Mo asks Nancy Duarte: How can we stay focused and continue on the growth path while we’re busy with delivery? It’s definitely a challenge. You have to deliver your highest and best work in order to get repeat business, but you also have to spend a lot of energy on growth activities that are very different from delivery. One of the things that Nancy noticed by eliminating all the clients that weren’t ideal for her organization was that it brought those two things closer together. Calendaring and blocking out specific time is also a good way to ensure those activities get done. To identify their ideal clients, the first step was to create a profile. It involved coming up with the right rubrics to understand which companies had the highest sales potential and biggest opportunity for growth. One of the most challenging roles is to be doing both delivery and sales at the same time. Care and honest communication is what will bring your clients back to you each year. Asking questions like “How can we help our clients achieve even more than they think they could?” is important to identifying those opportunities. Nancy also looked at how deep the penetration was into each organization and synergy with other services that Nancy’s organization had to offer. Looking at each client from a utopian/dystopian point of view was a helpful exercise as well.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com duarte.com duarte.com/nancy

Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice to people for deepening relationships in an authentic way? The simple answer is storytelling. Studies have shown that different areas of the brain light up during a story, and it allows people to feel your content, not just listen to it. Storytelling is a powerful way to feel a sense of connection between two people. If the goal is to create a bond, the best way to do that is through story. If you don’t have a great origin story, you should have a calling story. You should also have a collection of stories in your repertoire that shows how your product or service gets your customers unstuck. Origin stories are reasons to believe, but there are also stories just meant to bond or influence. They can come in the form of I, We, or They, and the more distant the story is from your own experience, the more you have to build in performance and empathy. The more you practice telling stories, the more you are able to inject your own genuineness and authenticity. Even Nancy hires a coach to help her craft her story. In one of her more recent internal presentations, Nancy took her slide deck and noted what emotions she wanted her audience to feel and when, and then recrafted the message to facilitate that.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com duarte.com duarte.com/nancy

Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your best advice on creating and closing the meaty business we all want? Anytime you’re speaking to an audience, no matter where that is, the first thing you need to do is think about your audience journey. You need to think about who they are when they walk in the room and who you want them to be when they walk out. Your role in that journey is the mentor. It starts with a big idea: Your point of view on an industry and what’s at stake if the audience doesn’t adopt your point of view. One of the most important things about the hero’s journey is that they start in the normal world and then something happens that moves them into the special world. You need to look at every communication as an opportunity to enrapture the audience, bring them into your special world, and then have them go back to their normal world with new tools and gifts or special powers. As presenters, we often think that we are the central figure, but the truth is that each person in the audience is the hero of their own story. As the speaker, you’re Yoda, not Luke Skywalker. If you deliver your material in a way that makes the audience walk out the door with your idea in their head and their heart, you win. Even if the audience isn’t physically leaving when you’re not giving value, they are mentally checking out. Authenticity is crucial and the best way to be authentic is to use the story structure to convey your perspective. Being able to show vulnerability is what makes you more likeable and connects people to you.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com duarte.com duarte.com/nancy

Mo asks Nancy Duarte: What’s your big idea for people to grow their business that feels great? LinkedIn does a study every year and each year the biggest skills gap is oral communication skills and the spoken word across all industries. How you show up, the presence you have, and how you deliver is how you separate yourself from your competitors Communication excellence takes practice and the ability to understand  frameworks and models. We need to be adaptive to the situation and what we hear, and we also need to be intentional about what words we use when communicating. The first step is always research. You can’t come prepared with good questions without research. The first thing a salesperson should do is understand the strategic initiatives and how things are going to be measured. Empathy is a theme that runs through everything that happens in Nancy’s organization. You can find a plethora of information about a potential customer in their newsfeeds. This can give you an idea of the kinds of pressure they are under. Sometimes an external person can be a better student than someone within the organization. When approaching a prospect, you should take some time to try to understand their perspective as deeply as possible including the culture, the biases, and the budgets. Nancy has a platform that enables her to invite people to part of it, which is a great way to initiate meetings. One of the values of Nancy’s organization is generous experts. Nancy dropped over 100 customers during Covid to focus on 35 of her best, and subsequently, the organization grew over the last year.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com duarte.com duarte.com/nancy

Alisa Cohn, the number one startup coach in the world, shares why the entrepreneurial growth mindset is the foundation for business success. Learn how to think about your business holistically, how to create a flywheel of great habits that makes doing the hard things easy, and why the ability to change your state when you need to is an incredible superpower in your quest for business development success.   Mo asks Alisa Cohn: Why is it important to think about running a business holistically? Everybody has to think of themselves as their own CEO. Think with the entrepreneurial mindset on how you are going to manage yourself, so that you can manage others and the business around you. The trouble is that people miss the entrepreneurial mindset and instead focus on the delivery aspect of the work. You need to be building business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. You need to do the activities that will eventually take yourself out of the business so that you can work on the business. When you are managing yourself, the most important thing is your mindset. You must carve out time to focus on things that build your business and not just the day-to-day grind. Structure your calendar so that it has those activities built in. A powerful activity you can do is to journal on what your future self and business look like. Project out what you want your future to look like, and then think about what has to happen in the intervening years to make that a reality. Those are the activities that need to be done today and everyday from now on. Distractions will always be ready to derail you. Practice not being distracted during the time you schedule for your most important things. Don’t check your email, put your phone on silent and focus. You should look back at your week and see what you accomplished. You develop a flywheel of great habits by merchandising your success. Make celebrating your success a weekly ritual in whatever way makes you feel good. This can be done solo or in a group. Celebrating the things that move your business forward is extremely powerful.   Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice for creating and closing more of the meaty business we all want? Alisa’s top tip is to think about your process of how you build relationships that eventually turn into business. Chances are you are great at one area of your process and other areas need work. Think about five different ways you can experiment and try something new for the piece of your process where you feel stuck. The first step is to identify the weak link by creating an environment of psychological safety. People are not going to share their weaknesses or mistakes unless they feel safe to do so. Once you know what to work on, it’s about trying new things and learning from the process. The more you try, the more tools and repertoire you have and knowledge about what does and doesn’t work. Many professionals work in an organization where it’s very difficult to admit fault. You can help create the right environment through a number of ways. This includes open body language and leaders disclosing their vulnerabilities first. The leader should model the openness and warmth that they want to see from their team. Share stories of failure and what you learned. By doing so you are showing that a skill like business development is a skill that can be learned. Leadership is an unnatural act. All of us have to learn how to do things, which at times feel counterintuitive to us, to be successful in the professional world. Ask questions that generate an honest conversation. For clients, ask for suggestions about what you can do better or mention an area where you’ve heard from others that you’re weak in and ask them for help on how you can improve. Asking good questions is a skill that permeates every aspect of being a high-end professional and senior leader.   Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice around how we can deepen relationships with clients and our internal team? First of all, recognize that what you want to and need to do is deepen relationships. It starts with the mindset. We don’t make anything important until we make it important. Build relationships with the people you work with one by one. Start with listening to how they approach the world and tailor your style to that. People prefer real talk, not stilted conversation. Good questions can be the spark you need to ignite deeper conversations. When you stay present in a conversation and listen deeply, they can feel the energy and you become more attractive to them. Follow up questions are very effective at taking a relationship to a deeper level. A great place to start is to ask “What are you most excited about today?” People love to talk about that kind of thing and almost no one ever asks it. For Alisa, she’s most excited about the imminent publishing of her new book, From Start-up to Grown-up.   Mo asks Alisa Cohn: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the growth activities when the world is trying to pull us away? Recognize that your job is to put the first things first. You have to separate out what is critically important and what is just the “urgent of the now”. Schedule time for yourself every day of every week to distinguish what the important things are and then put them on the calendar. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t feel like doing. Do whatever you need to do to create the right environment and get you motivated to do the things that will set up your long term success. Your calendar shows your priorities more than your to-do list does. Alisa encourages her clients to get up and get physical to change their state to start off with. Use podcasts or audiobooks to put the words in your ears that motivate. Music or coffee may be what you need to start the engine, you just need to find the way that works for you. Catalyzing a state change is your superpower. If you need something a little bit bigger, you might need to take a bigger break. Taking a digital sabbatical once a week is a great way to reset. If you’re feeling burned out, it may be from the critical voices in your head. Demonstrate self-compassion and surround yourself with people that make you feel great because that is one of the best cures for burnout. Find your purpose and then collect the things that keep you connected to your purpose.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Alisa Cohn. One of the most important things you can do is have an entrepreneurial growth mindset. Stay on track with your energy. If you feel out of balance or like your energy is being drained, do what you need to do to refuel and motivate yourself. Get up and exercise, read a book, listen to music, take a coffee break. Whenever Mo gets a complimentary message from a listener or client, he puts the message into an inspiration folder so that when he’s feeling low he can go back and remind himself why he does what he does. Leading others is based on the relationship you have from them. You develop that relationship by asking good questions and connecting with them at a personal level. Document what the people you know care about and what they are trying to achieve. This will remind you of their purpose and how you can support them in their goals. Creating an environment of psychological safety within your business is an important way to lead the business forward because that is how progress happens. Psychological safety drives growth, because if people can’t share what they are worried about, the problems will never be solved.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Alisa Cohn. One of the most important things you can do is have an entrepreneurial growth mindset. Stay on track with your energy. If you feel out of balance or like your energy is being drained, do what you need to do to refuel and motivate yourself. Get up and exercise, read a book, listen to music, take a coffee break. Whenever Mo gets a complimentary message from a listener or client, he puts the message into an inspiration folder so that when he’s feeling low he can go back and remind himself why he does what he does. Leading others is based on the relationship you have from them. You develop that relationship by asking good questions and connecting with them at a personal level. Document what the people you know care about and what they are trying to achieve. This will remind you of their purpose and how you can support them in their goals. Creating an environment of psychological safety within your business is an important way to lead the business forward because that is how progress happens. Psychological safety drives growth, because if people can’t share what they are worried about, the problems will never be solved.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mo asks Alisa Cohn: How can we hack our habits to keep focusing on the growth activities when the world is trying to pull us away? Recognize that your job is to put the first things first. You have to separate out what is critically important and what is just the “urgent of the now”. Schedule time for yourself every day of every week to distinguish what the important things are and then put them on the calendar. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Successful people do what unsuccessful people don’t feel like doing. Do whatever you need to do to create the right environment and get you motivated to do the things that will set up your long term success. Your calendar shows your priorities more than your to-do list does. Alisa encourages her clients to get up and get physical to change their state to start off with. Use podcasts or audiobooks to put the words in your ears that motivate. Music or coffee may be what you need to start the engine, you just need to find the way that works for you. Catalyzing a state change is your superpower. If you need something a little bit bigger, you might need to take a bigger break. Taking a digital sabbatical once a week is a great way to reset. If you’re feeling burned out, it may be from the critical voices in your head. Demonstrate self-compassion and surround yourself with people that make you feel great because that is one of the best cures for burnout. Find your purpose and then collect the things that keep you connected to your purpose.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice around how we can deepen relationships with clients and our internal team? First of all, recognize that what you want to and need to do is deepen relationships. It starts with the mindset. We don’t make anything important until we make it important. Build relationships with the people you work with one by one. Start with listening to how they approach the world and tailor your style to that. People prefer real talk, not stilted conversation. Good questions can be the spark you need to ignite deeper conversations. When you stay present in a conversation and listen deeply, they can feel the energy and you become more attractive to them. Follow up questions are very effective at taking a relationship to a deeper level. A great place to start is to ask “What are you most excited about today?” People love to talk about that kind of thing and almost no one ever asks it. For Alisa, she’s most excited about the imminent publishing of her new book, From Start-up to Grown-up.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mo asks Alisa Cohn: What’s your best advice for creating and closing more of the meaty business we all want? Alisa’s top tip is to think about your process of how you build relationships that eventually turn into business. Chances are you are great at one area of your process and other areas need work. Think about five different ways you can experiment and try something new for the piece of your process where you feel stuck. The first step is to identify the weak link by creating an environment of psychological safety. People are not going to share their weaknesses or mistakes unless they feel safe to do so. Once you know what to work on, it’s about trying new things and learning from the process. The more you try, the more tools and repertoire you have and knowledge about what does and doesn’t work. Many professionals work in an organization where it’s very difficult to admit fault. You can help create the right environment through a number of ways. This includes open body language and leaders disclosing their vulnerabilities first. The leader should model the openness and warmth that they want to see from their team. Share stories of failure and what you learned. By doing so you are showing that a skill like business development is a skill that can be learned. Leadership is an unnatural act. All of us have to learn how to do things, which at times feel counterintuitive to us, to be successful in the professional world. Ask questions that generate an honest conversation. For clients, ask for suggestions about what you can do better or mention an area where you’ve heard from others that you’re weak in and ask them for help on how you can improve. Asking good questions is a skill that permeates every aspect of being a high-end professional and senior leader.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mo asks Alisa Cohn: Why is it important to think about running a business holistically? Everybody has to think of themselves as their own CEO. Think with the entrepreneurial mindset on how you are going to manage yourself, so that you can manage others and the business around you. The trouble is that people miss the entrepreneurial mindset and instead focus on the delivery aspect of the work. You need to be building business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. You need to do the activities that will eventually take yourself out of the business so that you can work on the business. When you are managing yourself, the most important thing is your mindset. You must carve out time to focus on things that build your business and not just the day-to-day grind. Structure your calendar so that it has those activities built in. A powerful activity you can do is to journal on what your future self and business look like. Project out what you want your future to look like, and then think about what has to happen in the intervening years to make that a reality. Those are the activities that need to be done today and everyday from now on. Distractions will always be ready to derail you. Practice not being distracted during the time you schedule for your most important things. Don’t check your email, put your phone on silent and focus. You should look back at your week and see what you accomplished. You develop a flywheel of great habits by merchandising your success. Make celebrating your success a weekly ritual in whatever way makes you feel good. This can be done solo or in a group. Celebrating the things that move your business forward is extremely powerful.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com alisacohn.com

