So, Here's My Story...

What do you do when the gum of your business loses its flavour? Our special guest, Andrew Torrez of Opening Arguments https://openargs.com/, helps us explore the idea of forging a new path and embracing the version of your business that makes you the happiest. And for that, he gets a gold star. Why is that important for business?  Finding your own way of doing things is a critical aspect of creating a satisfying and successful business, especially when you feel like you were set on a path early on. When you suddenly find yourself without someone to give you an ‘A’ or a gold star, you have to find a way to replace that validation with a different kind of satisfaction. There comes a point in your profession where you realize you cannot just be a passenger, but you have to become the captain of your own ship. You are responsible for steering your ship. You get to choose your own gold star.  Creating a path out of a pre-existing template involves a lot of “eating the fish, spitting out the bones” kind of examinat

As you can imagine, the process of learning to do a headstand is a challenging thing. But did you know that it can also lead to a powerful business metaphor about commitment and failure?  There is a huge difference, in yoga and in business, between failing to succeed, and failing to try, and that’s the topic of this week’s story.  Why is that important for business?  When learning to do a headstand, the only way you don’t risk going all the way over is if you didn’t commit to going all the way up. If you aren’t regularly falling over, you need to take a look at your relationship with commitment.  But not just in yoga – this shows up in business.  There is an inherent truth that talks about the relationship between commitment and failure in business. Part of this is examining that there is more than one kind of failure. Some failures we take as inherent parts of the process – they don’t daunt us. Another kind of failure might feel riskier – more vulnerable – and it might look more spectacular. But the truth is

We were inspired to look at the business of our 50th Facebook member for business inspiration, and she didn’t disappoint. Rachel’s strong brand identity gives us an important reminder to look our own business’ identity. And hopefully, this will serve as your reminder to do the same! Why is that important for business?  A strong brand immediately tells people, “this is who I am and these are who my people are”. Instead of speaking to everyone, a strong brand speaks to the people you most love to work with. After all, your ideal client shouldn’t be 6 billion people.  A strong brand represents who you are, but more than that, who the business is. If the business was a person, it is that business’ personality and shape. The furthest reaches of integrity in branding is when you make a bold stand about who you are and who your company is.  Yet, while there are so many dangers to deciding who you are based on a poll, you also don’t want to pick a personality for your business just for personality’s sake.  One of the

What can you learn about business through learning to run? We have a special cohost this week, and she teaches us an important lesson about regular check-ins, pacing, and starting small.  If you are struggling to hit your business goals, maybe it’s time to take a lesson from a somewhat reluctant new runner! Why is that important for business?  Julie’s story about learning to run gave us a lot of business lessons: Learning to run 12 miles doesn’t start with a 12 mile run. Much like in business, you aren’t going to have as much luck getting a new client to sign up for your super-deluxe package as you are starting small. There is a gradual process, in running and in business, of getting to where you want to be. You need to have an awareness of what it takes to get people started; to get them in the door and to say yes to something. If you want to sell them Z, you have to know what the A is that would get them started. Meet your clients where they are and give them something they can say yes to.    Pacing is c

Going into an audition as an actor, you have to make a decision about how you are going to play a character. You can play it as you think the director wants to see it, or you can make your own choices about who the character is.  Turns out, taking on a new client as a business owner is a lot like being an actor at an audition.  In this episode, we ask, “when do you need to say ‘no’ to a client?” Why is that important for business?   Just like in acting, the secret to success could very well be making a clear, early choice about who you are and what you do. When you are the trusted advisor that someone is relying on, part of what they are buying is your expertise and your insight. In trying to please the client, you can’t ignore your own perspective.   Sometimes, the key is to go for the “no”. No is a magical word. As an expert, it is often incumbent on you to say, “no, that’s not the way we are going to go”. But in taking that stand, you have to be willing to either walk away or do it the client’s way if they

Most businesses dream about having their best year ever. But that doesn’t mean it comes without new problems and without competing priorities. There’s a limit to what you can say no to and still have the full life you want, and this episode is all about finding a way to have it all – even if it involves mall-walking.  Why is that important for business?  When you spend a lot of time in your business, you might find other priorities suffer. Conventional wisdom might have you deciding which of your priorities you have to say no to. But a fulfilling life only has room for so many noes.  Perhaps you can blend priorities instead.  This isn’t just about “two birds, one stone”; it’s about making each individual priority even more effective by finding a way to combine them. This can especially work with combining physical activity with stimulating business conversations. A lot of creative things happen in the white space, so why not build it in?  In the book, “Total Leadership”, Stewart Friedman talks about how we ha

A night of karaoke might not seem like the most logical place for an epiphany about company culture. But that’s the beautiful thing about using stories to talk about business – you never know from where the lesson will come. Why is that important for business?   To get everyone to participate in karaoke, you very well might have to build that expectation into the party – an “everyone must sing” rule. Otherwise, you will get a Ringer Circus, where instead of a fun night, you have a series of performances by people already confident in their singing. But if you make it safe and important for everyone to participate, it becomes fun for everyone. The same can be true about the culture you create in business. Yes, it’s important to reward and highlight people who do a good job – to elevate talent – but if you only focus on the people who are naturally good at things, who naturally raise their hand, you will miss a whole other layer of energy, talent and fun that won’t show up otherwise.   A culture that prizes and

