 20 years and this is not new to them. so what do you, w where’s your head at just love a few minutes of what you think is going to happen with. With schooling and the shift to massive shift to online learning. Well, I think there’s a couple of things they can sit and I think it’s at different levels too. Right? So let’s just start at the higher end for this for a second or patient. Right. We’ve got universities and we talked about this with Isaac Morehouse, right? We on the whole thing, we’ve got people that are going to universities and spending 50 to $120,000 a year to get a degree. And, and most of those people are leaving school afterwards. You know, six figures of student loan debt to go sort of job making, you know, 40, $50,000 a year. Can you start that again? The value, like what are they going there to learn? They go in there for the experience of partying and I did it. So, I mean, I’m not, there’s a place for that, but I’m just saying that in this new world, that goes back to how is the value of time versus production and the value of that, how to change that. And I just think that. Without college educations. They’re not maybe the same because people are not going to have that community experience. They’re going to be very different. Why people go to the university experience? In my opinion, it’s hard to justify that cost the same way. And I just think that, and we’ve already seen tech companies and we talked about Isaac with, with apprenticeships and so forth. I just think that people are going to start to question the value to the ratio, both in the short term and the long term. And so I think that’s one level. And then I think that you’re going to see, and I’ve talked about this for 10 years. Have you thought about what is the role that companies will play now in education? How will they recruit and educate and train and play a role in creating a career path that will be beyond that? Like how do they, what does that look like now? And what’s the level of autonomy that people have. And I think that, that goes back to, with, with, you know, K through 12 education now because of online because of how kids learn. And I’m starting to question myself, cause we’ve got. Little one that I know you got kids in school, we’re starting to think, well, you know, what would we do with school? We do. We really, the kids need to go to school eight hours a day and we talk again, save them comes Isaac. Or can we give them tutors? Can we get them access to online? We bring them places. Can we go do things that would never have been allowed before? I mean, we’re living in a time where right now we’re quarantine, but eventually that’s going to change. People are going to say, I should be able to, I can live anywhere. I’m working anywhere. So why should we not be able to move? And that’s going to change. Everything is going to change real estate. It’s going to change education. It’s going to change financial structures. I believe maybe I’m a little bit out there, but I personally think that’s, what’s going to happen if people, if people choose to progress and not fall back into old habits, because it’s easier because that’s what was because that’s what we know. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think back a lot to Seth Godin, right. And we just scratched the surface on Seth’s perspective on this, but when. Man every word out of that guy’s mouth. Yeah, that was, that was a month, maybe three weeks before Cobra happened. And we were talking in that meeting about the public schooling and the role of public school being, not education, but about being the socialization and the, and the learn how to be part of society, how to work and communicate with people who are different than you, how have different interests than you, how to deal with hard stuff that you don’t necessarily want to do. There’s a, there’s a role of that in education is creating discipline frame structure. And I get that part at the same time. We just, the whole system has been put on pause. Right. Or it’s been changed at the move to a different setting, typically changed overnight and it hasn’t finished changing. So no one even knows what to, what to make of it. Yeah. And I think it’s going to be a fascinating 10 years. why for you personally is education. So important Yeah. You know, it comes to something even more fundamental to me than education. Education just happens to be where the rubber starts to meet the road the most. And for me, I’m like my core. I don’t know. I guess like my animating value or core focus in life is freedom. I want to live free and I want to help others live free. and that comes in so many forms. I mean, there’s so many things that like make us unfree and so much of the time we, we don’t feel free. so it can be just like guilt or shame or litigation or commitments. We wish we wouldn’t have made. It can be social pressure. It can be lack of political freedom, a lot of different things. And like, to me, that’s like the core animating idea that gets me excited and I’ve, and I’ve had that since I was very young and it was gonna have been rebellious, independent, and, and I was homeschooled. and so kind of always had a lot of freedom. Always had a lot of jobs when I was young and kind of hustling and doing stuff, but not, not so much a structure on the school side. And I remember when I went to college. Yeah. Everyone’s like, you have to go to college. Of course you have to go to college or you’re going to be a loser. You’re going to be unemployed. You’re going to sleeping on a park bench and no one ever explained why, like, what’s the causal connection? What is college going to do? But you just have to where you won’t get a good job. Right. So I did like everybody else. And when I’m sitting there in these classes and you know, I enjoyed some of them, like, I’m an ideas person. I like, you know, reading philosophy and whatnot, but. I was working three days a week for a small business owner. I was in way over my head every day, all kinds of just learning on the job, like my way through some situations sometimes, you know? And, and then I’m turning around and I’m paying my way through school. I’m paying all this money that I’m earning and I’m sitting in these classes. Nobody seemed to want to be there. The professors didn’t want to be there. Everyone’s happy when classes canceled. Right? What other good do you pay for an advance? And then you’re happy when it’s not delivered. Right? Nobody wants to show up to class. Everyone’s kind of bored. And that’s where I realized like the knowledge, the information. That’s not the product. No one’s buying that. None of these kids are really that interested in that they’re buying the piece of paper. Because they feel like if they don’t have that, they’ll be seen as a loser. and so I thought, okay, well that’s helpful. It’s, it’s sort of like the signaling theory of education, right? You’re buying this, the signal that a third party has sort of said, you, you pass their test. So I thought. All right. Well, it’s a signal, whatever, I guess you need it. And then one day I’m sitting in class and I look around and, and all these kids are just like hung over and like talking about how they got wasted last night and , no one’s paying attention. I remember I just had this thought all I’m really buying is a piece of paper that says to the world. I’m probably no worse than everyone else in this room. Cause I was like, they’re all gonna walk out of here with the same piece of paper and I’m basically screaming, Hey, I’m probably not worse than that. You know? And I was like, wow, that’s like a pretty weak signal. and so I just, I had this feeling like. Most people feel very sort of unfree in their educational process. It’s all very much like I have to do this or, you know, my parents will, you know, bust my chops or I’ll never be able to get a job. And like, I don’t have a choice. Yeah. I wish I could do something cool or more interesting or follow something that I’m excited about. But I can’t, I have to do this and I just never, that never sat well with me. And so it took me about a decade of that frustration. I had experienced and exposure to the world and a lot more people entrepreneurs and the pain points they have in hiring people, students coming out with debt and being like, I don’t have any there’s no jobs, no one will hire me to kind of have this epiphany that I wanted to start a company to do this differently. And that’s when, when I started practice. So. you were homeschooled at a time before homeschooling was really becoming accepted. It’s why it’s coming. It’s becoming more so now, obviously because of virtual education and technology and so forth. But you know, when we were growing up, homeschooling was definitely a large minority. And so you went from going from a very atypical environment and I’m interested to hear about that process too, going into. A large box state school, traditional environment. And then you had this realization, I mean, talk to us a little bit about that process. Yeah. So, you know, it was funny. So our, my homeschooling experience, my dad was in a car accident when I was three. And he, you know, he has a closed head injuries in a wheelchair. He requires 24 hours. Yeah. So he was with us at home, but he was, there was usually home health aides, helping take care of them. We’d help take care of him. So for all intents and purposes, my mom was sort of raising us on her own and they had decided to homeschool us prior to that. And so kind of out of necessity, it was a very unstructured, homeschool experience. Like there are some homeschoolers who are like, They homeschool because they don’t think school is rigorous enough. And they want like, you know, to learn Latin and Greek and the violin by the time you’re five or whatever. that was not us. My mom wanted that to be us, but it was nothing like that. , I really resonated with the story you told about people not having any freedom to choose what they were going to study, what they were going to do. when you went off to college, what was, what was that in alignment with what they wanted? My mom was very practiced. she never put any pressure at all, like on whether you have to go to college, what college to go to. Like, we didn’t really, it was just sort of like do what you want to do as long as you’re like working hard. Not getting into trouble. You’re a good person. I’m not really worried about it. She didn’t have a lot of pressure expectations on sort of career and education, which. I didn’t think about it at the time. It just seemed normal to me. But now I’ve seen so many other kids with their parents and it’s always like really well-intentioned parents, but it’s just, there’s nothing harder to break away from then the good intentions of good parents that they just. You need the freedom to explore and success by your parents’ definition is probably not what success is going to look like by your own definition. And you need to have that transition. So I had a lot of freedom there we both have young children, right? So the idea is, do we even put our kids in traditional school systems? I mean, if you’re talking to young parents now, I mean, and we live in a technology enabled world. I mean, should we just live all over the world? Well, public school is super important. Okay. My kids went to public school. I think everyone should go to public school. Okay. And it’s not important because you learn, arithmetic. It’s important because you learn what it’s like to be a citizen. Okay. And to expose yourself to people who aren’t simply of the same socioeconomic strata, as you sure that you learn what it is to be with people you don’t want to be within any given moment. That’s a huge skill. We shouldn’t, we should just not confuse ourselves into thinking that skill has anything to do with the other things we ensure teach kids. So in my case, the kids were homeschooled from three o’clock in the afternoon until 10 o’clock every night. Okay. so you literally just saw that as the socialization component, the public school was more about socialization. Yeah, I think that if you, as you know, part of the thing that people miss about homeschooling in quotation marks is it’s a very privileged thing to be able to do that you can’t have. Two income household, where both people are on the clock for some other boss. Sure. Cause now there’s no one at home to do the homeschooling. You can’t go live on a boat and go from this Island to that Island because you needed a job. So we’re not going to be able to serve hundreds of millions of people by saying, everyone should do this thing. but we can go further than that by creating a dynamic that gets people to want to learn fundamentally. Yeah. Grab onto that. So wanting to learn when, when I started working with Derek and the scrimmage team, a few months back, I was looking at testimonials, and one of the reviews said, you know, I really like how scrimmage as a tool helps the team learn, but what is unique to them is they actually make my team want to learn more. Right. how do you teach that? How do you teach someone? Or give them an opportunity to actually develop a passion for learning? Well, I think everyone has a passion for learning. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t know how to speak or walk because no one is born learning how to speak or walk. And you learned how, because it was worth it. And you learned how, because as you were learning, you got this. Positive feedback from other humans that was on an axis. You cared about the problem with third grade. It is, yeah. I’ll get the right kind of feedback. You usually get feedback when you’re doing it wrong and you don’t get feedback that you want more of, you get a report card, right. Whereas. If you learn to make a yo-yo sleep, you want to do it again because your friends gave you more status because you felt smart because it was thrilling. And so now you need to learn how to walk the dog, and then you learn how to do around the world and then blah, blah, blah, that cycle, we just put a stick taking it. And we said, Nope, study for the sat instead. Because there’s going to be a test and then you get to work and it’s the same thing to L and D people at work, they call themselves learning and development. They’re not doing learning and they’re not doing development compliance. They’re doing teaching and testing. Right? And so our mission and we’re well enough to have worked with lots of, L and D people on the alt MBA is a few of them get that they have to teach leadership instead, or at least have people learn it. And that’s an experiential thing. It’s not a testing thing. And you don’t finish it. You sat, you study study, Sally. Thank you. you study for that test and when you’re done, you’re like fake. I never have to learn any of that or think about any of that again, it’s not really. so it’s directly against what you’re, you know, when you’re driven by passion and interest in making something, it matters. Michael today. Listening to episode one is we talk about Michael’s journey. what led him to pursue the art of learning and really understanding how the human mind works and how it can function best and learn the fastest and have fun while you’re doing it. , it’s the passion to learn how to learn. Cause that, that seems to me right from the beginning to be the single most important thing that I could know, and then anybody could know. So it’s great to learn something, but what fascinated me was. How do you learn anything? How do you learn about learning? How do you accelerate learning and how do you make learning fun? And this really came about because I hated school because I hated school so I’d be sitting there in school. And I was the classic kid who asked too many questions. . And by the way, we’re all in good company. They, They, Leonardo DaVinci. According to Giorgio Vasari, the first art historian, you went the lives of the artists, the stories of the lives of these great Renaissance geniuses. And then the story about Leonardo da Vinci. He points out that the young Leonardo asked so many questions that he confounded his school master Thomas Edison had to be taken out of school. His mother took him out of school. Because his teachers said that his brain was adult and she homeschooled him. Okay. The report from school was that he was difficult to possible have behavior problems. They were much worse in his day than they were in my day. And what they said about you, but she, his mother was, was really brilliant, knew about learning and knew about encouragement just to have. Correct. Which comes from core, which means heart. So the mother knew how to help strengthen young Thomas Edison’s heart. And she said to him, the school says you’re such a genius that they don’t know how to handle you. So I’m going to school, you at home 1093 United States patents later, right. That worked out pretty well. Yeah. So where you’re a good company, if you didn’t fit in, in school. the real purpose of education is to get people to think for themselves. This is the real original idea of the liberal arts education is that you should have enough knowledge about. Everything that’s important so that you really learn to think for yourself. I mean, the word university comes from the idea of universal knowledge. We should all have this year. And the most important universal knowledge is the knowledge of how to think for yourself that do assess things, through your own. Perspicacity through your own critical thinking. And we’re in a world today where that’s becoming a lost art. , what are your thoughts on specialization or being a general? Because back in the day when Henry Ford was building production and assembly lines radically changed the world. As we know it, because someone was from that point on, they were, they made a fender floor and that’s what they did every day. All day long, seems like the specialization. Is now being taken over by machines. Yes. So do you think it now is the time for people to become more generalists? Is it good to have a little understanding about a lot and then be able to put those pieces together? Bill arts university? Yes. And, but yeah, this is why you need to learn to think like Leonardo da Vinci was very reminiscent. If you learn lots of different things, but you don’t know how to make connections between them. Yeah, it’s not very efficient or effective. And so we’re now at this crossroads, cause technology is here too. And the technology says, you know what? For the first time in history, we do not need a human being to stand up next to us, to teach us to do square roots. For the first time in history, we do not need a human being to teach us how to sharpen an ax because the internet connects us all. And so I want to share with you eight things that I think are going to change completely. We decide how we want to answer this question. Or maybe even if we don’t want, as Sal Khan has pointed out homework during the day lectures at night, world-class lecturers, lecturing on anything you want to learn to every single person in the world. Who’s got an internet connection for free, and then all day go and sit with a human being a teacher and ask your questions and do your work and explore face to face. It’s stupid to have the same lecture being given handmade 10,000 times a day across the country when we can get one person to do it great for the people who want to hear it. Number two, open book note all the time. There is zero value in memorizing. Anything ever again, anything that is worth memorizing is worth looking up. So we shouldn’t spend any time teaching people to memorize stuff. Number three access to any course, anywhere in the world. Anytime you want to take it. So this notion that we have to do things in a certain order based on physical location and chronology makes no sense. Number four, precise focused education, instead of mass batch stuff. That’s and we make almost everything we buy now, right? It used to be, you could have any color car as long as black, so we could keep the assembly line going. But now they make 10,000 kinds of cars cause they can, so we should make 10,000 kinds of education, NUMBER 5 no more multiple choice exams. Those were invented to make them easy to score, but computers are smarter than that measuring experience instead of test scores, because experience is what we really care about. The end of compliance as an outcome. The resume is a proof that you have complied for years and years and years with famous brand names. And it gets you your next job. It’s worthless now and cooperation instead of isolation. Why do we do anything? Where we ask people to do it all by themselves? When then we put them in the real world and say, cooperate for more teachers, role transforms into coach, lifelong learning with work happening earlier in your life. NUMBER 6 And. Really important. The death of the famous college, not good college. We don’t know what a good colleges, but we know what a famous colleges cause someone ranked them as famous or because they have a football team. That’s famous. Why on earth are we paying extra? Why on earth? Are we working harder to comply and be obedient? Just so we can get a famous brand name that has no relevance to success or happiness. But after our name, NUMBER 7 I want to show you one more device. I have over here as I start to do this, this is called an Arduino, and it’s a little bit like a raspberry PI. They’re both electronic devices that cost 20 to $30 each the raspberry PI, which you can buy for $25 has on it. The complete Linux operating system, a USB port, audio out, and a monitor. So if we take that cable and that keyboard and that monitor, we already have in front of almost every kid in this country and hand them one of these, we can then say to them, go build something interesting and ask if you need help, why wouldn’t we want to teach our kids to go do something interesting? Why wouldn’t we want our teach our kids to figure it out? And yet every day we send kids to school and say, do not figure it out, do not ask questions. I do not know the answer to do not look it up. Do not vary from the curriculum and better, better, better, better, better comply, fit in. Be like your peers. Do what you’re told because I must process you because everything in my evaluation is based. On whether or not I processed you properly. So there are two myths. I want to close with the first one. And we gotta be really honest with ourselves about this myth. One great performance in school leads to happiness and success. If that’s not true, we should stop telling ourselves it is. And two great parents have kids who produce great performance in school. If that’s not true, we should stop telling ourselves it is. Are we asking our kids to collect dots or connect dots? Because we’re really good at measuring how many dots they collect, how many facts they have memorized, how many boxes they have filled in, but we teach nothing about how to connect those dots. You cannot teach connecting dots in the dummy’s manual. You cannot teach connecting dots in a textbook. Can only do it by putting kids into a situation where they can fail grades aren’t illusion, passion, and insight are reality. Your work is more important than your conduits to an answer. Key persistence in the face of a skeptical authority figure is priceless. And yet we undermine it. Fitting in is a short term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a longterm strategy that takes guts and produces results. If you care enough about your work to be willing to be criticized for it, then you have done a good day’s work. So what now, what now? What should we do? Because we’ve been talking about it a whole lot. Only one thing, ask the question. What is school for when they say this is our new textbook, the question is, is that going to help us with getting what school is for when they say this is the new superintendent we need to say yes, but is this superintendent going to help us do what we think school is for? And if you don’t know what school is for, then have a conversation about it, because until we can agree what school is for, we’re not going to get what we need. Thank you for the work you do. I appreciate it. The post 050 – Part 2 – What You MUST Know About School And Education appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

The Scrimmage, LEARN TO WIN Podcast, has reached its 50th episode! To celebrate, we have made a montage to capture some of the most memorable moments and topics discussed. Tune into Part 1 of our 50th episode celebration for a look back at key insights and takeaways surrounding core values and how to make work #FUN! 3:17 – How strong values set companies up for success with David Chinsky4:38 – Making core values behaviors with Lisa Mcleod5:18 – Creating a GREAT working environment with Derek Lundsten6:04 – How to create a STRONG team with Todd Staples8:08 – Connecting through shared values with Todd Staples10:35 – Giving yourself permission to play with Kathy Gruver12:10 – Loving what you do with Jon Dwoskin15:20 – Why there is no such thing as a dumb question with JT McCormick Full Transcription: Todd: [00:00:00] [00:00:00] so  Derek 50 episodes in the season, it’s been awesome.  [00:00:04] [00:00:04] Derek: [00:00:04] It flew  by Todd,  [00:00:06] Todd: [00:00:06] right? I mean, it really did, like I remember every dozen or so checking in like, wow, we’re almost to 20. Oh my gosh 40 , it really does move fast and it’s been really fun to do this with you and. [00:00:18] I can’t explain to people listening or watching who have never done a, an activity and exercise in creating a podcast and interviewing people. But we have met some of the most fascinating people on this journey.  [00:00:31] Derek: [00:00:31] It’s been an amazing year in terms of the conversations we’ve had and people who had the opportunity to meet and talk with and learn about I’ve enjoyed every conversation and learned so much personally from that process. [00:00:44]Todd: [00:00:44] So for this 50th episode, we’ve broken this into three distinct, categories reflecting on the three  topics that came up most during the show. And I thought it would be fun to see, start with [00:00:55] insights about fun and learning and core values, because that’s literally what attracted me [00:01:00] to scrimmage and to working with you in the first place Derek. And before we even dive into the insights, it’d be a good opportunity for you to share a little bit about the scrimmage core values and how they came about and what they stand for and how they’ve shown up for you during this process. [00:01:17] Derek: [00:01:17] Sure. So my overarching building scrimmage has always been to create an environment where people want to be, where they choose to be, where they are inspired to come to work every day, to get better and to serve our clients and our partners. And that it feels alive. It feels like people are growing and it feels like there’s purpose. [00:01:36] And I find that that’s fun and I’ve always felt it important to create an atmosphere. That is fun that people enjoy and that when they leave the virtual office that we’re now in, or what was at one time, an actual office that they go home and they feel excited to some extent, even about even when things are challenging, they’re looking forward to the next day. [00:01:56] and even when things are challenging, they’re looking forward to tackling that and moving [00:02:00] to the next phase of whatever it is and that they enjoy working with them. The people in an organization that make it worthwhile.  [00:02:06]Insert Todd transition [00:02:07]Krista Gargone: [00:02:07] Hi, my name is Krista Gargone and I am an associate manager with scrimmage. I really enjoyed David Chinsky’s perspective on shared values within an organization. I love this because it makes connecting with your team more efficient and effective when everybody’s on the same, the page. [00:02:26]David Chinsky: [00:02:26] values are incredibly important. They can amplify. The clarity of a mission and a vision statement. You have great mission vision. If your values aren’t very wholesome, then it’s not really going to create the outcome or the future that you want. [00:02:40]. Companies organizations that have a, a strong set of shared values, outperform organizations that have weak values on profitability on, on growth. And so values are, are the hard stuff. And if we don’t get them right, we’re going to have a hard time connecting with, with [00:03:00] our, our stakeholders. [00:03:01]Insert Todd Transition [00:03:02]Lisa Mcleod: [00:03:02] purpose is why your organization exists. It’s the impact that you want to have on customers. Your core values are the way you behave. And one of the things I always say about core values is they shouldn’t be easy. [00:03:17] [00:03:17] Oftentimes we find that organizations do have already have core values.  sometimes they’re great and we don’t need to do a thing more often than not. [00:03:27] They have eight or nine and we need to get them down to three or five. And we need to make them behaviors that’s where core values come in is they provide the behavioral template. That’s how you create that level of personal responsibility. [00:03:43] [00:03:43]Derek: [00:03:43] you know, and mean from a practical business standpoint, it’s about creating a place where people can show up and be passionate, where they can be adaptable to change, where they can build efficiencies. and really just get better, right. Really improve and create a standard for accountability that people know that we’re, we’re building something excellent. [00:03:59] meaningful, [00:04:00] something that they can be proud of, showing up and doing their best, but also that they know they’re celebrated and are having a good time. And that’s really what I’ve always wanted to be a part of and the environment that I’ve really tried to help create. And, I’ve been fortunate that we’ve had great team members and great partners and, people on this journey with us. [00:04:16] And so I think the podcast has just been. The external example of what we’ve always been building here at this company. And so that’s been really, really cool.  [00:04:27] Todd: [00:04:27] Yeah. And I got to tip my hat to you, even though you’re the one with the hat today that you I’ve done such a great job of attracting those type of people. [00:04:36] And I think there’s a few different approaches to that. Like you have, probably one of the most well known. Books around this is Jim Collins, good degree. And he talks about getting the right people on the bus, and then you figure out what to do. but even before that, you can either ,choose I’m going to pick and set in stone, all the core values of the company. [00:04:56] And then pick the right people that match those values and then let them make decisions [00:05:00] or it can be a little more organic. And then once you get this, this group together that do share some values, then you decide, what are we going to build? Where are we going to? Where are we going to point the boat? [00:05:10] Right. So you’ve done a great job with that. And one of the things I have always. Seen and experienced myself that when you create those strong core values and you step up and you share them every single day and every meeting and every all hands get together, they’d be great. I’m so ingrained in everybody’s mind and in their actions that the core values make the difficult decisions at the company. [00:05:33] So if there is challenge times, maybe COVID-19 comes up and you have some really difficult decisions to make. You can rely on the core values. And kind of, you know, cut away the external stressors and you just say, well, this is a value. So what is the decision we should make based on these values, not based on what we feel right now for frantic and maybe worried. [00:05:57] so you’re doing a great job with that. So I think that has [00:06:00] attracted the right client, the right people on the team and the right people to the podcast.  [00:06:06] Yeah, man, I thank you for the feedback and, and, you know, again, it goes back to the whole team. That’s I think the whole effort is that we’ve everybody shows up and they live them. [00:06:14] Right. And I think that’s really what the draw is, is when you have a group of people that are. Insane and going in the same direction with those values, that’s how you change the world. Right? And I’m one of those crazy people that thinks we can change the world for the better.  [00:06:27] So I love it. I love it. And that’s it nicely dovetails it to the guests. [00:06:32] we didn’t share this at the beginning of the podcast process, but when we were prepping and laying the foundation. We sat down and we reviewed the core values. And then we reviewed a bit about our, market that we want to be more focused on and just more engaged. [00:06:48] And we put together a two part email campaign. They’d specifically targeted the types of people who were in the right role and in the right industry, but more so than that, that [00:07:00] they had three or more shared core values. And we kind of sniff that out based on their social profiles and some other technical ways of doing that. [00:07:10] But when we did the outreach, the response was outrageous. We had 82 people book interviews in the first week and it was just overwhelming. Yeah. So, and that’s why every single guest that we’ve had on the show, even the ones that we thought might not be a fit at first  [00:07:28] were spectacular. They were  [00:07:29] really amazing how much of a fit they were with the way that we see the world and the vision we have for the future of learning and having fun at work and mobile and remote training. [00:07:40] I mean all this great stuff. so just reflecting on the process itself. It has been such a great journey. And we now have, we have strategic partners, who’ve come out of it. We have potential clients. We have, made more of an impact on our current client base and been able to share great information with them. [00:07:58] That’s relevant. so [00:08:00] let’s dive in and maybe you can comment on a few of your favorites. Moments from the show.  [00:08:05] Derek: [00:08:05] so I don’t even know where to begin on a favorite moments. I mean, we’ve had so many great guests, I mean, truly, and, and, and so over so many different segments, right? To your point, there’s overlap in different areas, right? [00:08:15] From the corporate side to the academics, to the personal coaches, to corporate leaders. I mean, it’s been, it’s been over the map and I just think that each one of them has brought, their own life experiences, their own business experiences, their own personalities to the conversation. [00:08:30] I mean, I come back to a couple back to the idea of fun. [00:08:33] Right. We’ve had a couple that were really fun. So, I mean, I think back to. Um, to Cathy, you know, that was up Kathy Glover was just on a couple of weeks ago. We talked about improv, right. And the idea of, the, our work being a stage and being able to, you know, improv it at work and have fun with just trying new things and making adjustments ended up the community and the relationships that, I mean, that’s, that’s one that’s come up for me. [00:08:53]Todd: [00:08:53] let’s jump into Kathy groovers quote and hear what she has to say about having fun at work and not taking yourself so seriously. [00:09:00] [00:09:01]Kathy Gruver: [00:09:01] one of the things that that I do is I teach improv skills and to me, I, you know, turn it if I’ve got 10 minutes in between clients and I want to just relax for a second, because I think as much as we concentrate, we also have to decent trait. [00:09:14] And I think we forget to do that. We forget to. Put the work aside for a second, I’m very type a, East coast or go, go, go driven person. So I have to remind myself to play. I turned on whose line is it? Anyway, you know, to me, that is the most fun and it’s great communication skills. [00:09:29] It’s that? Yes. And it’s that building? It’s that reincorporation. So I’ve taught people in corporations how to work better in the corporate culture with that kind of play. [00:09:38] we so often think of work as this very serious thing. And we forget that it doesn’t have to be that weighty. We forget that we can lighten up a little bit at the office and, and, just relax into what we’re doing.  [00:09:49]Kathy Gruver: [00:09:49] And. I think it’s about giving ourselves permission to do that because other people look at play as, Oh, you’re wasting time. What are you getting done today? [00:10:00] And I think we have to let that judgment and that input from other people go and just, just be, you just do what you need to do to take care of yourself. [00:10:06]Derek: [00:10:06] John Dwoskin, we talked about purpose. I think that goes back to,  [00:10:10] Derek: [00:10:10] The same thing when you’re doing purpose aligned work, it’s a lot of fun. You feel fulfillment that it’s fun to be fulfilled doing, knowing that you’re doing something aligned with that. I think that that was a key piece that came through through that is that when people are doing work, that they’re excited about it’s not quote, you know, you’re never working a day in your life. [00:10:26] Right. And I think that that’s something that a lot of our guests have resonated with throughout, the 50 episodes that, that we’ve done.  [00:10:34] Jon Dwoskin: [00:10:34] [00:10:39] for those who are listening, you know, do your best to determine what you’re good at? I think to have fun at work, you really just gotta be able to have your voice and do something that you love. [00:10:50] And if you don’t love what you do,  find what you love. And some people will say, well, I need the money. I need the security, I need this, but that’s, that’s true. [00:11:00] But You can also continue to stay on a path to find what you really love and, and, and you, and you deserve that for yourself. [00:11:06]Derek: [00:11:06] I loved the episode with JT   mcCormick, I mean, he’s got an amazing story. That guy just there’s this energy. [00:11:12] I mean, and he’s now working, helping people to amplify their stories. I mean, that guy story alone is just fascinating. I received a ton of value just from him as a leader in terms of how he shows up in the same level around his values and the way that they’ve used that and the subtlety of that and the specific things that he does and the way that he communicate. [00:11:30] those have been, there’s been a huge, [00:11:31]Todd: [00:11:31] Let’s definitely listen to some wisdom from JT, because if you haven’t listened to that episode, JT McCormick was the son of a pimp and had I believe 25 siblings, if you can even fathom that. So listen to what JT has to say about having fun at work and really stepping into your authentic self. [00:11:53]JT McCormick: [00:11:55] I’ll give you an example with us internally. One of our company principles is [00:12:00] ask questions. Why that one is so near and dear to me, because I’m the one that added it to there. I have built a career out of asking questions to this day. I will sit in meetings and again, I’m sitting in rooms with people that have gone to Harvard and again, all the, all the credentials. [00:12:20] And so they’re the writers I’m around a bunch of creatives and intellects. They’ll use vocabulary words that I have no clue what they’re saying. It’s all like, wait a minute. Timeout. What’s that mean? And I do for two reasons. One, because I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about because I want people in the room to see that’s what I mean by ask questions. [00:12:41] Someone challenged me on this. They said, I put in there, there is no such thing as a dumb or stupid question. Shout out to mrs. D deck. My third grade teacher who taught me that, but someone challenged me and they said, JT, that’s not true. And I go, okay, how so? They said, what about the [00:13:00] person who asked the same question over and over and over? [00:13:03] I said, The dumb or stupid person is the person who keeps answering the same question over and over and over. Because obviously you’re not explaining yourself this person’s not getting it, or they just don’t care either way. It’s not the person asking the question over and over. That’s dumb or stupid. [00:13:20] It’s the person who’s answering it. So to your point, I’m big on asking questions. Something I do believe has to come early. In in life where we express to our children, the youth in school, no question is dumb. You know, with our organization, people come on their first week of onboarding. This is, this is factual. [00:13:45] Most companies, we all know this. You can get higher for asking too many questions. I expressed to people in their first day, you can get fired here for not asking enough questions. If you make a mistake, because you’re so [00:14:00] prideful that you didn’t want to look dumb, you can’t be a part of this tribe. You gotta go. The post 050 – The Importance of Core Values & Fun at Work appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

