Building Meaningful Connections in Business

Welcome to Media Minds with your host, David Wolf. He's a two-time number one bestselling author, speaker, startup advisor, CEO at Success Masters LLC, former CEO at TrustEgrity. Gary Langney is our guest. He's a former high-tech software SaaS sales leader, leadership event organizer, serial entrepreneur. And that's not all. He's also the owner of Influence Heroes. It's a LinkedIn group and holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. By the way, I'm from Chicago. And Gary, welcome to the program. It's good to have you.

Hey, Dave, thanks so much. Dave or David? What should I call you?

Well, I like David, but I don't freak out if you call me Dave.

Yeah, I'll call you Dave. Of course.

Yeah, you'd be like family if it was Dave. So that's not such a bad thing, right?

No, David's good. And Gary's the only one way to say Gary. So no, you can't mess up.

So. Yeah, right. It's a Midwestern thing. They like— we like to shorten names. It's, it's a thing. It's great to be with you. You know, we're a podcast and audiobook production company, and we work with a lot of people that are trying to do the things I think, if I'm reading between the lines, that you help people do that are thought leaders, authors, speakers, etc., business leaders. This idea of the personal sphere of influence, I've heard it before. How do you like to frame this out for your clients and colleagues?

Well, Stephen Covey, 7 Habits.

Yes.

Used to talk about a circle of influence, and I was one of his subjects for years. He mentored me in a class with other leaders for over a 10-year period, got to know him very well and some of his family. And so, we talked about a circle of influence, which is important to be able to bring in the right kind of people into your life, and you get to be selective. You get to decide who should be in that circle. I call it a sphere. I like sphere better because it's more, it's more 360. It's about everything that's going on, not just the moment in time. It's harder to get into it, harder to get out of it, you know, because it's a sphere. And so I just think that the sphere of influence is important because we all have to decide in our lives who, who are those few select people that should be integral to your life and you to them. I'm, I'm on LinkedIn. We all have thousands of connections and followers, but you cannot be intimate. You cannot be integral in their lives or your lives to that degree. I've got 22,000 followers, but you can be selective about the right kind of people that could become partners, that could become promoters of you and you of them. And so I'm We look at this as every single day you should be connecting with people every day, but you should wait for those special moments where somebody bubbles to the top and they look like someone you could do something more than just be a connection with. It could become a relationship. It could become a partnership. It could become something that's really integral to both of you. And there might be a way— So go ahead. Yeah.

No, I was going to say, I was just going to interject. It's not always a transactional focus. And that's, I think, part of this conversation. When you talk about the Sphere. But it sounds like one of the core ideas is this idea of selectivity, proactive and selective. Like you, I've got about 20,000 people on LinkedIn. And as business owners— and here's the rub sometimes for entrepreneurs— we think more is more. We want— we think in terms of scale. And what I'm beginning to learn, and I've contracted with a company that's working on helping me with my LinkedIn by forging new connections. For years, I would go right to the the conversation about here's who we are and here's what we do and here's how you book a call. And I'm learning. I mean, I sort of knew this intellectually, but I just couldn't help it because I'm impatient and I wanted to get to a possible sale. But as a business owner and as a human on the planet, on LinkedIn, I've learned. And what you're basically reinforcing here is that it's the quality of the, of the intimacy, the quality of the connection that matters much more than getting right to this transactional mindset, right?

Well, if you don't mind me relabeling this just a little bit, I call it—

Absolutely.

Strategic influence. So strategic is not transactional, as you mentioned. It's long-term. It has purpose. It's beneficial to both parties. And so that's why I called the name of my book The Power of Strategic Influence. I was initially going to be called— it was going to be called Power of Influence. I thought, well, Lots of different types of influence. This is not social media influence I'm talking about.

Yeah.

About relationships that matter. And that has to be strategic.

Brilliant. All right. So inside of or within this decision and the strategic, back to your word, I'm sure you have techniques that you can share or some ideas about how to go about this.. And if you don't mind sharing some of them for our audience, that'd be terrific.