Mitch Joel shares the power of creating digital assets and how his simple framework for creating digital content can start off as just a drip and end up creating waves within your professional ecosphere. Learn how to pick the right communication format for you, how to create content in a way that’s unique to you and can’t be replicated by someone else, and how to build an audience that wants to hear from you each week by publishing consistently.   Mo asks Mitch Joel: What is your big idea for getting better at retention and growth? Whether it’s digital or not, it’s all about relationships and relationships are built on the stories you tell and how you deliver on them. Most people tend to market themselves with promises instead of with their overall story. The ethos of the Madmen era of advertising still permeates the way many professionals think. You don’t have to be personal, you just have to be personable. That’s the story that is going to connect with the right kinds of customers, which is something that you need to be focused on. As professionals, we all have to figure out what kind of content we are going to create. It can come in whatever form you like, whether that’s audio, video, or written. The content you create should have a bullseye that you’re aiming for within the Triangle of Attention. Even if your approach or niche isn’t unique, you can still bring your unique voice to the table to make your brand stand out. Human beings prefer regularity. Content you create should follow an editorial calendar instead of being posted whenever you happen to feel like it. Content should be scheduled regularly and you need to stick with the schedule. Seth Godin refers to this as the “Drip Strategy.” Content is a drip and if you create enough drips they become a ripple, the ripple creates waves, and the waves fill the ocean. The vast majority of the content you create will garner virtual crickets but cumulatively over time it creates a sense of presence, social proof, and credibility.   Mo asks Mitch Joel: How would you advise high end professionals to create and close more deals? Go and follow Jeffrey Gettemer and subscribe to his newsletter. Anything Mitch has learned about sales was picked up from Jeffrey. Essentially, a lot of sales is about relationship building, storytelling, not being boring, and not being caught up in our own world. Instead it is about focusing on what the prospect wants. One of the biggest mistakes in sales is thinking exclusively about your own goals and quotas, when having the vision of what the person across the table needs is where the opportunity is. Jeffrey once told the story of how his father always came home after work and voraciously wrote notes about companies and individuals and ideas so that he could better sell to them. The people who are outworking you or outselling you are just out-homeworking you. Even though Mitch is no longer in the agency business, he still collects any articles or content he finds that would be relevant to someone and sends it to them. This isn’t done to derive immediate value but it works well as a connection point and relationship builder. Don’t link-spam people. This approach is a strategy of gifting and is a customized, one-to-one touchpoint. There is a lot of power derived when you do things like this authentically and from the heart.   Mo asks Mitch Joel: What’s your best advice for professionals to deepen long-term relationships? People will not leave a relationship, even if they are paying you more than someone else, if they like you. Get people to like you in a way that’s authentic and genuine and clearly has their best interests at heart. Don’t identify as a dinosaur. Excuses like “I can’t understand this” or “I don’t do social” are holding you back. We are all dealing with fatigue and overwork, but having the dinosaur mindset is a choice. Technology has made content and communication very easy to accomplish and inexpensive to implement. There are no excuses. Take an hour and learn how a piece of technology or app works so that you can do it yourself. Mitch may get old and grey, but he will never become a dinosaur. Networking is great for creating and deepening relationships. Proactively fill your calendar with ways to connect with new people. As an example, Mitch takes his morning walks on Instagram and invites people to “walk” with him. Networking has to be something that you’re doing all the time.   Mo asks Mitch Joel: How do we hack our own proactive habits to succeed? We all make time for the things that are important to us. As we’ve seen from the pandemic, we can fill our schedules with anything and feel really busy. The only way to do anything really well is to make time for it. Your priorities won’t show up in your to-do list, they show up in your calendar. Scheduling is not Mitch’s main way to track his time because he prefers not being stressed out by a strict or full calendar. An alternative to scheduling the most important things is the Jerry Seinfeld approach of putting an X on the calendar when you’ve accomplished the one thing you wanted to get done that day, and then try not to break the chain. Start light and start easy. Mitch found himself struggling to get into books during the pandemic so he committed to reading just five pages a day. Little incremental wins make it more likely you’ll do more and can lead to even bigger wins throughout the day. When it comes to growing a book of business, Mitch’s advice is to focus on your zone of genius and say no to things that don’t fit within that, then be the best you can be. Be clear on who you serve and what you do, and say no to everything else.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mitch Joel. Most professionals don’t yet understand the power of digital communication and thought starters. By creating those digital assets you start to become attractive. People start sharing and want more of your content, and those people become predisposed to working with you. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your expertise is, you have a brand and you have things you want people to know about you. Pick a medium of communication that works for you, then identify your Triangle of Attention. What are three things that are unique to you that you can share information about? Pick a publishing schedule that’s consistent and stick with it. Our brains love patterns and consistency is the key. The format and style depends on you and what you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to create long form podcasts if that doesn’t fit your style. If you’re not sure what your style might be, ask yourself whether you would be excited to create something like that. Look at news and current events through the lens of your Triangle of Attention. This becomes the basis for your unique voice. Once you have those first two things established, pick a publishing cadence and stick to it. Deadlines can have the additional benefit of forcing you to act and become better over time. This digital marketing strategy is a great way to build your book of business because digital assets keep paying off over time and most professionals are not doing enough in this arena right now.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Mitch Joel. Most professionals don’t yet understand the power of digital communication and thought starters. By creating those digital assets you start to become attractive. People start sharing and want more of your content, and those people become predisposed to working with you. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your expertise is, you have a brand and you have things you want people to know about you. Pick a medium of communication that works for you, then identify your Triangle of Attention. What are three things that are unique to you that you can share information about? Pick a publishing schedule that’s consistent and stick with it. Our brains love patterns and consistency is the key. The format and style depends on you and what you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to create long form podcasts if that doesn’t fit your style. If you’re not sure what your style might be, ask yourself whether you would be excited to create something like that. Look at news and current events through the lens of your Triangle of Attention. This becomes the basis for your unique voice. Once you have those first two things established, pick a publishing cadence and stick to it. Deadlines can have the additional benefit of forcing you to act and become better over time. This digital marketing strategy is a great way to build your book of business because digital assets keep paying off over time and most professionals are not doing enough in this arena right now.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Mo asks Mitch Joel: How do we hack our own proactive habits to succeed? We all make time for the things that are important to us. As we’ve seen from the pandemic, we can fill our schedules with anything and feel really busy. The only way to do anything really well is to make time for it. Your priorities won’t show up in your to-do list, they show up in your calendar. Scheduling is not Mitch’s main way to track his time because he prefers not being stressed out by a strict or full calendar. An alternative to scheduling the most important things is the Jerry Seinfeld approach of putting an X on the calendar when you’ve accomplished the one thing you wanted to get done that day, and then try not to break the chain. Start light and start easy. Mitch found himself struggling to get into books during the pandemic so he committed to reading just five pages a day. Little incremental wins make it more likely you’ll do more and can lead to even bigger wins throughout the day. When it comes to growing a book of business, Mitch’s advice is to focus on your zone of genius and say no to things that don’t fit within that, then be the best you can be. Be clear on who you serve and what you do, and say no to everything else.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Mo asks Mitch Joel: What’s your best advice for professionals to deepen long-term relationships? People will not leave a relationship, even if they are paying you more than someone else, if they like you. Get people to like you in a way that’s authentic and genuine and clearly has their best interests at heart. Don’t identify as a dinosaur. Excuses like “I can’t understand this” or “I don’t do social” are holding you back. We are all dealing with fatigue and overwork, but having the dinosaur mindset is a choice. Technology has made content and communication very easy to accomplish and inexpensive to implement. There are no excuses. Take an hour and learn how a piece of technology or app works so that you can do it yourself. Mitch may get old and grey, but he will never become a dinosaur. Networking is great for creating and deepening relationships. Proactively fill your calendar with ways to connect with new people. As an example, Mitch takes his morning walks on Instagram and invites people to “walk” with him. Networking has to be something that you’re doing all the time.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Mo asks Mitch Joel: How would you advise high end professionals to create and close more deals? Go and follow Jeffrey Gettemer and subscribe to his newsletter. Anything Mitch has learned about sales was picked up from Jeffrey. Essentially, a lot of sales is about relationship building, storytelling, not being boring, and not being caught up in our own world. Instead it is about focusing on what the prospect wants. One of the biggest mistakes in sales is thinking exclusively about your own goals and quotas, when having the vision of what the person across the table needs is where the opportunity is. Jeffrey once told the story of how his father always came home after work and voraciously wrote notes about companies and individuals and ideas so that he could better sell to them. The people who are outworking you or outselling you are just out-homeworking you. Even though Mitch is no longer in the agency business, he still collects any articles or content he finds that would be relevant to someone and sends it to them. This isn’t done to derive immediate value but it works well as a connection point and relationship builder. Don’t link-spam people. This approach is a strategy of gifting and is a customized, one-to-one touchpoint. There is a lot of power derived when you do things like this authentically and from the heart.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Mo asks Mitch Joel: What is your big idea for getting better at retention and growth? Whether it’s digital or not, it’s all about relationships and relationships are built on the stories you tell and how you deliver on them. Most people tend to market themselves with promises instead of with their overall story. The ethos of the Madmen era of advertising still permeates the way many professionals think. You don’t have to be personal, you just have to be personable. That’s the story that is going to connect with the right kinds of customers, which is something that you need to be focused on. As professionals, we all have to figure out what kind of content we are going to create. It can come in whatever form you like, whether that’s audio, video, or written. The content you create should have a bullseye that you’re aiming for within the Triangle of Attention. Even if your approach or niche isn’t unique, you can still bring your unique voice to the table to make your brand stand out. Human beings prefer regularity. Content you create should follow an editorial calendar instead of being posted whenever you happen to feel like it. Content should be scheduled regularly and you need to stick with the schedule. Seth Godin refers to this as the “Drip Strategy.” Content is a drip and if you create enough drips they become a ripple, the ripple creates waves, and the waves fill the ocean. The vast majority of the content you create will garner virtual crickets but cumulatively over time it creates a sense of presence, social proof, and credibility.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com sixpixels.com

