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Bonus: Q&A

So I know we covered a lot of stuff, we're happy to skip back to the first section and second section, make sure you guys have everything handled, I'm sure if you have questions in the room, our listeners and viewers back home also have questions. Who's up first? Wow, nice. Yeah. So my question is what if you have, like I do a lot of different things. I have a portfolio career. So like I'm an author, a speaker, I host a podcast, I run an online business, I host retreats, I'm also doing this sort of pivot in my business where I'm moving into the organizational corporate world, so would you recommend having sort of a passel of elevator pitches and pulling out the one that is appropriate it, most relevant to the person that you're talking to, or how do you handle that sort of situation? Absolutely, I mean as you heard from us we had three separate elevator pitches because we're all encountering different people. I know for me, as someone who runs the company, I do a little bit of ...

the coaching but I'm often having to explain to other entrepreneurs what it is they do, or as Jordan is looking to get podcast guests, so he's looking for something different. You know I'm trying to target introverted entrepreneurs who know that they need to be social, so that's why my elevator pitch is really tuned in and focused on that audience, so I would say to make things easy, we can be pulled in seven different directions, we've been doing this for ten years and we tried that and it didn't work. Pick your top three, just go okay these are the three things that get 80 to 90 percent of my energy in a month and really hone those, because that's gonna be the most important. Figuring our that elevator pitch for that one potential person that's two percent of your business is not a good use of your time. Yeah, stay away from those weird twitter bios that are trending now where it's like father, son, follower of this, author, speaker, photographer, actor, singer, model, what do you do? Cause when somebody, like in my shoes, for example sees somebody with seven different job titles, I just assume you work at Equinox folding towels. Ya know, and there's not anything wrong with that, but I assume that you're laying it on thick because you don't want people to think less of you so you're going I'm just gonna list everything that I do, the top three things, think about it like this, are you and author that is leading a retreat or are you someone that leads retreats all the time and you happen to be writing a book about it, right? There's definitely gonna be more of one than the other, almost certainly. And if there's not, then yeah, you're an author and a speaker and a coach, done, no need for, and also I organize filing cabinets, I mean you just have to make sure you're talking about what you want referrals for. So if part of your business that pays the bills isn't necessarily something that you care about doing anymore, that you're winding down, then don't mention it at all because the whole point of introducing yourself, maybe 80 percent, 90 percent is to get referrals or to engage in dialog about that. So you're gonna want to pick what you're gonna talk about and what you want to be known as, because you can't be known as everything. People try and it doesn't work. Thanks. Mine's a similar question but with a little bit of a twist on it, I think one of my roadblocks is the shiny object kind of thing that you talked about, there's always another cool opportunity coming up and I have an interest in it so I kind of throw that out there too. Do you guys have a strategy for kind of not falling victim to that and instead of just picking the top three things that you talk about, actually picking the top three things that you do and focus on? Yeah, absolutely, I mean I know for all of us we have so many different interests and hands in a lot of different fires, especially living in Los Angeles and Jordan's up here, I mean the opportunities are just endless, however, for myself knowing how bad I am at multi tasking and the science is out on it, as human beings, we're generally awful at it, and so the more projects we're taking on, the less attention they get, the more half ass they come out, and then when they come out poorly we end up beating ourselves up and do a whole now because we perform so poorly on something we were so excited about, and it's an endless circle if we allow that to happen. So you're gonna have to pick those battles. But also, AJ and I talk all the time about, and we're looking down the road and it's like, six months, a year, there will be time, it's just finding that right space for it and allowing that to happen. Don't bite off more than you can chew, you'll only upset yourself. Yeah the best advice I ever received in this, and it kinda duck tails with a great book called "Traction" that we implemented as AOC, it really changed things, you set quarterly goals and then you break them down into weekly achievables, and you have some KPI's is literally write down those goals and put them in your phone and in your pocket, and anytime someone asks you about something, you pull it out and if it's not on the those three things, you say I'm sorry I don't have time for that this quarter. You're not shutting the door completely but you're being very clear on what your goals are, because you do not have enough energy to spread yourself that thin. I mean, right now, people are pitching us, oh and we do this VR thing with people with social anxiety, and we can do this 3D movie, and oh we should get a TV show with you guys, it's like, no, the core of our business is coaching