Are you looking to develop more social connections to obtain more sales? LinkedIn Whisperer and CEO of Social Sales Link, Brynne Tillman, shares tips and best practices combining traditional sales techniques along with the new digital world mentality to achieve more traction from target audiences.  0:12 – The LinkedIn fad2:51 – The rolodex of the future: LinkedIn7:22 – Position yourself as a resource not a resumé10:46 – Why we buy from people & not companies 14:44 – How to utilize a first & second degree connection15:37 – Always tailor your templates Website https://socialsaleslink.com https://www.linkedin.com **Search #SSLInsights on LinkedIn for more information** Full Episode Transcription: Derek: (00:00)So Brynne it’s so awesome to see you. Thanks for joining us. So, first question we want to know is obviously we’ve known each other all for a long time. Tell us what you’re up to these days and how you got into that line of work and what motivates you about it.Brynne: (00:12)Well, you know, my line of work is simply helping people leverage LinkedIn to start more sales conversations. And I mean, I, I got here by accident, I think because I really started off originally as a sales producer did well in some of the companies that I was working for, including dun and Bradstreet, and ended up being brought in as a trainer and helped create curriculum over time became sales trainer started a company focused on sales training. And then I found LinkedIn and I realized that there’s so much power. And I I’ve been teaching LinkedIn for sales before LinkedIn knew they were a sales platform when they were only job seekers, and really started teach it from a networking perspective and from a business development perspective. And it’s been gosh, eight, eight years of doing, monetizing of this and really probably 10 plus years of using it for business development. So I sort of accidentally got here and I’m really happy. And I was told by everyone, it’s a fad, have some fun. You’ll be back into sales training soon, but you know, the fads running a really long time.Derek: (01:35)That’s amazing. Todd: (01:35)So what I, and I’m also passionate and deeply knowledgeable about LinkedIn, but it’s funny when, when you say to a lot of people, like I love LinkedIn and that’s what I do. I teach people how to what is your actual statement? Brynne: (01:52)I Leverage it to start more sales conversations. Todd: (01:54)Okay. So perfect. But for some people they’re like, so you love a software program, but it just doesn’t, there’s no magic for them. So what is it about what you can get out of LinkedIn, what you can learn and what you can actually access with the tool? Like, why is that fascinating to you?Brynne: (02:09)So, I mean, I’ll start with the foundation or the core of why I love it. And then 50 million things come out of that. But the core really is you know, maybe I’ll tell a quick little story when I worked for Dun & Bradstreet. And I, you know, I was cold calling to get into appointments, like literally sat in a room and dialed and dialed and dialed, and then made it to the field where I really fell in love with sales. And I recall a situation where I was like sitting across from a client’s Rolodex. I don’t know if you guys remember what a Rolodex is. Derek: (02:41)I do. Brynne: (02:42)Every once in a while. Do you okay? GoodTodd: (02:45)I used to play with it at my dad’s office at his law firm.Brynne: (02:51)Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, so yeah, so, so staring at this Rolodex thinking if could get my hands on this for 20 minutes, I could figure out who he knew that I wanted to meet, leverage that relationship to get introductions. And I wouldn’t have to do any more cold calling, which was my least favorite part of sales, but in 1992, yes, I just aged myself. It wasn’t like politically correct to say, Hey, Mr. Client, can I thumb through your address book. Right. But when, you know, a couple decades later when LinkedIn launched, I had this like aha moment of like, my prayers have been answered. Linkedin allows us to filter and search our connections, connections, and identify who in our network can we leverage to get introductions into our targeted audience? And the fact is, you know, I wanted to just flip through all the business cards of the Rolodex.Brynne: (03:52)Linkedin really allows us to use to use filters and key words to really hone in on that list. So where they may have 800 connections, I can find the 23 that they know that I might want it to meet. And there are a couple of ways to do that. And you can ask for introductions, you can get permission to name drop. There are quite a few different ways to do that. And you have your clients, your networking partners, you can do it by company and look at your entire Rolodex to see who knows. I mean, it’s phenomenal. So that’s the core of why I love it. Right? And then so many things come out of that, but that ability to search and filter your connections, connections is like, there’s nothing else on the planet that allows us to do that. Todd: (04:40)There’s some, there’s some aspects of that for LinkedIn and for business that I wish were more available just in the, in the social side. Right? So a lot of what we want to get into here is about building a culture and understanding your team and supporting each other and playng. It’s Scrimmage, right? Scrimmage is about playing and working hard and learning through, through play right through. All right. So you want to play with people that share common interests, right? Or have wildly different interests that you can learn from. So like, what I think is fascinating about what you can get from LinkedIn is understanding not just where someone works or their industry, but like people put work into their profiles sometimes. So you can tell by the language they use, you can tell the, literally the reason you showed up in my outreach for this interview we’re doing right now is probably keeps me, we’re both passionate about some of the same things, clearly understanding people in business and relationships.Todd: (05:44)But I spoke with someone a few days ago on the phone who you actually know. And I was saying, tell me your story. Right. So when I found him, I look for uncommon commonalities, right. I see a story. And he said, well, I worked in Hollywood and film for a long time. I was like, Jake, that is it. And that’s why you showed up because I worked in film in Hollywood and visual effects for awhile. Yeah. So when you find these little common traits that you can share and spark conversation it starts a relationship. And then you can learn about all the uncommon traits that you don’t know about. Derek: (06:17)Totally agree. I was going to say Brynne, LinkedIn’s evolving a lot, lately to include more about your personal side, right? The personal side of, of, of life of business. How do you, what’s your feeling on that? I mean, it’s, you know,Brynne: (06:30)So I’m, I I’m mixed and I’m going to come back. I’ll answer that in just a minute. Cause the one thing I wanted to mention to Todd to your point is when I started in sales and I’d walk into a client’s office, I would look around the room and see, you know, Oh, he, he skis, it looks like he goes to Utah. Like, what are the things, Oh, he’s got twins. I have twins. Right? Whatever that looks like. Right. And so that’s what LinkedIn allows us to do. Like it gives us that you have their office, right. To help us build that rapport instead of just jumping into sales pitch. Right. Which is what we do often in not a great way. And it kills deals pitching too early. So to your question bringing the personal into it, we definitely need a our personality into it.Brynne: (07:28)And we should in some way, bring in kind of our interests, but generally speaking, our buyers don’t care about us as much as we’d like to think right now, having, you know, if you, you know, if you played tennis for Villanova, make sure it’s there. Cause that’s something that, you know, will bring in rapport. But what I really, my philosophy, at least through LinkedIn is about teaching and guiding and providing insights and value. And so where most people lead with their solution, here’s how to buy from us. Here’s what our clients love. This is what, you know, how to hire us, all that fun stuff. I often say, stop telling them how you can help them and simply help them. And then you’ll attract them to you. So for me, the primary purpose of the profile is to be a resource, right? To switch it, to move it I’ve been saying for 15 years, a long, not that long, but whatever, you know, seven, eight years, you’ve got to move your profile from a resume to a resource.Brynne: (08:37)Yeah. Right. If you are resume, no one cares. Especially if you’re in business development. And if you’re looking for a job that might be a whole other conversation, but if you are selling a product or a service or yourself, you’ve got to be a resource. People need to see you as a thought leader and a subject matter expert. And I really think that that, and you know, when you go into a networking meeting and someone talks 80% of the time, it’s all about them. They think you’re awesome. You know, you want to make sure you’re making it all about them. You don’t have to talk about you. You have to talk about how, you know, solving their problems, getting them curious, getting them thinking a little differently than they did before they got here. And that’s really in my eyes the way to position your LinkedIn profile.Derek: (09:25)Got it. That’s great. Thank you. I just learned something right there. I think I’m going to apply this as we leave the session.Brynne: (09:32)Yay!Derek: (09:33)But I would love to hear your, your answers to my other question too, is as far as that, how has becoming more personal, right? Like that side of LinkedIn, that’s evolved especially with the incorporation of the video now and those types of things.Brynne: (09:45)Oh, that, so it becomes more personal professionally is great. Right? Like it’s not about, here’s the video of the vacation with my friends unless, I’m giving you a business tip at the same time. Right? So here’s, here’s the good news, the bad news around that. There are some people that are doing a phenomenal job of that. I’m just going to give out Sherry Levitan does an incredible job of wherever she is. If she’s, you know, whether it’s her storage unit or she’s water skiing on some Lake in Utah, whatever it is, right? Like, but it always comes back to a business tip. And so you fall in love with her and you know what she’s doing and she brings great value. So I, every time I see a video from her, I’m connecting with her more deeply and I’m learning from her. So if you can balance the two, it’s a huge win, huge win video definitely connects you.Brynne: (10:48)And we buy from people. We don’t buy from companies, right. We buy from people. So if we can connect with the individual and see them personally, as the thought leader and subject matter expert, as the person that’s, you know, helping me get to a better solution, you are, and you’re making those relationships and connections. It’s huge. The mistake is when you blur the story of why people should, you know, so when it becomes all personal and not leading to your solution, if you are not. So I said, you know, most people lead with their solution. You want to lead to your solution. So 95% of what you’re doing on LinkedIn should lead them closer and closer to your solution. Right. And so if you were not, and you’re talking about some great quote from Albert Einstein, but you sell telephone systems, you’re diluting your brand and people don’t, they’re not thinking of you and your brand together. And so they don’t know how to work with you or why they may love you. But so that, that’s sort of my,Derek: (12:04)Yeah. So, so on that topic of learning with LinkedIn specifically, I’m kind of interested and curious of this question for employees of just of just companies. Like not. So a lot of, you know, a lot of things that we see on LinkedIn are from from influencers and people who are selling these concepts and influence and advocating for this platform, which we all agree. There’s a big value. How do you see it being used in that way for just a BDR or an account executive for just any regular company, right. In terms of their they’re one of a hundred reps, how can they use LinkedIn to differentiate within the construct or the, the rules if you will, of their company? Because there are some limitations around personal branding vs. company branding, and how do you balance that?Brynne: (12:47)Okay. So the first thing I’m going to say is don’t break your company rules as I go out there. Like, if you have constraints, I don’t want anyone to come back to me. Then I got fired. Cause I did what you said on LinkedIn. Right? Like, so make sure anything you do is approved now i’ll share some of the things. Cause I know the last thing, but there are a lot of things like an inside sales person can do, right? So let’s, let’s talk about some of the statistics that are famous, that we know there are 6.8 decision makers on the average enterprise sales says the customer challenger customer, right? Phoebe Gardner, right. Probably the most used stat out there, 6.8. So as an inside sales rep, you may have a pretty decent database. You may use ZoomInfo, you know, which is decent, right. It’s a great tool, but that’s information not connection.Brynne: (13:47)Right? So you may use those LinkedIn, we’ll do a few things. Number one, it gives you in mind experience the most up to date information on on the org chart. Right? Cause they’re all if someone gets a new job, the first thing they do is update their level. Right? Zoom info might take them six months before that gets updated. Not saying, I think ZoomInfo is great. Not saying anything, but there are, you know, everything has its own kind of expertise. And so LinkedIn has that number two very quickly. You can see what you can’t see on anything else, your social proximity to all of those people. Right? So I know my 6.8 here are the, all of the titles of the people that will be involved. All of the stakeholders that will be involved in the sales process. I go into the company, I look them up, I get 15 names that match that criteria.Brynne: (14:44)And now the next thing I do is look at my social proximity. Do I have a first degree connection in this company? If I do, even if it’s the wrong person inside that company, I’m having a conversation because they can make an internal introduction to the right partners, person, number one, number two, is there a second degree connection to the right person? And can I leverage that relationship to get a warm introduction? So I noticed that Todd is connected to Derek and I want to meet Derek. And I say, you know Todd, I notice you’re connected to Derek at Scrimmage. I’ve been trying to get into his company for a while. And I know he’s the CEO. How well do you know him? You know, a little bit about what I do. Would you be open to making an introduction, right? And so, and you can do this in many different ways, but inside sales reps can do a little of that.Brynne: (15:37)Now, if they have a call volume, they have to hit, they have to be a little careful around that. But if they have some templates that they can tailor each time, a little bit, it can make it flow, tailor your templates, not the same template for every single person, but you know, kind of get get that going. The other thing is pre call planning. I got an appointment with someone I’m going to get on the call. We were talking about this earlier. I say, you know, two things in two minutes, right? Spend two minutes on a profile and pick two things you can mention. It could be anything from their location. If you can’t find anything else, Oh, you live in Portland, Oregon, I’m dying to go there. It’s high on my bucket list is at least something right. That I recognize, even if it’s, I’ve never been, you know, so you’ve got to find like some connection to things in two minutes, same college. Maybe you both follow the same influencer, whatever that might be. Find that commonality to start the conversation in a much more natural way versus jumping right into, like, let me tell you all the things I can do for you. Right. Don’t don’t pitch too early. Yeah. Sorry. On and on.Derek: (16:53)No, that’s perfect. I thank you so much for the details. I think the audience will get a lot of value and understanding how to, how to use that specifically within their organization. So it’s always a pleasure talking with you, Brynne. You have anything? Todd: (17:04)Yeah, this is great. No, I’m just feverishly scribbling notes because I want to make sure we keep these in the put these in the show notes. As we wrap up your Brynne, how can people get access to you? Is there online trainings or your website? Where can they get more.Brynne: (17:18)Yes. All of that. Todd: (17:21)I would imagine they can reach you, butBrynne: (17:23)Yeah, I am still the only Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn, which is great. So you can find me there, social sales link.com. And on LinkedIn, if you put in hashtag SSL insights, all of our content will pop up. Derek: (17:39)Perfect. Todd: (17:40)And there’s a tip within within that sentence for people. So make your own hashtags so people can find your stuff easily.Brynne: (17:47)Exactly. Everyone should have one. Derek: (17:51)Awesome. Well, Brynne, thanks so much for your time and your experience and wisdom as always. We really value it and value you and I’m wishing you all the best as always. Thank you. Brynne: (17:59)Thank you. Thanks so much for having me guys. Todd: (18:03)Thanks.  The post 049 – Leveraging LinkedIn To Start More Sales Conversations With Brynne Tillman appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

Stress is not an uncommon feeling today. Pressures from work, home and life leave us feeling overwhelmed and uneasy from time to time. How do we overcome these feelings and maintain a positive outlook? Stress and Communication Expert, Dr. Kathy Gruver, chats about mindset, communication and the importance of play in the workplace. Learning to not put added pressure on yourself + give yourself permission to have fun goes a long way to reduce stress. 0:17 – An empowering mindset1:58 – How simple conversations can spark growth & development3:27 – The mind, body medicine6:43 – #PlayWhereYouWork9:24 – Breaking the ‘achievement mode’ culture11:59 – Giving yourself permission to play14:50 – The pros of open communication & mutual respect24:09 – Choosing the reality we show25:23 – Getting to know the person underneath the persona Website http://www.kathygruver.com Full Episode Transcription: Todd: (00:00)All right. So Kathy, so happy to have you here and dive into a little bit of your story. And I always like to start with why you do what you do, what is it that has drawn you to your career and your profession and what puts that big smile on your face that you have right now when we’re talking?Kathy: (00:17)Yeah. Thanks. I’m so happy to be here and meet you guys. This is very exciting. You know, I have always had this parallel path of performer and healer. I was an actor since I was about five and I started doing massage when I was a little kid. It was just this very natural thing that I was drawn to. And so when I moved to Hollywood from Pittsburgh to pursue those award winning film roles, I thought that the massage would be a good sideline and the award winning film roles never came and the massage stuck with me. And so I just developed that over the years and ended up studying more and more everything from Reiki and homeopathics to mind, body medicine and stress reduction and coaching and corporate work. And so I sort of now combine those two things. And now I get on stages in front of well, anywhere from 5 to 1500 people and teach them what I know. So it’s really about empowering those people and whether I’m seeing one-on-one in my office or an audience of thousands, that’s really what fuels me is I want to impart the knowledge that I know to give people those options, to give them choices so that they know that they can make the changes that are going to make them grow and evolve and, and be the best people they can be. I mean, it sounds kind of cliche, but I mean, it really is. That’s, what’s, that’s, what’s, that’s what fuels me, is helping those people.Derek: (01:27)It sounds great that we all resonate with that, Kathy, in terms of that mission and purpose. I think that’s why we’re actually all here talking, so, yeah. Todd: (01:35)And how, what sort of an impact, because, you know, you’re in California, you’re in Santa Barbara and then you’ve got this background in massage and Reiki sounds very spiritual and and a little woo woo. Right. But that, what sort of a direct impact does that have on a, on a corporate team, on the culture, on their ability to communicate and grow together? Derek: (01:57)Great question.Kathy: (01:58)Yeah. Well, and what’s really interesting is I, as I was a theater major, which has also kind of, woo woo, I was a psychology minor, and I’ve been studying psychology and human behavior, my entire life. One of the first books I picked up off the shelf when I was a little kid to read from my parents’ basement, was their college psychology textbook. I just always been obsessed with that. And so over the, over the 30 years of, of me doing massage how many people have I talked to? And I realized that what I was discussing with them on the table, if they were up for that of course, was about their own growth. And it ended up being a coaching session as much as a massage session. So now I’ve been able to take all of that info as well as things like massage and neuro linguistic programming improv and things like that, and turn it into a way to help corporations grow and help that communication build to something that works better. So all of those one on one interactions have really have really informed what I do now. So it’s been, it’s been a fascinating process. I didn’t think I’d get here from where I started, but I just follow the breadcrumbs and this is where I ended up. SoDerek: (03:01)I love that. That’s so cool. And obviously you can tell it radiates from you that, you know, your passion for this and your experience with that, and I can genuinely feel you love helping people. So that’s really amazing. So within the companies that you’re supporting, I mean, how have you kind of taken the, the physical modality of healing into the emotional and connectedness modality of, of helping cultures and companies heal from the inside out?Kathy: (03:27)Yeah, I think we forget that it’s all connected. I mean, we look at health as this absence of disease and in reality, it’s living your optimal life and whether that’s at work or at home, and I’ve talked to individuals and corporations about everything from their desk set up to what they’re snacking on to why that afternoon slump happens to how stress affects communication. And I think that’s been one of the big things is that mind body medicine, which is I’ve written a couple books on that, that’s what my dissertation was on. When I got my PhD was about mind body medicine and those modalities like meditation and mindfulness and how that affects your everyday functioning and communication is a huge thing that completely falls apart. If you’re in a stressed state, we can’t communicate well or have good leadership if we’re in that stress, that fight or flight response. Kathy: (04:14)So I talked to them about that and I am a total medical nerd. I, as much as Western medicine sometimes drives me crazy. I’m absolutely obsessed with it. So I know a lot about diseases, disorders, dysfunctions, and though I’m not an MD people come to me with those kinds of questions too. So if you’re having those types of issues in the corporate world, you’re still, you’re not gonna function your best. And so I can guide people towards the right modalities to that towards the right practitioners for that. So I don’t, I’m kind of a Jack of all trades. When I walk into a company, I mold myself to whatever they need me to do at that time.Derek: (04:46)That’s really exciting. So one of things you talked about in a few different themes, there was just the intersection of life and work and those types of things. And I think that’s something that we’ve talked a lot and something that Scrimmage talks about. If you ever look at our content about learn, when you play and play, where you work, like this whole concept of playing and fun intersecting with work and how you learn and all these different things, right? This organism if you will of being a human being and that context, like how would you see that kind of just showing up within the cultures that you’re working with and the company you’re supporting and doing it well.Kathy: (05:20)Oh, you want them to do it well, too. Okay. That’s, that’s tougher. You know, I, I love that you talked about play. And one of the things that that I do is I teach improv skills. And to me, I, you know, turn, if I’ve got 10 minutes in between clients and I want to just relax for a second, because I think as much as we concentrate, we also have to decentrate. And I think we forget to do that. We forget to put the work aside for a second. I’m very type A, East coaster go, go, go driven person. So I have to tell them, I have to remind myself to play. I turn it on whose line is anyway, you know, to me that is the most fun and it’s great communication skills. It’s that? Yes. And it’s building it’s that reincorporation.Kathy: (05:59)So I’ve taught people in corporations how to work better in the corporate culture with that kind of play. And I think we forget we’re allowed to have fun at work. I have fun every day at work. I have a different kind of job than most people. But no, I love that you brought that up because I think that’s important. And we so often think of work as this very serious thing. And we forget that it doesn’t have to be that weighty. We forget that we can lighten up a little bit at the office and, and just relax into what we’re doing. So I try to encourage that as well.Derek: (06:26)Yeah. How do you remind those people at those companies to have fun? Like how do we create that, that habit. Todd: (06:32)Remind them, or from scratch? Maybe it’s a company that has done well and has grown, but you can tell things are tense and maybe will crumble if they don’t introduce a little bit of fun and playfulness.Kathy: (06:43)Yeah. Well, and I think it’s about pausing for a second and taking it that breath because in that pause, there’s this power because we have the ability to decide what we’re going to do next. And we have that ability to decide whether we’re going to respond to something or react to something. And those reactions tend to be pretty serious. They tend to be not well thought out. And in that response, we have that ability to lighten up a little bit and actually make that different choice to do something a little more fun, a little more play. Maybe it is an improv game. Maybe we do some sort of icebreaker with groups that haven’t really met them each other a lot. You know, everyone’s working so virtually these days that you’ve got, you know, Bob and Kansas and Mary in New York and Joe and Florida, and it’s like, they never meet each other.Kathy: (07:25)So how can you develop those relationships over the computer like this? And I think it’s about that coming together and then getting to know each other. And I love when corporations organize retreats, where all the teams can come together or at least once a week do this sort of thing so that they put a face with that. It becomes more personal. And I think that’s one of the things that’s missing is that, that personal connection of, you know, I can certainly send out us a text, but I want to look you in the eye or that I, and I want to see your body language. I mean, you know what, 90% of our communication is nonverbal, right? So if I send a text with a funny emoji and I go, I don’t know, I don’t know what that means. You know, it’s like, we’re losing that ability to read faces and to read body language. And in that personal connection comes that lightness and that play. It’s harder to do that over text. It’s so often missed. How often have we got in trouble for saying something on tax that we meant to be sarcastic at times. It’s like, well, I’m glad you’re keeping track. Good. Yeah. So I mean it’s, and we’ve got to laugh. We have to laugh. More kids laugh like 200 times a day and adults like for it’s really sad. It’s really, sad.Derek: (08:30)Where is that chain? I’m glad you raised that. That’s actually, cause that goes back to the time this whole thing started was the play concept of being, you know, and scrimmage being fun and a game oriented. It’s about play. About being fun. Where do you think as adults we lose, like where does it fall off track? Where does the laughter factor from 200 go down to 4? And how do we proactively, you know, continue to create an environment that, that, that, that grows. So we look at it, I back to the healing concept, we see where we are. Now, if we’re going to have children taught us children and you have children, I assume, right. We’re going to think through. Or you don’t okay. So we all have children in this tense, your companies is your children’s, right?Kathy: (09:09)Yeah. Well, every one of my clients is my children.Derek: (09:11)Exactly. Metaphorically we all have children. Right. So the idea is we’re going to care for people. We want to, we want to nurture a better society. You want to create that culture? How do we do we do that? Right? Like how do we, where do we, where do we bridge that gap?Kathy: (09:24)Yeah. You know, and I think you guys have a huge advantage in having children. Because if I want to sit down on the floor and play with Barbie dolls, people think I’m crazy. Cause I don’t have a child I’m on the floor with matchbox cars, la la la, you know, I’m an only child I can play with. You know, I, everything to me is an improv game. But you guys have the excuse as an adult to go out and run around and to get on the floor and play with your kids. I think we lose that. And I think part of that is school. You know? I mean, I have a client who was so set on getting her kid in the right fricking preschool that this kid studied all summer and they didn’t let her hike and they didn’t let her go on a bike ride.Kathy: (10:02)I’m thinking she’s five. Like, let her be, Oh my God, let her be a kid. Why are you, why are you putting so much pressure? But I think that’s, what’s happening in this culture is we’re in this achievement mode, which I get, I shot out of the womb. That way I did not play well as a kid. I didn’t understand it. And now as an adult, I am so sorely missing that, that lightness and that play. So I make myself, I make sure I do that every day. You should see the things that sit on my desk. They make me like a little robot, the dances. And then it’s like, I surround myself now with things that remind me to woo it’s not that important, take a breath and play. And I do flying trapeze and I do dance class and I have scheduled in play. And I think through the schooling and through, we have to be an adult and we have to take this seriously. And this is important. I think we forget to laugh. You know, I tell jokes at least five times a day. I love that. I love doing that. If I’m not making people laugh, I’m not doing my job.Derek: (11:01)And where do you think that comes from though? Is it the, is it the parents? Is it the teachers? Is it, is it like where, like, I mean, obviously it’s both of those things more than those things, but I guess going back to it, I mean, I think we’re all achievement oriented people on some degree. Right. But I think there’s even, I think that it’s all about development and mastery of skills and personal growth and that in of itself is amazing. And I think that we all agree that on some level competition does breed that to it, to an extent. But I think most successful people would acknowledge that you hit a ceiling when you’re competing and that the next level, it comes back to collaboration or co-elevation, whatever you want to call it, like when people are working together to kind of push through that next level. Right. So it’s like, and that, that requires a level. You know, we had other conversational requires, a little bit more vulnerability. It requires a sharing of skills of strengths of weaknesses of viewpoints. I mean like where do we, how do we shift that? I mean like that, I mean that both metaphor like conceptually and in your perspective.Kathy: (11:59)Sure. You know, and I think that’s, I think you’re right. We get that. I mean, we can argue nurture versus nature forever. I mean, I shot out of the womb going, okay, now what done done with a birthing, let’s move on to the next thing. And I was raised by a dad who wanted a boy and I was an only child. So he was the one running around, outside with us, throw, you know, tell him, teaching me how to throw a football, teaching me to kick any boys butt. But his motto was, if I can’t win, I don’t want to play very, very competitive man. Very and my mother was very school oriented. So I was getting that from both sides. So it was playful as my dad was, there was also this sense of competition. And at some point in my life, I’m the one that went, wait a minute.Kathy: (12:42)Why am I busting my butt in dance class to be better than everybody in this class? I’m having fun. This is not, I’m not on dance moms. This is not a competition. I don’t have to do this with anybody other than me. Why am I acting like this? And it was myself that had to put the brakes on that and remind myself to play. And I had another point which completely went, I don’t know what I was going to say, but it is. We have to remind ourselves of that and, and just let that happen. And I think it’s about giving ourselves permission to do that because other, people, other people look at play as, Oh, you’re wasting time. What are you getting done today? And I think we have to let that judgment and that input from other people go and just, just be, you just do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Kathy: (13:28)And I realized that I was so serious, I had to play more. And so I had to give myself permission to do that and let the, Oh, I know I was gonna say, we also have to look at what our values are and if you’ve not sat down and done the values exercise, and one of my values, my top three values is fun and adventure. I value that. So that now makes my decisions easier because if I say to myself, is that going to lead to my values? Is that in alignment with my values? I kind of don’t say yes to things that aren’t fun anymore. Derek: (13:58)Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Kathy: (14:00)We have to know that we have to know what our values are.Derek: (14:03)So back to the corporate cultures for a second, with this concept, how do we, you know, obviously if you look at the historical structure of companies and organizations, you’ve got, you’ve got leadership and you’ve got the team, right. That just brought you, then obviously there’s many layers in historically and we’re getting more and more consolidated and flat, right. But there’s this level of you need the crowd of capabilities and ideas, and you’ve got people that kind of set that tone and that and create that values, culture that we’re talking about. How are you enabling that for leaders? And then how are you enabling that for the teams and how are you allowing that to commingle in a way that is allowing the culture to be empowered, but also allowing it to thrive because we do need some degree of structure in order for things to, you know, to get to where they need to go. Right. So how do you balance that? How have you seen it work? Well,Kathy: (14:50)Yeah know, I think in that structure, there has to be completely open communication. And one of the things where I see this breakdown is the very higher up goes, Oh, the staff isn’t happy give em a ping pong table. Right? Okay. Ping pong tables, not corporate culture it’s fun. Bring your dogs. Okay. That’s great. But if you’re still not thanking me for the hard work that I did or you’re taking my idea, or you’re making these blanket decisions where the staff goes, wait, why is he doing that? And it was funny cause I was at an event the other night and somehow this guy got on the subject and he said, kids ask why adults ask how. And I said, probably, but that’s screwed up. I said, why are we not asking why I want to know why? And I think one of the things that, and I was that kid that would always, always ask why, well, why can’t I, well, why can’t why this, why that spread drove my parents crazy.Kathy: (15:44)But now even as an adult, if I’m in a corporation and the boss makes this blanket decision, I want to know why, because if I understand the reasoning behind it, I’m going to be more willing to be on board with that thing. Hey, I made this decision because this is what it’s going to lead to. This is how it’s going to help us. Or this is what got screwed up. And this is now the fallout of that. We’re going to be more apt to get on board if we know the reasoning behind it. And I think that is so often not shared with people in the company and the organization. I think that’s a huge mistake. You can’t give them a ping pong table and expect them to be completely obedient to you because they can. Now there’s an ice cream machine in the kitchen. You have to have that open communication and that mutual respect. And I think that goes out the window too. And my God just thank people for a job well done. They don’t need their picture up in the break room. They don’t need a gift card to Starbucks. They want to be acknowledged and respected and supported through what they’re doing. And that’s, I think where the disconnect happens. Derek: (16:39)Yeah. I mean, there’s so many layers to unpack there, you know, from that standpoint around culture, because it goes back to like, again, it’s like, you need to have, like we talked about the idea of obedience vs disobedience. Like if you want to have open culture, you have to do allow for some degree of, of, you know, coloring outside the lines. Right. That’s truly what happens. I mean, that’s at the same time most companies have been successful because they’ve built structure and processes that allow people to move in. That’s what, that’s, what made, that’s how our companies have gotten where we are now. And it just, I feel like we’re in this really interesting time. In terms of leadership in terms of companies in terms of just, we talked about this before, it’s every aspect of life, right? Just how the structures of, you know, the rules, if you will, are shifting and how as individuals we find our path in that, and also help to create that path in a way that it’s mutually supportive, because you want to be seen giving kids, or for example, they want the freedom to, to create and thrive and have the independence, but yet science or studies also show they desire the routine discipline because it actually gives them safety.Derek: (17:43)Right. And so it’s just a combination of how do you give safety and, and also provide the, to create, to be inspired and go do and to think outside the box. And that’s a really tough balance to find, you know, even on a personal level, let alone within a company. Todd: (17:59)Oh no, go ahead.Kathy: (18:02)Well, and I was going to say, it’s one of the things that I always valued was I want to be surrounded by people who know more than me. Yeah. I don’t do my own taxes. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t change my own oil. I don’t know how to do that. So I surround myself with people who know more, if I’m going to play tennis, I want to play with someone slightly better than me, so that I learn from them. And the movie that just came out about queen, where Freddie mercury went off on his own and they gave him this band and he went back to his regular guys and said, it sucked. They did everything. I told them to, he wasn’t challenged in that, like everyone was just like, yes, yes, yes. If you don’t have somebody saying, what if we, how about, or that’s dumb? Why did you do it that way? I mean, we have to have people that support us and challenge us at the same time. And that’s a tough battle. It’s a tough balance. That’s, that’s a, that’s a personality thing that, you know, some of the worst relationships I’ve had have taught me the most about myself, about how I function as a woman, as a human being, as a practitioner, we have to value that too. We can’t surround ourselves by people that just say yes.Todd: (19:05)Right. And we spoke about that earlier with productive conflict. Like how do you, how do you encourage and foster an environment where productive conflict is, is present, present? Because it is helpful. Like if everyone just did everything you said without any pushback or challenging of ideas or ideas on how to improve them, you, why do you even need any of these, a bunch of robots.Kathy: (19:32)Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and it’s that dialogue. And I don’t think we talk about things enough or discuss things. And I’m, I’m a, I love sitting down with people and brainstorming that to me is one of the most awesome things. And I host a podcast as well, where I have a cohost and he, I love that. I love the dynamic because we come from two different backgrounds, but we have that. I hate the word synergy, but we have that synergy of we work really well together. And our podcasts are fun. It’s so much better to me to have those two voices and those two brains. And to have one of just me talking to somebody, you know, as far as hosting the pot. So yeah, I love having that collaboration.Derek: (20:07)Totally agree. That’s why we love doing these scars. You guys know to the point, I want to come back to a second. You talked about, you know, that the hardships of life, the challenges of life, the adversity, or struggles of life, giving you the biggest lessons. Right. I think that’s, I think that’s generally true for most people that that’s where you learn the most. That’s where your characters form, that’s where you’re challenged. And we all know that challenge is a key aspect to how you learn, take the cheap out of it. Chat people are the idea of work, the idea of, of, of how you grow driven by challenge. That’s how people get better. So they get, it’s how they grow. How do you see that kind of being fostered within, you know, companies or how, how could, how could it be fostered differently to optimize for this kind of future that we’re talking about?Kathy: (20:53)Yeah, that’s a good question because we all, we all look differently at that. I mean, we all come from such different places and I think it’s just about being, I think it’s about being authentic to who you are and bringing those lessons that you’ve learned in those challenges that you faced into that company. Now there’s a fine line too, because you don’t want to be that constantly bringing, dragging all that negative home crap with you when you want to leave home at home and work at work, but let’s face it. I mean, we all have a very different story and those stories build on us to what leads us to the next. I mean, I have very vastly different experiences probably than you guys do. And I have a different background, a different culture, just ethnically, culturally of how I was raised. I mean, you guys have kids, I don’t, I’m an only child.Kathy: (21:41)I was raised back East. I, you know, so it’s like just bringing all that into it. And I think we have to let the individual shine through and bring their strengths and bring those challenges and listen to one another and say, Oh my gosh, you know, I had a really similar situation and this is how I learned through that. It’s also really tough to look at. You’re holding that mirror up sucks. And I’m in the process of going through a divorce and my ex and I are we’re we’re friends today. It changes daily depending on what kind of mood he’s in. But one of the cool things about still being in in life with him is nobody on this planet knows me better than him. Right. And there have been times where he has held up a mirror to me and I’ve gone, Oh God, it sucks.Kathy: (22:27)And it hurts. It’s vulnerable. And it’s scary to look at that and go that re I feel like crap, but if no, one’s holding up that mirror to me, that I’m just like, yeah, I don’t know. I have food on my face. You know, unless someone tells me or holds up a mirror and goes a little something right there. And we don’t want to look at that food, but we have to that’s what makes us a better person. And I think it was the Dalai Lama that said pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. That stuff’s going to happen. It’s up to you. What you do with that, the suffering is all on you. That’s all in your head. That’s all that thought process pain is going to happen. Do you grow from it? Or do you sit at home with your sleeves over your hands and not function?Derek: (23:06)So, so I think first of all, thank you for sharing that. I think that’s really, it’s very real. I love you to share that. And I think that’s part of the aspect too, going back to, you know, corporate, right. We focus so much on performance. We focus on the metrics. We need to that’s business, but like, sure. How do we create the compassion that’s needed for people? You know, the whole person, right? That’s where we’re getting, I think we’re getting more of this. People just, you just see more about people now you can see on social media that the details about what people are doing well, and also what they’re struggling. That’s, that’s the reality. And every single person , I mean , you look at former presidents, how much we know about their, their lives, you know, and outside of that, right. And other leaders in the world that before they were put up on pedestal, and now we recognize and see that they’re human beings just like we are right. And then you take another level and you have your entire team within your company is just like that. So how do we create? And I’m asking both personally, and as a concept, how do we create cultures that allow that individual to be supportive compassionately on a personal level, and also still allows the business to thrive in a way that, that it can to it’s potential. It’s a really fine line, right?Kathy: (24:09)Ooh, that’s a really good question. I think it’s about building relationships and I think that goes back to the, as much as we know about each other, I can read somebody’s Facebook profile. That is what they choose to let me see. Right. And it’s, you know, I literally sat in a restaurant with a friend the other night and for about 20 minutes watched the girl going. I mean, she must have taken 500 pictures to get the perfect one with the perfect duck lips, with the perfect lighting, with the perfect beverage with it. You know, it’s not real anymore. We are choosing what reality we show and everything is, it’s so manufactured in that way. Who is the real person under that? You know what I mean? I can show all these amazing trips that I go on and I can show that I’m on yet another podcast and I’m writing another book and they don’t know that I sat at home and cried for three hours last night because my father passed away or whatever. I mean, it’s like, we get to choose what aspect of us we show to the world. And I think in one way, that’s kind of fun. And another way I think that’s really dangerous because we don’t know who anybody is anymore.Todd: (25:20)Everything looks picture perfect, then compared to you at home crying because you had something horrible happen. And you’re like, why is everyone else so perfect. And so lucky and I’m feeling, Kathy: (25:23)Oh yeah. Oh, it’s the talk about FOMO? My God, the fear of missing out, because you know, I literally had somebody email me one day and say, so I want your life, okay, please don’t ever want anybody else’s life because you have no idea what’s going on under the, under the radar of that. But I think we have this misconception that either everything is perfect or Bob on Facebook is always miserable. What the hell is wrong with him? You know? I mean, he just complains. He it’s all his poor me thing. What are we showing other people? And I think we have to get to know the person underneath that persona. I think that’s, that’s what it comes down to is who are you really?Kathy: (26:07)And we don’t listen to each other anymore. Everybody is. So it’s such a me me me time. And I’m not just talking about millennials. I’m talking about all of us. We are so self obsessed now, who is anybody else? And I sat last night at the, at the club afterwards, dance class with a girlfriend of mine. And I was talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. And I finally said, so what’s happening with you and your husband? He left her four months ago. She never told anybody. And I felt so horrible because I’m talking about this date I went on and how cute the boy was. I met this guy I met on this dive trip and you know, and I finally went, Oh my God, I am so sorry that I didn’t know that. And she said, okay, I didn’t tell anybody. She said, I’m more interested.Kathy: (26:45)She said, I would rather distract from my life to hear about the cute boy. You met then to sit here for the next hour and talk about my divorce. But I felt horrible because I didn’t know that was happening in her life. And I want to be there to support her. But what I didn’t know is me chattering on about the cute guy actually supported her in a way I never would have dreamt of, you know, so it’s this weird dance of what are we sharing and who are we? What do we need from people? What do we need? What do we need? And then telling people what we need.Derek: (27:12)So, Kathy, I just thank you again for so much wisdom and honesty and openness that you shared today. It’s been a really enlightening and fun conversation, and I just have such appreciation for you even though we just met. I just really, really appreciate you and your story and everything you’re doing in your life. So thank you for that. And how can, how can our listeners and viewers find you and find out more about you and, and outside of what you shared today?Kathy: (27:36)Yeah, absolutely. The best way is my website, which is Kathygruver.com. And I’m all over social media. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and whatever comes in the future. I’ll probably be on there too, but yeah, the best way is Kathy Gruver. You can get my books there and, and find out about my speaking and some trapeze videos and my TEDx and all that good stuff. So, yeah, that’s the best way.Derek: (27:56)Amazing. Well, thank you again.Todd: (27:57)Thank you Kathy. Kathy: (27:59)Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. The post 048 – How to Create a Culture of Fun and Appreciation with Kathy Gruver appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

Do you aspire to be an effective leader who impacts and inspires your team? Learning key strategies to encourage action, focus, engagement and timely execution of tasks, will help lead you and your team to continued success. Executive Coach and Leadership Advisor, David Chinsky, talks about his passion for coaching as well as his program to train future leaders and help them to achieve their goals. 3:01 – Make ‘one day’ today5:39 – The faces of leadership fitness14:40 – Toolsets to becoming a great leader18:04 – The gift of feedback18:42 – How to have conversations that neutralize defensiveness 26:53 – Conversations vs. confrontations29:25 – How to deal with internal & external pushback33:41 – Risks, successes & failures36:38 – How core values create instant bonds48:23 – The vanishing ‘to do’ list55:16 – Timeless approaches Website Home Mentioned Book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose – Tony Hsieh Full Episode Transcription: Todd: (00:00)All right. So welcome to the show today. I am so excited. I have David Chinski from Fit Leaders Academy, and as I’ve been researching guests, certain people catch my eye. And what really attracted me to David was his vision, his simple, straightforward, and inspirational vision, which is to create vibrant leaders who enjoy balanced lives marked by personal health and sustained contribution. So David’s a rockstar and in addition to that amazing vision, he brings more than 25 years of executive leadership and management experience to his role and his focus in his fit leaders Academy. So, David, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.David: (00:40)Thanks Todd. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.Todd: (00:42)Yeah. So, so what do you want to get into, I mean, I know a little bit about you from researching online. We haven’t spoken much other than just before the show. But I’m really inspired by what you do and again, your, your vision and would love to hear your definition of what drew you to that as a career and what you do for your, your members and your friends and your, and your network.David: (01:05)Well, Todd, I’d like to start by just acknowledging the importance of, of today, where we’re talking today on nine 11, September 11th. And that that’s a day that changed a lot of lives. A lot of people lost their lives that day. And a lot of people made some pretty significant life altering decisions that day, myself included. I had been a corporate executive for over 20 years at Ford motor company at Nestle at Thomson Reuters and went into work every day, doing my best. And I kept getting promoted and everyone was telling me, this is exactly what you should be doing with your life. And yet David: (01:49)I had been feeling this passion bubbling up inside of me, that what I was really here to do was to develop future leaders. And that’s what I tried to do as much as I could. In my executive role, I was an executive vice president who was a senior VP of HR. I was a general manager. And while I enjoyed that work, I enjoyed even more. The time that I spent with my leaders, helping them with their succession plans, coaching them, training them. And this was before coaching was a profession. I just enjoy spending time developing people. And I didn’t have a lot of time to do it. I had to steal time literally away from running the company to be able to exercise these skills and to pursue my passion of developing people. So for probably the last seven years of my corporate career, I was questioning whether this was really what I was here to do. And occasionally I would actually park as far away from the building. As I could thinking that this morning, I’m not going in, I’m going to go halfway to the dump and then go back to my car. Todd: (02:54)You get that longer walk just to see if you actually pulled the trigger and said, forget it I’m outta here.David: (03:01)So I was thinking that that would happen one day and it never did. And then I was in Washington DC, one Tuesday morning, and it was Tuesday, September 11, 2001. And I was about six miles from the Pentagon was attending a professional development program myself. And as the horror, was unfolding that morning, as we were beginning, our class of everyone was kind of rushing out to the lobby where there were some TVs and we began to understand what was happening. And for some reason, when I saw those towers going down that morning, I realized that a lot of people had just run out of one day, I’m going to do this or one day I’m going to do that. And I realized that’s exactly what I was doing. I was, I was saying one day when I retire one day when I have enough money in the bank, I’ll start a leadership development company. And I realized that a lot of people were never going to be able to make good on the promises that they were telling themselves that they were going to do. And so that morning I made the commitment and within three months I left my corporate job without any clients, without a business plan. I just knew in my heart that this was my calling and my wife and I had this conversation that went something like, how long are we going to give this before you go back and get a real job? AndTodd: (04:25)I had that conversation two months ago with my wife.David: (04:29)Yeah. So it’s a serious and important conversation. And so we agreed that we would give it a year and that was almost two decades ago. And since then, I’ve had the privilege of, of working with hundreds and hundreds of organizations and thousands and thousands of, of leaders. And over the course of that period, develop my model of leadership fitness.Todd: (04:51)That’s great. That is such an inspirational story. And you’re right. And thank you for recognizing today as as 9/11, it is significant. And I’d love to touch on them and we will circle back around to that and talk a little bit about how dramatic moments help lock-in memories. Right? And it’s kind of a fascinating topic to me. So, so many questions come out of that. Why don’t I save them a little bit? Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what, you know, you made that decision. You, you give it your, your year and it started to work enough, so you could pursue it full time. And now you’ve been doing this for 19 years. It’s a great, it’s a great story of how that catalyst really made you take the leap of faith a little bit. So let’s, let’s dive into a little bit more about what that looks like right now for you.David: (05:39)So for the first eight, nine years of, of my time, with what I initially called the Institute for leadership fitness. Now we’re focused a lot more in fit leaders Academy, a lot of custom leadership work. And then I was working with an executive coach myself, and she encouraged me to think more broadly about the impact I was making and what my model was. And so I started thinking about what are the issues that my clients are coming to me, seeking help developing in their own world, both professional and personal. And I came up with four, what I now call faces of leadership fitness. Some people call them pillars, foundations. I call them faces of leadership fitness. The first was clarity. I realized that a lot of my clients were seeking an ability to set a clear direction for their teams and removing and in doing so removing the ambiguity that often exists, you know, getting people on the same page and also then being able to articulate that, that vision in a way that compelled followership, because it’s not enough to have an idea and a vision, if you can’t ignite a spark in the people that you’re working with.Todd: (06:59)I would imagine sometimes you, you have people that have clarity internally, but they haven’t really managed to communicate that. And yes, you’ll have the clarity that people can understand and grasp onto that. Then they do have that spark. David: (07:14)Yeah, you got it exactly right. It’s two pieces. The first piece is being able to generate that vision being able to point to a future that as a leader, you know, the organization needs to head toward. And then secondly, as you just expertly identified is you have to then be able to translate that into a vision that people can grasp that, that they understand where they say, yes, I want to follow you. So that became the first face of, of leadership, fitness, clarity. Then I realized, well, you can be really clear about where you want to take your team and then be afraid to go there because of self doubt, because of all the negative voices that are telling you, you’re not good enough, you’re going to fall flat on your face.David: (08:01)No one’s going to support you or fund you. Who do you think you are? So confidence became the second face of leadership fitness. So it’s important to be clear and it’s important to have the courage to cross that line and to actually take the chance and to be willing, to take a risk, even if it doesn’t work and, and to be a strong advocate for what you believe is, is an important next step, so that you can take your team and your organization to the future that you see based on your clarity. So confidence became the second face. And then the third face was effectiveness. I realized that you can be clear and confident and then not know how to get anything done. So you know what you want to do. You’ve got the boldness and the courage to do it, and you don’t have the skills of effectiveness to make anything happen.David: (08:57)And as I thought about effectiveness, I realized that most of the leadership training that I had had over the course of my career was almost exclusively focused on effectiveness. You know, come, come to our program and we’ll teach you how to do this, or how to do that. That’s effectiveness and that’s great. We need effectiveness. And yet I think it’s important to be good at the things that are the right things that are, that are aligned with the strategy. That’s where the clarity comes in and you can be really effective and then not use your effectiveness skills because you’re afraid to do so. You’re afraid to make the first move. So clarity, confidence, effectiveness, were the first three faces of leadership fitness. And I actually thought I was done at that point. I actually went to my coach and I said, coach, I, I think I’ve got my model of leadership development. I’m going to call it leadership fitness, and it’s clarity, confidence and effectiveness. And my coach said, you know, I think that’s a great start. Why don’t you put it aside for a few weeks and go back and see if you’ve left anything out. So I listened,Todd: (09:56)David, real quick. Did you call it the four faces of leadership or the four faces of leadership fitness?David: (10:02)Well, actually at the time,Todd: (10:04)That’s what I was getting at. I wondered if fitness was in there to begin with?David: (10:08)It wasn’t it wasn’t, that’s a great question.David: (10:10)Actually I really hadn’t named the model leadership fitness and, and various do question. And I did it because of what I discovered I left out. And what I remember the fourth face of leadership fitness is vitality because I had been working with a number of clients at the time that actually had healthy doses of clarity, confidence, and effectiveness that were running out of gas. They weren’t able to go the distance. They weren’t taking care of themselves. They weren’t taking regular exercise. They, they weren’t aware of the impact of the foods and beverages. They were consuming on their energy throughout the day and they weren’t disconnecting to renew and reset their energy. So when I added vitality then it became a very whole person, whole leader approach to developing leaders. And that is where the fitness came in. Because often when I talk to people about leadership fitness, they just assume I’m a sports coach that I work with athletes. Oh, well talk more about that?Todd: (11:21)Well, I, I made that assumption at the very beginning. I said, Oh, one of my clients is Joe, the CEO of Spartan. And I said, are you into Spartan? Cause I figured, you know, when I heard of fitness and vitality, I’m like maybe he gets out there and cracks the whip on these leaders out, in, you know, on the track basically.David: (11:37)Right? And it’s obviously something that a lot of people do think initially. And when, when we have a conversation with, with prospective clients and with, with customers, they begin to understand that being fit and being vital and vibrant is essential. If you’re going to be clear, confident, and effective, if you don’t have vitality, if you’re not at your best, you’re not going to be clear. You’re going to be muddling through things. You’re going to, you’re going to have cobwebs you. You’re not, you’re not going to really be able to focus. And if you’re not taking care of yourself, if you don’t have vitality, you’re probably not going to have as much confidence. Right. Cause when we feel like we’re at the top of our game, a lot more confidence to whatever we’re doing and then effectiveness, whatever resources we’re bringing to a challenge or a decision are probably going to be somewhat depleted if we’re not taking care of ourselves.David: (12:33)And so that’s why we see these four phases of leadership fitness. As, as an integrated model, you can’t have any three without the fourth pick any three. And if you don’t have the other one, it’s hard to be a fit leader. And so that’s the model. And then I just, once I put it together, I wrote a paper that I published called the four phases of leadership fitness. Then I was thinking, well, not what do I do? How do I help people become fit leaders? And that’s when I set out to actually write a curriculum where I started writing workbooks processes, tools to help leaders become clearer, more confident, more effective and more vital.Todd: (13:22)I was actually looking on your site and was blown away by all these different modules that you have. And I’m assuming that’s what you’re talking about here. Like these individual do you call them modules or training?David: (13:38)We do we call them modules. We call them learning modules, leadership, fitness learning modules. And when we work with, with our customers, we would probably have a lot more modules than, than a client might want to engage us around in a given time. And that’s great. They can pick and choose. We usually do an assessment. We mapped their competency models, their leadership development challenges to our modules. And then we put a program together and we actually have 32 modules. And our online program actually features 24 of those.Todd: (14:16)It’s awesome. So I love that the four phases it’s, it’s great. The clarity, confidence, effectiveness, and vitality. So so many questions around this that I’m sure people listening or watching here would, would probably have in their heads as well. Do they have an order? Do you have to do them in order or is that part of the process where you do an assessment and then you come up with a plan?David: (14:40)When we, when we go onsite and work with an organization, a company, we first try to understand what their needs are. And then we put a program together based on best fit. And so they can actually select whatever tool sets they’re most interested in. We’d like to recommend. And, and, and we strongly encourage that all faces of leadership fitness be reflected in the program. We deliver for them because of our belief that this is an integrated system and you can’t, you can’t just study effectiveness and be a fit leader and you can’t just study vitality and be a fit leader. So our typical program for an organization is 16 of our 32 modules. And we work with them to pick the 16 that are the best fit. And we teach four in a day, four learning modules in a day. And so we do a four day program, four by four gives you the 16 learning models. David: (15:43)And we always have at least a month in between those full day workshops. I’m not a big believer in a four day learning process. It’s too much material and it doesn’t give people the time to process and apply what they’ve learned. And so we actually provide executive coaching after each of our full day workshops, about two weeks, three weeks after if it’s a, if it’s a monthly program where people come one day a month for four months, and that gives us the opportunity to make sure that people are getting the material and it gives us the opportunity to coach them around any obstacles they might be encountering in the real world. When they go back to apply what they’ve learned, they might say something like, gee, it made perfect sense in class David. Todd: (16:38)And it’s not working as I planned. David: (16:40)Right, so we can coach, we can coach them through that. So tell us how, how did you go about it? You know, what was your first step? What happened? How did you respond to that? And then we can, with, with that coaching process, help them go back and be successful at applying what they’ve learned. So it’s those four days. And then also there’s four coaching calls that in addition with some leadership assessments creates the experience, the leadership fitness experience. Todd: (17:14)So four full day trainings four one coaching call per month,David: (17:17)One coaching call after each of those four days, usually two, three weeks after it, certainly before the next workshop. So before we, we, we teach new material, we want to make sure that we have another opportunity to touch the material that we discussed in the previous workshop. Todd: (17:38)That’s great. Very, very neat. When you, do you have anything in your mind? It would be, it would be awesome. If you had a specific example, you who you could name, who, you know, would be okay with that, but if not anonymously would be fine as well, but something that was, you know, maybe a process that wasn’t overly complicated, but once they, once they got it and they figured it out and they implemented that change, it made a big difference for them. David: (18:04)I think one of our most popular learning modules is, is what we call the gift of feedback. And the gift of feedback is all about how to have conversations with people who need to do something differently. And often we’re afraid as leaders to have these conversations because we don’t know how they’re gonna, and we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. So often we just. Todd: (18:24)Confrontational. It has a reputation of being confrontational. David: (18:30)It often is. And that’s what we’re trying to change with our program. So the gift of feedback, first of all, just by the title, you can see that we believe that feedback is a gift as a gift. Todd: (18:40)I really liked that framing. That’s great.David: (18:42)And so we teach people how to have a conversation that neutralizes the defensiveness that usually accompanies these kinds of conversations. And we teach a seven step process. The first three steps are the most important because that’s what sets up the conversation. And so if you think about problem impact and cause, so the, the first step is describe the problem. So it might be the Todd. I want to talk to you about something I’ve noticed. I’ve noticed that you have been late to the last four meetings that we’ve had as a team. That’s it? That’s, that’s the problem now. It’s not, ToddTodd: (19:24)It’s not stated as a fact, it’s that like, it’s not, you feel, you know, you don’t care about meetings. Very different. David: (19:31)Yes. Right. We got more allies, right. We don’t know whether you care or not. You know, if I say, you know, if you cared about us, you’d be on time. Todd: (19:41)There’s a conflict, right. Because you immediately stirred me up. And if I do care, I just happened to get my coffee that time. And I didn’t know I needed to be on time.David: (19:51)Exactly. So the first step is really, as you say, it’s just objective and it’s 30 seconds or less because sometimes when we give feedback because we’re nervous and we don’t have a process and a structure ourselves, we go on and on and on. And the other person’s eyes glaze over. We’re confusing them. Sometimes we’re talking about multiple things and now they don’t know what we’re talking about. And now they want to intervene and defend themselves. So we can’t describe the problem in 30 seconds or less. We don’t know what the problem is ourselves. Right. So, Todd, I want to talk with you about the fact that you’ve been late to the last four meetings. That is the problem. The most important step in the process is the next step. Step two, which is explain the impact. And this is what often diffuses the defensiveness.David: (20:43)So Todd, you’ve been late. I want to talk to you about the fact that you’ve been, it’s a conversation. I want talk with you about the fact that you’ve been late to the last four meetings when you’re late. It causes people to lose track of where we are, as they’re saying hello to you as you come into the room late. And it really messes with the momentum of the meeting and the productivity of our time together. That is the most important step because I want you to own that. And I’m not, I, I’m not suggesting. That’s why you’re coming late. That’s the impact of your coming late. And this is the real reason we’re having the conversation. Even more than the problem to me, a problem without an impact is not a costly conversation.Todd: (21:32)It’s not a problem, right? I mean, it’s, yeah, it could be a thing, but if you’re late and maybe if you were there on time, you would have disrupted the meeting more. I don’t know the impact is the problem.David: (21:45)Right? So, so when I say, when you’re late, it caught, I, what I’m hoping you’re doing is you’re thinking, Oh, I don’t want to be responsible for that. Gee, that’s not a good thing. And then, and again, that should also be articulated in 30 seconds or less. And then the third step, which is the, the, the, the, these three steps set up the conversation, the third step is identify the cause. So I’m going to turn it over to you now by saying, so what’s causing you to come late to our meetings or what’s preventing you from being late. I’m not going to tell you what I think