MMS #119 - The Chameleon Effect: Unlocking High-Value Prospect Conversations with Stephen Oommen

[00:00:01] Welcome to Mastering Modern Selling, Relationships, Social and AI in the buyer-centric age. Join host Brandon Lee, founder of Fistbump, alongside Microsoft's number one social seller Carson V Heady, and Tom Burton, author of The Revenue Zone and co-founder of LeadSmart, as we explore the strategies and stories behind successful executives and sales professionals.

[00:00:24] Dive into business growth, personal development, and the pursuit of excellence with industry leaders. Whether you're a seasoned executive or an aspiring leader, this podcast is your backstage pass to today's business landscape. This is Mastering Modern Selling, brought to you by Fistbump.

[00:00:49] Hey everybody, welcome to episode 119 of Mastering Modern Selling. 119, Carson, man.

[00:00:57] Whew! Crazy. It's getting up there.

[00:01:00] I thought you were in my grace.

[00:01:01] I think we're starting a trend here.

[00:01:04] Yeah, sure. Let's keep it going. So welcome everybody. As you can see, Carson is here with me, my awesome co-host. Tom Burton is not here today. He is, I think he's in a blackout. He's in Southern California. They got those high winds and fires and he said he hasn't had power all day. So he might show up in the comments, I'm sure. And for everybody else, hey, welcome. Hopefully you guys are staying warm or staying out of the wind.

[00:01:31] I feel like most of the country is frozen.

[00:01:33] And the other half or the other part of California is on fire and windy. So hope everybody's doing well.

[00:01:39] But here in Texas, they don't get any of that, right?

[00:01:42] We get a little bit of everything. So it's tornadoes. You name it, man.

[00:01:48] Especially where you are. It's like you get the cold fronts and the warm fronts. It just kind of hit there and cause all kinds of havoc.

[00:01:55] You never know what you're going to get.

[00:01:56] 20 degrees the other night. I had all the pipes on, you know, just trying to make sure things don't freeze. Go figure.

[00:02:03] We've got that here tonight. But hey, let me welcome everybody on. If you're on the LinkedIn Live or YouTube Live or Facebook Live or Instagram Live or wherever else.

[00:02:12] The cool thing with the live is if you comment, we're going to see it and we like to interact with you.

[00:02:17] So ask your questions, make your comments. We see Bob Britton is here already. Aloha, Bob. Thanks for joining us.

[00:02:23] And if you're on the podcast, hey, we don't want to leave you out as well. Thank you so much for joining us on Mastering Modern Selling.

[00:02:29] We really appreciate you. If you like what you hear, we'd appreciate a review.

[00:02:35] And if you really like what you hear, you think somebody you know needs to hear it, man, screen capture that thing, text it to them, let them know about our episodes.

[00:02:42] We'd really appreciate it, especially because today I think is going to be a great episode.

[00:02:47] Stephen Uman is with us, formerly with Microsoft as a sales leader there and new as the author of The Chameleon Effect.

[00:02:56] Not quite done in process, but we're going to talk today about The Chameleon Effect and unlocking high value prospect conversations.

[00:03:06] Stephen, welcome, man. Good to see you.

[00:03:09] Man, I appreciate it. I was wondering if I was going to mess with Carson a bit or not on something.

[00:03:15] I'm like 119 episodes it took for me and my boy to finally get together on this.

[00:03:23] I got to razz you.

[00:03:25] So we had you on the other show, so we go way back.

[00:03:30] So I've been learning from Stephen for, I think, six years now.

[00:03:37] So glad to finally get you on Mastering Modern Selling.

[00:03:40] Love it, man.

[00:03:41] And I appreciate you for both of you for having me.

[00:03:44] Of course.

[00:03:45] Stephen and I, I think we had our first talk last week or two weeks ago, and I think it turned into about a three-hour conversation over a couple of dials.

[00:03:55] That was great.

[00:03:57] Really appreciate getting to know you and spending that time with you.

[00:04:00] I appreciate taking the time as well.

[00:04:02] Yeah.

[00:04:02] Well, let's jump into the chameleon effect.

[00:04:04] For everybody, this was when Stephen started explaining the chameleon effect to me.

[00:04:10] It was like it gave me language for something that I did kind of intuitively and kind of I learned through lots of different situations.

[00:04:19] And it was like this light bulb went off.

[00:04:22] I'm like, oh, that's like that's a skill.

[00:04:24] I didn't realize I had this skill.

[00:04:27] So tell us a little bit, Stephen, what do you mean by the chameleon effect?

[00:04:32] And then let's jump in and talk about it.

[00:04:35] Yeah.

[00:04:36] I'll start off with this.

[00:04:40] Really, I'll take a step back and just share with you how this all came about.

[00:04:45] Because I think one of the things that you and I discussed is what am I even doing with my time?

[00:04:50] Why would I leave?

[00:04:51] What have I been doing?

[00:04:53] And you kind of commented this in one of our other chats.

[00:04:56] You were like, did you just retire?

[00:05:00] What did you do, right?

[00:05:01] I didn't really actually announce anything.

[00:05:03] I didn't say anything.

[00:05:04] But it was a very comical conversation because I like to say semi-retired, right?

[00:05:10] And so what actually happened was late last year, for most people who are in this space in their life, I have two young, young boys.

[00:05:20] And so this is part of my kindred spirit with Carson over the years where we bonded about the sales profession and how we want to make the sales profession better and a noble profession, right?

[00:05:31] So that's where this is leading to.

[00:05:32] So I'll start there.

[00:05:33] Last year around May, I walk into my son's bedroom late after a late day of working.

[00:05:39] And I've been working like 60, 80 hours a week because of the role that I'm in.

[00:05:43] And at that time, I was at outreach.

[00:05:44] And long story short is he looks at me because I haven't been around for months, essentially.

[00:05:51] And he looks at me in the eye and he goes, daddy, go work.

[00:05:55] Mommy put me to bed.

[00:05:57] And it rocked me to my core.

[00:06:01] And as a just over two years old at the time, him finding his words, he knew what an absentee father looked like.

[00:06:07] And a lot of children rebel and, you know, those sort of things.

[00:06:10] And it broke me because I would put him to bed every single night, bathe and feed him all that stuff.

[00:06:15] That was like our time.

[00:06:15] But it was only about an hour a day.

[00:06:18] So I went and talked to my wife about this.

[00:06:20] And she said something very humorous to me.

[00:06:23] And basically, we looked at it and said, she goes, Stephen, if you've been in go-to-market, you've been selling, you've been saying how great this profession is.

[00:06:32] And you've been doing this for 25 years.

[00:06:36] If you can't step away for a little bit and kind of walk away after 25 years, one of two things has to be true.

[00:06:43] Either whatever you're doing isn't working and you kind of suck at what you do.

[00:06:47] Or like let's be leaders how we tell everyone else.

[00:06:52] They put family first.

[00:06:53] And so we decided for me to step away and focus on the family.

[00:06:57] The wisdom of wives.

[00:06:59] A hundred percent, right?

[00:07:02] And it was funny because we have done well over the years and things of that nature.

[00:07:08] But it was funny because as I was talking to one of my leaders at the time, I go, I'm thinking about retiring.

[00:07:14] Funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

[00:07:16] He looks at me and he goes, you don't have enough money to retire.

[00:07:20] I'm like, you don't know how much money I have, right?

[00:07:22] Like we never talk about things like that.

[00:07:24] It's somewhat of a faux pas.

[00:07:25] And I don't mean this as arrogance.

[00:07:26] But here's what he was getting at.

[00:07:29] And this is why this book, how this all came about in terms of deciding to write a book.

[00:07:36] When you are fully disengaged from what we call like work, there is something that happened.

[00:07:43] Because I saw someone write this this morning and it hit me square between the eyes because this happened about 90 days after I left.

[00:07:49] And what happens is you feel this sense of lack of purpose.

[00:07:53] Like, what am I doing?

[00:07:54] I get so much time with my kids and all these other things.

[00:07:57] But this post this morning was talking about the CEO of Loom who wrote this thing about he sold it for a billion dollars, has all this money.

[00:08:03] I'm not a billionaire.

[00:08:04] I don't got that kind of money.

[00:08:05] But the whole point was how are we contributing and what are we doing with our life, you know, greater than just the money.

[00:08:13] And so that hit me square between the eyes this morning.

[00:08:15] That's why I want to share this because I have always wondered why people who don't have to work still work.

[00:08:24] I've always wondered this, right?

[00:08:25] And like at that 90-day mark, you can talk to three-year-olds and one-year-olds and all that stuff for every day.

[00:08:31] But it messes.

[00:08:32] It really does mess with your mind after a while because you want to feel like you're contributing.

[00:08:36] And so during that time, I talked to my business coach and we discussed how can we give back.

[00:08:42] And that's how this book came about because what are your skills?

