Josh Linkner shares why tiny innovations can yield oversized results for business development professionals and how small experiments can lead to game-changing breakthroughs. Learn why you should never forget the dinner mint when interacting with prospects and clients, how to run mini experiments, and how to boost your business development efforts with a little dash of creativity.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: What is your big idea on how listeners can focus on business development, grow their book of business and relationships, and grow their careers? Josh’s big idea is actually a little idea. We don’t need to bet everything on a single idea because innovation isn’t restricted to billion dollar ideas that change the world. When we think of creativity as small little acts or micro innovations it becomes more accessible, less risky, and actually builds additional skills over time. Many professionals struggle with doing any business development at all. The work always seems to get in the way and breaking it down to little acts makes it much more likely you will get things done and see actual results. Little acts of innovation could be changing up the form of your prospecting email or experimenting with the way you run a sales meeting. It’s small adjustments or counter intuitive acts of creativity that unlocks big results. Josh tells the story of how his relatively small business landed a $30 million contract by a simple act of innovation and everyday kindness. Look for anything you can test within your business processes because business development isn’t a mysterious skill you need to learn; it’s just a series of small experiments. One of the techniques that Josh uses to initiate innovation is the Judo flip. Look at the prevailing approaches in your industry and think about what the polar opposite might be.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can professionals use the concepts of Big Little Breakthroughs to close more business? In the research for the book, Josh uncovered eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. One mindset in particular is called “Don’t forget the dinner mint.” For a business development person, adding a little creative flourish to each interaction you have in the course of business. A small 5% increase in effort can generate disproportionate outcomes. If you’re pitching your services to a prospect, before you hit the send button, think about what extra you can add that is unexpected. It could be an extra feature or shorter delivery time. Every single touchpoint or interaction with a prospect is an opportunity to add a little extra. Every extra touch can drive a significant impact in terms of your overall results. It doesn’t always have to take the form of an extra service; it could also take the form of a unique experience. The dinner mint strategy can also help differentiate your business from other service providers. Another idea has to do with the notion of experimenting being very provocative. What if every week you ran five little experiments in your business processes? This is how you can find tiny innovations without risking too much, and if you land on a winner, you can expand it out once you have enough data to justify it. Instead of thinking you need to come up with one idea to transform your business, what if you came up with three smaller ideas each week? When you break them down into smaller bets, it’s much less risky and you increase the odds of winning over the long-term. Your creativity is more like your weight than your height. You can adjust your weight with your behavior and your creativity works the same way.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How do we use the Big Little Breakthrough concepts to deepen relationships? Creativity and innovation are tools that we use to focus on product development or marketing, but they also apply to relationships. In a relationship setting, think about the other person’s big problem and about how to solve their issue. The more you fall in love with your client’s problems, and the more they view you as someone who is aligned with them, the relationship becomes transformed. Mo had a similar experience with a lawyer friend he had where he had to have a difficult conversation with her but the end result was that it completely changed her career trajectory. Feedback is a gift. If you care about somebody you have to be willing to have hard conversations with them. If you do, you demonstrate that you care about them and that deepens the relationship. Failure is a part of life, in terms of relationships, those are opportunities to deepen relationships. Owning your mistakes and doing what it takes to make it right is how you show integrity in relationships. Doing a feedback session after a loss sets up the next win. Even when you win, there is an opportunity to ask for feedback on how to improve. This shows that you are always working on your game and are committed to over delivering. This takes your relationship from transactional to one of substance.   Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can we hack our habits with Big Little Breakthroughs? The short-term tends to scream the loudest, to the detriment of the long-term. Over the next 12 months, if all you do is what you’ve done before, you're likely to fall about 30% short of the results you could have achieved. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still. Think of your effort, time, and energy in the same way that you do as your stock portfolio. You wouldn’t take all your money and invest it entirely in one stock. The same principle has to apply to your time. It’s important to carve out some of your schedule to be strategic and think about the future. Some day a company will come along and put you out of business, it might as well be you. A constant stream of reinvention allows you to control at least some of the inevitable disruption that will happen to your business. The first thing is to try a 5% adjustment. Carve out just two hours each week for the next four weeks where you’re not going to do anything tactical and only focus on heads-up strategic thinking. Josh has issued this challenge to thousands of people around the world and found they experienced a 0% decline in productivity but by the end of the 30 day period, most people report that those two hours are the most productive time they spend. Use your creativity to solve your short-term problem and it will, in turn, solve your long-term problem. The first thing you need to do is challenge the assumption that it’s impossible to be more efficient or to find space to commit to head-up thinking. Creatively rebalancing your calendar and creating an untouchable day or untouchable morning can make a huge difference. If we want certain desired outcomes, it’s the rituals and rewards that will support them. If you need help saying no, make a list of things you are going to stop doing. Having a simple framework (Think, Do, Feel) can help you benchmark things against so you will make better choices.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Linkner. Don’t forget the dinner mint. Don’t forget to add an element of surprise and delight for each interaction you have with a prospect or client. That tiny amount of extra effort often has an outsized impact on the end result. There was a study that showed the effect of different ways of adding dinner mints to people’s meals and they found some pretty interesting results. Little good things have a big weight because they are unexpected. When you add up the little surprises and delights, they can outweigh the inevitable bad experiences. The most valuable things you can do are things that help your client succeed, both on a professional level and a personal level. These could be little ways to innovate the delivery or make the experience a little more unique. You could also improve the process or offer them additional information or connections. Tweaking the way you do things and measuring the results can lead to incredible breakthroughs. One example is the way that Mo offered webinars and follow up content. One simple tweak led to 10x times the result. Small, low risk experiments in each area of your business will yield some incredible results. Not everything will succeed, but that’s why they’re small. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. What can you deliver that will be streamlined and effective, but also unique? A simple improvement would be to describe what you do in your client’s language instead of your own. A little extra effort in the delivery and presenting the solution in the client’s own language will make it feel completely unique to them and create a much more memorable experience with your business.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Linkner. Don’t forget the dinner mint. Don’t forget to add an element of surprise and delight for each interaction you have with a prospect or client. That tiny amount of extra effort often has an outsized impact on the end result. There was a study that showed the effect of different ways of adding dinner mints to people’s meals and they found some pretty interesting results. Little good things have a big weight because they are unexpected. When you add up the little surprises and delights, they can outweigh the inevitable bad experiences. The most valuable things you can do are things that help your client succeed, both on a professional level and a personal level. These could be little ways to innovate the delivery or make the experience a little more unique. You could also improve the process or offer them additional information or connections. Tweaking the way you do things and measuring the results can lead to incredible breakthroughs. One example is the way that Mo offered webinars and follow up content. One simple tweak led to 10x times the result. Small, low risk experiments in each area of your business will yield some incredible results. Not everything will succeed, but that’s why they’re small. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. What can you deliver that will be streamlined and effective, but also unique? A simple improvement would be to describe what you do in your client’s language instead of your own. A little extra effort in the delivery and presenting the solution in the client’s own language will make it feel completely unique to them and create a much more memorable experience with your business.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can we hack our habits with Big Little Breakthroughs? The short-term tends to scream the loudest, to the detriment of the long-term. Over the next 12 months, if all you do is what you’ve done before, you're likely to fall about 30% short of the results you could have achieved. Too often we overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still. Think of your effort, time, and energy in the same way that you do as your stock portfolio. You wouldn’t take all your money and invest it entirely in one stock. The same principle has to apply to your time. It’s important to carve out some of your schedule to be strategic and think about the future. Some day a company will come along and put you out of business, it might as well be you. A constant stream of reinvention allows you to control at least some of the inevitable disruption that will happen to your business. The first thing is to try a 5% adjustment. Carve out just two hours each week for the next four weeks where you’re not going to do anything tactical and only focus on heads-up strategic thinking. Josh has issued this challenge to thousands of people around the world and found they experienced a 0% decline in productivity but by the end of the 30 day period, most people report that those two hours are the most productive time they spend. Use your creativity to solve your short-term problem and it will, in turn, solve your long-term problem. The first thing you need to do is challenge the assumption that it’s impossible to be more efficient or to find space to commit to head-up thinking. Creatively rebalancing your calendar and creating an untouchable day or untouchable morning can make a huge difference. If we want certain desired outcomes, it’s the rituals and rewards that will support them. If you need help saying no, make a list of things you are going to stop doing. Having a simple framework (Think, Do, Feel) can help you benchmark things against so you will make better choices.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Mo asks Josh Linkner: How do we use the Big Little Breakthrough concepts to deepen relationships? Creativity and innovation are tools that we use to focus on product development or marketing, but they also apply to relationships. In a relationship setting, think about the other person’s big problem and about how to solve their issue. The more you fall in love with your client’s problems, and the more they view you as someone who is aligned with them, the relationship becomes transformed. Mo had a similar experience with a lawyer friend he had where he had to have a difficult conversation with her but the end result was that it completely changed her career trajectory. Feedback is a gift. If you care about somebody you have to be willing to have hard conversations with them. If you do, you demonstrate that you care about them and that deepens the relationship. Failure is a part of life, in terms of relationships, those are opportunities to deepen relationships. Owning your mistakes and doing what it takes to make it right is how you show integrity in relationships. Doing a feedback session after a loss sets up the next win. Even when you win, there is an opportunity to ask for feedback on how to improve. This shows that you are always working on your game and are committed to over delivering. This takes your relationship from transactional to one of substance.