the cause is because I probably don’t know. I might guess, right? Occasionally, although I’m probably gonna get no, that’s not it. So why don’t I just start with a good open ended question. So what’s preventing you from coming to the meeting on time. So in a minute or less, I don’t talk anymore. I take 30 seconds to tell you that, you know, describe the problem 30 seconds to explain the impact. And then with an open ended question, I, I turn it over to you and then I zip it. I don’t say another word. I’d let silence. Do the heavy lifting.Todd: (22:57)Do you find that would that third question about the cause? Is it important to, to use either the positive or the negative? Like, is it equally effective to say what’s causing you to be late or what’s preventing you from being on time? Right. One is kind of a towards, in a way.David: (23:15)Yes. I think both can work and I’ve, I’ve used it both ways in my own feedback conversations with, with people that I’ve engaged with, where I needed to give them feedback. And when I talked to my customers who have adopted this, this approach, they share the same feedback because the question does come up, should it be, should it be what’s causing you or what’s preventing you from coming on, you know, go meet at meetings on time. I don’t think it matters as long as there’s no judgment in it. Right. Cause there’s no judgment in either of those what’s causing you to come late. What’s preventing you from coming on time here,Todd: (23:49)Referencing the problem, not the impact. Right. So you’re not saying what’s causing you to disrupt the whole company and waste time during a meeting.David: (23:57)Yes. Yes. That’s, that’s a really important observation. So the impact is critical. And yet when we move to step three, which is identify a cause it’s a question that revolves around the problem,Todd: (24:10)The fact yes. Indisputable fact. Cause if he doesn’t make to something that’s subjective or that they may not agree, like, Oh, it shouldn’t disrupt the meeting. It’s not disruptive. Right. I know it’s not disruptive. Right. But if they come five minutes late can argue that. Yeah. That’s great. And that’s only the first three steps.David: (24:32)Yeah. So that’s really to kind of get the conversation going, which is the most important part, right? Because that’s what people don’t have the confidence in, in doing is starting that kind of conversation. And these conversations can be had with our bosses and colleagues just as much as we might choose to have them with our team members, our direct reports that this can be used with, with anyone and, and often needs to, we, we often don’t have those conversations with bosses where they can be made to understand the impact of the things they’re doing or the things they’re not doing. They’re they’re in their unwillingness to take something up the chain of command because they’re afraid. Well, you don’t want to talk with you boss about the fact that, you know, this is an issue that keeps coming up. And, and my sense is that you haven’t kind of taken this or made this an agenda item with your boss. When, when that happens, I feel like my team and I are not likely to get any resolution on this because we’re not taking the, the next step what’s what’s preventing. And so when I talk to a boss, the only change I make is I usually change you to us. What’s preventing us from having those conversations with the people who really need to hear this information.Todd: (26:03)Yeah. It’s funny as you were walking through this, because we’re talking about the leadership and oftentimes, you know, when you hear a framework, you think this is to be coached down, right. To people who are under you or reporting to you, you are responsible for it. But it’s, I mean, it’s almost seems more important to be able to speak like this, to someone who can give you the ax. Right. Because, it handles something that could be misinterpreted, right. As you think they’re disrespectful. Like if you, if you frame this differently without being very grounded in like you show up late, like if it’s your boss who shows up late for the meeting it’s right. And a lot of times they have good reason to do so. So this is a great way to bring those things up without causing unnecessary conflict, right.David: (26:53)It’s designed to be a conversation, not a confrontation. We certainly wouldn’t want to confront our boss and we don’t want to confront our direct report because it doesn’t end well. And we often create more problems, relationship problems with, with someone, right. If I came to you Todd and said, I want to talk with you about the fact that you’ve been late two to four of our last meetings. What’s wrong with you? Do you not know how to tell time? Do I need to buy you a new alarm clock? I’ve just created a whole new problem between you and me. Right? Like who do you think you are talking to me like that? And you’re not focused at all on the problem of being late. Yeah.Todd: (27:36)Yeah. So would this, this is a great example. Thank you for that, David. That’s helpful. Would you, where do you bucket that? I could almost bucket that in the first three areas.David: (27:46)So it’s an effectiveness module. You have to feedback is an effectiveness module because it’s a tool for how to have these, these conversations more effectively. And you’re right. Many of our modules could fit in multiple faces of leadership fitness. We try to put, I try to put them in the, in the one that I think is the best, the best fit.Todd: (28:13)Yeah. So the, and it makes absolute sense that it goes into effectiveness. It’s the, you know, the tools, the skills, the skills and the tools. Right. but that leads really nicely into a couple of questions I wrote down about confidence. Right. Because, and I guess I’ll phrase it as a question here. So what is it that gives you confidence? What does it give someone confidence? And I have a few things I’ll follow up with, but I’d love to hear your answer first before I do.David: (28:43)Sure. Well, there’s a, there’s a lot of different areas that we focus on when, when we’re teaching confidence, one is just kind of helping people get clear on what their communication style is and preferences and how they might alter it. When they’re talking with someone who’s, who’s different. So becoming more comfortable around what I need when I’m interacting with someone, we have a module called the masterful communicator, and it’s all about being able to adapt your approach and not taking personally when people communicate with you in the way that they best know how so. So yeah,Todd: (29:21)That’s a great little addition to that sentence in the way they best know how,David: (29:25)Right. Right. Right. And, and because that’s who they are, it’s hard to change your style. If you understand someone else’s style, though, you can modify your approach. You don’t change your style by modifying your approach. You’re still going to be your style. Although if you understand their style, you can more confidently converse with them. So that’s one piece of it. Another piece is just how to deal with self doubt. And we have a module called the confidence net, which is all about building your own net, like a safety net. We talk about a confidence that what are the habits that you might develop that give you that ability to deal with both external and internal pushback? So external pushback is you might just disagree with something I say in a meeting. And so how do I, how do I deal with that without getting flustered and without feeling attacked. And then internal pushback is the, the gremlins, the voice, which are probably more difficult to deal with because we feel like they’re coming from us. When we hear our gremlins saying, what do you, what, what are you thinking? This isn’t going to work, give it up now. And so we teach people how to, how to manage those gremlins. And then also how to develop a repertoire of positive habits to kind of give you that confidence, to be able to deal with that.Todd: (30:55)How do you address confidence in a plan, right? Do you coach people that, you know, plans don’t always work. Right. But I think from what I’ve seen in personally, like if I don’t really believe that what I am recommending or about to do will absolutely, without a doubt work, you know, knowing that that’s sort of unrealistic, but it still lowers the confidence level in me standing to my team and saying, here’s what we’re going to do. This is the plan. And, and speaking confidently that that is the right thing to do right now, you know, on the flip side of that is, you know, you can be confident that here’s what we’re going to do. We will either learn, or it will work or both on the middle, but how do you address like an action plan and being confident in that?David: (31:47)So are you asking, how do you deal with a situation where you’re not confident at the moment that this is the best course of action, and perhaps you’ve been told up from above that this is what we’re doing, and you need to communicate it. Todd: (32:01)Either you’ve been told or it’s maybe uncharted waters and you’re trying a new new campaign or new type of product launch or new market. Yeah. How do you develop confidence in something that is unknown and you’re, you’re hesitant to say it will work.David: (32:16)Yeah. So I think it’s, it’s all about changing the perspective that we attach to, to what we’re feeling, right. So someone might be thinking, I’m going to be an utter failure at this. This is never going to work. Now that might be right. That, that, that might be the outcome. And yet that’s just one perspective. And so often when we get stuck and we, we don’t think we can move forward. It’sDavid: (32:40)Because we think the only way we’re thinking about it, that’s the only way to think about it. That there’s no alternative. And so I often recommend to, to my clients, all right. That’s one perspective. So you might say stand up and stand in a place in your, in your office where, where your perspective is, this is not going to work. Okay. Now move, move to another place in your office. What’s another perspective that you might bring to this activity. And usually people say, well, I’m going to be another success. So this is, this is going to work. Okay, great. That’s another perspective. Alright, move somewhere else. What’s another perspective. Well, maybe it’s I might fail and I will learn something so that I’ll be better positioned to do it differently the next time. So we then say, well, where do you want to live? What, from what perspective do you want to move forward?David: (33:41)Right. So yes, you might fail. That’s always a possibility when we’re taking risks, right? Risks are defined as you know, uncertain. We don’t know if we’re going to succeed. If we never take risks, we will never succeed. Right. We have to take a risks and sometimes it won’t succeed. Sometimes it will succeed. Sometimes it won’t work and we’ll learn how to do it differently the next time. So it’s all about being willing to open up to the possibility of success. See, a lot of times people are afraid of success. They’re more afraid of success than, than, than failure. And so we have to help people embrace that failure is okay. Failure is an essential step in the learning process. And I know a lot of organizations have a hard time with this because even though organizations tell their people, we want you to take risks.David: (34:31)We want you to step up. We want you to take initiative. The first time you do that and you fail, you often get your hand slapped, or you never get an opportunity to take another risk. So we’re sending a mixed message to our people. We’re saying, we want you to share your ideas. We want you to step up. And then when they do, and it doesn’t work out, we ostracize them. And sometimes we even fired them. So that’s why a lot of people stop taking risks. Because if, if that’s the consequence of, of, of, of saying, this is what I think we should do, even if I’m not 100% confident that it will work, I’m willing to do it. If the organization punishes us, that is a, is a real confidence Buster. Todd: (35:16)Yeah. Yeah. Those are great. All right. So we got in pretty, pretty deep to effectiveness and confidence. You want to tackle the other two clarity and vitality and give that example for the effectiveness. This was great. Another tangible example would be really nice to hear for the other categories.David: (35:35)Yeah. For clarity, we talked a lot you know, mission, vision, and values. The mission is the, what the organization does. The vision is why it does it and the values usually relate to how we do it. And so we talk a lot about core purpose and core motivation and the importance of, of, of values. So, you know, mission and vision, we give a lot of examples of, of good and poor mission and vision statements. And then we kind of take a deep dive into values because values are incredibly important. They can amplify the clarity of a mission and a vision statement. You can have great mission vision. If your values aren’t very wholesome, then it’s not really going to create the outcome or the future that you want. And the one example I give around values is so when I was working for an employer of mine, many years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Chicago, to meet the vice president who had purchased our product.David: (36:38)And I was the general manager of this business line. So once the sales team had successfully closed the deal, I would go with them. And I was there to shake their hand and to commit that we were going to take care of them and kind of be the face of, of the, the leadership of the company. And so I decided to talk about our values, our core values, and I always carried them on, on a card. So we laminated our core values. Like a lot of organizations do, although as a general manager at every meeting, I would ask people to take the card out of their pocket. And the first time you can imagine the horror when people didn’t have it.David: (37:19)So they learned that it was important to have it. And I set an example that I carried it with me all the time. So when I was in Chicago for this meeting, it was my time to talk. I started talking about values and I reached into my pocket and I had my card and I swung it or push it across the table to this individual who had been the, kind of the strategic buyer. And instantly he reached into his pocket, pulled out his card and pushed it in my direction. So in an instant, there was a bond created between our two companies, because we cared enough about our values to share them. And, and so that values help us retain people. They help us attract employees. They help us attract customers those matter. And a lot of people think that values are the soft stuff. And they’re not study after study has shown that companies, organizations that have a strong set of shared values, outperform organizations that have weak values on profitability, on, on growth. And so values are, are the hard stuff. And if we don’t get them right, we’re going to have a hard time connecting with with our stakeholders.Todd: (38:40)Yeah. Yeah. I’m a huge fan and believer in the process. And I think one of the things that I thought was really interesting that I’ve read about that was, and I don’t remember who said this or what book it was in, but but I’ve read a lot on core values and the whole discovery process and having them in a card and getting people to know them and live them and having them be actionable. But what was interesting about this was that they said something similar to what you just said is the companies that have core values and have gone through that have better metrics. They grow better. They retain their employees better. They attract better people. But what was different about what it said is it said it doesn’t actually matter what the values are. What matters is that, that it’s important to the people there, that they discover them and bring them to life.David: (39:32)Yes. And they have to be reinforced and recognized. And what we would do once we created our set of core values is every month at meetings, all hand meetings, we would give an example of someone who had epitomized each of those core values.Todd: (39:51)I love it. David: (39:53)And at the end of the year at our kind of annual party and, and meeting, we would give a thousand dollar check to the one person who did the most based on a, on a panel’s evaluation of living one of our values. So we put our money where our mouth was and people wanted to be recognized in our monthly meetings. And then obviously they, they, they wanted to get a thousand dollar check. And so we really did live our values. It’s, it’s really important to not stop once you’ve done the discovery process and simply put them up on a wall. Like when I go to customers often I’ll see their, their values in a meeting.Todd: (40:36)Honesty. Right. What does that mean? Exactly. Right. And you know, funny enough to that point, I was speaking with another guest and we’re talking about the same, the same thing. And, you know, the problem with like a one word value with nothing else to explain what that actually means to the person who identified or is claiming it is it can mean very different things to different people. And a lot of times it’s just an easy way out. You know, Enron’s one of Enron’s core values was integrity that didn’t pan out. So well, I get clearly, I would imagine at some point, whoever selected that, that was important to them, and they probably lived with that as a important part of their character, but it certainly didn’t permeate the culture enough to prevent some, some messes they got themselves into.David: (41:28)Yeah. I think that’s a really important observation Todd, because a lot of times people their own meaning out of words, that they hear. So it really is important to go beyond the one word value and, and to articulate what, what, what does it mean to us as an organization? And this is where getting people involved throughout the organization comes into play so that there’s some ownership about, you know, what do we mean when we say a passion for pleasing customers, right? What do, what do we mean by delighting our customers? What do we mean by service excellence so that we kind of remove some of the noise around, well, that’s, this is what this means to me. And that’s what it means to that person. This is what it means to us as an organization. And this is what we’re striving for. So I think that’s a really important point. And, and anyone who’s thinking about putting some values together that might not have them today having a sentence or two that accompanies each value is very powerful.Todd: (42:26)Yeah, absolutely. And is that part of the process that you bring people through as well?David: (42:31)Yes, we do. And we have some derivative work that we do outside of the program that, that actually helps people understand what are the disconnects between the values that people see every day in the workplace and the values they’d like to see in the workplace. So what are the current cultural values and what are the desired cultural values? And that, that is a great start.Todd: (42:57)I love that. I love that now that can probably lead to some challenging conversations, because if you you know what I have seen, you know, firsthand, and then through, through mentors and reading you know, one of the, one of the people I learned the most about this this whole process is Tony Shea, right? Not directly I’ve, I’ve met him before. I actually went to one of their all hands meetings at one point. But his book delivering happiness is fantastic in, in learning about this. But one of the things he talks about is his first company. He, he grew it and it grew so fast that they just were, they were hiring someone every day, basically. And they ended up with a company where the people in the company did not share the values that he built the company around because he just didn’t, he didn’t integrate them with the culture enough or keep them alive. So when you do your process, have you ever had an example where you start with someone who is like, they just got a mishmash, I got a total melting pot of different people in different values. So you ended up with maybe conflicting opinions.David: (44:09)Absolutely. And that’s the beauty of the process. You know, it, then the senior leadership has to be open to this process because it can be intimidating, particularly senior leaders, particularly when people say that these are the values we see, we see hierarchy and we see blame, right? The information hoarding and see all of these things that as a senior leader, I’m going to say, Oh, gee, those aren’t good things. And that’s kind of an indictment if you will, of us and what we’re about. And yet, if we’re not honest, if we’re not open to hearing from our people, we’ll never know that, that these things are eating away at our potential. And we need to replace those potentially limiting values with positive value. So yes, it’s a, it’s a natural part of the conversation. It’s a, it’s a very challenging process to facilitate.Todd: (45:06)Yeah, I can imagine. I was just going to say, I’m sure you’ve learned a lot throughout the years of how to maybe not soften the blow, but to frame it properly because as a leader and especially as many leaders are a bold and opinionated, right. That can be hard to swallow, even gets back to you. And you come back with a report and says, 72% of the people say that you’re kind of a jerk in the way you operate every morning. Right? Like, I mean, they might actually not use those words, but they could dig up some stuff that from outward appearances, especially at a larger company where there’s not a lot of engagement right. Between the leader and, you know, a large pool of the staff, right. It might come across that way just because it’s a busy, he’s a busy leader and he’s got a lot to do. And when he gets there, he’s got to get right to it. And there’s no time for small talk and that might come across as Curt. And yes, you know unappreciative.David: (46:05)So we prepare, we prepare the leaders, we prepare the senior leaders, we prepare the founder or the, the, the CEO. But to expect that some of this is going to be uncomfortable and that their, their role is not to become defensive it’s it’s to embrace the truth. And, and particularly with founders, right? You mentioned founders you know, when you’re first starting out, you’ve got a small group of people. The values are often shared. In fact, you usually look to select people who are just like you, that share your values. And as you grow, as you go from a 10 person company to a 50 person, to a thousand to 20,000, you lose control. If you’re the founder, you’re not hiring everybody anymore. You probably were hiring everybody directly when, when it was a five, 10, 20 person company. So you’re going to get a hodgepodge, a mishmash of values.David: (47:03)And, and sometimes the founders still thinking that initial set of values are prevailing. When in fact the reality is different. So we, we, we work, we work with founders, we work with with the senior leaders ahead of time. In fact, we tell them, don’t have us do this. If you’re uncomfortable with hearing that things are not the way you think they are. Cause it’s worse. It’s worse to give people that opportunity to share the truth and then nothing happens. Right. That it is just the don’t don’t address it even though you should address it. Yeah. I’ll have to go into this the right way.Todd: (47:42)Yeah. Well, I mean, I can see this tough exercise, but incredibly valuable, especially with creating that clarity. Right. Understanding if the clarity you might have internally is being communicated properly, excuse me. Or it’s, or it’s not coming to us. Right. Absolutely. Do you have a few more minutes first to dive into vitality? David: (48:03)Absolutely, absolutely.Todd: (48:03)Excellent. And I can already see, like, I mean, this is what you’re talking about here is the exact type of things that build a strong team and a vibrant culture. So I’m, I’m eager to hear how vitality groups that for one person and then maybe how that influences their entire team and their company once they get yes.David: (48:23)So we, we touch on a number of different aspects of, of vitality. The one we’d like to start with, which is some people question, well, why is this vitality is a module that I, that I, I titled the vanishing to do list,Todd: (48:37)Oh, I saw that’s the one title that stuck in my head, like above all the others. I was like, that is a brilliant title because how great would that be?David: (48:46)Yes. So we actually do teach people how to make everything banish from their, to do list at the end of every day. And of course, we’re not, we’re not suggesting that everything gets done at the end of every day. Although everything comes off the, to do list either by doing something in two minutes or less delegating it or calendarizing it. So the key to the vanishing to do list is this principle of calendarizing. So the things that take longer, the things that, that I am not going to be able to get to for a while, I don’t leave them on my, to do list. I make the commitment that day when I’m processing my to do list. And for me, it’s, at the end of every day, it can be done at the, at the beginning of every day. It should be done consistently at the same time every day.David: (49:31)So it becomes a habit. And so if I can’t get something, does I’m processing my list at the end of the day, the things I haven’t gotten to yet, I can get it done in two minutes or less. Great, done, check it off. I don’t have to do it. I delegate it. And the decision to delegate isn’t do, I think I’m going to have time to do this myself. It’s do I have to do this? Or is there someone else who would be developed by having the opportunity to do it, and who has the skills to do it and is, and is the person who really should do it because too often we’ll think, Oh, I’ll get to this by the end of the week. And a couple of days go on and we’re still on our to do list. We still haven’t done it.David: (50:12)It’s the end of the week. And then we realized, you know, I’m never going to get to this. So then I delegate it. So when I delegated five days later, I’ve just robbed the person I’ve delegated this task to a five days that they could have been working on this. So the isn’t will, I have time to do it. The question is, do I have to do it? Is this something I need to do? Or is this something that I can delegate? And then if I can’t do those two things, do it in two minutes or less or delegated. Then I decide today, when in the future, will I be able to do this? Whether it’s administrative work, whether it’s writing a policy, whether it’s helping develop one of my key staff by spending an hour or two with them, I put those appointments on my calendar and then I check it off my list.David: (51:04)So at the end of every day, my to do list is empty. And I start with, it vanishes. It’s called a vanishing to do list and we do that with email too. Todd: (51:14)And you and you bucket that in the vitality, in the vitality phase, because of it’s the release and the physical relief from not having the angst of having 50 things on your, to do list. David: (51:27)Because if we’re not in control of our calendar, we’re being drained. Our energy is, Oh, we’re overwhelmed. Oh my I’m never going to get this stuff done. So you can be eating well and exercising and taking time off. And yet you still have all of these things. What am I going to get to that? When I go home, I’m losing control. I’ve got way too many things, about 30,000 emails in my inbox, which I had a client actually have 30,000 emails. And we taught him how to move the emails to only the ones he could see at the end of the day on his monitor without scrolling.David: (52:05)So with the, to do list, the goal is nothing survives with an email inbox, nothing survives that you can’t see without scrolling. And we got them down to that. So yes, that’s why it’s vitality. And we actually usually try to teach that first because it’s such a, it has such an impact on how. Todd: (52:26)It’s a cleansing feeling. I mean, I’m no Saint when it comes to email inbox, that’s for sure. But I do, I do try to be very specific about my daily to do list and really only have two or three critical things that must be done. And the rest I tried often, I was forward to the right time. Yes. And it does it, it even, even if you don’t dive in full on and do the entire process, you’re talking about just getting everything out of your head, right putting it on the whiteboard, putting on a piece of paper, this frees up space, and it creates a sense of calm.David: (53:02)Absolutely. So we start there and we also talk about distractions and, and keeping your attention. We have a module called the attention keeper, and we have an attention checklist where we talk about all the things that can kind of move us off, what we’re supposed to be working on. And, and, and we lose focus. So keeping our attention, managing distractions is important for my business. Todd: (53:28)This is fantastic. David, you got so much great stuff in there. And if anyone is listening, I will put a link in the notes. I mean, can they get a sneak peek at any of this? We talked about a lot of what you do. And I know you do this for leaders. Is there always one on one coaching? Do you work with groups? Is can they join you? Can they join the online portal and be part of the community on there? How does it all work?David: (53:48)Yes. So we do have an online community and fit leaders, academy.com is where people can go and they’ll learn. They’ll be able to see the same list and actually not list you. You actually see the workbook covers for the 24 learning modules that each in fit leaders Academy. And if they, you’ve probably discovered this as well. Todd, if you click on any of those, Todd: (54:12)I’m just putting it up on the perfect fit leadersacademy.com. David: (54:18)Right? So first they can watch that video. If you move, if you move the screen back down, creating failures. So that’s a, about a 10, 11 minute video that kind of walks through the model of leadership fitness. And then if, as you scroll more, you’ll see the four phases of leadership, fitness defined, and then below that are the 24 modules that you can access if you purchased the fit leaders Academy. And if you click on any of those, if you click on any of these, you’ll actually get a short description of the, of the learning outcomes, like what we teach and what you can expect to learn from those. And that’ll, that should work on all of them. So, yeah.Todd: (55:05)And so this is fantastic. Well, that’s, that’s great. So I highly recommend anyone go there. And is it a, from what I can tell it’s a one time purchase and then they get access to everything. Is that an annual, David: (55:16)It’s a one time purchase Todd, and as long as the internet, doesn’t get blown up, blown away in the future. It’s a, it’s a lifelong library of, of access. And you’ve probably discovered if you’ve kind of taken a look at the content, these are our approaches processes that are timeless. We’re always going to have to manage conflict. We’re always gonna have to manage our inbox. We’re always going to have to learn how to give feedback. We’re always going to learn how to be a humble servant. So these are videos that people come back to time and time again, because you might learn the gift of feedback and not actually have a juicy conversation coming up. And then a week later, a month later, a year later, you’re going, gee, I wish I could go back and hear David walked through the process with his examples where you can just go back to the gift of feedback and you’ll be prepared to go have that conversation. Todd: (56:14)Yeah. And there’s timeless principles that help you learn and grow and engage with people like that is never going to change no matter much, AI’s coming out and, you know, new social media platforms and anything that’s kind of the newest bell and whistle. Yes. If you understand people in conversation and communication and strategies for dealing with that it’s it’s, as you said, it’s timeless. David: (56:40)That’s what leadership is.Todd: (56:41)Yeah. That’s great. All right. Well, David, thank you so much for the time and the, the examples. I’m eager to dive in myself and, and I have a ton of things to talk to you about after the call, some interesting people to introduce you to as well. So thank you for taking the time. And it was really great to learn more about that leaders Academy. David: (57:02)Thanks, Todd. Todd: (57:03)All right. Have a great one.  The post 047 – Timeless Leadership Principles with David Chinsky appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