clients professionally and interviewing people. That's the core. When we spread ourselves too thin or get too far away from that, we perform poorly and the business then performs poorly. Since you mention a lot of about working with introverts, I'm definitely an introvert, I'm by myself, very drained after going to a couple events, what are some advice you can give in terms of how to manage that, how to bounce back from that, so and so forth? Yeah, I think as Johnny was talking about earlier, it's all about the small victories. Just you going to the event is a victory, you don't have to stay for the full four hours, so getting to the event, putting yourself out there, and then journaling, that's a big one. Because a lot of times we have these thoughts just bouncing around and it takes up brain power and energy, getting them out, writing about okay what was that experience like, what didn't go well, what did I learn from it, and what do I want to do the next time, and making that clear goal for the next time you go to the event. So if the goal for the first event is I'm just gonna say hi to five people, or I'm gonna use the conversation formula with five people. And you only did it with three. You go home, you say okay well I put in energy, I got there, that's a win, I actually used it with a few people and I got in a longer conversation, and now you have a clear goal for the next time. And that way you're not using all of your energy, and I'll be honest, I'm an introvert too. We're all introverted up here, which I know, it sounds shocking, but it is exhausting, and you have to know your limits. The problem is a lot of times we just try to jump into the deep end, and swim with the sharks when we're not ready. But over time you set those goals and over 90 days you're gonna find yourself not only staying for the entire event but actually having fun. It's easy to see an event as this four hour block, and then also on top of that feeling like oh if I'm going to network, then I have this goal of people to meet, and you don't have to. If you know that you're an introvert, and you know that looks exhausting, sign yourself up for an hour. The other thing I love to do is just call it out, like if you notice someone else is a little awkward, or a little exhausted too, you're like, oh you're an introvert too? And you'll get a good laugh and you'll bro out over it. So my question is, you've gotten that warm introduction, you've connected with that person, you've used all the tools per say, and that person's gonna connect you with somebody else that's actually gonna make that decision, and you get that email, that cc to that person, you should talk to Mary, and a lot of times that email sort of dies, any suggestions on, you don't have that warm connection to that person or don't know much about that person, so any suggestions about picking that up after trying once or twice and no answer? Okay so just to clarify, you're getting a warm intro from somebody over here to somebody over there that you actually want to speak with, so it's like if I'm asking Eric to introduce me to Travis and he's like cool, but I don't know who Travis is, and then what happens? He's not responding back to me? So for example, the managing director of a law firm that I know personally put me in touch with the person that's making the decision for hiring the photographer to capture all the photographs for the firm. And then that person doesn't respond. Oh yeah, I love slash hate this, obviously I don't love it because the point is I want them to respond, so what I will do is write to that person and if I don't get the response, what I'll do is I'll try again, I use Boomerang for this, it's a tool I mentioned earlier, and basically it's like in gmail, I can say, if no reply, remind me again in four days or a week, and it'll bounce back to me. And then I'll reply again if they don't reply in that threat, Boomerang will come back and I'll say, hey John, circling back on this, I wasn't sure if you're not getting my email. And there's a couple of tricks, after one or two of those if they're just ignoring you, you can use a read receipt also in Boomerang, so if it's like, this was opened twice, but never replied to, you know that they're just like oh screw this guy, I'm not gonna answer him. So what I will do is often in email signatures from that executive for example, in the same company, you'll see that there's a phone number there and you can call the operator or the receptionist and you can just call them. Hey I wasn't sure if you were getting my email, I had some deliverability issues, thought I would call. I've found that even in my follow up replies, if I say something like, hey not sure if you're getting my email, happy to call you if that's easier, they tear their hair out, ah don't call me, I'm ignoring you. They'll even reply right away often because they just don't want to deal with that, cause they know I'm gonna leave them a voice message, I'm gonna talk to their assistant. And then, if that doesn't work, what I'll do is I'll take the whole thread, three replies of them not answering, and I'll cc the managing director again, often their boss, and I'll be like hey John, so weird, Mike's not responding, must not be getting my email, and then it's like, of course he's getting your email, I sent it, I made the introduction, get off your patooty buddy and reply to my friend here. So when they see, this isn't a bcc, this is a cc, you want them to go, oh shit, my boss is on this thread now. It's called lighting a fire under someone's ass, and it works. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. So I don't know the question going back to the intro, cause I struggle with that, I'm a high school PE teacher, and I find a lot of negative connotations and like the oh you stand around in short shorts and make kids run and so I'm like oh I'm just a teacher, and they're like, what kind? And it kinda leads back in, so I struggle with the best way to give out an introduction to alleviate that connotation and those thoughts of coming up with that profession. You have to change careers dude. (laughter) Yeah, that's kind of what I came up with. (laughs) Something like, I help kids get fit, or I make sure kids understand their health better, because you don't just whistle and make them throw kickballs around, you probably teach them creepy health stuff too. (laughter) You can say look I help kids understand themselves. Creepy always is a win. I help kids get fit, I help kids stay fit, I help kids understand their health, don't say bodies, that's just creepy. But anything along those lines, I understand, I am a gym teacher, oh that's a stupid job, you just play kickball all day, people don't remember that their gym teacher also taught biology or health and all the sex ed stuff, which you probably also don't want to make the focus of your job description, We're giving you a lot of what not to do. That could make a really terrible introduction. (laughter) No but really, I like things like I help kids get fit, or I help kids understand their health, I teach kids health, I teach health, which so what if it includes basketball skills right? It doesn't matter, you're teaching health, unless it's a lie, unless you only teach Phys Ed, in which case maybe we're back to the drawing board here, but do you teach health as well? Yeah. So I would lean into that, and if you're sick of being made fun of for your shorts, stop wearing those shorts, and tell people you teach health. And keep in mind, I've seen so many exposes on athletes who, it was all about this one gym teacher who turned it around for me, or showed me that I had this potential that I really didn't know I had, and all this stuff. So sure, some people might think that, but how many others know the role that you play in developing these athletes or these kids that for the first time in their life see the strength within them and finally have this opportunity, especially the boys who don't have fathers and all those things growing up. Yeah, so I would use empower kids with physical fitness. That's a good one. Yeah I like that. Thank you. Eric's been waiting patiently. Getting denied over and over. Yeah, if I'm going to a business event, and there's a clear division between client and supplier vendor, I'm in an interesting position where sometimes people are asking me for business, and then I'm asking for business too so I know how it feels when people come up to you, the sleezy, salesy, oh hey I haven't seen you forever, how's everything with your clients? And then it immediately I don't want to do business with them, but then I have to turn around and go do that to other people. So how do I turn off the sleezy, salesman stuff and just be more genuine in regards to enthusiasm with the introduction? I don't want to be too fake. Do you know who's gonna be there before you go to the event? Yes. So reach out to them before you go to the event. That way, it's sort of dig your well before you're thirsty. Oh, am I gonna see you in three weeks at the World of Concrete? Or whatever. Yeah, I'll be there, great. If you can do a side event, if it's a long thing, cool, if it's like a three hour thing, you can reach out before hand, they're expecting to see you, they're expecting to talk to you, and they're not going oh crap, this guy's gonna pitch me. And if you're able to not pitch right there, or at least do the smallest pitch possible like get an appointment to meet them, instead of going, hey we have a great deal on concrete now, that's the kind of thing you want to avoid but reaching out before hand, for some reason it just softens everything up because you're priming them up, you're not just like I don't need you until I can sell you something, see you in a week. It's hey are you gonna be there? Great, by the way, here's some stuff to look at at your leisure, I don't want to bother you with it during the event, is always a cool key phrase. I don't want to bother you with this during the event, and they're like oh thank god, the one guy who doesn't want to bother me during the event, that is not coincidentally the reason that they're actually gonna want to talk to you and not the other people at that same event. And I think the answer was kind of in your question, you have to be genuine, so why would you genuinely like having them as a client, or what do they do that's genuinely interesting to bring them into your book of business, versus like oh I'm just so excited to meet you. Right, so it's being a little more specific and it shows that you did your homework. I'm excited to work with you because you work with entertaining clients who are freakin' awesome. That's much different than oh it's so great to see you Jordan, I hope you get your business. Thanks. So this is an appearance slash confidence question, I have these retainers that I've never had before and now I have a speech impediment. I have this mental block when going up, talking to people, having a conversation, because it's challenging to get the words out sometimes. Any tips you might have to help with that? I'm about to get those retainers, I'm about to get visiline at about 43 years old. Don't do it. (laughs) And so it made me think of that, I think the best thing about it is, if you feel that some of your speech got slurred, I would just call it out, because the fact