[00:08:45] What are some of the things that are lacking in the industry?

[00:08:48] And one of the biggest things that I hear you both talk about all the time is what word?

[00:08:54] Relationships, relationships, relationships.

[00:08:56] And I had sat with one of my top AEs over the years and was discussing something.

[00:09:03] And I used this story where I asked one time ago, why do you spend so much time cold calling, cold email, cold all this other stuff?

[00:09:14] And what she said was, if I go and try to get a warm referral, warm connection, build these relationships to get to that person, I'm just adding all these extra steps.

[00:09:24] Whereas if I send a cold email, like mathematically, there's a chance they could respond back.

[00:09:30] Now, anyone who has experience, like both of us would say, like that's maybe efficient mathematically, but not effective.

[00:09:36] And what ended up transpiring in that conversation, she goes, Stephen, no one is actually teaching the world and teaching sellers, these new generations, the tactics.

[00:09:46] Like how do you actually network?

[00:09:49] Like there's some of that out there, but like the person, what does that mean?

[00:09:53] Build a relationship.

[00:09:54] What does that look like?

[00:09:55] What is tonality?

[00:09:56] What is words?

[00:09:57] What does it mean to bring somebody's wall down?

[00:10:00] And so that's where the thought of the chameleon effect came about.

[00:10:04] And it's about adapting to someone else.

[00:10:08] But I'm going to actually share with you real quickly.

[00:10:11] Actually, let me stop before I share the context of what started the chameleon effect in terms of observation.

[00:10:17] But I'm just curious, both of your thoughts, when you think about it, do you see a lot of people teaching our sellers the actual skills of we say build a relationship, but then nobody actually shares what that means?

[00:10:30] And what does that look like?

[00:10:31] I'm curious your thoughts.

[00:10:33] Go for it, Carson.

[00:10:35] I mean, the short answer is no.

[00:10:38] I think the longer, more elaborate answer is I think that, and I've shared this on this show before.

[00:10:44] I've had challenges with the fact that I've trained what I've been able to do globally and shown like, hey, this is quote unquote how easy it is.

[00:10:55] This is fundamentally data driven why it's effective.

[00:11:00] This is why you should do it.

[00:11:02] This is why you should jettison your comfortable way of mediocrity or take the risk, you know, risk the lack of relationship that you have to do something outside the box to get a net new relationship that you don't have that could be game changing.

[00:11:15] People don't do it.

[00:11:17] It's not a comfortable muscle.

[00:11:20] People often gravitate toward the easy.

[00:11:23] And then on the flip side of that, I mean, at the heart of it is the relationship piece.

[00:11:28] Why and what?

[00:11:30] Why don't people understand the value of the relationship?

[00:11:35] And also what is kind of their understanding of what's important?

[00:11:40] The tonality, like who's setting the tone for what should matter?

[00:11:45] Is their leadership even coached up and trained on how to do it either?

[00:11:50] Like it's I don't think there's malice or neglect intended by the seller.

[00:11:56] I think in an ideal world, if most were trained and understood like how to do it and why they would do it.

[00:12:04] But I also think that the leadership that's got to set the tone and create the culture around creation and nurturing of relationships isn't doing it either.

[00:12:13] You know, it's interesting.

[00:12:14] I came into a new role a little over a year ago.

[00:12:18] And up until this point, I mean, the organization had been very transactional because that's the nature of how it was set up.

[00:12:24] We were making a tonal shift to make it more strategic.

[00:12:28] And a lot of these folks, I mean, they've they've latched on.

[00:12:31] They've lapped it up.

[00:12:32] And I mean, it's taken every bit of a year, year plus to really embed and entrench that kind of culture.

[00:12:38] And frankly, with the turnover of organizations, the changes that they go through, the way the environment, the ecosystem today, like how conducive is an organization's environment or an industry's environment to even have a foundation, have a culture of really going out and creating relationships and then training it from people that understand the value of it.

[00:13:02] So, I mean, the short answer, no.

[00:13:04] The long answer is all of that.

[00:13:06] It's there's several different reasons and problematic opportunities that make it very challenging to embed a culture of being relationship driven and being buyer centric.

[00:13:18] Yeah, 100 percent.

[00:13:19] I love what Andre and Bob are saying.

[00:13:21] Like, you know, Andre's talking about that.

[00:13:23] A lot of there is training out there, right?

[00:13:25] About how to build it.

[00:13:26] And it's very generic and things of that nature.

[00:13:29] But down to the specifics.

[00:13:30] I'm going to work backwards because there's something I always say from something I read where intention matters more than technique, but technique still matters.

[00:13:39] So I'll give you an example of something that I do and I'll back into how I got there and explain to you how I first realized what the chameleon effect means to me.

[00:13:50] So whenever I meet someone, right, something as simple as if I'm like the tilt of the head and I go, most people are very polite and they go, how are you?

[00:14:01] And they don't actually mean it.

[00:14:03] But something as simple as the tonality of if I say, hey, Carson, how are you?

[00:14:09] Just where that are like even the melodic sounding of tone is not like down to that level.

[00:14:14] It's not.

[00:14:15] And here's the reason why intention matters.

[00:14:17] If you teach someone the technique and they don't understand the intention of how someone got there, it comes off as cringy.

[00:14:25] It comes off.

[00:14:26] And so that's why a lot of people don't get to the technique because everyone wants to know the how the words, the email, this and that.

[00:14:31] But they don't understand the heart, the mindset and why it works for some people.

[00:14:36] And so I'm going to give a few anecdotes of some of that today.

[00:14:40] And I will tell you that this story is I know it's my story, but I have to believe that people can find themselves in this story.

[00:14:50] And I have rarely shared.

[00:14:52] Actually, I think I want to share this publicly once, maybe twice, because for me, this whole story is very emotional.

[00:14:58] But I'll tell you first in the middle of the story, and then I'll go back even further.

[00:15:03] My first tech sales interview or the first tech sales job that I got.

[00:15:09] I walk into the live interview and there's four VPs, directors on the other side of the table.

[00:15:16] And midway through the interview, they asked the age old question of what makes you different?

[00:15:21] What's your superpower?

[00:15:22] What makes you unique?

[00:15:23] I can't remember exactly the way they phrased it.

[00:15:25] But I also want to tell you this was at a time where we didn't have Zoom, WebEx, Teams.

[00:15:31] We weren't doing video interviews prior to that.

[00:15:34] They had never seen me before.

[00:15:36] And at that time, I had kind of loopy, long, curly hair, beard, all this kind of stuff.

[00:15:42] And so I had prepared for this, and I was going to take a shot in the dark because I had no idea at that time, like, what is my real superpower?

[00:15:50] But I thought about what it was, and it's this idea around building relationships with anybody.

[00:15:55] Because I realized there's not a person on the planet that I don't have the ability to get along with because of the things I've been through.

[00:16:02] And so I said something ridiculously provocative, and I looked at them and I go, I'm the world's best chameleon.

[00:16:10] Now, all of a sudden, they're looking at me like, what does that mean?

[00:16:13] So I kind of hit them in the eye for a little shock and awe, and I said, I guarantee you when you all spoke to me on the phone, you probably assumed, maybe subconsciously, that I was a Caucasian male.

[00:16:28] Yeah, like literally that silence that you just saw.

[00:16:31] Like, I saw all four of their eyebrows go, oh, gosh, are you about to call HR on us or something?

[00:16:36] Like, what's about to happen, right?

[00:16:38] And I promise you I have a point with this.

[00:16:41] And I go, and I said, but when I walked in, I probably wasn't what you were expecting.

[00:16:46] And you couldn't actually figure out what I was because, like, the dark skin, the hair, like, I just, I looked very unique at the time.

[00:16:52] And I said, let me kind of explain what I've been through and how I got to this place where I'm the world's best chameleon.

[00:16:59] I go, my heritage is actually from India originally.

[00:17:02] And so I understand that culture and the Eastern culture very, very well, the Asian culture, the Indian culture, South Asian, and all of that.

[00:17:09] And when we're selling into IT, the truth of the matter is there is a very big cultural element of a lot of Indians in there.

[00:17:16] So I walk in and I understand how they're raised, how they've been built, why they're in the roles they have.

[00:17:22] Like, I understand that.

[00:17:24] But guess what?

[00:17:26] My entire life, I've been treated like an African-American when people first see me.

[00:17:31] So I have empathy and I understand some of the things that they've been through.

[00:17:35] And even growing up, when I share some of the stories, you'll understand what I mean by that.

[00:17:38] But most of my friends at the time were African-American, Hispanic, every race you could possibly imagine.

[00:17:48] Right?

[00:17:48] I went to school to help my diction because I was from Oklahoma originally.

[00:17:54] And I used to get made fun of for the very Southern accent.

[00:17:57] I was trying to be in broadcasting.

