Give to Grow with Mo Bunnell

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Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. My name is Anne. In today's episode, Bjork is sitting down with Mo Bunnell, who just released a new book called Give to Grow. They'll kick things off by discussing how Mo went from crunching numbers as an actuary to to diving headfirst into entrepreneurship. Along the way, he discovered the magic of reciprocity in fostering meaningful relationships and how relationships can be key ingredients for success. He also shares practical tips for making clear, trustworthy offers that can open doors to high value connections. Even if you're just starting from scratch. Whether you have a long list of contacts or you're just starting out, Mo's advice on tracking opportunities and nurturing relationships will inspire you to take proactive steps toward collaboration and growth. If you enjoy this episode, we really appreciate it. If you would leave a review anywhere you listen to podcasts or share the episode with your community. And now, without further ado, I'll let Bjork take it away.

Mo, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Bjork. I'm excited. Like, we've known each other for a long time and, like, we've got this cool collaboration. We're going to add a lot of value. I can't wait.

Yeah, long time coming. So you. We know each other through. It's one of those rare connections where we've had multiple conversations that haven't been recorded or digital. It's like you're one of the weird, like, real life in person friendships that I have in the business world. But now we're actually going to record it. We're going to document some of these conversations. What I love about you and just to build you up a little bit, you and your story is you have followed this path of entrepreneurship where you've in the positions you've been in, you've approached them creatively and looked for opportunities. And if I remember right from your story of entrepreneurship, the door opened because of when you were at a W2 job, you started to think creatively around, like, how can I add value here? How can I, you know, make the work that I'm doing more impactful? You kind of created a little bit of a system or a playbook, and that grew into a consultancy where now you're like, consulting the smartest consultants in the world. It's really this incredible thing, but it all started with your work within a company. And I think that sometimes what we think about is like, I want to get out of my job, I want to become an entrepreneur. But so often it starts with. And I think of a conversation I had with John Acuff, another author, and he talked about how it starts with, like, doing that within where you are within your job and thinking like an entrepreneur within your current position. Can you give us a little kind of elevator pitch of like, what your journey has been like into entrepreneurship? And then we're going to be talking about this idea of relationships and why those are so important in business.

Well, any shout out to John. He's a good friend too. And like, like, good vibes happen. When you just mentioned if you just say the words John Acuff, you have life, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

It's so true. Yeah. So I was sort of an accidental entrepreneur in the sense that I build a thing for me that would be helpful to me. Turned out other people just around me wanted the thing And I realized, oh, this could be something I could charge for and create a business out of. But I had no idea that was the beginning. The metamorphosis or the change in me was I had been an actuary, I think you remember that we like bond on the. We, you and I bond on numbers and logic font and all that. And I took all the exams to be an actuary. It's like took 24 exams back in the 80s and 90s, like a 35 pass rate on these things. So like two thirds of the people are failing and it took 6, 8, 10 years to get through. All because it was so hard. Well, you almost can't do anything else but study and try to keep your marriage together. Which I was able to pass the exams and keep my marriage together. So success.

Yeah.

When I, when that, when that system spit me out on the other side, the very month I passed the last exam to be a fellow Society of Actuaries, my firm moved me to a relationship development role. Well, I'm like 29 or 30 years old. I'm calling on people that are 50, 60, 65, they've got 20, 30 years experience on me. I can't now lead with expertise and content because my little one, one inch wide, mile deep actuarial expertise doesn't work when I'm calling on chief human resource officers at Fortune 50 companies, which is who I was calling. So my only real move was generosity, which is how can I learn what they're, how can I learn their priorities? How can I connect them with people internally at my big multinational consultancy? How can I work with the internal folks to figure out what, what they could give to these high level people so that they win as well and can start relationships and new topics off. And basically through that developed a science based system based on peer reviewed science that I just like hammered out in Word documents that I would find out experimenting on myself. That's what turned into a playbook that at one point had a big huge percentage of the global revenue of the firm running through the teams that I was able to lead with hundreds of consultants and people underneath and that people started asking like, gosh, how are you doing it? And it was through that I sort of fell in love with not just relationship development, but teaching other people relationship development. And that's when I got the guts to, to leave and start my own thing. And that was, gosh, It'll be almost 20 years ago.

Yeah. So you went through this process of getting these really specific skills. You acquired those skills, you, you verified that through these tests and then you were put in a position where, you know, maybe it was valuable to have the, some of those skills, but really it was like you almost had to develop a new skill set. Is that right? Like in that, in, in that new relationship development position.

Yeah.

Was that hard to let go of what felt like, hey, I've done all this work to get here and now I'm kind of having to like re. Invent myself.