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Mo asks Josh Linkner: How can professionals use the concepts of Big Little Breakthroughs to close more business? In the research for the book, Josh uncovered eight core mindsets of everyday innovators. One mindset in particular is called “Don’t forget the dinner mint.” For a business development person, adding a little creative flourish to each interaction you have in the course of business. A small 5% increase in effort can generate disproportionate outcomes. If you’re pitching your services to a prospect, before you hit the send button, think about what extra you can add that is unexpected. It could be an extra feature or shorter delivery time. Every single touchpoint or interaction with a prospect is an opportunity to add a little extra. Every extra touch can drive a significant impact in terms of your overall results. It doesn’t always have to take the form of an extra service; it could also take the form of a unique experience. The dinner mint strategy can also help differentiate your business from other service providers. Another idea has to do with the notion of experimenting being very provocative. What if every week you ran five little experiments in your business processes? This is how you can find tiny innovations without risking too much, and if you land on a winner, you can expand it out once you have enough data to justify it. Instead of thinking you need to come up with one idea to transform your business, what if you came up with three smaller ideas each week? When you break them down into smaller bets, it’s much less risky and you increase the odds of winning over the long-term. Your creativity is more like your weight than your height. You can adjust your weight with your behavior and your creativity works the same way.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Mo asks Josh Linkner: What is your big idea on how listeners can focus on business development, grow their book of business and relationships, and grow their careers? Josh’s big idea is actually a little idea. We don’t need to bet everything on a single idea because innovation isn’t restricted to billion dollar ideas that change the world. When we think of creativity as small little acts or micro innovations it becomes more accessible, less risky, and actually builds additional skills over time. Many professionals struggle with doing any business development at all. The work always seems to get in the way and breaking it down to little acts makes it much more likely you will get things done and see actual results. Little acts of innovation could be changing up the form of your prospecting email or experimenting with the way you run a sales meeting. It’s small adjustments or counter intuitive acts of creativity that unlocks big results. Josh tells the story of how his relatively small business landed a $30 million contract by a simple act of innovation and everyday kindness. Look for anything you can test within your business processes because business development isn’t a mysterious skill you need to learn; it’s just a series of small experiments. One of the techniques that Josh uses to initiate innovation is the Judo flip. Look at the prevailing approaches in your industry and think about what the polar opposite might be.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com biglittlebreakthroughs.com

Nathan Barry shares the secrets of the world’s most effective communicators and how you can leverage the power of automation to scale your business development efforts to the moon. Learn how business development professionals can use email and content to grow an audience that is hungry for their expertise, reach more people in a deeper way at scale instead of just 1-to-1, and how the compound gains of consistent action can lead to incredible results.   Mo asks Nathan Barry: What’s your big idea for growing a book of business, growing relationships, and growing a career? Nathan used to play video games and he likens having an audience and a newsletter to having the cheat codes for business. Having an engaged audience that you can push content to is incredibly powerful. Some platforms have followers, like social and blogging, and others allow you to push content in front of your audience. The push method puts you in control and makes those platforms much more valuable in achieving your business goals. Many professionals don’t think of an email list as a relevant tool for building a book of business, but if you have a list of the right people that want to hear from you it can definitely be a powerful asset. Even if you’re not selling something through your email list, you can still build the mind share and reputation with your audience that increases your value in their mind. Delivering value is key. When it comes to professional services, a cadence of once a month is more than sufficient and the important thing is quality over quantity when it comes to communication. The best approach is to augment your close relationships with the vital few and combine it with a larger audience where you are delivering content. Those people are your prospective clients and finding a communication method that has leverage is how you can scale relationships considerably. Content allows someone to get to know you on a deeper level, well before you ever talk to them in person or on a phone call.   Mo asks Nathan Barry: How can we get more of the meaningful work we want to do? When you think about all the service providers you could hire, you consider all sorts of things like price, location, rapport, but near the top is actual expertise. One of the most effective ways to signal your expertise is to teach what you know. Nathan originally started off designing apps for the iPhone for other people, and in the process of trying to land more freelancing gigs, he had the thought that if he had written the book on iPhone app design it would make landing clients much easier. This led him down the path to creating a newsletter and writing a book. It’s hard to remember where you are in every conversation with every prospect you are currently talking to. This is where automation comes in and one of the reasons why email can be such an effective communication tool. You could create an automated sequence that delivers your content and includes the appropriate calls to action at the right time. It’s also possible to leverage your content that you’re delivering over time and turn that into a book down the road. When you’re just getting started with a smaller list it can be discouraging. When you have 0-10 subscribers, the first thing you should do is ask them where they currently go to learn about your topic and what their biggest pain points and struggles are. This gives you very valuable information and lets you know where you can potentially add content and lets you know what your follow up content should be. Whatever the audience is struggling with is exactly what your content should help them with. As your list grows, it’s okay to start asking them to share your content with people they think would benefit from it. Once you approach the 100-1000 mark, you can start bundling your content into a free ebook or course or resource and use that to continue growing your audience.   Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do you deepen relationships with an email list? When you first meet someone, your relationship is initially pretty shallow. Nathan likes to take as much information about himself and include that into his email sequence because that allows people to get a glimpse of who he is. Being authentic, open, and direct is a way you can help people get to know you and instill that vital trust. Any stories that you can teach and share are going to help someone who is following along feel like they can trust you. It’s also important to take your prospect on a journey where they are learning about you consistently over time while you are delivering value to them. An email course is a great tool to accomplish this. As a blogger or content creator, you can turn your best content into email content and use it as the basis of your email course. You can make sure thatyour prospect gets to know you at a set cadence over time and has already consumed your best content. By automating this kind of a sequence, you get leverage and scale so the hours you put to create the client onboarding system payoff considerably in the future. The most common place people struggle when building an audience is in being too broad. People are usually trying to solve a specific problem, so the more you can create content around that specific problem the more effective the hook in bringing people into your audience. The sequence of content also trains people to open your emails. If your content is good, you drastically increase the odds of them opening your next email. Great content also shapes the person’s questions and mindset for what they should be thinking about once they do get on a call with you. The trouble with creating content is that it can be very time consuming, and this is why the automation is so important for leveraging and scaling the work you are putting in. A common concern is that if you give away too much for free that no one will hire you, but the opposite is actually true. The more they learn, the more likely to realize how complicated what you do can be and understand that they need to hire a professional. If you’ve already been serving clients, you’ve probably already been doing half the work to create these kinds of assets that can work for you in the long term.   Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do we hack our own habits to keep building their audience? The most important thing you can do is do it consistently. Anywhere you can find leverage and compound returns are crucial to your long term success. This is where habits come in. Creating content is a long term game and if you only do it for a few months you’re not going to see a lot of traction. Nathan uses an app called Streaks to track his habits and his chain of accomplished actions every week, including sending a newsletter every week, writing every day, exercising and practicing the piano every day. If there is something that you want to get compound gains from, do it every day, even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes. It’s consistent effort over a long period of time that is going to get you the results you want. If you break your streak, that’s okay. Just don’t miss twice.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nathan Barry. ConvertKit has grown from a startup to $25 million a year in revenue. His perspective on seeing how thousands of professionals use his platform gives him a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t. Teach everything you know. Many professionals resist the idea for fear of giving away all their best stuff for free, but the opposite tends to be true. The more you give away, the more the prospect realizes that they need your expertise to help them in their specific situation. The right place to switch from teaching to pitching is at the point where you have adequately framed the problem and figured out how you could work together. Teaching naturally flows into the conversation around working together. Give with abundance and do it in a way that scales. If you’re going to spend nearly a hundred hours packaging your education, you should absolutely use a platform like ConvertKit to automate it and scale your efforts. Once you set up something that’s automated, it works for you forever. Share what you are working on and what you’re learning with the people in your audience. Automation allows you to develop a relationship with a prospect without actually having to be there and sharing your story is incredibly powerful in getting people to bond with. For Nathan, the two most important things in business that he’s looking for is leverage and compound returns. Automation fits that bill. Once you create a piece of content, think of ways that you can use to help more people at scale. Develop fewer things and leverage them more effectively. When you think of your time when it comes to business development, ask yourself what things you can do that will pay off and work for you forever. Build it once and do it right, and then put it out in a way that scales.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com nathanbarry.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Nathan Barry. ConvertKit has grown from a startup to $25 million a year in revenue. His perspective on seeing how thousands of professionals use his platform gives him a lot of insight into what works and what doesn’t. Teach everything you know. Many professionals resist the idea for fear of giving away all their best stuff for free, but the opposite tends to be true. The more you give away, the more the prospect realizes that they need your expertise to help them in their specific situation. The right place to switch from teaching to pitching is at the point where you have adequately framed the problem and figured out how you could work together. Teaching naturally flows into the conversation around working together. Give with abundance and do it in a way that scales. If you’re going to spend nearly a hundred hours packaging your education, you should absolutely use a platform like ConvertKit to automate it and scale your efforts. Once you set up something that’s automated, it works for you forever. Share what you are working on and what you’re learning with the people in your audience. Automation allows you to develop a relationship with a prospect without actually having to be there and sharing your story is incredibly powerful in getting people to bond with. For Nathan, the two most important things in business that he’s looking for is leverage and compound returns. Automation fits that bill. Once you create a piece of content, think of ways that you can use to help more people at scale. Develop fewer things and leverage them more effectively. When you think of your time when it comes to business development, ask yourself what things you can do that will pay off and work for you forever. Build it once and do it right, and then put it out in a way that scales.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com

Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do we hack our own habits to keep building their audience? The most important thing you can do is do it consistently. Anywhere you can find leverage and compound returns are crucial to your long term success. This is where habits come in. Creating content is a long term game and if you only do it for a few months you’re not going to see a lot of traction. Nathan uses an app called Streaks to track his habits and his chain of accomplished actions every week, including sending a newsletter every week, writing every day, exercising and practicing the piano every day. If there is something that you want to get compound gains from, do it every day, even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes. It’s consistent effort over a long period of time that is going to get you the results you want. If you break your streak, that’s okay. Just don’t miss twice.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com

Mo asks Nathan Barry: How do you deepen relationships with an email list? When you first meet someone, your relationship is initially pretty shallow. Nathan likes to take as much information about himself and include that into his email sequence because that allows people to get a glimpse of who he is. Being authentic, open, and direct is a way you can help people get to know you and instill that vital trust. Any stories that you can teach and share are going to help someone who is following along feel like they can trust you. It’s also important to take your prospect on a journey where they are learning about you consistently over time while you are delivering value to them. An email course is a great tool to accomplish this. As a blogger or content creator, you can turn your best content into email content and use it as the basis of your email course. You can make sure thatyour prospect gets to know you at a set cadence over time and has already consumed your best content. By automating this kind of a sequence, you get leverage and scale so the hours you put to create the client onboarding system payoff considerably in the future. The most common place people struggle when building an audience is in being too broad. People are usually trying to solve a specific problem, so the more you can create content around that specific problem the more effective the hook in bringing people into your audience. The sequence of content also trains people to open your emails. If your content is good, you drastically increase the odds of them opening your next email. Great content also shapes the person’s questions and mindset for what they should be thinking about once they do get on a call with you. The trouble with creating content is that it can be very time consuming, and this is why the automation is so important for leveraging and scaling the work you are putting in. A common concern is that if you give away too much for free that no one will hire you, but the opposite is actually true. The more they learn, the more likely to realize how complicated what you do can be and understand that they need to hire a professional. If you’ve already been serving clients, you’ve probably already been doing half the work to create these kinds of assets that can work for you in the long term.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com nathanbarry.com

Mo asks Nathan Barry: How can we get more of the meaningful work we want to do? When you think about all the service providers you could hire, you consider all sorts of things like price, location, rapport, but near the top is actual expertise. One of the most effective ways to signal your expertise is to teach what you know. Nathan originally started off designing apps for the iPhone for other people, and in the process of trying to land more freelancing gigs, he had the thought that if he had written the book on iPhone app design it would make landing clients much easier. This led him down the path to creating a newsletter and writing a book. It’s hard to remember where you are in every conversation with every prospect you are currently talking to. This is where automation comes in and one of the reasons why email can be such an effective communication tool. You could create an automated sequence that delivers your content and includes the appropriate calls to action at the right time. It’s also possible to leverage your content that you’re delivering over time and turn that into a book down the road. When you’re just getting started with a smaller list it can be discouraging. When you have 0-10 subscribers, the first thing you should do is ask them where they currently go to learn about your topic and what their biggest pain points and struggles are. This gives you very valuable information and lets you know where you can potentially add content and lets you know what your follow up content should be. Whatever the audience is struggling with is exactly what your content should help them with. As your list grows, it’s okay to start asking them to share your content with people they think would benefit from it. Once you approach the 100-1000 mark, you can start bundling your content into a free ebook or course or resource and use that to continue growing your audience.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com

Mo asks Nathan Barry: What’s your big idea for growing a book of business, growing relationships, and growing a career? Nathan used to play video games and he likens having an audience and a newsletter to having the cheat codes for business. Having an engaged audience that you can push content to is incredibly powerful. Some platforms have followers, like social and blogging, and others allow you to push content in front of your audience. The push method puts you in control and makes those platforms much more valuable in achieving your business goals. Many professionals don’t think of an email list as a relevant tool for building a book of business, but if you have a list of the right people that want to hear from you it can definitely be a powerful asset. Even if you’re not selling something through your email list, you can still build the mind share and reputation with your audience that increases your value in their mind. Delivering value is key. When it comes to professional services, a cadence of once a month is more than sufficient and the important thing is quality over quantity when it comes to communication. The best approach is to augment your close relationships with the vital few and combine it with a larger audience where you are delivering content. Those people are your prospective clients and finding a communication method that has leverage is how you can scale relationships considerably. Content allows someone to get to know you on a deeper level, well before you ever talk to them in person or on a phone call.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com

Luke Burgis shares the incredibly powerful concept of mimetic desire and how it shapes our behavior in fundamental ways. Learn why your mental models are the foundation for everything you do, how to figure out what motivates you at a core level, and how to eliminate the negative aspects of desire and replace them with a transcendent desire that drives you to change the world.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers? Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic. Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear. Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else. Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models. Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere. When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical. Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development. Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them. One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire. Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about. The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits. By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business? Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need. At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires. Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business. Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out. Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available. Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest. The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm. The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships? We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements. Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship. Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time. A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you. Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire. In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits? It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy. You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult. Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be. In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations. Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray. We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing? If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model? Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do. In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality. Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey. It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another. We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis. Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you. We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds. A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed. When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?” All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire. Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com/quiz lukeburgis.com lukeburgis.com/motivation winning-more.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis. Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you. We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds. A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed. When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?” All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire. Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com winning-more.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits? It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy. You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult. Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be. In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations. Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray. We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing? If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model? Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do. In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality. Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey. It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another. We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships? We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements. Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship. Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time. A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you. Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire. In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com lukeburgis.com/motivation

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business? Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need. At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires. Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business. Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out. Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available. Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest. The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm. The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers? Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic. Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear. Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else. Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models. Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere. When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical. Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development. Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them. One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire. Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about. The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits. By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com/quiz lukeburgis.com