[00:17:58] I wanted to be a sports broadcaster.

[00:18:00] So there was all these different things from even the fact of when I thought about, like, gender, I was the only male in the household.

[00:18:07] And, you know, I had a lot of I had my sisters and mom and things of this nature.

[00:18:12] There was I walk through how there's not a room that I can go into that I can't become one with whoever's in that room because I have taken the time to learn about different cultures, different.

[00:18:25] And part of it was because of what I lived through.

[00:18:27] But then I learned just by happenstance, you've got to learn about other people.

[00:18:33] It's not just about the sales skills.

[00:18:34] It's about what have they lived through?

[00:18:36] What is their lived experience?

[00:18:38] And by the time I was done, it was probably about a five, seven minute soliloquy.

[00:18:42] They all sat back and they were like, oh, damn, we have never heard an answer like that before.

[00:18:48] You're hired.

[00:18:49] Right?

[00:18:50] And I'll walk through some of the things I've gone through that have gotten me to that point.

[00:18:55] But what I realized is that based on all the things and the hurt and the past and things I had to go through in the past, I had to learn how to turn that into what I believe is my one of my biggest superpowers.

[00:19:06] Right?

[00:19:06] So let me stop there for a second and hear how that resonates.

[00:19:12] You know, it reminds me of I appreciate your story.

[00:19:16] And I know you shared with me the other day, which is partly why we had a three hour conversation in talking about that.

[00:19:23] But, you know, and I've done on the show a lot.

[00:19:26] I talk about this book of how to win friends and influence people because it was there you go.

[00:19:32] You got the old school version.

[00:19:34] I lost my office.

[00:19:35] So, you know, what's great about the holidays is I cleaned up my office.

[00:19:38] I've got a few books on the desk that I want to revisit.

[00:19:41] And this is one of them.

[00:19:43] And I reread that book probably three times and listened to it a couple of times last year, primarily for that reason.

[00:19:51] But I shared this with somebody.

[00:19:54] He's an enterprise sales leader.

[00:19:57] Shared it with him several months ago.

[00:19:59] And I got a text message from him just last week.

[00:20:02] Said, hey, got to let you know, I finally picked up how to win friends and influence people.

[00:20:06] And he said, oh, my God, why didn't I look at this book before?

[00:20:11] And he goes, not only on the business side, but I've been struggling with my teenager and connecting.

[00:20:16] And I'm just reading this book, bawling, realizing all the mistakes I've made with not connecting because the way that I've been showing up and not connecting with them.

[00:20:28] And I think that what you've gone through and what you took from it, more importantly, Stephen, that you had the awareness to pay attention to it because you also could have just been pissed off and bitter.

[00:20:40] You know, you're like, I'm Indian.

[00:20:42] They think I'm black.

[00:20:42] I hang out with a bunch of white people.

[00:20:44] I'm in Oklahoma.

[00:20:45] I got a southern accent like this sucks.

[00:20:47] But you used it to learn from it.

[00:20:49] And I think that that is such a great example of going into any work environment these days, whether it's the sales environment, it's in a leadership meeting.

[00:21:01] We've got this lots of people from lots of different places in our rooms, people we talk to on Zoom, different backgrounds, different accents, all these things going on.

[00:21:13] And just that ability to learn how to connect with people quickly is probably one of the most important skills that we can have right now, especially in sales.

[00:21:25] But as Bob said, leadership see it as a soft skill and it's not very important and it gets kicked to the wayside.

[00:21:32] I want to say hi to Jennifer and Madison from eGroup.

[00:21:36] Stephen, every time I talk to Stephen, I always pick up so much.

[00:21:41] And there's a lot that we can unpack out of what he said, but there were a couple of things that I really wanted to hone in on.

[00:21:47] One being so many sellers.

[00:21:50] And this reminds me of when I was building call centers, when I talked to sales teams.

[00:21:56] So many people ask about like, just tell me what to say to overcome this objection.

[00:22:01] It's like, oh my gosh, like, well, walk me through everything we know about this customer.

[00:22:06] You know, what are their pain points?

[00:22:08] Like, what are they trying to achieve?

[00:22:10] What are they afraid of?

[00:22:11] Like, what's their, you know, what's the current state of the industry?

[00:22:15] And they don't know any of these things.

[00:22:17] And you said something really important about like the desire for sellers to often understand the what to say.

[00:22:25] But what's so much more impactful is helping people understand why do we need or want this information?

[00:22:30] Why do we need or want to understand like what the big priorities are that a customer has this upcoming five years?

[00:22:37] What's on their strategic roadmap?

[00:22:39] Why is that important?

[00:22:40] What are the resources or the, you know, what's the inherent value that we can bring to bear?

[00:22:45] Why are we the differentiator?

[00:22:47] Because you line up a lot of sellers.

[00:22:50] You line up a bunch of organizations.

[00:22:51] And if they all look and sound the same, you know, you're just going to go with the cheapest cost most likely.

[00:22:58] The other element and parlaying that into what you, you know, the impression that you left with these hiring managers.

[00:23:04] What I think is amazing is that some people could walk away from the experiences that you had and feel jaded and cynical.

[00:23:11] Like, my gosh, like where do I fit in?

[00:23:14] What is, you know, my niche?

[00:23:17] You embraced it.

[00:23:18] And I'm sure it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

[00:23:22] But you embraced it ultimately and said, hey, this is like, I love that this defines me that I am the chameleon.

[00:23:29] And I can adapt and respond and attune and align to everybody I touch.

[00:23:36] And that's, I mean, that's magic.

[00:23:37] It's poetry.

[00:23:38] Because the reality is you put you in any room and you're going to be able to.

[00:23:44] And I can attest to this because I've known Stephen for years.

[00:23:46] We've been, you know, we've met in person multiple times.

[00:23:49] You know, we just, we strike up the conversation like we've known each other forever.

[00:23:54] He does that with everyone I've ever seen him with.

[00:23:56] I mean, he's just very personable.

[00:23:59] Gets in and gets to the heart of, you know, what's on the mind of the people that he's talking to.

[00:24:05] And that's how he sells.

[00:24:06] That's how he leads.

[00:24:08] And I think those are things that while they are easy, they're not often emulated.

[00:24:15] They're not often executed.

[00:24:17] And if we just tapped into a little bit more of that sales EQ, we would be a lot better.

[00:24:24] I'll share honestly.

[00:24:26] I'm just, I mean, there's no reason not to be.

[00:24:28] I'd rather have people like me for who I am.

[00:24:30] But I will tell you a facetious thing first that I find I think will make people laugh.

[00:24:35] But sometimes I jokingly say not to be arrogant.

[00:24:38] So please don't take this as arrogance.

[00:24:40] But I do say sometimes if someone doesn't get along with me, I a thousand percent know that they're the problem.

[00:24:49] Right?

[00:24:50] Because I've gotten to the point in my life where I purposely try to get along with people.

[00:24:54] I want to know you.

[00:24:55] That doesn't mean we always have to agree on things.

[00:24:58] Right.

[00:24:59] There's been some adaptability.

[00:25:00] And I will tell you full stop, I didn't actually get to this stage until I was probably in my mid-20s.

[00:25:06] Maybe, well, actually really post-college.

[00:25:08] That's pretty good though.

[00:25:10] Here's why.

[00:25:11] I'll tell you.

[00:25:11] I didn't get my head out of my butt until my 30s.

[00:25:14] I didn't realize there was an a-hole looking back at me in the mirror until I was about 40.

[00:25:19] I didn't get good until my 30s.

[00:25:21] But I realized that, I'll tell you that the moment in time where I realized that I have to take the pain and the hurt.

[00:25:30] Because from kindergarten on, the first time I realized that I was different.

[00:25:35] And I went through a place of hating people.

[00:25:37] I did.

[00:25:37] Like as a kid, like I didn't want to go to school.

[00:25:39] I wanted to stay home.

[00:25:41] And so there's many people that would resonate.

[00:25:42] But I think for people who don't like understand that people go through pain.

[00:25:47] But I still remember, bless my mom's heart.

[00:25:51] She was an immigrant.

[00:25:52] She didn't know.

[00:25:53] She put me up in traditional Indian garb as a kindergartner one day.

[00:25:59] And if anyone knows like traditional Indian garb, it looks more like robes sometimes, right?

[00:26:04] So I go to school and the first time I really recognized that I was different was when we had these little, the pen holders.

[00:26:11] And everyone in the class started making fun of me and saying, hey, that's your purse.

[00:26:15] Because they started saying like, I was dressed like a girl.

[00:26:19] You know, I never wanted to be known as Indian ever again.

[00:26:23] Because the other thing that happened in Oklahoma is the first thing somebody would ask is, if I say I'm Indian, what tried?

[00:26:29] And I have to explain something that I can't say in public.

[00:26:32] There's an old school slang saying that I find funny and I can say it.

