MMS #91 - Unlocking Curiosity: Leadership and Culture with Carl Lubbe

[00:00:00] . 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. Everyone welcome to Mastering Modern Selling episode number 91. And we have a full house today.

[00:00:56] I think this is the first time that three of us have all been on at the same time and like, I don't know six months or something. It seems like it's been a while. In recent weeks. I barely made it.

[00:01:05] Well, I feel honored that you guys are just clear your entire day. We've just been hanging out for four hours now. This is now the culmination. I was in a meeting all day, Carl, and I basically said no. I have to meet Carl. That's right.

[00:01:17] We made it happen. Love it. And you look sharp, Carson, all dressed up and everything for us. I know. I didn't just do it for you, Tom. OK, well, we're going to assume that we did for the show. I do love the bear of this though.

[00:01:30] Carson, you have a shirt on. Well done. Yes. Sometimes that's half the battle. All right. Well, Carl, I'm glad you're willing to hang with our crap. Not lately. Yeah. Carl Lebo, welcome. Curiosity coach.

[00:01:47] And we're going to talk about something today that we've touched on quite a bit recently. Sales leadership. And really how do you really coach? How do you put, you know, coach and work as a sales leader nowadays to help more of that consultative sale, that solution sale?

[00:02:07] And Carl has some great ideas and some really interesting things we're going to jump into here. So this should be interesting. And welcome Bob. Aloha, Bob. I think Bob's in Texas though, isn't he? He is, but he always starts with aloha. All right. All right.

[00:02:25] Everybody else, we got to remind everybody, hey, we love you to be a part of the show. Put in your comments. If you're on the podcast and you can't, we get it. But, you know, we take the comments.

[00:02:34] If you're on the podcast and you love what you hear, we'd really appreciate the five-star reviews. That would be very much appreciated. And anyone else that's live, whether it's our YouTube channel, it's on LinkedIn. I don't think we're streaming anywhere else these days. We're still on X.

[00:02:51] We're on X with Carson because Carson's got like 5 million followers on X. And it's good to say X without having to say formerly Twitter too. That's kind of a nice thing now. But yeah, we love your comments and join the show.

[00:03:04] We got great questions for Carl, but I'm sure you all have better questions than we have. Bob says he used to live in Hawaii, so it's now my blood. Totally get it. I want to hear Bob speak pigeon someday. Yeah.

[00:03:17] Well, Carl, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and kind of how you got into the executive coaching area. Yeah. Well, gents, thanks for having me on. Born and raised in South Africa. Came to the States fairly young.

[00:03:32] Been here for the last 30 years on and off. My first real job, I guess as a grownup, I was a touring musician and did that for, you know, about a decade. And then in the middle of that, I understood that I had probably two real gifts because

[00:03:48] everybody in the band was always better than me. And so my thing was as a songwriter, so it was as a storyteller, which led itself into branding. So launched a branding agency about five years ago.

[00:04:00] And then what immediately happened was one of the first two or three companies that I worked for would say, hey, our people seem to be a little bit happier after you were around. Oh, they just have some brain clarity.

[00:04:12] They're like, no, there was something that you were doing and you were asking all these questions and you're being helpful and you were offering advice because I'd led teams at that point for about the last 15 years.

[00:04:22] And I was like, oh, yeah, I don't know what you want me to do that. And he's like, hey, Dum Dum, I'm trying to pay you to come back and coach me and my executive team how to keep this happiness thing going.

[00:04:32] And so that literally launched Curiosity, which is our consulting company and catchphrase is we make happier companies. So, Carl, we were talking a little bit before the show. Let's just start off with a I think a question that probably we all ask ourselves is what's going on?

[00:04:53] What's going wrong with sales and why is sales failing in the B2B world? What do you see and how do you address it or where is it failing? I guess is a better better question.

[00:05:04] Yeah, I think what I'm seeing is the constraint of speed is so high now because the attention span of all humans is dropping drastically day after day that salespeople are going, oh, I have to dive in and I have to get

[00:05:20] to the point as quickly as possible that they're no longer with a person. They're with the idea of a person. And most of the time, they're not even with that. They're with a number.

[00:05:29] How do I get to because you and I talked to him like, how do I get to my 150 phone calls today? And so the thing that I am trying to help, you know, executives and sales leaders understand every single day is people not your product are the profit.

[00:05:47] And so if as a salesperson, you can understand the people not product are the profit, then all of a sudden when you're with somebody, you can truly be present to them. And this is this interesting thing. We're doing very simple things these days.

[00:05:59] Like I'm teaching salespeople how to have a 30-second micro meeting before the call. I'm teaching them how to take five deep breaths. These are all in an attempt and we've got about six or seven other tools

[00:06:09] on how to be present to the call, not like, oh, I'm here. But literally, you know, we've got a culture build off of FOMO. I'm afraid of missing out on the next call or the thing I should be doing.

[00:06:19] So I'm never actually here with Cass and Brandon and Tom. I'm thinking about, okay, when I get off this call, I've got a leadership call with an EMS company out of Gainesville. Okay, how do I help it? So I'm never actually here.

[00:06:31] And so we talk about all the time. There is power in the pause. So P-A-U-S-E, and I've got an accent. So you're like animal pause? No, P-A-U-S-E. There's power in that pause to have the micro meeting before

[00:06:43] and then really ask this question, what am I genuinely interested in in this next phone call? Because if I can remain interested, I will become interesting. Powerful. I like that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Let's come back to it.

[00:07:01] Yeah, well, how do we, it all goes back to that, doesn't it? Carl, I love how you articulated the value and the pause. I want to hear more about kind of the micro meeting beforehand. I will say, well, I felt like you were almost reading my mind

[00:07:15] when you were talking too about how you're always thinking about the next thing and the next thing. And it's like, I almost think salespeople are always armed with rather than even listening to their client, they're thinking about,

[00:07:25] well, what's the next question that I'm going to ask to sound smart? Or how am I going to make sure that I hit my checklist of asking this question or figuring out their timeline? There's so many things that I think we have on our minds at all times.

[00:07:40] Talk to us more about the micro meeting and how we can be more outcome focused when we're going into these meetings as opposed to being lost in the future. Such a great question. And this is why we name the company Curiosity, because we have great questions around here.

[00:07:58] I think the other thing that I'm teaching people to do, and this is going to sound really odd and it's meant to, and I'll zoom out just a little bit to my 30,000 foot mission. My mission in life through the branding agency,

[00:08:12] through my consulting company, or even through my real estate investing partnership, is I'm on a rescue mission for Carson's inner eight-year-old. I'm on a rescue mission for Brandon's inner eight-year-old. I'm on a rescue mission for Tom's inner eight-year-old. Because I look at the world, whether it's politically,

[00:08:28] economically, racially, and I'm going, hold on, most of these divides are because we've come to very simplistic answers and it's like, oh, I know Carson. I met you 30 seconds ago. But I formulated in the 60,000 subconscious thoughts that are all

[00:08:44] wired around fight, flight or freeze, hey, is Carson threat or not? As opposed to if I can go, I wonder what Carson was like as an eight-year-old. Like, what were you really into? What were you interested in? And it's such a silly, discerning question, especially if we're honest.