that you're going through this work, you're working on yourself, you're doing these things, it's vulnerability, it's charm, and it shows how much you're looking to better yourself and care about yourself. And I didn't hear any of that, so for what it's worth, it's barely audible dude, it's mental. I hear it now that you say it, but, I want to go back a little bit to this afternoon, talking about transformation and talking about scenarios and outcomes, if a roadblock or an obstacle becomes a rut or becomes very difficult to overcome, what do we do to overcome that roadblock to make it something that empowers us? Can you be a little bit more specific? So a roadblock for me in my transformation plan is disciple, discipline in my personal business. It's very difficult for me to provide the space and the time to be discipline in my personal business. How do I look at discipline in a different way that's actually empowering? The first step you've already taken, you've identified what that is. Obviously, we want to reframe it so we have some power of a challenge ahead of ourselves, and as I mention in my presentation, you know that you have trouble with it, you know that it's gonna to be difficult, you know that it's gonna be a challenge, so every day waking up it shouldn't be a daunting task, it should be this neat challenge of can I be disciplined today in my business? Can I get things done? I know for myself, on weeks we don't have a program running, it has in the past been difficult for me to get much work done, working from home on those days. So now I go to the coffee shop or the common room, so I know that just that change in scenery, I'm sitting there, it's like oh it's time to start working. So it's little things like that that have helped me. But also knowing that those challenges lie ahead, every time that I beat that challenge or met it head on is the best feeling in the world. So now I end up chasing that. Couple things. Outsource your weaknesses. At this point, you could get an assistant who will just hit you over the head with texts, phones, and emails if you're not doing your tasks. The second thing is using psychology to your advantage, so this concept of break the chain, right. We don't naturally want to break the chain. So get a big, twelve month calendar like wall size, poster calendar, and a big ole magic marker, and every day that you're disciplined, you put an X on the day, and every day that you're not disciplined, there's no X. And you're going to start to dread those days that you can't pick up the marker, and over time, you're gonna start to see more and more X's until there's zero empty spaces, but you have to start to visualize this, because it's very easy to just go oh I'll just reset tomorrow, but if it's starting at you in your bedroom, in your safe space, hey this has to get done today, you'd be surprised at what you're capable of. How do you systematize to make products out of social skills that are typically abstract in such as who is my, How do we, Like systematize and make products, like information products. Great question, that's actually what our business model is, the art of charm, simplifying and teaching emotional intelligence in a way that anyone can learn and master, so what we've had to do over the last decade and change is figure out what's not worked for us, reverse engineer it into something that has, and then figure out what the discrete skills sets are inside that successful outcome and then, these guys especially have been really adept at designing drills and exercises that build on those individual, mini skills. So those discrete skill sets are what we drill and what we work on, so if we know, and there were some earlier today, so if we know for example a body language drill, okay look at the door way drill, well I know that the first impression's made nonverbally, I know that I've got to make that into a habit, so we have a doorway which is linked to that habit, we have posture linked to that habit to the doorway, we make that into a full circle thing, alright great, now how do I know that's going to work? Well crap, I keep forgetting every time I walk through a door, so what can break that pattern? The post it note. So you look at all the psychological hurdles, you figure out ways around those so the drill is successful. And then you take a whole ton of those and you pack it into a sixty hour a week long program and you've got a product. So if your friend wants to compete with us, good luck. (laughter) I welcome them He has the workbook so, We're screwed now. (laughter) I would add to that after ten years of working with people when you start to learn what works and what doesn't, of course the responses that we get or the reviews that we get, of how this worked for me, how this didn't work for me, what did work for me, and I know that AJ and I change things up as we learn them, as we do our research, and I know in the classroom when lights go off above people's heads, when things have clicked, where in the past they may not have, which becomes a very powerful thing. And until you're working with people, you really don't know what each individual are going to respond to, and that's very important, and the funny thing is, a lot of times when people ask us what made us think we could do this job when we first started, and that question ten years ago was little arrogant, a little brash and a lot of caring, but that quickly turned into, after two years, four years, five years, six years of really understanding how people think, how they operate, and what they respond to. And that has been our biggest blessing is the fight over time to get better. Yeah, bear in mind that we