Episode 262: Fireside Chat - The Value of Retaining Customers with Micah Cannon

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Robert Galford and Charlie Green. They are the co-authors of the book The Trusted Advisor. You know, I am always trying to cultivate different guests to come at this whole thing of business, really. I mean, it's the Leadership Podcast, but it almost could just be the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Podcast. And I want to try to find different ways to, to serve all of you, whether it's something we're talking about regarding marketing or whether it's regarding sales, whether it's team development. I mean, there's so many different layers to growing and developing yourself. And growing and developing and let alone scaling a business. And so I came across this book and I was like, oh, this would be a great book. Started reading the reviews, great reviews, picked it up myself, and I thought, we've got to, to get them on the podcast. We spend a lot of time in this episode, especially at the very beginning, coming to terms or the definition around trust and trustworthiness. And I think that you're going to get a ton out of this episode, something that's going to allow you to kind of think through, especially when we get to the trust equation. How can you improve each one of these variables to be able to have more trust in the marketplace? Without further ado, here's my conversation with Robert and Charlie. Robert and Charlie, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Yes, sir. You, you know, in asking about where did I come from, where did this come from, you know, you've heard the phrase before, I'm sure, uh, those who can do those who can't teach, those who can't teach consult. And Charlie and I found ourselves spending a lot of time teaching consultants. So we're still trying to figure this out a little bit. I say that with tongue deeply in cheek. In fact, we both come from somewhat similar backgrounds, liberal arts undergrad educations, found ourselves together in an MBA program at a small school in New England called Harvard Business School, kind of glommed onto each other with, I think, respect and similar kinds of approaches to life. And then found ourselves, and I found myself having been, having spent time before and around that in strategy consulting, investment management, and the practice of law, that my life was really circulating very much around professional services. So these concepts of what really distinguishes better players or better participants in various professions rose to the fore. And we began, because we had worked, we're working together, I think we had some very similar ideas about what really differentiated those who were particularly higher performers than their peers and competitors. So Charlie, over to you to really kind of embellish that a little bit.

Well, Rob just gave the Aristotelian final cause basis of it. I'll give you the proximate cause. What literally happened to trigger it was Rob and I were jointly subcontracting to another firm doing some work for Deloitte and Touche at an offsite. And the head of that program called us up. We were up there the evening before and he said, gee, one of the faculty members missed their flight. Can you guys throw together something tomorrow on the idea of a trusted advisor? And we said, sure, you know, we're good consultants, we'll do 2x2 matrix or something, don't worry, you'll be fine. And it was fine. So he said, gee, that was good, can you make it 2 hours next time? And it went to 2 hours and then 3 and then 4. And after a while, Rob and I said, gee, maybe there's a book here. And we started noodling around and didn't have much luck with publishers or agents, but then we ran into another guy, our third author, David Maester, who had already written several books. And David said, you know, if you guys are interested and if you're willing to make me lead author, I will solve your publishing problem. So we thought for a nanosecond, said, welcome lead author. He picked up the phone, called up Simon Schuster, and we had our book deal, and the rest is history.

Wow. Wow. What year was that?

Uh, that was about 1998, Rob.

That was 1999. Yeah, 1998, 1999. We had spent those first 3 years actually teaching partners at Deloitte, uh, in '96, '97, '98. So it took us really 1999 to craft it. And that's when, when we, we had run into David and just professionally. And that's when this all happened. And then the book first came out right at the turn of the century.

Right.

20th anniversary edition got published, you know, 20 years later, a couple of years ago.

All right.

Before we get into trust and trusted advisor, I got to ask, What has been the biggest benefit to you personally and professionally from the fact is that you graduated from Harvard?

Oh, that's a good question. I had a Harvard professor who was pretty caustic, uh, who was pretty snarky, and he said, you know, that Harvard affiliation is a non-depreciating asset. Now that may be an exaggeration, but I certainly think that there is an element of that. Let's be honest about it.

100%.

That's just, it is a fact. It's a fact of life that it is a, you know, it's just, I guess, a credential, a, you know, a club mark or something like that that you get. More than that, I think what it does do, and this is true for, I think, most really great MBA programs, They give you a way of thinking about stuff. They give you an approach. They help you synthesize because they've had so much practice at it. Remember, we got there, you know, 90 years after these folks were doing this to really say, okay, what really is fundamentally important as a leader of a business, of a profession, of a corporation? So I think we learned how to distill things to their essential at a fairly intense pace because, you know, 2 years at business school, you're going to get 1,000 cases thrown at you, literally 1,000 cases, 3 a day, every day, you know, for 2 years. By then you should be pretty good at pattern recognition. And I think that's really what, what helped us a great deal. What are the pattern recognitions, not just on the regular basis, but for people to stand out, for people who are extraordinary at building trust and building organizations.