[00:08:59] We're all, you know, men of a certain age. This is not something that we've thought about recently. Like, oh, what would eight-year-old me have been interested in this conversation? And also take that to the other extreme. What would 80-year-old me be proud of that I talked about or

[00:09:14] was present to in this conversation? So every talk that I enter into, I'm trying to remain as present as possible because the idea there is the greatest gift I can give myself or the world is to be present right now.

[00:09:25] That's the greatest thing I can do for myself or anybody else. And so if I can be in a place where I'm not afraid, because we're all hardwired for scarcity. It doesn't matter how macho you are or how alpha you want to beat your chest. All that's garbage.

[00:09:37] Tom, Brandon, Carson, Carl are all at a biological level afraid in this conversation because we don't know what the outcome is. And like you said, I'm focused on the output or what I can get or what I can do. How can I create safety for Carl?

[00:09:51] And then if it happens to benefit Brandon, Carson and Tom and whoever is listening, awesome. But that's not my main focus. So in the meeting before the meeting, if I can go, oh, I'm going on this podcast. I wonder what Brandon's like.

[00:10:03] Not Brandon now, but who Brandon was and who Tom was and who Carson was. And I think about that very strangely. So I'm going to zoom this out one more because I like to give hyperbole so people know that's ridiculous and then they can zoom it in.

[00:10:14] Could you imagine if the two lovely almost octogenarians that are now almost surely going to be one or the other running our country, if the eight-year-old version of them showed up and said, I like people and I want to be

[00:10:29] liked and I'm curious and I'm interested and the world is full of whimsy and wonder and I'm really interested in Palestinians and Israelis. I'm really interested in black and white and rich and poor. So do we not think that handing that much power to an

[00:10:44] inquisitive creature, more like their eight-year-old self, I would be much more interested in being led by somebody with that mindset. With all the acumen and the age and the power, we need all those resources. But could you imagine if you started giving powerful

[00:10:59] people the mindset of being present and being curious, more like the eight-year-old version of themselves? Wow. Boy, that eight-year-old thing has definitely hit a chord with a few people. Bob says you definitely don't want to see his eight-year-old self. Kevin, and unfortunately he does, he says he knows

[00:11:19] my inner eight-year-old. I mean he knows your real eight-year-old self. That's right. He knew me at eight years old. And you know what's funny? I hear the, and I agree, I think the jokes are really funny, but what I notice in this thing,

[00:11:31] especially with seasoned professionals, is the joke is the first thing because they're like, oh, I was kind of a butt hole as an eight-year-old or whatever the, you know, the level of colorful language. Yeah. The level of colorful language you have.

[00:11:44] But in my mind I'm going you were inquisitive, the world was full of wonder and whimsy, all new people were possible friends. Now for some of you, let me put a giant asterisk, if you experienced trauma earlier than that, then go to your five-year-old or your four-year-old self.

[00:11:59] So for some people they experience deep, real, traumatic pain before they were eight. So I would tell you go a little further. But the general rule of thumb from all kind of psychological research is we start to experience our first like world-dimming experiences where

[00:12:14] the world seems scary or dangerous or ugly or terrifying after that age. So it's going to that mental state and going, I was picking out my favorite sports team. I was making my new best friends on the playground that I met that day.

[00:12:26] I was thinking about what new food I could eat or what place I could go to. Now obviously my context is I'm from South Africa, traveled here, so I had this dial to 11 coming to a new country. But what I've experienced is even if it's a kid in

[00:12:38] East Tennessee who's always lived there, I'd much rather be around that version mentally now transplanted into a 48-year-old powerful CEO who's looking around at their executive and management and frontline workers going, I'm interested in them. Like I'm just flat out interested in them. They will lead better.

[00:12:56] They will be in the sales conversation better. Hey, how do we train people today to be more curious? Like I keep thinking about, you know, I believe that the tone is set. The culture is set by sales leadership and all sellers have good leaders.

[00:13:12] Some have very poor leaders. Some have great ones. But these all change over time. I think there's things that we can take from each. But as a sales leader, when I inherit somebody on my team or I hire somebody in my team and I

[00:13:25] want to make sure that I'm, you know, empowering and enabling them to be more curious where do I get started? Mirror neurons. So the psychology and the neurology of this is actually really straightforward. It's the old phrase of monkey see monkey do

[00:13:39] the same way you learned how to crawl as you watch somebody else move and you said, I can't do that, but I'll do this. Then you learned how to waddle and then walk and then run. You're watching somebody else get to food faster than you are.

[00:13:51] So you start to imitate it as quickly as you can. So the benefit of being this servant leader position that Kirsten is talking about is that I can model it all day. And so with a brand new person, I'm going to

[00:14:03] become what Will Gadara talks about is I'm going to become unreasonably hospitable. My phrasing would be I'm going to be unreasonably curious. I'm going to try and figure out how do I ask a question that would mean so much to this person that they're like, I didn't know

[00:14:22] anybody cared about that. Not a hey, tell me about your parent's divorce. You're like we just met 30 seconds ago. We're not talking about that. Right. That's a lazy sort of well, Carl told me to do this. You weren't really curious. Now I'll give you an example of something

[00:14:35] like that. If I were to share, hey, you know, one of the things that shaped my sales ability is I came from and this isn't true of my life, but it would be, you know, an analogy. I came from a house of different parents.

[00:14:48] And so I felt like I was constantly selling mom and dad on each other and trying to make peace. And so I think it created the superpower. What in your life do you think has created this superpower where I'm so excited to have you on my team because

[00:15:01] you've been this recommended and I'm inviting you in and please feel welcome. But what in your life has formed you and do you think has given you the superpower now all of a sudden, what are they going to do? They're going to open up themselves

[00:15:11] as a person and go, well, actually, I think in college I had this weird breakup and after that I had to make new friends and I was in it. Now all of a sudden you're making this hyper emotional relational connection all based on one great question.

[00:15:25] Carl, what so I can hear I love what we're talking about. This totally makes sense. And as you're saying your examples, I'm thinking about things in my own life and how it played out, which is great. And I'm going to have to journal the

[00:15:36] heck out of this when we're done. But for what happens for a salesperson who's trained this way and they show up in a meeting with this extreme curiosity? What happens? What does that look like? And let me ask a question. Do you mean what the outcome is

[00:15:54] or what happens in the actual meeting? You know, I think both. You know, because I think what you're saying, it sounds great. And I can I'm getting in the mind of some of our audience going, yeah, that sounds great. But reality is I want them to see

[00:16:09] what does reality really look like when you do this and you actually take the time and you do your little mini meeting. You take five deep breaths and you're extremely curious and you're approaching somebody thinking about what their eight year old self was like.

[00:16:25] How does that change the way that people show up in conversation? That's a great question. Before you ask, I want to extend Brandon what you're asking is because when you do that meeting, are you looking at the person you're talking to from the viewpoint that you're curious about

[00:16:41] that eight year old self? You're not looking. Is that the key sort of mindset that you want to be going into kind of as a corollary to what Brandon was asking? That's a great setup. So I would think I would tell you there's probably three parts to this.

[00:16:55] The meeting before the meeting is going, how could I get curious about the eight year old version of this person? Because all of a sudden then it de-escalates like, oh, Carson is the CEO of GE and I've got to sell him on my product and I'm terrified now.

