#156 - Andrew Sykes | The Power of Habits & Building Trust

[00:00:03] This is the Let's Grab Coffee Podcast and I'm your host George Khalife. Andrew, good morning. Welcome to the Let's Grab Coffee Podcast. I appreciate you being on the show man. George, it's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to have a conversation with you.

[00:00:17] For folks who don't know, I'll get to how I know you and how I've gotten to know you. Andrew Sykes, you're a salesperson, entrepreneur, speaker. You're a behavior change expert and you've been doing that for 30 years. We'll get to some of the nuances.

[00:00:33] What I found super interesting is you started your career building one of South Africa's largest health care consulting companies. And among all of this, I mean these are just tidbits for folks listening but you're also an inspiring poet which I kind of love. You had to throw

[00:00:48] that creative nut in there. It took a while for it to come out of that picture. It's a long way from where I started my life professionally. You're a man of many talents my friend. The personal context is, so actually I think some

[00:01:03] of my co-sponsors know I just finished an executive MBA, dual program through Kellogg and Shulik. A bunch of my friends in my cohort ended up taking your course which is world-renowned. It's kind of the top 10 course in the US called Entrepreneurial Selling.

[00:01:17] They loved it. They were sort of raving about it after they took the course. And I just remember, I kept hearing about this amazing prof who taught them how to story tell better and how to present and be more magnetic. And he'd always show up

[00:01:30] in the most eccentric suits. And I was like out of all the courses I missed, that's the one that I, you know, as someone who loves fast shirts, who loves suits, I'm like, this is the guy I missed taking a course with. So personally I was bummed.

[00:01:43] And then I ended up meeting you through a mutual event that we went which was the Economic Club of Chicago through a mutual friend, Elk, who was kind of enough to invite us both. So I ended up meeting you there and here we are now.

[00:01:56] Yeah. Well, I hope you'll come back and audit the course one day. I'm sure you'll love it. And it is such a beautiful course to teach because although it is about entrepreneurial selling, the art of being able to sell

[00:02:09] someone on an idea before you even built the product when you have no customers, not no track record, like how do you do that? As many people say about the course, it's really inquiry into what it means to be a magnetic trustworthy human

[00:02:25] being because in the end as an entrepreneur, you're selling you rather than or before you're selling the product that is yet to be built or yet to be bought by anyone. Why this word, by the way, I keep seeing it like when I was kind of doing

[00:02:40] a bit of the homework beforehand, I kept seeing a focus not only on the word magnetic, but you'd always have it in caps. Yes. Why is this so important to you and everything you sort of talk about?

[00:02:50] Well, in the context of sales, but I would say this is true also for leadership and just for how you live your life. Half of the battle is getting time or earning time with people. There's so much data on how customers do all of this research

[00:03:06] before they interact with salespeople that don't really look forward to spending time with salespeople. They want the interaction to be short and transactional. Just tell me the price. I've done my research and all of that is born out of this fear

[00:03:18] that I'm going to be working with someone who can't be trusted, who's self-interested and who's just going to try and manipulate me to buy something I don't need. Well, what's the antidote to that? Is having the kind of personality, the way of being that occurs for people as

[00:03:35] well, I just want to be around George. There's something charismatic and interesting about him that makes him my kind of person and I'm happy to spend the time and listen to him and learn from him. But the reason I choose magnetic versus charismatic

[00:03:52] is a reminder that magnets have two poles and they are as repulsive as they are attractive. And the why I think that matters is as a salesperson and as a leader, as a human,

[00:04:06] it's worthwhile remembering if you have a strong enough point of view that makes you unique and interesting, you're also going to be a real turnoff to certain people. And can you design how you show up so that you're charismatic to the people that you need to be,

[00:04:24] potential customers or your team, and maybe repulsive to the people that aren't in your target market, not because you want to be sort of mean to anyone or exclude them from your network,

[00:04:39] but just so that you can be focused on the people you are trying to help in life and distinguish the buyers from the shoppers. Because as that old saying goes, like if you're trying to be everything to everybody, you end up being nothing to anyone.

[00:04:57] It's interesting you bring charisma. I didn't actually put, sort of compare the two even remotely close. But now that you say it, the one thing that I'm thinking about is in your opinion, full transparency, do you think magnetism just like charisma?

[00:05:12] Is it something that someone is sort of innately born with? Because when I think of charisma, that's what I think about. And I know some people can improve on that spectrum. But to be honest, you can kind of tell when someone's manufacturing charisma,

[00:05:24] whereas when someone walks in the room, you're just like, man, that person has it. Yeah. Well, I would say that manufactured charisma is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as real charisma because it does have that feeling like this person is just somehow, luckily unique and interesting.