That's good. Yeah.

John?

I have nothing to add to that. That's good.

I think it does. It carries a weight. It does. I mean, it gets me to ask the question, right? It's like, wow, that's amazing. I mean, I'm sure the rooms and the tables that that allows you to get in, right? The calls, it gets you in the door and a lot of things that otherwise No offense to other universities, I'm not going to name those, but I mean, it's just like it carries a certain weight to it, you know, and a credibility factor to it. Okay.

Although, Bradley, one final point on that one, I think, is it may get you in the door, doesn't keep you in the room.

That's fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So one thing I didn't want to mention this before we hit record because I wanted to talk about on the recording. I really love that you all take the time to define certain words and like, what do we mean by that specifically around trust and even what does trust, trustworthiness, trusted, et cetera. So, and the reason I like that is because oftentimes, and I was this way before myself, that I would just use words very loosely. You know, I could say blueprint or roadmap or playbook or process or, you know, procedure and checklist. And it was all just interchangeable. Like it was, you know, system, you know, something versus now, I try to know this is what this means and this is what this means. So, Charlie, why don't you start with tell us what is your definition and why should we come to a clear definition of what trust is?

Yeah, well, the reason to want a clear definition, you articulate it very well. Trust is one of those words. It's soft, muffy, fluffy, you know, cloud sculpting, vague type of stuff. And even researchers who spend a lot of time on this, they'll tell you Oh, trust is up, trust is down, which is all true and statistical, but it doesn't help you very much until you get precise. So we've come up with a very simple common sense base. Rob and I both have a deep belief in common sense and common language. And I suggest you, everybody listening to this already knows the answer to this, to what I'm about to say. We know it, we just forget to use it. So real simple distinction. Trust is a noun. It's a state of existence, a relationship between two parties. And it's made up of interactions between two players, a trustor and a trustee. A trustor is a person who takes a risk to trust the other person. A trustee is the person who then proves themselves either to be trustworthy or not. And when a sufficiently risk-taking trustor meets a sufficiently trustworthy trustee, voilà, the level of trust between them goes up. So if you want to examine practically, instead of just going on about the levels of trust, So, well, where's the problem? Is it a problem with the trustor not being sufficiently risk-taking, or is it a problem with the trustee not being sufficiently trustworthy? You can look, for example, at over the last 10 years, I'd say, for example, Wells Fargo has had a trustworthiness problem. I don't think they disagree with that. They've messed up publicly, and that's what you call lack of trustworthiness. They messed up. On the other hand, you look at a statistic like over the last 20 years, violent crime in the US is measurably, statistically down. At the same time, also measurably, statistically, fear of violent crime is up. So that's a case where it's not a problem of the underlying material objective reality, it's a problem of perceptions. People are afraid of stuff. So whenever you come to trust, you have to say, is it a problem with— and this is true of financial services in particular. You know, you got a whole bunch of risk-averse people who are not very good at trusting others. The only good risk is a dead risk, and it's to be mitigated. So that's a common problem we have running in with financial planners, commercial bankers, investment bankers, insurance agents, etc. On the other side, which we'll talk about more, the trustworthiness thing, we've really dove into that one quite a bit around the model called the Trust Equation, which Rob will describe. Very, very simple. And we probably should talk more about the trustworthiness side than the trusting side, but they're both relevant. So anyway, there's a quick definition, a practical one.

So Robert, is it fair to say that it's not binary in the sense, does somebody trust or not trust? It's at what level and how much somebody trusts. Is that fair to say?

I think that's great. There are degrees of it. And that's why we had to kind of look at this and say, if you're not careful, this all becomes, as Charlie says, mufty-flufty. We need an equation here just to anchor this on some of the real factors. The other thing that I think is important, just from the standpoint of definitions, when we talk about trust, there's a lot of times that people say, I don't trust— you pick it— that company. I don't trust that government. I don't trust that thing. And there are lots of different ways, taxonomies you can think about this. There's strategic trust, the way— there's in the sense of the way companies behave or what their goals are, what their values are. There's organizational trust, the way things get done. And then there's this question of individual trust. Do I trust that person? Do I trust my lawyer? Does my lawyer trust the people working for him? They're expert witnesses, let's say. And so that's that individual trust dimension, which is also very much a part of this. As Charlie said, it starts with trustor and trustee. And I think to both of us, you can get overly caught up on, oh, societal trust and corporate trust. For us, it's about those relationships.