If you don't mind, I'll just show you or display something that's inside the book. This talks about the 6 spheres of strategic influence, but there's 10 success factors that help you get there. So each sphere, and I'll just quickly just kind of rattle these off. The first sphere is about perspective. And in life, anything you start, including life, it has to have a perspective. If you want to get somewhere, it'd be nice to know where you're going, at least have some idea of where, what it looks like, where you want to go. So perspective to me means before we ever start the journey, before we start a project, before we start, you know, our career, before we start, you know, a relationship, really you should say, well, what is this all about? Why am I doing this? It's not bad to ask that question. Sometimes you can ask somebody else that's involved, why do you think we're doing this? To get a different perspective. But perspective to me means, number one, that you're starting with a mindset that says, okay, I'm doing this, I'm committed to it. I have to have a survival mindset because things are going to get in the way. There's going to be disruptions, there's going to be interactions, there's going to be distractions. So when those happen, how do I stay on track? How do I stay on the path? So that's important that mindset-wise, okay, I don't care what is thrown at me, I'm going to survive this. We watched this movie about, my wife and I, about Mount Everest last night. Oh my goodness. And a group that went up there and 13, I think, of them died. It was terrible. But perspective-wise, they all had the right perspective. Somehow some things got in the way along the way and they decided to stay longer than they should. And people, you know, there was consequences for those decisions.

Yeah.

There's one other aspect of perspective, and then I'll move on. Just stop me anytime.

No, no, please. This is beautiful.

Perspective, whether it's related to life, projects, career, relationships, has to involve other people. I can't be, you know, no man is an island. We have the ability to do much more, I believe, when other people that you selectively choose !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But he's not doing it alone. He finds people he trusts. That's a really important part of your sphere of influence. And people that are competent so that he can release himself from it and only check in when necessary to see that things are on the track. So that's the other aspect is that we have to have a network. And that's what LinkedIn's all about. I love LinkedIn and the way we connected there. So shall I give you the overview quickly of of those steps, or do you want me to— what would you like me to talk about?

Yeah, no, whatever you feel would benefit our listeners and viewers. So, so, Mike, happy to continue. So thank you.

So the first book, again, as I showed you that display, is there's 6 spheres, and you'll see there's a ship's wheel. I love everything nautical. Yeah, yeah. And you look at my office, if I showed you, I've got 1, 2, 3, 4 ship's wheels in here. One of them is very big, one of them has a mirror on it, so reminds me who I am and where I'm going.

Yeah, I love the metaphor. Yeah, I'm a pilot, so I understand the navigation. Yeah, the navigational metaphors run abound, right, for business and strategy and perspective and all of it.

I'm only a sailor to the point that I've been given help to guide a sailing ship before. I've done it a couple of times, but more importantly, I just love the ocean. I love everything about it. I love the perspective. We owned a home in Northern California, north of Mendocino that had, was 1,000 feet above the ocean on a mountain that looked at the ocean and you couldn't see anything but ocean. It was marvelous. Oh my goodness. And I wish we'd never sold it.

See, it's gone. Life does its thing.

Yes. Wow. But here, so here's, I said 6 spheres. I only mentioned the first one, which is perspective. The second one. Right. Second one is accountability. Okay. What's accountability about? It means that, okay, I'm going to become personally responsible for the things that happen in my life. Whether I put them there or not. I'm gonna own it. As Harry Truman says, the buck stops here. Even President Trump said that recently, the buck stops with him. So I love that perspective. The second part of accountability is that you have to learn how to become self-reliant. You'll never build a reputation, you'll never become influential if people don't think you can do something and do it well and you have the expertise to do that. So become self-reliant in that aspect. That you know how to reach out and how to grab resources, how to get things done. That's number 2, that's sphere 2. Number 3 is about relationships. So we go right from accountability that people think I'm responsible to, okay, I can be in a relationship with you because I trust and I admire and I believe in the things you're doing and what you— Right, right. Relationships is about number 1, getting influential people in that sphere, not just people, not just anyone. Influential people and you influential for them. And then the second part is that you're going to do something with that. You, if at all possible, with a few people in your life, maybe a few people per year, you have trusted partnerships. The reason I stuck that in there, David, is that I have, my brother-in-law is David. He goes by Dave. So if I say Dave, I apologize.