Ron Tite shares the insights behind the Think. Do. Say. framework and how you can use it to create an effective personal brand, do more of the work you truly care about and be more authentic. Learn the four C’s that make communicating your brand belief easy, the five questions that get a prospect’s head nodding during a pitch, and how to innovate consistently while still delivering your best work.   Mo asks Ron Tite: What’s your big idea on how the audience can grow their book of business, grow their career, and grow their relationships? The first thing is to stop gaming the system and stop looking for shortcuts to business development. You need two things: a consistent brand narrative to sell the things you have and to be entrepreneurial so you can create the resources that people need. Business development is bound by purpose, defined by actions, and adopted by other people by how you communicate it. Your purpose has to go beyond the thing that you sell that speaks to your brand belief. If you can’t articulate that, that’s where you need to start. You will be defined by the actions you take to fulfill and live up to your purpose, it’s not by the things you say. Those first two are not enough though. You can be living in your purpose authentically, but you still need other people to adopt your purpose as well if you want something to grow. Even in a retail setting, you can still act in an advisory or consultative role. REI is a good example of a company that embodies that principle as they have a purpose that is strategically aligned to where they make their money. They inspire, inform, and equip people with the proper tools to have a greater enjoyment of the outdoors. Your purpose should align with what you sell. REI also communicates its purpose in a way that conveys trust and authority, without sounding too corporate and separated from what the customers really care about. Your brand narrative flows consistently out of those three foundational ideas and is composed of these five things: What’s going on in the world through your lens? What problem does that create? What do you believe about that problem? How do you solve that problem? Why should someone believe you? This set of questions establishes your brand narrative and gets people’s heads nodding. It’s not about selling, it’s about framing the conversation around where you add the most value.   Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we get better at creating and closing the meaty work that we want to do? The first step is identifying the meaty work where you can add your best value. Ron recently had someone resign from his agency after they had a conversation about what she really wanted to do. It wasn’t until she asked herself that question did she realize that she wasn’t happy because she wasn’t doing what she really wanted to do. You need to put yourself in a position to close after building an organization that people want to work with. Who are the specific people that can best use your service and how can you put yourself into a position to win their business? In terms of communicating your brand belief to the right customers, there are four C’s: Consumption, Curation, Creation, Connection. Once you have your brand belief, you need to operationalize the strategic consumption of media that supports that. You need to consume media that makes you smarter and better. Curation is about taking the media that you find compelling or valuable and sharing it with your community. Editorialize it with your own opinion and put your own spin on it. Ron also categorizes content and insights that he finds and adds them to categories for use in his future speeches and books. At some point you have to create your own stuff and get that out into the world. The connection part is about the conversation that happens when someone challenges your thinking or adds to it. That’s where your personality shows through: it’s not in the post, it’s in the comments.   Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we deepen relationships and win the relationship advantage? If you have great relationships, know that some of them will convert, but that’s not why you invest in relationships. When Ron started his agency, his first client was a woman that he knew and had a work relationship with 15 years prior. She didn’t have a need for his agency, but she created a project for him and launched his agency. Far too many think they need to create relationships to grow their business but if that’s your primary motivation it’s not going to work. To properly build relationships you need to have a genuine desire to get to know someone as a human being. Authenticity means to be comfortable with your imperfections. Don’t show up as the stock photo version of a lawyer, consultant, marketer, or business development professional. Your imperfections are not bugs, their features and that’s what people buy. People don’t know where to look or who to trust, and if their gut reaction is that you are hiding the real you from them, it’s not a good way to start a business relationship. Ron’s background is in stand-up comedy and there is a line in comedy that comedians use; “never ignore the reality of the room”. Call out your mistakes and the reality of the situation. If you get the sense that they aren’t interested, acknowledge that. Even a catastrophe can be used as a way to stand out and be completely human. The beginnings of meetings and the ending of meetings are very important. Just like comedy, you should start with an insight and tie the ending of the meeting back to that same insight.   Mo asks Ron Tite: How do we stay on top of retention and growth activities when everything is yanking us away? In car manufacturing, there are two sides that are critical to the business. The money is made on the assembly line because that is repeatable behaviour that strips out inefficiencies over time. But if they only did assembly line work they would go out of business. The other side involves concept cars and experimentation. They have no expectation that concept cars will go into production, but it allows the assembly line to consistently innovate over time. You need to look at your day the same way. Is it a particular task assembly line work or concept car work? It’s important to innovate but you need to focus on the assembly line work without changing too much, too fast. You need to carve out time for concept car work because, like exercise, there is always something more important to do. You also have to establish metrics to evaluate the success of the experiment. Put all your effort into the concept car activity so you don’t give yourself excuses later on. Limit your concept car activities to just one at a time. This forces you to prioritize it because delivery is going to take up the rest of your day. When the business dynamic changes like it has over the past year it creates new problems. Start with thinking about what problem exists right now that no one is solving right now.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Tite. Think: What’s the thing you believe in so much that you would be happy to work on it for the rest of your working life? Do: How do you exemplify that? People don’t judge you by the things you say, they judge you by what you do. Actions are what signals what you believe deep down. Say: How do you communicate what you believe? Too many people jump to this part before figuring out everything else. Be comfortable with your imperfections. Authenticity means being okay with who you are, even when you make mistakes or ask dumb questions. Share your journey because we are all always learning. When people are focused more on progress than a result, they are more comfortable with sharing that they are not perfect and those are the kinds of people that others want to be around. Add some humour to your communication. Ron’s background in stand up comedy gives him a good foundation for making a conversation enjoyable. Be a good entertainer and great host. Don’t be so focused on the content you’re teaching or discussing that you become boring. Studies showed that if you tell a joke at the beginning of a negotiation it reaches a better result and people rate the negotiation higher. Even an attempt at humour that doesn’t hit the mark is better than being boring and dry.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ron Tite. Think: What’s the thing you believe in so much that you would be happy to work on it for the rest of your working life? Do: How do you exemplify that? People don’t judge you by the things you say, they judge you by what you do. Actions are what signals what you believe deep down. Say: How do you communicate what you believe? Too many people jump to this part before figuring out everything else. Be comfortable with your imperfections. Authenticity means being okay with who you are, even when you make mistakes or ask dumb questions. Share your journey because we are all always learning. When people are focused more on progress than a result, they are more comfortable with sharing that they are not perfect and those are the kinds of people that others want to be around. Add some humour to your communication. Ron’s background in stand up comedy gives him a good foundation for making a conversation enjoyable. Be a good entertainer and great host. Don’t be so focused on the content you’re teaching or discussing that you become boring. Studies showed that if you tell a joke at the beginning of a negotiation it reaches a better result and people rate the negotiation higher. Even an attempt at humour that doesn’t hit the mark is better than being boring and dry.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Mo asks Ron Tite: How do we stay on top of retention and growth activities when everything is yanking us away? In car manufacturing, there are two sides that are critical to the business. The money is made on the assembly line because that is repeatable behaviour that strips out inefficiencies over time. But if they only did assembly line work they would go out of business. The other side involves concept cars and experimentation. They have no expectation that concept cars will go into production, but it allows the assembly line to consistently innovate over time. You need to look at your day the same way. Is it a particular task assembly line work or concept car work? It’s important to innovate but you need to focus on the assembly line work without changing too much, too fast. You need to carve out time for concept car work because, like exercise, there is always something more important to do. You also have to establish metrics to evaluate the success of the experiment. Put all your effort into the concept car activity so you don’t give yourself excuses later on. Limit your concept car activities to just one at a time. This forces you to prioritize it because delivery is going to take up the rest of your day. When the business dynamic changes like it has over the past year it creates new problems. Start with thinking about what problem exists right now that no one is solving right now.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we deepen relationships and win the relationship advantage? If you have great relationships, know that some of them will convert, but that’s not why you invest in relationships. When Ron started his agency, his first client was a woman that he knew and had a work relationship with 15 years prior. She didn’t have a need for his agency, but she created a project for him and launched his agency. Far too many think they need to create relationships to grow their business but if that’s your primary motivation it’s not going to work. To properly build relationships you need to have a genuine desire to get to know someone as a human being. Authenticity means to be comfortable with your imperfections. Don’t show up as the stock photo version of a lawyer, consultant, marketer, or business development professional. Your imperfections are not bugs, their features and that’s what people buy. People don’t know where to look or who to trust, and if their gut reaction is that you are hiding the real you from them, it’s not a good way to start a business relationship. Ron’s background is in stand-up comedy and there is a line in comedy that comedians use; “never ignore the reality of the room”. Call out your mistakes and the reality of the situation. If you get the sense that they aren’t interested, acknowledge that. Even a catastrophe can be used as a way to stand out and be completely human. The beginnings of meetings and the ending of meetings are very important. Just like comedy, you should start with an insight and tie the ending of the meeting back to that same insight.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Mo asks Ron Tite: How can we get better at creating and closing the meaty work that we want to do? The first step is identifying the meaty work where you can add your best value. Ron recently had someone resign from his agency after they had a conversation about what she really wanted to do. It wasn’t until she asked herself that question did she realize that she wasn’t happy because she wasn’t doing what she really wanted to do. You need to put yourself in a position to close after building an organization that people want to work with. Who are the specific people that can best use your service and how can you put yourself into a position to win their business? In terms of communicating your brand belief to the right customers, there are four C’s: Consumption, Curation, Creation, Connection. Once you have your brand belief, you need to operationalize the strategic consumption of media that supports that. You need to consume media that makes you smarter and better. Curation is about taking the media that you find compelling or valuable and sharing it with your community. Editorialize it with your own opinion and put your own spin on it. Ron also categorizes content and insights that he finds and adds them to categories for use in his future speeches and books. At some point you have to create your own stuff and get that out into the world. The connection part is about the conversation that happens when someone challenges your thinking or adds to it. That’s where your personality shows through: it’s not in the post, it’s in the comments.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Mo asks Ron Tite: What’s your big idea on how the audience can grow their book of business, grow their career, and grow their relationships? The first thing is to stop gaming the system and stop looking for shortcuts to business development. You need two things: a consistent brand narrative to sell the things you have and to be entrepreneurial so you can create the resources that people need. Business development is bound by purpose, defined by actions, and adopted by other people by how you communicate it. Your purpose has to go beyond the thing that you sell that speaks to your brand belief. If you can’t articulate that, that’s where you need to start. You will be defined by the actions you take to fulfill and live up to your purpose, it’s not by the things you say. Those first two are not enough though. You can be living in your purpose authentically, but you still need other people to adopt your purpose as well if you want something to grow. Even in a retail setting, you can still act in an advisory or consultative role. REI is a good example of a company that embodies that principle as they have a purpose that is strategically aligned to where they make their money. They inspire, inform, and equip people with the proper tools to have a greater enjoyment of the outdoors. Your purpose should align with what you sell. REI also communicates its purpose in a way that conveys trust and authority, without sounding too corporate and separated from what the customers really care about. Your brand narrative flows consistently out of those three foundational ideas and is composed of these five things: What’s going on in the world through your lens? What problem does that create? What do you believe about that problem? How do you solve that problem? Why should someone believe you? This set of questions establishes your brand narrative and gets people’s heads nodding. It’s not about selling, it’s about framing the conversation around where you add the most value.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com rontite.com churchstate.com