Yeah. In a personal trust.

The interpersonal trust.

I trust you, you trust me, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. It's almost, If we put this in the context of, uh, of a financial advisor, you could have someone who's a prospect or a client hypothetically could say, I trust them to manage $20,000, but if I had $20 million, I'm not so sure I would trust them at the same level. Is that fair? Like, I'm not saying that maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but it's like I would trust him with this, but I wouldn't necessarily trust him with that.

Yeah. I mean, what you're saying, when the stakes are low, it may be a little bit easier to say, yeah, I got, you know, if I get burned on the $20 grand, no big deal. Right. Stakes are higher, you look at it more, more closely. And Rob and I would agree, I think that, well, let's get into the trust equation, Rob.

I was going to say, yeah, because that's where this will pop up.

Yeah. People, people, you know, in financial professions in particular, for example, overrate the components of trustworthiness that have to do with like your credentials and your data and your track record and your clever equations and so forth. And they underrate what Rob referred to the more emotional, interpersonal, subjective, body language kind of emotional stuff, if you will. Both of which are parts of trustworthiness. We trust people for both reasons. And a mix—

Yeah, let's lay out the equation. You'll see where this pops up because I think just the order in which we put them, trust is a function of 4 variables.

Trustworthiness.

Trustworthiness is a function. We should probably, we should be calling this the trustworthiness equation rather than the trust equation. But literally half a million to a million people all call it or more call it the trust equation. And we put the trust equation, but it's the trustworthiness equation. And where does it start? It starts with credibility. I'm gonna give you 4 variables. It's credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, an unusual word, but an important word for the business context, all reduced or diminished by the other person's perception of your self-orientation. So we got a number—

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Exactly.

We got 3 elements in the numerator, 1 in the denominator. Credibility plus reliability plus intimacy. And all really good, all really important. But if you just kind of step back and take the, you know, the 10,000-foot view of that equation, it says if you are not sufficiently credible and reliable and intimate, or you are, you're great on those things, but if you are viewed as operating too much out of your own self-orientation in your own head, being too much self-interested even, or not interested enough sincerely in them, it doesn't matter how credible, reliable, or intimate you're going to be. You can be—

oh, okay, this is great. So I, so I have to— I want to, I want to pop in here. So basically what we're saying is, and I did not go to Harvard, okay, and I did, I did get my degree in finance, but if we divide it by zero, if that, if that denominator is zero, it is zero, right?

Right. Yeah.

Realistically, you know, realistically We'd never go all the way to zero.

No, right, right.

And that very frankly is why we put that equation this way, just what you've hit on, which is you can't have zero in the denominator. You need some level of self-orientation. We have worked— let's think about this for a minute. Who are the people with— what do we call people with zero self-interest or self-orientation? We call them martyrs. We call them saints. We call them doormats sometimes. So you need at least some amount of self-awareness. And your interests may be parallel, but it's not going to be— you can never have zero self-interest.

That makes sense.

Sure.

Yeah. I've got a business to run.

Right, exactly. You've got things that— or whatever, you know, I've got a reputation to protect even, you know. So there are times when I can't be zero self-interest.

And let's be clear, this plays out, this, but not just in issues of whether I'm self, you know, selfish and worried about my own business, but also simply paying attention. Am I looking at you in the eye or am I off in my head thinking about what I'm going to answer to your next question? Am I really paying attention and asking questions genuinely? That translates into low self-orientation. That translates into higher levels of trustworthiness. So, George, on a very personal level, Yeah.

And so the important thing is, is really don't look at this equation and say, okay, in some ways it's like anything else. Numerators do good behavior, have good behaviors, and have those outweigh the more negative behaviors in the denominator because the denominator brings everything down.

So would credibility be things like— and again, I'm just coming back to this because this is what I told you before, just real time, like, you know, where you went to school. You went to Harvard. Okay, that raises the credibility. Let's just be real.

Let's go through those quickly. Credibility, basically, are you smart? Are you good at what you do? Yeah.

I actually say to actually— Go ahead.

Expertise.