It all came down to one moment. Bjork. I was so I had been leading these big healthcare consulting projects with an actuarial bent to them. You know, imagine the largest companies on the planet could spend at that time easily a billion dollars on their health and welfare benefits. Well, they're hiring consultants and actuaries to figure out how should they optimize that. And it's ridiculously complex. And, and I'd been doing things like that. So to get ready for this new role, I wanted to be ahead of the game. So I handed off all my projects to my peers in that, in that, in the healthcare consulting practice. They were awesome and cheering me on to take on this new challenge. Moved offices over the weekend and got in early that Monday morning. And it was like the only time I remember in my life. Like I don't have emails, I don't have things to do, like I don't even know what I'm doing. And my boss, my boss walked in, I got there early and I did not do my due diligence. Even though we worked on this for a year. I made the transition thinking he would hand me sort of a playbook.

Yeah.

To learn this. Like if you can imagine an actuary trying to pass these 24 exams, you're taking a couple exams every six months. Well, you click the button on which one you're going to take, you get all these materials delivered. It's like a foot. Memorize it and every six months you take a test. I thought, I thought he would give me the playbook. And there was no playbook. He said, he just sort of chuckled what I asked for and said, well, treat the client right, you'll do great. You know, you've got a good man. Which thank God I did. But it was then through my, my, my brain was used to these six month learning cycles to pass the exams. So for some reason I put the pressure on myself. I don't think my firm did this, but I put pressure on myself to become great at relationship development in six months because those are the cycles of learning I was in. And instead of taking 30 years, like it usually takes. So it was through that pain and pressure that, that, that, that pushed me to nights and weekends. Build the system out or start it and then get better, better, better and better. And so that paid off really well for me long term. I don't know quite how I made it through, you know, that time period, but it worked.

So you had this position. The position didn't have any like documentation around, like, hey, here's the process you should follow when you development. So you took that on, you start to document it. This is a really specific question. Were you able to take that with you? And did you have to negotiate that? Like you had built this thing within the context of the company? Did you have to like negotiate being able to like own the IP of that? What did that look like?

No, because I didn't res. I was like anecdotally teaching it to people, but it wasn't like there were.

It wasn't like, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

So. So if you can imagine me starting out at like a Starbucks that I was like worried about a meeting the next week. I remember this specifically. The first time I started writing stuff down is I had this super high stakes meeting. I had to make it go well, I'll skip over the story, but I had one shot and it was very clear. I had one shot. And so I wrote down, I started digging into the science of reciprocity and how do you give things away? How do you, how do you size it, how do you communicate it, how do you offer it? And it was some of that really early on research that ended up being like a three page word document that I hammered out at a Starbucks that turned a meeting that when it actually happened started with literally the chr at this huge company said, I don't know how you got this meeting. Long story behind that, but I don't need you. I forgot every advice. I've been at this for 30 years. I've got every advisor I need. And by having a list of gifts to give her, she basically said, get out. I said, don't you want to see? I worked for like 20 hours coming up with things that we can offer you to invest in your success. Don't you at least want to see the first one? And she said, well, what is it? And York, she loved it. And then I. And she loved the second one, she loved the third one. Like I had like 11 offers that each were. And remember this is like 25 years ago. Like in total it was probably $300,000 of free work or something, it'd be worth a lot more. But I'd gone to all of our practice leaders and found ways that they would be willing to offer her success and ended up she liked like 10 out of 11 ideas or whatever. I left that meeting with like 10 follow ups and it started with get out. And that's why I drove home that day and I thought, aha, Generosity is the way to go. And then of course, 20 years later, we've trained 50,000 people. And that was sort of the beginning of when I realized giving is the way. And thus the title of the new book, Gift to Grow and all the things we'll talk about today.

That's awesome. And one of the things that I love about it, and we kind of talked about this a little bit before, is this idea of it's grounded in relationships. And we, I think the connection here into our world is we've talked a lot about how as creators, publishers, like one of the focuses that a lot of people have is, hey, I want to figure out how to get more traffic to my website. And if I get more traffic to my website, that means that I'll be able to earn more from ads. And that is a system that works until it doesn't. And a lot of people have felt that recently, where there's a Google algorithm update or a Pinterest update, and suddenly you have this traffic and it goes away. So does that mean that you can't create online, that you can't publish online, that you can't be a content creator? No, it just means that you have to approach things differently. And one of the things that we're thinking a lot about and we're talking a lot about is the importance of connecting with brands, with companies, and also the importance of figuring out the process of sales. But oftentimes I think when people think about sales, what they think about is like, it's all of the things that people don't like about sales, which is like pitching. It's trying to convince somebody to buy a thing. It's the, the extreme of like you need to buy a used car. And what does that process feel like? You feel pressured? I feel like it's maybe manipulative. But what I love about what you teach as it relates to relationships, sales, you know, the, the kind of core business considerations is like what it business at its best, sales at its best, relationship development at its best, is you giving. Like it's. And it's in the title of your book, give to Grow. It's you thinking about and trying to find ways to help somebody else. And I love that. And it's one of the things that I've tried to think about as I've started to have some of these calls with brands, as I've taken those on more, is like, approaching those from the perspective of, like, how can I help? Like, what is it that you're after? What, what is it that we can do? But there is a system that you have and that you can follow within that. And I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now. And refining is like, okay, I know the spirit of what I'm trying to do, which is like, help brands be successful. I think we can do that. But how do I as a salesperson now for Pinch of Yam, how do I create a system around that? And you talk about the difference between winning the work and doing the work. Can you talk about what the, the. What are those two things and how are those different? Because they maybe sound a little similar, but they're actually very different.