No, and my family, as I said, it's like family. So no harm, no foul.

Thank you. So, so trusted partnerships. I had a partnership that didn't go well, and I talk about it in my book. I talk about it in my second book. And it's because even though we both had confidence, we both had a goal that kind of went the same direction, how to get there was different for both of us. That was crucial. And so now I have 6 steps that help you know how to develop a trusted partnership. It's so critical. So that's number 3 is relationships. Number 4, is leadership. If you want to be in leadership, once you have trusted partnerships and relationships that matter, it's going to be a lot easier for you to get into leadership because then you have these people that'll back you up. They'll be there for you, you and you for them. So leadership to me means, okay, well, number one, I have to assume the role. So if I'm a leader, what does that mean? How do leaders get anywhere? They have to assume the role. I can't wait for people to ask them to do things. Some leaders do that. They sit behind their desk and wait for people to come and ask them for advice, for whatever help. I'm not like that. I make sure that I'm proactive about being a leader. The people that I manage, especially the ones that are one tier down from me, we have monthly get-togethers. It's their agenda, it's their plan, but I'm there to help keep them on the plan and ask good questions. So that's, that's very important. And then number 2 is prepare as a leader for the opportunity that's about to happen in your life if you haven't hit it yet. So that's number 4. Number 5 is opportunities. So it's pretty— my book's very progressive, step by step. Even Kevin Harrington, who wrote my foreword, said that this book was very systematic and he loved the way that it flowed. So it's my life. It's kind of the way my life works. Opportunity means— there's 2 aspects to opportunity. Each of these have 2 success factors. Opportunity means to me that I have to assemble and assess what I call my purposes. And I call them personal driving forces. My purposes are personal driving forces. What are the forces that drive me when things get tough, when things get haywire, when I'm not sure about what I'm doing? What reminds me of what I'm all about? What do I have that— Yes. That's why I have that ship's wheel. Yes.

You're in the middle. Yeah. It's a trigger, the trigger back into that mindset you need to be in. That you're accountable to. Yeah.

Thank you, sir. So isn't it the back of my door? Every time I go to the door, I have to look at myself, everything. So, so that was there on purpose. Uh, the second part of opportunity is that we have to identify and leverage our, our personal competencies, our competitive competencies. So we're leaders, we have expertise to some level on certain different things, and there might be one single thing, which is what I talk about in my second book, How to Become a a super leader, one thing that distinguishes you from all the other competencies that you possess, all the proficiencies you possess, there's one that everybody says, "Ooh, that person, that David Wolf is so good at this and he's the go-to guy. You need somebody, you need somebody on your team, he's the guy to include on that aspect." So that's the passion, that's the super passion, if you will, the competency that you're going to focus on, but also continue to learn in other ways. I've been an owner 12 times now, business owner. The first one I was a business owner was a business my dad sold to me because they wanted to retire. I took over his business and I had to learn. The great thing I'll tell you, I grew up in this family business and the great thing about it is my dad had already taught me everything. And so when I got into the mode, I didn't have a lot of worries. I didn't have to consider that I might fail because I had been trained not to fail. You know, what kind of a business was it?

I have to ask.

Retail business. My dad was a business owner. He had a small chain and I did everything at the beginning. I swept the walks, I stocked the shelves, I started doing deliveries, I started, I started doing accounting, I did advertising. I mean, I got through. I had my— what I call my first MBA.

Yeah, there's a 360 view of what it takes to do this.