[00:05:47] But I'm going to tell you, at least through my personal experience and having taught this for a long time and seen that people can acquire the skill of being charismatic and magnetic. I'm of the view that every skill and every skill leads to a personality trait.

[00:06:03] So every personality trait is an acquirable thing. I would say genius is built and not born. Charisma is developed and not lucky. In a sense, I've come to view it almost as insulting when people say, you know,

[00:06:18] you should meet George. He's one of the most charismatic, interesting human beings. He's so lucky he's talented. Don't call someone talented because the truth is what you see as talented misses the thousands of hours of effort and coging and blood, sweat and tears

[00:06:37] that led to this apparently lucky trait. So yeah, I'm all in on the view that charisma among many skills is learnable. And when it's learned, it's no longer inauthentic charisma. It's just who you are.

[00:06:51] Yeah, it's very true. I mean, now that you think, now that you say it and I'm trying to think more about it. I think even if someone that's a has more personality traits that lend towards being more charismatic,

[00:07:04] I even think to myself like I also, whether it was what binging late night shows and kind of watching how you know their mannerisms when they're interviewing guests or going to thousands of events and also kind of honing how you have conversations in different settings in different contexts.

[00:07:22] I mean, I never thought of that as actual training, you know, because it was something that I had to do for work or enjoy doing on sort of on the side. But yeah, over time, you sort of get better without noticing.

[00:07:33] You do. And I would call that accidental practice. Whereas if you're deliberate, you start with the intention and say how might I decode and annotate a model of excellence of what charisma looks like? Like what do charismatic people actually do?

[00:07:51] Now there's that famous story of Marilyn Monroe walking down the street with one of her friends and like no one's noticing her and her friends asks about it and she says, well, I'm not Marilyn right now, but I could just turn it on.

[00:08:04] And a friend is understandably skeptical about it and she says, watch this and just becomes Marilyn. And in a moment people like start coming up to her and falling over and asking her for an autograph and that kind of thing just occurs for the rest of us.

[00:08:21] Like how is that even possible that the same person can just turn on this trait of magnetism? But I believe like every skill being able to do it is different from actually doing it. And you can choose to be charismatic or choose not to be.

[00:08:37] And so I've been a lifelong student of asking this question, what are the most charismatic people do? And for a long time I would say I got it wrong by making what I think is the common mistake that charisma equals extroversion.

[00:08:53] And what I've noticed is captured by that are the favorite saying of mine to be interesting, be interested. And many of the people I've seen as charismatic in the way that people gravitate towards them aren't always the ones like a late night host talking and loud and funny

[00:09:14] and they often are just quiet and they ask phenomenal questions and then listen to you like their life depends on it. Right, and they're sort of drawing you in, they're drawing in the audience. People often talk about Bill Clinton as being one of the most charismatic humans

[00:09:31] and the thing that people say about him when they met him is how they felt and people say the same about Nelson Mandela, another great listener and personal hero of mine given that I come from South Africa. They said the same thing about both of them.

[00:09:46] When we met him I felt like I was the only person in the room of maybe 200 people and we had this connection where you just wanted to know about me and who I am. And that's so humbling, I think the more prestige and fame people have

[00:10:01] the more disarming it is when they just take time to listen and care about someone who is otherwise unimportant to them. Yeah, I can imagine the scene where like let's say if that were the case

[00:10:15] and you would expect, let's say randomly I walk and I meet someone who let's say is a celebrity and you're like wow I just want to say hi or take a picture

[00:10:24] and they stop and give you that five minutes and you're like oh god what do I say now? I didn't expect them to actually walk to listen. Yeah, and you know I can understand and thankfully I'm not famous in any way shape or form

[00:10:37] but I can understand people who have these big personal or let's say public lives that it must be really annoying to have people coming up to you all the time. So it takes a discipline and a generosity to stop and speak to someone

[00:10:54] who's bugging you for an autograph while you're trying to catch a plane or something. This switch on switch off, you know back to Marilyn Monroe example. For those who may not know Andrew as well, I've seen you whenever you sort of have a big event

[00:11:13] a big let's say if you're doing a keynote speech you've done at TechStock, you've spoken at Google. I know you dress mostly like this when you're doing lectures at Kellogg. You have this like famous purple suit, you know and I wonder is that for you

[00:11:28] your switch on switch off Marilyn Monroe? Do you become the Marilyn Monroe? It's a little bit, you know there are a lot of background stories to the purple suit. It began in my 20s just noticing that men are traditionally dressed in black and grey and blue

[00:11:45] and if you're lucky you know a splash of red in a tie and women get to dress in all these beautiful colours and I thought that it was a little unfair and I wanted to equalize the stakes

[00:11:56] and allow it to be true that men could dress in any colour they want. Like every human can be. And then I got the opportunity to teach at Kellogg and our colour is purple of course. Some people say do you dress in purple because you teach at Kellogg?