[00:17:08] If Carson is like an eight year old, I'm like, oh, wonder what got him on the path. And now all of a sudden I'm curious, man, what a fascinating journey you must have gone on from eight year old from Topeka, Kansas to now the CEO of GE.

[00:17:20] So my mindset was all for me. To go like, oh, I'm not entering into the conversation and fear. That's part one. The second part that that immediately creates is I'm now no longer in the conversation from a place of need. I'm in the conversation from

[00:17:33] a place of desire. And this is a massive difference in sales. We have all felt it when the other person on the line has a neediness, like I need to close, I've got a number to hit, like I'm trying to get to the end of this conversation.

[00:17:47] And intrinsically, subconsciously we are sensing that off the charts and they're not even communicating it. We just have the sense of they're trying to get through the script because they need something from me. My goal is once I'm in phase two, in the actual conversation, I'm just here

[00:18:02] because I want to be. My desire is to be with you, not a need to get something from you. And the emotional ramifications of that are absolutely astronomical. Because again, you all know, who do we buy from? People we trust and like. And if somebody wants to be

[00:18:18] on the line, and if somebody wants to be on the conversation, I immediately like them because what they liked me first. And I'm tending to trust them more because they're not driving towards an end goal, even if we only have 30 seconds on the call and you're churning

[00:18:31] and burning. And then the third part, to Brandon's question, so we've got the setup of I'm thinking about them as an eight-year-old to de-escalate fear. In the second part, I'm thinking about I want to be here, not I need to be here. And then the third part is

[00:18:44] you're just going to naturally outperform everybody else. You will make more sales. Like I've watched this for the last 20 years. People who want to be on the conversation, outsell people who need to be in that conversation, like by a factor of four. It's not even close.

[00:19:01] I love that because we do know like we all give off energy. We give off something and people use different terms to express it. But the reality is that our psyche, what's going on in our head, communicates even if we don't think it is. Our subconscious is out

[00:19:19] there, you know, expressing and influencing people. And it's part of like we say, you know, go slow to move fast. And that's the, you know, get to let people be and let them express, let them share and be genuinely curious about what's really going on in their lives.

[00:19:38] Not just you need this solution or you need that solution. And it does. It changes the environment and it changes the relationship. And you become somebody they want to work with and somebody they're trying to decide if they should work with. Yeah, because all of a

[00:19:53] sudden in that moment they feel like they need you. You've created that sense of connection. And one last thought, you know, it reminds me of an African proverb, what you brought up there Brandon is, you know, if you want to go first, go alone.

[00:20:05] If you want to go far, go together. And so in every sales call, it's going, oh, I really want to go far. So I want to be with you. That makes the journey more fun. That's cool. You said something earlier, Carl. I mean, even thinking

[00:20:19] about the micro meeting beforehand and the eight year old version, I run into sales people all the time that almost have this two things. One, they grapple with the fear of or the trepidation of talking to a sea level. They've not yet developed that acumen that eight year

[00:20:37] old envisioning piece I think can bring the humanity element to it. You know, that desire to be more curious about what what brought this person into this role. Often when you find out that an executive has taken a role, whether they've been in it for a short

[00:20:51] period of time or they've been in for a long period of time, they have a vision for that role. They have a reason that they gravitated toward that job. And if you can find that and be curious and uncover that that can make all the difference in the

[00:21:04] world and how you how you approach it. And the second part was that can also help prevent the show up and throw up. I think often we feel like we're inclined to be asked all these exactly right questions. And it doesn't have to be like that.

[00:21:17] You ultimately want it to be a dialogue. Mm hmm. Yeah. And to your point, you know, Simon Sinek puts this well in his thesis that leaders eat last. I would tell salespeople you could probably talk about the quarter of the time that you need to

[00:21:31] like you can ask a great question and then just allow for silence and pondering and let them kind of unpack that because in those spaces, that's where they're going to feel like they're connecting before we jump to the comments. I'm sorry. We're going to bring those in.

[00:21:48] It I had this learning moment and I was in grad school and I had a meeting with the chairman of our department and I was anxious and I asked him a question about something and he paused and I filled it because I was like, oh, like maybe

[00:22:03] I need to rephrase it and he goes, hold on. I'm thinking about your question so I can give you a good answer and it stopped me in my tracks because I realized how bad I was at doing that and here's the kicker. I felt heard. I felt important.

[00:22:23] I felt valuable and it totally changed my relationship with him and he became my go-to. He was a chairman of this department so he couldn't become my advisor, but he became my go-to because my respect level and everything with him went up because he made me feel important

[00:22:40] and he was using long enough to really think about the answer because he cared about the answer. So powerful. Yeah. And in that space, you know, people will ask, okay, well, how do I find a good question and pause? And I tell them the

[00:22:57] quick cheat sheet on this is humans are designed for two things, to carry pain and to celebrate pleasure. Also, neurologically, our brain goes to pain 15 times faster than it does pleasure. So pain is going to be a great question. If you're like, I don't know what

[00:23:12] great question to ask. Well, then just start listening for pain. That's what your advisor did. He could feel the nerves off you trying to fill the space and he's like, hey, pause, pause. I know that you're nervous. Let me process what you just did. And in that moment,

[00:23:26] he carried the pain, the anxiety of, well, you're holding kind of my future in your hand. And so I tell people all the time, you know what I love is a complainer. You know, you'll hear a lot of these things like, hey, this is a Nick

[00:23:40] or it's the side of a bandaid. And I'm like, oh, there's something that hurts over there. And a constant complainer who's elevating and has this kind of mentality is because nobody listened to the complaint the first dozen times. So they're elevating the volume on that.

[00:23:55] But if I hear somebody complain, it instantly goes, oh, there's a trigger for questions. Hey, could we take five minutes? Could we take three minutes? I'd love to know when's the first time you remember trying to complain and you were ignored. Now, all of a sudden,

[00:24:09] they've taken me to the root of that complaint. And now I can get to work carrying a little bit of that. And then the other side, you were supposed to celebrate pleasure. A lot of times if Kirsten comes to me and we need to say, oh yeah,

[00:24:21] I landed this great CEO thing. What's most people in our culture's response? Oh, that's great. Let me tell you about my thing. So never felt celebrated. I was never present to your moment as opposed to, oh my gosh, OK, so how long have you been chasing that?

[00:24:34] What did it feel like in the room? What was your proposal like? Are you going to celebrate? Is it a steak dinner? Could I help you celebrate? Is there a place you and your wife want to go? You've been waiting six months for this.

[00:24:44] How different is that reaction in our now capital conversation as humans? It's completely different. So I want to hit a couple of things here and then I want to... There was a point that you brought up, Carl, that I also want to unpack a little bit more.

[00:24:58] But I found this one interesting. This from a LinkedIn user so it doesn't say who it's from. But he or she was saying that as an eight-year-old, they were planning adventures and living in possibility of where to build the next tree fort. That was my core goal

[00:25:13] at eight years old and how far I can ride my bike and get home before the streetlights come on. Now, I think... And Carl, tell me if I'm looking at this correctly, right? As if I'm going to talk to the CEO of General Electric

[00:25:26] like you were talking about. But I go in with a mindset and going, what was that person thinking about at eight years old? If you even look at the things here, these are goals, these are accomplishing things, these are challenges that they were overcoming.