Yeah, I really did. There was no chance I was going to do that. But the key aspect of it is that finding that one thing that makes people consider that you are the person that, that can drive forward in this aspect. I have, I did a survey, David Wolf, with 1,000 business leaders worldwide. I started out with a few hundred here in the US for my first book. My second book, I surveyed over 1,000. And the question was, what are the competencies? The main question, what are the competencies that leadership possess? The best competencies, the most important competencies. I asked Nando Sesroman, I interviewed him, he's the president of UPS US, what do you think are the most important leadership competencies? And he responded, forgiveness. And then he thought about that and he says, well, not to take things too seriously when you first hear it, not to be reactive. I thought that was an emotional intelligence competency, by the way. He doesn't react either good or bad. No matter what happens, he stops, contemplates, and sees where he can then impact that statement. Yeah.

Love that. Love that. And you have written that leaders are made, not born. So I'm guessing the work you do, the book you've just written about super leadership has to do with helping to guide those who may not have understood that and need to develop these skills.

Well, who was it? Vince Lombardi, that's where I get this from, said, Leaders aren't born, they're made. A little different than the way I said. Of course, his is more important because it's Vince Lombardi.

But well, he starts with the negative. Here's what they're not, here's what they are.

You just reversed it, which I, you know, the football coach, he wants to stir your mind. He wants to, you know, gets you, you know, he wants to get your attention, right? And emotional impact. Yeah, I think I like to say leaders are made because that's what I'm focused on. I'm about saying that anyone can be made, anybody can become professional and even a master at something if they really focus on it and are passionate about it. Yeah. One thing I'll tell you that I learned about when I was growing up, I thought, you know, prodigy, somebody told me what a prodigy was one time and I said, what? You mean somebody just has natural ability to do stuff like that? I mean, Tiger Woods, for example, when he's 9, 10 years old, became a national golf, you know, leader with kids that were 2 years older and just continued to do that. And he was a prodigy. That's great. Beethoven is another person that I learned about growing up. Beethoven, was he a prodigy or not?

What do you think? Beethoven? Well, Beethoven's an interesting case because he was disabled at a certain age and couldn't hear the music he was writing, which Certainly I can relate to because I spent a good number of years composing music. So that's an interesting one. I don't know historically if he was a prodigy or if he learned the skills of music. I don't actually know that about him. You do?

Usually to be considered to be a prodigy, other people will proclaim you to be a prodigy. You don't get to proclaim yourself, just like I said. Right, right. He was not proclaimed to be a prodigy. He was a developing student. His father was the one that pushed him and pushed him and wanted him to be Mozart and wanted to be tutored by Mozart, who was a prodigy. Later on though, through all that you talked about, all the adversity he went through and his personal problems with being able to hear, he became, what some believe, the best composer of all time. Commensurate with Mozart, who was a prodigy. So I mean, the whole gist of this idea is that we can become made, we can make ourselves into something if we have the willpower, the passion, and the time to do it.

Yeah, I believe that's true. I believe that's true. Yeah, I'm reflecting a little bit on my own life, which is not the subject of this podcast, but—

Oh yeah, sure is, it's the conversation.

It's, you know, I think, you know, in my case, you recognize some natural talent. I had talent in a few different areas. I chose one and pursued it and really just made a decision like a bolt of lightning. You decide this is the way I'm going to go and you make a commitment back to accountability, which you've just talked about in this segment. And I know you think about it. I'm curious, Gary, what are you doing now other than— I mean, you've got a lot going on. Uh, but are you in business or is this the business you do now? Do you coach people to help them develop leadership skills or tell me, I'll ask the open question.

So yes, all the above. I just want to mention the last sphere really quickly because I didn't get to and that's just—

Oh yeah. So you wouldn't get to number 6.