Shawn Blanc shares how margin impacts every area of your life, and why every professional who is serious about building authentic business relationships needs margin to do it. Learn how margin allows you to say yes to the most important things, how to create genuine relationships, and why slowing down and planning can save not just your business, but also your life.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: What big idea do you have that professionals can use to do a better job at business development? Margin, also known as breathing room, is the space in our lives between the stuff that we do and the limit where we fall off the cliff. It’s very easy, especially in the world of business, for people to push their energy to the absolute limits where there is zero margin in our lives. Margin can apply to more than just business, it can apply to all areas and relationships in your life. Having breathing room in Shawn’s life helps him lean into his strength as a Yellow thinker. Shawn feels the constant need to fill every moment in his life with something productive, so the reminder of building in the margins is critical to doing his best work. Working on projects that are due weeks ahead instead of the next morning allows you to work more effectively with less stress. For business and your personal life, margin exists to benefit your relationships. When you have no margin in your life you are tapped out in your schedule and physically, and this leaves little strength left over for your relationships, including business development.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we use margin to grow our book of business and get more opportunities? Shawn shares the parable of the good samaritan and how margin relates to opportunities. The ability to say no to certain opportunities is as important as the ability to say yes. When we are not clear around our priorities or have no margin within our schedule, it can be easy to say yes to everything and become overwhelmed. This puts strain on your work when truly great opportunities come your way. Margin can enable us to say yes to the most important stuff. It also helps us know when to say no to certain things so that we can show up with our greatest strength during times of opportunity. Evaluating opportunities is not binary, it’s an organic process. The first step is knowing your values and understanding how you work within your daily schedule. Does the opportunity align with what you care about? If it does, what are the most important things on your schedule, and do you have enough resources and time to say yes to the opportunity? Lastly, if it is important and time is tight, is there something you can give up on to take the opportunity on? Business development is probably one of the most important things you can do for your career, yet it’s one of the first areas the professionals let slide when time gets tough. Great rainmakers have a roadmap for what they are going to do in terms of business development. You have to be proactive with your time and have the clarity to know what the most important things are so they don’t get pushed aside. Shawn’s team works in eight-week cycles which have been transformative for his business. The first six weeks are focused work time for clearly defined projects and the following week is a buffer for review. The eighth week is time off for the entire team. This work cycle structure allows Shawn’s team to accomplish more in less time while also building in time to recover and celebrate what they have achieved.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How can we use margin and apply it to long-term relationships? Margin exists for relationships. We need to have breathing room in our time, in our money, and in our energy to be able to build relationships. Margin allows us to build and strengthen and grow long-term relationships as well as new ones. People often view the business of business development and sales as an impossible environment to build authentic relationships but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build the relationship first and it can result in additional business, but if not that’s okay too. Margin is the foundation for being truly authentic in a relationship. Without it, you will find yourself in meetings because you need the business and it will come across in the conversation. Margin helps us with perspective and allows you to create relationships in the long term. Great business development is about creating a better future for other people. Your core expertise is how you impact people in a positive way and relationship-oriented business development is how you do that. In Shawn’s experience, providing a lot of value upfront and being clear about the nature of the relationship is what leads to long-term success. The idea of serving is paramount instead of converting each user to a customer immediately. Having confidence in your ability to help people is the key to turning them into a customer. The imposter syndrome is what prevents people from understanding the value they can actually add to their customer’s lives. Pulling people from one side of complexity to the other is immensely valuable. For some people, you need to charge enough money just to get their attention. A big part of your pricing is who your target customer is, and what price you need to charge to deliver your best work. For Shawn, the number is high enough so that the client will take it as seriously as he will.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done? There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life. Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit. Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you. You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out. It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you. The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop. Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area? Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule. If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc. You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time. Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks. When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way. Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them. If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy. If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc. You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time. Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks. When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way. Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them. If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy. If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done? There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life. Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit. Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you. You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out. It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you. The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop. Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area? Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule. If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How can we use margin and apply it to long-term relationships? Margin exists for relationships. We need to have breathing room in our time, in our money, and in our energy to be able to build relationships. Margin allows us to build and strengthen and grow long-term relationships as well as new ones. People often view the business of business development and sales as an impossible environment to build authentic relationships but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build the relationship first and it can result in additional business, but if not that’s okay too. Margin is the foundation for being truly authentic in a relationship. Without it, you will find yourself in meetings because you need the business and it will come across in the conversation. Margin helps us with perspective and allows you to create relationships in the long term. Great business development is about creating a better future for other people. Your core expertise is how you impact people in a positive way and relationship-oriented business development is how you do that. In Shawn’s experience, providing a lot of value upfront and being clear about the nature of the relationship is what leads to long-term success. The idea of serving is paramount instead of converting each user to a customer immediately. Having confidence in your ability to help people is the key to turning them into a customer. The imposter syndrome is what prevents people from understanding the value they can actually add to their customer’s lives. Pulling people from one side of complexity to the other is immensely valuable. For some people, you need to charge enough money just to get their attention. A big part of your pricing is who your target customer is, and what price you need to charge to deliver your best work. For Shawn, the number is high enough so that the client will take it as seriously as he will.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we use margin to grow our book of business and get more opportunities? Shawn shares the parable of the good samaritan and how margin relates to opportunities. The ability to say no to certain opportunities is as important as the ability to say yes. When we are not clear around our priorities or have no margin within our schedule, it can be easy to say yes to everything and become overwhelmed. This puts strain on your work when truly great opportunities come your way. Margin can enable us to say yes to the most important stuff. It also helps us know when to say no to certain things so that we can show up with our greatest strength during times of opportunity. Evaluating opportunities is not binary, it’s an organic process. The first step is knowing your values and understanding how you work within your daily schedule. Does the opportunity align with what you care about? If it does, what are the most important things on your schedule, and do you have enough resources and time to say yes to the opportunity? Lastly, if it is important and time is tight, is there something you can give up on to take the opportunity on? Business development is probably one of the most important things you can do for your career, yet it’s one of the first areas the professionals let slide when time gets tough. Great rainmakers have a roadmap for what they are going to do in terms of business development. You have to be proactive with your time and have the clarity to know what the most important things are so they don’t get pushed aside. Shawn’s team works in eight-week cycles which have been transformative for his business. The first six weeks are focused work time for clearly defined projects and the following week is a buffer for review. The eighth week is time off for the entire team. This work cycle structure allows Shawn’s team to accomplish more in less time while also building in time to recover and celebrate what they have achieved.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo asks Shawn Blanc: What big idea do you have that professionals can use to do a better job at business development? Margin, also known as breathing room, is the space in our lives between the stuff that we do and the limit where we fall off the cliff. It’s very easy, especially in the world of business, for people to push their energy to the absolute limits where there is zero margin in our lives. Margin can apply to more than just business, it can apply to all areas and relationships in your life. Having breathing room in Shawn’s life helps him lean into his strength as a Yellow thinker. Shawn feels the constant need to fill every moment in his life with something productive, so the reminder of building in the margins is critical to doing his best work. Working on projects that are due weeks ahead instead of the next morning allows you to work more effectively with less stress. For business and your personal life, margin exists to benefit your relationships. When you have no margin in your life you are tapped out in your schedule and physically, and this leaves little strength left over for your relationships, including business development.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Ozan Varol shares how thinking like a rocket scientist can unlock business innovations that most people would not believe are possible. Discover the lessons and ideas that allowed NASA to put a man on the moon and how to apply them to business development, the subtle insight that led to the creation of Netflix, and why questioning your assumptions is the secret to innovation and long term success.   Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we take Ozan’s content and become better skilled at business development? Ozan opened his book with the story of how John F. Kennedy pledged a literal moonshot despite the lack of technology at the time that could make it possible. Ozan wrote the book to show that it wasn’t just the technology that made putting a man on the moon possible, it was the framework of thinking that kicked everything off. The big takeaway from what NASA was able to accomplish is the combination of idealism and pragmatism. Dreaming big and then working backward from that dream and figuring out what needs to happen to get there, then methodically attacking each problem along the roadmap. Sometimes a challenge can galvanize your entire team to make your goal into a reality. Reasoning from first principles is a powerful way of reimagining and reframing what is possible. It’s a method of breaking a problem down and questioning your assumptions, and letting go of everything except for what is essential. One assumption from rocket science that didn’t change until recently was the idea that rockets couldn’t be reused. SpaceX and Blue Origin have used first principles thinking to reimagine what’s possible and it’s because someone was willing to step back and question the accepted wisdom of the time. Hack through your business assumptions. You owe to yourself and your clients to create a better vision that allows you to serve them even more. It’s important to ask yourself whether you own your assumptions or do your assumptions own you? Is it possible to question your assumptions and replace it with something better?   Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we do a better job of getting the kind of work that we want? One of the biggest problems in the business right now, especially in this time of uncertainty, is that we assume that other businesses around us know something that we don’t, so we end up copying their strategies. This ends up in a race to the center, where businesses start to look more and more like each other. First-principles thinking is a way of questioning assumptions that you or other people have taken for granted. One of the best tools for identifying your invisible assumptions about your business is cross-pollination. Look at other industries and see what they do because what is commonplace in one industry can be completely innovative in another. A great example is the origin story of Netflix, where Reid Hastings had the idea of applying the subscription model that gyms use and applied it to video rentals. Most of us can not see our outdated assumptions because we are too close to the problem. There is immense value in stepping outside of your industry for inspiration. The humility that comes from saying you don’t know something is very rare, but that is the mindset that often leads to innovation. Many of the business leaders that have transformed the way we do things have done so with the beginner’s mindset after entering another industry from the one they started in. Bring people into the conversation that know nothing about what you are working on. Beginners have a way of looking at a problem that more experienced people can’t even see. Experts should not work in isolation, they should benefit from the input and the “dumb” questions of amateurs.   Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we deepen relationships for long term success? There is a simple concept within rocket science known as “test as you fly, fly as you test”. It's about making sure your experiments are as close to the real conditions as possible. In business, we almost never experiment and instead go from idea to execution immediately. Look at whatever you are offering from the perspective of the people that you are serving. It’s hard to see the human component of our product or service from a PowerPoint presentation. Keeping the client’s perspective in mind is how you increase the value of your relationship with them. The client won’t know what it will be like to work with you, but if you can give them a sample (the Give to Get), you can set yourself apart from the competition and give your client value upfront. This shows them what your relationship will look like, which is something that no email, sales page, or presentation can do. The best way to reframe a question is to step away from a tactic and see the overall strategy. Often the tactic becomes a trap. If you’ve become used to using the same tactic to reach people you won’t see the other options that are possible. There are other tactics available that fit into your overall strategy but you need to be able to step back and see what is possible.   Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we hack our own habits to be successful over a long period of time? The best way to grow your business is to do nothing. So many of us are in constant hustle mode, constantly going from one thing to the next. There is an incredible value in simply doing nothing but thinking. Schedule time every day that is dedicated to unplugging and thinking. Don’t approach it with an agenda or an outcome, just write down whatever comes to your mind. 95% of your thoughts will be junk, but the remaining 5% can be invaluable. Research shows that when you are daydreaming, a region of the brain called the default node network comes alive and that region is associated with creativity. When you let your mind wander you are allowing your subconscious to connect the dots that you would otherwise have missed. This is why so many great ideas come to people in the shower. If you can take that and build it into your day, you’ll find that it will become the most valuable time on your schedule. Do what works for you. Thinking time can take the form of going for a walk, exercising, or just sitting in your favorite armchair. As long as you are stepping away from distractions you are opening yourself to great ideas. We are walking repositories of epiphanies, the problem is we are generally too distracted to receive them. Creativity comes as a subtle whisper, and if you’re not paying attention, it’s very easy to miss. Avoid using your phone or laptop to take notes. For Ozan, that means a notepad and pencil. Put it on your calendar and treat it like a meeting. Start it as an experiment and start small. Part of the reason that people shy away from this kind of practice is there doesn’t appear to be an immediate return on the time. Approach it as a long term investment that will turn into amazing opportunities in the future. You need to find a balance between the short term demands of business and your long term vision.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ozan Varol. Always having a couple moonshot ideas that you are working on is incredibly valuable as you are working on the day to day tasks of business development. For something to be a moonshot, it has to be something that would completely change the game, for example, a 10x investment. What can you work on that is totally different from what you are doing right now, that if it worked, would be a 10x game changer for your business. There is a large correlation between highly efficient people and problem solvers and the ability to reframe questions. The ability to reframe the question behind your actions is how you can achieve incredible results. Instead of getting stuck in a rut, stepping back and seeing the bigger strategy may be what you need to do to see better alternatives. By reframing the question we get a much broader context of what we might do next. Being willing to admit that you know nothing opens up your mind to learning. The beginner’s mindset is liberating and puts you in a position to learn more. We have to seek outside our tiny ecosystem of our business and clients to see other ways of doing things that can unlock innovations that can change everything.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Ozan Varol. Always having a couple moonshot ideas that you are working on is incredibly valuable as you are working on the day to day tasks of business development. For something to be a moonshot, it has to be something that would completely change the game, for example, a 10x investment. What can you work on that is totally different from what you are doing right now, that if it worked, would be a 10x game changer for your business. There is a large correlation between highly efficient people and problem solvers and the ability to reframe questions. The ability to reframe the question behind your actions is how you can achieve incredible results. Instead of getting stuck in a rut, stepping back and seeing the bigger strategy may be what you need to do to see better alternatives. By reframing the question we get a much broader context of what we might do next. Being willing to admit that you know nothing opens up your mind to learning. The beginner’s mindset is liberating and puts you in a position to learn more. We have to seek outside our tiny ecosystem of our business and clients to see other ways of doing things that can unlock innovations that can change everything.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we hack our own habits to be successful over a long period of time? The best way to grow your business is to do nothing. So many of us are in constant hustle mode, constantly going from one thing to the next. There is an incredible value in simply doing nothing but thinking. Schedule time every day that is dedicated to unplugging and thinking. Don’t approach it with an agenda or an outcome, just write down whatever comes to your mind. 95% of your thoughts will be junk, but the remaining 5% can be invaluable. Research shows that when you are daydreaming, a region of the brain called the default node network comes alive and that region is associated with creativity. When you let your mind wander you are allowing your subconscious to connect the dots that you would otherwise have missed. This is why so many great ideas come to people in the shower. If you can take that and build it into your day, you’ll find that it will become the most valuable time on your schedule. Do what works for you. Thinking time can take the form of going for a walk, exercising, or just sitting in your favorite armchair. As long as you are stepping away from distractions you are opening yourself to great ideas. We are walking repositories of epiphanies, the problem is we are generally too distracted to receive them. Creativity comes as a subtle whisper, and if you’re not paying attention, it’s very easy to miss. Avoid using your phone or laptop to take notes. For Ozan, that means a notepad and pencil. Put it on your calendar and treat it like a meeting. Start it as an experiment and start small. Part of the reason that people shy away from this kind of practice is there doesn’t appear to be an immediate return on the time. Approach it as a long term investment that will turn into amazing opportunities in the future. You need to find a balance between the short term demands of business and your long term vision.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we deepen relationships for long term success? There is a simple concept within rocket science known as “test as you fly, fly as you test”. It's about making sure your experiments are as close to the real conditions as possible. In business, we almost never experiment and instead go from idea to execution immediately. Look at whatever you are offering from the perspective of the people that you are serving. It’s hard to see the human component of our product or service from a PowerPoint presentation. Keeping the client’s perspective in mind is how you increase the value of your relationship with them. The client won’t know what it will be like to work with you, but if you can give them a sample (the Give to Get), you can set yourself apart from the competition and give your client value upfront. This shows them what your relationship will look like, which is something that no email, sales page, or presentation can do. The best way to reframe a question is to step away from a tactic and see the overall strategy. Often the tactic becomes a trap. If you’ve become used to using the same tactic to reach people you won’t see the other options that are possible. There are other tactics available that fit into your overall strategy but you need to be able to step back and see what is possible.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we do a better job of getting the kind of work that we want? One of the biggest problems in the business right now, especially in this time of uncertainty, is that we assume that other businesses around us know something that we don’t, so we end up copying their strategies. This ends up in a race to the center, where businesses start to look more and more like each other. First-principles thinking is a way of questioning assumptions that you or other people have taken for granted. One of the best tools for identifying your invisible assumptions about your business is cross-pollination. Look at other industries and see what they do because what is commonplace in one industry can be completely innovative in another. A great example is the origin story of Netflix, where Reid Hastings had the idea of applying the subscription model that gyms use and applied it to video rentals. Most of us can not see our outdated assumptions because we are too close to the problem. There is immense value in stepping outside of your industry for inspiration. The humility that comes from saying you don’t know something is very rare, but that is the mindset that often leads to innovation. Many of the business leaders that have transformed the way we do things have done so with the beginner’s mindset after entering another industry from the one they started in. Bring people into the conversation that know nothing about what you are working on. Beginners have a way of looking at a problem that more experienced people can’t even see. Experts should not work in isolation, they should benefit from the input and the “dumb” questions of amateurs.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Mo asks Ozan Varol: How can we take Ozan’s content and become better skilled at business development? Ozan opened his book with the story of how John F. Kennedy pledged a literal moonshot despite the lack of technology at the time that could make it possible. Ozan wrote the book to show that it wasn’t just the technology that made putting a man on the moon possible, it was the framework of thinking that kicked everything off. The big takeaway from what NASA was able to accomplish is the combination of idealism and pragmatism. Dreaming big and then working backward from that dream and figuring out what needs to happen to get there, then methodically attacking each problem along the roadmap. Sometimes a challenge can galvanize your entire team to make your goal into a reality. Reasoning from first principles is a powerful way of reimagining and reframing what is possible. It’s a method of breaking a problem down and questioning your assumptions, and letting go of everything except for what is essential. One assumption from rocket science that didn’t change until recently was the idea that rockets couldn’t be reused. SpaceX and Blue Origin have used first principles thinking to reimagine what’s possible and it’s because someone was willing to step back and question the accepted wisdom of the time. Hack through your business assumptions. You owe to yourself and your clients to create a better vision that allows you to serve them even more. It’s important to ask yourself whether you own your assumptions or do your assumptions own you? Is it possible to question your assumptions and replace it with something better?   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com weeklycontrarian.com