[00:25:41] And if I look at it from... And then I start thinking about asking questions from that vantage point, I think that it removes a lot of the barrier, I guess you will, and the angst and all of that stuff and just creates an interesting, intriguing conversation.

[00:25:59] Am I looking at this correctly with that? Because, Carl, it's Carson, you always say, right? That the executives put on their pants. Their pants, one leg at a time. One leg at a time. These days with Zoom, they might not even be wearing pants. That's true.

[00:26:14] I mean, Carson right now is Winnie Poo-ing this thing real hard. That's right. I might be wearing shorts, but it's right. You see the shirt. That's right. By the way, I don't know who wrote that because it does say LinkedIn user, but I second that one.

[00:26:28] I think that was me. I could have easily written that comment. Especially before the streetlights came on. You know, as a user. Oh yeah, right? Yeah. There's so many ways that you can apply that to. What I love about it is that you're open to possibilities.

[00:26:41] You're a dreamer. You're creative. And you know what I hate is that often it's negative experiences that can throttle those dreams that you have that will keep you from going out and chasing what you really ultimately want to do in life and having, you know,

[00:26:55] and salespeople do this all the time too. You know, you have maybe one negative experience or an experience with a manager or a company that makes you believe that you're not good at this. And that is not the case. I mean, I look back,

[00:27:09] I thought I was really good at sales in my twenties. I was nothing. I knew nothing compared to what I feel like I know now. And when you realize that you know relatively nothing on your journey and that you're constantly a student and trying to absorb

[00:27:23] and you're still going out and trying to, you know, seek these. Like these are, for me, these are like a guilty pleasure. I show up to the show to learn and I apply stuff that I learn on these shows every day while I'm going out being a practitioner.

[00:27:34] So I love the fact that, you know, I feel like I can tap into the creativity and the open-mindedness of my inner eight year old when I am on a show with Brandon Lee, you know, it's amazing. And let's not push it, Carson,

[00:27:48] one step at a time here. But I think an interesting thing to think about just the use said earlier about, you know, you put on pants one leg at a time. Think of the same way as that that person was eight years old once, right?

[00:28:00] Everyone was eight years old once, regardless of they're the CEO of GE or somewhere in between. And it kind of then levels that playing field on that conversation. I also wanted to hit Bob's question here just to clarify, Carl, he says this is the difference

[00:28:16] in what you're talking about between active versus empathetic listening. Is that, is he on track there? Yeah, Bob's 100% on track. It's this idea that in active listening I'm just not somewhere else. So I'm engaged in the conversation. Empathetic listening is this idea that,

[00:28:32] oh, what does it look like to be so interested? I'm almost starting to take on bits of your story and bits of like what you're experiencing. And we're creating what I would call an empathetic bridge between what I've experienced and what you're experiencing.

[00:28:46] And we're creating that bridge strongly enough that you and I can now walk back and forth between my experience and yours. So now we're connected. If I can jump back, so Bob's already 100% on the right track. So I don't know that that needs a ton of unpacking,

[00:28:58] but I do want to get Tom back to your earlier question is if you're looking at that C-suite, is it the right mentality to look at them as an eight year old and have this idea about forts and getting in home before the streetlights come on?

[00:29:11] Here would be my, again, let's zoom out 30,000 feet for just a second. Brandon, as somebody who's written an entire book on 99 fantastic questions, what's the root part of the word question that we don't think about enough? If you were to dissect it, what's the first part?

[00:29:27] What's the first other word? Quest. We're on a quest. And so in this idea, when we were kids, to Kassan's point, everything was a quest. Hey, let me build the fort. Let me get on my bike. Let me scale that tree. We as humans are hardwired,

[00:29:42] and this comes from my branding side from that agency. Everything's about story and storytelling. Our tagline in our branding agency is you have a fascinating story. Let us help you tell it better. Everybody has this fascinating story. You're just moving too fast to get it.

[00:29:56] So let me ask a really quick question here. For Tom, Brandon and Kassan, what would be your favorite coming of age movie? Mine would probably be Sandlot. That's the one I was exposed to when I first came to the States. Stand By Me. Stand By Me is fantastic.

[00:30:10] Gold star there. Brandon, it could be favorite movie or coming of age. Yeah, I had two that came. One was Stand By Me and the other one was Dead Poets Society. Oh, so good. So, so good. And then Tom, what would your movie be? Caddyshack. Oh, yeah.

[00:30:26] So if you look at these all... Back to the future. Back to the future with Second, but I figured Brandon was going to bring that one out. Yeah, listen, me and Duck and Marty, that was one of my first movies I saw on the stage.

[00:30:37] So if you look at the arc... You've known Brandon for a long time, Carl. You just didn't know it. Brandon's in the movie. He was in the movie. Oh, I didn't. Well, yes, we're going to have to dive into that.

[00:30:49] I think maybe we need to press play on Leah Thompson's message to Carson. That's right. Who are you going to get next birthday? Beth? Can we get Beth? We're working at it. Anyway, we digress. Sorry, Carl. Our inside jokes are bad. That's a lovely...

[00:31:06] We haven't been on a show together in long... It's pent up angst. We just kind of let it all go. You guys don't get to hang out enough, so I understand I'm in the clubhouse now and you guys are like, ooh, here's my buddy.

[00:31:17] This is the idea, right? Could you imagine... So let's take what just happened there. Could you imagine the CEO, the middle management, the executive, whoever the stakeholder is that you're calling as a salesperson going, oh, man, we haven't connected in so long.

[00:31:31] Imagine it's like, oh, we haven't seen each other since the filming of Back to the Future. What would that conversation feel like? Because there's a quest for reconnection. There's a quest to be known. There's a quest to experience something.

[00:31:43] To say I was a part of a movie franchise. How fun and big a thing. I got instant credibility from my daughter about six months ago when she found out when I was a musician that I had met and hung out with Taylor Swift.

[00:31:54] I was like, oh, daddy was a musician. Now daddy was an actual musician. Because in her mind... That's when my kids found out that Microsoft owned Minecraft. I suddenly became cool. Now you're good. Now you're in the club.

[00:32:08] But it's this idea of if we're all on a quest, coming back to this idea of curiosity, your question is probably not big enough or interesting enough if it's not prompting some desire in them to engage the quest. Wow. And so when I'm talking to a leader

[00:32:26] and I'm like, all right, what's the... Are we talking about ROI? Are we talking about net profit? Are we talking about how I can increase sales? I want to start with what problem do you want to be known for solving

[00:32:38] in your team as a human, in your organization? If I can get to that, if we can get a question around that, all of a sudden it's the... Like it's the scene. We're in the movie now. We're in some part of the story arc.

[00:32:52] And I can insert myself right alongside them. And now all of a sudden to use a really geeky reference, I'm the Gandalf to the Hobbitzes. Oh, you have a guide now on the journey who's just going, here we go. Your quest wasn't big enough. The Shire was beautiful,

[00:33:07] but it's not interesting enough. Let's live for something really worth living for. Because the quest just got bigger, because the question just got better. That's incredible, Carl. Because when I think about like, I think about relationships where I had executives who wouldn't give me the time of day,

[00:33:23] but once I found out what made them tick or what they came to that organization to do and had yet to be able to do, and I could plug into that, that is what ultimately ended up being the game changer in the deal happening.