Okay. Last number 6 is strategic influence. It means at that point in your life you've arrived. They use in business school, they'd say when you arrive, uh, well, that's when you've arrived. That means when You are the center of influence for a certain group of people. It could be local, regional, national, global, but you're the center. You can— people proclaim you to be a center of influence. And so you accept that role and you do what you can to impact people for good. So that's the— and then the last part is how do you give back? Because you've been blessed, helped along the way. So my life, so from retail that I grew up in with my father. Went on to get my MBA at Northwestern. Out of there, I became a marketing management consultant. And then, uh, got into, uh, sales management. I'd been in sales for years, but never really at the top. And so, uh, after that, I became a VP of sales, um, once in commercial publishing and then multiple times in high-tech software, SaaS mostly. Yep. And that was a great experience. I've managed thousands of salespeople, but more importantly to me, not the numbers, but the numbers don't matter. It's whether I made an impact or not. Right. I have a friend named Gary Kennedy. He was the first president of Oracle. Marvelous guy that, you know, made a huge impact there and was known for his ability to, you know, create super sales leaders. Really impressive. Though I've never worked for him, he and I became really good friends and he was interviewed in my book. My book also, besides the content that I write, I use interviews to substantiate what I teach. So it's modernized, it proves that my stuff actually works. Gary told me, I asked him during our interview, I said, Gary, I said, talk about leadership. Why do you take different roles? How do you get different roles? Do you like being a leader? And he stepped off for a minute and didn't say anything. But then he said, you know, the one thing I do do before I take a role to become an executive, to become a board leader, to become part of a nonprofit, he says, I will step back and ask myself, can I make an impact? Can I make a difference? He says, money looks great. I probably can, you know, get involved and probably can help. But I mean, really, Will I really make an impact or could somebody else do better at it than me? And he makes that question and then he gives an answer to himself and then he proceeds. And I thought it was a marvelous answer.

I thought it was a good one. Oh, I love that kind of, you know, the thing about in my world, the concept of impact, I spent a lot of years, you know, writing and producing music for radio, TV, film. Really? And it was all about me performing a pure creative act and being paid for it. There was some impact, but this phase of my life, and you'll relate to this, and it relates back to what you've just said, what I didn't see coming was this idea that I'm having an impact on my employees' lives, all the freelancers that work for us, all the podcast clients that we produce their work for, and all the authors that we produce audiobooks for. And when I step back and think about the leverage isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but the magnitude of impact that you can have just by having a small business like ours. And that, that would be so satisfying to me after a year of somewhat self-serving as an artist, you know, making a living as an artist. That's been an interesting transition for me. So I very deeply relate to this concept of impact. And it's something I talk about when I do interviews and appear on other people's podcasts. The question might be, what did you not see coming? Or what did you not expect? That what satisfies you most about the work you do Now it's the impact. So.

Well, yeah, you're going out of your way to provide a service to other people that can learn from what you and your guests, you know, provide. I think that's marvelous. I think that's a huge impact. And by the way, from my father's business to getting into corporate, and then 2005, my boys, my twin boys were at that age where I just didn't want to be gone. Sales leaders, sales VPs, CROs, whatever. Are never home. And it really bothered me. I couldn't be there for their baseball games and things. And so I kind of cut it cold and left in 2005. So it's been 20 years and started that journey to entrepreneurship that my dad put me on when I was a kid and when I bought his first business. And so I've owned 10 businesses since then. Most of them had successful exits. And what I've learned from all that is that you are so much more capable than you give yourself credit for. People get, they're afraid. Of the thought of doing something. That's why you have to just start doing it. Don't, you know, don't worry about the process. Don't worry if you're going to fail up front. Actually, it's better if you fail sooner than later.

I'm such a bird of that feather. I totally can relate to all this. Yeah, I really am. I think so. Yeah, I really can relate to what you're saying there. Um, you know, when I'm— the bolt of lightning hit me and I wanted to transition from being a freelance musician to being a guy that writes music for commercials and television and so forth. That was a decisive moment. And it was a fearless moment. I was probably 19 years old. And then the rest, I never looked back and it led me into these other things. But that's a funny one. I have a lot of colleagues, colleagues. I have a lot of people that I recall going to high school who went off to college and they were living the lives their parents wanted them to live, or they didn't decide what they wanted to do and follow their own path. And I think part of this is family. The foundation of my family was such that I had a lot of freedom to figure it out myself. And I'm really good. I'm— I didn't have the push and I didn't have the academic support that a lot of my friends had, but I did have a lot of freedom. And fortunately, I was able to figure that out and make it happen. So Again, I didn't want to make this about me, but it's really mirroring back this idea that you're putting forth about, well, about impact on your own life and the people around you. But, well, there's a few other subthemes in there. But this is great, Gary. Yeah.