[00:26:35] But I had to explain I'm from India, not Native American.

[00:26:40] But the one that snapped in the...

[00:26:42] So I dealt with a lot of that through a lot of racism, bigotry, all that kind of stuff growing up.

[00:26:49] Especially elementary, junior high, high school.

[00:26:53] I was the only Indian kid in my elementary school.

[00:26:56] And I was, I think, one of the few minorities in the entire school.

[00:26:59] So there was a lot of other names that you can think of that I was called growing up.

[00:27:04] But fast forward to the federal building bombings in Oklahoma, if anyone remembers that, Timothy McVeigh and all that stuff.

[00:27:12] My house got, you know, mudded and, you know, basically vandalized because everyone was like, hey, did your dad do it?

[00:27:21] You know, that sort of thing.

[00:27:21] But the straw that broke the camel's back when I finally...

[00:27:26] I mean, this is the worst one ever in terms of I personally snapped.

[00:27:32] Was I remember the most embarrassing thing I had that I think I'm the most ashamed of.

[00:27:43] I was...

[00:27:44] Damn, I knew that I was practicing because I didn't want...

[00:27:48] It's hard to...

[00:27:51] So I was in high school.

[00:27:53] You know, you want to make friends.

[00:27:55] You want to be there.

[00:27:56] And so highly Caucasian high school.

[00:28:00] We're going to lunch.

[00:28:01] And I was sitting in the middle of the back seat.

[00:28:04] Two Caucasian males in the front.

[00:28:06] You know, two Caucasian females in the back.

[00:28:08] And so I'm really...

[00:28:10] I'm actually friends with the driver.

[00:28:11] But one of the other friends was one of those type of people that didn't want anyone else to be friends with that friend except him.

[00:28:19] Right?

[00:28:20] Very racist.

[00:28:21] Very whatever.

[00:28:21] And one day he just...

[00:28:23] You know, during this time, he looked back and he's like, you know, what's this N word?

[00:28:28] Or get it, you know, in the car.

[00:28:29] And he's like, get this out of the car.

[00:28:33] And I just felt this just anger come over me.

[00:28:37] And I wanted to deck him so bad.

[00:28:39] And in the back of my mind, I knew how this would play out that I'm the one that would get in trouble.

[00:28:44] I'm the one that would go to jail.

[00:28:45] You know, that sort of thing.

[00:28:46] So I just took it.

[00:28:49] And this happened from the time I was a kid.

[00:28:51] I remember going back and I was like praying.

[00:28:53] I was like, I could have been all these things, right?

[00:28:57] People think I'm everything except what I am.

[00:28:58] And I was like, God, like, why could you not make me white?

[00:29:03] I literally was praying.

[00:29:05] And I was so ashamed of myself because I was like not proud of what he made me.

[00:29:12] And so that's when I finally fessed up and, you know, shared with a friend what was going on.

[00:29:20] And that's when I first heard the term hurt people hurt people.

[00:29:27] And what dawned on me, and so he walked me through this, and this is what changed my mindset.

[00:29:33] And I was thinking, how horrible or what is that guy going through that he could turn around and talk to me like that?

[00:29:41] What's happening in his home?

[00:29:43] I don't know.

[00:29:44] Maybe he was trained that way.

[00:29:45] Maybe he was abused.

[00:29:46] I don't know.

[00:29:47] Like, yes, I had a tough upbringing.

[00:29:49] We all have our pains.

[00:29:52] But I wanted from that point on, and I came up with a new term is like hurt people heal people.

[00:29:59] So if I could be hurt but use that hurt to help understand more people what they're going on, let's not be the hurt person that hurts people.

[00:30:08] And I've hurt a lot of people in my life because of that, right?

[00:30:11] I didn't realize it until I got older.

[00:30:12] But if hurt people can heal people, then what I realize is this chameleon effect, what it really boils down to is most people, when they think of chameleons, it's a defense mechanism.

[00:30:24] That's what they think of.

[00:30:25] You're hiding.

[00:30:27] That's what I was doing for years.

[00:30:28] I was trying to be somebody that I'm not.

[00:30:32] But then now what I believe is a true chameleon, what does a chameleon do?

[00:30:36] Becomes one with their surroundings.

[00:30:39] They look at what's out there.

[00:30:40] And it's not about them.

[00:30:42] People think it's about survival.

[00:30:43] But now let me walk into a room and understand you, Carson.

[00:30:47] Let me understand you, Brandon, because it's not about my story that needs to inspire you.

[00:30:55] It's about everything in you that I can find that inspires me because we're all connected.

[00:30:59] We're all human.

[00:31:00] We all share similar circumstances.

[00:31:02] And none of this connection has anything to do with sales.

[00:31:07] But the fastest way to build trust, because we always say in sales, no, like, and trust, what are the techniques that I have observed over time because of how I've tried to fit in?

[00:31:20] But again, before the intention was to fit in, now the intention is to connect.

[00:31:25] So I'll give a great example of something that I've learned.

[00:31:29] Whenever I meet someone, so I grew up without any brothers.

[00:31:32] And it was funny because even when I was a teenager, I was like, Mom, can you give me a brother?

[00:31:36] Can you give me a brother?

[00:31:37] Like, I was starving for, like, you know, male camaraderie.

[00:31:41] And so I picked up the term always saying brother.

[00:31:44] But, like, there's something that I do that I think Jay Ryan called me out on this.

[00:31:49] He's a video producer.

[00:31:50] And I said this at the end of one of my talks with him.

[00:31:54] And I go, hey, brother, how old are you?

[00:31:57] I'm just curious.

[00:31:57] And he was older than me.

[00:31:58] And I say, I go, okay, so that means when I come to town, you're the older brother.

[00:32:02] And I think I did this on you, Brandon.

[00:32:04] And I'm going to be the older brother, so, like, I'm –

[00:32:06] You're paying for dinner.

[00:32:08] Yeah.

[00:32:08] You're paying for dinner.

[00:32:09] I said older brother always pays, right?

[00:32:13] Now, what did I realize?

[00:32:15] Why do I do that?

[00:32:16] Because for me, I really do look at other men like this family.

[00:32:20] And this is just for me.

[00:32:21] Again, everybody has their own scenario.

[00:32:23] This is not to say, you know, I don't want sisters or anything like that.

[00:32:27] That's not the point.

[00:32:28] The point is, if you don't understand the intention – like, if somebody else – if

[00:32:33] I were to teach somebody to try to put somebody in a familiar sort of group because it usually

[00:32:37] lowers the bond and, you know, I try to explain this tactic.

[00:32:41] But you don't understand that the reason I usually can get away with it is because

[00:32:45] there's a tone.

[00:32:46] There are some preemptive things that naturally happen.

[00:32:48] There's the way that, like, my soul speaks to these things that come through in my facial

[00:32:54] expressions.

[00:32:54] It's not, like, cringy when I say it because we've already connected.

[00:32:58] But, like, when I start doing the observation, this is just observation.

[00:33:03] It's not manipulation.

[00:33:04] So if somebody does the tactics without the intention, that's manipulation.

[00:33:09] This is why the sales world gets such a bad rep because no one wants to learn and

[00:33:16] observe the intention.

[00:33:18] So intention plus tactic, that equals trust.

[00:33:23] So everyone has to find their own.

[00:33:26] But ultimately, that's a great example where if I observe what happens is I put – most

[00:33:32] people think of familial bonds as a positive.

[00:33:34] Most.

[00:33:35] Not everybody because we all have different opinions, right?

[00:33:38] But if I say brother, for most people, that brings the walls down.

[00:33:45] But if I just tell people, hey, start calling everyone brother, that's just a weird thing

[00:33:48] to say, right?

[00:33:49] So this is why understanding the intention, I'm so big on that.

[00:33:54] And I always explain that before, like, whenever I train anyone or speak to anyone, I help them

[00:33:59] understand intention before the tactic.

[00:34:02] And then you can come up with your own tactics a lot quicker.

[00:34:05] Let me stop for a second because I just went down.

[00:34:09] Let me – this is what it made me think of and something that I think I figured out, I learned tactically.

[00:34:16] And again, I pulled it out of How to Win Friends and Influence People is that if it's not a genuine care – and Carson, we had a whole episode with what?

[00:34:26] Keith Rosen, where we talked about the word love in business.

[00:34:29] And I think it's the right word to use, right?

[00:34:33] If you don't genuinely have a love for the people you're serving, you better find a place that you can tap into that because if not, it will come off disingenuous.

[00:34:46] And one of the – in one of my companies, you know, I had – sales team was in a call center.

[00:34:52] We had 15 people in a call center.

[00:34:54] But we did a lot of live events too.

[00:34:56] Like, we were at a lot of trade shows and doing our training on how to start conversations, right?

[00:35:03] How do you walk up with somebody and start a conversation?