[00:33:38] It's so important to tap into what really matters and makes tick the people that you want to earn the right to work with. And what I'd love to ask you about is because, and not only your business, but also for sellers and for sales leaders,

[00:33:53] we talk about modern selling on this show, AI is everywhere right now. I'd love to hear how you're thinking about leveraging AI in your organization, how sellers could and should be. We live in this age where everybody is at the pulse

[00:34:08] of all of this data and all of this ability. I can go out to somebody's LinkedIn and I could run an AI tool to ultimately contrive like, how should I show up and ask questions and be more curious based on this person's LinkedIn or what they've published

[00:34:23] or whatever the case may be? How should we as sellers and sales leaders also be thinking about using AI responsibly to meaningfully connect and be more curious with our customers? That's such a good question. So I look at AI like I would look

[00:34:37] at any other really advanced tool. It's either a scalpel or it's a machete. And in surgery, it matters. It also matters, did I go to med school or did I grow up in a butcher's shop? Okay, so the tool matters, the training matters, the impetus matters,

[00:34:56] the intention matters, all of these things matter. The way that I would say I'm using AI in my companies is as again, an additional tool to go, is this is concise a way for me to ask the question? And so I would tell you

[00:35:10] this kind of happens in three parts. The first part is the beauty of this is the human element will never be lost from connection. And so when people are afraid of AI, I tell them, hey, like let's reduce the anxiety. This is just the world's greatest screwdriver.

[00:35:25] Like we didn't freak out 100 years ago when somebody handed us a screw screwdriver and then when it became a compound one and it could go both ways. And now all of a sudden we've got this digital thing that can just help you do this thing so much faster

[00:35:37] than we were able to do things before. However, it still has a beginning and an end and the tool happens in the middle. The beginning part is going, could I ask my friends, how curious am I about you?

[00:35:49] What does it feel like to be on the other side of me? If you're not curious about your most intimate relationships and your best connections, you're faking it with other people and they know it. So Thomas Bacon had this great quote,

[00:36:03] he said, the saddest thing in life is to die known to everybody but yourself. Everyone else knows you're faking it. You think you're really clever and especially let's talk about our specific demographic. We're all white men of a certain age and the world has like said,

[00:36:17] hey, you know things, say things, be the first one to talk. But I'm saying like, hey, especially to us, to the power brokers in the world who want to admit that or hold that or not, you are a power broker.

[00:36:28] And so for you to ask a better question as opposed to making a quicker statement shifts the room, it just does. So I would ask the people I'm closest to, do you feel like I'm interested in you when I'm in the room? And if not,

[00:36:41] that's the first place I've got to go start. That's, I'm either learning how to become a butcher or I'm going to med school, both of which are good, but I need to learn the trade of being curious, of being inquisitive, being present,

[00:36:51] making somebody else feel interesting to me. And the second part is, as I'm working on that, and this can all happen parallel. It's not one, two, three, they're all kind of running concurrent. I'm using things like AI to go,

[00:37:01] hey, I'm going to have my meeting before the meeting. I'm going to set this thing up in ChatGPT and I'm going to go, hey, I'm meeting with this sort of exec in this organization. I feel like this would be some of the problems that they're up against.

[00:37:11] What are three or four great one line questions that could show my interest in what they're up against? And because I've got 20 years of asking these questions, it's not fair for me to go to a salesperson and be like, hey, do this like I do.

[00:37:24] They're like, you're thinking so fast on your feet because I've got med school and residency and I've been the head of curiosity neurology at a major hospital is my mentality. It's not fair for me to tell the intern, go be as inquisitive to the level of the degree.

[00:37:38] So use the tool, bypass all of that and get to exactly my level in a quick prompt because you have intent. And then the third part of that is, use it and then test it. Everything, every idea is an experiment. And so if you come into the meeting,

[00:37:52] you're like, oh, that really worked. Then ask the question, have the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting to kind of go, oh, I'm gonna do a little audit on myself and go what works, what didn't, what is only anecdotal to this conversation

[00:38:05] or are there any things here that could start to be evergreen where I could use it in lots of different sales calls because it felt universal. They responded to it very viscerally. Oh, that was amazing. Let's do more of that. Yeah, you were just talking about this really.

[00:38:20] I was thinking about, right? We've all gone through meetings or discovery calls or whatever it is and we ask questions and we just get back road answers. You know, we get boring, wrote, politically correct if you wanna call that answers. But then I think this is the game.

[00:38:37] And I think Carl, what I'm hearing you say is that whether you're a leader or a sales professional or whatever, is test this and start to see where you get those visceral responses, right? Where the needle really moves and you get that response almost like you got

[00:38:52] when we started talking about the movies where it was like an enthusiastic response and we wanted to go off in different directions and not just answer a rote yes, no answer. I think you can, when you start to feel that, then you know you're on the right track

[00:39:06] and you may not be very good at it in the beginning but I think that's where AI can help you is find questions that could be a bit more probing, a bit more intriguing, a bit more curious. Am I looking at this correct? 100% and what you noticed

[00:39:19] and I think what you highlighted there Tom beautifully is the idea that it's not all professional. We talked about a movie and it was like, oh, we're going off the rails. It's like, no, those are the new rails. So now follow the conversation in that space

[00:39:32] and remain curious. And I would tell people, you almost wanna think about it and this is where I get to cheat a little bit because this is literally my lived experiences as a foreigner in a foreign land. I was interested in the food and the culture

[00:39:43] and the language and the movies and the way we gathered and why we did those sorts of things. And so if you can go into a conversation and go, what sort of food do they like? What sort of movie moved them?

[00:39:54] What sort of music has touched their life? Like these sorts of things, again, when you met another eight year old, you're like, hey man, you Braves or Marlins? Are you Georgia Bulldogs or Georgia Tech? Like, you know, these are things like you're sussing out other people

[00:40:10] and at that age it's fun. You know, a lot of times at 35, it's like, oh, now we're in a bar fight. So, you know, you have to be careful with questions. That's funny. Let's stay out of the bar fights. That's right.

[00:40:23] They're not as fun as they used to be when we were younger. No, not at all. So what are some other techniques, Carl, that as sales leaders, sales professionals, tools and techniques on the things that you talk about related to curiosity and coaching that we can be applying?

[00:40:40] I think there's some really good stuff today we've already got that's applicable right away. So what are some other good takeaways that we could possibly apply? That's a great question. Unfortunately, we've got a very large tool bag. So I'm trying to go, okay,

[00:40:52] what's the quickest thing to hand off to you guys? I think the one that's been helping a lot lately, whether it be with sales or this is executive leadership, this is your first day on the job or you're having a fight with your significant other,

[00:41:05] is everything is relationship. When, you know, there's a thing in the 80s where it was like, oh, it's not personal, it's just business. I was like, you three all know that's the largest lie that anybody could be told in this world. Everything is personal.