Dr. Ivan Misner shares his expertise as one of the world’s most effective networkers and talks about the nuts and bolts of creating real relationships that drive real revenue. Learn why the quality of the people you surround yourself with will determine so much of your life and business and how to ensure your inner circle aligns with your core values, plus tips for networking in a way that leads to long term business development success.   Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: What is your big idea on how business development experts can grow their book of business, their relationships, and their careers? The quality of the people you surround yourself with determines the quality of your life. Imagine that you live your life in one room with one door and it’s one-way entrance only. If that were true would you be more selective about the people that you let into your life? The room is a metaphor for your mind, and when you have a relationship with someone, business or personal, their fingerprints are all over your brain for the rest of your life. This is why it’s vital to be very selective on the front end. Your experiences with people, the good and the bad, will affect your decisions for the rest of your life. You have to ask yourself whether a client is going to be worth the money and the psychic energy you are going to invest in the relationship. The selectivity starts with understanding your personal values. If you don’t know what’s important in your life you will take anyone that comes to your door. Clients don’t have to have the exact same values as you, they just can’t be incongruent with the things you believe are the most important. You’re better off turning down a client or an employee if you believe they will take you in the opposite direction of your personal values. One of the most important values in Dr. Misner’s organization BNI is that giver’s gain. If you want to be able to get business from people you have to be willing to give them business. Networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s a way to build a solid foundation for a strong, successful business. It’s an attitude and not an expectation. Creating a great organizational culture changes that organization forever. Your business’s core values should be short and repeated constantly.   Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we grow our book of business? There is a networking disconnect, where everybody goes to networking events wanting to sell but nobody is there to buy. Networking is all about relationships, it’s more like farming than hunting. Avoid selling the first time you meet someone. Plant the seed of the relationship first and then cultivate it over time. Ivan recommends the 24/7/30 follow-up system. Within 24 hours of meeting someone, send them a note and let them know that you enjoyed getting to know them. Within 7 days find them on social media and make a meaningful connection with them. Go where they are, not where you want to be. Within 30 days reach out to them and ask to have a conversation about what they do. The whole time you avoid selling to them and focus instead on just building the relationship. Start with the other person in mind and get to know them as a human being. It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s how well you know each other that counts. The important thing is not about who is in your database, it’s who is willing to help you if you asked. If you follow up in a meaningful way with the goal of building a real relationship, it’s not going to feel formulaic or contrived. Helping and authenticity are key. Infinite giving does not mean that you’re an infinite victim. Giving can take all kinds of forms and there are a number of ways your giving will come back to you.   Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we develop more and deeper relationships? BNI now has over 276,000 members and over the course of 2020, those members generated over $16 billion in business. A one-to-one conversation with people periodically is the best way to develop a relationship with them. The Gains exchange is a great way to deepen a relationship with someone you know. Write down your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and find out what you have in common. Ivan tells the story of two BNI members that were initially skeptical of the Gains exchange and discovered something they had in common that became the basis for a great relationship. People are usually open to the Gains exchange. You don’t have to frame the one-to-one beforehand if you approach it the right way. The perfect way to ask the Gains questions is to model it. Start with your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and show them what you want to know about them. The modeling provides the example instead of a perfectly designed question. Near the end of the conversation reiterate what you learned about them and open the idea of having another conversation in the future to connect on things that are important to them. If the other person has a need that you can help with by sharing a resource, that becomes the perfect reason to follow up. Before you ask for something, you should invest in the relationship with them first.   Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we hack our own habits to keep building our relationships? Instead of saying we’re busy, we should think about our life being full instead. The foundation of networking is the VCP process. First, you have to be visible, then you move to credibility where people know who you are and that you’re good at it. Only then can you move to profitability. Most people try to leapfrog the process and go from being completely invisible and straight to profitability. When networking, you need to be aware of where you are in that process with that person because that will dictate the way you communicate with them. You always have to work on all three aspects of the process to maintain your business development efforts. Consistency is key. The biggest mistake that businesses make is doing a thousand things six times instead of doing six things a thousand times. It’s about doing fewer things and doing them well and not stretching yourself too thin. Work in your flame instead of your wax. Hire people to do the things you don’t want to do so you can focus on the things you want to be doing to carry your business forward. Ivan color codes his calendar and is very strict about his timelines. That’s how he knows what kind of day he’s going to have and he can see if he’s working on what he should be working on over the course of the week. Business people are constantly chasing bright shiny objects. Stop chasing the bright shiny distractions and focus on just doing the same things effectively over and over again.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Dr. Ivan Misner. Ivan Misner is the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest networking group. There is probably no one else on the planet who knows more about building a valuable network or relationships. We need to be very careful about who we allow into our inner circle. This can include strategic partners that we work with to grow our businesses, the clients we work with, to the people in our personal lives. Think about your current ecosystem and about who shares your core values and who you want to invest your time with. The people you allow into your metaphorical room you can’t kick out, so it’s important to be cautious on the front end. When you have negative experiences with people you don’t get that time back, and those experiences will influence your decisions for the rest of your life. Be very critical of the people you let into your life and be willing to let people go when you discover that they are not a fit. The core values of your organization have nothing to do with what’s on people’s resumes. Your core values should be concise and clear. When you start to get to know somebody the Gains exchange is a great way to build the foundation of the relationship. Enter into a dialogue about your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills to facilitate a great conversation. Model the response you are looking for by sharing your Gains with the other person and then ask them to reciprocate.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Dr. Ivan Misner. Ivan Misner is the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest networking group. There is probably no one else on the planet who knows more about building a valuable network or relationships. We need to be very careful about who we allow into our inner circle. This can include strategic partners that we work with to grow our businesses, the clients we work with, to the people in our personal lives. Think about your current ecosystem and about who shares your core values and who you want to invest your time with. The people you allow into your metaphorical room you can’t kick out, so it’s important to be cautious on the front end. When you have negative experiences with people you don’t get that time back, and those experiences will influence your decisions for the rest of your life. Be very critical of the people you let into your life and be willing to let people go when you discover that they are not a fit. The core values of your organization have nothing to do with what’s on people’s resumes. Your core values should be concise and clear. When you start to get to know somebody the Gains exchange is a great way to build the foundation of the relationship. Enter into a dialogue about your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills to facilitate a great conversation. Model the response you are looking for by sharing your Gains with the other person and then ask them to reciprocate.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we hack our own habits to keep building our relationships? Instead of saying we’re busy, we should think about our life being full instead. The foundation of networking is the VCP process. First, you have to be visible, then you move to credibility where people know who you are and that you’re good at it. Only then can you move to profitability. Most people try to leapfrog the process and go from being completely invisible and straight to profitability. When networking, you need to be aware of where you are in that process with that person because that will dictate the way you communicate with them. You always have to work on all three aspects of the process to maintain your business development efforts. Consistency is key. The biggest mistake that businesses make is doing a thousand things six times instead of doing six things a thousand times. It’s about doing fewer things and doing them well and not stretching yourself too thin. Work in your flame instead of your wax. Hire people to do the things you don’t want to do so you can focus on the things you want to be doing to carry your business forward. Ivan color codes his calendar and is very strict about his timelines. That’s how he knows what kind of day he’s going to have and he can see if he’s working on what he should be working on over the course of the week. Business people are constantly chasing bright shiny objects. Stop chasing the bright shiny distractions and focus on just doing the same things effectively over and over again.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we develop more and deeper relationships? BNI now has over 276,000 members and over the course of 2020, those members generated over $16 billion in business. A one-to-one conversation with people periodically is the best way to develop a relationship with them. The Gains exchange is a great way to deepen a relationship with someone you know. Write down your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and find out what you have in common. Ivan tells the story of two BNI members that were initially skeptical of the Gains exchange and discovered something they had in common that became the basis for a great relationship. People are usually open to the Gains exchange. You don’t have to frame the one-to-one beforehand if you approach it the right way. The perfect way to ask the Gains questions is to model it. Start with your goals, accomplishments, interests, networks, and skills, and show them what you want to know about them. The modeling provides the example instead of a perfectly designed question. Near the end of the conversation reiterate what you learned about them and open the idea of having another conversation in the future to connect on things that are important to them. If the other person has a need that you can help with by sharing a resource, that becomes the perfect reason to follow up. Before you ask for something, you should invest in the relationship with them first.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: How do we grow our book of business? There is a networking disconnect, where everybody goes to networking events wanting to sell but nobody is there to buy. Networking is all about relationships, it’s more like farming than hunting. Avoid selling the first time you meet someone. Plant the seed of the relationship first and then cultivate it over time. Ivan recommends the 24/7/30 follow-up system. Within 24 hours of meeting someone, send them a note and let them know that you enjoyed getting to know them. Within 7 days find them on social media and make a meaningful connection with them. Go where they are, not where you want to be. Within 30 days reach out to them and ask to have a conversation about what they do. The whole time you avoid selling to them and focus instead on just building the relationship. Start with the other person in mind and get to know them as a human being. It’s not what you know or who you know, it’s how well you know each other that counts. The important thing is not about who is in your database, it’s who is willing to help you if you asked. If you follow up in a meaningful way with the goal of building a real relationship, it’s not going to feel formulaic or contrived. Helping and authenticity are key. Infinite giving does not mean that you’re an infinite victim. Giving can take all kinds of forms and there are a number of ways your giving will come back to you.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

Mo asks Dr. Ivan Misner: What is your big idea on how business development experts can grow their book of business, their relationships, and their careers? The quality of the people you surround yourself with determines the quality of your life. Imagine that you live your life in one room with one door and it’s one-way entrance only. If that were true would you be more selective about the people that you let into your life? The room is a metaphor for your mind, and when you have a relationship with someone, business or personal, their fingerprints are all over your brain for the rest of your life. This is why it’s vital to be very selective on the front end. Your experiences with people, the good and the bad, will affect your decisions for the rest of your life. You have to ask yourself whether a client is going to be worth the money and the psychic energy you are going to invest in the relationship. The selectivity starts with understanding your personal values. If you don’t know what’s important in your life you will take anyone that comes to your door. Clients don’t have to have the exact same values as you, they just can’t be incongruent with the things you believe are the most important. You’re better off turning down a client or an employee if you believe they will take you in the opposite direction of your personal values. One of the most important values in Dr. Misner’s organization BNI is that giver’s gain. If you want to be able to get business from people you have to be willing to give them business. Networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s a way to build a solid foundation for a strong, successful business. It’s an attitude and not an expectation. Creating a great organizational culture changes that organization forever. Your business’s core values should be short and repeated constantly.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ivanmisner.com bni.com