Motivation – Morning Routine This week, Jodi and Eliot talk about how motivation and routine are linked, and what filing cabinets and pit stops on a race track have to do with business.  Why is routine important for business?   When we are especially busy or stressed, it is easy to forget to do, or convince ourselves we don’t have time to do, the very things that keep us centered. And it is only in returning to those routines that we find ourselves able to navigate the work effectively again. Even though absolutely nothing might change, the way you see those things in your business or life changes.    Interestingly, the things we tend to skip when we are busy are literally the things that help our brain to work its best – down time, sleep, exercise and good eating. These are critical for your work, yet the things that you often cut first.  You have to be able to step outside of the experience you hare having and contextualize it. Clues that you need to recalibrate before continuing can be when it feels hard o

It can be hard to ask for help, especially when the stakes are high or when you are supposed to be the leader. Almost as hard as asking for help in finding the small lump in a polyurethane testicle.  Why is that important for business?   Asking for help can be really hard - admitting that you don’t know something, especially if you want to be considered an expert, is a vulnerable thing. The higher the stakes get, the bigger it feels to admit you don’t know and the stronger the impulse to keep hobbling along as if you do. When your ego is involved – when you start reading your own press releases – it can be harder to admit you don’t know something that feels basic.  There are many different sizes and shapes of baggage can cause people to choose pride over the truth of not knowing. Whatever the particular baggage, it can be a deterrent to good leadership. Becoming comfortable with “I don’t know” is a much-overlooked leadership skill. As important as it is to be skilled and informed, it is dangerous if it feels

We often don’t see the way we are influencing and affecting those around us. We don’t make the link from our behavior to what we see pervade our company culture. And then – like so many of our episodes - a trip to the bathroom changes everything.   Why is that important for business?  Often, we experience an effect in the world, and then rationalize that thing without taking the time to notice if we have a hand in causing it. The truth is, everything you do is modeling things for people in your organization. You teach what you tolerate. And you teach what you model, even when you don’t know you are modeling it.  However, we are often unaware of the things that we are inadvertently modeling. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect and it keeps us blind to our blind spots. It can make us unaware of the impact we have on those around us, which is why it is important to ask: when I see a behavior that I don’t like in others, where does it exist in me? Where am I nurturing or tolerating this behavior and teaching others

Time is a valuable commodity, and we hope all of our listeners properly value their time.  We also know that our time does not inherently have the same value to others, including our clients. And that’s why we ask the important question: does time really equal money?   Why is that important for business?  Just because you invest a precious asset - your time – into work for someone doesn’t necessarily mean they will equate it to value. The idea that time equals dollars is very misleading. For instance, if they were charging by time, iPads would cost $10k. Instead, they have to price according to the value to the buyer. Because of this, you have to make sure that when discussing value, that you have determined and discussed your expectations well in advance.   The question of value is especially confronting when you talk about raising your prices. If someone that has never worked with you balks at a price, you can dismiss that as them not understanding your value. But it can be hard to not attribute it to your

You can learn important business lessons from just about any source, including a squeegee kid with a surprisingly nuanced sales approach.   Why is that important for business? The biggest challenges you will encounter when doing sales – and if you are in business, make no mistake: you are doing sales – are the silent objections of your potential clients. Often, while being sold to, we are busy stacking up a list of reasons to say no. Good sales is about making it easy to say yes. What, by trying harder, makes sales barriers go up; and what, by trying harder, makes sales barriers go down? First, the young business ingenue made you root for him, but he also made it feel like he was rooting for his potential customer. He looked at the world through his customer’s eyes and figured out what mattered to that person. He essentially asked, “if I can give you more of what you want, is it worth it to you?” His approach wasn’t adversarial at all – it was customer-focused. And even though this particular instance was not

Audience Q&As can quickly devolve. Someone wants to share a story instead of a question; someone else wants to demonstrate their own expertise and “teach from the seats”. No one seems to know how to ask a succinct and relevant question and you can feel the frustration from the group. As the leader – whether it be in front of a large audience or just at your staff meetings – you must consider the impact of these contributions on the room, and your goals. This episode is about being clear on your objective and helping everyone make the best contributions possible. It’s also a little bit about Jodi’s terrible poker face.    Why is that important for business? There are people who are always going to answer, regardless of the question, with the answer they want to give. It can feel like they are not taking responsibility for the care and feeding of the group, nor considering the impact to the group. As the leader, it is important to frame the rules of contribution before asking people for their contributions.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who ignores the substance of the conversation, and instead present themselves as an authority based on their experience or resume, instead of their response to the issue? This is exactly the kind of incident that instigates todays story/rant, and leads to a discussion about authenticity, confidence, and credibility.   Why is that important for business? This kind of appeal to authority can sometimes be mistaken for confidence, but it comes across as having its roots in insecurity instead. When someone is truly confident, they let the substance of their input speak for them. You can do something for 30 years and still not do it well, so experience isn’t a replacement for a cogent argument. Relaying your resume is an attempt to build credibility, but it often backfires. Genuine, authentic presence can do more for your credibility than a listing of your experience. Sometimes, confidence is simply a matter of acting as if – it is starting at the end, figuring out