Karim Nehdi shows you how to read your prospect’s mind so you can tailor your service offer to exactly what they want. Learn how the Herrmann Brain Dominance model works in business development and how you can use the concept to better understand how a prospect thinks, what they care about most in terms of communication, and how you can use that to close more deals.   Mo asks Karim Nehdi: What is your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, relationships, and career? Different people think differently, but most people don’t realize what that really means. The most effective leaders and business developers are able to harness the differences in thought and cognitive diversity for maximum effect. We all have neural pathways that shift over time. We innately default to seeking out people that think like us, but the best teams break out of that pattern and tap into the differences in the way that people think. Karim is the CEO of Herrmann International and has been working with Mo for a long time in many of the programs he’s developed. We are just scratching the potential of what the brain is capable of. We’ve learned over the past few decades that there are cognitive modes that dictate the way that we think, and the four different modes come together in different measures within each person. The first system is analytical thought. The second is structural thought. The third is relational thought. The fourth is experimental thought. We have all four pathways in our brains, but over time we come to default to one or two primarily, and that’s where the trouble comes in. People think they connect on preferences and areas they align. When you feel a match with someone the ideas tend to flow fairly easily, but when there’s a mismatch, the interaction can be awkward or difficult. A good example would be the IT team and the customer facing team. They both think in nearly opposite ways, and this can create tension in an organizational setting. In a business development context, understanding the differences can be very powerful. If you sense the prospect is risk averse, you should probably minimize the experimental and transformational elements of the pitch and focus on the process and how it all works. The most important component of good management, good leadership, and good stewardship is making sure that you have diversity of mind. Leaders that can bring a unique viewpoint and harness that within their organization can have a big impact. 3% of people are balanced across all four quadrants. Everyone can tap into the four different thinking systems. You just have to be willing to stretch and flex those cognitive muscles.   Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use our cognitive diversity to create and close more deals? What if you could read the minds of your customers and predict their response in advance? That would be an incredibly powerful business development skill. The first step is understanding yourself and where your preferences lie. For Mo, he fell into the experimental/analytical spectrum and knowing that helped him understand what was really on his mind and how he approached life. Your unique thinking style comes with strengths but also potential blindspots. Your default thinking may be leading you in the wrong direction for a deal, and if you never look back or get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, you will keep making the same mistakes. Once you know what your thought process is like, you can use that as a model to consider how a prospect might be thinking. Think about one of your most important customers and take a guess about what they might be thinking about in terms of what you are offering. If they are a big picture experimental thinker, maybe they are looking for something more innovative. If they are more relational thinkers, maybe they want to know they are going to be taken care of and are really concerned about what everyone else thinks. If they are structural thinkers, they are probably hyper-focused on the details and whether the offer will deliver exactly what they need. If they are analytical thinkers, they can be very price sensitive and looking for the greatest measurable ROI for them. Understanding the different types of buyers can allow you to position your product or service around what their needs might be. Don’t assume that people are on the same wavelength as you and ask the question about what they need. There are certain ways of thinking that tend to manifest more often in certain industries. Analytical thinkers like actuaries are probably all about the bottom line and being efficient in their communication. Structural thinkers are probably all about the details. Relational thinkers may ask you about your personal life and will probably engage with you beyond verbal communication. Experimental thinkers will ask a lot of questions to try to connect the dots, and you might see them work out their thought process in the conversation.   Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How do we use cognitive diversity and adapt to each of these four different ways of thinking? The baseline is to understand where you are likely to default and what your blindspots are going to be. Think about your pitch through the lens of what the stakeholder wants to hear and needs to understand in order to feel comfortable to move forward. This can mean adding in additional details for the structural buyer, including some ROI calculations for the analytic buyer, bringing in other clients to speak on your behalf for the relational buyer, or coming up with some novel ideas for the experimental buyer. Prepare your thinking in advance and try to start the conversation with where their preferences are instead of starting with where you are at. We often think about relationships on a one-on-one basis, but there are lots of people involved in the business development process. Business development is all about making your team work seamlessly with your customer’s team which is where cognitive diversity comes in. You need to make sure that the people on your team that think a certain way are being paired up with people that need to think that way. You need everybody to be on the same page and moving in the same direction to take advantage of an opportunity, and understanding how each person on the team thinks and facilitates that knowledge transfer. In just 10 minutes you can get a basic understanding of the mindsets on your team and identify some of the things you need to do to bridge the gap. Taking the time to think about your thinking has a massive ROI in business outcomes. Understanding the thought processes of the individuals at play builds trust and allows people to communicate and solve problems more effectively. Challenge everyone that is involved in the conversation to think about their thinking and how it’s going to play out in the success of the stakeholder.   Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use cognitive diversity to hack our own habits and be more successful, even when we’re busy? Business development is a team sport. There is a role for the individual relationship, but there is also an important role for the team that supports that relationship. Research shows that cognitively diverse teams who know how to harness cognitive diversity are 60-70% more effective than teams that don’t. Cognitive diversity accounts for about 20% of the variance in overall team performance and up to 34% in specific activities like strategic thinking and problem solving. The first hack is around making sure your team is built in a diversity by design way. If you all share the biases and blindspots, they will be magnified in a deal context. On the other extreme, if you have too much cognitive diversity without the tools to manage it, it can create emergent conflict. When you’re building a team, an easy way to stay balanced is to ensure you have at least one person who can represent the mindset of someone from each quadrant. Have an experimental thinker that can connect the dots, a analytical thinker who is going to be ready with an ROI calculation when you need it, a relational thinker who is able to build the personal connection, and a structural thinker that is going to make sure the customer has everything they need to feel comfortable. The best teams have a steward for each way of thinking. The lone experimental thinker may be an outlier, but they are also probably the most necessary mindset. Karim tells a story of a CEO that he worked with that had a specific set of questions answered at every meeting. Why, What, Who, How? Coincidentally, those four questions map to the four quadrants of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. One way to take notes in a meeting is to create the four quadrants and write down notes in the corresponding mindset/question. If you notice that an area is missing, you can bring the focus there before the meeting wraps up.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Karim Nehdi. There are four major ways we think: analytically, structurally, relationally, and experimentally, and each way of thinking gives clues. With an analytical thinker, they are going to be quick and cut to the chase. They want to jump right into the meeting and get things done. With the structural thinker, they will want to know the details and what the process looks like. They want to know the steps to start something and how to keep it going. With a relational thinker, you will see clues that they care with more emotion in their voice. They probably think from the perspective of other people and ask more questions to dial up the engagement. With an experimental thinker, they may zig zag in the conversation and want to do things that haven’t been done before. Experimental thinkers want to connect the dots. Analytical thinkers want to dial in the ROI, structural thinkers desire safety, relational thinkers want more connection to you and your team, and experimental thinkers want a strategic fit with where they are heading. To adapt to a person’s thought style, make it easy to talk about what matters to them, whether that is money and ROI, that you’re a safe choice, that your team is ready to engage, or what you stand for and how it aligns with their goals. Big deals are sold by teams, to teams. You can really knock a deal out of the park by covering all four ways of thinking.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Karim Nehdi. There are four major ways we think: analytically, structurally, relationally, and experimentally, and each way of thinking gives clues. With an analytical thinker, they are going to be quick and cut to the chase. They want to jump right into the meeting and get things done. With the structural thinker, they will want to know the details and what the process looks like. They want to know the steps to start something and how to keep it going. With a relational thinker, you will see clues that they care with more emotion in their voice. They probably think from the perspective of other people and ask more questions to dial up the engagement. With an experimental thinker, they may zig zag in the conversation and want to do things that haven’t been done before. Experimental thinkers want to connect the dots. Analytical thinkers want to dial in the ROI, structural thinkers desire safety, relational thinkers want more connection to you and your team, and experimental thinkers want a strategic fit with where they are heading. To adapt to a person’s thought style, make it easy to talk about what matters to them, whether that is money and ROI, that you’re a safe choice, that your team is ready to engage, or what you stand for and how it aligns with their goals. Big deals are sold by teams, to teams. You can really knock a deal out of the park by covering all four ways of thinking.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use cognitive diversity to hack our own habits and be more successful, even when we’re busy? Business development is a team sport. There is a role for the individual relationship, but there is also an important role for the team that supports that relationship. Research shows that cognitively diverse teams who know how to harness cognitive diversity are 60-70% more effective than teams that don’t. Cognitive diversity accounts for about 20% of the variance in overall team performance and up to 34% in specific activities like strategic thinking and problem solving. The first hack is around making sure your team is built in a diversity by design way. If you all share the biases and blindspots, they will be magnified in a deal context. On the other extreme, if you have too much cognitive diversity without the tools to manage it, it can create emergent conflict. When you’re building a team, an easy way to stay balanced is to ensure you have at least one person who can represent the mindset of someone from each quadrant. Have an experimental thinker that can connect the dots, a analytical thinker who is going to be ready with an ROI calculation when you need it, a relational thinker who is able to build the personal connection, and a structural thinker that is going to make sure the customer has everything they need to feel comfortable. The best teams have a steward for each way of thinking. The lone experimental thinker may be an outlier, but they are also probably the most necessary mindset. Karim tells a story of a CEO that he worked with that had a specific set of questions answered at every meeting. Why, What, Who, How? Coincidentally, those four questions map to the four quadrants of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. One way to take notes in a meeting is to create the four quadrants and write down notes in the corresponding mindset/question. If you notice that an area is missing, you can bring the focus there before the meeting wraps up.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How do we use cognitive diversity and adapt to each of these four different ways of thinking? The baseline is to understand where you are likely to default and what your blindspots are going to be. Think about your pitch through the lens of what the stakeholder wants to hear and needs to understand in order to feel comfortable to move forward. This can mean adding in additional details for the structural buyer, including some ROI calculations for the analytic buyer, bringing in other clients to speak on your behalf for the relational buyer, or coming up with some novel ideas for the experimental buyer. Prepare your thinking in advance and try to start the conversation with where their preferences are instead of starting with where you are at. We often think about relationships on a one-on-one basis, but there are lots of people involved in the business development process. Business development is all about making your team work seamlessly with your customer’s team which is where cognitive diversity comes in. You need to make sure that the people on your team that think a certain way are being paired up with people that need to think that way. You need everybody to be on the same page and moving in the same direction to take advantage of an opportunity, and understanding how each person on the team thinks and facilitates that knowledge transfer. In just 10 minutes you can get a basic understanding of the mindsets on your team and identify some of the things you need to do to bridge the gap. Taking the time to think about your thinking has a massive ROI in business outcomes. Understanding the thought processes of the individuals at play builds trust and allows people to communicate and solve problems more effectively. Challenge everyone that is involved in the conversation to think about their thinking and how it’s going to play out in the success of the stakeholder.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: How can we use our cognitive diversity to create and close more deals? What if you could read the minds of your customers and predict their response in advance? That would be an incredibly powerful business development skill. The first step is understanding yourself and where your preferences lie. For Mo, he fell into the experimental/analytical spectrum and knowing that helped him understand what was really on his mind and how he approached life. Your unique thinking style comes with strengths but also potential blindspots. Your default thinking may be leading you in the wrong direction for a deal, and if you never look back or get into the habit of thinking about your thinking, you will keep making the same mistakes. Once you know what your thought process is like, you can use that as a model to consider how a prospect might be thinking. Think about one of your most important customers and take a guess about what they might be thinking about in terms of what you are offering. If they are a big picture experimental thinker, maybe they are looking for something more innovative. If they are more relational thinkers, maybe they want to know they are going to be taken care of and are really concerned about what everyone else thinks. If they are structural thinkers, they are probably hyper-focused on the details and whether the offer will deliver exactly what they need. If they are analytical thinkers, they can be very price sensitive and looking for the greatest measurable ROI for them. Understanding the different types of buyers can allow you to position your product or service around what their needs might be. Don’t assume that people are on the same wavelength as you and ask the question about what they need. There are certain ways of thinking that tend to manifest more often in certain industries. Analytical thinkers like actuaries are probably all about the bottom line and being efficient in their communication. Structural thinkers are probably all about the details. Relational thinkers may ask you about your personal life and will probably engage with you beyond verbal communication. Experimental thinkers will ask a lot of questions to try to connect the dots, and you might see them work out their thought process in the conversation.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Mo asks Karim Nehdi: What is your big idea on how people can grow their book of business, relationships, and career? Different people think differently, but most people don’t realize what that really means. The most effective leaders and business developers are able to harness the differences in thought and cognitive diversity for maximum effect. We all have neural pathways that shift over time. We innately default to seeking out people that think like us, but the best teams break out of that pattern and tap into the differences in the way that people think. Karim is the CEO of Herrmann International and has been working with Mo for a long time in many of the programs he’s developed. We are just scratching the potential of what the brain is capable of. We’ve learned over the past few decades that there are cognitive modes that dictate the way that we think, and the four different modes come together in different measures within each person. The first system is analytical thought. The second is structural thought. The third is relational thought. The fourth is experimental thought. We have all four pathways in our brains, but over time we come to default to one or two primarily, and that’s where the trouble comes in. People think they connect on preferences and areas they align. When you feel a match with someone the ideas tend to flow fairly easily, but when there’s a mismatch, the interaction can be awkward or difficult. A good example would be the IT team and the customer facing team. They both think in nearly opposite ways, and this can create tension in an organizational setting. In a business development context, understanding the differences can be very powerful. If you sense the prospect is risk averse, you should probably minimize the experimental and transformational elements of the pitch and focus on the process and how it all works. The most important component of good management, good leadership, and good stewardship is making sure that you have diversity of mind. Leaders that can bring a unique viewpoint and harness that within their organization can have a big impact. 3% of people are balanced across all four quadrants. Everyone can tap into the four different thinking systems. You just have to be willing to stretch and flex those cognitive muscles.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thinkherrmann.com/mo