[00:12:10] I'm like no I came to Kellogg because I like purple. It's not quite accurate. But there was also an interesting side to that which is I'm also aware given that magnets that have two poles that showing up as a self-professed salesperson

[00:12:27] in a three-piece purple suit occurs for many people like you're just one of those walking slick shmucks. I don't trust you as far as I can see you and I know I have a smile that looks like I'm hiding something.

[00:12:41] So there is a very clear persona that is the antithesis of trust and I teach trust a lot. So in a sense I get to play with this when I start a class and I can see some people are just looking at me like who is this guy?

[00:12:55] And I try to embody through the way I teach what it takes to dig your way out of a trust hole which is what all of us have to do when we meet someone and they have assumed or judged us to be untrustworthy

[00:13:09] because we're a salesperson or because we're a politician or because we're an entrepreneur with an agenda or a sales leader with a presumed hidden agenda. We're very quick to judge people as having bad intentions. And how do you get over that?

[00:13:24] So the Purple Suit is a fun game I get to play with myself. Can I get over the interesting first impression? Very cool. It's almost as if though I know you also like to wear suits generally

[00:13:38] and I feel like you're also leveraging it to make a statement to sort of showcase your learnings. Let me physically show you how this would look like. True. And then the course that your friends and colleagues took, it's a five day course

[00:13:53] but the MBA version of it is 10 weeks. And so over 10 weeks I have the opportunity to wear a different coloured suit for eight weeks. And then in week nine I show up in jeans and a t-shirt and a worn leather jacket

[00:14:09] and instead of standing at the front of the room presenting like a professional speaker I sit and I cross my arms and the effect is jarring. And it's a visual way of making the point like how you choose to show up and how people relate to you.

[00:14:28] And there's a big conversation in America in particular about being authentic and being your true self and not letting anyone tell you how to dress or show up empathise with a lot of that particularly my female colleagues and people of colour

[00:14:43] who have been told that they are not appropriate in some way to help with that. And you do have a choice of how you design yourself as a gift for other people. And I think it's a humble thing to ask yourself the question

[00:15:00] how do I have to or how do I get to dress, speak and show up so that George goes home tonight and says to his wife it was a joy to meet Andrew can you have that impact on people like Maya Angelou said

[00:15:16] they'll forget what you said and what you did but they'll never forget how you made them feel. Can you do that for someone else? Yeah 100% are you a fan of Guy Ritchie by the way Andrew? A little yeah. You know the director?

[00:15:28] Yeah he's also a very, and you can kind of tell in his movies most notably let's say the recent one, Gentleman, King Richard I believe but he always focuses on dressing up people.

[00:15:39] Like you can tell both men and women like you can see their outfits are over the top they're amazing top of the line fashion suits very sort of traditional and nice and he was on a I think the Joe Ogan podcast if I'm not mistaken

[00:15:51] and he was just he was talking about why that's so important to him and he showed up in a three piece you know and Joe was sitting there in a shirt jeans like Levi's jeans and a hat with a fanny pack

[00:16:00] and he's like why are you so overdressed dude this is a podcast like relax a little bit and he you know Guy was saying that to him it's almost like the modern day armor

[00:16:14] you know he's wearing a suit so he's talking about men but he's saying that yeah in today's world you seldom see that and for him it's a sign of respect

[00:16:21] like he's showing up to this and if I come and I'm doesn't always necessarily have to be a suit but really what he's saying is if I come and I show you that I'm prepared and I'm tidy and I took care of myself and I put myself together

[00:16:33] and I know I shower I did my hair I clean my beard I put on a suit I took the time to show up for you and that sort of communicates something that this isn't just in a regular meeting.

[00:16:46] Now I have had the experience so when I've shown up especially to technology companies where the dress code is sort of shorts and t-shirts and it turned out to have been a mistake

[00:16:59] to be overdressed in that sense and so my rule of thumb is taking a leaf out of Guy Richie's book show respect by being dressed to the same level as your customers are plus one level moral formality or maybe two at most

[00:17:15] but you know if I show up to I don't know 4th of July party where everyone's in shorts and t-shirts and I'm wearing a tuxedo that goes from being well dressed and prepared to just downright weird so there is a balance there.

[00:17:27] Yeah you talk a lot about both the 10 week and the 5 day you know the MBA or MBA course a lot of it is on trust. I'm curious when students walk into your classroom I want to ask two things in terms of

[00:17:41] how do they what are their misconceptions, sorry one the first one what are their misconceptions about trust over the course of your teaching career that you've seen is so common that people get wrong.

[00:17:53] There are a couple of them first and probably the most dangerous is the assumption that I am trustworthy because I tell the truth I have good intentions and I keep my promises

[00:18:07] and you know when I say that I'm guessing your response is well of course that makes you trustworthy Andrew and my response would be that those things good intentions telling the truth and keeping your promises are indeed worthy of trust.