I actually think, yeah. Go ahead, Robert. I go with what I call the 3 Cs that really mark one's, what makes you credible.

Yep.

And the first is competence or the perception of competence. And what may grant you that, you know, some of it is the initials after your name or the certifications. What do we call the person who finishes last in their medical school class?

Doctor.

Exactly. So the perception of competence often comes from credential.

Sure.

It often comes from experience. Oh, you went there. You used to work for that company. You are, you know, you know people who I know who I think are credible and they've endorsed you. So in some ways, that's what that— the first C is competence. The second of them is confidence in oneself because you can have a lot of people who have great competence, but they don't have a lot of confidence and therefore they don't come across as credible. And the third dimension, the third C is communication. So it's the what you know and what your expertise is and what you're good at. That's the competence plus the ability to bring that forward and actually doing it in the what you say and how you come across. So that's credibility.

That makes a lot of sense. So I can think around competence. Where did I go to school? How many years have I done this? Do I have initials or certifications behind my name?

Part of that.

That I have a license of some sort that says that I have passed X number. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Confidence, like just basically how I, how I'm maybe carrying myself about whether or not I can do this. And maybe even confidence has come from I've done this so many other times, right? So it's like to your doctor example, I've got a neurosurgeon, somebody has done their 1,000th brain surgery, developed some level of confidence. Okay. Not and competence of saying, yeah, I've experienced this before. I do have to ask, how does communication then differ from the second part of the equation, which is reliability?

Ah, good, good question. Charlie, you want to handle the difference between that C and R? Go ahead.

Yeah, and let's accelerate a little so we get all 4 covered. I know you got limited time here. The reliability component really is track record, dependable. I'm done before I meet my promises. I do what I told you I would do. I do it on time. It's the easiest one to do. Just make a lot of promises and keep them. Increases your perception of reliability.

One of the big insurers has their slogan, "Promises made, promises kept," right? Yeah.

Okay.

There you go.

And by the way, those first two, the credible and the Rye, both those components are subject to very familiar business manipulations. We can collect data on them. Track records. You can get, you know, all kinds of statistics and keep track of them. And, you know, the phrase, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Neither of us believe in that. There's lots of ways you can manage without measuring, but that's a very common belief and very commonly practiced. So most people in the professional services, and I think especially in financial, put a lot of weight on the C and the R components, the credible and the reliable. After all, that's what we spend most of our time doing, is staying up to speed on all the stuff. You can't be brain dead and be a financial planner or insurance agent. You got to have a certain amount of intelligence, and we're used to conveying that and purveying it. Unfortunately, that's not where most of the action is. It's in the other two factors, which I'll do the third one in the numerator, the intimacy thing. People have a hard time with that word. All we mean by it is kind of emotional safety. Do I feel safe sharing this information with this person? This is the kind of person, you know, maybe would I want to have a beer with? But more importantly, am I going to open up and actually share with them? If a financial planner asks me, you know, if they've got a CFP, that's good. If they understand risk management, that's good. If they got a lot of clients, that's good. But if a financial planner asks me, What do you do with your money? What's important to you? What's with your family? That's a question that gets more into that intimate interpersonal thing. And an advisor who asks that question is showing, demonstrating, we can talk about this. In fact, this is important to you. And if they convey that sense of ease, intimacy, safety, security to the client, the client opens up. That's where that intimacy component comes in. So much more. And that, by the way, is not particularly easily put down in statistics and metrics and so forth. That's much harder to measure, but it's, you know, we all know how real it is. It's like, do I, do I want to talk to this person? Do I want to let them into my family secrets and stuff, tell them about my medical and health issues? Well, you know, they may be super competent, but if, if you don't have that confidence in them, there is a certain amount you're not going to trust with that $20 million you mentioned. No way.

And here, what Charlie talks about there, I think there's an important distinction to be made here. What we are talking about and the difference in intimacy is we are talking about it's going to get personal. Yeah, but it doesn't necessarily have to be private. Private is private, and the trustor makes a decision very consciously what they are comfortable revealing about themselves. So where we start with our intimacy is it's— yes, it's personal first. Of and for and about the person, their wishes, their aspirations, their goals. And if they want to add that background that many people would find private, the reason this is a goal is because I had a lousy second marriage, or I didn't do right by my, my kids in that marriage, or something like that. That's for them to say. So you— there's an important element here in being able to get to the personal Make people feel comfortable, not try to suck them into anything, not try to fool them into it, but make them feel sufficiently and honestly at ease that they will tell you a lot more. And by doing that, it changes the conversation away from the statistical, all the credibility, reliability stuff, Lee tables, all those kinds of things, why one financial advisor's results are better than the other, all that sort of stuff. Easily differentiable. But I want to quote a line from the great Charlie Greene, from who I learned, "Until they know that you care, they don't care what you know." That's so good.