Yeah, massively different. You just nailed it. And just to put a headline on this, this topic, we're gonna, we're gonna give your audience exactly how to do this stuff and do it well and do in a way that they don't, like a weirdo and they have to take a shower afterwards. Like, if you do this the right way, it feels great. You can literally talk about what you're doing to the other side and say, I'm giving in these re for these reasons. And it feels awesome. And I think that that hints at the idea that almost everything that's taught about sales is wrong. It's that used car sale thing that you were talking about. It feels awful. It feels like it's just not how it has to be. So to your answer your question, doing the work versus winning the work, there's a facing set of pages in the book Give to Grow where there's the. And I know you saw it. It's the. It's the little table and it says these are the things that are true for doing the work. The definition of that is after you've got the. Yes. So after you've got the mandate, the. The. The brand has come to you, they've signed the contracts. You're going to do X, Y and Z. The mindset and moves that you need to deliver on that contract or even get the website humming in the way you want to anyway, that's doing of the work stuff. And that is not just different than the winning of the work stuff. It's the exact opposites. The mindsets you need are opposites and the moves you need to make are opposites. A couple examples. Do you want me to go a little deeper?

That'd be great.

Yeah. So a couple examples. One is when we're doing the work, we should expect that brand ambassador or that agency or whoever we're working on, they're going to respond 100% of the time because they, they got to get the files ready, you got to get the copyright, you know, whatever you're doing. Winning of the work. We should expect people to answer 1 out of 10 times. We should think 10x not one actually we should say I'm going to try to add value to this person. I'm deepening the relationship 10 times over the next x many months and I'm just hoping one of these offers of helpfulness will six stick. So just our expectations have to be totally different. Another example is the length of emails. I know this is ridiculously simple, but emails should be long and have everything in one place when you're doing the work. These are the seven things I need before we can get the add up. When winning the work, our rule of thumb is 50 words or less. Why is that? That's because that's one screen on an email platform or client. On your iPhone.

Yeah. That's great.

So you would like. Yeah.

Well, even as you're talking about it, I think of my interactions with some brands and I and I see myself doing the work communication in winning the work and what happens a lot of times and I would be interested if this is the reason why is like we might not get a response because it feels like I probably put too much in there.

Yeah.

And. And it needs to be quick and fluid. Whereas opposed, you know, opposed to that like winning the works or doing the work suddenly it's like you need to get for in our case it's like you need to figure out what the deliverables are going to be. You need to communicate to Instagram reels and here's how long they're going to be and here's the basic premise for it. Like suddenly your expertise has to be in communicating information clearly, concisely still, but kind of all in one package. Whereas opposed to winning the work would be like hey, let's just keep this conversation going. The purpose is to like get a response as opposed to communicate all the things I need to communicate. Does that feel accurate?

You nailed it. You nailed it. If we had to get it down to one word for each of the Columns. Doing the work drives certainty. Certainty being the key word.

Winning the trust is the importance of certainty. Like, certainty equals trust. Like, and you were saying winning the work is possibility.

So the. And what's underneath that is if we go step farther down the road is when we're driving possibility. What we need is momentum. Yeah, we have no momentum like that. This particular. Because literally our definition is winning the work. We haven't won it yet. We have no momentum. So we want to choose our very best offer, make it very concisely, and have our call to action be the last sentence. You know, hey, I'm headed up to Minneapolis to work with another brand sometimes in October, little flexible on dates. Can we get together and talk about some of your priorities and see if I can find a way to be helpful? What do you think? Question mark done. But what we don't want to do is like, hey, I got this idea and that idea and do you want to join this webinar we're having and we could come up for. I could come up to Minneapolis and hey, here's a thought piece on advertising in the new world order after Google rejiggered their algorithm and like, yeah, as soon as we have even more than one decision that drives pausing, not responding. I'll handle this next week. Next week never comes. Like, you're just not the point of winning the work emails. I know we're being really specific here, but it's just to drive momentum. And so we want one thing. We want to choose our best thing and we might want to make it really easy to respond.