How hard are you making people work to hire you? Sometimes in business, people make it hard to give them money. Like you are drowning, and they need you to fill out twelve forms in triplicate to order your life preserver. In this episode, we talk about the importance of small victories, triage, and making it easy for clients to hire you.   Why is that important for business? When someone is ready to hire you, it is important to find the points of disengagement – the part of the process of on-boarding or hiring you where they become frustrated or overwhelmed – and find a way to give them a small victory. This isn’t about solving the whole problem, but about making it easier to get started. If you need a lot of information to best help a client, can you determine the key things you need to get started, and begin there? This is about facilitating the “yes” process. The confused mind says no. If you can determine the place (in any of your processes, but especially the hiring process) where a client is most likely

In this episode, we are podcasting live from the National Association of Broadcasters Show New York and talking about fist-bump people, Jewish high holidays, and genuine human connection.   Why is that important for business? Some people – even clients! - deplete your energy and those relationships may need a second look. It is rare to regret not taking a client, but you will most likely experience the feeling of regretting taking on a client. This is why it is important to surround yourself with what Eliot calls “fist-bump people” – those people that you get excited and inspired by. There is also importance to periodically throwing out the agenda. There’s an unspoken rule that everything in business must have distinct purpose or must have an exacting line to an outcome. But so much of what is needed for business happens in the whitespace between. As Eliot’s friend says about the Jewish high holidays: “God is in the hallways”. We have to make time for connections, and for these hallways, or we will burn out.

When her son wants to quit something, Jodi and her husband must decide if they want to encourage him to stick with his commitments or applaud him for knowing what he wants. And this common parenting dilemma brings us to some important decisions you will need to make in business, too.      Why is that important for business? There are so many opportunities in business to make similar decisions. But commitment might not always be the skill to flex - quitting can be just as important as commitment, even though it isn’t a skill that we often celebrate. The question becomes: how do you discern when the most important thing is following through, and when quitting is the right way to go? Some points to consider might be whether the commitment involves other people relying on you, the duration of the commitment, and what you are trying to accomplish with the commitment. It is also important to consider your core values, or the core values of the organization, both in the initial decision, and in re-evaluating a commi

Eliot recently spent 3 days walking 60 miles for the Susan G. Komen foundation, and as usual, came home with a bunch of ideas for what your business can learn from the experience. In this episode, we’ll talk about company culture, and what you can learn by staring at people’s backs for 60 miles.   Why is that important for business? There are many important lessons to be learned from an organization like the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Chief among them is how to create a culture that engages people, regardless of their “learning style”. Wherever you looked, you were inside the “pink bubble” and you couldn’t avoid their mission, their impact, and why people cared so deeply about the cause. Even if your mission isn’t to cure cancer, you can still learn these lessons by helping to tie people to your mission. A big part of making that happen is by weaving new people – whether they be staff or clients – into the fabric of your business’ culture. You do this by encouraging: A sense of belonging. This c

When illness befell the Hume household, Jodi learned an important lesson about empathy, and how bad we can be at empathizing if we haven’t experienced something for ourselves. It turns out, empathy involves more than emotional intelligence. Why is that important for business? So often in business, we jump to conclusions about the motivations, experiences and decisions of others. Sometimes, this lack of empathy is a matter of needing to develop some emotional intelligence. But perhaps more often, it is simply a lack of knowledge or a need to ask more questions. Lack of empathy is often a lack of curiosity. We think we know what we are looking at and don’t take the time to do additional diagnostics. In the moment when you want to be frustrated with a behavior, there is power in being willing to ask a couple of questions. In this way, empathy in general is more like a shared understanding as opposed to an emotional response. If you don’t understand why someone has a problem with something, maybe it’s because you

Business platitudes: they aren’t wrong, but they also aren’t right. And they annoy Jodi. So let’s talk about them! Why is that important for business? There are many business platitudes around leadership – how many leaders there should be, for instance. Even Mark Twain said, “the perfect committee is made up of three people, two of whom are dead.” (Or at least Eliot insists he said it. Google isn’t as certain.) But if you have the right people around you, you should value their input based on merit, not based on equity. The problems that people are attributing here to leadership clichés are actually an issue of lack of clarity, either in vision or priorities - it isn’t inherently a problem with the number of leaders. It is clarity, not equity, that matters. One of those things to begin to have clarity around is deciding, for each area of business: Who is in charge or/responsible for this area? Who needs to be consulted around decisions? Who needs to be informed of decisions? These are the three things that