Jay Baer shares insights into marketing that will transform the way you think about business development and will allow you to spend half the time creating content while generating 10x the results. Learn how to inspire your customers to market for you, why marketing your content is more important than your actual content, and a simple strategy for creating extraordinary and memorable client relationships.   Mo asks Jay Baer: How can people become great at business development? The challenge with business development is that technology has made it so easy to create contacts. It used to be that you could stand out just by having a better toolkit, but now the volume of business development messaging is out of control. Competency does not create conversation. The best way to grow any business is for your customers to grow it for you. There is a time and place for advertising, but in many cases the most successful brands advertise the least because their customers and clients spread the word for them. Even though word of mouth is the #1 way of generating business, fewer than 1% of companies have a word-of-mouth strategy. If you want your customers to be a proactive word of mouth engine, you have to give them a story to tell, which means you have to do something different in your organization. What if, instead of sending your proposal as a pdf attachment in an email, you send your proposal in a completely unique and unusual way. Doing the normal thing is often more risky than doing something that’s a little bit different. Just because you're in professional services doesn’t mean that you took a vow of boredom. Every single person and organization can have a talk trigger, but we’re are often afraid to stand out. Start with a pilot program and roll out your talk trigger to a certain subsection of your customer base and see how things go. Once you see the results, you can roll it out to the rest of the organization.   Mo asks Jay Baer: How do we create and close more opportunities? You have to focus on the problems you solve, not on the services you offer. People don’t want services, they want a fix to the problem they have. You also have to really understand who you are selling to. This can become more challenging as time goes on as the number of people you are selling to grows, but it’s vital to growth. Figure out a way to rank your potential clients against one another and create an asset around that and they will beat a path to your door. It’s important to provide value instead of selling to them. If you provide enough value, the client will sell themselves. Figure out the marketing plan for the asset before you build it. When you do that, you will build a better marketing asset. You have to atomize your content. The individual asset (report, whitepaper, survey, etc.) can be broken down into additional bite size chunks. Everyone is besieged with opportunities and information, so you have to give them a short, easy intro to lead them in. Increase your conversion rate by merchandising the findings of your report in smaller pieces of content. It’s the little things surrounding the asset that drive people to the landing page. Every single slide of your webinar is a potential social media graphic, blog post, video, or infographic.   Mo asks Jay Baer: What is your best advice on deepening relationships? The more transactional you think the relationship is, the more transactional it’s going to feel. If your motive is based on getting paid, you’re not going to develop deep and rich relationships. The best way to go about building relationships that matter is to build relationships that you want to have on their own. If you get paid, that’s great. If not, that’s okay, too. Be there before the sale. Build the right relationships now, even if you have nothing to sell or are not the right answer for them. Someday you might be. Most people suck at business development because they are not patient. Have conversations with people that are not about business and eventually they may lead to a commercial deal down the road. If you’re trying to figure out what relationships to build today, it should be the relationships that you might try to monetize in 2022. If you want to build deeper, more valuable relationships that will eventually yield victories, it is your responsibility to add all the value to the relationships. Business development is like practicing your serve, you should just keep sending value and adding to the relationship. Who you are is infinitely more interesting than what you do. You have to add your personality into your interactions with people if you want them to remember you. It’s okay to treat people like people. How can you add value to someone if you don’t know what that person cares about outside of business? Do the work to get to know the person. It’s very hard to tell if a professional is 20% smarter or better, but it’s really easy to tell if they genuinely care.   Mo asks Jay Baer: How can we hack our own habits and be working efficiently at business development even when we are yanked away by other demands? The first step is you have to enjoy the process at some level in order to put real time into it. If you hate social media, you will suck at social media. You have to find the relationship nurturing schema that you actually enjoy so that you can stick to it. If you don’t derive satisfaction or pleasure around it, you are going to invent a bunch of excuses for not doing it. You also have to batch your relationships. Write down and organize your relationships into tiers and figure out what your idealized communication cadence for each tier. You have to schedule relationship time, just like everything else that is important in your life. Once you’ve organized your relationships, add them to your calendar. If you wait until you have absolutely nothing else to do and nothing better to invest in your relationships, it’s never going to happen. Everybody has time, the question is “How are you prioritizing your time?” If you don’t spend time investing in your relationships each week, it probably goes back to either not liking the process or you don’t believe it’s worth it. The best way to stay top of mind is to add value. The best way is to study what they are doing and then comment, amplify, or add value to what they are doing. People tend to underestimate the value of amplification for other people. If you’re not sure what to say, share what your tier 1 relationship is saying and act as their cheerleader. Sometimes all you have to do is schedule time each day to tell other people how great they are.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Jay Baer. Market your marketing. Most experts put in the time to create some content, but they would be much better served by taking half that time, creating less content overall, and spending the other half marketing that content. Doing this allows you to spend half the time and generate 10x the results. There are three components to marketing your marketing: the plan, the lead up before the launch, and what you do after the launch. Whatever you are creating, you should spend quite a bit of time upfront developing the outline of the content, who the audience is, and think about the marketing of that content. Start with what your audience needs to know and how you can create something that they would die to have. Jay’s example of creating a report on the top 50 university’s websites is perfect. If you’re the person that has the data, information, or algorithm, it makes you more magnetic to your prospects. Narrow down your audience to specific people. That will help you tailor the content directly to what they care about. The goal of your pre-launch is to break down your big piece of content into smaller, bite-size pieces as you can. Get as many people as you can to help promote them and get the word out for the official launch. The post launch step is the most important. Your big piece of content is not the finishing line, it’s the start. Post launch you should organize an effort with your strategic partners to funnel people into a meeting with you on how the content impacts them. Seize the momentum of your launch to get the meetings where you can actually get hired. Most people only do one or two parts of the three steps of the marketing your marketing process. Put all three into practice and watch your results explode.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com talktriggers.com convinceandconvert.com jaybaer.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Jay Baer. Market your marketing. Most experts put in the time to create some content, but they would be much better served by taking half that time, creating less content overall, and spending the other half marketing that content. Doing this allows you to spend half the time and generate 10x the results. There are three components to marketing your marketing: the plan, the lead up before the launch, and what you do after the launch. Whatever you are creating, you should spend quite a bit of time upfront developing the outline of the content, who the audience is, and think about the marketing of that content. Start with what your audience needs to know and how you can create something that they would die to have. Jay’s example of creating a report on the top 50 university’s websites is perfect. If you’re the person that has the data, information, or algorithm, it makes you more magnetic to your prospects. Narrow down your audience to specific people. That will help you tailor the content directly to what they care about. The goal of your pre-launch is to break down your big piece of content into smaller, bite-size pieces as you can. Get as many people as you can to help promote them and get the word out for the official launch. The post launch step is the most important. Your big piece of content is not the finishing line, it’s the start. Post launch you should organize an effort with your strategic partners to funnel people into a meeting with you on how the content impacts them. Seize the momentum of your launch to get the meetings where you can actually get hired. Most people only do one or two parts of the three steps of the marketing your marketing process. Put all three into practice and watch your results explode.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com talktriggers.com convinceandconvert.com jaybaer.com

Mo asks Jay Baer: How can we hack our own habits and be working efficiently at business development even when we are yanked away by other demands? The first step is you have to enjoy the process at some level in order to put real time into it. If you hate social media, you will suck at social media. You have to find the relationship nurturing schema that you actually enjoy so that you can stick to it. If you don’t derive satisfaction or pleasure around it, you are going to invent a bunch of excuses for not doing it. You also have to batch your relationships. Write down and organize your relationships into tiers and figure out what your idealized communication cadence for each tier. You have to schedule relationship time, just like everything else that is important in your life. Once you’ve organized your relationships, add them to your calendar. If you wait until you have absolutely nothing else to do and nothing better to invest in your relationships, it’s never going to happen. Everybody has time, the question is “How are you prioritizing your time?” If you don’t spend time investing in your relationships each week, it probably goes back to either not liking the process or you don’t believe it’s worth it. The best way to stay top of mind is to add value. The best way is to study what they are doing and then comment, amplify, or add value to what they are doing. People tend to underestimate the value of amplification for other people. If you’re not sure what to say, share what your tier 1 relationship is saying and act as their cheerleader. Sometimes all you have to do is schedule time each day to tell other people how great they are.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com convinceandconvert.com jaybaer.com

Mo asks Jay Baer: What is your best advice on deepening relationships? The more transactional you think the relationship is, the more transactional it’s going to feel. If your motive is based on getting paid, you’re not going to develop deep and rich relationships. The best way to go about building relationships that matter is to build relationships that you want to have on their own. If you get paid, that’s great. If not, that’s okay, too. Be there before the sale. Build the right relationships now, even if you have nothing to sell or are not the right answer for them. Someday you might be. Most people suck at business development because they are not patient. Have conversations with people that are not about business and eventually they may lead to a commercial deal down the road. If you’re trying to figure out what relationships to build today, it should be the relationships that you might try to monetize in 2022. If you want to build deeper, more valuable relationships that will eventually yield victories, it is your responsibility to add all the value to the relationships. Business development is like practicing your serve, you should just keep sending value and adding to the relationship. Who you are is infinitely more interesting than what you do. You have to add your personality into your interactions with people if you want them to remember you. It’s okay to treat people like people. How can you add value to someone if you don’t know what that person cares about outside of business? Do the work to get to know the person. It’s very hard to tell if a professional is 20% smarter or better, but it’s really easy to tell if they genuinely care.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com convinceandconvert.com