What else helps drive momentum? What are the other things? Along with, like, we talk about email as a specific thing, but how else can you keep momentum going?

Yeah, so generally, if somebody is not responding, then either our value that we're proposing isn't high enough or they don't trust the value. Like, somebody might be offering you 500 hours of free prototyping and coding, but if it comes in a cold email from, you know, another country, like, like, you're like, oh, this is spam, you know, so you need value and they need to trust the value. Real simple. So around momentum, we want to do a couple of things we want. And this is, there's a bunch of this in the four gifts section of the book that the gifts we can give our clients, we want to prioritize the organizations that we can do the most business with and help the most. In other words, we want to think of very high value things that we can offer them so that they Want to get in the room with us in general, live sessions are going to have a lot more and in person is even is going to have a lot more momentum building than on Zoom, which is going to be a lot more than say on email. Like to have a half day workshop on what other brands are doing on our website and beyond to really drive traction, whatever. And then we want to make those offers in as trustworthy way as possible. So finding a referral in from somebody they trust that also knows us might be worth waiting a month in a cold email if we can find that way in. So that little three step process is getting really clear on who are we for, what can we offer and how can we make that offer in a real trustable, trustworthy way. And just like treating that like a project, like you manage, that's a winning of the work project. If you had 10 organizations and you're trying to find out those three things, you can manage that like a project and then, then it becomes something that's like random ideas popping in your head while you're on a run versus no, I'm going to drive growth and it's going to be reliable and here's how I'm going to do it.

Yeah. And let's go one step before that. So we talked a little bit about what it looks like to communicate with a client. Like in our case, a brand might reach out. I can imagine really clearly what winning the work might look like in that situation. It's us following up. It's probably timely, like we follow up quickly. For me it's as often as possible I'm trying to get on a call, you know, if it's local. We just did this yesterday. We did like a tour of a factory and like met with somebody on site, which was great to your point. So much better than, you know, getting on a Zoom call. But if they're not local, trying to get on a call as quickly as possible asking those questions, how can we help? Like what does success look like for you? But let's go to the step before that. Like what, what if you don't have a connection? What if it's not somebody reaching out? Like is that still in the bucket of winning the work where you're kind of doing what I would consider to be the hard part of sales, which is like trying to get that initial connection. That initial, yes, that initial response. You know, you talked about 1 out of 10 of those emails are going to get a response. But how do you even like cultivate that pool of like really early connections, contacts, leads. It's probably in, it's probably industry dependent but do you have any advice?

Oh, I do. This is fun. Because we're dork. You and I are like four wheeling off the main path. Like we're going, we're going into the deep stuff.

Great.

So one of the things that we actually didn't have room for in give to grow at one point the manuscript was 96,000 words and we had to get to 40. So only the best stuff could be in there and also the best stuff that's broadly applicable. So the idea of generating leads, it was on the cutting room floor. So what we did though is we knew a lot of people would want that so we created a, you know, trained 50,000 high end experts all over the world. Over 20 years we've developed the top 16 ways that people generate leads with value. How do you get the first meeting the very first time? And we created a extra download people can get for free to get that. But I can give you a quick overview now. And it augments the book, it aligns with it, all that stuff, it's just sort of like alongside the book. It's not in the book but you can download it right away anyway. The top 16 ways, some of the ways that, that we probably don't have time to go through all 16, but a couple, um. One way you can get in is to create a group of people trying to accomplish the same goals. That's called a value group. It's a method I think we invented. It was probably out there before but I'd never seen it in anywhere, didn't have a name for it so we had to invent it. But that is. Imagine if, imagine if you had a group of 12 people that were non competitive brands but, but that were in charge of expanding brand marketing, whatever call it. And you, you. If you had 12 people you might invite seven of your best advertisers and clients and invite five people that you've never met before but would love to work together. And three times a year you get on a 90 minute Zoom call and you share what's working. Well, what's everybody going to ask? The first time they get to the call they're like hey, how do you know Bjork? Oh man, we're having tons of success with Pinch of Young. Here's where. So you're, you've literally.

Yeah.

Are building in in included reference checks and you can pick who you include in the group. So that's like idea.

That's great. And no, that's great. One of the things I've thought about is like, what if we had it? We talked to publishers, we talked to creators. How do you grow your business? What if we had an adjacent podcast or community or group all around brands and companies? Like, how do you work with creators? How do you work with publishers? Because a lot of times I'm getting on these calls, we're meeting up in person, and these really successful companies are just starting to get into partnering with creators or influencers, and they're like, how does it work? And we're not super confident around it, and there's an opportunity there. But also, selfishly, it feels like then you are the connection point. You are the center point for so many of those people. And naturally what happens. You talk about this in the book, like, you have these relationships and you say relationships are the biggest predictor of success. And, but it takes effort and you have to be intentional about it. And I think some people would look at it and be like, oh, that feels like a lot of work. And it's like, well, it is. But the outcome of that could be pretty significant. Like, you could get a brand deal. You could have, you know, these recurring relationships over time. Yeah. Can you share maybe like one or two more that you think are kind of top of the list when you think through that list of 16?