L. David Marquet shares his incredible insights into how the words we use shape the relationships between us and our team as well as our clients, and how we can stop using the industrial age mindset in the modern world. Learn how to create a resilient team that generates extraordinary results for your clients, how to stop obeying the clock, and why creating the right business development habits can determine the arc of your career.   Mo asks L. David Marquet: What big idea do you have around using the language of leadership to build client relationships? The language we use today has been passed down from our parents and grandparents, and is in essence an industrial age language. In the past, language has adapted and changed as the work and society have evolved but more recently, language has fallen behind. Work and society are changing more rapidly than our language and this leads to communication issues. The underlying theme of the industrial age in terms of human connections was conformity, where disrupting the hierarchy typically caused problems. We need to retrain ourselves to connect instead of conform and we do that through language. Connection language is about being vulnerable without sharing too much; incremental intimacy is the key. It’s about reinforcing the idea of improvement instead of knowing all the answers right away. Clients are shrewd and if you try to pretend that you know it all instead of being authentic and honest, the relationship will be damaged. Communication is not part of the training for most complex expertise. One activity that we can do is saying “I don’t know” to a question a few times a week and being observant about how you feel about it, even when you do know the answer. We teach leadership as if it’s history, but that’s not the right metaphor. Language is the perfect metaphor for leadership because it’s all about practice and the words that we use to communicate with other people.   Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can the language of leadership help us control the clock? Controlling the clock is the antithesis of obeying the clock. In the industrial age it made sense because that’s the way production was done, but it doesn’t serve us in the way human teams interact now. For creative work, controlling the clock is about acknowledging deadlines but controlling the rhythm between action and doing, and pausing and thinking. Doing is all about focus, whereas variability is an ally for thinking. Many organizations are biased towards doing and action, and leave very little time for thinking and reflecting which leads to less innovation over time. Another aspect of the industrial age is coercion. The very structure of most organizations is about controlling the actions of other people, and if that bleeds over into your client relationship, it’s not going to be very healthy. Work with a client to choose a time to pause and get feedback, and as you get closer to the goal you can deliver more each time. You want your decisions to have expiration dates. When you reach the expiration date, you revisit the activity and evaluate what’s working. The key is to commit until that date. When we work in teams, we want the commitment to be small, so that the team can buy in without having to change their thinking right away. Make it easy for them to commit in the beginning instead of requiring them to admit their prior thought process was incorrect.   Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can we use the language of leadership to deepen our relationships? There is a language difference between resilient and adaptive teams, and fragile teams. Adaptive teams are more open to dissenting opinions with people being willing to speak up. On fragile teams, only the loudest tend to get heard. One of the most common patterns is that word distribution matches the salary distribution of the people involved in the meeting. If you’re in a meeting, the point is not to get your point across, it’s to understand other people’s points and to structure the meeting so that the people that are underrepresented are invited to share. Vote first, and then discuss. If you sense there is a dissenting opinion you should shine a light on that. You need to celebrate a dissenting opinion because that’s where all innovation comes from. Avoid binary questions when you want to increase variability and increase innovation. Always go to the minority dissenting opinion first, you want to hear from the people that feel strongly one way or the other. You should focus your time and energy finding out what the group knows and maximizing learning in the limited time that you have, and you don’t do that by rehashing what the majority thinks.   Mo asks L. David Marquet: How do we get our team to focus on the right client development activities? We act our way to new thinking. When you want to change something, you need to act the way that those people would act and the thought process will follow. Our brains change as a result of our habits. In terms of language, simply switching out the term “they” for “we” can create a very unique team environment. Instead of looking for what you’re doing wrong, you need to look at the things that you’re doing right and celebrate those activities. Invite your team to tell their story. We tend to focus on the outcomes for the things we do. Habits don’t change from the desire for an outcome. You have to put yourself into an environment where it’s easy to have the habits that generate the results you want. Learn what it takes to change a small habit first, because if you haven’t gone through that process yet you have no right to ask other people, including your clients, to change their habits. Celebrate all the actions, yours and your team’s, before you start suggesting incremental improvements.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of L. David Marquet. We, as humans, are typically either thinking or we’re acting and we tend to bias toward action. For business development, this means it can be very easy to just do the next thing and do it right away. Sometimes that focus on action is not the right thing to do. Occasionally, we need to step back and think about the next right move, but that can also include our colleagues and even the client or prospect. Ask the client/prospect what kind of followup they want to see from you. Build default thinking time in with yourself, your team, and your clients, and then act. Put time in your calendar once a week for your thinking time and commit to it. It’s important to not think about completion as just being a deal getting closed. A complete phase in business development can be the Give To Get, then each next step after that. Each step is an opportunity to step back and meet with the team about what worked well and what should change. When you celebrate the small, incremental steps, you will do more of them. Business development is challenging. We all almost always default back to delivery so we need to create mechanisms to celebrate every completion we do. Business development is a journey. Ask open-ended questions and use each moment to learn and get better. If you put 100 hours into improving your technical skills, your clients probably won’t notice. If you put 100 hours into your business development skills, not only do you improve your book of business and networking ability, you also pull through your expertise. Make it a priority and all kinds of good things will happen along the way.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Mo shares his insights from the habits of L. David Marquet. We, as humans, are typically either thinking or we’re acting and we tend to bias toward action. For business development, this means it can be very easy to just do the next thing and do it right away. Sometimes that focus on action is not the right thing to do. Occasionally, we need to step back and think about the next right move, but that can also include our colleagues and even the client or prospect. Ask the client/prospect what kind of followup they want to see from you. Build default thinking time in with yourself, your team, and your clients, and then act. Put time in your calendar once a week for your thinking time and commit to it. It’s important to not think about completion as just being a deal getting closed. A complete phase in business development can be the Give To Get, then each next step after that. Each step is an opportunity to step back and meet with the team about what worked well and what should change. When you celebrate the small, incremental steps, you will do more of them. Business development is challenging. We all almost always default back to delivery so we need to create mechanisms to celebrate every completion we do. Business development is a journey. Ask open-ended questions and use each moment to learn and get better. If you put 100 hours into improving your technical skills, your clients probably won’t notice. If you put 100 hours into your business development skills, not only do you improve your book of business and networking ability, you also pull through your expertise. Make it a priority and all kinds of good things will happen along the way.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Mo asks L. David Marquet: How do we get our team to focus on the right client development activities? We act our way to new thinking. When you want to change something, you need to act the way that those people would act and the thought process will follow. Our brains change as a result of our habits. In terms of language, simply switching out the term “they” for “we” can create a very unique team environment. Instead of looking for what you’re doing wrong, you need to look at the things that you’re doing right and celebrate those activities. Invite your team to tell their story. We tend to focus on the outcomes for the things we do. Habits don’t change from the desire for an outcome. You have to put yourself into an environment where it’s easy to have the habits that generate the results you want. Learn what it takes to change a small habit first, because if you haven’t gone through that process yet you have no right to ask other people, including your clients, to change their habits. Celebrate all the actions, yours and your team’s, before you start suggesting incremental improvements.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can we use the language of leadership to deepen our relationships? There is a language difference between resilient and adaptive teams, and fragile teams. Adaptive teams are more open to dissenting opinions with people being willing to speak up. On fragile teams, only the loudest tend to get heard. One of the most common patterns is that word distribution matches the salary distribution of the people involved in the meeting. If you’re in a meeting, the point is not to get your point across, it’s to understand other people’s points and to structure the meeting so that the people that are underrepresented are invited to share. Vote first, and then discuss. If you sense there is a dissenting opinion you should shine a light on that. You need to celebrate a dissenting opinion because that’s where all innovation comes from. Avoid binary questions when you want to increase variability and increase innovation. Always go to the minority dissenting opinion first, you want to hear from the people that feel strongly one way or the other. You should focus your time and energy finding out what the group knows and maximizing learning in the limited time that you have, and you don’t do that by rehashing what the majority thinks.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can the language of leadership help us control the clock? Controlling the clock is the antithesis of obeying the clock. In the industrial age it made sense because that’s the way production was done, but it doesn’t serve us in the way human teams interact now. For creative work, controlling the clock is about acknowledging deadlines but controlling the rhythm between action and doing, and pausing and thinking. Doing is all about focus, whereas variability is an ally for thinking. Many organizations are biased towards doing and action, and leave very little time for thinking and reflecting which leads to less innovation over time. Another aspect of the industrial age is coercion. The very structure of most organizations is about controlling the actions of other people, and if that bleeds over into your client relationship, it’s not going to be very healthy. Work with a client to choose a time to pause and get feedback, and as you get closer to the goal you can deliver more each time. You want your decisions to have expiration dates. When you reach the expiration date, you revisit the activity and evaluate what’s working. The key is to commit until that date. When we work in teams, we want the commitment to be small, so that the team can buy in without having to change their thinking right away. Make it easy for them to commit in the beginning instead of requiring them to admit their prior thought process was incorrect.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Mo asks L. David Marquet: What big idea do you have around using the language of leadership to build client relationships? The language we use today has been passed down from our parents and grandparents, and is in essence an industrial age language. In the past, language has adapted and changed as the work and society have evolved but more recently, language has fallen behind. Work and society are changing more rapidly than our language and this leads to communication issues. The underlying theme of the industrial age in terms of human connections was conformity, where disrupting the hierarchy typically caused problems. We need to retrain ourselves to connect instead of conform and we do that through language. Connection language is about being vulnerable without sharing too much; incremental intimacy is the key. It’s about reinforcing the idea of improvement instead of knowing all the answers right away. Clients are shrewd and if you try to pretend that you know it all instead of being authentic and honest, the relationship will be damaged. Communication is not part of the training for most complex expertise. One activity that we can do is saying “I don’t know” to a question a few times a week and being observant about how you feel about it, even when you do know the answer. We teach leadership as if it’s history, but that’s not the right metaphor. Language is the perfect metaphor for leadership because it’s all about practice and the words that we use to communicate with other people.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Enroll in The Nudge at https://intentbasedleadership.com/enroll-for-the-nudge/  View David’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LeadershipNudges