Mo asks Jay Baer: How do we create and close more opportunities? You have to focus on the problems you solve, not on the services you offer. People don’t want services, they want a fix to the problem they have. You also have to really understand who you are selling to. This can become more challenging as time goes on as the number of people you are selling to grows, but it’s vital to growth. Figure out a way to rank your potential clients against one another and create an asset around that and they will beat a path to your door. It’s important to provide value instead of selling to them. If you provide enough value, the client will sell themselves. Figure out the marketing plan for the asset before you build it. When you do that, you will build a better marketing asset. You have to atomize your content. The individual asset (report, whitepaper, survey, etc.) can be broken down into additional bite size chunks. Everyone is besieged with opportunities and information, so you have to give them a short, easy intro to lead them in. Increase your conversion rate by merchandising the findings of your report in smaller pieces of content. It’s the little things surrounding the asset that drive people to the landing page. Every single slide of your webinar is a potential social media graphic, blog post, video, or infographic.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com talktriggers.com convinceandconvert.com

Mo asks Jay Baer: How can people become great at business development? The challenge with business development is that technology has made it so easy to create contacts. It used to be that you could stand out just by having a better toolkit, but now the volume of business development messaging is out of control. Competency does not create conversation. The best way to grow any business is for your customers to grow it for you. There is a time and place for advertising, but in many cases the most successful brands advertise the least because their customers and clients spread the word for them. Even though word of mouth is the #1 way of generating business, fewer than 1% of companies have a word-of-mouth strategy. If you want your customers to be a proactive word of mouth engine, you have to give them a story to tell, which means you have to do something different in your organization. What if, instead of sending your proposal as a pdf attachment in an email, you send your proposal in a completely unique and unusual way. Doing the normal thing is often more risky than doing something that’s a little bit different. Just because you're in professional services doesn’t mean that you took a vow of boredom. Every single person and organization can have a talk trigger, but we’re are often afraid to stand out. Start with a pilot program and roll out your talk trigger to a certain subsection of your customer base and see how things go. Once you see the results, you can roll it out to the rest of the organization.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com talktriggers.com convinceandconvert.com

Todd Henry shares why creativity is crucial to business development success and a new mindset for identifying client problems in a way that will make them think you’re reading their mind. Learn a practice that allows you to connect the dots and deliver brilliant insights when you need them most and a method for getting to the root of a client’s problem without being pushy or relying on a PowerPoint slide deck.   Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your big idea for folks to stand out, to be creative, do their best work, and get their prospects’ attention? A lot of people believe that they are not creative because they don’t make art, but creativity is problem solving. Any line of work that involves problem solving requires you to be creative on a daily basis. Most successful creative professionals have disciplines in their life that prepare them for moments where they have to be brilliant. They build study time into their schedule to fill their mind with valuable stimuli. If you want to be brilliant on a moment’s notice, you have to begin far upstream from the moment and that begins with building practices into life so you can deliver great results when you need to. One of the interesting challenges of working from home over the past year has been that meetings have become frictionless. That means that everyone needs to identify time on the calendar to commit to engaging in those disciplines. Block out time in your schedule to read, to think, and sit and think about your priorities. Get ready to feel unproductive for a couple of hours because creativity is not about efficiency; it’s about effectiveness. If something is important to you, you will find time for it. Those that are willing to take the uncomfortable step to carve out strategic time on the calendar are the ones that are going to see results on the other side. We have to manage our energy in the same way we manage our time. We need to think about our time in terms of investing, and when you invest, you are expecting long-term gains. Part of your time portfolio should be investment focused on efforts that may not pay off now but can lead to bigger results later on. Treat this time like a meeting with yourself. If someone calls you and requests that time, treat it like you were meeting with a client or important prospect. It’s also important to create feedback loops with your team so they can see the results of your efforts. We have to say no to things that aren’t using our time in the way that we want to use it in order to use our time effectively. One of the problems with meetings is that people will often set them for 60 minutes by default. One tactic you can use to restrict meetings to accomplish what they need to without wasting time is scheduling them at specific times (9:22) and a specific place (potted plant on the 2nd floor). You can also define how long you want to commit to when asking people to pick a time on your calendar.   Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your best advice on how people can create demand using creativity? If we want to be effective creative professionals, we need to become effective at defining problems. If you can define the problem your client is trying to solve better than they can, and also propose some solutions, they are much more likely to come to you for the work. The creative process begins by defining problems effectively. Those who ask the best questions win because they get closest to the middle. When the client feels like you are inside their head and you deeply understand the issues they are facing, you become the go-to expert. Every organization thinks they’re unique but they often can’t see the problem they are facing because they are too close to the work to have a proper perspective. You can bring an outside perspective and if you can identify the problem differently and give them the language that helps them simplify the problem, you’re halfway to closing the deal. Start with very broad questions and work your way down. Broad questions give you opportunities to ask more pointed questions that can guide you towards the deep problem the prospect is dealing with. The issue with experts is that we start to become comfortable with what we do and start to lead with solutions instead of questions. We have to be curious and want to understand what is going on before we start offering solutions. Your marketing materials are tools for the prospect to justify the purchase decision, not the reason to make the purchase decision. At the end of the day, they want to know if you can solve their problem. Many of us artificially escalate the perceived consequences of failure and this prevents us from taking enough action to really get results. We need to rely less on the PowerPoint slides and more on the personal relationship where you are invested in them and solving their problems.   Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your #1 tip to deepen relationships? If something is important to you, it becomes a priority. We need to start treating relationships as investments rather than obligations. As we become successful professionals, we start to see relationships as more transactional and we need to change that perception. We need people in our life to reveal patterns that we can’t see, to speak truth to us, to help us see life through new eyes, and to inspire us, and we need to be that person for other people as well. Do you have anyone in your life that you meet with routinely to help each other become better? Especially with leadership, you need meaningful relationships in your life where people are willing to speak truth to you and preferably before the other person needs something from you. Be intentional about your relationships. A head-to-head is a good tactic to deepen one relationship at a time. The next time you meet with the person, share one new thing you’ve learned since the last time you met and have the other person do the same. This simple practice expands your capacity to see the world and helps you both be better at what you do.   Mo asks Todd Henry: How do we hack our own habits to have the best chance at long term success? Professionals that succeed in the long term and continue to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy are the ones that have disciplines and practices in five key areas. The first is focus. Successful creative professionals solve problems; they don’t work on projects. Define the problem you are trying to solve and whittle it down to the most important aspects so you can allocate your finite resources effectively. The second is relationships. We need other people in our life to help us solve problems effectively. Creativity is a team sport. Teams that are good at connecting the collective dots are the most effective. The third is energy. We have to be good at managing our discretionary energy in ways that help us create more energy in the future. We have to be good at saying no and investing our energy in meaningful places. The fourth is stimuli. These are the dots you put into your head that you can connect later. You need a practice of inspiring yourself with stimulus that forces you to see things in new ways. The fifth area is hours. We often think of our time in terms of efficiency and not effectiveness. We need to invest our time in long-term future value.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Todd Henry. Long scale creativity is a process, just like business development. The Snowball System and the Grow Big Training are a creative synthesis of the business development practices that have been shown to work across industries and time. Any kind of long-term sustainable work, whether that’s growing a business or learning a language, takes a long time to get there. As soon as you realize that, you can identify the process behind it. Anybody who is great at something has both learned it and earned it by developing a process around it. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” -Jack London You should walk into your first meeting with someone with a hypothesis as to what’s going on, but lead with broad questions. Ask enough questions about the prospect’s situation until you can articulate back their problem to them better than they can describe it themselves. By asking questions first, you get a triple win. Good questions light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind, you are going to learn their priorities in their words, and the more self-disclosing information they give you, the more they like you. You have a higher chance of getting the yes at the end by starting with great questions at the beginning. A simple tactic you can use to take your business development efforts to the next level is the head-to-head. Find someone who is moving in the same general direction you are and schedule a 30 minute meeting once a month to share what each of you has learned since your last meeting. Build in an element of accountability to stay committed and maintain momentum. As you share your three big things that you plan to accomplish, you will start to notice ways that you can be helpful to each other. Business development is a project that never ends. It's a process, like creativity, and if you want to grow your business, you need to focus on it and have a system to make it happen each week.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Todd Henry. Long scale creativity is a process, just like business development. The Snowball System and the Grow Big Training are a creative synthesis of the business development practices that have been shown to work across industries and time. Any kind of long-term sustainable work, whether that’s growing a business or learning a language, takes a long time to get there. As soon as you realize that, you can identify the process behind it. Anybody who is great at something has both learned it and earned it by developing a process around it. “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” -Jack London You should walk into your first meeting with someone with a hypothesis as to what’s going on, but lead with broad questions. Ask enough questions about the prospect’s situation until you can articulate back their problem to them better than they can describe it themselves. By asking questions first, you get a triple win. Good questions light up the pleasure center of the other person’s mind, you are going to learn their priorities in their words, and the more self-disclosing information they give you, the more they like you. You have a higher chance of getting the yes at the end by starting with great questions at the beginning. A simple tactic you can use to take your business development efforts to the next level is the head-to-head. Find someone who is moving in the same general direction you are and schedule a 30 minute meeting once a month to share what each of you has learned since your last meeting. Build in an element of accountability to stay committed and maintain momentum. As you share your three big things that you plan to accomplish, you will start to notice ways that you can be helpful to each other. Business development is a project that never ends. It's a process, like creativity, and if you want to grow your business, you need to focus on it and have a system to make it happen each week.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Mo asks Todd Henry: How do we hack our own habits to have the best chance at long term success? Professionals that succeed in the long term and continue to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy are the ones that have disciplines and practices in five key areas. The first is focus. Successful creative professionals solve problems; they don’t work on projects. Define the problem you are trying to solve and whittle it down to the most important aspects so you can allocate your finite resources effectively. The second is relationships. We need other people in our life to help us solve problems effectively. Creativity is a team sport. Teams that are good at connecting the collective dots are the most effective. The third is energy. We have to be good at managing our discretionary energy in ways that help us create more energy in the future. We have to be good at saying no and investing our energy in meaningful places. The fourth is stimuli. These are the dots you put into your head that you can connect later. You need a practice of inspiring yourself with stimulus that forces you to see things in new ways. The fifth area is hours. We often think of our time in terms of efficiency and not effectiveness. We need to invest our time in long-term future value.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your #1 tip to deepen relationships? If something is important to you, it becomes a priority. We need to start treating relationships as investments rather than obligations. As we become successful professionals, we start to see relationships as more transactional and we need to change that perception. We need people in our life to reveal patterns that we can’t see, to speak truth to us, to help us see life through new eyes, and to inspire us, and we need to be that person for other people as well. Do you have anyone in your life that you meet with routinely to help each other become better? Especially with leadership, you need meaningful relationships in your life where people are willing to speak truth to you and preferably before the other person needs something from you. Be intentional about your relationships. A head-to-head is a good tactic to deepen one relationship at a time. The next time you meet with the person, share one new thing you’ve learned since the last time you met and have the other person do the same. This simple practice expands your capacity to see the world and helps you both be better at what you do.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your best advice on how people can create demand using creativity? If we want to be effective creative professionals, we need to become effective at defining problems. If you can define the problem your client is trying to solve better than they can, and also propose some solutions, they are much more likely to come to you for the work. The creative process begins by defining problems effectively. Those who ask the best questions win because they get closest to the middle. When the client feels like you are inside their head and you deeply understand the issues they are facing, you become the go-to expert. Every organization thinks they’re unique but they often can’t see the problem they are facing because they are too close to the work to have a proper perspective. You can bring an outside perspective and if you can identify the problem differently and give them the language that helps them simplify the problem, you’re halfway to closing the deal. Start with very broad questions and work your way down. Broad questions give you opportunities to ask more pointed questions that can guide you towards the deep problem the prospect is dealing with. The issue with experts is that we start to become comfortable with what we do and start to lead with solutions instead of questions. We have to be curious and want to understand what is going on before we start offering solutions. Your marketing materials are tools for the prospect to justify the purchase decision, not the reason to make the purchase decision. At the end of the day, they want to know if you can solve their problem. Many of us artificially escalate the perceived consequences of failure and this prevents us from taking enough action to really get results. We need to rely less on the PowerPoint slides and more on the personal relationship where you are invested in them and solving their problems.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Mo asks Todd Henry: What is your big idea for folks to stand out, to be creative, do their best work, and get their prospects’ attention? A lot of people believe that they are not creative because they don’t make art, but creativity is problem solving. Any line of work that involves problem solving requires you to be creative on a daily basis. Most successful creative professionals have disciplines in their life that prepare them for moments where they have to be brilliant. They build study time into their schedule to fill their mind with valuable stimuli. If you want to be brilliant on a moment’s notice, you have to begin far upstream from the moment and that begins with building practices into life so you can deliver great results when you need to. One of the interesting challenges of working from home over the past year has been that meetings have become frictionless. That means that everyone needs to identify time on the calendar to commit to engaging in those disciplines. Block out time in your schedule to read, to think, and sit and think about your priorities. Get ready to feel unproductive for a couple of hours because creativity is not about efficiency; it’s about effectiveness. If something is important to you, you will find time for it. Those that are willing to take the uncomfortable step to carve out strategic time on the calendar are the ones that are going to see results on the other side. We have to manage our energy in the same way we manage our time. We need to think about our time in terms of investing, and when you invest, you are expecting long-term gains. Part of your time portfolio should be investment focused on efforts that may not pay off now but can lead to bigger results later on. Treat this time like a meeting with yourself. If someone calls you and requests that time, treat it like you were meeting with a client or important prospect. It’s also important to create feedback loops with your team so they can see the results of your efforts. We have to say no to things that aren’t using our time in the way that we want to use it in order to use our time effectively. One of the problems with meetings is that people will often set them for 60 minutes by default. One tactic you can use to restrict meetings to accomplish what they need to without wasting time is scheduling them at specific times (9:22) and a specific place (potted plant on the 2nd floor). You can also define how long you want to commit to when asking people to pick a time on your calendar.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com toddhenry.com