[00:35:06] What we focused on is, hey, there's some general topics that you can talk about.

[00:35:11] But if you don't have a reason why it's important to you, like it's got to be important to you but about them, you will fail because of exactly what you said.

[00:35:22] Something will be off in your facial expression.

[00:35:25] Something will be off in your tone.

[00:35:27] Something will be off in your eyes and where you look or how you just kind of show up and what they feel.

[00:35:33] So if you're not able to find a topic that you really are genuine about and you're not genuine about them, then this whole network thing is going to be very, very difficult for you.

[00:35:43] And I think that's where we find ourselves right now because there's a lot of tactics without a heart behind it or without the instruction to genuinely care.

[00:35:56] Is that what I heard?

[00:35:57] That is so good because over the last few months, like I will tell you, one of the roles that I got at Microsoft, I remember it was funny though, the walking deck you posted, Carson.

[00:36:09] So on my walking deck, the very first page, like at the very top, it has my personal philosophy.

[00:36:15] And it was Matt Pitner who said it to me, the best thing, like it was the best compliment I ever got because at the very end he goes,

[00:36:21] Steven, I knew you were going to be a great leader here because all I had to see was the one word in the very first line, which is my personal philosophy.

[00:36:30] And here's what my personal philosophy is, to inspire people to create life and love.

[00:36:36] And he goes, I've never in corporate America seen a man that was bold enough to actually use that word.

[00:36:43] And I explained to him where it came from because if you break down modern psychology, that there's really two fears that people have.

[00:36:50] And it breaks down to fear of death and fear of not being loved or rejection, which is why sales is so hard, right?

[00:36:56] It's like the hardest thing to get through.

[00:36:57] And so I just flipped the words and said, you know what, instead of focusing on death, let's focus on life because you have your whole life.

[00:37:04] Let's breathe that into people.

[00:37:06] And then obviously the love is just know that, you know, I'm going to accept you unconditionally.

[00:37:11] That's what I want people to feel when they feel me.

[00:37:13] And so when they meet me.

[00:37:15] And so over the last few months, it's so interesting because I've had no service, no product to sell, but I've continued to network.

[00:37:24] And when someone gets on the phone with me, like I can always tell this is the most interesting thing about where humanity has gotten.

[00:37:31] Everyone thinks there's an agenda.

[00:37:33] There's when's the shoe going to drop?

[00:37:34] Like, why are you wanting to talk to me?

[00:37:36] And so I've had these conversations where I can be like, where I'm watching someone on the other side.

[00:37:40] And these are just true, no agenda calls.

[00:37:42] I'm trying to actually meet all my first connections.

[00:37:46] That's one of the long-term goals that I have because I got tired of people being like, do you know this person?

[00:37:51] I'm like, I really don't.

[00:37:53] So I'm just trying to meet people just to meet people.

[00:37:55] But here's what's hilarious.

[00:37:58] They're like, so you really just want to meet me and know me and help me and be friends with me?

[00:38:04] And I know we don't have time to be friends with everyone.

[00:38:07] But the fact that that is so odd for people is what tells me what's wrong with this world.

[00:38:13] And I know that I'm probably different.

[00:38:15] There's a few people.

[00:38:16] So like I get onto Carson all the time because I'm like texting him all the time.

[00:38:19] Like some of us have a gifting and I do understand it's our natural event that we're going to be the proactive ones reaching out and all that kind of stuff.

[00:38:27] But like, oh, just happy birthday.

[00:38:29] Yo, bro, what's going on?

[00:38:31] And it's just hilarious because they're like, what do you need?

[00:38:36] So it's without having a product or services, it's been the most freeing couple months because the conversations have been awesome.

[00:38:45] And here's one thing I've found over the last couple of months.

[00:38:48] And this is why I keep I've been training on this specifically.

[00:38:54] More goodness seems to come from those calls because I have not looked for anything to do, but I've gotten four contracts to speak and train.

[00:39:03] And so like revenue still comes in.

[00:39:05] People still call me to do stuff, to train and all stuff.

[00:39:07] And I'm not I don't even have my own product or anything.

[00:39:09] Right.

[00:39:09] It's just random because I keep in touch with people.

[00:39:12] Right.

[00:39:13] But what I keep telling individuals is, especially in sales, start having no agenda.

[00:39:20] When I say no agenda calls, I just meet people for the sake of meeting people, because you don't know the six degrees of separation who they know.

[00:39:28] So if that's only one person a day, one person, something is better than nothing.

[00:39:31] But so many sellers are taught.

[00:39:34] You know, condense your time, be very focused.

[00:39:36] You have to go up to your ICP, all these other things.

[00:39:39] And I'm like, yes, but spend some time just meeting people.

[00:39:45] Like, you know, we create that problem, though.

[00:39:47] I mean, leadership creates that problem so often because it's, hey, Stephen, where are you relative to your quota?

[00:39:54] You know, here's your gap.

[00:39:55] And it's it's not it's putting the cart before the horse.

[00:39:58] You're not going to get anywhere until you go out and have a relationship.

[00:40:01] And you can't have a relationship without a conversation.

[00:40:04] You can't have the relationship without trust.

[00:40:06] You have to earn the right to to to be trusted.

[00:40:09] And it goes back.

[00:40:11] Something I extracted from everything that you very poetically articulated is, you know, don't let the only time that somebody you want to be connected with hear from you is when you want something.

[00:40:23] I mean, it's it's funny, not ha ha funny.

[00:40:27] But I think back to like I got a call not long ago from somebody that I used to be pretty tight friends with.

[00:40:34] And, you know, we'd hang out.

[00:40:36] We do stuff.

[00:40:37] They call me out of the blue and I'm like, hey, this is great.

[00:40:39] You know, pick up the phone.

[00:40:41] It wasn't you know, they asked me a couple of random questions and it wasn't two minutes.

[00:40:45] And they were already trying to say, hey, I got a new job.

[00:40:47] I'm doing this.

[00:40:49] And, you know, tell me more about it.

[00:40:51] And they started trying to sell me and it's like I haven't heard from this person in probably two years.

[00:40:56] And immediately I get this.

[00:40:58] The point being, you get to decide where you invest, where you invest your energy, where you invest your love, where you invest your everything, your energies.

[00:41:09] And invest in people that you value, that you want to learn from.

[00:41:16] I frankly, I want to master my craft and I'm obsessed with it.

[00:41:22] So I've gone out and I've tried to understand.

[00:41:24] And there's a lot of deep seated reasons why I came into sales with a chip on my shoulder.

[00:41:29] You know, I was bullied as a kid.

[00:41:32] There's some things that I can extract from, you know, from my past that are the reason why I never felt good enough.

[00:41:40] And I have a chip on my shoulder and why I wanted to prove myself to the world.

[00:41:43] But frankly, I'm obsessed with mastering my craft.

[00:41:47] So I wanted to learn the right way of doing it, the ethical, correct way.

[00:41:51] And it's all about what you've said, Stephen.

[00:41:53] It's we've got to have these relationships.

[00:41:55] We've got to earn that right.

[00:41:57] And the problem is people don't inherently understand that because we're going out every day and we're telling them you got to go close your gap.

[00:42:04] You've got to go sign big deals.

[00:42:06] And they don't know how.

[00:42:07] They don't know the why behind the need for a relationship.

[00:42:11] And frankly, they're not intelligently investing in the relationships and in the learning, you know, like picking up books.

[00:42:20] I mean, I'm obsessed right now with diving in.

[00:42:23] I'm 46 years old.

[00:42:24] I've been in sales for 25 years.

[00:42:26] And I'm obsessed with I've got an audio book, a paperback, a Kindle book all going at the same time because I'm obsessed with learning.

[00:42:33] And if people would focus more on bettering themselves, being the best version of themselves, understanding why these things matter.

[00:42:42] And frankly, just seeking.

[00:42:44] I'm going to quote my friend Bill Kirst because he says this.

[00:42:48] If we if we approach every situation with a bid to connect to genuinely, meaningfully, authentically connect with people, the results are there.

[00:42:57] I've never worried about a quota a day in my life.

[00:43:00] Yeah.

[00:43:00] I've been pretty successful.

[00:43:01] So have faith and trust in the process, the importance of actually genuinely connecting with people.

[00:43:08] The rest will take care of itself.

[00:43:10] You know, Brandon, before you for you, I'll just share one thing real quick to what Carson said.

[00:43:15] And this is what I believe wholeheartedly.

[00:43:18] I have a very, very diverse friend group, different religions, different ethnicities, different sexual orientations, different everything.

[00:43:28] Right.

[00:43:28] We all love each other equally.

[00:43:30] It doesn't matter that you have fundamentally different beliefs than me.

[00:43:33] We can still be super, super close because here's here's what I have found from anybody that I ever met.