[00:18:22] However, when people judge you as trustworthy or not it happens before you've made or kept a promise it happens before they've had the data on which to judge are you telling the truth and it happens based on their perceptions of your intentions not the reality.

[00:18:42] So the truth is people judge you as trustworthy or not based on a bunch of false signals in the milliseconds to minutes when they meet you and it's unfair and such is life. So that's the first one is there is a big difference between having integrity

[00:18:59] which is truthfulness or honesty, good intentions and keeping your word and assessed trustworthiness which is someone's judgment of you made on false signals. So that's one and what flows from that is the second misperception and we've all felt this and so we believe it to be true

[00:19:20] that trust takes time to build and all the research says no it doesn't it happens in literally milliseconds maybe minutes can it grow over time absolutely but when we think we are taking time to build trust often all we're doing is

[00:19:35] climbing out of a trust hole and that does take months. You know if you've met someone and something that they did in the first impression has you not like them or not trust them and you can't really put your finger on it

[00:19:49] you're going to interpret everything they say through that lens and it will take months for you to change your mind if their first impression is poor. So I would say those are two things that are really true about the misperceptions of trust

[00:20:03] and then when it comes to the overarching goal of the course the misperception that flows from that about what it means to sell people come into the course thinking they're going to learn the skills of influencing someone to buy something

[00:20:20] and my view is to sell is to help another human being make progress in their lives it's a generous service opportunity and if you think about sales like that it gets you out of this icky feeling that people have dealing with salespeople and being a salesperson

[00:20:38] I think it's something to be very proud of it's like a generous, honest, wonderful occupation if done well. Yeah, so much in there I mean it's also a stick to the last point it's also a bit more difficult than people you know sometimes realize

[00:20:55] in all of its sort of detailed activities and not all of it is sexy and fun and you put on a taxi and you go to an event like that's you do that maybe as an ancillary piece of your overall function but it's hard and it's emotional

[00:21:09] and I think one of the reasons people struggle so much is many careers reward knowledge acquisition so if you're an engineer or a physician or a lawyer the more you know the better you get paid generally in sales knowing too much is sometimes

[00:21:27] I wouldn't say it's a disadvantage because I do think knowledge is power but selling is a set of embodied skills and it's not what you learn at university and it's not what you learn by reading a book or reading research papers

[00:21:41] you only acquire embodied skills by the doing of them like you said earlier lots and lots of reps of meeting people and seeing what works and what doesn't or better having a coach who can guide you on these behavioral skills

[00:21:55] so that you're matching how you behave with what you know and they're in balance I think it's very common for salespeople to as they say show up and throw up and try and demonstrate that they should be trusted because of how much they know

[00:22:11] no one trusts you because of how much you know they trust you because of how you make them feel it's very true my I don't know if I've told you this but my wife is a clinical psychologist and I often joke with her I'm like

[00:22:25] I regard what I do more as relational selling working for a stock exchange connecting people to get their desired outcome so it's not necessarily product sales it's maybe you're selling a platform let's say for companies to get on to race capital

[00:22:39] but I joke with her often that I feel like I'm more of a therapist when I talk to CEOs of companies I'm literally sitting there and just listening I'm like what are you going through? what are some pain points? where can I help?

[00:22:50] and I'm listening and I'm listening and I used to and I learned this a lot from my wife and I used to much like many of us in business we were very quick to propose a solution you know and she taught me like the art of venting

[00:23:03] like sometimes George people just need space you know give them the space and they'll actually reveal a lot more to you and you can then use that not necessarily in a malicious way by any means but it's more so that it's your solution back to them is tailored

[00:23:16] in a way that is actually helpful for what they need today not necessarily when you're suggesting like just kind of spitting the salesperson who just gets on the call and like hey this is a product I'm sure you need it and we can lower the price and

[00:23:30] you know that's very interesting you raised that I think your wife's obviously very wise I would say maybe a hundred times in my career I've had a customer say to me in a conversation Andrew this feels like therapy and I the first few times that happened

[00:23:48] I'm like maybe I've been a little bit too personal and now when it happens I get this internal and probably a big external grin on my face because what I've come to realise is when selling feels like therapy you're doing it right because wouldn't you want a salesperson

[00:24:06] to really care about who you are and what you're trying to achieve in life and how you feel about it and how you are already thinking about solving the problem before they dare to tell you how it should be done

[00:24:18] like none of us like being told what to do especially by a salesperson whose motives we may not trust yet right and they're incentivised in a different way what are some of those people often say why are salespeople the least trustworthy profession in every survey and they are

[00:24:36] and I would say a little bit of it is explained by some bad salespeople's bad behaviour and our experience of that as buyers but a lot of it has to do with the fact that we all know salespeople are paid commission and so we all assume salespeople have