How do you get more traffic coming to your website? How do you get that traffic to turn into customers? These are two of the core questions business owners grapple with. Understanding the technical side of those questions is the first step to obtaining the needed conversions. Web Consultant, Matthew Edgar, discusses his work with conversion optimization, SEO and how his knowledge is used to help companies identify and fix the technical + structural issues that may be holding their website back. 2:27 – Connecting people with technology4:30 – Embracing the challenges6:03 – Turning site traffic into customers9:32 – The good, bad & curious 12:17 – Innate curiosity vs. the bigger picture mentality15:10 – The gray spectrum of running a business17:54 – Better is the enemy of done20:30 – Step 1: Defining the problem27:00 – Measuring the trends with qualitative & quantitative data38:20 – The uniqueness factor42:29 – Everything is a series of simple problems Websites: Matthew Edgar – Technical SEO & Analytics https://www.elementive.com/ Full Episode Transcription: Todd: (00:00)Hi Matthew, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.Matthew: (00:04)It’s wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.Todd: (00:05)Absolutely. Absolutely. So I am really excited to talk to you because you are the first person I’ve spoken with in this new season of luminary business that is a fellow data junkie and it seems like we’re going to get into some stuff that on the surface might, might not seem relevant to some people because they say, well I’m not, I’m not an analytics person. I don’t do SEO audits or conversion rate optimization. So maybe I’ll skip this episode. But if you’re listening right now, I’m telling you that my 10 years or so in conversion rate optimization has taught me more about people and human nature and what makes people do what they do than any other career path or experience in my entire business career for the past 20 something years.Todd: (00:51)So I’m excited to see if you agree with that and get right into it. Matthew: (00:55)Yeah, I mean, I definitely would agree with that because ultimately when you get down to conversion rate optimization, SEO, it’s about figuring out how you can build technology in a way that it connects it with people. That’s all it really is. I mean, and you can talk about conversion optimization theories and you can talk about different ways of doing data analysis and all the different complexities of it and all of that’s good and important stuff. But fundamentally it’s about do you understand who these people are that you’re trying to bring to your website or you’re trying to convince to buy your product and you have to learn who those people are and you have to understand something about how they behave, something about who they are, what they want.Matthew: (01:35)And the more you can understand that, you know, the better you will be at driving conversions and building a business. But yeah, I mean it fundamentally is about understanding that and that’s where I think conversion optimization grows out of the discipline of human factors, right? Which is all about ergonomics and building things for people. And that’s where it stems from. Todd: (01:58)This is going to be fascinating. I can already tell. So before we go too deep in the, in the geeky, the geeky stuff, I’m just labeling it that cause it’s a total, I get it there. Why, why did you get into this line of work? What is it about this field that was fascinating to you and drew you to it? Matthew: (02:18)Yeah, I mean it’s never, I can’t remember in the last two decades, any point at which I deliberately made a decision to say, this is what I will spend the rest of my years doing. But it’s just, there’s a lot of interesting problems to solve and there’s just been a lot of interesting clients to work with, a lot of interesting technical challenges, a lot of interesting marketing challenges to start exploring, to start figuring out. And for me it’s, it’s just kind of a long string of interesting projects that I’ve had the opportunity to work on. And there’s always something new. There’s always something different. And I’m just that much of a nerd that I, want that different challenge and I want that different thing. And for me, I haven’t been able to find that anywhere else outside of this. And right coupled with that, it’s also, yes, there are interesting problems and they’re interesting things to figure out. But equally it’s also, and there’s real value that’s delivered from figuring out those problems cause it’s not just purely academic, right? I mean it’s not just, okay, you figured this thing out theoretically. It’s, you know, you figured it out and you helped this company grow, you helped this person, you know, succeed at whatever they were trying to do. And it’s a good blend. I think of those two things.Todd: (03:40)Sorry, I’m just writing some of these notes here because I think it’s, it’s always interesting to, you know, again to figure out the why, right? And you’re what you’re, what I hear you talking about is your core values, right? Something about problem solving and problem solving in a way that really provides value, right? So monetary value because it’s a business, right? So the more you can help a business profit and grow, the better off you know, your relationship and your income will be as a business owner. So yeah. That’s great. So with that said, with solving problems what, what type of problems, well, I get really basic. What type of problems do you solve that provide value for people?Matthew: (04:31)Yeah, I mean the biggest things that we work on and I work on are kind of the conversion optimization and SEO problems. I mean, it’s right when it gets right down to it, it’s how do we get more traffic coming to our site? It’s how do you get more of that traffic turning into customers? Those are kind of two core questions now where I kind of come out at where element of really specializes is on the technical side of those questions. So it’s figuring out, okay, what has gone wrong with the way your site is built? Technically what’s gone wrong with how it’s you know, programmed how it’s working on the backend, whether that’s a speed issue or you have a database that’s creating all kinds of duplicate content or generating a lot of junk whatever that is, that’s deterring you from being able to you know, get the traffic that you want or to get the conversions that you want.Matthew: (05:23)And so it’s understanding the, the technical side of that problem and looking at it. And so, you know, the, there’s a complexity there to understand because it’s, you know, I think too many people want to blame the technology for not working as a result of them not getting conversions or they’re not getting traffic. That’s not always true. I mean, there are technical problems that can hurt your conversion. There are technical problems that can help you with traffic and they’re worth exploring and looking into. And you definitely see that across all kinds of sites. But there’s also an importance to understand when it’s a technical problem and when it’s not a technical problem. And that’s some of the problem we help people figure out is that question of, okay, I’m not getting conversions. I’m not getting traffic. Is it because there’s A or B? Right. Exactly. What’s, what’s kind of the root cause? Is it something more to do with the technical side or is it something more to do with the, you know, your brand or your product itself or you know, something else going on outside of the tech?Todd: (06:27)All right. And so there’s, this is good. It gives a good overview of, you know, why, why you got into what you do. You like clearly like to solve problems for people. I like those two buckets. If you’re going to be binary, right? It is the world. It’s good for a company like yours. Like is it a tech problem or a human problem, I guess you could say. And you know, in terms of in terms of your team and the people you have solving these problems, what is it, what is it about a team member of yours that makes them effective in figuring out if it’s A or B? Right. If it’s a technical problem, if it’s a human problem, and how to, how have you chosen the right type of people to support you and build your company on your, yeah.Matthew: (07:20)Yeah. So we have a small team. I mean, there’s three of us at Elementive, and then we have a few contractors that support us. But I would say kind of the unifying thing that we look for is it’s people who can have, I guess maybe two or three different kind of interesting attributes to their personality. I mean, one is insanely curious to figure out what the heck is going on with this thing. And you know, that’s you know, both the good and the bad thing. One of the biggest things we talk about constantly is have we gone too far down the rabbit hole on this problem? Right. And it’s easy to do because if you are the kind of person who is insanely curious about why is this happening, you will just keep digging and digging and digging until you figure it out.Matthew: (08:02)And that’s wonderful and that’s good. But there’s also a point to which it’s counterproductive to continue digging you. You’ve answered the question enough. So looking for somebody who understands, yes, you need to be curious, but also understand there’s a point at which we need to stop digging and you know, or at least can stop the other person from digging too far. That’s certainly one aspect of it. I would say too, it’s people who, although we are very technical and although we have, you know, that’s our specialty, everybody here, everybody I’ve worked with who I think really is, is good are people who have an understanding and an awareness of all other disciplines around this and not just saying, well, this is my specialty and this is all I know. But saying, yeah, okay, that’s my specialty, but I know all these other things, right? It’s kind of that T-shaped you you know, learning model or that T-shaped you know, skill model of, you know, a lot about, a little about a lot of things and a lot about a few things. And it’s people who have that who have the depth but also just kind of know, okay, this really technical thing I know also relates to this other thing over here that I know a little bit about.Todd: (09:17)What do you, do you, so I mean, I know with your team is small, so it’s not like you’re bringing on a new person every month or something, but do you think those two things in saying curiosity, which I love that, the insane curiosity and then having an understanding of different principles. Is that something that can be taught or does it have to be built into the DNA of a person? Matthew: (09:43)Yeah, I mean, and although we’re not hiring a lot of people at Elementive necessarily, we do a lot to help clients hire staff and build up their team. Todd: (09:51)Yea and I’d love to hear your knowledge and your knowledge as an outsider is actually an interesting perspective shift because you’re not in the weeds of running the company dealing with the staff. You’re an outside advisor or. Matthew: (10:05)I’m an outside advisor and I get to just kind of focus on different aspects. I don’t have to think about the HR aspects and all the internal logistics which, which does change the hiring dynamic when you pop in those conversations that way. So, no, I mean I think yes, there’s a certain extent to which it can be taught, but I think it just, if you haven’t figured out how to be a really curious person by a certain point, I don’t know if it can be taught at that point. I think that’s something that does have to come a little bit more from your nature. And the people who I’ve seen who don’t have that kind of just innate curiosity, they can kind of get there and they can understand it, but it’s never, you know, it’s never really a core part of who they are. It’s never something that they’re just going to be so wrapped up in a problem that they lose track of time and all of a sudden, you know, it’s three days later and you’re still working on the same thing.Matthew: (11:06)You know, they’re, they’re just going to be people who don’t quite get that in the same way and quite go there. And I don’t think that’s a problem, right? You also need people who are on a team who are not necessarily going to be the constant, you know, asking why constantly and constantly digging into the problem because those are the people who can keep a better idea of that bigger picture and understand kind of what’s going on and pull you out of that rabbit hole when you need to come out of it. So, I mean, there, there is a balance here too, so I don’t want to in any way come across saying that if you’re not that kind of person, that’s a bad thing. Like that’s, that’s not a bad thing. But I do think it is probably a little bit more nature as opposed to Todd: (11:55)So that’s really interesting. The two types of people especially you know, again, bucketing very simply black or white, you have those insanely curious people that just will get lost and for days go down the rabbit hole. And and I know from my own background in Google analytics, when I started getting proficient enough at analytics, that is like the definition of I know enough to be dangerous, right? Like when you start getting, when your eyes open up to how much you can learn from looking at analytics, you can be lost for months in one in one campaign or one account trying to solve a problem and you never get the exact solution. So you can just keep going and going down that rabbit hole. So would those two types of employees or types of people on your team, how do you go about teaching or how do you create an environment or provide the materials or a structure for those two different types of people to learn and improve and grow? You know, again, probably mostly through your clients that you’ve seen this, but what would you, what would your thoughts be on that?Matthew: (13:38)Yeah, I mean I think it gets to rates. What’s just kind of the nature of the company. Cause I see clients who very much discouraged that, you know, they don’t want that. And they tend not to be clients that we can really help. Because are clients who they just want things that are truly black and white. They want things that are the simple quick fix, like, yeah, okay. There’s a certain extent to which there’s simple, quick things you can do. But digital marketing specifically running a business more generally is just a a very gray spectrum. I mean, there’s, there’s not a lot of simple quick things and if that’s your company culture, somebody who, you know, wants to just dig into things and figure things out, probably isn’t going to fit there. Particularly well. They aren’t going to necessarily be somebody who really fits well within that organization.Matthew: (14:29)So I think unfortunately it, it kind of isn’t something that, that kind of personality won’t necessarily fit at every company, particularly a company who just wants to do the quick quick things people who want to move, you know companies who want to, to kind of operate in a different way. And I don’t know if they can really grow their the other clients I’ve seen though and you know, I think the ones where they fit better and are the ones who have an appreciation for that and understand that. So I think you have to, that has to start at the top of the company. Otherwise it’s not going to work. It’s not going to be something that will actually be beneficial.Todd: (15:11)Yeah. I think it’s a decision about culture, right? Like what culture do you want? I’ve actually had my own issues with rocking the boat in that regard. Right? Because I am, you know, I am a avid learner and I struggle to not constantly try to make something better. Right. And I’m not saying that like, Oh, I’m so good. I’m always trying to make things good because it causes total chaos sometimes because even if something is working well, if I get an idea to make it better, I’ll go in and kind of cause, cause some issues with something that was already working good enough for what we were charging and the clients we were working for. Like I want to give more, I want to do it better. So at certain point from me knowing that I’m built that way, I literally need to step away and hand off to someone who might be one of those people that’s like, great, I got the system, I’ll do it the same day, same time, same way every week for as long as I’m here. Right? That drives me insane. Right? I’m not a procedural person that could do the same thing every month over and over and over again unless there’s something new about it. Right. So so yeah, I can appreciate your perspective there. Right?Matthew: (16:27)And it’s better at the end. It better is the enemy of done, right. I mean it’s, it, to what extent is it done versus it can be made better? And I mean, it’s something we talked about with clients all the time is okay, before you go and you invest thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars behind making this thing better. Do you really have to, and that’s where looking at the data and doing a little bit of research can help you understand, are you at the level where it’s good enough or not? And I actually think, I mean, that’s a hard question to answer because yeah, to a certain extent, everything can always be made better. But do you need to, and figuring that out is, it’s actually a really tricky problem and it’s a tricky problem specifically within digital marketing. It’s a really hard problem just kind of for all aspects of life, right? Figuring out is this good enough? Truly what would the gains be if I, if I invested this amount of money to improve it, would it be worth it? And that’s where I think data is probably actually the most beneficial, is figuring out answers to those kinds of questions. To what extent is it okay to just kind of find the right person who can just sit there and chunk out the same routine every day? Who loves doing that versus when do you need to bring in somebody who needs to just completely think about it differently? And there’s a time and a place for both, but really the only way you’ll know that is if you’re measuring things in the right way and really looking at the data and the right way to understand that. Todd: (18:02)Yeah. Well let’s, let’s dive in there. So excuse me data, right? One of the first things that I do with clients and I know Derek from scrimmage who’s a cohost sometimes don’t here today, but they, they focus on making sure at the beginning you can level set and you can actually understand what is happening. So share a little bit about your, you know, your insights and if you can share them in a way that works for someone who knows nothing about Google analytics and someone who’s more advanced. Like what can you, what have you learned and can you learn for your clients by looking at the data and how, how do you, how can you turn the scientific approach into something that people actually will take time to look at who are totally not scientific and data driven at all? I think you understand what I’m trying to dig out. Matthew: (18:58)You’ve also just described pretty much every, every day of life figuring that out. And so, I mean, kind of my thinking on that is, you know, if you’re, if you’re somebody who’s never really looked out, Google analytics never looked at data, I wouldn’t even say you start there. Like before you go into Google analytics, you really ought to kind of know what questions you should answer. You know, what kinds of questions are you, are you not sure about? You know, I think there’s a danger here of people get into the data a little too quickly and they start looking at things and it just becomes a disaster because you start looking at things and you, you start worrying and you go, well, my session seemed low or my bounce rate seems high, or my exit rates seems heightened all the different numbers that you can look at. But before you look into any of that, you need to understand like, what the heck matters here?Matthew: (19:44)Like what, what do you actually care about? What’s your, what’s your problem is your problem, you need more exposure. You need more people just to know about you is your problem that people aren’t interested. Even if they do know about you or you were in the kind of the marketing funnel you know, are, is your problem is your, it’s your problem kind of lowering the funnel with conversions, hiring the funnel with awareness or somewhere in between. And once you kind of start to know those questions and you start to figure out, okay, I need to know, you know, about awareness or anything about interest or desire, action, you know, whatever you know, level of the funnel you might be talking about or whatever part of your marketing you might be talking about that you’re struggling with. That’s when you know, you want to then start going into analytics and say, okay, I have a very specific question.Matthew: (20:32)Let me go in here and try to answer this. Because if you just go into analytics without any ideas of what questions you’re answering it, you’re not going to get any benefit to it. And that, I mean, right, what I just described as the scientific method, I mean it’s, you figure out what are you trying to figure out first and develop your, your question, your research question. And then you move into looking at the data, starting to figure out what you think has gone on. And you know, you wouldn’t want to start any of that without having a question in mind. And so where we actually spend a lot of time with clients is, what’s the question you need to figure out? You know, because they might come to us and say, well, we need more conversions. Great. That’s, that’s interesting, but why don’t you have conversions?Matthew: (21:16)And there’s a whole multitude of answers to why you don’t have conversions. And you know, it’s a lot of time spent spent just talking about that, figuring out the right question. Todd: (21:27)I think that’s really important, especially when it comes to a website. Someone might’ve read an article, right? And it’s on single page checkout. Right? Oh, that’s, that’s the solution. Right? It might be that every person on the planet hates your brand and what you stand for, just single page is not going to help you get more conversions. Right. Right. And no one might even be arriving at that page. Right. So I love, I love taking it up to the highest level possible. And for people listening it would, it would help to, you know, maybe we can relate this to a non website related area of the business, right? So let’s say it’s sales calls, right?Todd: (22:05)It’s not a website activity, but the questions you’re getting at is, you know, what, what do you want? Or what is the success metric, right? What can you track right now? What do you need to track in order to answer the right question? So how, how, you know, what are some of the, the ways that you get those answers from people and maybe maybe some examples from both the, you know, digital world and the tangible world. Matthew: (22:35)Yeah, I mean cause you’re right. I mean both are ultimately the same thing. And right. I mean there’s also this kind of false distinction that seems to come up a lot of, we separate the digital world from the traditional world. It’s like, yeah, the website is really just an extension of your business and it should be treated as such. And it shouldn’t be cut off and isolated. And thought of as something, something separate. I mean the website is a means of connecting with customers just as you know, the yellow pages used to be or sales calls are or who knows what will be in 20 years. I mean it’s, it’s truly just a tool to communicate with your customers. So with that in mind, it really is kind of the same questions across the board. I mean, and it’s probing really. I mean, it’s right just kind of going through the questions and saying, okay, you come to us and say, Hey, I don’t have enough sales. Great. Why is that? What have you tried? What, what have you experimented with so far? What have the different methods been for trying sales? And more often than not, right? Everybody’s tried a few million different things with sales. And so then you start looking at each of those and say, okay, you know, you want sales, so you did a whole bunch of cold calling.Matthew: (23:47)How did that work? Okay, you got 2% of people. A lot of be amazing if you’ve got 2% of people to convert on a cold call. You know, or you know, I tried a Facebook blast or I tried driving traffic to my website or I sent emails or I went to all these meetups or whatever, and you start looking at the three lines between those and you say, okay, you got this percentage of people that were interested here in this percentage here in this percentage here. Great. Now we’re starting to understand that of the people who were interested, take it to another level. Why were those people interested? Well, these people were interested because they liked this aspect of my product, or they liked this part of my service, or you know, these other people over here. And then you start looking for the commonality and then you can go a step further and say, okay, if those people are interested for these reasons, why did they ultimately make the decision they did? And it’s just, Todd: (24:36)That’s, that’s such a great example of something that you can do. I would say you can do it in a more automated way. I was going to say easier, but I don’t know if it’s easier to get the right answer, but you do a more automated way. Someone goes through the site, they sign up for something, they give their email or make a purchase. And then immediately after you ask them, why did you, why did you do this? Why did you give us your email? Why did you make a purchase and why did you purchase the thing you did? Right. Same thing with big, you know, large accounts with, you know, a very big integration or ongoing, you know, recurring revenue SAS product or something like that. How do you, how do you create like a real, how do you take a relationship that’s mostly spoken word and meetings and turn that into tangible metrics, right.Matthew: (25:28)I mean, so once you have kind of all the qualitative stuff collected, then you can start categorizing that. You can start looking at that as well. I mean, once you, particularly once it’s on a website, you can start seeing the trends with people who answer questions in certain ways. So if you know that, you know, certain people are really interested in this particular product for these particular reasons, you can start to identify that within the analytics you can say, well yeah, I know that they are because I can measure where people stopped on a page where they were reading on the page where they scroll to on a page, what they clicked on on the page. And by doing all those things, you can start to get a sense of what people are looking at more quantitatively as opposed to just qualitatively. But I think you have to start with the qualitative to kind of look at that and understand kind of what what people are kind of thinking first.Matthew: (26:23)And then you can start lining the quality quantitative data up against that to say, okay, based on that, here’s, here’s what these things represent as in an actual numbers. And then from there you can kind of create segments and filters for people who fit different conditions. So you can monitor those kinds of people throughout. Todd: (26:44)Yeah. So in order to get, if someone, someone is running a business where they might not have all those metrics in the, in the tangible world up here they need to start collecting. You need to start tracking that even if it’s just a quick phone call where they ask them, you know, why, why did you choose to go with this version of the product? Oh, because this like you need some sort of tracking system where they’re checking that box. Right?Matthew: (27:10)Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing to me how many people don’t talk to their customers, talk to their clients about that. And you know, right. The whole it’s kind of done. Norman, the Nielsen Norman group that talks about this law, you really only need like three to five people that you need to do stability test with. And it’s true. I mean, if you sit three to five people down who are generally representative of your customer base of your audience, and you say, okay, what did you think about this? You don’t necessarily need to, we’re not talking about interviewing hundreds of your customers though. That’s great if you can. But take three to five people or five to 10 people and sit them down and just talk through this and have them use things, have them tell you about what they’re thinking. Doesn’t need to be anything super formal. You will learn a whole heck of a lot about your customers in that. And every time I’ve done that with clients or gone through that, everybody’s mind is blown by that of wow, I didn’t know people were thinking that.Matthew: (28:10)I didn’t know people thought that way. Or you know, I’ve also had people argue about that and say, well, these, these people don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re all right. They’re not thinking of it the same way you do. But that’s the whole point. You know, and you wouldn’t have gotten there had you not done that. And that’s, you know, great Google analytics and all of the various analytics tools are credibly important. You should use them, but equally not to the exclusion of using more qualitative methods as well because it’s bringing those two together where you actually see that the real value of, of using this kind of data to understand your marketing. Todd: (28:47)Yeah. Yeah. Is that understanding again, we started the show with why, right? Like in my experience, especially on the conversion world, like it’s much more important to understand why people are buying then that they are buying. Because like if, you know, they bought and that’s it. Like, okay, good. I guess I get more of people like that and you use a Facebook custom audience, but like if you really know why, like, Oh, well I bought this because last month something, you know, there was a horrible problem I ran into or like understanding that why will give you such a, an epiphany as a business owner or someone in the company. So I’ve seen so many times where people are like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. People thought that way. Right. Now, one of the things that in my experience, I’d love to hear your input on this is, Is when I was working for conversion rate experts, they, they referred to this as the curse of knowledge. So I see that little smirk, you know what I’m talking about. So, so what, what is your experience with that and how can you explain that to the listener? Cause I think it’s something, it’s so critically important to understand as a blind spot that most people just, they don’t quite understand the gravity of what that creates. Matthew: (30:12)Yeah, I mean it’s also a kind of rate the, the phrase and usability is kind of, you are not your user and it’s, you know, understanding that you know, your business, you know, your website to a whole different level than, than anybody else ever will. And you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot when we start working with clients is we have about a month, you know, when we first started working with a client before we fall into the same trap as the business is in because as soon as we start digging into it and looking at the website, we’ll understand it in a different way. And your users just don’t know your website the way you do. They don’t know your business the way they do. Or you do. You know, right. They just don’t have that same awareness and they don’t understand it. And the the same, way. And that’s not just true specifically of any given website. That’s also just true of technology. If you are somebody who works in a browser and you know, uses websites and you program websites and you do, if you’re in the digital marketing world, you are just going to use technology in a totally different way, fundamentally different way than anybody else. And it’s real easy.Todd: (31:23)You’ve got Chrome plugins running and you, you know,Matthew: (31:26)Right. You know, sort of cuts and you know what all these things are and you know, go watch somebody who’s outside of that world, try and use a browser and it is painful. It’s, you know, there’s that part of me when I watch people who do that where I want it. Like, but you could do this in, Todd: (31:44)Why don’t you have a 27 inch monitor? Right? Like doesn’t everyone have that? Matthew: (31:49)Right. Hey, well yeah. I mean that’s a whole other thing. I’ve seen so many developers who say, you know, I built this website and it works great. Yeah. Yes it does. But your audience is still using a 10 80 wide monitor. Yep. Yeah. You know, so and that’s one of the reasons why I very specifically have a small monitor, you know, sitting over here that I can use as my second monitor. That puts me in a whole other category of I have a second monitor. Most people don’t. But regardless, I mean I have a small monitor, I have emulators to look at screen sizes cause that’s a perfect example of yeah, people are not going to look at it the same way you are. People are not thinking the same way you are. They have completely different mental models than you do cause they just don’t know your business as well. And so when it comes to thinking about conversions, when things to come, things in your company about SEO or usability or any of that, you want to make sure that you really are understanding where your users are at in the process. And don’t assume that they know a whole lot more about your business or a whole lot more about your industry. You know, then than they actually do.Matthew: (32:58)And it’s great. So much of SEO is about you find the right terminology that people are actually using. And I have had clients tell me that is not the right word. You know, I would never describe my business as this, you see this in travel. People will say, well, I don’t offer a vacation. I you, I offer a a tour. Let’s be real. People will describe that as a vacation. You need to rank for the word vacation. You need to use vacation in your, in your marketing company. Because that’s how people describe it. I don’t care if you think it’s a tour, people will describe that as a vacation. And you can find lots of instances and examples of that where the words people use don’t necessarily connect with what the business may actually want to use. And it all gets to that. It’s, you know, more about your business then, then everybody else does.Todd: (33:45)Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s fascinating. And it’s to your point, like these are all things that lead to, you know, or support the value of usability testing, right? You want to get very different people to sit down and ask them those questions or ask them to go through a website or they go through a training. Or you want to try your, your experience that you’re used to looking at it on a big monitor, on a small monitor. In the digital world, some of that you can just switch to the small monitor. You can’t unlearn what you mentioned takes roughly a month for you to fall into the trap. Right. You can’t unlearn what you know about a company or a product. Which is the reason it’s so good to have fresh eyes look at that. Matthew: (34:28)Yeah. I mean, and just to take that to a higher level, I mean we’re talking about it in a marketing context, but that’s true of learning anything. And I see this whenever I lead workshops or trainings about tech SEO or analytics people who come in, particularly people who have been in the field for awhile and really know how to think through things a certain way, you know it’s okay, take a step back, forget what you know. And you’re now going to have to think about it in a slightly different way. And you see this with you know, cause a lot of what I do is I help marketers learn about the technology stuff and help developers learn about the marketing side. And there are just fundamentally different ways that developers and marketers think and for developers to learn how marketers think, they have to kind of forget some of the things they know. And, and the same is true in reverse. You know, it’s being able to appreciate that people may not necessarily think the same way you do and some of the things you know, might actually prohibit you from being able to understand how other people think.. Todd: (35:26)Yeah. How do you, that’s a, that’s a great, it’s a great insight right there. And you know, the ability to have a clean slate going into something and that sort of open-mindedness, right, to new experiences and new ideas. I would think that’s probably something that innately I, I had as a child growing up, probably one of the things that, that has helped me the most in marketing is going in. Like I can walk into, you know, a persona discussion and very quickly start saying, you know, I am, I am a pregnant black woman who is searching for a solution. You know what I mean? Like you can try to get into the character and you have to, you have to blank slate before you do something like that. If you’re trying to deliver a result that’s in a totally different world than you are. Right. And some people they, they have a really hard time unlearning, I guess. Right? Or forgetting something that could, could put up a barrier between learning something new is any thoughts or ideas you have on how people can better approach something with an open mind? Like that visual. Matthew: (36:48)Yea, I mean, I think it’s I mean, I can speak to it for what I do. I mean, in what we do kind of collectively at Elementive, I mean, what we try and focus on it, right? It’s very easy to go into a situation thinking, Oh, I’ve seen exactly this thing before. You know, and I, I know exactly what to do here. And I’ve caught myself saying that to clients, Oh, you need to do this because I saw it work somewhere else. No, it’s catching yourself in those moments and taking a step back and saying, okay, every business is unique. Every website is unique. Every situation is unique. Every customer is unique in what they, they need. So a lot of what we end up spending time talking about is okay there, there’s all the things we know that might help in this situation, but let’s reemphasize why these are unique and it’s talking through they’re unique because blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And they’re, you know, a little bit different because of these reasons. And the more you do that, the more you remind yourself. Yeah, okay. They, they are unique. They are different. They’re not going to necessarily fall into the same kinds of things. And right. You see this with a lot of people in the marketing space, business consulting more generally where, you know, people will come in and say, I know how to fix everything and they view things as one size fit all solutions.Matthew: (38:05)That’s just not true. That’s not how things are solved. So it’s remembering that and catching yourself in that. And you know, my business partner and I will, we’ll go through this a lot together where before we get on the call with a client to talk through anything, we’ll just kind of dry run it and say, okay, here’s what we’re going to say. And whoever’s not talking is the one who will jump in and say, yeah, you’re forgetting that they’re unique because of these other things over here, or it won’t work because they’re a little bit different as these, and you force to remember that. It’s not easy. There are, I will not claim perfection on this front in the least. But, you know, I think it’s, you have to remember that and you have to have some kind of system to catch yourself in that.Todd: (38:51)Yeah. There’s a very simple framework of a mentor of mine taught me who was a one of these old sales dogs, right. And like gray hair at one of the agencies I worked at who was just a cold calling wizard. Right. Cold calling wizard where people think cold calling just doesn’t work, shouldn’t do it. Anyways. He used to always ask he would say, what, you know, what do you know is true, right? And then you kind of write your things out and then he says, it’s, it sounds so simple say, but what do you notice too? And then how do you know that, that, that the material you’re referencing is correct, right? Like what do you know is true and how do you know it’s true? Right. Very simple. But often you skip that second part and you just say, well, I know this is true when you just list all the things that were true before for other circumstances. But if you ask, how do you really know that that’s true right now. We start to have little doubts. You go, Oh, well actually I don’t because this is a different market or a different product or different time period. Matthew: (40:00)That’s great. Yeah, I think so. I mean, and that’s, that second question is where it will really catch you and you actually don’t know anything.Todd: (40:10)Yeah. Exactly. Matthew: (40:12)That’s Awesome. Todd: (40:15)I think we’ve, we’ve covered some really interesting points here. Is there anything else that you have learned through, you know, the, the real technical work that you do that has been, you know, one of those things that once you know it you’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s so simple. I’m kind of one of those things. If you had one one day or even one hour to sit someone down who you really care about, who has a big challenge with their website or their conversions or getting, getting something accomplished in their, you know, in their customer journey. Like anything comes to mind as something that you’ve, you’ve learned from a lot of work that is actually a really, really simple thing.Matthew: (40:57)Right? Well, I mean I think, I think the answer is actually in that question. I mean, I think everything ultimately is a series of simple problems and they think it’s really easy, especially when you get into really hard technical problems or really hard marketing problems or really hard problems in general to think that it requires really complex answers. And that’s just not true. Everything is, can be broken down further. So I think and I’ve actually had clients call me out on this of, you know, recognizing that I’m, I’m forcing them to not overthink something because it’s real easy to think I need to solve this huge big problem. Like, no, you don’t chunk that problem down. What are the smaller parts to it because ultimately everything is a series of small problems. You just need to figure out what those small problems are. And I think it’s real easy to trick yourself into thinking that that’s not the case. That everything is actually really big, hard, challenging things. Like, no, it’s, yes, there are challenging aspects, but you can chunk everything down into really small steps and I think it’s It’s, it’s easy to kind of take that for granted when you, when you do it because I can look at a problem and kind of see the, the super small things along the way that, that you kind of need to do. But, but right. I mean if you haven’t done that before, it’s kind of hard to see what those smaller the problem are. And you know, I actually had a client yesterday, which is why that came so quickly to my mind, you know, mentioned that of Oh yeah, I’m overthinking this. I need to just think it’s smaller and look at it in a, in a more chunked down way. That probably be one of the ones I would call out.Todd: (42:50)I think that’s, I totally agree. I think it’s great insight. And even that, even taking that advice in itself, some people will write off because it’s so simple. Like why would you focus on something that’s so simple? One of the first things that I recommend for a web, like a company with a website that wants to improve it, right? It’s just a simple pop up on abandonment. Did you find what you were looking for today? Right. Like, because the simple problem is why are they leaving? And you won’t know the answer unless they tell you. And it’s so simple that people will just put it off and let it know it must be more complicated and we must have to do so much to figure it out. Just ask them why, maybe to your point, like with the technology, maybe the button doesn’t work on Explorer.Todd: (43:40)It’s like make a purchase. I literally could not make a purchase or you know, something else just didn’t work. Tech on a tech side or you know, in terms of the product or anything like that. So yeah, I think it’s great. Small problems. Well we have a, I have a ton of notes here. This is fantastic stuff. Matthew. Any resources that you would recommend people look into and if they want to have a followup conversation, which I think we should do a follow up conversation and go deeper into some of these things, it would be really fun. But if anyone wants to go straight to you to get a problem solved or have their website looked at, where can they go?Matthew: (44:17)Yeah. well you can check out my website, MatthewEdgar.net. I’ve got a whole bunch of blog posts, a whole bunch of resources on there. We also have a whole bunch of resources on Elementive’s website which is elementive.com and on there we have a whole resource section, links to lots of other articles, lots of other people who are talking about things in this space that you can certainly check out and learn more about. Technical marketing, technical SEO, analytics related subjects on there. Todd: (44:52)Fantastic. Well, thanks for all the great ideas sharing and I appreciate you taking the time. Matthew: (44:58)Yeah, thank you. This was wonderful. Todd: (45:00)All right. Have a great one, Matthew. Talk soon.Matthew: (45:02)You too. Bye.  The post 046 – How to Turn Website Visitors Into Customers with Matthew Edgar appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