[00:43:39] And I'll just ask this to the audience and even just think about what your answer would be for this at the end of your life.

[00:43:47] Ninety nine point nine percent chance.

[00:43:50] We've all heard this.

[00:43:50] What are you going to wish you had more of and probably not care about that you had more of?

[00:43:55] Right.

[00:43:55] So I'm going to slightly challenge something you said, Carson, not because I understand we always want to be better people.

[00:44:01] It's the modality.

[00:44:02] And this is what my point is.

[00:44:04] I'm not going to wish I read more books.

[00:44:07] I'm not going to wish I made more money.

[00:44:09] I'm not going to wish any of these other things.

[00:44:10] But I really believe that at the end of my life, outside of my family, outside of my faith and all that, I probably think that I wish I would have impacted one more person, two more people.

[00:44:21] So when I think about learning, I don't care if you are a frontline seller, an SDR, if you're, you know, retired.

[00:44:29] I don't care who you are.

[00:44:30] I want to know you because I learned just as much.

[00:44:32] And don't get me wrong.

[00:44:33] I read voraciously.

[00:44:35] Like I'm listening to audio books.

[00:44:36] So that wasn't my point.

[00:44:37] I'm not telling anyone, hey, stop reading.

[00:44:39] That's not my point.

[00:44:41] My point is when you understand that the value of life is actually in people.

[00:44:46] And I wrote this the other day is real relationships equals real currency because over the last few months, while I am a big believer, get on LinkedIn, post, do all that.

[00:45:00] It's a yes and.

[00:45:03] I haven't even updated my profile to look like I'm a speaker, a coach, like none of that.

[00:45:08] But I'm still getting it because people are calling me on my cell, my text, because I actually have real, I'm building real relationships.

[00:45:15] So I may not have a lot of followers.

[00:45:17] Ali Rosacco says it all the time, like followers aren't dollars, right?

[00:45:22] And most of the people that are really, really powerful and can help you get stuff, like if I go look at their LinkedIn profile, they're not posting, they're not doing all this stuff.

[00:45:31] That is not saying don't post on LinkedIn.

[00:45:34] Don't get involved in LinkedIn.

[00:45:35] All my point is the end of your life.

[00:45:39] I'm a big believer that you will, the more than likely will just wish you had more relationships with people more than anything else that you could possibly want more of.

[00:45:48] So anyways, Brandon, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

[00:45:51] No, no, you're good.

[00:45:51] Let's go.

[00:45:52] I'm going to pull up Dr. Joe's quote, comment on here.

[00:45:56] And for everyone else, we've had a lot of great comments and the conversation just really hadn't opened up to bring in a lot of comments.

[00:46:01] So I'm so sorry, we usually do better at bringing comments on there.

[00:46:05] But Dr. Joe Hill, for you, Stephen, I like it.

[00:46:10] Thank you for validating that.

[00:46:12] And I know Dr. Joe is a really strong networker as well and makes that a real focus point of his daily behavior.

[00:46:20] Thanks for that.

[00:46:21] But I want to go in also to Paul's question, the next on there, about the meat just to meet, no agenda.

[00:46:29] It's great in concept.

[00:46:31] Do you guys have thoughts on how to juggle that with the short-term focus of most sales orgs?

[00:46:37] And Paul, that was great.

[00:46:38] And I want to add this to it before either of you, Stephen and Carson, both answer it.

[00:46:43] I spent a lot of time being the guy, you know, after selling a company, I really didn't have an agenda.

[00:46:49] I wasn't sure what I was going to do for a little while.

[00:46:51] And I was making a lot of calls to people to say, hey, how's it going?

[00:46:56] What's going on?

[00:46:56] And I got a lot of like, why are you calling?

[00:47:00] Like, what do you want?

[00:47:02] They're the tendency, the natural response is, hey, this is bullshit.

[00:47:08] What do you really want?

[00:47:09] And I didn't want anything.

[00:47:11] But yet I also know in my own experiences, like a college friend of mine who called me out of the blue and, oh, let's get together.

[00:47:17] I'm going to be in town.

[00:47:18] And so I invited a bunch of our mutual friends over and she showed up and pulled out the Amway thing and started selling Amway to everybody.

[00:47:25] So you get gun shy, right?

[00:47:27] You're like, wait a minute.

[00:47:29] But I've spent a lot of time trying to do that.

[00:47:31] Like, hey, let's network because you never know what's going to come out of it.

[00:47:35] Me for you or you for me or both for each other.

[00:47:37] And it's really hard these days to do that because people are busy and they're skeptical.

[00:47:42] And I think that's kind of the gist of Paul's comment there.

[00:47:47] But what do you say to that?

[00:47:48] How do you work through that?

[00:47:50] I have a very pointed answer.

[00:47:52] No, a very opinionated answer, as I guess I should.

[00:47:56] So let me just share with this.

[00:47:58] So there is an intention to know the value of every human being.

[00:48:04] When we change our heart and perspective behind it, we would say, oh, this is actually just as valuable, if not more value.

[00:48:10] I use the terminology of seeds sometime versus like, would you rather have to go to an organic growth store and buy a bunch of apples the rest of your life?

[00:48:20] Or would you rather have a global field of orchards for the rest of your life, right?

[00:48:25] So the seeds that you plant today sometimes germinate later.

[00:48:29] Sometimes you can get them right away.

[00:48:31] But here's my two cents.

[00:48:34] I want to learn from everybody.

[00:48:36] So I take just at least 30 minutes a day.

[00:48:38] I'm trying to do just one networking meeting a day.

[00:48:42] Just maybe 15 minutes, maybe 30 minutes just to get to know, right?

[00:48:47] And I figure out how I can help them.

[00:48:49] What are their biggest problems?

[00:48:50] This morning I was talking to somebody who works at a marketing agency.

[00:48:54] And I was like, what do you need more of?

[00:48:56] You know, and I'm trying to figure out how to help.

[00:48:58] One person said, man, I just need a job.

[00:48:59] So I tapped my network.

[00:49:02] But the way that you get value is just being honest.

[00:49:06] Saying, listen, I don't have anything to sell.

[00:49:08] I have learned that there is value in human connection.

[00:49:12] And I have like, I'm just, just tell them like, I am genuinely trying to be a better human being and learn from more people.

[00:49:18] I haven't been.

[00:49:20] You say that, they're like, oh, shit.

[00:49:21] It's like now either they'll say yes, they want to meet or they won't, right?

[00:49:24] Right now what I'm doing is I'm just going to all my first connections and literally saying, people keep asking me, do you know such person?

[00:49:31] I'm like, I don't.

[00:49:32] I just want to start getting to know my first connection.

[00:49:34] Some people have time.

[00:49:34] Some people don't.

[00:49:35] That's fine.

[00:49:36] But I just think that in those conversations, what you'll tend to find, I'm totally making this stat up, but it's a high percent.

[00:49:45] 80 or 90 percent of the time, you'll find something positive because they'll learn what you're doing.

[00:49:51] They'll know what you're trying to accomplish.

[00:49:53] And they'll try to help you.

[00:49:54] They may not be a buyer, but they may know somebody.

[00:49:56] Like, is there anyone else you should learn from?

[00:49:59] And then finally, the third component is, especially if you're newer in career and you don't have a large network, first thing I'm going to start doing is going again to friends and family and say, who's like a really cool person that I should know that's in your network, that's intelligent, smart, doing well, that can serve as a mentor.

[00:50:19] I just need to learn from.

[00:50:21] And you get the warm connection to network and you just keep doing that at the end of every call.

[00:50:26] Like, hey, who else is just super cool that you need to know about?

[00:50:29] Because here's my theory on life.

[00:50:31] You want a quality life.

[00:50:33] Just meet quality people.

[00:50:34] The rest sort of takes care of itself.

[00:50:37] But that's just my answer to it.

[00:50:39] So hopefully that wasn't too preachy.

[00:50:41] But apologies if it was.

[00:50:42] Was it Joe or I forgot who asked the question, but maybe it was Paul.

[00:50:46] But yeah, I think it was Paul's question.

[00:50:48] Yeah, Paul's question.

[00:50:49] And I like the fact that you laid out the concept around planting seeds because, you know, there is there.

[00:50:56] It goes back to what I said earlier about investments.

[00:50:59] You know, I've had situations where the relationship wasn't going to come to purchasing fruition in the current framework because there wasn't need.

[00:51:08] There wasn't budget.

[00:51:09] You know, we parted as friends.

[00:51:11] We stayed in communication.

[00:51:12] And, you know, as I've talked about on the show, I do a lot of passive education.

[00:51:16] I'll do newsletters and I'll send things of interest or whatever the case may be.

[00:51:21] Try to add value.

[00:51:22] And, you know, a couple of years later, this person got a new senior executive role at a different organization.

[00:51:27] They went right to me.

[00:51:28] They trusted me.