[00:24:54] a motive that isn't in our interest which is why I also say to leaders when I'm teaching leadership to sell is to lead and to lead is to sell and you have the same trust problem as a leader as you do as a salesperson

[00:25:10] although you may not be known to make commission leaders are assumed to have bad intentions because they're assumed to have hidden agendas or you know a motive for the company that supersedes the motive for employees as soon as someone suspects your motive is not in their best interests

[00:25:30] they put you in that trust hole whether you're a leader clinical psychologist or a salesperson Yeah, that's so true I face this as well and I don't know what you think of this but one thing that's really worked for me is that I'm not a CEO

[00:25:48] of this sort of hole especially on the incentive side and just mentioned to a CEO or a founder who may be a prospect how I'm incentivized not necessarily in detail but I will say in many of my calls I'll say like I'm not an independent advisor

[00:26:04] so you're not paying me anything I'm full-time with the TSX it's important you know that upfront but I am incentivized to help you cross the line and I think it's important to make it harder and make sure this is a seamless process

[00:26:16] you want someone who also has some you know sort of sweat equity in this whole process otherwise the effort isn't matched, let's say Yeah, I do think that one option is revealing the truth of it because they're assuming you have an incentive and so saying yes I do

[00:26:36] and he has heart structured but I think what I'm hearing in how you describe that is the other piece I would talk about which is why you do what you do and my default is to focus on that more than any conversation about compensation

[00:26:52] because the question people are asking is George who are you and what do you want and unless you address that they're going to assume you're a salesperson wanting to maximize your commission so give them the answer to that question and the answer isn't

[00:27:06] I'm a salesperson trying to maximize commission the answer is I'm a financial advisor who really cares about the outcome for my clients or I'm a professor at a business school because I love the opportunity to change the way that people think about trust in their lives

[00:27:24] tell people why you do what you do so they don't have to guess because if they guess they're going to assume it's for personal self-interest Yeah, yeah and also showing them that's a really good point but now I'm reflecting on what it is that I usually say

[00:27:40] and for me it's actually building a successful market and in fact I let them know very honestly it doesn't do me any good if let's say you do go public in the Midwest the market I cover and you end up failing miserably so it's my

[00:27:56] whether it's selfish or even if you think it's genuine or not it's in my best interest to make sure that you do very very well and I see you grow so whether you believe me or not it sort of disarms the conversation you know

[00:28:10] And George it's such a big deal you asked what do students expect when they come into my course and then what do they get they are certainly not expecting a three hour conversation about how you design the first three minutes of meeting someone

[00:28:26] they're like are you kidding me Andrew it's just meeting someone let's get on to the real stuff like how to sell and my response to that is that 90% of a sale is over in the first hour when you meet someone

[00:28:40] and in that first hour that I call the golden hour 90% of the magic happens in the first five minutes the platinum five minutes of a meeting with someone and if you have not in your life spend time designing your first five minutes when you meet someone

[00:28:56] given you'll meet 10,000 people in your life what a missed opportunity are you just going to go through life and hope that you'll make it up on the spot and it will be awesome or do you respect people enough to be deliberate about how you design your first impression

[00:29:12] so we spend three hours just on what exactly do you do for the first milliseconds and then the first 10 seconds and then the small talk and then how do you answer the question what do you do because we're always asked that and most people completely blow that opportunity

[00:29:28] what are your favorite go-to's for your five minutes say this is a prospect calls the first time you ever talk to me what are some of those kind of triggers for you that you love to bring up well I think there are three things that I've learned

[00:29:44] to do that I didn't do naturally and I don't think many of us do naturally the one is make it easy for people to remember your name and I know that sounds trouble we all or many of us say I'm bad at remembering names

[00:29:56] it's nonsense we all have a good memory what we're bad at doing is either paying attention when we meet someone so we hear their name or actually I believe the fault lies on the other side we're bad at introducing ourselves because mostly people say something like

[00:30:10] hey George I'm Andrew Sykes nice to meet you and you've had no warning that my name is coming I've given you my first and my last name I rushed through it and you were distracted because you're worrying about introducing yourself so what I've learned to do is instead

[00:30:26] of saying I'm first last name I say my name is and I pause a little to check that you're ready to hear it and then I just share my first name Andrew you know people roll their eyes when they hear this and then I challenge them

[00:30:44] to go and do it and they're amazed by the difference it makes so that's the first thing the second thing I think is choosing to stand apart by having the courage not to say how are you or rather given that it's so ingrained in us to catch

[00:31:02] yourself when you say how are you and let it be a trigger to ask a more interesting connection question and here's the opportunity you and I work together for 10 years George if every day I see you I say how are you George and you say