Yeah. And, and I actually want to circle after that. Let's circle back because I have a, a thing that I'm going to do some YouTube videos on, but I haven't shared yet. I want to share with you. I think you'll love it. And it, it, it pinpoints the value of relationships. But let's circle back to that later. So a couple other examples you gave one. Another One of the 16 is interviewing others. Incredibly powerful. So whether it's a podcast or for a quote or for a thought piece, people love being interviewed. So be, you know, you got to have the goods behind it. You can'. This or else it'll backfire. But let's say starting, if starting up a podcast, just like you mentioned, gosh, you might be able to just do one episode a month. That's not a heavy lift. But that's 12 new people you get a, you get to meet per year. And like us, right? Like, you bond when you're on a podcast with somebody, you're creating content, you have a prep call before you record it, you get a follow up later. Like, you're fast friends when you invite people to podcast, even if you've never met them. Before, that's another one. A third is the multi millennia old method referrals which we've hit on before. That's Maybe going into LinkedIn, Facebook, other things and finding what are my, my points of connection between the people I know and the people I'd like to meet. Here's the way to do a referral. Most people think of them as the cheesy life insurance agent version where the person pins on you and says, hey.

I put it just happened to me. Yeah.

Oh, it's the word. Like I actually.

And I was like, no, I was like, sorry. I was like, I'll introduce you if I feel like there's an opportunity but I'm not going to like cold introduce you to somebody.

Yeah. We're not going to disclose who the company is, but I guarantee I know who it is because it happened to me. And I think they trained people. They literally slide a 3 by 5 card across a table. I put my food on the table for my kids.

Yes.

It's so ridiculous. The better way to do a referral though is just flush that we're not going to do that. It's to offer what we call a gift to get through the referring party to the person they're introducing to. Maybe it's a half day workshop, an analysis of what you see around their brand. Running some numbers, a project plan for how you do a certain thing really well. The idea is you go to the person that knows both parties and say, hey Joe, I see you know Janine, CMO over at XYZ Corp. Gosh, I think I could help her a lot because we've really specialized in her industry. But I want to make this a win for everybody. I was thinking we'd be willing to do X, Y and Z for Janine. What do you think about that? Do you think, I mean, you know, or would that, do you think that would land really well? If not that, what would work? I'd like to come up with something with you that would be really valuable, that you'd feel really excited to, to offer her and then you get credit for the offer anyway. Engaging in that conversation where everybody's going to win at every turn is really valuable. It engages a mental heuristic called the IKEA effect. People buy into what they help create. So as you, it's sort of a slow down to speed up referral move. Instead of leaning on the relationship like, you know, the bad version we talked about, you actually engage in the importance of making this introduction. You get the referring partners advice and you Start the whole thing off with a gift they can offer to their friend. And then, I mean, those, those have a hit rate or success rate of like 90, 95%. When you slow down a little bit, do it the right way.

Yeah, that's great. Before we continue, let's take a moment.

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So how about when it comes to let's Say you are starting to be intentional about this. You're thinking about, okay, we want to think about relationships strategically. We want to think about helping people strategically. But how do you start to build a system around that? Like, even for myself, I think about, for Pinch of Yam, we have these brands. Some of them are cold outreach or some of them are inbound. A lot of them, most of them are inbound now. But we also have some brands that we'd want to work with, that we'd want to reach out to. We start to want to be, you know, strategic about that. But right now, it's kind of like in my head, it's in Lindsay's head, it's in my inbox. Like, I'll think probably daily, hey, this would be a cool thing to, like, connect with somebody on. But, like, I don't have a system or a process or a tool that I'm really using to manage all of that. Do you have recommendations for people who are wanting to do this well and wanting to do it strategically around building something that kind of keeps them accountable but also is almost like a second brain for all of their relationships?