Michael Port shares the power of speaking to transform an audience and get them to take action. Discover how to skillfully and authentically impress and inspire any audience with substance and style, the best way to sell your services during a speech without actually selling, and how to connect with your audience emotionally and intellectually at the same time.   Mo asks Michael Port: What’s your best advice for professional services experts to get great at growing their book of business, growing their relationships, and growing their career? Stop speaking, and start performing. Most people who are trying to share their ideas tend to only share information, which doesn’t generally change people’s behavior. First we have to change how people feel before we can change how they think, and then how they behave. If you are working on a pitch or sales conversation, you have to think about how you want your audience to feel moment to moment, how you want them to think, and then what you want them to do afterward. Trying to stuff four hours of information into a one hour conversation is not a good way to convince someone. There are five foundational elements that exist in any type of pitch or presentation. The first element is the big idea that acts as a through line for the rest of the presentation. A big idea doesn’t need to be different to make a difference, it just needs to be true, relevant, and important for the people you serve. The second is being able to articulate the way the world looks to the people in the room. Changing someone’s mind takes a lot of effort and if the other person believes that you don’t understand them, it gets easier for them to say no. The third element is to have a clear and definitive promise that is associated with that presentation. The fourth element is articulating the consequences of not adopting the big idea and achieving the promise. The last element is the emotional, physical, and even spiritual rewards of adopting the big idea. Most people rely on their expertise when going into a pitch or presentation. If you’re not using a process for the content work and rehearsal, you will fall back onto your preparation, which in this case is minimal. Presenting is like running a marathon; you’re not going to succeed without training and preparation. Communicating your own value is a vital skill to learn. Talent is overrated. The people you are seeing on the stage at the high end of your profession work on their craft. They may have some talent to start off with, but the time they spend rehearsing and practicing is the real source of their success. The ones who excel are the ones who put in the most work into the craft of speaking, not the most talented.   Mo asks Michael Port: How can the audience create and close more opportunities? All sales offers should be proportionate to the amount of trust we’ve earned. When Michael started as an entrepreneur who wasn’t very comfortable making big sales offers so he started thinking about what people responded well to. This led him to the idea of inviting people during a weekly teleconference call. He started speaking about ideas that would help people think bigger about who they were and help advance their professional goals. He found that after six months of doing those calls, they had brought in 85% of the clients he had at the time. The interesting part was that although he made no sales offers during the calls, people were raising their hands to discuss working with him as a natural extension of the process. Rather than trying to sell every time you meet somebody, think about what you can invite them to that would add value to their lives and that you can do on a regular basis. You will start to find that it will begin to create business development opportunities for you. Using speaking as a promotional tool is one of the most effective tools you can employ, because there are very few environments that immediately infer credibility. The mistake that most people make is believing that they should be selling during the presentation, so Michael focuses on helping people deliver transformational speeches. If the audience has a transformation in that period of time while you’re on stage, all they need to know is that they can work with you and they will ask to work with you. If you have a truly transformational product, you don’t need a lot of marketing or selling because the product will do it for you. When you are delivering a speech, you should be getting stage-side leads every single time and if you get those leads, you will get clients and referrals for additional speaking opportunities. You can mention your services but keep it a light touch. Deliver something that people want, and if they want more of it they will book you as a consultant. Speaking live allows you to affect the way the audience feels and that’s the most important aspect of connection.   Mo asks Michael Port: How can people use speaking to deepen relationships? It’s critically important to start by demonstrating that you understand how the world looks for the people in the room. Can you fill multiple pages with their thoughts and perspectives? There is a difference between having someone tell you “you’re right” versus “that’s right”. Too many speakers are driven toward getting the audience to admit that they are right, but the better approach is to share an idea and get the audience to say in their head “yes, that’s right!”. That’s how you create an intellectual and emotional connection. It helps to find an analogy that you can use to demonstrate an idea. People are much more likely to adopt a new idea if they can contextualize it and relate it to something that they already understand. In terms of importance to communication, the most memorable things are stories, with metaphors and analogies towards the top, then data and facts at the bottom. Generally, we want to ask questions of the audience so that they can come to the answer themselves rather than us telling them what the answer is. Questions like “how would you feel if…?”, or “Would it make a difference if you were able to do X?”. Avoid leading the audience with questions that always end up in the affirmative. Research shows that people will resist answering your big idea when they feel led, but if you frame the questions in the negative you will actually increase the odds of getting a yes on your big idea.   Mo asks Michael Port: How can we hack our habits to keep doing things in the long-term even when we’re really busy? Michael doesn’t see himself as particularly disciplined. He tends to choose really intense projects that require a high level of focus and then move on from them when he is One of the key habit changing strategies he’s implemented in his business is using OKRs. Objectives and Key Results changed the way Michael and his team worked. OKRs are all about setting objectives and key results for the future in relatively short chunks of time, which gives Michael the best of both worlds. One of the most important things that Michael has discovered is that sometimes enough is enough and more is not always better. Being process-obsessed is the thing that has driven the growth of Michael’s business the most. The only way to keep his service at the highest level possible is knowing how he does it every single time without variation, the same is true with employees burning out. Every single organization needs to create their own operating system. This codified system allows people to be creative artists who are focused on growth and development within the framework of the processes. The operating system needs to be designed with a growth destination in mind. Develop the system with help from the people you work with. Allow your team to create their own standard operating procedures so it feels more collaborative as a result. You also need a way of measuring key results. Michael uses OKRs and health metrics in his operating system. OKRs are the growth oriented goals and the health metrics are the bottom line numbers you need to see to ensure the business is always healthy.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Michael Port. Mo strongly recommends that you consider using speaking to grow your business. Like any skill in life, if you have the right formula, get on the right stage, and deliver the right message you will see results. Put in some practice and you can become great at it. Like driving a car, it takes time to learn but when you put in the time it becomes so ingrained that you barely even think about it. Speaking reaps big rewards. Of all the ways you can generate leads, speaking is one of the most effective and has the highest leverage. Speaking allows you to bond and connect with potentially hundreds of people all with one action. Those same stage speaking skills can now be amplified on the internet as well via webinars and online conferences. Speaking also comes with a number of secondary benefits. By getting great at speaking, you grow your skills in a number of other communication areas. Speaking is a craft, treat it like one. You need to practice and if you want to get better fast, hire someone to help you. The major components of a speech that you need to work on are your opening story, the three pieces of content that you want to cover, and the ending. If you nail the opening and really connect with people at the beginning, they are going to stick with you. Try not to put too much content into your speech so you don’t overwhelm the audience. For the ending, leave them with a little inspiration. Mo is going to create a database of the three elements of his speeches so that he can easily mix and match the pieces. When you give a great talk, write down what you said so you have a blueprint for your next great speech to work from.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Michael Port. Mo strongly recommends that you consider using speaking to grow your business. Like any skill in life, if you have the right formula, get on the right stage, and deliver the right message you will see results. Put in some practice and you can become great at it. Like driving a car, it takes time to learn but when you put in the time it becomes so ingrained that you barely even think about it. Speaking reaps big rewards. Of all the ways you can generate leads, speaking is one of the most effective and has the highest leverage. Speaking allows you to bond and connect with potentially hundreds of people all with one action. Those same stage speaking skills can now be amplified on the internet as well via webinars and online conferences. Speaking also comes with a number of secondary benefits. By getting great at speaking, you grow your skills in a number of other communication areas. Speaking is a craft, treat it like one. You need to practice and if you want to get better fast, hire someone to help you. The major components of a speech that you need to work on are your opening story, the three pieces of content that you want to cover, and the ending. If you nail the opening and really connect with people at the beginning, they are going to stick with you. Try not to put too much content into your speech so you don’t overwhelm the audience. For the ending, leave them with a little inspiration. Mo is going to create a database of the three elements of his speeches so that he can easily mix and match the pieces. When you give a great talk, write down what you said so you have a blueprint for your next great speech to work from.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Mo asks Michael Port: How can we hack our habits to keep doing things in the long-term even when we’re really busy? Michael doesn’t see himself as particularly disciplined. He tends to choose really intense projects that require a high level of focus and then move on from them when he is One of the key habit changing strategies he’s implemented in his business is using OKRs. Objectives and Key Results changed the way Michael and his team worked. OKRs are all about setting objectives and key results for the future in relatively short chunks of time, which gives Michael the best of both worlds. One of the most important things that Michael has discovered is that sometimes enough is enough and more is not always better. Being process-obsessed is the thing that has driven the growth of Michael’s business the most. The only way to keep his service at the highest level possible is knowing how he does it every single time without variation, the same is true with employees burning out. Every single organization needs to create their own operating system. This codified system allows people to be creative artists who are focused on growth and development within the framework of the processes. The operating system needs to be designed with a growth destination in mind. Develop the system with help from the people you work with. Allow your team to create their own standard operating procedures so it feels more collaborative as a result. You also need a way of measuring key results. Michael uses OKRs and health metrics in his operating system. OKRs are the growth oriented goals and the health metrics are the bottom line numbers you need to see to ensure the business is always healthy.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Mo asks Michael Port: How can people use speaking to deepen relationships? It’s critically important to start by demonstrating that you understand how the world looks for the people in the room. Can you fill multiple pages with their thoughts and perspectives? There is a difference between having someone tell you “you’re right” versus “that’s right”. Too many speakers are driven toward getting the audience to admit that they are right, but the better approach is to share an idea and get the audience to say in their head “yes, that’s right!”. That’s how you create an intellectual and emotional connection. It helps to find an analogy that you can use to demonstrate an idea. People are much more likely to adopt a new idea if they can contextualize it and relate it to something that they already understand. In terms of importance to communication, the most memorable things are stories, with metaphors and analogies towards the top, then data and facts at the bottom. Generally, we want to ask questions of the audience so that they can come to the answer themselves rather than us telling them what the answer is. Questions like “how would you feel if…?”, or “Would it make a difference if you were able to do X?”. Avoid leading the audience with questions that always end up in the affirmative. Research shows that people will resist answering your big idea when they feel led, but if you frame the questions in the negative you will actually increase the odds of getting a yes on your big idea.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Mo asks Michael Port: How can the audience create and close more opportunities? All sales offers should be proportionate to the amount of trust we’ve earned. When Michael started as an entrepreneur who wasn’t very comfortable making big sales offers so he started thinking about what people responded well to. This led him to the idea of inviting people during a weekly teleconference call. He started speaking about ideas that would help people think bigger about who they were and help advance their professional goals. He found that after six months of doing those calls, they had brought in 85% of the clients he had at the time. The interesting part was that although he made no sales offers during the calls, people were raising their hands to discuss working with him as a natural extension of the process. Rather than trying to sell every time you meet somebody, think about what you can invite them to that would add value to their lives and that you can do on a regular basis. You will start to find that it will begin to create business development opportunities for you. Using speaking as a promotional tool is one of the most effective tools you can employ, because there are very few environments that immediately infer credibility. The mistake that most people make is believing that they should be selling during the presentation, so Michael focuses on helping people deliver transformational speeches. If the audience has a transformation in that period of time while you’re on stage, all they need to know is that they can work with you and they will ask to work with you. If you have a truly transformational product, you don’t need a lot of marketing or selling because the product will do it for you. When you are delivering a speech, you should be getting stage-side leads every single time and if you get those leads, you will get clients and referrals for additional speaking opportunities. You can mention your services but keep it a light touch. Deliver something that people want, and if they want more of it they will book you as a consultant. Speaking live allows you to affect the way the audience feels and that’s the most important aspect of connection.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Mo asks Michael Port: What’s your best advice for professional services experts to get great at growing their book of business, growing their relationships, and growing their career? Stop speaking, and start performing. Most people who are trying to share their ideas tend to only share information, which doesn’t generally change people’s behavior. First we have to change how people feel before we can change how they think, and then how they behave. If you are working on a pitch or sales conversation, you have to think about how you want your audience to feel moment to moment, how you want them to think, and then what you want them to do afterward. Trying to stuff four hours of information into a one hour conversation is not a good way to convince someone. There are five foundational elements that exist in any type of pitch or presentation. The first element is the big idea that acts as a through line for the rest of the presentation. A big idea doesn’t need to be different to make a difference, it just needs to be true, relevant, and important for the people you serve. The second is being able to articulate the way the world looks to the people in the room. Changing someone’s mind takes a lot of effort and if the other person believes that you don’t understand them, it gets easier for them to say no. The third element is to have a clear and definitive promise that is associated with that presentation. The fourth element is articulating the consequences of not adopting the big idea and achieving the promise. The last element is the emotional, physical, and even spiritual rewards of adopting the big idea. Most people rely on their expertise when going into a pitch or presentation. If you’re not using a process for the content work and rehearsal, you will fall back onto your preparation, which in this case is minimal. Presenting is like running a marathon; you’re not going to succeed without training and preparation. Communicating your own value is a vital skill to learn. Talent is overrated. The people you are seeing on the stage at the high end of your profession work on their craft. They may have some talent to start off with, but the time they spend rehearsing and practicing is the real source of their success. The ones who excel are the ones who put in the most work into the craft of speaking, not the most talented.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com heroicpublicspeaking.com