[00:31:16] fun things Andrew how are you and I say fun things and we go to our discs and years later our relationship is veneerthin but if I say George I just came back from a dad daughter trip with my daughter Caroline to New York

[00:31:30] we had an amazing time may I ask you what was one of your favorite vacations as a kid or as a parent if you have kids and the interesting thing about asking a very specific connection question is I think as humans we tend to

[00:31:48] assume people are very different based on how we look our age our ethnicity our race our gender I'm of the view that human beings are almost the same people underneath all of that and all it takes is to remind someone of that is to surface

[00:32:02] some part of our common humanity so if I say George what's your favorite book and what impact did it have on your life your answer will be different from mine but the fact that we both have a favorite book suddenly I'm thinking you know

[00:32:16] George is my kind of guy we both love books well at least we both have a favorite book so that's my second thing is be more interesting than asking simply how are you and then the third big thing for me is when someone says what do you do

[00:32:30] have a three sentence story that shows why you do what you do not a resume summary which more than likely has people assume you're a interested sales person or a self interested leader I'll give you the difference imagine you're going for surgery tomorrow got two choices of surgeon

[00:32:54] surgeon A says hey George I've done this procedure 50,000 times I get the best clinical outcomes in the whole industry I make a lot of money doing this can't wait to cut you open tomorrow no boy or surgeon B says George when I was 10 years old my older brother

[00:33:12] died from this disease and I promised myself no other family would suffer the same outcome I get good clinical outcomes and I'm looking forward to working with you tomorrow who would you choose of course the latter yeah and the truth is based on the data you should choose

[00:33:28] doctor A more and better outcomes paid better maybe as a proxy for quality but we are suckers for a story because all we really want to know when we meet someone is why do you do what you do because that answers the question who are you

[00:33:44] and that's what we're afraid of like we're afraid you're not a friend you're an enemy you're not an ally you're a risk yeah that personal touch can I share a quick story yeah please so one of the courses that we had was like an M&A course

[00:34:02] and the final project you're putting in a group and you're sort of pitching to potential sellers so you're acquiring and everybody that comes up with their own price their own valuation and you come up with a story and you present and they pick

[00:34:16] they do some Q&A they sort of hound you at the end and we were in a pretty tough let's say cohort of different presentations really good all very good one of them was super analytical Andrew exactly like the first doctor you were talking about

[00:34:30] had like six different rows of potential prices and it was a little bit confusing but it was so technical and masterful and one of the guys one of the guys who was in that group comes from the PE background like it was very solid work

[00:34:46] and we ended up presenting and I remember in our slide deck I put a picture of my wife and I in Ireland you know because this was to acquire potentially a hotel booking site and before we even started talking about pricing and valuation

[00:35:00] and my kid just wanted to share a quick story my wife and I actually got engaged at one of your properties not true it was for the classroom so I'm not saying like obviously try to be genuine and be honest about it but everybody started laughing

[00:35:14] and we ended up being chosen towards the end and I remember the professor saying never discount the importance of a personal touch no matter how important you think a deal is like in this case everybody looked at it and probably was like well why does this even matter

[00:35:26] but if you're a buyer having just even that slight personal edge and differentiation I think goes a long way I'm getting goosebumps listening to that story it's a beautiful story thank you for sharing it and it reminds me of the thing that I say

[00:35:40] as a drumbeat in my entrepreneurial selling course which customers first decide that they want to buy from you before they decide if and what they want to buy from your company and that's a great one quite a profound thing to contemplate because it means

[00:36:00] everything I've got to say about my product and my service and my track record and my case studies and my referral customers none of that matters until and unless someone has decided that they believe you and one of the exercises I do which is quite fun is

[00:36:16] I ask people to draw a circle like a pie graph that represents the billions of facts you know in the world your views on climate change if you're religious your views on that if you're not your political views everything you know about your technical job

[00:36:32] and then I ask people draw for me the slice of that knowledge that you have that you acquired first hand so you believe climate change is real you fluted the north pole you drilled some holes you've cracked at the core you did the analysis or

[00:36:48] did you read a book watch a podcast listen to an influencer and for most people and certainly my answer is 0.00001% of my knowledge is acquired first hand I read it I learned it I listened to someone and if that's true even if your number is 5% it still

[00:37:08] speaks to this rule as humans first we decide whom to trust and that determines what we believe so if you're a leader and you want people to believe you about the vision we have of you're a salesperson you want someone to believe you about

[00:37:24] your product you got one job which is to have them trust you as a human the rest is easy which is why 5 days of entrepreneurial selling is really 5 days of how do you build trust through your first impression how do you drill trust

[00:37:40] by the way you ask questions how do you build trust by the way you listen to feel rather than listen to fix good advice from your wife how do you that's a hard one yeah how do you tell stories instead of