Having a good relationship with your team is one of the driving factors towards business success. Creating a trusting environment where employees feel safe to share ideas, take risks + make mistakes leads to better performance as well. Founder & CEO of Workplace21, Cesar Keller, discusses the benefits of AI and how it can be used to mold your workplace into a high performance powerhouse with a happier and fully engaged workforce. 4:50 – How the 21st century changed work6:10 – How natural language processing can increase team performance11:04 – Using meta data to optimize company performance 14:29 – The secret sauce for analyzing behavior16:38 – Why people development is SUPER important21:20 – Bringing data science into management26:01 – Defining what a “healthy team” looks like Website: Home Full Episode Transcription: Derek: (00:00) So Cesar it’s so awesome to have you on the show. Talking with Todd and myself, obviously we’ve had some great conversations in the past and some shared interests around the future of work and the evolution of how companies and employees work together and getting people’s best selves at work and outside of work. And just really appreciate the time here and excited to talk about what you’re working on and help everyone out there understand that. So thank you for joining us.Cesar: (00:25)It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to be here. Do you want me to talk about workplace21?Derek: (00:29)I was going to just ask that first question. Why don’t you tell us what about Workplace21 and the inspiration for that? You know, you’ve come from good corporate and now you’re building something on your own. Tell us about that journey.Cesar: (00:39)Absolutely. So the first thing I like to say is I’ve worked like for more than 20 years in corporate America, right? Like different companies. And I found great place to work and I also found some places where I was miserable every day. Right and I say like why, what is different? Like what’s going on? And all comes about like company culture and leadership and all those differences. And to me what call my attention being a people leader for so long is how subjective those conversations are, right? Like how difficult it is to get to the point and be objective about like what we call soft skills. And some people are saying soft skills are the hard skills to get. So how do you actually get in, be more objective about that? And in few companies I, I, I, I could see actually people going like miserable on, like to work every day and like not enjoying and being some bad examples about like leadership, some toxic environments like this became so like clear in corporate America, right?Cesar: (01:51)Like when you talk to people that’s like two people that are happy about it, but there’s so many that today like are unhappy and that reflects on the engagement employee engagement rates that everyone talks about. Like only only 30% of employees are engaged to work in US for so long. So in that journey I said like, I want to do something different, but to do something different and real, we need to start from within, right? Like we need to actually be part of those processes. So I started visioning what this new workplace of the 21st century could be, especially with the new technologies that are coming into play now, right? Like so we’re talking about artificial intelligence and that it can break up into machine learning. We can actually talk about natural language processes and all those technologies and just to close all this scenario, there’s also like the new generations and all this, the social changes that is happening in the workplace with the new generations, like requiring way more like, like from the environment’s right in front of the leadership to say like, I want to work in a fun environment. Cesar: (03:03)I want to be part of something that I can add value, but I don’t feel like I’ve been, squeezed to last like juice I have to give, right? Like in at the same time do something that is actually socially meaningful, right? Like to understand like the purpose of all we’re doing all this. So I got all of these together and it’s not thinking like what the workplace in the, 21st century should look like. And then we create Workplace21. And that’s, that’s the idea of creating a new workplace that gets all those social trends, all the generation needs and base it on these new technologies, reinvent their workplace. And we chose as our first product. So what we are actually putting out today, excuse me, it’s just the first product is called Workplace21 teams. Yes. And it is a to that we, we want to increase team performance.Cesar: (04:03)That’s, that’s our main goal. And we are gonna do that by using natural language processing. If, if you, if you go to the market today, you’re going to see that like most of those, those are out there to increase team performance. They use service, but it’s always a nightmare for HR professionals and for executives because you need to in many cases like stop the company, run surveys, make analysis and all that. So we don’t want to do any of that. So we use natural language processing, basically text analytics to understand like how, how the team is communicating and like however everyone in that team is at your at their softer skills rather to say how we engage at the team is how collaboration is ongoing, how adaptability, right? Like how positive people are when they’re working in. And then we understand like what makes people tick at work and perform.Cesar: (05:00)So that’s, that’s what we were doing using natural language processing and then we offer for the team two things. One is a dashboard that the team can actually be very objective coming back to the beginning of the conversation, be very objective about like how those soft skills are going or in the team and like what the areas to focus on. Of course, this is a very simple frame that I’m painting here. And the second, the second key feature on that application is a photo coach. So we have a bot that is totally connected with that dashboard and help first of all help team to understand what are the areas to focus on at an all level and at a team level and at the leader level. So to say. We can actually draw some examples here. It’s just saying, Hey, we, we think that the collaboration can be improved.Cesar: (05:59)And as we map that kind of need, we have like a full library of coaching tools that we coach, like every team member, the team leader to actually, you know, like go through some reflection questions too to do some exercises, some activities and start working that in, in order to improve those those soft skills, right? Like each one of those. And just to close all that, it’s been proven over and over in any many methodology of team performance. That performance is actually connected with soft skills. It’s not the hard skills, hard skills are easy, kind of easy to acquire, a soft, excuse me, super difficult to actually make, make teams move the needle. So we are going straight to the problem and trying to solve like by giving like a very objective view, good content and exercises for teams to start evolving and then change the company one team at a time from within. And that will help us to start the journey on creating this new workplace. Sorry for the long explanation.Derek: (07:09)Yeah. So many questions on that explanation. I’m going to, we’ll kind of roll it back through a few different paths, I mean the first is I just wanna acknowledge your, your efforts and your, and your work that you’re doing here. I think it’s very exciting and also something that’s very much in line with what you said what is needing. Right? I think that you’re absolutely right that people are seeking greater levels of purpose, that there is a new level of value and values exchange happening in the world. And that that’s not just generationally, that’s I think across the board. Just the fact that we have more information, more of it than ever before is kind of facilitating that, that expectation across these companies. So I think that’s really cool. And I think that, I can’t wait to talk more about the specifics on your, on your platform and how you’re seeing that operate.Derek: (07:53)But I know Todd, you’re, you’re chomping. Todd: (07:57)Yeah. I’m chomping at the bit. So I’m just imagining how you do this. Do you tap into existing conversations? Are you tapping into Slack and email and seeing what type of questions are being asked and then the response and then does the bot come in and say, you know, you’ve had someone on your team express something that is relatively personal. Maybe it can tell that and you’ve given no feedback or no recognition of them sharing something like that. I’m really curious how you take a, you know, an artificial intelligence which is very non-human and have that assist with a soft human, you know, human skill, a soft skill. Derek: (08:35)You’re, you’re acknowledging knowingly. So I’m excited for this answer.Cesar: (08:39)That’s a great question. And let, let me start by the direct answer to our question. Yes. We tap into like every communication to those teams use, right? You say the use like Slack, it is slack if you use Microsoft is Microsoft teams. If you use email, it’s pretty much you emailDerek: (09:00)They’re doing multiple systems at once, is that, is it tapping into multiple? Okay, cool.Cesar: (09:06)Right? So if you use all of them, we are going to actually tap into all of them. Right. Okay. When you say tech, this is very important because this is a privacy. The first privacy question I get like every time, right? When we do that we don’t have any human reading of any of the content, right? And we have a pledge to say we don’t keep any of that information either, right? To say it’s all electronically traffic trafficking the system right through to the, to encrypted and we don’t keep it. So all we actually read and keep is what we call meta data, right? Like it’s what’s around the message but not the messages itself. So example is, for example, we read tons of messages so we can say if someone writing this message, was happy, was sad was angry, right?Cesar: (10:01)Like we can actually tap into each one of those, those stones. We also get some other, metadata that is embedded in the message in terms of like time and like very physical properties of the message itself. And we have like our own algorithm to like interpret those and, this is pretty much how we teach machine learning, learning what those data points are. And then like they all read them or you, well, again, assume as soon as we decode all that, so this, this is, this is how the, the, the, the system works, right? Like on the backend. It’s that’s, that’s one point and this is super important for us. Is this, that this is a known human process. What is kind of cool, right? Because you have that in for companies especially, right? Like if you have a small business, if you have like a large business, it doesn’t matter because we can help like all the teams in a company to optimize performance at once. That’s the biggest value. So if you hire a consultant to help you to optimize one team today, that will cost you probably tens of thousands of dollars. Right. And you can not only optimize one team at once,Derek: (11:22)It’s hard to scale that. Yeah.Cesar: (11:24)Right, exactly. We can always scale that. And worse, like if someone in the team, what is pretty normal today actually rotates or leads the team, you need to start the work again. So we want to actually also bring a solution that you say you don’t need to, you have all this information. Yeah. That scale I like to say at a fraction of the cost of optimizing one team to that. Okay.Derek: (11:47)That’s exciting. So back to, so coming back around on the metrics that on the dashboard and the details that are being served up to the stakeholders or the teams themselves, what are you showing to them exactly? Like what is the information that they’re receiving and how are they analyzing and applying that information into?Cesar: (12:04)Right. So we have a few areas where we, we cater them like with that information. So we are starting, when we talk about team members right? Like everyone in the team, we start with four indicators, right? Like the first one is engagement, then we have collaboration, then we have communication and adaptability. Those four, we optimize the system to actually read those four. And we believe it. Starting with those fourDerek: (12:36)To be clear again, just you’re looking at certain, certain words that are being used, the frequency of those words that are being used, like expressions of emotion, expressions of disengagement, expressions of all these things actively. And then essentially just analyzing it all in real time. AndCesar: (12:51)That’s right. You would just describe it as a little like a few more data points there. But I would say that it’s our secret sauce of course. Right? Well how to do that. But you would just describe it. That’s exactly how we do. And we see in just to be absolutely clear about that. It’s not one data point or like what happens today that actually matters. It’s mash of those things. We are humans, right? So you might be mad at me today and tomorrow we are best friends again, right? So that doesn’t matter. But what do look is actually overtime trends on how those things are going, right?Derek: (13:35)We’re getting very excited by this. Todd: (13:38)Can I throw in another little question for clarity measure. So let’s say, let’s say someone is non-communicative, there’s not much to measure, right? There’s nothing to measure and that is the measurement. But can you measure like, Oh, someone read your message and they did nothing and then they came back and read it again and did nothing and they came back and then they said something sort of quickly little, little feisty. Like does it take into account emojis and time, time delays, number of times an email was opened, anything like that outside of just the text?Cesar: (14:12)Yeah. It’s a cloud of indicators that we use there. Right? so the big question in your example would be is this person engaged it or not engaged it, right? Like is that just an introvert person or, or, right. So that’s, that’s also something that we are reading here to say, is this person an introvert? And then we do expect like a lower level of message, but if it’s like an absolute no messaging on that environment where teams talk a lot, that might be, that might be an engagement each year. So we use our own algorithm and soft course to actually map that out. And more than actually point, it’s what we believe it’s super important for any human interaction is to offer a chance to talk about it. Right? So, so we will talk about it. And if that actually manifests as it is low engagement then is something for the team to discuss with the team leader.Derek: (15:17)Yeah. So that goes back to the initial question because I got so excited, I asked more questions. What is the dashboard actually saying? Like what are, what is being communicated back to the, to the teams or to the team leaders?Cesar: (15:28)Right. So one principle that are used that is super important is all the data that we collect and we analyze, we only use for people development, right? There’s no shaming, there’s no finger pointing. Like this will be counterproductive. Okay. So it is our pleasure and our main goal to say every information that we read and collect we use to help people develop in teams develop and leaders develop. So that’s, that’s the, the main stage intention. So if we notice that this is an engagement problem, then the coach who bring that topic to say, Hey, what’s going on? What, right? Like what I’m like things you can do to increase engagement, right? Like to say. And on the other hand, like we are going to talk to the leader as well to say it seems like engagement is going down in our team. Like what are the possible things like to say are you, have you been able to create a trust environment? Like this is super important for people to engage, right? Like is that clarity of goals and roles. Like this is super important as well for people to understand like what is expected and how to perform. And, and even like if, if we go deeper into that, you say, Hey, it’ll be great if you engage with X person, right? Like to say and revisit goals and roles. So we can give hints as well on how those things go. But once again it’s really like with always been our intension to actually promote people development. Yeah.Todd: (17:08)Very cool. And do you, does it offer specific prompts of what to say based on who you’re communicating with? So if I’m communicating with an introvert, I might use different language or different approach than if I’m communicating with someone on my team who’s, you know, always boisterous and feeding off the group energy.Cesar: (17:31)Yeah. So in, in the sake of full transparency, we are a startup, right? Who is starting this journey. So what you just describe it is email where roadmap is not offered today, but we will be, it will be. So the bot itself has a right like that we project over a few years in order to how to actually make more humanlike that conversation like, but that, that takes like few years. So we are like still to lounge the company commercial in the next few months. But that’s absolutely now our roadmap to, to make that like more personalized. But according to your communication style.Derek: (18:16)Got it. So that was kind of my, one of my next questions are kind of those same lines. So you’re launching teams, you’re in the process of launching that now. I understand the concept of roadmap very well. What, what other products in your do you imagine launching besides just iterating on this offer? What else do you imagine building as part of this workplace21 concept. Cause that that was a, I mean we’re definitely a very big opportunity, right? In terms of what’s happening in the market on the, on the macro level and then we’re speaking very specifically on the micro, here’s our products that are addressing this. So where’s that, where’s that come together?Cesar: (18:50)Absolutely. Lovely question. So let’s move now from the specific to the broader picture here. So as, as part of this new workplace, right? A bit 21st century. Once we understand like who you are and like how do you connect with other people and what makes you excited about working at all that the next logical step. And actually we have started already working on that is how to, how, how to help you to develop skills and not, not only like developing skills but the right skills. So looking, looking at the future trends of ad either sorry, every profession. We, we come back and say like, you’re like some skills that we believe it’s going to be important for it, for you one moving into the future. So that is the next logical step. We are working on that as we speak now and of course as part of a workplace there will be solutions on the jobs and connecting to jobs and projects and areas and that will be some career counseling as well to say like, how do I manage my career?Cesar: (19:59)And one thing that I want to say that we believe has to be different from the way these things are managed today is bringing data science into, into all of those paths. Right? All those journeys. Cause today we are moving from like a market that was professionally very static. Like when I, when I say that, like when I was like finishing school, I knew I would actually follow a marketing career and I knew I would retire on a marketing career. Right? Like so that was super static and nowadays you don’t know what you’re going to be in the next four years sometimes. Like if you are like on, on, on that the technology.Derek: (20:43)Nowhere near as linear as that once was. Right?Cesar: (20:45)Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, so moving from a very static reality to a very dynamic reality, we need to bring way more data science to help people navigate to like all those changes and all those trends and that’s what you would intend to do with like all the information we are collecting.Derek: (21:05)Hmm. So on the same note then, so you’re going to be thinking here. So as I’m thinking through teams, I mean you’ve worked with some large organizations in your career, obviously I think back to your journey and you can feel free to share about that. And you talked about you being a startup now and working with small businesses. I mean, how do you kind of see this evolving from a, from a market adoption standpoint, do you see this tool being best fit into a big corporate structure? Do you see it within the digital teams or is it that you can influence an entire company of 30 or 50 people, right? Where’s the optimal return going to be in the short run for, for workplace21 in your opinion to collect the data that you think will help prove out these, these thesis or, Cesar: (21:46)So, so commercially this, this is super interesting cause it’s, I like to say that actually reality help you to shape commercial strategy, right? It’s a start up, right? You want to buy like, okay, but here is enough right. We got like a lot of a good answer rapport, right? Like in terms of building a pipeline, pipeline of potential customers on all the segments. So today I’d been talking with two large corporations, so that’s amazing for us. Like I didn’t imagine that I would start there, but actually there’s a lot of interest from large corporations to actually implement, implement that solution. On on the other hand, I have like small companies, agencies and, and especially companies that work with customers on a daily basis that need to be like high-performing all the time. Super interested in the platform too. And last but not least there’s a huge problem of engagement in talent retaining o\n dev shops, right? Like all the companies that work with that, that’s like so much required nowadays. It’s a very specific one, but there’s so much problem with engagement that we’ve seen a lot of interest from that shop saying, please the day you were ready to let me use it. Cause like we, we want to actually improve that process.Derek: (23:15)Yeah. That’s really interesting actually. Where, where is the breakdown, at least in the conversations that you’ve had today or what you’ve seen so far in the data, where is that, where is that disconnect happening for dev shop? Specifically? Or dev teams specifically where those four categories. Is there a certain area where you’re seeing a particular gap? Is it, is there not data that shows any of the specific things or what is it?Cesar: (23:36)So there’s, there’s differences. This is very, very very interesting question cause there there’s differences in all X is when you analyze customers here. Yeah. So when you talk about like that shops, the problem is really talent retaining cause it’s so expensive to, to, to hire a new talent and then what they are seeing is like are you a turnover, right? Like so less, sometimes less than a year, right? Like we hired the talent and then people just move out. Then it found the next level job. Like it’s being super hot. So that talent retaining is important. And understanding like how people are engaging, like how collaboration, those are all very good signals if fit teams are healthy. And you know, like a healthy team has a chance to rethink talent way, way more. So. So, so this is one in the second aspect of that is leadership because like we can have a very clear reading on how healthy leaders are, right?Cesar: (24:37)Like to say if, if there’s a trust environment if, if this is a caring leader, if people understand goals and roles and Oh, those indicators that tell us if the leader is creating a healthy team. So, so that, that super-interesting for that shot. If you go to, for example, I’ve been talking to lots of sales leaders in organizations and of course like collaboration, like teamwork, right? Like to actually achieve goals as like so important, right? For any sales team. So they are looking at that like to say, Hey, I need that tomorrow, right? Like to to be sure that like everyone is really engaged and committed to what we need to deliver. And then he goes, it varies like one by one.Derek: (25:28)So that, that raised the question to me as well. And I think through, you know, back to what a healthy team looks like or what does it, what is the optimal level of, of these four pillars look like. Have you, are there benchmarks that exist now on what is the standard by what trust is or, or a high collaboration environment or, and how do you, how do you use, how do you define that?Cesar: (25:48)Right. And on this, on this dashboard, we have, we have an overall number that we want to use that to help teams understand what, where they rank in terms of exactly that, that, that the issue, right. And help also companies and teams to gamify that if they want to, right. To say, Hey yesterday you were like 75, today was 76, and this is, it has been growing, right. And all that. So we don’t have like numerically that is standard yet, but we intend to create that exactly with that indicator. But I can tell you like probably, probably the best answer at this point is to say the best teams, the ones who actually perform better is the teams that are able to create a trusting environment. So, and I mean by that, when people really can come to work and check in rationally and emotionally, right, like they, they feel safe and they feel safe to share ideas to risk, to make mistakes. And the team can actually deal with that in a good way, in a positive way. So every time you have, like, you have a team that actually have that key characteristic. Be sure that if it’s not a high performing team, it will be. Derek: (27:12)Very cool. That’s really interesting. Do you have a question?Todd: (27:17)Yeah, I do. Have you explored, yeah, I can go deep here. Have you heard any audio, any transcriptions of conversations or meetings? I know there’s another company that I will probably have on the show soon that does anonymously record and look for, I forget what they call them. They’re, they, they have flagged words, triggers, trigger words that are either good for people to say or bad for people to say, so that it gives them a score. And some of that, there’s a lot of compliance involved with some of these phone calls. So they can be detrimental like certain calls, you cannot say the word guarantee, right? Healthcare, any, any industry with that. So do you have any intent on doing audio transcription and analysis?Cesar: (28:06)100% 100%. So it’s, it’s so simple. The, the, the difficult there is, it’s really to be sure that teams use the online environment to communicate, right? Like, like we are doing here today. We could be listening to that conversation and translating sentiment out of, out of this conversation. So one thing that we are building now that is clear is 2021 year from now, it’s expected to one every three Americans to be working remotely. Right? Right. So this is a huge number. Yeah. It’s, it’s a huge number. Derek: (28:47)Mobile learning man. Cesar: (28:48)Yeah, exactly. And this is, this has been only growing, right? Like so, so what we are building today feeds well to that future, right? Like, or in the present cause like the more people communicate online like we are doing here today the more effective we can be. So yes, it is on the roadmap and very soon to use that.Cesar: (29:13)And just to comment on one thing that you said, I, we are humans and sometimes we can have a very particular limited moment when we get angry at something, at a joke, maybe two minutes later we are no angry anymore. So the quality of that analysis, right? The algorithm like what we are doing is so important to take life conclusions or wrong conclusions over all that. So, so, so one of the concepts that we use here that it’s super important that we covered already, but just to repeat it, it’s not like one sentiment or one word or something that we can actually, but it is the high density of the same things that actually guide us like to through our analysis. So if I’m consistently angry for two weeks in a row, that tells me something. Yeah.Derek: (30:18)So, so Cesar what in your mind as you’re, because again, you’ve built this cool concept, you’re building this amazing company, think out two, three, five years. What would it, what would the ideal look like for you if you’re, if you’re bringing forth your vision of this, of this startup, what does that look like for you in terms of the, the adoption, the, the impact of companies using it? How is, how is the world changing as a result of, of this work?Cesar: (30:43)Right? So what do you, what do you want to you know, like start up like the hockey stick projection. How fast can we grow a SAS solution, right? Like, it’s super, it can be super fast. It can be faster, it can be slower. Like, okay, it’s super hard to tell like how we are going to grow. But what we do want to accomplish is it’s really create this new workplace where everyone, wants to getting out of the bed, be productive, want to go to work and have fun working and producing and more than anything else working in a way that can create social change at scale, right? Like, so this is, this is what we wanna accomplish and hopefully in three years we’re going to see, you know, like more people engaging to that journey. Derek: (31:36)Yeah. Well we definitely have a shared view on that in the world standpoint. I think, you know, you look at Scrimmage, we’re all about the concept of play, where you work and learn when you play and make sure that you’re adding purpose and fun and meaning and community to all of that. Right? So I think that I definitely can appreciate your vision there and what you’re building and just thank you for, for sharing the specifics on what you’re building here today has been really fun to, to learn more to talk with you about it.Cesar: (32:00)It’s a pleasure to be here, was super fun conversation. And I have to say I’m a big fan of, of Scrimmage. And I can only see as we drive into that excuse in the skills development that we create a partnership here where we can absolutely help companies to use screen much like, you know, even in a more effective way than it is today.Derek: (32:21)Cool. I love that. Well, more conversations to happen for sure. And have an amazing labor day weekend. Cesar: (32:28)Thank you. Todd: (32:29)Great. Thank you Cesar.Cesar: (32:29)You guys too. The post 045 – Using Artificial Intelligence to Elevate Team Performance with Cesar Keller appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