And of course, that didn't originate with me. It's very true. And there's a sequencing in that statement that Rob just quoted there. Until they know that you care, they don't care what you know. First they have to feel that you care, then they will listen to what you know. Now, let's be clear, as you pointed out earlier, the credentials will get you in the door, it'll get you a meeting. All the letters after your name, the school you went to, etc., that's sufficient for people to say, yeah, we want to talk to that person, that's cool. But they don't open up and do the stuff that Rob just talked about until they get that sense from you that, oh, This person may actually sort of give a damn. It seems like they're actually paying attention. Maybe they really kind of care. Maybe I will talk to them a little more.

What a concept.

What a concept. Do you mind if I then ask a question around that?

Sure.

Then if that holds true, why would the formula not start with intimacy in the numerator?

Good question. Because, uh, It's not alphabetical because I think if you want to actually, in some ways you need the credibility, in some ways it's a license. It's Jack's for openers. Oh, that's good. And that's fundamentally it. It's one is, you know, you show up for the first, you know, take the sequence that all your insurance folks know. First thing you got to do is show up. And what's the, you know, the old joke, what's the purpose of a meeting? To get another meeting. And so there's a progression here.

That makes sense.

Imagine walking in, if you would, to a client or a prospect, say, hi, my name is Rob. You don't know me, but I'm your trusted advisor from now on because I'm really gonna— you know, I mean, you, you see that there's an evolution there, right?

That makes sense. Yeah.

All right, so just to round that out then, those three factors, C, R, and I in the numerator and the S that we talked about in the denominator self-orientation goes the other way. High self-orientation reduces your trustworthiness. Low self-orientation increases it. So that denominator factor, the ability to really pay attention and hone in on genuinely what you're hearing from the other person, as opposed to executing your pre-planned checklist, which is very impersonal, that factors in as well. And if I'm not— let me, let me share with— we did a little statistical analysis We put together an online self-assessment version of the Trust Equation so people could take it. Over half a million people have taken it. When we got to 70,000, I think it was, we did an analysis. We said, that's enough people. Let's see what patterns there are here. And I'll share 3 headlines with you. Number 1, women score better than men, which by the way is no surprise to most men. Most men would agree with that. But it's objectively true. Secondly, Our scores get better with age, which I think makes sense because certainly we get more experience as we get older. It's not guaranteed that you get wiser, but there's a correlation there. You know, all cultures have some sort of level of respect for their elders, so enough to say that makes sense. But the biggest one of all, we did a regression analysis, um, and to ask which is the most powerful of the 4 factors. And a little bit surprise to us, but the number one factor by small margin was intimacy. That one, if you equally weight all four of those variables, that one had the most power and the most impact. Now, I emphasize that because that's exactly the opposite of what most people in financially related professional services tend to believe. It's like, ah, that's all soft skills. No, it's a power skill. It's the most important skill. And, you know, we found ways in which that makes a ton of sense. It's what closes the sale. It's what makes people take your advice. And so it makes people say, let's move on to something else, or you don't have to fill out all those checkboxes. Let's just do this. It's the intimacy thing.

It almost is. Robert, earlier you said, you know, hey, look, the degree has been nice to get me in the room, but it— or get us in the room. It doesn't necessarily keep us in the room. It almost feels like what you're saying is The credibility, the reliability, doing what you say you're going to do, those sort of things get you a seat at the table. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to, in the context of what we're talking about, make the sale, keep the customer, deliver on the promise, all that sort of thing.