Yeah, I love Thiago's second brain stuff, by the way. I'm such a fan. Yes, there is. And to put a bow on something I mentioned before, because it feeds right into this is what most people don't understand is how fast relationships grow. So if we start investing in the right people and it's not random, we're not being reactive, we're proactively investing in the right people, and we're doing that consistently over time. That's like dollar cost averaging in the stock market. Like, it grows exponentially. So our relationship equity and power and trust being our sort of the element of that, it can grow exponentially, not linearly. What's interesting about relationships, though, unlike the stock market, is people talk to each other. So there's like a second compounding exponential growth curve of the network effect that sits on top of all the people we're investing in. So the reason people would want to do what I'm about to share, the system part is that. But most people don't understand is that relationship capital trust grows exponentially, not linearly, with each person we invest in. But the more people we help, the more people are talking to others that could need our help or that are reinforcing it. So the benefits of this are like a double exponential curve stacked on top of each other. Here's how you do it. So it's ridiculously simple. And there's some worksheets that accompany the book that we can give people a link to. But. But all you have to do is pen and paper. You can use a CRM if you want, but pen and paper works fine. And you write down two lists. One list is your list of opportunities. What are the brands I would like to work for? We think of opportunities broadly. So it can be. It's basically any place another person or group of people needs to say yes. So if you want to speak at convertkits conference, you know that is an opportunity and you want to. Other people have to say yes to that. So no matter what, what an opportunity is, whether somebody can pay you money or if they just have to approve a thing that you think would be helpful, you write those down really proactively. These are dreams. These are like, there may be no momentum at all. The second thing you write down is who are the 10 or so relationships that are the most important? Your future success. Notice that lens is really interesting. It's not in really any sales book ever. All sales books are like, you know, here are the things you want to sell, get them, do a demo, get in front of them. You know, it's more of a approach. What we. But we don't want to have that. We want to have our list of opportunities. Then we want to have a different lens where we look at relationships. And usually the number that's perfect is 10 to 20, no more than that. If people just take. It usually takes 90 seconds or so. Just take out that pen and paper and say, who are the 10 relationships most important to my success over the next couple years? It doesn't take long. Those are the first two steps. You just write those down. The third step, rock Simple. You manage the advancement of the opportunities relationships like a project. 15 minutes recurring calendar entry. I'm Friday at 3:00'. Clock. People can choose Saturday morning, Thursday morning, Monday afternoon, whatever works. And in 15 minutes, you just take a look at your list of opportunities. You take a look at your list of most important relationships, and for the next week, you pick the three moves you're gonna make. It's always your move. It's always a chance to be helpful. You pick the three moves you're going to make the next week that are going to either advance an opportunity or advance a relationship. And you do those three and that's it. And you don't actually do the things.

Friday, you just think about them things.

And then the next week you find time to do it. You block it off and time block and all that crazy stuff. But you want to separate the choosing from the doing. Because if you try to say I've got two hours to do relationship development, like you just your mind gets all in muddy and you don't. You have to. So you want to have one block is the choosing takes 15 minutes and then your other blocks are the doing.

That's awesome. So you have this time it's blocked off for you. Let's say It's Friday morning, 15 minutes, you're looking at that list. Here's opportunities. Here are the people that are most important for me. And you are coming up with the three things from that entire list of hey, what can I do to be of value to this person? Is that more or less what you're trying to think about?

Yeah, if it was an opportunity advancement, it might be calling up the person and say, hey, I was thinking about you. I know you've been thinking about doing a pile, you know, doing some work with us on, on our website. I just was thinking I'd like to run a pilot and I'd like to do it at no charge and I like to do it over six weeks. Give me a call if you want to learn more. Like that might be the move, a relationship move might mean just letting them know you're thinking about them. Hey, it's been six months since we talked. I remember you had X, Y and Z as priorities. Gosh, I'd love to get together sometime on Zoom and talk and just refresh those, see if there's some ways I can be helpful that might be there. So you have.

Oh, go ahead.

That's it.

Do you, do you have personal like non work relationships on there as well? I know this is within the context of work sales business, but do you also have personal like connections on there? Yeah, yeah.

We recommend four types of people. One are folks who can buy directly from you. So these would be, you know, they can actually pay you money. The next group are people inside client potential client organizations that influence. We might call those influencers. The third group we call strategic partners. Now that's really interesting. These are people who generally can't usually pay you money, but they know who should might be somebody in the agency. It might be another person with an adjacent but different type of website. You know, the kind of people who know the kind of people who need you. That. So those are some, those sometimes those relationships are more important than clients because they might be able to send you five clients a year or something and then are. So those, we call those strategic partners. Definitely want to double down on those. And then the fourth group, we just have a bucket we call interesting people. Well, like my nephew Spencer is on my list. Like I just love the kid. Like he's, I say kid, he's like in his late 20s, but he's sort of like the son I never had. I have two great daughters, but I just, I just love Spencer and all he does. And this morning he's on my protomoid list for a Greek word that means first among equals. My closest relationships. And they're about to have their first baby. And I just want to remember Spencer's key to me. I want to text like, hey, I did my workout today. Did you? Yours by the way, any news on dilation? Like how's it going? Yeah, feeling. And like that's. He's a priority for me more so than others. First among eagles. So I think, yeah, I think having a nice mix of all four of those types is really nice. And it honestly makes it fun to have something like that.