https://youtu.be/t1IWvlLs9ag Is your organization stuck trying to define where the learning gaps are? In order to effectively train and maintain employees, you need to be able to pinpoint the best learning methods for each learner. Learning and Development Leader, Marina Theodotou, has helped many organizations increase their profits and performance by combining current analytic technologies to define problem areas and fix them. Guest Bio: Dr. Marina Theodotou is a learning & development change management leader developing and delivering game changing data-driven, UX centric learning experiences at the intersection learning, technology and defense to drive mission outcomes. Dr. Theodotou regularly develops and curates learning events and opportunities to push boundaries and inspire the workforce to think and do at the Defense Acquisition University (www.DAU.edu) at the Department of Defense. She is the executive producer of TEDxDAU. *DISCLAIMER: The opinions discussed in this podcast are those of the speaker alone and do not necessarily represent those of the the Defense Acquisition University or the Department of Defense. ·      2:41 – How to build resilience with 3 ingredients ·      3:42 – Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset ·      7:56 – The new oil & electricity: Data & AI ·      11:41 – Why there is a need for upskilling & reskilling ·      14:55 – Closing the gap between startups & government ·      20:29 – Using data to discover what learners need ·      23:38 – How to be company focused & learner focused ·      25:42 – Closing the loop of data ·      28:45 – Do people perform better with AI capabilities? ·      33:04 – Why you should embrace learning to your core   Marina Theodotou’s Bio https://dauaa.org/about/board-of-directors/marina-theodotou-bio How to do business with the Department of Defense: https://www.dau.edu/industry-support/p/doing-business-with-the-department-of-defense Full Episode Transcription: Todd: (00:00)So, yeah. Marina, I’m so excited to meet you. Thank you for joining us and contributing today.Marina: (00:06)Absolutely. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.Derek: (00:09)Yeah. So Marina I think just let’s just kick it off. I mean, I think it’s been awesome to get to know you over the years and I’ve seen you kind of evolve in your career and now you have this awesome opportunity to drive innovation and quote unquote disruption and change at a massive level within the government, right? And how the government is training, educating people and bringing that intelligence that you’ve brought from that world to this space. And I couldn’t think of a more appropriate time with what’s happening around us right now for there to be massive innovation and new ways of thinking and new ways of building systems and processes than right now. So maybe you can just share a little bit about what you’re most excited about in the midst of all this that you see as a huge opportunity and why you are so inspired to do what you do every day.Todd: (00:52)And real quick, Marina, just before you jump in, just for anyone watching or listening in the future, we are in the throws of Corona virus. It is March 20th today, and pretty much everyone in the country is at home, a little displaced, operating in a way that they might not be used to. So that’s the current state of the country in the world. SoMarina: (01:18)Right thank you. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. So, great question. So yeah, and we are in the, in the, in the middle of the Corona Virus pandemic. So the first things that come to mind is resilience and the growth mindset. So I will, I will center on that. So, growth mindset Carol Dweck, she did the amazing research and ah, I just wrote an article actually on how to build one’s resilience. So three things adopt a growth mindset build grit and also think of playing an infinite game. So I’m actually borrowing from three greats. Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, and Simon Sinek. So when I look at when I look at the work we do, and thank you, Derek for that intro. There’s an amazing team right now I’m at the defense acquisition university, which is a university within the department of defense that serves 176,000 members of the workforce.Marina: (02:19)And we are in the middle of transforming the way we deliver learning to, to these to these members of the workforce. And our mission is, is critical because we have to deliver learning to them so that they can provide the war fighter whatever they need to be to protect us. And so the, the work that day you does is critical to the national security. But on the individual level what we’re trying to do is explore very quickly all the different ways that we can transform the way we deliver learning. And keep in mind the four elements. So the people, the process, the technology, and then the data, right? There are four elements that we have to look at so that we can, we can transform the learning. But it all goes back to growth mindset versus fixed mindset, fixed mindset, as we all know takes challenges as, as constrictors and does not allow for brainstorming and new ideas come in. Whereas growth mindset is about taking challenges as opportunities for learning taking other perspectives as ways to broaden ours and thinking about how we can learn and grow. So, so I would think that that’s what makes me excited every day and makes me wake up every morning having this growth mindset and driving the mission that we have at DAU.Derek: (03:49)Super exciting. I completely agree with everything you said regarding the preconditions and then those four elements. So why don’t we, why don’t we kind of unpack each of those and how you are kind of systematizing or building a framework for how you’re addressing those four elements of design innovation within the structure that you’re currently working in. Maybe you could, yeah.Marina: (04:07)Well, my role right now at DAU is, is a, is a I operate on the on the confluence of culture and change and people and data and tech and learning. So in terms of of people we need, we are, we need T-shaped people, right? We need people that are experts. So the perpendicular type part of the T is, is the expertise that goes deep. But also we need the, the, the horizontal part of the T so that our expertise is not just centered on one thing, but it’s adjacent and can give us the ability to, to do different things. So for example within the learning and development space, a T shaped person is somebody, let’s say who’s a good instructional designer, but also is good at storytelling, can do good. Design a user is good at user experience, is good at design, knows how to create a, a good not only the, building elements of instructional design, but also take that all the way through to an amazing user experience.Marina: (05:24)So that would imply probably having good coding skills so that they can create a nice nicely, a designed online online course. Because we are talking about online courses. We’ve seen this massive movement in the last what, two weeks of all learning online, which is, which is an incredible moment for learning and development. So, so T-shaped people, technology has to be able to connect. So we know there is this push for LXPs LXPs and the learning and in the learning and development space has grown from a few million to a several billion dollar industry is as you very well know. So how do we make sure that all these disparate systems, the LMS’s that we have, are, are actually empowered by learning record store and learning management system and xAPI and making sure that we are building in the backend this technical seamlessly technical experience so that we enhanced the user experience in the front end.Marina: (06:33)So data I think two things come to mind. Andrew Ng who is the Stanford professor of AI experts and also the cofounder of Coursera said that AI is the new electricity. And then I, and mathematician whose name I cannot recall right now, said that data is the new oil. So we have, here, we have data in AI this to powerful elements. When we think about technology that are coming together and transforming the way we’re, we’re doing our work within learning and development data is so critical because it can inform what it is that we are. We’re, we need to know what the learner is doing, what their needs are, when they need, when they need the course, how do they need it? So when, where, how, so that we can deliver that to their moment of need. So in our context an acquisition professional out there working in the air force or the or the us Navy or Marine, they and their in acquisition acquisition is the procurement process of everything that warfighter needs, whether it’s a pen or, or, or a, a uniform to an aircraft carrier.Marina: (07:49)So the acquisition professionals are, are, are doing, contracting and procuring. So they have to have all the tools in their, in their hands to be able to deliver immediately what the war fighter needs. And in cases, in times like these, the acquisition professionals are in the forefront because they are the, they’re in the mix that delivers these masks and ventilators, et cetera. So, so from our perspective, we have to make sure that the technology is is empowering and not a, not a difficult hurdle in that process. So I spoke about people, data and technology, and then there’s the process. So we’re looking at agile, so agile versus waterfall. We’re borrowing a lot from the software industry developing working in, in two week sprints to develop learning content so that not only we’re, we’re managing the cadence and also focusing on outcomes, but including our customer early on in the design and making sure that we are not waiting, taking 18 months to develop a course, but take a few weeks to develop a course and, and make, get it, get the MVP out there getting it in front of the users and get their feedback and keep iterating so we can get it out right.Derek: (09:16)Love it. I think it’s really exciting what you’re doing and that work and you know, from our time together that’s very aligned with what we’ve been building. See the market evolving too.Marina: (09:25)There’s an amazing team. A lot of people are working on this across across the EU right now.Derek: (09:30)Cool. So one of the questions I had that you kind of alluded to so, so one, the adaptation of how we’re, like even this crisis that we’re in right now, is it a situation where quote unquote war fighters were fighting a disease? Right? So there’s a way, there’s an element of what you’re doing that applies right now. But in addition, we’ve talked before about the idea of re-skilling and skilling in general. I mean, there’s going to be a mate, a major shift in terms of employment and the industries that have been affected through this crisis in terms of people needing to re-skill at a massive level, even more than we planned potentially, not just because of technological disruption, but now because of economic changes that are exacerbating that. Right. So what are your thoughts on how this will kind of come together to address those two points that you’ve, that you’ve mentioned before?Marina: (10:18)Yeah, absolutely. You’re, you’re bringing up a significant point with regards to how we need to upskill and reskill and we’re seeing the shift right from, from, from the services industry that are plummeting. And then we’re seeing this, this shift to, so some services industries are plummeting. For example, we’ve seen restaurants and movie theaters and let’s see what for example in Nevada comes to mind. So the entertainment industry, hotels, that industry is plummeting. And I was listening yesterday to a video by the CEO of Mariott. Then they said that they’ve seen a 90% drop which is unprecedented in their industry. So, but we’re also seeing this in tremendous increase in skills, in skillset, in in like Amazon is hiring a hundred thousand people and all the different grocery stores. So we have this, this tremendous need. And also within our context, the learning development industry, we see this tremendous growth or need for expertise.Marina: (11:28)How do you transform learning from classroom to online? There is this, there’s also a need for teachers to teach online. So the upskilling here and and a few folks are a little miffed by the term upskilling and they want to use the term leveling up. Whatever it is, we need to do it fast. So in our context of learning development, it would mean that we really need to get people really comfortable the faculty and the professors and the teachers out there really comfortable using these technologies that are existing today, like zoom and WebEx and Adobe and ToYou. But on the other hand, there’s an opportunity for these technologies to go and improve, right. And be less clunky and more intuitive yeah, to, to make it even easier. So I see tremendous opportunity both on the tech side, so the tech startups can can iterate and create a better user experience when it comes to providers of training like if I’m, if I’m teaching on Adobe connect or any one of those online teaching capabilities, I want it to be seamless and easy.Marina: (12:48)I don’t want, I don’t want it to, I don’t want to have to go through all these different steps to be able to do that. And the flip side of that, of course, is as a student, I also want it to be easy and intuitive. So I don’t want to focus on spending my time learning about technology. I want to learn what it is that is on my plate. So tremendous opportunities on both sides.Derek: (13:08)So Marina, how do you think that technology companies and startups and content providers can work more effectively with government entities and groups like you’re supporting to kind of move this forward at a fast pace? Right. And we always talk about some of the processes that inhibit innovation. How do we frame that in a way that allows everyone to move faster and adapt fast, adapt better, and drive the outcomes that we all want to see.Marina: (13:32)So I will, I will code our secretary for acquisition and sustainment we sell. And Lord, that that has time and time again reiterated that we need to be working closely with industry and the startups and find opportunities to work with with, with the innovators that we can actually close this gap faster. And of course there is this, this component of working, working with government that it’s complex and difficult to navigate, especially for small, small technology companies. At DAU, we have, we created a page, actually a webpage that provides guidance to startups and technology companies to how to work with the DOD.  Derek: (14:28)Yeah, we’ll put it in the show notes as well for people they can review and refer to that afterwards as part of the episode. It’s great.Marina: (14:39)Yes. So I’ll provide that. I can provide that. And in there we have created actually a, an infographic that startups can follow to, to, learn how to navigate the complex government process. And the bottom line is, is that we want to work with industry and also secretary expert reiterated this. So he specifically spoke about innovation and how we’re, how we need to work with industry and enable startups to do that. Now the us air force was a big participant at South by Southwest, which was canceled. So that didn’t deter them. They actually took the spark Collider, which was their spark. There are things there, a shark tank equivalent online. So they had 5,000 participants in nine hours. $1 billion of contracts were allocated out to startups and companies that pitch that day online. So this is. Yeah. So there’s a lot, there’s a huge need and we want, we want to close that gap of, of learning and, and understanding of how small innovating startups can work with government.Derek: (16:22)Very exciting stuff. Todd I could see that you have a question there, you want to chime in? Todd: (16:25)Yeah, I would I’m a bit of a data junkie myself, Marina. So maybe you could give us, you know, your perspective and an overview of, first of all, just just foundationally what is an LMS versus an LRS and what do you see, you know, we’re on the, like on the near horizon. What’s coming up next for both of those?Marina: (16:46)Yeah, so an LMS of course, is a learning management system. And as we, as we know, it was created to allow organizations to manage all of their learning content. So it’s not, so it’s not so much focused on the user experience or the learner experience. It was created to, again, to allow organizations to house all of their different assets and be able to manage them. So as we, as we have seen the last probably what, three to five years we’ve seen this this growth in, in LRS and LXP’s.  Marina: (17:40)CUTEND So the LRS is a learning record store, which was evolved because companies had to make sure that they have a place where they’re actually storing all the data of learning that each individual learner conducts. And this came about because organizations had more disparate systems of accessing and making a content, learning content available to their people. So the third piece is the learning experience platform, which actually can be stand alone or can, can actually sit on top of, of the LMS and connect seamlessly into it as well as to the learning record store. Now, I’m not a, I’m not a techie. So I will leave that to my technology colleagues and counterparts to discuss the inner elements of all these systems. I’m a, I’m a business person. So I bring in the business perspective of okay, how can I harness technology so that we can get business outcomes?Marina: (19:06)And so the key element here is the xAPI that allows the organization to glean all and pick all these different learning experiences or learning actions. Then individual learners are doing, pulls all that in through the xAPI, pulls that in and places it into the learning record store so they can actually see and glean data from there. So back to your question, Todd, about the data we want all of these things to, we want to connect all these disparate systems so that we can get as as clear as possible. The picture of what it is that the learner needs so that then we can take that data, analyze it and say, okay, they, they’re watching more videos. This is the time of day. They’re watching the video. They don’t like longer daunting online courses. They prefer chunked so that then we can take that information and build learning content that really reflects the needs of our, of our learners.Derek: (20:17)It’s really great to hear Marina share that narrative and that perspective because I mean, as we all know, that is essentially the evolution of, of scrimming as an organization, right? Like you just articulated exactly how we, you know, we saw opportunity around LMSs that they were great for managing content and data, not so great on user experience. You recognized early in a role that xAPI could play and how we work that across different systems and create a platform that was essentially to your point a pioneer of the LXP space Marina. So it’s helpful to hear an objective perspective on the market, kind of affirming the work that we collectively are doing. So I just want to say thank you for your recognition and conclusion.Marina: (20:55)Oh yeah. Well I have to say that as a government employee and as an employee of DAU, I have to put a disclaimer out there that these are my opinions only and not those of DAU or the DOD and that this is not an endorsement of any of any particular product. But yes, this is the, this is the, the perspective that that we, we are getting with regards to starting from the learner. You know, what’s, who’s, who’s our customer, what do they need and, and, and what, what is available to us and how can we get it to them?Todd: (22:50)So Derek what I’ve noticed, you know, being immersed in this world for the past year, which has been really exciting, the world of learning and training and an online remote working is there’s a lot of acronyms and people throw them out really quick on podcasts and maybe for some people they understand some and not others. So it would be great if you can explain from your decade of experience in here what an LMS is and how that has differ, how that differs or similar to an LXP and then where we’re moving in the world and where all the data is getting stored and then what we’re doing with the data for people like Marina. Derek: (23:34)Sure. Yeah. So I think as you kind of highlighted a little, an LMS or learning management system from my perspective is really about managing content. Managing users would be able to deliver content to an audience, but it’s really about giving the organization the ability to see the results in the output of what they’re producing relative to what they want to accomplish. And we saw early on at Scrimmage that that was a way that was company focused but necessarily not necessarily learner focused. And so what the LXP space is about and where we were seeing that market shifting was about learner experience and learning experience platforms is that if you create something that’s easy to use, personalized to the user can make it engagement engaging, relevant to what they need to learn, you are going to have better performance outcomes. And so that’s where this, this combination of experience versus learning management per se, which I think is a misnomer comes together. And the way that you bind those together in a meaningful way is through this concept that we talked about called the learning record store, the LRS, which captures all the different data elements using xAPI and other metadata components to see how learner behavior is impacting business performance metrics and other things like that. And we can capture all that and then provide analytics and reporting on that. And so I think that’s my perception of how this market is coming together. And as we get better and better at processing data, quickly leveraging the AI elements that we talked about around data is the new oil and so forth. We’re going to get better and better at prescribing content and formats of content to the user in response to their style, their needs, their goals, their objectives to help them improve in their learning capabilities as well as their job performance over time. That’s my perspective. But I’d love to hear Marina’s thoughts on how this is evolving relative to her and other organizational needs that are in the market. Todd: (25:18)Yeah, and as you do them are going to be really interesting to hear some very tactical examples cause I can kind of envision what, what you might be referring to when you talk about using these things in the world of government defense. But I’d love to know is this, is this in training on how to, you know, go to the field and execute on a mission or what are you actually training when you’re doing this without revealing any secrets that you’re not allowed to.Marina: (25:42)Right. So thank you Todd. And yeah, I agree with how Derek described it, which is very much in line to how we talked about it a few minutes ago. So from, from the practical perspective and the learning outcomes perspective, when we think about in our context at DAU, when we think about the acquisition professional, we want to make sure that they have everything that they need. So let’s say let’s take a acquisition component, which is contracting. So contracts, government contracts are very complex. So how do we make sure that our learner has all of the different tools that they need at their disposal when they’re building a new brand new contract to field rapidly particular a particular capability out in the field. So what really that means is that instead of having the traditional you know eight week course, an eight week course, not going to help the learner that needs to turn around a contract in a couple of days, they can not take off and go take an eight week course and come back.Marina: (26:53)That’s, that’s, that’s that can not happen. So how do we chunk down the content? How do we create assets like videos and job AIDS? And how do we make those available within a particular technology so that our learner can quickly search. I need contracting for X, Y, Z, and here pops a curated list of learning assets. So here’s a how to video. Here is a job aid and here is a use case of somebody else that did a similar contract in probably in a different in a different unit that that learner can actually take and leverage and build their contract. That’s, that has to go out in two days. Marina: (27:48)So having, so having a system, having a system that allows, that means that you have the learning experience system. The learning, the LXP is where the user is going to go. And what we need to do in the background is make sure that we are building these assets and feeding them into the LMS and making them available through the LXP so that the user only goes to one place. They can Google, for example hypothetically, DAU.DAU contracting. And once they do that, they get that list of curated learning assets that I mentioned, I mean to go. But all that takes the, the different systems that Derek described and also the ability to build content that’s chunked and easily accessible and has a user experience element incorporated in it. And so from there to close that loop of data, what we’re going to get is OK our learners on the contracting side in the field, they actually need these kinds of videos and these kinds of of learning AIDS because we were able to pull that up from learning record store through the xAPIs that were, that were leveraged to pull the data out when our learner in the field was pooling the learning, the learning context.Marina: (29:14)So as you can see, it’s a, it’s a what we are trying to build here from learning and development perspective is a virtuous circle, but brings in all the elements that we discussed earlier, the people, the process, the technology and the data. I hope that helps. Derek: (29:31)Makes perfect sense. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Marina: (29:36)Todd, you seem pensive. Todd: (29:39)Yeah. You want to know? I’m a, I’m just kind of gears turning here. I’ve, You know, my background is, is very much in website optimization and marketing funnels and analytics. So the way I’m seeing the LRS, some of the advantages of the LRS is being able to measure people like you can measure a website, right? So which content did they look at in which order? And for how long on a website that determines what to you know, what, how to rearrange your site. So the most valuable content is at the forefront, right? Which pages they’re staying on the longest means that that content is of interest to those people, right? So you can very quickly looking at Google analytics, you can see these pages are totally useless. No one’s using them. And when they do use them, they leave the site and don’t make a purchase or don’t do what I want them to do. In the LRS, you can do something similar with content. You can look at how are they engaging with videos, how are they engaging with PDFs? What quizzes are they taking and are the best performers, the ones that are performing the best on certain types of quizzes? Or is there not a correlation as we expected? Is that, is that correct? And how I’m assessing what can be drawn out of the LRS, the value you can get from that.Marina: (30:52)Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And actually you’re bringing n the element of, of of you know, learning achievement, which is, you know, how, who are the best performers and how are they performing? So that’s where the AI comes in and actually their AI powered learning capabilities out there where they actually are measuring grit. Are people going back and keep they keep keeping at it or they keep are they keeping up with the learning that is popped up and recommended to them? Are they not giving up easily? Metrics like that. So through those, and actually we’ve tested one of those and I led that AI pilot for DAU. It was incredible to be able to see that actually people did not necessarily learn faster because what we did, we dumped a 384 slide PowerPoint slide course into the AI capability.Marina: (31:48)And of course it spat out 3000 learning items. Our learning there was just with any AI, make sure that your data is, is AI ready. So if we have just like a via dash goes, if you have seven hours to cut down and tree you’re gonna sharpen your ax for six hours. So the same thing with AI. If you have six hours to do an AI, you need to use the five hours to, to prepare your data. So, in our case, in the case of learning and development, that would mean that you’d have to redesign that content for your course and not have 384 slides have 50 slides and of those 50 slides, then you then they, I ingest them and then it creates the learning items and that that are used to remind the learner that, Hey, you’re, here’s, here’s the learning you need to be, you need to be doing today so that you don’t forget that.Marina: (32:50)So in that AI pilot, we learned that it was important to prepare the content AI. We also saw that folks that used it actually perform 10% better. So we had the control group that took the course the traditional way, and we had the test group that took the course through the AI capability. And we tested them immediately after and there was no difference. The median score was exactly the same. We tested them 80 days later and there was a 10% difference, which is, which is huge. Because what we found is that the test group actually remembered much more, much more and tested 10% higher 10 basis points higher than that the control group that pretty much forgot because all they did were, was clicking through the slides. And then the third component that we learned was that the user experience was incredible and people loved it. So it’s these small pilots that are critical for learning development organizations that are looking to do digital transformation. They, they need to, you know, don’t, don’t spend all your money, don’t pull all your money to transform digitally. You have to do small, small pilots that cost very little and minimize and mitigate your risk, see what you get out of there, and then those that work, scale them out so that you can digitally transform. Does that help?Todd: (34:18)Marina that does. Thank you. Derek: (34:20)Yeah. I mean, I just very much appreciative of your time here, Marina, and sharing your thoughts and insights with our community of learners. And I think it’s going to be especially timely here as, as things continue to evolve. So appreciate everything you’ve shared so far. Todd: (34:37)Well I just think you know, you have a very unique position in you know, in the things that you’re exposed to and some of the advanced technologies and just probably the thought leadership that surrounds you on a day to day basis. What do you see is coming down the pipeline? That’s that people should be ready for, and I’d love to have your input on, is this only for large corporations or is this also something that smaller teams and companies should be looking at right now?Marina: (35:11)Well, thank you Todd. It’s a, it’s a, I am very lucky to be surrounded by an amazing team of, of people at DAU. So as a learning and development leader, I think that what’s critical for us is thinking about learning cultures. However you look at it it’s, it’s, it boils down to organizations, whether they’re large or small, to building a learning culture that encourages employees to focus on innovation and communication. And transparency and trying new things. Because the only way we’re going to survive this volume and velocity of change is by continuously learning. So if we as learning and development people don’t embrace learning to our core, we’re not going to be able to deliver good learning to our learners. So it’s, it’s a, the two sides of the same coin. So it’s a learning culture, whether you’re a provider of learning or a beneficiary of learning. So for us, learning providers that are designing and delivering learning, we ourselves have to embrace a culture of continuous learning. So we have to be benchmarking and seeing what’s happening out in the industry and bringing it back in and having dialogue and conversations with other thought leaders and academia and industry and government to make sure that we are, we are leveraging the best so that we can create learning solutions that we can then deliver to our beneficiaries of our learning. So within the, the defense department of defense, that that mission is is paramount, then it’s accelerated. You know, we cannot, we cannot wait. We have to deliver at the speed of relevance as our national defense strategy says. So. So it all makes it faster. We have to be faster and better and it’s exciting.  Derek: (37:25)Great way to wrap it. Marina, thank you so much for everything you’ve shared, your insights, your wisdom, your experience, and really value your time and contribution to this, to this environment. Marina: (37:34)Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Appreciate it. Derek: (37:38)Cool. Thanks Todd. Todd: (37:40)Thanks Marina, great to meet you. Thanks for joining us.  The post 044 – Closing The Learning Gap with Marina Theodotou appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

A lot of small business owners are excellent at the operational side of running their business, but get STUCK when it comes to marketing—especially in creating a strategy that aligns with their core values, and compels their target customer to take action. Founder & CEO of Box Out Marketing, Tyler Garns, shares some of his “Secret Sauce” for creating a strategy that works. In his former role of VP of Marketing at Infusionsoft, Tyler produced massive results, helping to grow the company from $3M to $40M in just a few short years, then continued his journey to help businesses grow with a combination of marketing experience + technical skills to achieve better marketing results. Today, Tyler shares some absolute gems worth hearing. 3:21 – The benefit of learning in a fast-paced environment8:44 – Why having a marketing strategy is so important11:53 – Creating the freedom we want17:34 – The power of simplicity19:05 – Common marketing misconception21:01 – Why you NEED a compelling offer23:17 – Finding the right conversion model for your business29:32 – How core values define workforce Website: https://www.boxoutmarketing.com/author/tyler-garns-8/ Full Episode Transcription: 408 01:42:36.600 –> 01:42:44.940 Todd Staples: Well, I am really excited. Tyler, welcome back to your second podcast with me. It’s really great to see you, buddy. 409 01:42:45.510 –> 01:42:48.630 Tyler Garns: Well, thank you. You too. Yeah, it’s good to connect. It’s been a little while. 411 01:42:54.990 –> 01:43:13.350 Todd Staples: So I’m, I’m excited because it’s actually been a couple years since we’ve really connected again and now you’ve been making some shifts in your own business. And I just, I’ve always thought you have one of the most simple and clear and 412 01:43:14.700 –> 01:43:27.270 Todd Staples: Superb way of teaching people how to come up with strategy teaching how to execute on marketing and setting up processes and systems to do that. So I’m ready to hear what’s the latest and greatest that you’re working on. 413 01:43:27.900 –> 01:43:32.100 Tyler Garns: Well, thanks. Yeah, and appreciate you having me on the show. Yeah, you know, 414 01:43:33.150 –> 01:43:44.400 Tyler Garns: We’ve been in this marketing game for a long time in some form or fashion. I’ve been doing, you know, online marketing since 1999 on it and 415 01:43:44.940 –> 01:43:52.830 Tyler Garns: And then you know with this business box out marketing started in 2014. And you know what, one of the things we realized early on. 416 01:43:53.580 –> 01:44:04.170 Tyler Garns: Is that most business owners need a lot of help with marketing strategy and we’ve helped with that through our fold, you know, done for you agency services. 417 01:44:05.010 –> 01:44:10.410 Tyler Garns: But one of the things that has been frustrating for me is that we can only help a certain number of people that way. 418 01:44:10.800 –> 01:44:22.500 Tyler Garns: And so we’ve been shifting our model. And I think that’s one of the things obviously as well that you know on on your path podcast, you’re probably talking about a lot is, you know, this need to kind of reinvent yourself all the time you know this. 419 01:44:22.530 –> 01:44:32.940 Tyler Garns: continual learning right is just part of the process. If you stay stagnant, you’re going to die. So, you know, we’re re envisioning and reinventing the way we operate. 420 01:44:33.750 –> 01:44:41.880 Tyler Garns: And part of that a big part of that is to be able to help more people, but in helping more people. We also need to come up with a way to help them with. 421 01:44:42.420 –> 01:44:44.010 Tyler Garns: With the strategy portion 422 01:44:44.400 –> 01:44:54.780 Tyler Garns: And simpler, faster way. So we’ve been developing a lot of different models I created this whole like basically triage system that was way too complex to teach to other people, but it but it’s actually really good for internal 423 01:44:55.080 –> 01:45:00.690 Tyler Garns: You know, employees to learn like, hey, when someone has this problem then ask this question, and if they answer this way, then do this thing. Right. 424 01:45:01.620 –> 01:45:07.530 Tyler Garns: And so then that way you can teach people, or at least give give people a way to 425 01:45:08.490 –> 01:45:21.510 Tyler Garns: To figure things out the right way without having to have experience. You know, I’ve got years and years and years of experience to rely on. But when we go hire someone new. They don’t have that. And so we kind of built that internally but externally, we’ve got now. 426 01:45:22.590 –> 01:45:29.970 Tyler Garns: You know, a system that in the future. We’re going to release as as marketing strategy school that’s not even close to being ready yet, but 427 01:45:30.480 –> 01:45:42.060 Tyler Garns: But this simple process and system for developing marketing strategy is really key because you know when you’re a lawyer or a doctor or a roofer or whatever you are 428 01:45:42.900 –> 01:45:53.760 Tyler Garns: You’re trained in your craft, not in marketing strategy. So it’s so easy to get it wrong. And it’s so easy to see what other people are doing and go oh that’s working for them. Let’s try that. And it’s wrong. And it doesn’t work. 429 01:45:54.180 –> 01:45:54.540 Todd Staples: Yeah. 430 01:45:54.750 –> 01:45:56.640 Tyler Garns: That’s, that’s a big part of our focus right now. 431 01:45:57.600 –> 01:46:05.790 Todd Staples: So I want to, I want to get into some of the details of that. But before we do that one thing. I also want to point out for people watching and listening. 432 01:46:07.290 –> 01:46:13.080 Todd Staples: One of the things that I think is amazing about marketing is in order to be a good marketer, you have to do good. 433 01:46:13.650 –> 01:46:23.940 Todd Staples: Like you actually really have to help people. And that to me has always been where you have shined and I think it’s like it comes from within somewhere. So maybe you can share a little bit about 434 01:46:24.240 –> 01:46:30.480 Todd Staples: Your, your personal beliefs, your, your values that have led you into marketing. 435 01:46:31.200 –> 01:46:40.500 Todd Staples: And maybe shine some light on the fact that it is such a beautiful thing to do when you do it right. I think sometimes people bucket sales and marketing and that’s in pushing people to spend money right 436 01:46:40.860 –> 01:46:45.480 Todd Staples: It’s like totally not what it’s about. If you do it right, so maybe you can share a bit about that. 437 01:46:46.230 –> 01:46:53.910 Tyler Garns: Yeah, absolutely. And that that’s actually part of the strategy conversation we can get there in a minute. But, um, you have to have a good product, right, you have to have a good service. 438 01:46:54.360 –> 01:47:02.430 Tyler Garns: Like you said, you have to do good in the world. And if you’re not, it’s not going to be a lasting success if you’re able to have immediate success. It’s not going to last. 439 01:47:03.330 –> 01:47:09.510 Tyler Garns: But yeah, a lot of what drives me comes from my upbringing. My dad was had his own business. 440 01:47:10.410 –> 01:47:24.600 Tyler Garns: I saw him go to work in jeans and a t shirt and be able to manage his own schedule. And then I saw the guy next door every day suit and tie same schedule miserable all the time. And I said, I don’t want that. 441 01:47:25.080 –> 01:47:36.060 Tyler Garns: I like doing. And so, um, you know, I, I knew early on that. That was kind of the path. I wanted to follow, but as I grew up and got older and got into 442 01:47:36.180 –> 01:47:44.880 Tyler Garns: You know, marketing and sales world and working with business. I realized then. Looking back, how much of a struggle. It had probably been for my parents. 443 01:47:45.960 –> 01:47:57.990 Tyler Garns: To run and grow their own business. And so then I just became very, very passionate about helping people like them, you know, here’s a photographer. He’s a photographer for 40 years phenomenal, he’s a he’s a 444 01:47:58.500 –> 01:48:05.100 Tyler Garns: In particular industry. He’s very well known world renowned you know photographer commercial photographer. 445 01:48:05.790 –> 01:48:08.580 Todd Staples: What can you say what do you what is niche is. 446 01:48:08.880 –> 01:48:16.530 Tyler Garns: Yeah so. So if you ask him like, hey, what do you specialize in. He would say, you know, hard to light reflective objects and 447 01:48:16.650 –> 01:48:19.260 Todd Staples: Believe that that this photographer speak. I love it. 448 01:48:20.130 –> 01:48:27.600 Tyler Garns: But that comes down to like shooting cars a lot of cars and high tag and perfume bottles and things like that so 449 01:48:28.500 –> 01:48:39.990 Tyler Garns: You know, if you’re just the average person, you would never think like that that’s really hard. But if he takes just a moment and pause you realize it’s extremely difficult because reflective objects will reflect anything 450 01:48:40.320 –> 01:48:41.670 Tyler Garns: In the background. The photographer. 