You nailed it. That's exactly right. Because one of the little games you could play is if you were walking down the streets in Atlanta or in the financial district of some you know, medium to large city and say, you know, I need a good antitrust lawyer. Let's just for the moment, business cards would descend upon you and everybody would have a recommendation. But fundamentally, what's the differentiator? Yeah, we can find a lot of really talented insurance agents. But why is your— why are the great ones favored? It's not because they know more insurance. Right. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know, in fact, one of the biggest mistakes people make, and this is across all professions, is they, they get invited to a meeting, you know, once you show up and tell us about yourself, and they show up and they got there because of their credentials or the reputation of their website or a referral, whatever, and they get there and they start answering the wrong question, which is who we are and how we work. That's not what people want to know. Once you're in the room and they're looking at you in your eyeballs They want to know, who is this person? Can I get along with this guy? Is this going to work? They don't want to hear you rehearse your resume. That's what got you in the door. So our advice is always put the resume and the deck down and say, listen, here's what little we know about you. Here's what we're fascinated to hear about. Let's talk. What do you think about this subject? And get them talking. And when they're talking and you're nodding your head and paying attention and reformulating your agenda based on what you're hearing, That's when the trust gets built. That's when the sale gets made.

And it's not just paraphrasing or, oh, we're always taught to, you know, listen carefully and then paraphrase. So what you're really saying is X and Y. It's not that. There's a genuine nature to this. There's a sincerity to this that's required. You know, in fact, we used to say about that last dimension, you know, so much of that numerator is the most important thing in the world is sincerity. If you can fake that, you got it made. And just by definition, you can't fake sincerity. People see through that. And if the only people, the only exceptions to that really are individuals who are sufficiently capable in, of kind of either twisting reality or influencing people on a different basis than simply being the authentic self. And that's what we're looking for.

Yeah, Bernie Madoff was very successful, but And he was—

the guy was a sociopath, fundamentally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's very good at mimicking this stuff.

Exactly. So, yeah, I think, you know, think of who got screwed by Bernie Madoff. There's a lot of his friends and people, you know, companions in some ways, um, you know. So that's, that's it. On the other hand, the other good news on this one is when you have this capability, it's what makes the difference for people, you know, when you— that they, they do believe in you and they do— they, they— you are a responsible human being. They can— they know that people can sniff out, or, you know, generally they can sniff something out like this, except for the unusual ones.

So my biggest question that I then have on, on, on that part of it is I feel like that the credibility and reliability aspect of it, you know, if I'm kind of summarizing, it's like, okay, look, I've got competence because I've done this a number of times. I can, I can speak to that. I've met with people in a similar situation. I have had X number of clients over the years, whatever that may be, right? You've got that. You carry your— you've got the credentials, maybe potentially in some, in some respects. Uh, I say that I'm going to follow up from this conversation today with an email, and I follow up today with an email. I say that I'm going to call them next Monday, I call them next Monday. You do what you say you're going to do, and maybe even in some cases you under-promise and you over-deliver in whatever capacity that is.

Quick, quick sideline on that: if you under-promise and over-deliver, you're lying twice. You're not helping your trustworthiness and your credibility, you're destroying it. If you under-promise, you were intentionally saying that you're going to do something that you intend not to do.

It's a sandbag.

Do exactly what you said you're going to do, right?

You can— now, which says the importance of language here. If you can say, look, and I can try to get it to you earlier than that, but no later than, I promise. That's legitimate.

Okay.

It's not just saying I'll get it to you Wednesday and showing up by Tuesday and saying, see, see how great I am.

Okay, fair. No, that's good. I appreciate the, I appreciate the, the challenge on that. That's good. All right. So what one thing that I'm, I think I'm trying to think through is if I'm listening to this, uh, podcast, I could think to myself, I think I do a pretty good job with intimacy, right? Somebody could be thinking that and they say, I think I'll do a pretty good job. Everybody else does a bad job.

Yeah, right.

And so what I guess I'm getting at is, how do you, how do you self-assess in a way to, you know, to where, like, we're not— you're not a narcissist, you're actually really thinking about, like, I want to get better. I, I'm thinking to myself for this, even for me and, and, and my businesses. How would I want to, to do that? I think I do a pretty good job, but there's so many levels that I know that I could do, do a much better job. But I'm not so sure I could even see myself unless I recorded things and then handed over to somebody who I trust their opinion. That's another thing, by the way. It's like, who do I even trust their opinion of it, you know?

Got it.

So then I could say, hey, I send it to you guys. You guys have had Tremendous experience. And I'd say, okay, you know, let's just say as an example, after this, I could say, I would like your feedback on how I did on this podcast.

Right.

Okay. And then you said, well, okay, this was good. This was not so good. Okay. I appreciate that. Right. Because versus somebody else asked for their feedback, it's like it doesn't really matter what their feedback is or something. You know, you get what I'm getting at there, Charlie?