Josh Kaufman shares the fundamental frameworks that amplify business development success and breaks them down into actionable strategies that you can start implementing today. Learn how to speak the language of business so you can understand your clients on a deeper level, solve their problems more effectively, and determine which opportunities to pursue and which to pass over so you can make the most impact possible.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful? Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development. Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well. Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client. Most employees know their job very well, but they don’t know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference. The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization. Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization. As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business. Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities? Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future. Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what’s possible. All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there. This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh’s career have come from posing this thought experiment. As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question. Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise because you weren’t framing the problem in that particular way.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships? When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time. Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what’s important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows. You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness. There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people. The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time. The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.   Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can someone hack their own habits and accomplish more when it comes to business development? Most of us imagine a world in the undefined future where all our tasks are completed and there’s nothing left to do. Fortunately for us, that’s not the way the world works. We live in a finite world of tradeoffs with limited energy and attention. As a consequence of that, we have limited opportunities to get things done. We can make ourselves miserable by not realizing that we live in a world of tradeoffs. We must make choices between competing alternatives. You must be clear on your personal values and priorities to know what choices to pursue. They become the lens that helps you decide which opportunities will make the biggest difference in your life long term. You don’t want to spend all your time and energy climbing a ladder, to only discover at the top that it was leaning against the wrong wall. Being clear about what you want helps eliminate some of the existential pressure. You’re only responsible for figuring out what you should be doing to get to the end result you desire is instead of doing everything all at once. No is a complete sentence. It’s okay to pass on certain opportunities. There is a certain amount of status consciousness that doesn’t serve us when it comes to opportunity, but we have to keep our values in mind and use them to choose our direction. Most people try to avoid making a decision until absolutely forced to. When presented with multiple opportunities, most people will say they are all important. We don’t need to feel bad about the opportunities we are passing on, because that’s a necessary part of the process. It’s what allows us to enjoy the benefits of the things we value the most, and the more we can do that the more effective and happy we’ll be. We all have an unlimited opportunity, and we all have limited time, so creating a mechanism that allows you to embrace that is crucial. Business developers need to be proactive and make things happen, and that means making the right choices.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman. Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don’t realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects’ words and language and understanding them on a deep level. Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage. Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It’s also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business. Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results. We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on. It’s okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net The Personal MBA How to Fight a Hydra

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Josh Kaufman. Speaking the language of business seems obvious, but most people don’t realize how important this is to business development. Specifically speaking with your prospects’ words and language and understanding them on a deep level. Get out of the mindset that you speak internally because that can come off as jargon. Talking with the language of a client is a differentiator that will set you apart from other competitors. Adding that to every aspect of the business development process is an incredible advantage. Counterfactual questions like “what would have to be true for X to happen?” are great for opening up your thought process to possibilities. It’s also a great tool that you can use with clients in their business. Asking the right question can open the door to making it a reality. Use those kinds of questions to start a conversation that can create incredible results. We have unlimited opportunities as humans, but we have limited time. We need a mechanism that catalogs the opportunities available to us and a system to triage the ones you are going to focus on. It’s okay to say no to some ideas so that you can say yes to the ideas that will make a major impact.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can someone hack their own habits and accomplish more when it comes to business development? Most of us imagine a world in the undefined future where all our tasks are completed and there’s nothing left to do. Fortunately for us, that’s not the way the world works. We live in a finite world of tradeoffs with limited energy and attention. As a consequence of that, we have limited opportunities to get things done. We can make ourselves miserable by not realizing that we live in a world of tradeoffs. We must make choices between competing alternatives. You must be clear on your personal values and priorities to know what choices to pursue. They become the lens that helps you decide which opportunities will make the biggest difference in your life long term. You don’t want to spend all your time and energy climbing a ladder, to only discover at the top that it was leaning against the wrong wall. Being clear about what you want helps eliminate some of the existential pressure. You’re only responsible for figuring out what you should be doing to get to the end result you desire is instead of doing everything all at once. No is a complete sentence. It’s okay to pass on certain opportunities. There is a certain amount of status consciousness that doesn’t serve us when it comes to opportunity, but we have to keep our values in mind and use them to choose our direction. Most people try to avoid making a decision until absolutely forced to. When presented with multiple opportunities, most people will say they are all important. We don’t need to feel bad about the opportunities we are passing on, because that’s a necessary part of the process. It’s what allows us to enjoy the benefits of the things we value the most, and the more we can do that the more effective and happy we’ll be. We all have an unlimited opportunity, and we all have limited time, so creating a mechanism that allows you to embrace that is crucial. Business developers need to be proactive and make things happen, and that means making the right choices.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: Great relationships are something we should invest in. How can someone be more effective at managing relationships? When you enter into any new relationship, trust is something that needs to be built over time. Trust is earned by showing up and demonstrating that you understand someone, and what’s important to them. Even before someone becomes a prospect, you can keep adding value to a relationship and building that trust. This is known as earned regard, and all business development activities will be more effective as the trust grows. You earn the trust and regard of your team in the same way that you earn the trust of a prospect or client. Keep showing up and providing value, and demonstrating your trustworthiness. There are three methods of building trust known as the Golden Trifecta: essentially, you treat people with appreciation, courtesy, and respect. The more you interact with people in those three ways the more likely you are to produce a positive result. In a business environment, you layer adding value on top of those three fundamental approaches to interacting with people. The effect of this accumulates, as well as behaving in the opposite. Respect compounds and leads to a trusted and valued relationship, constant disrespect or discourteousness destroys relationships over time. The combination of earned regard and the Golden Trifecta are very effective at deepening relationships in all areas of your life.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: How can the ideas of The Personal MBA help people manage their opportunities? Begin with a thought experiment. “What would it look like if…?” Counterfactual questions can be extremely useful for understanding what is true in the given moment, and what could be a way of making things better in the future. Business development is all about the future. Asking this sort of question takes you out of the present situation and gives you clarity on what’s possible. All of the most valuable questions in business start with that question. These questions allow you to supply your brain with a destination which is how you start formulating a plan to get there. This is a powerful tool to get unstuck and figure out what your next action should be regarding an opportunity. Most of the breakthroughs in Josh’s career have come from posing this thought experiment. As you are planning out the next quarter and figuring out how to reach your financial or personal goals, the way you get your brain in gear to solve the problem is by asking yourself a counterfactual question. Starting from the question allows you to avoid being mired in self-criticism and doubt. You will come up with ideas that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise because you weren’t framing the problem in that particular way.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net

Mo asks Josh Kaufman: What big idea do you have to help business developers be more successful? Regardless of what industry or market you are in, understanding business at a fundamental level is a significant advantage. It will help you deliver more effectively as well as the business development. Having an accurate understanding of what businesses are and how they work will help you do your job better and serve your customers better as well. Organizations are good at teaching a deep understanding of a specific specialty, but they are not necessarily good at teaching the general business language and communicating that to a client. Most employees know their job very well, but they don’t know how they or their boss fits into the bigger picture of the organization. Having a comprehensive understanding of the entire business system is where you get to the strategic and practical insight that can really make a difference. The decision-maker in an organization has to think of all five parts of the business, the value creation side, the marketing, the sales, the delivery, and the financial side when deciding what actions to take. Expanding beyond a narrow view of the business helps you understand your client and sell your services, but it also helps operate within your own organization. Thinking into the future and anticipating issues before they arise will make you a better business person and make you more valuable to your organization. As we communicate with clients we should do so with their priorities in mind and in their words. All aspects of business development get meaningfully better if you can talk the language of business. Business development is about trust. Everything you can do to convey that you understand a client at a fundamental level, the more they are going to trust you, the more effectively you are going to be able to work with them, and the more effectively you will be able to close business.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com JoshKaufman.net