451 01:48:41.700 –> 01:48:43.200 Todd Staples: The camera camera. Yeah. 452 01:48:43.890 –> 01:48:56.970 Tyler Garns: Everything. So there’s an art to concealing all of that and lighting the car or the item in a creative way that just makes it like really pop right so he had for years, you know, 453 01:48:57.450 –> 01:49:04.830 Tyler Garns: Clients like Honda if you walked into a Honda dealership, you know, a lot of the photos and the brochures and the facts books and everything were all taken by him. 454 01:49:05.880 –> 01:49:11.460 Tyler Garns: And he worked for years for Motor Trend doing like cover shots for for them and things like that so 455 01:49:11.910 –> 01:49:22.740 Tyler Garns: That that’s what he did. But again, whether it’s photography or being an insurance agent or a realtor or you make and sell widgets online doesn’t matter. It’s all the same challenge of 456 01:49:23.160 –> 01:49:36.060 Tyler Garns: growing a business when you are an expert in your craft. But now you have to learn marketing and sales and internet stuff and technical things and whatever, it’s all pretty overwhelming. So I became really passionate at 457 01:49:36.540 –> 01:49:44.760 Tyler Garns: In this idea of, like, I want to help those people not have to be burdened by all that extra stuff, but even more so. 458 01:49:45.060 –> 01:49:55.530 Tyler Garns: Allow all the new tech and and strategies that are available to them to be able to actually create the freedom that they want, because ultimately that’s what it comes down to. We all start our own businesses because we want freedom. 459 01:49:55.980 –> 01:50:10.800 Tyler Garns: Right freedom in our lives, or we want freedom to do things the way we want in the business, etc. And so many people get stuck in the process of trying to build a business that they actually get buried by the business instead of creating the freedom that they set out to create 464 01:50:33.750 –> 01:50:41.520 Todd Staples: So I love that vision and that mission for helping people helping make it easier. It’s interesting that you were sort of 465 01:50:42.420 –> 01:50:52.740 Todd Staples: I mean, you saw your dad living a life that he enjoyed right and actually being able to set a schedule. What did you see him like really experienced some of the pain and frustration around the business side? 466 01:50:52.890 –> 01:51:01.320 Tyler Garns: You know, my, my dad’s type of guy that I don’t think he ever really showed that my mom would would be a little more visually stressed and 467 01:51:02.430 –> 01:51:12.750 Tyler Garns: You know she she would she would stress over you know finances and things like that a lot. My dad. I think he’s internal optimist always was, like, hey, everything’s worked out to be fine and 468 01:51:13.200 –> 01:51:20.460 Tyler Garns: Also, when you’re the one in control. I think it’s easier right like he’s in control of his future running the business. She’s at home like just dependent on the income. 469 01:51:20.970 –> 01:51:29.220 Tyler Garns: Oh, yeah. Another she dependent. She could have gotten a job or whatever. But they had made decisions about her staying home as a as a mom and everything so 470 01:51:30.720 –> 01:51:33.240 Tyler Garns: But but yeah I he 471 01:51:34.530 –> 01:51:49.230 Tyler Garns: I never saw that from him, but I know like you know there were stressful times and I know there were times when he would sleep at the studio because he’s working all night and you know there’s long days, and as long nights that every business owner goes through. Yeah. 472 01:51:50.370 –> 01:51:51.000 Todd Staples: Well, that’s 473 01:51:52.230 –> 01:51:53.220 Todd Staples: That’s a 474 01:51:54.270 –> 01:51:58.560 Todd Staples: That’s a I can see the motivation, because I’ve experienced some of that on my own journey as well. Right. 475 01:51:59.460 –> 01:52:10.140 Todd Staples: But let’s let’s dive in the strategy, a little bit right so you I’ve been actually years ago guys probably 10 years at this point we’ve done some mastermind weekends together and things like that. 476 01:52:11.400 –> 01:52:25.710 Todd Staples: And strategy is something you you have to figure out where the leverage is you have to figure out unconventional ways of thinking. Sometimes, a lot of times when you hear someone like you, because I do think you’ve. Very good. Are you present and teach this. 477 01:52:26.820 –> 01:52:34.650 Todd Staples: It seems so easy. Sometimes when you hear an expert explain it, but there might be some counterintuitive approaches you know what most people 478 01:52:34.920 –> 01:52:46.590 Todd Staples: Don’t naturally operate or they don’t actually think in certain ways maybe talk about some of that that you’ve seen, you know, running the whole marketing department for Infusionsoft and growing that business and then running your own team. 479 01:52:47.520 –> 01:52:53.100 Todd Staples: What have you done that sort of counterintuitive or unconventional that’s led to some of your successes. Yeah. 480 01:52:53.520 –> 01:53:07.590 Tyler Garns: Yeah, so, so let’s back up though to something you said about it, seeming easy when I always tell people is, look, the bottom line is marketing and growing a business as simple that doesn’t make it easy right the simplicity is 481 01:53:07.590 –> 01:53:08.640 Todd Staples: Correction simple 482 01:53:09.540 –> 01:53:17.820 Tyler Garns: Yeah, the simplicity of it is what makes it feel easy but then when you go actually try and do it. It’s hard, right. It’s a lot of work and it’s tough. 483 01:53:18.660 –> 01:53:25.740 Tyler Garns: But if it’s not simple, then you’re probably doing something wrong. Right. And that’s a mistake that I’ve made, and I’ve seen business owners make a million times is 484 01:53:26.070 –> 01:53:40.110 Tyler Garns: We think that by creating this you know complex funnel and segmenting everyone 37 different ways, whatever is going to make it all better and it just makes it more complex. So I’ve found over the years that the more simple. We can keep it. Often, the better. 485 01:53:41.190 –> 01:53:44.370 Tyler Garns: So just throw that out there before we move on to to the other. 486 01:53:44.400 –> 01:54:03.120 Todd Staples: Yeah, no I it’s great advice as medicine. I need to take probably every few years, right, because I because I think some marketers, myself included, we’re wired to like the complex fancy systems. Right. Well, what the Rube Goldberg business. Yes, everything fits together but 487 01:54:03.330 –> 01:54:04.770 Tyler Garns: But as a marketer to 488 01:54:04.830 –> 01:54:14.220 Tyler Garns: It’s easy to get caught up in that’s part of your identity. Oh, I can create all the fancy stuff you could ever dream up right and run that’s not always the best thing for the client. 489 01:54:14.640 –> 01:54:19.410 Tyler Garns: Yeah. Um, but yeah, let’s get to your question, though, about, you know, the kind of counterintuitive aspects of it. 490 01:54:20.220 –> 01:54:24.030 Todd Staples: And really just what makes what, what have you seen success in. Yeah. 491 01:54:24.420 –> 01:54:37.890 Tyler Garns: The first thing that we do is we actually take a step back from the marketing itself and look at the business because it’s a very, very common mistake that people make thinking that marketing is going to solve their problems. 492 01:54:38.850 –> 01:54:48.660 Tyler Garns: Or that a marketing agency can create miracles in a situation where there are no miracles going to happen, right. So, so first thing we look at is, like, are you even in 493 01:54:49.380 –> 01:55:02.370 Tyler Garns: The right industry, right, is this industry growing does it have momentum, etc. People come to us like oh yeah my funnels don’t work, blah, blah, blah. You guys can fix it. Well, truthfully, your, your industry dying. Right, right. 494 01:55:02.880 –> 01:55:03.270 Todd Staples: Right. 495 01:55:03.330 –> 01:55:06.600 Tyler Garns: But you’re selling you’re selling cassette tapes, my friend, and 496 01:55:07.680 –> 01:55:13.920 Tyler Garns: That’s just not gonna work. Like, we cannot solve that problem. So, first thing is a look at the industry, make sure we’re in an industry that’s growing has momentum. 497 01:55:14.700 –> 01:55:22.650 Tyler Garns: Next thing is to make sure that the product or service is actually profitable again marketing will only heighten 498 01:55:23.130 –> 01:55:32.970 Tyler Garns: Problems that already exist. So if your service itself isn’t already extremely profitable say say it’s unprofitable or it’s barely profitable. 499 01:55:33.240 –> 01:55:38.700 Tyler Garns: Oftentimes driving business up creates more and more problems, you know, if you have very tight margins. 500 01:55:39.150 –> 01:55:55.560 Tyler Garns: Now you have very tight margins, Times 100 times 1000 times whatever. So you got extra people extra overhead extra fulfillment that you’re, you know, beating your head over the wall or against the wall over and it’s not helping to have more business. It’s actually hurting 501 01:55:57.090 –> 01:56:03.510 Tyler Garns: And so again, another another very common mistake we we trick ourselves into believing that more sales equals more money. 502 01:56:04.260 –> 01:56:14.460 Tyler Garns: But it doesn’t more profit equals more money and profit solves problems but sales don’t necessarily. Yeah, so we have to take a step back and look at these fundamental business issues. 503 01:56:15.000 –> 01:56:20.550 Tyler Garns: Or else we fall into the trap of oh yeah let’s go create a nice marketing funnel that grows the business and it just creates challenges. 504 01:56:21.870 –> 01:56:25.530 Tyler Garns: The next thing is looking at the offer, and this is a big one as well. 505 01:56:26.400 –> 01:56:32.520 Tyler Garns: People think oh well you guys have professional copywriters you know you can write better copy and therefore, it’ll sell better 506 01:56:32.790 –> 01:56:40.260 Tyler Garns: Blah, blah, blah, or you’re going to make a funnel with good messaging and that’s going to cause our product to sell better. Well, if the offers bad 507 01:56:40.890 –> 01:56:53.100 Tyler Garns: No amount of good copy can overcome that and that’s a big misunderstanding that people have, if your copy. If your copy is good and the offer doesn’t sell, then the offer has a problem. 508 01:56:54.030 –> 01:57:06.060 Tyler Garns: And the, the opposite is true as well. If your offer is great and the copies bad the offer still sells it may, it may be able to be sold better, but it will still sell if it’s a good offer and so 509 01:57:06.210 –> 01:57:13.590 Todd Staples: You know when you can you just take a moment and from your perspective, because everyone is a little different semantics. When you see the offer. What is that exactly 510 01:57:14.100 –> 01:57:18.780 Tyler Garns: That’s what you’re actually selling right it’s here’s how much I’m charging and here’s what you get for it. 511 01:57:19.020 –> 01:57:25.080 Todd Staples: Okay, does that include guarantees. Does it include turn you know the extra layers sort of the 512 01:57:25.620 –> 01:57:31.710 Tyler Garns: Yeah, all of all of that, it’s, it’s the decision making process for the customer to be able to say, all right, 513 01:57:32.640 –> 01:57:39.660 Tyler Garns: My the value exchange is in my favor. Right. They don’t feel like it is far in their favor. I’m getting a sweet deal on this. 514 01:57:40.230 –> 01:57:47.790 Tyler Garns: A lot of people will equate that to a discount. And that’s not what I mean I’m not saying you need to discount everything I’m actually fairly opposed to discounting, most of the time. 515 01:57:48.930 –> 01:57:52.050 Tyler Garns: But the offer just has to be so compelling right 516 01:57:53.280 –> 01:58:04.830 Tyler Garns: And if it’s not, then the funnel is not going to help the copy is not going to help. We have to get the offer and this is an area where as business owners were very reluctant to look at the offer. 517 01:58:05.160 –> 01:58:09.600 Tyler Garns: And admit there’s a problem there. We always want to blame it on the the marketing team or the 518 01:58:09.600 –> 01:58:10.680 Todd Staples: Salesperson or 519 01:58:10.680 –> 01:58:16.260 Tyler Garns: Whoever’s closing the sale. Like I you just don’t know how to sell it. No, actually, you know, 520 01:58:16.740 –> 01:58:30.300 Tyler Garns: Because if we look at the offer, then it’s a reflection on us right then the business owner. Well, I created that offer it has to be good, we have to be willing to humble enough to admit that. Well now, maybe I created an offer. That’s not great, maybe 521 01:58:33.570 –> 01:58:38.790 Tyler Garns: So yeah that’s that’s the next thing. And then the next part is where we really start getting into the strategy. 522 01:58:39.180 –> 01:58:52.590 Tyler Garns: And that is looking at the business model and aligning it with the right conversion model. So what do I mean by that. Well, we bucket every business into one of four business models. Right. So we have local services. 523 01:58:53.100 –> 01:59:01.440 Tyler Garns: That’s anybody you know a doctor, lawyer roofer pest control, whatever. Someone who who offers a local a service that is bound by geography. 524 01:59:01.980 –> 01:59:08.880 Tyler Garns: And they have online services. That’d be a business like ours. We’re an agency. We offer a service, but we can offer that to anyone in the world right 525 01:59:09.420 –> 01:59:16.320 Tyler Garns: Then we have influencers you know your authors speakers coaches experts gurus, etc. And then you’ve got e commerce businesses. 526 01:59:16.680 –> 01:59:24.450 Tyler Garns: Pretty much every business will fall into one of those four buckets, unless you’re in like wholesaling or manufacturing or something like that which we generally don’t work with 527 01:59:25.860 –> 01:59:34.290 Tyler Garns: And so you got to look at that and then you gotta look at what are the conversion Models that work with that business model because here’s the problem. 528 01:59:34.890 –> 01:59:46.260 Tyler Garns: Most of the educators out there in the marketing world are influencers and so when you and I go to a conference and we watched the guy on stage show off his amazing million dollar funnel. 529 01:59:47.100 –> 01:59:57.420 Tyler Garns: He’s an influencer and he’s teaching influencer style marketing, right. So Ryan Dice brilliant guy, he’ll get up and talk to you about, you know, lead magnet tripwire core offer profit maximizers 530 01:59:58.050 –> 02:00:08.580 Tyler Garns: Amazing. And that works all day long for an influencer, but that doesn’t work for e commerce doesn’t work for local service, you know, if I have a leak. 531 02:00:09.210 –> 02:00:22.110 Tyler Garns: A pipe that breaks. It’s leaking all over my house sewage. I’m not going to go search online and find the guy with the best lead magnet and opt into that and then by his by his $7 book on having 532 02:00:22.710 –> 02:00:23.670 Todd Staples: A bigger problem. 533 02:00:24.570 –> 02:00:26.670 Tyler Garns: I need someone now right and 534 02:00:27.480 –> 02:00:38.370 Todd Staples: Actually, funny enough, you see my nice new blue painted wall. Yes. Bradley freshly painted because I had a sewage leak on New Year’s Eve. This year right out of the ceiling so 535 02:00:39.300 –> 02:00:40.290 Todd Staples: That’s a whole nother story. 536 02:00:40.800 –> 02:00:48.630 Tyler Garns: Yeah so. So anyways, um, there are conversion models that we’ve defined and organized for each business model. So 537 02:00:48.870 –> 02:00:57.270 Tyler Garns: Again, that’s a huge mistake because we go to the conference and we learn and we say, oh, that’s working for them. Let’s try it for us and doesn’t work well the wrong conversion model for your business model. So 538 02:00:57.630 –> 02:01:07.350 Tyler Garns: Those things have to be aligned once we’re aligned to their now we can finally get into messaging copy, etc. But all those other things have to be in line for us. We got to be in the right industry. 539 02:01:07.680 –> 02:01:14.160 Tyler Garns: We got to have a good offer. We got to have a profitable offer. We got to have the right conversion model for our business model. 540 02:01:14.760 –> 02:01:19.470 Tyler Garns: Now we can actually talk about marketing. Right. So there’s just a lot of pre work to to kind of understand 541 02:01:20.010 –> 02:01:32.160 Tyler Garns: What’s going on there. But once you simplify it down to those things you can easily look at and go, okay, I can see where the problem is. Because now I understand. Oh, it’s the offer. That’s the problem and not the funnel or it’s the funnel is the wrong conversion model or whatever. 542 02:01:32.670 –> 02:01:48.780 Todd Staples: And if you look at that, that chain right that tree I could, the closer you can get to the root, the better because like when you make a tiny adjustment at the very beginning, it has a massive exponential impact on what comes at the end of the funnel. 543 02:01:49.680 –> 02:01:55.710 Tyler Garns: Yeah and that that’s something we deal with on a fairly regular basis where you know at the top at the root, you know, as you called it 544 02:01:56.220 –> 02:02:00.510 Tyler Garns: The potential client has a major problem they come to us and they want us to solve it with a funnel. 545 02:02:01.110 –> 02:02:14.550 Tyler Garns: And we have to tell them hey look, this isn’t going to solve your problem either either week we aren’t going to work for you, or we need to make some major adjustments here. And oftentimes, they don’t like to hear those those words. They just want us to solve the problem, and we can’t 546 02:02:15.030 –> 02:02:20.730 Todd Staples: Right. Right. Yeah. And I’ve worked with a lot of clients and in agencies and companies that have 547 02:02:21.120 –> 02:02:28.080 Todd Staples: That have the issue is if it’s common because people bootstrap and they build something and they kind of piece things together and they end up with a 548 02:02:28.440 –> 02:02:38.280 Todd Staples: Product or company or e commerce site, or whatever it is, it’s sort of this Frankenstein mess that they just piled on patch after patch after patch. 549 02:02:39.480 –> 02:02:53.880 Todd Staples: So getting getting a nice clean slate. I can see you know if you if you’re able to which some people are not always able to in a position to do that extra businesses running. Sometimes it’s hard to make a dramatic shift like that I might be neat to hear your thoughts on that. 550 02:02:54.960 –> 02:02:58.830 Todd Staples: But as a strategic approach. I think it’s, it’s great. Yeah. 551 02:02:59.430 –> 02:03:07.440 Tyler Garns: Yeah. And again, that’s kind of, we were talking about earlier about reinventing yourself. You know when you come to those moments of realization realize, oh, wow. My offers not great or 552 02:03:07.860 –> 02:03:10.440 Tyler Garns: We’ve been doing this for five years, the business doesn’t move forward. 553 02:03:11.280 –> 02:03:19.830 Tyler Garns: It’s because you know what, we’re selling isn’t very profitable. Yeah, you have to decide to make some changes in those moments. And those are tough changes to make because you got to keep the business running 554 02:03:20.280 –> 02:03:25.110 Tyler Garns: Keep employees paid to keep the lights on while you create a new product or service. 555 02:03:25.530 –> 02:03:34.200 Tyler Garns: Keep delivering on the old ones start selling the new ones start delivering on the new one, while you’re still doing the old one. It’s top. Those are tough challenges. I mean, we’ve been through those cycles, a few times. 556 02:03:34.530 –> 02:03:34.950 Yeah. 557 02:03:36.000 –> 02:03:43.620 Todd Staples: How do you see like that you know there’s there’s some emotional work that has to be done with people when they’re going through this right. It’s a mindset. 558 02:03:45.240 –> 02:03:50.760 Todd Staples: In order to do something like that to throw away one idea kind of cut your losses. If it’s not the right 559 02:03:51.180 –> 02:03:58.290 Todd Staples: Direction to go in and like I’ve seen you over the past 10 years make a couple of shifts and how the way you’re adding services and the way you’re 560 02:03:59.010 –> 02:04:09.090 Todd Staples: The type of services you’re providing. And I can see it just like, you know, kind of on the scent trail finding out what’s going to be the absolute best for you and your team and do something that has a lot of value, but 561 02:04:10.290 –> 02:04:20.520 Todd Staples: When you’re working with people who might be rigid in their idea, how do you, how do you help them personally grow and learn that maybe it’s time for a change. 562 02:04:21.000 –> 02:04:34.560 Tyler Garns: Yeah. Well, there’s two things. One is sometimes people just don’t want you and we have to acknowledge the fact that it like they’re not listening to what we’re saying. And so we’re not going to take their money will turn them away. Sometimes they get upset about that. 563 02:04:35.700 –> 02:04:42.270 Tyler Garns: But that’s actually the best way we can help them if we take their money and do what they’re asking us to do to build the funnel or whatever. 564 02:04:43.020 –> 02:04:50.430 Tyler Garns: We’re not doing them any good at all, we’re just, we’re just wasting their money. And so we’ve turned a lot of people away over the years. For those reasons. 565 02:04:51.360 –> 02:04:57.750 Tyler Garns: The next thing is it within our company, you know, we have our set of core values which I defined years ago. 566 02:04:58.050 –> 02:05:10.800 Tyler Garns: And we hire and fire according to those core values. So everyone on my team has to be aligned with these core values and that affects greatly how we operate with our clients so 567 02:05:11.010 –> 02:05:14.400 Tyler Garns: A couple of them. I won’t go through all them, but a couple of them that that I’ll share with you is 568 02:05:14.880 –> 02:05:24.330 Tyler Garns: We’re passionate about helping entrepreneurs succeed and we serve with compassion and so that conversation that we have with the client when we have to tell them, like the bad news, like, Hey, your offers really terrible. Most people.  569 02:05:25.740 –> 02:05:26.610 Todd Staples: Nice. You do it nicely. 570 02:05:26.640 –> 02:05:28.230 Todd Staples: Will you let them down easy.  571 02:05:28.260 –> 02:05:35.430 Tyler Garns: Yeah. Most people are totally fine hearing that news as long as you are delivering it with compassion, like, yeah, we understand 572 02:05:35.790 –> 02:05:46.020 Tyler Garns: And I, I’m very open with our team like about how I run day to day as a business owner and I want them to see all of that because I want them to understand what it’s like 573 02:05:46.560 –> 02:05:50.940 Tyler Garns: So that when they’re talking to our clients they get it. They get the stresses, they get the 574 02:05:51.180 –> 02:05:55.920 Tyler Garns: Time commitments, they get, you know, the weight that’s on their shoulders at all times, they get what it feels like. 575 02:05:56.130 –> 02:06:04.620 Tyler Garns: To get to the end of the month and be worrying about are we going to make payroll this month or not like they get all of that stuff because I share it with them. We talk about it openly all the time. 576 02:06:05.130 –> 02:06:18.150 Tyler Garns: And they’re just people who inherently already are compassionate like that and and that’s really, really important because yet when you have to have those tough conversations with people. If you do it with compassion, then it’s fine. 577 02:06:19.320 –> 02:06:26.760 Tyler Garns: If you don’t even if you think your doing it with compassion, but the compassion is not real, then it comes off rude and people are having. Yeah. 578 02:06:27.330 –> 02:06:33.570 Todd Staples: So it’s real empathy like feeling being able to feel someone else’s pain and and address it. 579 02:06:34.050 –> 02:06:43.530 Tyler Garns: Yeah, yeah. So just as an example, years ago, you know, I had a certain team member who would get off of a phone call with a client and 580 02:06:43.920 –> 02:06:48.210 Tyler Garns: It’d be a really frustrating phone call, because the client is not getting it like he’s giving great advice. 581 02:06:48.540 –> 02:06:55.320 Tyler Garns: And he’s trying to guide the client trying to do the right thing for the client, but the clients not listening. You’re off the phone call. And he’d be like, hi guys such an idiot. 582 02:06:56.220 –> 02:07:13.440 Tyler Garns: And I just elated them. I said, Look, you cannot talk about our clients like that. Yeah, I don’t care if they are a real idiot, you feel like they’re an idiot. Then you’re going to convey that unintentionally to the client. And that was not okay. 583 02:07:14.610 –> 02:07:18.540 Tyler Garns: And that person no longer works with best anymore like it. It 584 02:07:19.710 –> 02:07:22.320 Tyler Garns: I need people who, when they get out that phone call. 585 02:07:22.830 –> 02:07:30.090 Tyler Garns: They’re so bothered internally, because they know what’s right for the client and the clients not listening and they just want so badly to help the client. 586 02:07:30.300 –> 02:07:36.870 Tyler Garns: Understand have success. Right. That’s a totally different feel and approach, even if you say the same thing. It’s going to come off differently. 587 02:07:37.200 –> 02:07:50.520 Todd Staples: Yeah, totally. We honestly we could maybe we should do a whole episode on on mindset because those, those things are so critical. When you like the difference in getting off the call and be like such an idiot. Right. 588 02:07:50.940 –> 02:08:01.230 Todd Staples: And then taking a moment to really feel what it’s like to to maybe be ignorant to something and and no you’re right. Right. So you’re fighting the person on the phone, who probably knows more than you do. 589 02:08:01.590 –> 02:08:07.830 Todd Staples: And you could sound like an idiot in that moment, but we all do that stuff just in different areas of our life. Right, sure. 590 02:08:09.060 –> 02:08:20.160 Todd Staples: So yeah, just the way to look at that from okay they don’t know any better. They think they’re right. I know they’re not so I got to find a way to get through to them, you know, 591 02:08:21.060 –> 02:08:28.650 Tyler Garns: Yeah, there’s that as an analogy that I read in a little booklet that I was given by Lisa Sasevich  and I can’t remember who wrote the book, but it’s talking about how 592 02:08:29.160 –> 02:08:34.710 Tyler Garns: We’ve all seen this happen in our house a fly gets in the house. It makes its way to the window because that’s where the light is 593 02:08:35.190 –> 02:08:51.810 Tyler Garns: And the fly is trying to get outside and it’s flying into the window over and over and over, because it sees the light out there. And eventually what happens the flight dies, even if you have like the door open right next to the window that flies gonna die trying to go through that window. 594 02:08:52.980 –> 02:09:03.030 Tyler Garns: Because it doesn’t realize that there’s a door right right around the corner. Right. And like you said, we all. We all fall into that trap and our clients sometimes are in that trap. 595 02:09:03.810 –> 02:09:09.870 Tyler Garns: Not because they’re idiots, just because they haven’t been taught or they don’t know any better, or just because of the pressure 596 02:09:10.170 –> 02:09:15.900 Tyler Garns: Of the business and everything else going on in their lives is so all consuming that they can’t see that those adore around the corner. 597 02:09:16.350 –> 02:09:21.030 Tyler Garns: And so that’s our that’s our goal. And our mission is to help them to guide them around the corner. 598 02:09:21.570 –> 02:09:33.270 Tyler Garns: And help them get out of that trap and be like, hey, there is a door to freedom. It’s over here. It looks a little different than what you were trying to do, but just just trust us. It’s everything’s gonna be okay. Yeah. 599 02:09:33.570 –> 02:09:44.250 Todd Staples: Yeah, you might have to stop flying for your life. Just for a second one is the intensity of building and running a business. It’s a lot so it’s hard to shake that 600 02:09:47.310 –> 02:09:53.370 Todd Staples: That intensity sometimes in order to get the clear mind to think of what the right move is 601 02:09:54.630 –> 02:09:57.000 Todd Staples: Sure. So, um, 602 02:09:58.140 –> 02:10:02.850 Todd Staples: The strategy part. So that’s not developed yet. That’s something that’s in the works. 603 02:10:03.090 –> 02:10:04.500 Tyler Garns: Yeah, I mean we we have a 604 02:10:04.560 –> 02:10:10.110 Tyler Garns: We have a framework of that internally that we utilize for our internal team to manage things with their clients. 605 02:10:10.920 –> 02:10:21.420 Tyler Garns: But like I said, we’re, we’re going to in the future, create a whole service to teach this externally to people, you know, for whatever reason, I feel like that’s just a 606 02:10:22.200 –> 02:10:39.030 Tyler Garns: God given gift that I have is be able to kind of break things down for people and to simple terms, so they can understand what their next steps are. And so I really want to teach that externally to the entire world really but that’s that’s coming 607 02:10:40.380 –> 02:10:42.030 Todd Staples: That’s excellent. That’s excellent. So Tyler I have, you know, pretty good understanding of your, your history with Infusionsoft. In particular, but maybe you can tell a little bit about that story and 625 02:12:46.350 –> 02:12:58.530 Todd Staples: You know where the position you find yourself in the success you had there and what you learned about building, building a team rapidly building a team and scaling your business and the and the approach that it took to get that done. 626 02:12:59.160 –> 02:13:06.600 Tyler Garns: Yeah. Cool. So what one part of the story that you may not know is that before I started at Infusionsoft. I was actually doing I was working for a pharmaceutical company. 627 02:13:07.020 –> 02:13:09.300 Tyler Garns: pharmaceutical sales and 628 02:13:10.440 –> 02:13:16.170 Tyler Garns: I had prior to that been in the internet industry, you know, internet marketing stuff. 629 02:13:17.370 –> 02:13:27.480 Tyler Garns: But got into pharmaceutical sales and while I was doing that kind of kept sharp on mine, and that skills. I was, you know, had a little side business doing websites for small businesses and things like that. 630 02:13:28.050 –> 02:13:40.860 Tyler Garns: Thought that I was going to leave pharmaceuticals and go do that. But, you know. Luckily, my wife talked me out of it told me I was stupid. And she was, she was right. That would have been a disaster for our family, but eventually I ended up getting a job at Infusionsoft and 631 02:13:41.910 –> 02:13:47.640 Tyler Garns: I had, I had heard about it was intrigued wasn’t sure I wanted to commit wasn’t sure I wanted to leave the 632 02:13:48.060 –> 02:13:58.110 Tyler Garns: You know, cushy lifestyle of a pharmaceutical rep with all the benefits and go work at this like internet startup that, you know, had a very unsure future. So what I did is I went out there. 633 02:13:58.620 –> 02:14:04.980 Tyler Garns: To Arizona. I was living in California. At the time, went to Arizona for a week and just spent a week in the office just 634 02:14:05.760 –> 02:14:15.750 Tyler Garns: Observing and learning and trying to figure out what they were all about. And by the end of the week I had put together a whole like kind of marketing plan presented to the CEO said, hey, I want to work here. 635 02:14:16.170 –> 02:14:20.430 Tyler Garns: Here’s what I can do for you truth of the matter is I had no idea what I was doing. Like I was, you know, 636 02:14:20.970 –> 02:14:27.840 Tyler Garns: I wasn’t totally like I was gonna say I wasn’t lying. I’d had enough experience that I knew. Like you know some of the basic pieces. 637 02:14:28.080 –> 02:14:36.000 Tyler Garns: But I’d never done that at a big company before right i i played around with this stuff like on my own sites and things. So I had no like real 638 02:14:36.630 –> 02:14:51.090 Tyler Garns: Proven history to do what I was proposing to them that I was going to do. Um, but they bought into it, which is great and I got a job and started there as the Internet Marketing Manager, which is basically a glorified term for like the webmaster 639 02:14:55.050 –> 02:14:56.370 Todd Staples: How many people were at the company at the time. 640 02:14:57.150 –> 02:14:58.530 Tyler Garns: About 40 people 641 02:14:59.340 –> 02:15:04.890 Todd Staples: Because now they’re they’re $100 million your business, at least. Right. Yeah, exactly. 642 02:15:05.760 –> 02:15:11.820 Tyler Garns: So about 40 people the marketing department was like three people. It was the marketing director 643 02:15:13.050 –> 02:15:20.190 Tyler Garns: Me and the graphic designer oh four people. And then there was like a marketing coordinator who just did whatever right 644 02:15:21.300 –> 02:15:32.190 Tyler Garns: Until about two weeks after I started though they let go, that the marketing director. He wasn’t performing, I guess. So I went into the VP at the time. I said, hey, look. 645 02:15:33.960 –> 02:15:41.400 Tyler Garns: I’m gonna, I want that director job and I’ve known him for years. He kind of laughed at me, said, hey, I appreciate the you know the 646 02:15:42.390 –> 02:15:51.600 Tyler Garns: Fact that you’re kind of going after it the aggressiveness, or whatever. But you’re not ready. And I said, Okay, well, I’ll just fill that role until you realize that I am ready and you start paying me for it. 647 02:15:54.360 –> 02:15:57.660 Todd Staples: I love that. I mean they had to hire someone anyway right they needed someone to enroll. 648 02:15:58.050 –> 02:16:02.730 Tyler Garns: Right, so about a month later he comes to me. He’s like, All right, you. You’ve earned it, you’ve proven yourself your good. 649 02:16:04.080 –> 02:16:14.670 Tyler Garns: But so then I was director of marketing and eventually the VP of Marketing at Infusionsoft. We grew from about 4 million to like 30 million in annual sales. 650 02:16:15.090 –> 02:16:32.520 Tyler Garns: During those few years that I was there. And it was a ton of fun. That was super exciting is really, you know, fast paced growth environment. You know, I learned so much during that period. It’s insane so much about leadership about hiring about managing people about marketing itself. 651 02:16:33.960 –> 02:16:46.170 Tyler Garns: You know, we were really, really disciplined with our marketing, advertising approach. And I think that’s a big reason why we were successful in those early days, and it was just awesome was a great experience.  652 02:16:46.200 –> 02:17:03.870 Todd Staples: Yeah. That’s really neat. Did you so a lot of what we do with with Scrimmage with the Scrimmage mobile platform is in onboarding and training, but I, I bet I know the answer this question, did you build out internal campaigns with Infusionsoft to do training at the company. 653 02:17:04.950 –> 02:17:07.230 Tyler Garns: at Infusionsoft. We didn’t. 654 02:17:07.290 –> 02:17:09.180 Todd Staples: Oh, I thought you would have. I thought you would have turned 655 02:17:09.600 –> 02:17:12.960 Todd Staples: Out on that and built out a whole internal marketing like automation. 656 02:17:13.350 –> 02:17:20.820 Tyler Garns: You would, you would think so, but we were just such a like scrappy like fast paced company. There was just never time for that. 657 02:17:21.210 –> 02:17:34.350 Tyler Garns: It was kind of an ongoing joke that like you learn Infusionsoft just on the job, figuring it out like there was no training and we were almost kind of proud of that is like if you can’t come in and learn it on your own then you don’t belong here kind of thing. 658 02:17:34.710 –> 02:17:41.430 Tyler Garns: Yeah, yeah. It’s really silly looking back, but it, it worked in those early days, it required people to come in and really just dive in and 659 02:17:41.850 –> 02:17:53.370 Tyler Garns: get their feet wet. Now I have done that a box out, we absolutely have that in my current company. We have a full onboarding process. You know, we don’t use anything like Scrimmage because I didn’t know anything about it, but we use 660 02:17:55.800 –> 02:18:06.090 Tyler Garns: WordPress plugin called mem barium that connects with Infusionsoft automates the whole process of, you know, the learning management system and walking people through everything they need to know as an employee and all that kind of stuff. 661 02:18:06.570 –> 02:18:11.520 Todd Staples: Oh. That’s very cool. Well, that’s a good transition. We can transition into, you know, after Infusionsoft. And they’ve 662 02:18:12.480 –> 02:18:22.590 Todd Staples: dabbled in some one on one consulting and some launches. And now, now you’re doing box out marketing. So we can dive into that and tell me a little bit about what’s going on there. Yeah. 663 02:18:22.830 –> 02:18:24.390 Tyler Garns: So so box, how it’s been 664 02:18:25.470 –> 02:18:38.550 Tyler Garns: For, you know, since 2014 has been a full done for you agency, you know, where we build campaigns we develop the strategy we write the copy we build the landing pages set up everything and Infusionsoft etc so 665 02:18:39.180 –> 02:18:48.870 Tyler Garns: That’s been the core of the business. We’ve done a lot of other things, but that’s that’s the core of who we’ve been at box out for the last six years.  667 02:19:02.610 –> 02:19:09.540 Todd Staples: That’s really cool. Um, alright, well, Tyler. This has been great. I really appreciate you coming on. It’s always great to hear. 668 02:19:10.140 –> 02:19:22.890 Todd Staples: As soon as you do have the marketing strategy school or training program or whatever you end up exactly releasing I’d love to know about it and share it, and we’ll add it to the show notes here.  669 02:19:23.010 –> 02:19:29.940 Tyler Garns: I’ll let you know and let you know. And those who are interested in that kind of help and training. You know, I would suggest following 670 02:19:30.570 –> 02:19:40.650 Tyler Garns: You know, our blog or our social media profiles and things like that because we are putting content out there. It’s just not organized like the way it will be when we put it all together as the product. 671 02:19:40.860 –> 02:19:48.150 Todd Staples: Yeah, and you have I’ve, I can speak from experience that your content, you’ve released a script you give away a lot of lot of really good stuff. 672 02:19:49.020 –> 02:19:58.530 Todd Staples: Thanks so awesome. And that’s boxoutmarketing.com right that’s right. All right. And well, good to see you. But thanks so much. And we’ll be in touch. 673 02:19:58.920 –> 02:20:00.210 Tyler Garns: Alright, thanks. I appreciate it. The post 043 – 5 Things You Must Know About Marketing Strategy with Tyler Garns appeared first on Learn to Win | The Scrimmage Podcast.

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