Well, I mean, the quick answer is you can— anybody listening to this can take that self-assessment quiz that I just mentioned. If you— at the risk of self-promotion, if you go to trustedadvisor.com and look at the upper right corner, you can click and take a free version of that self-assessment. 5 minutes and you get an instant feedback, and it'll tell you not only your score but where your strengths and weaknesses are and so forth. But more substantively, um, yeah, how do you— how do you get better at that? I, I think a lot of it is, uh, um, ask yourself, do you go in with a set agenda? Are you willing to toss that agenda completely depending on what comes out in the meeting? Because if you're not, you're not paying attention. You're not really being, you know, focused on what they're saying. Another one is, are you ever willing in principle to recommend a competitor? Because if you're not, you're implicitly saying, I'm better than everybody at everything, which is a complete lie on the face of it. Nobody believes that. Don't say that. Another one is long-term versus short-term. Transactionalism is the death of trust. If you find yourself screening out all kinds of clients and who cares what happens with them because you want to get this deal, you shouldn't get this deal because you're just the transactor. People focus on, you know, if you're willing to give advice even at the cost of losing a job, that's impressive to people. They say, wow, you could have pushed on that, but you didn't. Guess who I'm going to come back to when I really need what it is that you do? So there's a couple. Rob, you can add to that, I'm sure.

Yeah, the only thing I would add, I mean, Charlie's description is stellar, really. The only other thing I can suggest sometimes, it's a very personal basis, get yourself a truth teller. Make sure that you know somebody who said, you know, that probably wasn't your best performance. And you will be able to hear what they are saying. I do not recommend doing this with spouses and significant others. They got a long list already, perhaps, but somebody who's a truth teller for you to say, look, how could I? And it's even how you make the question because they don't want to hurt me. They don't want to— they may like you and care about you and don't want to hurt your feelings. But how do I make this better is a different question than how did I do?

Yeah.

And so if you deal more in the relative than the absolute, you have a better shot of getting some really unvarnished feedback. Because, you know, it's like, how many times have you been to a restaurant and, you know, the burger was a little overcooked and it was a little— and the cold, you know, the cold drink wasn't quite cold enough, or whatever it is. And the server comes by at the end of the meal and says, how was everything? How often do you really let them know? More often than not, it's, eh, it was fine. You know, or something. You don't go into this long explanation. What you're looking for is the truth teller here to say, you know, not just in that example, but and say, hey, look, when you present, you stepped on my words, you didn't listen enough, or you went, you went for the close before you had it fully opened, or try doing this instead of that. And so you're asking really people for constructive feedback. How do I make this better?

That's good. That really lands with me, relative as opposed to absolute. I think, I think that that makes sense. And even just asking a better question, how did I do? Right. And so I was thinking to myself, is, is somebody listening to this? They could say, okay, if I'm in a, if I'm in a sales appointment or I'm in an appointment with a customer that I'm trying to land, either, either compliantly record it or have someone in the room who you trust their opinion and then asking the question, How could I have made that better? Because I think the tendency is to judge how we did based on whether or not we got the customer or not.

Right.

So you could say, well, I got the customer, so I did good enough. Well, maybe not so much. There's still areas of opportunity for you to be able to get better in that particular case.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, I spent 2 days in Nashville with the Forrester folks and You know, a lot of people talk about this net promoter score stuff, which is really a way, you know, it's, it's not just you did a good job, you got to be up there. And if there's not reference in your industry in particular, if there's not referenceability, you know, you know, you know, there's a, there you got a problem. Yeah, you're getting a lot of 6s and 7s. That's not going to move the needle. You know, it's the 9s and 10s. It's, you know, it's raving fans, so to speak, and say, hey, this is your guy.

Yeah, that's great, guys. This has been, uh, fantastic. I have learned so much. I know, uh, Charlie, you, uh, teased it just a minute ago, but Robert, if people want to connect with both of you, how would they go about doing that? And then where would you guys point them to as far as your website information, etc., if they want to take the assessment and get in touch with you?

Charlie, you got trusted— Charlie is trustedadvisor.com and easily findable there. Um, I have something called centerforleading.com, but you know, we're both so easily Googleable and contactable. LinkedIn, you know, ring me up. There are no secrets in this world. We're easy to find.

Yeah, that's very true. Well, I really have enjoyed the conversation, and I enjoyed reading your book. I'll make sure that we put in a link for people to be able to purchase your book, The Trusted Advisor.

That's great. Great. That's great.