I have to tell you something really quick. Yeah. Yeah. I know you're a composer. So I'm not a composer, but in college I was in a band. I was a lead singer. I played the bass.

Oh yeah, man. Oh yeah.

And so, you know, we played all the good tunes. We messed around with a couple of things we were trying to do ourselves.

And then I left for— Was this in Chicago when you were at Northwestern?

No, I grew up in Utah. No, this is—

Okay, so you grew up in Utah.

Okay. So this was back, if I can date myself, 1975 to '76. Yeah.

Like junior high into high school?

It was, no, it was last year of high school, first year of college.

All right, so you're a couple years older than me. All right.

So maybe so. But anyway, that was a great experience. My cousin was a lead guitarist. He wanted to put a band together and I just jokingly told him, I said, when you want a good singer, let me know. And then my friend and their friend who was an organist. And so we put together this band and we had a drummer and we had a lead guitarist and we had a drummer. I mean, excuse me, we had 4 of us. So I played bass, guitar, drum, and then we had somebody that did lead guitar. So that was fun.

Yeah. There's something about bands and the— I've talked about this. Our core leadership team, which Sean, who's not just an audio nerd, he runs our whole podcast department with 40 to 50 shows going on. So he didn't give himself enough credit. And he'll be back to, you know, Show up and make that right. But there's— we've talked about this in our own team. We call ourselves the Fab Five, right? This is the founding group for Autovida Studios. Oh, cool. And we're like a band. It's because we share values, but we all have very different ways of thinking about it. So when we have our summits and when we have our weekly Thursday calls, it feels like a band. It's that kind of a bond. And somehow, I guess this is my leadership thing, I was able to stitch together this interesting group of people that were very coherent on a lot of levels. Doesn't always happen with a— we're not a startup in the sense that we created something new, but we leaned into a market inflection point in the market, you know, where podcasts and audiobooks were growing. And so, but we think of ourselves, the band metaphor comes comes to mind as we're talking, just as the shipping and navigation and the piloting a plane. There's a lot of these.

So a lot of metaphors that, uh, yeah.

Well, it's great to be with you, Gary. Uh, likewise. Yeah, garyclaney.com. That is Gary, G-A-R-Y-C-L-A-N-E-Y.com. Uh, you can find them on LinkedIn, The Power of Strategic Influence on LinkedIn. And, um, what else? What should we close with? Any Parting words.

Well, I think I just want to part on this idea that influence is something that we can all develop as well as leadership. But the most important part is that the impact that you make is reciprocal. If you do something good for someone, they're going to give it back as far as confirmation, affirmation, assistance to you. I sat down with a guy one time, I was trying, I used to own a company called Trustegrity. It was a business networking company I co-founded and then built into a national company. And, you know, people are all trying to build their businesses. It was all business owners getting involved for the most part. And I went to meet one of the guys who was, just became a new member. And during the process, I was there to help him. In the process, we learned about each other. He learned about something I needed in my life and my family. David Wolf stepped forward and offered to help. I go, wow, I was there to help him and he turned it around. He did something really cool for me. And so I was so much appreciated that. So what I did, here's the lesson. The lesson is that you can fast-track trust. Most people think that's not possible. But the fact that you can sit with somebody as soon as they feel like you've done something for them that you've stepped out of your box, there's some level of trust that's built right then, right at that moment. Yeah. Sometimes you would expect to take years to happen. So that's my parting message. That's beautiful.

No, if you can create that in the moment, it's so powerful. Gary, thanks for being with us on the Media Minds. Well, maybe we'll do it again and enjoy the rest of your day.

Would love it. You too. Thank you so much, David Wolf. Thank you. You've been listening to Media Minds with your host, David Wolf. Media Minds is produced by Audivita Studios, a premier production company producing audiobooks and podcasts for clients worldwide. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

To learn more about the team at Audivita Studios, visit audivita.com.