Molly Fletcher shares her insights into business development and how she became the world’s top-performing female sports agent. Learn why every business development conversation starts with curiosity, why over-delivering in a relationship makes asking for referrals easy, and how to create a sustainable system that keeps you motivated and energized to build new relationships every day.   Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to grow their book of business, their relationships, and their career? You have to behave in a way that sends a message to the people you want to work with and for, that the relationship matters so much to you that you behave like they are your client already. In all business development relationship conversations, people are asking the same basic questions. “Do I like you?”, “Can you help me?”, and “Can I trust you?”. When you act like you have the business before you already do and behave as you care about them, they can answer those questions with a yes. Every business development conversation starts with curiosity. When you’re curious you can discover the gaps in their world and find a way to add value to them. People like us when we help them and make their world better. What can you do to show up in your client’s and prospect’s world and help them feel like they matter to you? Especially one week or one month after you have that initial conversation. You have to believe in the process and put systems and triggers in place to create that and turn follow-up into a routine. The big moment is not the pitch, it’s after they leave and you have the opportunity to behave in a way that shows them that they matter to you. It’s not about making money right now, it’s the fact that if you lean in and add value and make their lives better, they can’t help but trust you and appreciate that. Once you have the process in place you have to be disciplined about it. Build your process around follow-up into your calendar and don’t leave it in your inbox. You have to schedule the things in your life that matter most. Block that time and protect it. If you want to stay top of mind with your prospects you have to stay connected, stay curious, and stay in their world.   Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How can busy professionals create and close the meaty business that we all want? Be relational, not transactional. When we stay relational we can do powerful things. A client relationship is like a marriage, you have to show up every day and continue to add value to their world or they will go somewhere else. Consistently over-deliver and add tremendous value to your client’s and prospect’s lives. If you pour into the people that matter to you, it creates a platform where if you ask for a referral or a favour, they are happy to do it for you. Throwing in little extras around the services you provide have a disproportionate impact on your relationship. Getting into someone’s head and heart is how you stand out. Most people are thinking that way or doing the things that connect that way, and if you do it consistently over time and from an authentic place, your prospect can’t help but like and trust you. Oftentimes, the things that don’t cost money can have the most value of all. Don’t aim to close the deal. Instead, build a vibrant ecosystem of relationships. When you do that you naturally generate opportunities for your pipeline over time. You need enough in your pipeline to avoid desperation. Prospecting is like dating, you need to develop a relationship with the person before you propose to get married.   Mo asks Molly Fletcher: How do we deepen our relationships, but also meet the right new people and handle the first couple of weeks? One of the easiest ways to meet new people is to over deliver to your current clients so that they want to help you and are happy to make introductions. Know the difference between referrals and introductions. Asking for a high level of specificity in the ask is crucial to getting new relationships into play. When you over deliver in a relationship, they know that it would be a clear win for the other person and they’ll feel safe vouching for you. When we are building new relationships, any way we can create opportunities that benefit both parties can be powerful foundations for growth. No matter how you go about meeting new people, the common thread is always leading with value. Molly speaks on stage 80 to 100 days out of the year, and before every engagement she does a pre-call to get into the head and the heart of the audience. Before she even steps on stage, Molly has over delivered on the front end, well before she asked for something in return. The people that win business listen first and have the courage to go off script. This is how you can become an authentic chameleon, take what you heard, and deliver what matters most to the other person.   Mo asks Molly Fletcher: What is your best advice for busy professionals to stay consistent, focusing on the things that will help your future self stay happy, and hack their own habits to win? How is your no button? You need to manage your energy as much as your time. You have to be remarkably intentional about what matters most because if you don’t protect your time and your calendar, the world will decide where you put your energy. 40% of the reason why people don’t achieve their quarterly goals or weekly targets is a lack of visibility and intentionality. It’s a lack of alignment with the things that matter most and the behaviours that create the results that you want. If you protect your time and commit to business development, block off the following time period to reward yourself with something that gives you energy. If you don’t schedule it, you’ll fall back into the inbox and miss the positive feedback that keeps you wanting to do it. The most sustainable way to stay motivated for business development is to remember your why. Keep your purpose front and center. Look at your life through the lens of energy and build in times in your life to recover and re-energize. Step outside, take a walk, do an act of kindness, meditate, or say a prayer. Reward yourself and remind yourself why you do it. Identify the things in your life that are the most important and then put those onto your calendar first. Everything else should be added around those things. Molly has her purpose statement (To inspire, lead, and connect with courage and optimism) all over her house and office as a way to remind her what’s important. It’s how Molly realigns with what she is chasing after a tough day. If you don’t know what you’re chasing, that’s what you need to figure out first. Your purpose statement is what gives you the clarity to say no to the things that don’t align with what matters most.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Molly Fletcher. Consistently over delivering is key to building high value relationships. Many professionals have to renew their work and that means convincing people that you are worth continuing to work with. We tend to over value the fact that a gift was made versus the actual value of the gift itself. Multiple smaller touches and value adds will have a greater impact on a relationship than a single larger gesture. Little extras, known as positive reinforcers, give the feeling of deep appreciation for working with you and is a powerful concept to developing your relationships. Is there some kind of way that you can summarize your results in a way that they could share with their boss? Is there a way to get things done a little earlier or with a little extra thrown in? Can you invest in their team or add a little extra relational value? Are there things you can do that can build their business that is outside of the scope of what you were hired for like referring a new client? Small extra value-adds prevent you from being commoditized and gives you a goodwill buffer when things don’t go your way. Make referral requests very specific once you have over delivered in your existing relationship. You only do it with the people who it makes sense to ask, be clear about exactly what you want, and then assure them that you will deeply invest in the new relationship as well. Ask for referrals when it’s a win for everybody involved. It’s crucial to have a reward mechanism associated directly with business development activities. Many business development activities have no immediate payoff, and this can lead to feeling less motivated to put in the work, despite business development being one of the most important things you can do for the long-term success of your business. You have to build your own reward mechanism that rewards your effort and creates a positive feedback loop. Batch your business development tasks and then schedule a rewarding activity right afterwards. It’s during that following reward that you should reflect on the fact that you did a hard thing that your future self will appreciate.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Molly Fletcher. Consistently over delivering is key to building high value relationships. Many professionals have to renew their work and that means convincing people that you are worth continuing to work with. We tend to over value the fact that a gift was made versus the actual value of the gift itself. Multiple smaller touches and value adds will have a greater impact on a relationship than a single larger gesture. Little extras, known as positive reinforcers, give the feeling of deep appreciation for working with you and is a powerful concept to developing your relationships. Is there some kind of way that you can summarize your results in a way that they could share with their boss? Is there a way to get things done a little earlier or with a little extra thrown in? Can you invest in their team or add a little extra relational value? Are there things you can do that can build their business that is outside of the scope of what you were hired for like referring a new client? Small extra value-adds prevent you from being commoditized and gives you a goodwill buffer when things don’t go your way. Make referral requests very specific once you have over delivered in your existing relationship. You only do it with the people who it makes sense to ask, be clear about exactly what you want, and then assure them that you will deeply invest in the new relationship as well. Ask for referrals when it’s a win for everybody involved. It’s crucial to have a reward mechanism associated directly with business development activities. Many business development activities have no immediate payoff, and this can lead to feeling less motivated to put in the work, despite business development being one of the most important things you can do for the long-term success of your business. You have to build your own reward mechanism that rewards your effort and creates a positive feedback loop. Batch your business development tasks and then schedule a rewarding activity right afterwards. It’s during that following reward that you should reflect on the fact that you did a hard thing that your future self will appreciate.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com training.mollyfletcher.com – $10 discount code: GAMECHANGER