didn't want to do coaching at first, when AJ and I first got asked by people to help them out, we literally replied look we're talking in a basement on a podcast, which nobody even knows what that is, we're not coaches, we can't help you. And the response from a lot of those listeners was yes you can, because they've hired these so called coaches, they didn't help as much as the free stuff you guys are talking about in the furnace room in his friend Bob's condo basement, right. So we realized okay, we're on to something here. Try these little exercises, we'd give them over Skype or over email. They'd come back and be like I can't believe this, this is really helpful, what's next? And we're going, okay let me try some stuff at the mall today and get back to you. And that's how the initial curriculum developed, and then when Johnny was like, are you kidding me, this is your curriculum, and he metaphorically wiped it all off the next and made it a real program and over the years, these guys have made it into the force. I think there's a tendency to over complicate things when you're teaching something. And I've been trying to learn how to play golf, somewhat unsuccessfully, and the one thing is there's a lot of information online, you can get all this information we learned, but it's not really put in a system that with the minimum effective dose will get you the greatest results. And over time, even with my golf swing, I can be thinking about eight different things while I'm swinging and that will never allow me to swing the golf club. You have to start to trust your instincts, but I have to get you to take action. So I would say, everything that you're looking to design should be empowering action first, and that's why all of these worksheets and all of these slides, it's dead simple stuff but now you have an action plan. Everything is like okay how can you apply this? We taught you something but then what is the action step? That's where the winds are, it's not collecting knowledge and information. I know a lot of people who think they're amazing networkers and they're always bragging about how they have 20,000 contacts in their roladex. I've also talked to a lot of influencers are nobody likes this guy, no one. And I thought, this guys really thinks that he's got this amazing network because he's got peoples' phone numbers and emails and some stupid iphone app. And no one can stand him and be around him, and I just thought that was the most amazing thing ever, so the reason I'm telling you this, is because it's not about the roladex clearly, it's about the action that you guys are taking here. This is the beginning of a lot of big things. I know a lot of it's, three people I want to reach out to, whatever, this is a stupid worksheet. Probably at least one of you thought about that. But then you'd think, okay I'm just going to do this, hopefully and you will, and you reach out to those people and you go, okay wait, two of them didn't go anywhere but that one did. Alright I'm going to do this with 20 people now. And now I'm going to do this every week. And then you see the repetition that we also built into some of the drills and exercises in these worksheets and this is exactly what we did without all the things that didn't work, and it's the very beginning of how you can build a really great network. It just took us a really long time to synthesize all of this stuff. So we're getting rid of a lot of the failed experiments that led nowhere, does that make sense? Does that answer your question? Yes. So this would be more for Jordan, because of the art of charm, what's your process for each guest? For the interviews on the show? Okay, I'll make it quick because it's already in that working course, but the process for researching a guest, so I'll get a guest in mind, I'll reach out to them through a warm introduction hopefully, but sometimes cold, to their publicist, or even to them if I can find them on social media, etc. Using the outreach stuff that we talked about, the outreach stuff and the bonus materials as well, then I will read their book if it's interesting, we're good, if they have two books, I might read both if they're related. If they're not related, I might just read the one. I've definitely read three books for one guest at a time. When I go through the whole book, I take notes in a google document, I write down a bunch of stuff, usually like five or six pages of notes. Then a few days before the show, I go through all of my notes and I ask myself questions about the things that I wrote in the notes. Then, I take those notes and I send them to a group of friends who are also interested maybe in those same people. They'll go through those and ask questions based off either my notes or my questions. And then I will watch their videos and make sure I'm not missing anything, I'll listen to the interviews they've done with other shows to make sure that there's a story I want to get in there, make sure I'm not asking the same questions as every other radio host. Then I take all those and I put those in that Google doc and I have different colored highlighters inside Google and I highlight stories, practicals that I want to make sure you guys get, introductory materials that I put in the beginning and the close of the show, things I want to make sure that I get, and then things that are optional if I have time. And those are all different colors. And then when I do the show, I have those documents spread out on multi page format in front of me the whole time. So I'm synthesizing all that stuff in real time, using the highlighter colors to guide the show. It's really simple. No problem, anybody can do it. (laughter)