[00:37:54] tell people what to do so they can see for themselves no one likes being told what to do but how do you tell stories in a way that builds trust so it's really just 5 days in the art and science of being the most trustworthy human in every room

[00:38:08] where to you does confidence come into all of this confidence for me is a trait that requires adjustment and what I mean by that is being super confident is attractive to many people but there is a line at which you go from confident to arrogant

[00:38:32] and so I would say there is a level of confidence that's appropriate to the situation the person and the stage of the relationship and there are moments to be bold and there are moments to be humble and it's not either or it's the balance between the two

[00:38:48] so for example listening is an act of humility whereas asking questions done well is an act of boldness so it's the combination of the two and I love the conversation about confidence because one of my favorite pieces of research is that Dunning Kruger

[00:39:10] research to the Dunning Kruger effect the people we know who are incompetent so much so that they can't judge their own incompetence and as a result are super confident we all know like confident idiots in our time and I say I've been one of those in some domains

[00:39:28] so I like the idea that true growth requires that your confidence drops first as you get to see like I thought I had this I don't have this there's a lot more depth to it than I imagined and just in a domain like listening

[00:39:46] most human beings are pretty good listeners but there's a difference between Bill Clinton listening Nelson Mandela listening Oprah Winfrey listening and pretty good and as soon as you get clarity on that gap that we all have I think you lose some confidence

[00:40:04] you're like oh boy this is a lot more complex than I thought yeah that is true and confidence to me much like happiness kind of ebbs and flows yeah I've kind of found actually more recently I don't know I kind of wanted to ask you this

[00:40:20] because I know you are quite of a public figure in your domain and you do these big speeches and you're in front of a large crowd and I know a lot of people struggle with public speaking and they mostly struggle with public speaking

[00:40:34] not necessarily because of the content but because of being in front of other people and facing kind of judgment so I'm curious for you how do you deal and the reason I ask this as a segue is back to the confidence

[00:40:46] confidence to me ebbs and flows a lot in my career and what I found through the help of my wife actually is how do you use vulnerability as a tool and I tried this for the first time I don't know if you've ever it doesn't appear that

[00:41:00] you would ever need to use this but I was trying this was more of a work event and kind of like a theater style room for some reason I don't know what ended up I started feeling very nervous right before I was about to

[00:41:16] go on and kick it off and I kid you not I just looked at everybody kind of paused and I was just like to be honest with you I'm a little nervous not gonna lie and as soon as I said that I just went for the next 30 minutes

[00:41:30] and gave sort of an A plus performance zero nervousness I'm like let me actually just see what happens if I do that and in fact everybody sort of embraced me you know everybody was more engaged and they're like man you know what

[00:41:46] they came up to me after like you didn't seem nervous at all like that was amazing but thank you for being open so curious for you do you ever battle with nervousness how do you coach people through that if they're public speaking awesome question and you just made

[00:42:04] another case for the wisdom of your wife that's what I'll say a couple of ways in as a professional speaker I have had 10 or 15 talks in my life for which I have not been nervous and they've all gone really badly and what I now know is

[00:42:28] that if I'm not nervous before a talk it's because I haven't put it much enough at stake and I'm not taking enough of a risk to get myself into this nervous dare I say almost terrified state and so as crazy as it sounds

[00:42:44] if I show up for a talk and I'm feeling confident and relaxed then I excuse myself I go outside and I start choosing to drop some pieces of my talk and add in new pieces or find some way to add risk into it until I'm nervous again

[00:43:00] because I've found that only when I'm nervous do I deliver fantastically because I believe that nervousness is simply your body's way of telling you you're ready to perform and it's an energy that you can channel now can it collapse you for sure but I think that practice

[00:43:18] is a substitute for courage and practice is how you turn nervousness into performance and one of the ways that I get nervous is by choosing to be vulnerable and you're right vulnerability is a superpower because it is deliberately choosing to put yourself at risk for humiliation and paradoxically

[00:43:40] people love when you're vulnerable and the last anecdote I have a couple of colleagues at Kellogg who are phenomenal speakers and I've had the luxury of having a few of them watch me and give me feedback and two of them Connor Cast who's an amazing marketing professor

[00:44:00] and Suzanne Mution said it in a particular way and my friend and colleague Craig Bortman similar advice they said and this is the just not the actual words Andrew you're too polished and as a result you're unrelatable and so you leave people feeling impressed but not inspired

[00:44:20] so what I recommend is you stop trying so hard to be word perfect and articulate and well-dressed and like all the things that I spend hundreds of hours trying to be and like just be a little bit more human make some mistakes just be relatable

[00:44:38] and why are they right and it really stung that feedback but they nailed it which is we don't like watching someone who leaves us feeling like good for them I'm amazed and impressed by what they can do we love watching someone who leaves us feeling like