Thank you.

All right, guys. Appreciate you. Hope to have you back on in the future.

Thank you.

Anytime. You bet. You take care of yourself. See you.

Okay. Enjoyed that conversation with both of those gentlemen. You know, there's I always try to take away 1, 2, or 3 things. Certainly, we spent a lot of time around the trust equation or trustworthiness equation. And I do like to try to pull things into some sort of formula, whether it's a framework, concept, et cetera. I don't know, it feels like I can kind of get my hands around it versus if those things were just kind of in a we talked about, but what we're not necessarily in a formula. So I think for me personally, it's made me think through, okay, the credibility factors. So what are the specific things we can do? Because it's part of the equation. What are the specific things I can do, we can do to be able to show credibility? Some of it comes through just period of time, um, uh, the competence, uh, the, you know, do we have Do you have your MBA as an example? What other— CHFC, CLU, whatever, uh, other things that you may have that shows some competence. I think also confidence in communication. How well are you able to communicate? And I do think that communication is a skill. And if it's a skill, it can be learned, it can be cultivated, it can be developed. I think around the, uh, reliability. There is just do what you say that you're going to do. And I thought Charlie did a really nice job of kind of sharing around, hey, if you, you know, under-promise and over-deliver, you're lying twice. I'd never heard that before, and that really landed with me personally. And then I would think the last one is around intimacy, and we spent quite a long time there just talking through what are the things that you can actually do to be able to develop the intimacy in, um, you know, the conversations. And even though we were kind of fixated on the business or the advisor to a prospect, to a client, to a customer, I do think it almost in a way applies a little bit to, uh, your team. Like if you're recruiting a team member as well to come on board. And, uh, it's actually one thing I wish I'd asked those guys is is like this equation could actually apply over to people who are deciding to come and work for you and your organization. So yeah, I really enjoyed that conversation with those guys. Go to trustedadvisor.com. You can search and connect with them on LinkedIn and be sure to take the— take their assessment and get an idea of where you are, what your score is. And so that you can begin to improve.

All right, everyone.

So next episode, Lead Well. You know, whenever I think around trust, it really does— and trust equation— it really does remind me of our podcast partners and sponsors, Coach B Consulting, Autopilot Recruiting, and Club Capital. They have the credibility, they've got the competency, of knowing what to do and how they can best serve you. If you want somebody that's got the credibility, the reliability, and the intimacy that's going to get to know you and your business to help you to bring on A-players, reach out to Autopilot Recruiting. And now they have a concierge onboarding service to help you whenever you finally have made that offer. And now how do I get them on, on board, and how do I make that a seamless experience for my new team member? Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. I think intuitively we all know that we want to grow and develop not only ourselves but our team members. And so what's the plan to do that? You know, training and investment for me has been the one of the best investments that I've ever made in anything. And putting in the money into my team and developing my team is another way to do that. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Look, David has had tremendous experience. And there's not oftentimes, like, if you think about Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, I'm not comparing David to those guys, but you want to be able to see what they're doing in real time. Not just, hey, you should do this, but like, what are they actually doing to have success? They give you a behind-the-scenes look twice a week, every single week. And then they have an agency-only call so you can be around just your peers. You want to develop your team members, but also you want to develop yourself, this is the perfect place in the mastermind, the group, the curated to help you do just that. Go to coachpconsulting.com. I've told my story so many times around financials and not knowing what the heck I was doing regarding financials. Yes, I got a finance major in college. I should know exactly how to read basic financial statements. But I didn't. However, if you are in that case, in that situation, or if you're just wanting to go to the next level, go to club.capital. They're going to be able to sit with you. I say it often, mindset, skillset, toolset. You know, what are the tools I need to be able to make better decisions? But actually, how do I read these things? What do these numbers mean? How do I put the numbers in perspective? I see $5,000 in marketing. Is that good? Is that bad? Is that How do I even look at that? What's the ROI of that? What, you know, what should I be spending in relative to my revenue numbers? And what are other people making this investment? You know, what does that look like on a monthly basis, annual basis? How do I forecast ahead of time so that I could actually bring home more money? I was literally just today talking to a business owner and they were like sharing, you know, the business has really grown, but my personal income hasn't. Grown because they didn't put a plan in place. They didn't actually forecast that as revenue was going to go up, so were they going to be able to take home more money. Club Capital can help you with all of those decisions. Go to club.capital. All right everyone, till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting and advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.