That's awesome. It reminds me a little bit. So when I was younger I got, I was really into cards, you know, sports cards. I'd go and buy all these random cards at the card shop. Yeah, yeah. And. But then I got really into sending the cards to the players. I was at the local library. You know, this is, it wasn't technically pre Internet, but it's like before we had Internet I went and I like photocopied all of the addresses of the different stadiums. And so I would like do a self address stamped envelope, take another envelope and ship these cards out to get autographs. And what was really fun was I would do it every day, like two, three, four letters. I'd ask for stamps for my birthday and for Christmas. But then what started to happen was, you know, three, six months in, you'd start to get back two or three of these autographs in, in the mail every day. And that was really fun to have a little bit of this system going where I, you know, and it, and it kind of created this loop where it motivated me to continue doing this. Where you'd get home, you'd have some of this inbound, you know, mail coming in, you'd send mail out.

Yeah.

But I imagine it to be a similar thing where you have these people that you really care about that you're excited to connect with, that you want to be in your inner circle and you create the system to make sure that you are connecting with them and you know, sending an email, sending a text, whatever it might be. And then what happens is you, you start to open up those channels of communication and that's, that's just like a really fun thing. But you have to have the system in place in order to keep you accountable to do that. And it sounds like for you what that is is that calendar item where you brainstorm who it's going to be. You block that out moving forward if it needs to be blocked out. If it's more than just a simple text message. Yeah. And then you repeat that each week. Do you keep track of conversations or even this is again maybe kind of an in the weeds conversation. Conversation or topic. But like do you keep track within for work stuff like a CRM of where things are at and like technically what does that look like?

Yeah, there's sort of two levels of tracking. Well first I just have to say that story was awesome.

Like yes, I still have the, I still have the huge book of all the autographs that I bet you do.

All that work that went into it, you look at. You were a relationship developer. How old were you?

Yeah, totally. I don't know, 10 probably.

You were like a world class relationship developer at the age of.

There we go.

You're so successful.

Yeah.

And as somebody has boxes of boxes of baseball cards, I'm right there with you. So yeah, there's two types of systems to really for people to lean into. One is a system of accountability that's a little different. And then the other system is a system of information sort of second brain, if you will. So accountability. And then we'll. And then we'll talk about information. Accountability is so darn important because your story's so good. At the age of 10 somehow you had the what scientists call trait self control to such a TSC to such a level. You were able to plow through those first two, three, four months where you're getting no feedback and you kept going. Very few people can do that. So what that that happens in this world too where fear of rejection comes in. Like I didn't get a response to my email. Like it can be really the five. Well you, you saw in the book we have five lies people have to get over and this towards those.

So and we talk about that in the context of reps. That's the word that we use is like it's guitar, it's weightlifting, it's basketball. Like you need to get the reps in before you get the value of whatever it is you're trying to do.

That's exactly it. So we need a system of accountability. So different ways to do it. I have a spreadsheet that I track my hours that I work on the business and like five buckets if how many MIT I got done from the week of before. Pro tip on MIT is most important things. The three things you choose each week. Write them so they're 100% in your control. Show that to the audience. Not UFC, but that by. By by saying offer dinner to Jane instead of have dinner with Jane.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

That lets us get three out of three every week. It disconnects us from worrying about the outcome. We move forward to action faster. All that. So anyway, whether it's a spreadsheet like I use or you know James Clear's paperclip method where you have a jar of the thing, how many of the reps you want to do of the thing and you have an empty jar and you literally just move the paperclips over that is that tactile nature can be good. Dry erase boards with tally marks. Accountability partner, whatever it takes. But having something that will push people through those first two, three, four months where you're not getting the intrinsic motivation yet you're not getting baseball cards back, the business isn't growing. You need that. And then the other system of is a system of information and that's just second brain stuff. Watch Tiago's videos. I Tiago and my podcast where we talked about second brain 4bd that we could put in the show notes if you want. But the idea there is whether you use a notion database, an apple note, pen and paper somehow marking down what in writing down what people's priorities are, the details about how old their kids are, what they're focused on at work. Just it's I, I feel like my guess is for every half hour interval where some we're with somebody, I think there's six or eight really good things to document. They're a 49ers fan, they're headed to Africa to take their family on safari. Their boss just asked them for X, Y and Z in the marketing department. Writing those things down. Even if we never look at them again, there's a higher likelihood we'll remember them and we have the ability to look at them again before our next call. Quick refresh. It's just really powerful unlock I think.

Yeah, that's awesome. So give degrows the book. Talk to creator, a publisher, somebody who's listening to this podcast. They want to understand how to do you know, you say BD business development in our world it would Be like partnering with brands, partnering with companies. They want to get better at it. What is the transformation that happens as you read through Give to Grow? Because I think it's an important book for people to pick up. It's available now. I, I have. This is the original copy. I was also lucky enough to get the advanced copy. I'll save it for years. It'll be yeah, but talk to somebody who's listening and like what, what is the transformation they'll go through that they can then apply to their business? And, and we'll use that as kind of a last thought to share.