[00:51:29] They knew I wasn't going to come in and try to, you know, bring the bring the big sales guns.

[00:51:34] My goal was just to add value and have a relationship.

[00:51:36] Now, Paul's specific question was, you know, the meet just to meet is great in concept.

[00:51:41] But how do you juggle that with a short term focus of most sales organizations?

[00:51:46] Juggling is the right word because you almost have to you've got to serve multiple masters.

[00:51:53] You know, when I talked about I've talked on this show before about how I started social selling.

[00:51:58] I had a manager who didn't understand it.

[00:52:00] They didn't know what it what it meant.

[00:52:02] I was telling people that I was going out and using LinkedIn to meet these folks.

[00:52:05] And, you know, when we were in these meetings, I was the I was the oddball.

[00:52:09] Everybody was doing this normal thing and they were all stuck in IT and procurement and they could, you know, put a lot of fluffy pipeline to keep managers off their back.

[00:52:19] And I wasn't doing that.

[00:52:20] I was going out and like trying to connect with people that were in different lines of business that had actual influence in these organizations to make purchasing decisions.

[00:52:27] And it's not an overnight success story.

[00:52:29] It took a full year to really gain traction and momentum.

[00:52:33] And this manager didn't like me and they tried to get rid of me.

[00:52:36] And but ultimately, year two, this manager took another role.

[00:52:41] I ended up winning the biggest company award there was that year and the following year.

[00:52:45] And then I got promoted six more times after that.

[00:52:47] Long story short, what happens is you have to juggle as in you've got to be able to.

[00:52:55] Speak to the short term that you're doing like right now.

[00:52:58] I'm looking at the quarter.

[00:53:00] Right.

[00:53:00] But I'm also looking at the full year.

[00:53:02] Now, me personally, I run fiscal year July to June.

[00:53:06] So it's the back half of our year.

[00:53:08] There's a lot of focus on looking at the quarter because we owe numbers to Wall Street.

[00:53:12] So the quarter matters.

[00:53:14] It's important that we hit our quarter.

[00:53:16] But it's very important as well that I resonate with my team.

[00:53:20] Like, what is your full year look like?

[00:53:21] Because at the end of the day, the tail of the tape is going to be what is your full year look like?

[00:53:25] I need to get them to buy off on process.

[00:53:27] And that's why these meet to meet meetings are so important.

[00:53:30] And frankly, a meet to meet meeting for me, I'll still walk out with five opportunities because at the end of the day, you're going in.

[00:53:40] And don't get me wrong.

[00:53:41] I have a logo on my back.

[00:53:42] And sometimes that helps me.

[00:53:43] Sometimes it hurts me.

[00:53:44] Sometimes there's people that don't want to talk to me because of that logo.

[00:53:47] If there's value that you can bring to the person that you're reaching out to, you can likely get a meeting.

[00:53:52] And it's a probability game.

[00:53:54] Maybe I can get one out of 10.

[00:53:55] Maybe I can get one out of 20.

[00:53:56] But the bottom line is, is if you go in with that meet to meet mentality, I often go in saying, hey, there's resources that we have available or that you're entitled to because of the investment that you may already be making.

[00:54:07] Or I can help demystify these types of things where a lot of the clients that I work with, they're looking at this.

[00:54:13] They're in the same industry.

[00:54:14] Happy to walk you through what we're working on with them type of thing.

[00:54:18] But at the end of the day, it really comes down to if you go in and you have that relationship.

[00:54:24] I've had customers that they didn't take the meeting when I tried to go in talking about that.

[00:54:29] But they took a meeting whenever I asked them because they were in a leadership position and I liked their posts.

[00:54:33] Hey, would you like to be on a podcast that I do?

[00:54:36] And I actually had them on another podcast that I do with Hilke Faber.

[00:54:39] And it went very, very well.

[00:54:41] And a couple of years later, we actually had a sales opportunity.

[00:54:46] It's all in the planting seeds.

[00:54:48] It's in the investments that you make.

[00:54:49] And frankly, I'm a believer that if you approach it about getting the meeting to see if there's an opportunity to do something or add value, you're going to walk out more often than not with opportunity.

[00:55:01] And that can serve the masters that you serve.

[00:55:04] You can still tell a story.

[00:55:05] You've got a great narrative.

[00:55:07] You've got a sound structure and system that will feed that master while also keeping a lens.

[00:55:13] I do have to keep my tunnel vision sometimes and say, this is the quarter.

[00:55:16] This is what's happening.

[00:55:17] But guess what?

[00:55:18] I'm making investments and deposits that are going to feed my entire 2025 right now.

[00:55:23] So come next quarter, my quarter is going to look very good.

[00:55:26] My short-term outlook is going to look good.

[00:55:28] And it's going to be a story that I can tell about a process that I was running all along.

[00:55:32] Frankly, my team has three times more pipeline than any other team of its ilk in the entire world.

[00:55:40] You could be doing work this week that's planting seeds for your fiscal year 27 second quarter, right?

[00:55:46] You just don't know.

[00:55:49] Keep cutting seeds, man.

[00:55:51] I got two things real quick before we run out of time.

[00:55:54] So it's kind of on top of what Paul was asking.

[00:55:57] And so here's two things.

[00:55:58] First is the meat to meat is to meet cool people.

[00:56:03] As Carson was talking, I'm not talking about specifically prospects, right?

[00:56:07] But there's value in it.

[00:56:09] And here's something that is very specific in terms of tactics.

[00:56:14] I posted to some of my friends on LinkedIn, hey, who's just cool people that you think I should know?

[00:56:18] And I ended up meeting this woman from Montreal.

[00:56:22] Her name's Maya and she runs a marketing agency.

[00:56:24] One of the coolest conversations I've ever had.

[00:56:26] I would have never, like I just asked who is a cool person, quality person that now I can follow her on LinkedIn and all this stuff.

[00:56:33] But I'm learning things from her.

[00:56:34] Second component of why this is valuable is something that one of my AEs back in the day, he was out of the UK.

[00:56:41] I just asked him one day, what are you reading?

[00:56:43] And he was reading this weird, crazy stuff because I wanted to know, because this was one of the best sellers I've ever seen that could get relationships with the highest level executives.

[00:56:54] And he was reading something on like, it wasn't a business book.

[00:56:57] It was like something on China, something, whatever.

[00:57:00] And then there was another one about like history of the Berlin, whatever it was.

[00:57:06] But all my, it was these off the wall, like books.

[00:57:08] And he looked at me and he goes, Stephen, everyone reads these business books, leadership books, sales books.

[00:57:14] But the truth of the matter is when you have like cultural understanding, when you have these off the wall topics, you become more interesting.

[00:57:21] And you can talk to people in a much different manner because these executives, like they're thinking about unique things.

[00:57:29] But the other part of the meet to just meet is now think about learning from people of different walks of life, different cultures, different things like.

[00:57:37] And you bring that into your world when you're talking to others.

[00:57:42] Like having a diverse network is like having a diverse portfolio if you think about investments.

[00:57:47] There is power in that, right?

[00:57:49] So usually I find those next person to meet just from asking someone who's cool.

[00:57:56] So I just, it's almost like a not, it's like roulette, right?

[00:57:59] Just wherever it finds.

[00:58:00] And I'm telling you the world is filled with amazing people.

[00:58:04] And again.

[00:58:05] I mean, it's how you up level.

[00:58:06] I mean, look, I'm just a normal, regular guy.

[00:58:09] I go out and I literally seek out the people that are doing better than I am or that are, you know, say something profound and poignant.

[00:58:16] I mean, frankly, it's how I got connected with Steven because we were talking about, we had heard of each other and what each other was doing.

[00:58:22] And it's like.

[00:58:23] John Nessel.

[00:58:23] John Nessel.

[00:58:25] And we had to get connected.

[00:58:27] And I got to tell you, like Steven is, he's a genuine dude.

[00:58:30] Everything he says is real.

[00:58:31] The guy's never tried to sell me squat.

[00:58:32] I've probably never given him anything.

[00:58:34] But every time I fly in, he's like, let me pick you up at the airport.

[00:58:37] And we're talking and we're, you know, swapping stories.

[00:58:40] And like, I just, I've learned so much from this guy.

[00:58:42] He's a real deal.

[00:58:43] And these are things that you can practically apply in your life.

[00:58:46] If you connect meaningfully, like Steven is doing, you can assimilate the superpowers of everybody that you touch.

[00:58:53] And that is how you up level.

[00:58:55] Yeah.

[00:58:56] The struggle I have with this is when you, again, going back, I will leave with this is technique matters.

[00:59:04] But intention matters more.

[00:59:06] Right.

[00:59:06] So don't take the tactics.

[00:59:08] That's why sometimes I don't like teaching the observations of what has worked for me.

[00:59:13] Because then it comes off cringy.