[00:44:56] hey if you can do it I can do it and that requires a level of vulnerability and humanness and relatability and that's a skill that I've had to learn because it wasn't my default yeah it's so hard because the default feeling I think for a lot of men

[00:45:12] I don't want to generalize but I can speak for myself is that it makes us feel weak but in that moment I just felt such a sense of relief and imagine I was doing this in front of my boss and his like you know

[00:45:24] two seniors up in my company and I'm just like I don't care I'd rather kind of give it up now and let people see my true cards of how I'm feeling in this moment for whatever reason maybe I'm feeling anxious first

[00:45:36] maybe because I ate dessert before the speech and I forgot and now the insulin is high in that so maybe it's not even the presentation itself but let me just let's call it spades here's how I'm feeling I'm not going to say it today

[00:45:50] but I'm about to give you 100% of who George is in this moment and you know I think that people see it as an act of courage to tell one on yourself to sort of reveal your inner fears because everyone's terrified of public speaking or professional speaking so

[00:46:08] makes you much more relatable I've come to the view that being vulnerable like many things is a skill that you can acquire and the more vulnerable you are the bigger risks you can take in being vulnerable but I've also come to

[00:46:22] talk to my body in a different way you know as you said earlier one of the things I'm aspiring to be is a performance poet I don't really know what that is or whether I'm any good at it one of the poems I wrote is called

[00:46:34] The Butterfly Trap and what I realized is we have three metaphors or phrases for that horrible feeling in your stomach one is I've got a knot in my stomach one is just the description I feel nauseated and one is I've got butterflies in my stomach and

[00:46:54] physically they feel very similar to me but a knot in my stomach ties me down butterflies in my stomach ready to fly so I've started to think about what is my body feeling and how can I tell myself a story about those bodily feelings and empower my performance

[00:47:16] not constrict it I label that as mindset you know I think all a mindset really is in the end is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves so when I'm going on stage I'll now say I'm ready because I'm terrified and I want to throw up

[00:47:32] versus I'm gonna blow this because I want to throw up yeah I wanted to end on thank you for that and thank you for being vulnerable also because I think it's so reassuring both to myself and everyone listening that it is okay it's almost

[00:47:50] not only is normal it's almost it's not normal not to feel nervous and I love hearing that from people who are constantly out and doing this let alone for your full time focus it's so reassuring to hear because you're a practitioner when it comes to public speaking and

[00:48:06] if you out of all people you know also have to deal with this I think we'll all be okay basically if I ever feel completely at ease before a big talk it's time to retire last one for you Andrew and I want to be mindful

[00:48:26] I know we're heading into the weekend here long weekend you I would be remiss not to bring up behaviors I know this deserves another hour podcast which we will do there are a few people I really like to have on for sequels and I already

[00:48:38] can tell this is not an hour conversation only but what sort of behaviors from everything you've learned a 30 year plus career what were the most important behaviors that you've instilled in your own life three things the most powerful life changer for me has been developing

[00:49:00] the habit of listening with empathy listening to feel rather than listening to fix it's number one and number two I would say is leading with story not with facts and figures as a recovering actually and behavioral researcher like I love to me a good fact

[00:49:18] and a good statistic and what it took a long time for me to learn is no one gives a damn unless you can wrap it in a beautiful story and I would say the third and this is was the subject of my book the 11th habit

[00:49:32] is the foundational habit of self care because so many of us especially people who care about other people tend to sacrifice ourselves at the altar of our customers and our companies and our spouses and our kids and it took a while for me to get

[00:49:48] clear like I can't be at the top of my game for forming for other people unless I first invest in my own health happiness and financial security not as an act of selfishness but as an act of service to other people I want to show up feeling

[00:50:06] like a million bucks because then I'll perform versus feeling tired and stressed and exhausted and run down so that took a long time for me to get clear like investing in myself as a gift to other people it's not a take away from other people. Yeah, but the

[00:50:26] God forbid max oxygen mask on first before you help other people but that added just is so important hopefully not enough I wish I had to see this. That succinctly because that may have been what I wanted to say and attend to the words thank you for being

[00:50:40] here. Yours is definitely more uplifting and let's use it, definitely use yours well good sir I have to thank you very much for this inspiring conversation impactful conversation I almost knew this is how it would go having met you very very briefly over dinner

[00:51:00] and I can't thank you enough for all the good work you do and just kind of the positive energy you bring every day and all the content you do on LinkedIn. Yeah George likewise you will have told if you're watching this

[00:51:12] or you would be able to tell if you're watching this I've had a smile on my face for 50 minutes I mean I can feel my cheeks are actually sore and that's for me a great sign I'm in the company of someone who just lovely

[00:51:24] thank you for being there. You found this podcast useful. Make sure to share it out with your community if you haven't already done so subscribe to the podcast and I'll see you next time