[00:41:19] I tell people when I'm helping them with HR for both recruitment and acquisition and then retention of talent, people don't leave positions, they leave people. And I tell them, this is the hardest thing I'm gonna say to you as a leader, is they're leaving.

[00:41:34] If it's not under good terms and you're not sending them on and you're not empowering them to next great season of their life, they left the organization which is made up of people and we try and like remove that sense of that.

[00:41:45] And so I like to lean into the pain of that before we lean into how do we make that better? So people aren't leaving a position, they're leaving you if you're leading them unless you are sending them. There's two differences, right?

[00:41:56] If I get to send you and empower you, I found you another great job, that's a better fit, I'm so glad you got that giant raise that we couldn't afford, they didn't leave you. They went on to the next thing. They were drawn to something else.

[00:42:07] They didn't flee the thing that you're a part of. And so the thing that I've been helping salespeople and leaders recently is the three A's of a hard conversation. It can also be what we call the three A's are profitable conversation or good one,

[00:42:20] but again, we go to pain faster than we do pleasure so it's easy to remember if you're like, oh, I have had conversations all the time. What are the three A's of the structure? The three A's would be this. And let me give this quick asterisk.

[00:42:30] You can't operate the three A's under the influence of ego. In the same way you're not allowed to operate heavy machinery when you're drunk or high because you'll kill somebody. If you use these three things under the influence of your own ego,

[00:42:44] it will hurt like somebody will get hurt because it's manipulation and it may not happen immediately but eventually you will sever the relationship because you're trying to win. What I'm doing in this conversation is helping you get a win-win. This is the third way.

[00:42:57] I don't have to win by you losing, you don't have to win by me, we can both win. And so the point of the three A's in a hard conversation is to get us on the same side of the table

[00:43:06] looking at the same problem with a new perspective. So here's the three A's. First, you want to acknowledge their difficulty. Hey, this thing's really hard you're up against. If I'm on a sales call with somebody, you're leading 150 people without a chief people officer.

[00:43:23] Now, to another salesperson they might go, oh, I could be your fractional chief officer. I could do this, this and this, and this is how much I'm worth and how much it will cost you. No, no, no. I'm just in the difficulty moment.

[00:43:34] I have the emotional intelligence to go, this is hard for you and I should carry it for a while. If you want like the MBA version of this, what you need to do after that is then go, hey, what's really difficult in your world right now

[00:43:46] that you wish somebody understood or that you wish I understood? Oh, you're cooking with like some high level like gas at that point. So that's first one, acknowledge their difficulty. Second thing is affirm their effort. You can do this with people you're leading,

[00:44:01] you can do this with your manager, you can do this with somebody you're hoping to, you know, do business with. I'm going, hey, you know the thing I love in your culture is I see you doing this all the time. You notice I'm not praising output,

[00:44:12] I'm affirming effort. Massive difference. The psychological research on this recently has shown a lot of people may have problems with participation trophy culture, but the research is now actually pretty clear. When you told Timmy, hey bud, I'm so proud of you because you made the team

[00:44:28] or hey Timmy, I love the 10 hours you put in on the field this week whether or not you make the team or get cut. Second Timmy will perform better over the next 40 years than first Timmy did. So the psychology of affirming effort

[00:44:41] over praising output is really, really strong. So that's the first two EQ bits. And then the last bit is you want to ask what's their win? And the way you amplify this is if it can come with a number and a deadline.

[00:44:55] Hey in your world, in the next 60, 90 days, if I waved a magic wand, what's the one thing that gets better? And if it could have a number, that would be amazing. And then just be quiet. Now all of a sudden in that call,

[00:45:08] the first two parts you've handled all EQ, emotional intelligence. The last question, ask them what's the win, is all data IQ driven. And again you've created this empathetic bridge between you and them that they go, you are hyper interested. You asked three really great questions.

[00:45:23] I can't tell you the last time my spouse or best friend has been that interested in what I'm carrying. It reminds me one of the things, we have five kids and we have great kids. And one thing I learned early on and I'm so grateful for it was

[00:45:43] the difference of saying I'm proud of you versus I'm proud to be your dad. And when I've told them all these years, I'm really proud to be your dad. It's really affirming them. When you say I'm proud of you, it means your behavior made me happy.

[00:46:00] It was a huge difference. And I learned that we incorporated that for years and now I hear my kids feeding it back to me and I see it in their lives. I love the way that you explain that because I know it in my personal life

[00:46:15] but you're helping me see how I could do things like that with the word choice in my professional life as well. That's so good. Thank you. I mean, I hadn't heard that Swiss de phrase. I've got an eight and ten year old. I will be using that tonight.

[00:46:28] Because I've always struggled with this idea. My spiritual context is as a believer and I'm like, oh, well, pride is one of the seven deadly sins. How am I supposed to run around telling people I'm proud of them? That feels like I'm against what I should be doing.

[00:46:42] So I love the idea of like, I'm just so excited or I'm proud to be your dad. I'm enjoying the experience of you. Like that's often a phrase we use around here is like the business of heaven is enjoying us and we're missing out on all that fun.

[00:46:55] And so like this idea of you as a dad just going, I'm just enjoying getting the position I lucked into having and I'm grateful to be here. And to your point, it translates so quickly into business. It's just a joy to be on the podcast with you guys

[00:47:08] regardless of the outcome. This has been really fun. End of story. So let me ask another question related to, this ties back to another good question by Bob. Bob brings his game every week. Do you notice that on the show? We need him as a guest.

[00:47:23] I would love it. We always say it and then we don't. Noor is listening. Noor, you want to reach out and give Bob a chance? Hey Bob, we're just going to sub out now. I'm just going to click out. You jump in. It's been great. Thanks Carl.

[00:47:37] We appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. It's been good. But I want to touch on this because he's saying on storytelling, tell a story and shut up, the customer will feel the silence with the story of their own. Can you use, because sometimes it's hard, right,

[00:47:51] to just come in and start asking questions. But can you tell a story or maybe this is a more advanced version of what you're talking about, but not just use questions and curiosity, but use storytelling that then leads to a question or results in the same outcome

[00:48:08] as if you just directly asked the question. Does that make sense? It does. Bob is highlighting something that I see a lot of people make the mistake of. So thank you again, Bob. In that they'll hear a story and then want to immediately share one of their own.

[00:48:22] That's what Bob's giving here is the opposite, which I think is really clever. If you're having the meeting before the meeting and you're thinking about this person and you're like, hey, went through your LinkedIn profile and I noticed you went to Northwestern.

[00:48:34] Oh, my best friend went there in 1980 and they had this experience. I was just curious, what drew you to Northwestern? I've immediately given a story and then to Bob's words, I've shut up and now offered them the floor and then they can take it wherever they want to.

[00:48:46] And this idea, by the way, is there's power in the pause, right? Like we said earlier. And it's this idea, another quote that I love is, silence is the first language of God and everything since has been a poor translation. Do you have a book of these quotes?

[00:49:03] No. Hey, Charlie, you're one liners. Yeah, amazing. We're just sitting here going, yeah, yeah. I know, they just fall out. My brothers and friends all joke that I talk in bumper stickers. So I'm like a walking, talking fortune cookie. But it's this idea, right?