Yeah, that sounds great. And we can, we can tie back to that doing of the work, winning of the work table and mindset. So in the doing of the work we're already hired to do, there's almost always systems to get better and better. We're probably in peer groups, there's articles we're reading. I mean heck, just doing the work and getting feedback makes us better at doing the work. But when it comes to winning the work relationship develop business development, there are not systems to get better. In fact most people we've trained 50,000 plus experts, some of the top management consulting firms, law firm people in the world, marketing experts, agencies. There's almost never a system for teaching how to win work at a company. You're left your own devices, sink or swim. Good luck. And that is crazy to me because it's the most important thing for most people in their career is growth. So with the transformation people go through is if you read give to grow, you learn the best in class methods for how to think about it, how to move past the lies and the traps that will get in your way. That's a big chunk of the book. What are the gifts in the methods you give those to the various people, the relationships that are most important. And then the last section of book is how do you succeed in the moment, the short term and the long term. Like how do you think about this as the arc over the arc of your career so that you be successful. So if we get all the way to the transformation, it's if somebody has great expertise but they're not good at winning work or relationship development. Eh, they're sort of a jerk and nobody knows about them. Somebody's great at relationship development but they don't have any core expertise fun to go to the ball game with. But that's getting harder and harder to find time to do that these days. Yeah, it's when somebody can do both. Yeah. Wickedly good at what they do. And they're incredibly good at making it easy for people to find them and purchase from them. Those are the people that change the world.

That's awesome. And so often we hear as we have conversations with people, the questions they have isn't the. The questions aren't around doing the work. It's almost always around winning the work. And it's so hard to know how to coach people through that because there isn't really a good system for it. And I think you cover so much of that here, even in our own story. It was interesting. As I was reflecting on, I talked about, like, hey, a lot of the stuff is inbound. When I actually paused and thought about it, it's actually people who have noticed Lindsay talking about their brand, including the brand, saying something about the brand. It's give to grow like it is. That's what's happening there without us quantifying it. Lindsay's naturally talking about products she loves. And that's the thing that opens the door to these conversations. It's not like, and this occasionally happens, like brands will just kind of reach out randomly. But almost all the conversations I'm having now have to do with somebody being like, oh my gosh, you shared this thing on a Costco run. You did. It's so awesome. Thank you. My response, hey, thanks so much for reaching out. Can we jump on a call? Would love to hear about what you're doing, the initiatives that you have, how we might be able to help. And it's so interesting to see you talking about that and me starting to realize, like, oh, maybe there's something there. And you know that because you've been in this world for so long. So I think for anybody who's interested in starting to do that more intentionally, be sure to pick that up. One of the things that you had mentioned was a couple resources. Can you talk about where people can pick those up and then also talk about where people can find the book?

Yeah, that sounds good. Well, I could make a joke out of the resources in a way, because if you. Bjork, if you could imagine the pressure an author feels to give things away when they write a book.

Totally.

Like, it's over the top. We gave a ton of stuff out for free with our first book and this is like 10x that. So all the resources we talked about, like the 16 lead gen methods, we've got the top 50 discovery questions we've ever heard of that are the best. We have a team launch guide to scale the resource across the team. There's training videos. There's just down all kinds. The doing of the winning is a download chart people are printing out and sticking on their wall. Anyway, all that stuff is at give to grow.info.info and it's all free. We we made it so valuable. Unlike most book resources, we made it so valuable it could actually live on their own. So if somebody doesn't have 20 bucks to buy give2grow the book, they could actually learn a lot at give2grow.info and it'll all stand on its own. That said, it's better if you buy the book. So yeah, totally. That said, buy the book, people can get it everywhere. So Amazon's where most people buy business books, but it's at every single major bookstore. We landed deals in all four major airport bookstores. So if you go through an airport, grab a copy. Indigo up in Canada is doing a huge thing at the front of their doors. They like the book so much. And if people like audiobooks, it took me it took me a week and 44 green teas to read the to read the audiobook if you're interested in that data. So it was fun as an author to read the book too. So audiobook, Kindle, everything.

That's awesome Mo. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate your insights and just appreciate you as a person. So thanks for coming on.

Yeah, you too. I was really looking forward to this and we'll see each other in a couple weeks, which I can't.

It'll be awesome. Yep.

Okay.

Thanks Mo.

Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I wanted to take a minute and just ask that if you enjoyed the this episode or any of our other many episodes of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast that you share means so much to us as a podcast. If you share episodes with your friends and family or if you are a food blogger or entrepreneur, if you could share em on social media or even in your email newsletters, it really helps us get the word out about our podcast and reach more listeners. Thanks again for listening. We really hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you back here next week.

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