[00:59:15] Because as we even talk about it, this is just me.

[00:59:17] And maybe it's my own filter and all these other things is you just genuinely got to love people and know that there's value in everyone.

[00:59:27] And sometimes it takes the hardships that I've gone through to get to that level.

[00:59:30] I wish to God that no one has to go through what I've gone through.

[00:59:35] That's why I do what I do.

[00:59:36] Because someone asked me, why are you the way that you are?

[00:59:39] And I go, I don't want anyone to ever experience what I experienced.

[00:59:42] It's not fair.

[00:59:42] And it's not right.

[00:59:44] But the intention matters more than, that's the one thing I could leave is intention matters more than anything else.

[00:59:50] You know, this makes me think of two, and I know we're running out of time.

[00:59:54] But, you know, I was at a trade show one time.

[00:59:57] This is, I was younger.

[00:59:58] I think I was in my early 30s, mid 30s.

[01:00:01] We're at a trade show and we went out afterwards and we were in the taxi line waiting for the taxis to go back to our hotel.

[01:00:08] It was at a convention center.

[01:00:10] And we start chatting up with a group of people around us and just genuine, where are you from?

[01:00:16] Oh my gosh, tell me about it.

[01:00:17] I had this great conversation.

[01:00:18] It was like, you know, 15, 20 minute line.

[01:00:22] And I had a really good conversation with them and just genuinely loved on them, asked them a bunch of questions about themselves, stuff that I've learned in here.

[01:00:30] Right.

[01:00:31] And then the next day they came walking into our booth and said, oh, that was such a great conversation.

[01:00:39] Tell us what you do.

[01:00:41] And all three of them, we sold to individuals, but all three of them became clients.

[01:00:46] And it had nothing to do as much about, I mean, obviously our product was good.

[01:00:51] It was a good price.

[01:00:52] They had a need and all that.

[01:00:54] But they were way past looking at the details of the product because the relationship and the conversation that we had was genuine enough that they wanted to come in.

[01:01:05] And I learned in that company as well, and I learned earlier in my career about, you know, you go to the bar and, you know, for people in recovery or anything like that.

[01:01:16] I'm sorry.

[01:01:17] I don't mean to overstep with that stuff.

[01:01:19] But it was like, you know, go to the bar and just have conversations with people.

[01:01:22] Don't sell in the bar.

[01:01:24] Just meet people.

[01:01:25] And then the next day in meetings or something else, pick up the conversation and just see where it goes.

[01:01:31] But it was always like, yeah, there's always a thought of a potential sale in the background.

[01:01:36] It's always more of a thought of who do they know?

[01:01:38] I think that's what you've heard.

[01:01:39] Like, who do they know?

[01:01:40] Who do I know?

[01:01:41] Six degrees and never know what's going to come of it.

[01:01:43] So there's always those thoughts in the background.

[01:01:46] But you've got to come at it genuine and genuinely enjoy people, care about people, get to know people.

[01:01:52] And then that's the fertilizer that makes all the other stuff really come about quicker and bigger and a lot more yield to it.

[01:01:59] But that's my big takeaway from today.

[01:02:02] And pressure is a privilege, but don't let it shake you from what you know to be the right process.

[01:02:08] That's good, Carson.

[01:02:09] Because here's the thing.

[01:02:11] You're going to get pressure from above to go out and do this, do that, to have this conversation this way.

[01:02:16] I had to ignore that when I adopted a process, a system years ago to meaningfully connect with people that actually were influential stakeholders that nobody else had ever spoken to.

[01:02:26] And it wasn't easy.

[01:02:28] And there were uncomfortable moments and uncomfortable conversations.

[01:02:31] But the bottom line is, is I subscribed to this and I committed to it and it worked.

[01:02:36] And so don't let the pressure shake you out of what you know to be the right thing.

[01:02:40] Commit to this way of doing things.

[01:02:42] And one, two, five, ten years from now, you'll look back and you'll be very grateful that you did.

[01:02:47] I know I am.

[01:02:49] I love it.

[01:02:51] Well, Stephen, thank you for...

[01:02:53] I could talk to you both all day and I could talk about this.

[01:02:55] I was going to say, we could easily go for the Donald Kelly hour and nine minutes record on this one.

[01:03:00] We could go three hours with this one.

[01:03:02] Let's go to the Joe Rogan, that sort of thing.

[01:03:04] Oh, yeah.

[01:03:06] I was going to say, this should be a three-hour one.

[01:03:09] Yeah.

[01:03:09] I wish I could have gotten more into some of the tactics and stuff.

[01:03:12] But I will tell anyone that's listening, you know, DM me.

[01:03:15] Message me.

[01:03:16] Comment.

[01:03:16] Whatever.

[01:03:17] Follow me.

[01:03:18] Air warning, though.

[01:03:19] He'll want to meet you.

[01:03:20] I mean, yeah.

[01:03:21] Yeah.

[01:03:21] Like, ultimately, like, that's the goal.

[01:03:23] Like, it's just meet people, help people.

[01:03:26] Because a rising tide raises all ships.

[01:03:28] So, like, help everyone be successful.

[01:03:30] Guess what?

[01:03:31] I learned that in college, right?

[01:03:32] It's...

[01:03:33] I used to give free haircuts and people were like, why don't you charge?

[01:03:36] You're in broke college.

[01:03:36] Because I was like, now that person owes me a favor.

[01:03:40] So, it was, you know, just one of those things.

[01:03:43] But, man, I love you guys.

[01:03:44] Thank you for having me.

[01:03:46] And if anyone just needs any help, like, I don't know what I'm going to do next.

[01:03:51] But I do know I'm getting a lot of calls randomly.

[01:03:54] And I'm like, I don't know.

[01:03:55] I don't know what I'm going to do.

[01:03:57] It's a fun place to be.

[01:03:58] I just...

[01:03:58] Good position to be in.

[01:03:59] It's a fun place to be.

[01:04:01] Yeah.

[01:04:01] Yeah.

[01:04:02] Absolutely.

[01:04:03] You deserved it.

[01:04:04] You earned it.

[01:04:05] And whoever lands you is going to be lucky.

[01:04:09] Thank you.

[01:04:10] Yeah.

[01:04:11] So, thank you, everybody.

[01:04:12] A lot of people in the comments.

[01:04:13] By the way, Jennifer, I see you really, really enjoyed this.

[01:04:16] Thank you for your comment about your dad giving you how to win friends and influence

[01:04:19] people.

[01:04:20] Yeah.

[01:04:21] It did surprise me because Jennifer is a freaking rock star.

[01:04:24] So, like, everybody that I've ever talked to that's read the book is a rock star.

[01:04:29] And, frankly, I've recommended it probably more than any other book.

[01:04:33] One other one that I read over the holidays, finally, was The Greatest Salesman in the World

[01:04:37] by Ogmandino.

[01:04:39] I mean, just changed everything for me.

[01:04:41] So, get to reading.

[01:04:44] Yeah.

[01:04:44] That was one of my business coaches, the CEO of that company.

[01:04:47] That's cool.

[01:04:49] Jennifer, I appreciate you doing that because I do give the book to all of our kids.

[01:04:53] All five of our kids get a copy at 13 and we read it together.

[01:04:57] We're 13 or 14, depending on.

[01:05:00] But we read it together before they go into high school, right?

[01:05:03] That's the time that it gets difficult and relationships get wonky and weird.

[01:05:07] And I want to equip them then going into high school and then into college with that.

[01:05:12] So, when you said it was the best thing you did for you, it made me feel good.

[01:05:15] So, thanks for that.

[01:05:16] But everyone else in the comments, Madison, Jennifer, Paul, April, Andre, Bob, so many

[01:05:23] others that were in there that we may have missed.

[01:05:25] Sorry if we missed you.

[01:05:27] It was such a great...

[01:05:28] Dr. Joe was in there as well.

[01:05:30] Thank you all so much for joining us today.

[01:05:32] I mean, if we could, you know, I don't know, change the name of the show and do these love

[01:05:37] and heart conversations all the time, I think I would be all over that.

[01:05:43] But, Stephen, thank you again for joining us.

[01:05:46] Thank you, everybody.

[01:05:47] And, Carson, you want to wrap us up today?

[01:05:49] Stephen, thank you.

[01:05:50] And everybody in the audience, until next time, happy modern selling.

[01:05:54] Bye, everybody.

[01:05:55] Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling.

[01:06:05] If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more insights.

[01:06:09] Connect with us on social media and leave a review to help us improve.

[01:06:13] Stay tuned for our next episode, where we will continue to uncover modern strategies

[01:06:17] shaping today's business landscape.

[01:06:19] Learn more about Fistbump and our concierge service at getfistbumps.com.

[01:06:24] Mastering modern revenue creation with Fistbump, where relationships, social, and AI meet in

[01:06:29] the buyer-centric age.