[00:49:19] Of the silence thing is there's just not enough of it. And so you remember in the, about 10 years ago when their cell phones were coming into the movie theaters, what would it say? Like silence your cell phones because silence is golden.

[00:49:33] And so I would tell you as a salesperson, the money, the profit, if you're like, hey, Carl, I appreciate all the warm fuzzy. I'm telling you the way to 4X, what you've done previously is to 4X multiply the amount of silence. Because again, as a musician,

[00:49:50] I got to hang out with some of the best musicians on the planet. And the greatest guitarists on the planet all talk about the same one thing. It's this elusive thing that everybody from Eric Clapton to John Mayer or whoever makes it onto your Mount Rushmore

[00:50:03] guitarists all talk about the same one thing, the space between the notes. They all talk about, we could play a thousand notes. There's always going to be a guy who's just a little bit faster. But the reason Clapton is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time

[00:50:18] and also has the nickname slow hand is because of the space between the notes. It's the silence, it's the rest, it's the anticipation. And this is what Bob is talking about is share the story, create the note, and then just let it ring

[00:50:34] and then let somebody else now start to join in the duet, the conversation in writing this thing with you. I want that clip is going to be going viral tomorrow. Yeah, that's a good, we'll have to make sure Nor gets that one clipped out.

[00:50:49] Frankie Raleigh told us that silence was golden before the movie theaters too. Well, thank you for, I didn't know who said it was. Before the time with a lot of the folks on our audience. So I'm glad you said the movie theater. Yeah. Hey, last question here,

[00:51:03] or we'll start to wrap up here, Carl, is related to that. You had mentioned, I think earlier, you said something about salespeople should talk 25% like of what they really do. What was the quote or the comment you said back few weeks ago?

[00:51:19] Yeah, kind of the same math, right? They should increase silence by a factor of four and they should decrease the amount they're talking by a factor of four. So if I were to say, oh, I've been talking 10 minutes on my call because a lot of salespeople hyper data-driven,

[00:51:34] I'd be like, I'm gonna reduce that talk time to two and a half minutes. And I wanna create seven and a half minutes of like primed silence that if I just sat there, they wouldn't say anything. But because I've asked a question,

[00:51:47] my hope is that they will engage. By the way, number one thing to tell your salespeople, if the answer is yes or no, it is not yet a good or great question. Yep, that doesn't move the needle as we were talking about earlier.

[00:52:00] So does that scare the crap out of people or it's in salespeople? I'm interested in your take on this. Is that like, oh my God, that's a scary proposition to have the potential of dead air or something like that and that I'm not-

[00:52:14] I think there's, I mean, it's funny. I can say this because I spent the better part of today with a client and this is actually a client that when I was an account rep years ago, I had this customer and now someone on my team does

[00:52:27] and they flew in and we sat with them and we rekindled dialogue. And so it's funny, Carl, you made a couple of comments that really resonated because we related to each other very well because I had worked with them very closely years ago.

[00:52:40] We knew one another, so there was, we wove in and out of projects like where things were priorities, things that had changed over the years, personal relationships, things that had stature. And I'm even thinking now like how I,

[00:52:53] it's, I almost took for granted how easy the flow was, but no matter how long we've been doing this as salespeople, there is always this inclination, sometimes just below the surface to talk and you have to almost like bite your tongue sometimes

[00:53:09] to just let the, you know, as Bob called it in the chat, the goldmine flow because the less you talk, the more potential information you can get. And I mean, I literally, I got my notebook over here. I took pages and pages of notes today in these,

[00:53:26] because we've learned that discipline. I've learned that discipline, but it takes time. And I think a lot of times we feel that inclination to speak instead of listen because we want to sound smart. We want the client to view us as adding value.

[00:53:40] So we feel compelled to say something that they'll latch onto to see that it's valuable. That is not the right method of that mentality. Your heart's in the right place. To the point that Carl has illustrated so eloquently throughout our conversation today,

[00:53:57] the more that you're curious, the more you can unearth what matters to that person. What is a win to them? That's ultimately what's going to gravitate toward. You being able to tell a story that matches your client's story is not gonna be what gets you the second date.

[00:54:12] What's gonna get you the second date and beyond. And ultimately the standout relationship that leads to a deal is by honing in on what matters to them. How do they wanna leave their mark? And then being a part of making that happen. And this is an excellent point.

[00:54:28] Thank you for setting that up, Kass. One of the ways that I would use AI is whether you're using read.ai or Otter or whatever AI transcription service you've got in your calls, I would literally immediately, and you can create this through Zapier

[00:54:41] or a number of other automations. I've got an automation company that runs all of this for me. At the end of the call it automatically goes into a chat GPT and then the prompts are already created where it goes,

[00:54:52] what's the most important person to this thing from that call based on the transcript? And then from that it auto loads into a Google Drive and it timestamps it. So the next time I have a meeting, I can literally have a 30 second meeting before the meeting

[00:55:05] that I didn't have to write it down, remember it, where did I put it? All of a sudden going, oh he was talking about his daughter's soccer is happening this weekend at this thing. And Jimmy Cutter used to do this.

[00:55:14] He literally had a guy on staff who would walk the room before he came in the room and would come back and be like, hey, this is who you met the last time. So Jimmy would be like, hey how's Stephanie your second daughter doing at grad school?

[00:55:25] And people are always amazed. It's because Jimmy had a guy in the room. So salespeople now really have very little to no excuse to not be more personable. And one of the best people talking about this sort of stuff not tactically but strategically

[00:55:38] is Will Gadara in his book Unreasonable Hospitality. If you've got a salesperson who hasn't read that, I would tell you that that'd be the first thing that I would go out and read or, sorry Will, go put it into chat GPT

[00:55:50] and be like, hey what are the 10 takeaways? And I'll go listen to it later. Michael Scott did that on The Office as well. That's probably when he got fired he stole all that business from Dunder Mifflin because he had cards on every one of the clients.

[00:56:02] He knew them inside and out. He knew them personally. And as funny as the episode was, the fundamental is true. If you know your audience, people and what makes them tick and what matters to them and you can help facilitate them getting the win, you matter. Yep.

[00:56:20] This always comes back to this. That's why it's always on my desk. Just a good reminder. I recommended that book to so many people over the years. I want to get one more point here and then Brandon I'll jump over to you to kind of wrap up.

[00:56:33] No, that's what I was going to point to. I knew that. I knew that. Go ahead Brandon. No, I mean I just thought it was such a great point Kathy and it's so true when we're in fear and I think whether we're selling,

[00:56:48] we're working with the prospective client, the fear is oh it's not going to work or how do I get it to work and it just takes us out of everything Carl you've been saying. It takes us out of the right mindset. We're no longer curious.

[00:56:59] We're trying to figure out a way in and it just changes the culture of that conversation that we're in and we're not thinking win-win. We're thinking how do I win? And I think so much of the sales culture, the business culture was so much pressure to 30 day goals

[00:57:18] and how many meetings you got to get, how many closes you got to get. Just so many people are living from a place of fear and stress that they don't have the ability. I mean you even just say like the meeting before the meeting

[00:57:30] I could hear people going I don't have time for that. I mean just take five breaths beforehand. I don't have time for that. You know because you know take a look at my notes from last meeting before I get there. I don't have time for that.

[00:57:44] A 25 minute meeting instead of a 30. You know I mean there's so many things that people are doing in this virtual world and hybrid world to facilitate that. You know having a meeting in five minutes early so you can grab your coffee and take five breaths

[00:58:01] and have your pre-meeting, that's meaningful. 100% and looking at the outcome of that too is going you know Havid recently did a study on like a thousand hyper successful CEOs and they found the top 300 were all doing the same three things. And the three things that they were doing

[00:58:17] unbeknownst to each other was a brain dump, a prioritized session, and time blocking. And so what I would tell every salesperson I would start with this weekly then I would move it to daily then I would move it to a 9, 1, and a 5.

[00:58:30] And what you're doing in that thing is you're brain dumping all of the anxiety. Hey here's all the things that are running through my brain if I just let it go in any sort of silence. I'm going to prioritize the top four or five of those things.

[00:58:41] And then I'm going to time block each one of those four or five things now during the course of my day. The idea now is you are now telling your day what's happening as opposed to reacting to it. And most fear our saying in our company is

[00:58:54] ambiguity creates anxiety and clarity creates connection. And when you're telling me afraid I instantly go oh something's unclear. So for you going into the sales call it might be like oh if I don't get this call I don't know if I'm going to hit my numbers

[00:59:10] and get my commission. It feels unclear. And I would tell you okay well let's go to the next second part of the exercise then. Will that fear matter in the rule of fives? Will it matter in five years? Probably not. Will it matter in five quarters? Probably not.

[00:59:25] Will it matter in five months or five hours? Probably not. Will it matter in five minutes? Okay I will give it the energy of five minutes and reorg my mindset around this but I will not give it five year or five decade energy

[00:59:39] because that's reserved for my wife and kids. I'm not giving that to work and that's where we're in this space of we're giving the wrong energy to the wrong things. Well and it ends up being a kind of a dwindling spiral right?

[00:59:52] You keep putting more fear into it. You don't do the prep like you just talked about because you're worried and then it just keeps going down the wrong way if you start the other way. You also get to the point where you start catastrophizing

[01:00:04] and then you're just negatively prophesying into your own life. Well hey Carl, you know if you come back I'd like you to bring a little more value next time if you could. I'll try. I'm sorry I know. I want the Bubba stickers.

[01:00:21] Yeah the book's coming at the end of the year so there we go. Oh hey now Bob's really talking my language. He's like in celebration I'm going to go have a bri for dinner which if you don't know South Africa our word so

[01:00:33] Bob is look he's showing interest in me. Bob is interestingly instantly interested in me. Look at the reaction he got out of that. Perfect. So it's a South African barbecue is what we call a bri. Okay. Brandon, Carson any final thoughts questions before we wrap here? No Carl

[01:00:51] that was great. This is going to be another one that as soon as it gets published our own podcast I'll probably listen to it three or four times this week. That was really deep very practical too. And you've got me challenging on some

[01:01:05] areas that I was like oh I got to do that better. So Carl thank you so much. Oh you're so welcome. Couldn't agree more. You know the major takeaway for me was if you do the extra legwork to be curious about your client

[01:01:21] and even be curious about yourself and your own motivations and to really understand how you can better attune to the needs of your customers the pain that they're having or the brand and legacy that they want to create. Those are the types of things that are

[01:01:36] going to really propel you to where you claim to want to go. And it's a space for that and make room for that. And the more curious the more genuinely and authentically curious you are the better. And Carl you said some too like on the silence part

[01:01:52] if you if you 4x your silence I think you said you actually 4x your success. Right. It's it's I know it's very counterintuitive for us but so often going slow makes us move faster but we're we don't slow down enough just to trust the process like

[01:02:10] we want control so bad that we won't trust the data or trust the process it just says be curious be other oriented listen more talk less and you actually win more. So so true. And you know this is kind of my life's

[01:02:26] mission now. Like I said before I'm on a rescue mission for everybody's in our eight year old. So when I get to do that with C-suite and executive is it's amazing when I get to do it one on one with the founder or just with

[01:02:36] you know the human at the grocery store it's all the same thing. And so part of things that I would encourage everybody to do is how are you integrating all of your life. How is the thing that you like to do in your personal life as a

[01:02:48] salesperson solving a problem if you really believe in the thing that you're doing and bringing value to them you're doing that all the time. And so the more integrated your mind and your life can be the less disintegration you will experience. Which is where the fear and the

[01:03:02] anxiety come from. I will tell you honestly I don't want this to sound like a flex. I don't ever worry about one of these calls because I don't need it. Like I'm genuinely wanting to be there to be helpful. I'm genuinely going. The other day sat next

[01:03:16] to a C-suite executive from GE. Didn't know him we were on the same plane together. He unpacked a little bit of his story found out about halfway through that he was the C-suite individual from GE. And I really was like I didn't turn

[01:03:28] up the importance of the conversation because we've been talking about kids and his employees and all this stuff. And I just started doing what we do here. I got curious and he's like oh that was really helpful. I'm glad it was helpful.

[01:03:38] It's switching into that mindset to go I'm the same person all the time because it's fun all the time. And then what will naturally happen is really fun. We go if you're not having fun you're probably doing it wrong. So those are the first places I

[01:03:50] would be looking like. If it's not fun it's probably because I'm not curious and others focus like Brandon was talking about and it's probably why it's not working. And so if I can turn up the curiosity and I can turn up the enjoyment then this

[01:04:02] weird thing happens. It starts to work. And so that's the fun we get to have in coaching people through the company. I think we'll try it for a little while Carl. We'll have you back and you can tell

[01:04:14] us how we're doing and we can kind of give you some more story. Yeah, no you tell me did you have more fun? Was it easier? Did you make more money? That's the fun stuff. And last thing, sorry we talk about the ABCs of a great culture.

[01:04:26] Ask great questions build a better culture, create more revenue. Ask, build, create. And it's all around this curiosity thing and so I would tell you test it with your spouse, your kids, your friends and then work people and go oh you're

[01:04:40] right. It was more profitable. It was more fun. It was easier. Carl if someone wants to learn more about you or your company where should they go? I'm sure it's no surprise. The URL is get more curious dot com. Oh cool. And we recently were really excited.

[01:04:56] I'm basically at this point about my calendar is about seventy five percent full and so I was like oh no what am I going to do when it's twenty five percent more full and I'm all done. And so about six months ago we created

[01:05:08] an employee development program that's fully digital and so people can go and get this sort of curiosity training at curiosity dot training. Awesome. Well thank you again. Great, great stuff. Carson wrap us up. Fantastic stuff. Thanks everybody for being on the live show

[01:05:28] and for listening to us on the podcast today. Carl phenomenal stuff. And until next time happy modern selling. Thanks everyone. Thank you for joining us today on Mastering Modern Selling. If you enjoyed this episode don't forget to subscribe for more insights. Connect with us

[01:05:50] on social media and leave a review to help us improve. Stay tuned for our next episode where we will continue to uncover modern strategies shaping today's business landscape. Learn more about Fistbump and our concierge service at getfistbumps dot com. Mastering Modern Revenue Creation with Fistbump. Where relationships

[01:06:08] social and AI meet in the buyer centric age.