336 - Listening, Empathy, and Connection: Keys to Successful Marketing Partnerships with CJAM Marketing Connector's Behdad Jamshidi

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. B. Jamjidi, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of a company that you founded called CJAM, the Marketing Connector, which can be found at cjammarketing.com. And you've had a really interesting background. So let's just start off with what your backstory is.

That sounds good. Thanks for having me, Doug. Absolutely. So I started out weirdly, right? I'm in marketing now, but I started out as an engineer. And so I was actually, I did a whole bunch of different types of engineering when I was going through the cycles. But one of the main ones is I was a sales engineer. And so I used to work for a company very similar to Verizon, but up in Canada it was called TELUS. And I worked with a lot of B2B companies, anywhere from about 50 to 1,000 type employee range. Understanding like what's going on within a business from a C-level perspective, IT perspective, and then building out technology roadmaps. How do you get from A to B to C within the organization? And I got to work with a ton of different types of customers, like the Lushes of the world, large law firms, not-for-profits, manufacturing, senior homes, just a whole host of different businesses, which allowed me to establish my business consulting background, my sales background, marketing and technology and leadership, right? On the marketing side, super randomly, 6.5 years ago, I started building out websites, Google Ads, and SEO for businesses and realized very quickly I hated doing 80-hour websites on the weekend. I was like, this is not fun. I get paid very well as a sales engineer. I don't really need to do this work on the weekend. Like, why am I doing this? And so I had an agency say, hey, send us business and we'll give you a percentage of the business. And as I did that, I started realizing, oh. Marketing agencies don't really understand business and businesses don't really understand marketing. Like the agency was good at websites, but they weren't good at other stuff. And how was the business supposed to know? And so I thought, interesting, if I'm putting like agencies in the meetings and they don't speak the same language, and most agencies say they can do everything, but 85% of them can't do anything. And then their last 15% are good at 1 to 3 things. I thought, okay, maybe I could be the person that bridges this gap. And I had this crazy idea. I find 10 marketing agencies and then I'll talk to businesses and match them. And to date, I've talked to 1,032 different marketing agencies and experts over the last 6 and a half years.

Wow.

And I work with about 11% in my vetted network in terms of people that I'll actually send business to. And so I've become this marketing connector slash super connector in that space.

So that means out of 1,000 agencies that you've interviewed, basically you've got 110 that you decide are qualified enough that you feel comfortable referring business to. Exactly. What are the criteria that you use for deciding whether or not an agency is competent?

Yeah, there's a lot. So I have a, like a 4-step process basically. So the first step is just talking to an agency owner one-on-one. After you have over 1,000 conversations, like you can pretty quickly pick up like specific things that people say and you're like, this is probably not going to be a fit. And so some of those things would be, okay, my agency has been around for 2 or 3 years. I've been in marketing for 10 years. So I'm like, But their agency's been around for 2 to 3 years, and typically that means that they don't have the people, systems, and processes in place. And most of them don't actually even know if they want to do this thing long term. And so that's one tell, but there's, they all have these like little tells on that first call that I'll be like, eh, this is not a fit. Second, if I do like the agency owner after that first call, I go, okay, you talked about you doing this service really well, this service really well, this service really well. Please send me information on that. Like I wanna see the websites that you've built. I wanna see the paid ads accounts that you're running. I wanna see your Facebook ads and what your creative looks like. So I go through and look and just see, does what they say check out? Then from there, if they pass that piece, I actually make them pay to get into my network cuz that's also another filter. And then I also have another hour to an hour and a half deep dive that I do with about 30 to 35 questions to understand that agency inside and out. And so you can tell a lot from an agency from that aspect, and that gets rid of about 80 to 85% of the agencies in the network.

Wow.

That come to me. And then what you're left with is that last 15% that I was talking about. In that last 15%, 5% is really good no matter what they do, 'cause they only, they pick up very specific type of customers and they won't pick up people outside of that. The next kind of 5% that's left is if you make a really good match, like, so you're like, this is the business, this is their personality, this is who they need for their stage of business. And this agency is the perfect fit right now for that business. And sometimes it's not one, it's multiple. And then the last 5% are people that are just got through the filter and they're just not good. Like you just, or they broke, or systems broke. And that's what it ends up looking like.

That's amazing. I was just thinking about it as you were talking that one of the reasons why there is so much bad marketing is because there's no barrier to entry.

Zero.

Anybody can open up an agency with anything and claim that they're in marketing and PR, and there's no way to discern really Quality?

No, there's not. Zero.

So you're, so you vet these agencies, they're on your, basically on your panel.

Yeah.

Potential referrals. And then how do businesses find you when they're looking for help in finding a, an agency that can help them, help them scale to the next level?

Yeah. So I do a lot of different marketing channels myself. So how businesses find me are either through referrals from my other customers, through referrals from within my agency network, because agencies typically do 1 or 3 things well, the ones that actually know what they do really well. And so when they have stuff that's like something they don't do, they'll typically send it to me and then I'll end up finding the matches. And then, or someone finds me online and goes, hey, all my pain points, like I've gone through 3 to 5 different agencies, I've burnt a ton of money. It's been 2 years since I've been trying to figure this out. Can you help me? And so when businesses come in, I use my experience from the teleside, cuz I used to work with mid-sized businesses. So understanding businesses that are doing anywhere from $3 to $30 million is a lot easier than the ones that are doing more. And you can understand, okay, who's the business owner? What are they running? How do they think about their business? Where are they headed? What internal resources have they had? Who have they tried? Where has it failed? What level of marketing knowledge is within the organization, like the business organization?

Mm-hmm.

So that I know, okay, I have the expectation set before I introduce them to specific partners. And a lot of people won't do this because they don't have the overall view of the marketing landscape. One of my close friends, or now close friends, says, be like you know so much about all the different aspects of marketing. So whenever I ask you a question, like you typically have the answer for it because you've talked to 11 specialists in Amazon marketing. You've talked to 11, like 15 specialists in the PR aspect. And so you know what works and what works at what level, right? And so he'll ask questions like, hey, I'm about to spend like a small amount of money, like $1,500 or something on ads. Does it make sense? And I'm like, listen, like you're not gonna get enough data back. And if you're gonna cancel it after 3 months, like you're just gonna fail. So just might as well not throw money down the drain. Save that money. Get the right amount of money that you can actually test so that you can actually potentially have a chance of winning at that thing you're about to do. And so that's like how businesses will end up finding me and how I guide them through the process.

So this is fascinating. The, the marketing landscape change— it's extraordinarily dynamic with, with technology. Now we got AI breathing down our throats, which is changing, seems to be changing a lot. How do you keep up and make sure that your marketing agencies are adapting to this extraordinarily dynamic market and environment?

Really good question. Couple ways. One, because I'm a broker, right? And I have networks. At this point, I've built networks in a bunch of different places. I'm part of a diff— bunch of different marketing communities as well. So you don't find agencies online. That's— I don't use that. That's a last resort. You're going to Google and stuff like that. All of these really strong agencies are typically within different hidden networks, and those are the networks that I'm a part of. And so as the space changes, I need to change with it. So I'm like, oh, things are moving more into social content or things are moving more into paid ads or things people need better creative. And so you're just keeping an eye on things. And then because I have the network, like I have an email list of over 300+ agencies, I'm part of a bunch of communities where I'm, I probably have access to over 10,000 like different people that who all have access to different people and potentially use. So it's almost like a one level of filter. And so I just work to be dynamic. Plus I run my own marketing community., and so I have agency owners, fractional CMOs, high-level experts in that community that are all vetted by me. So I consider them all A players. And then that's the community that I'll reach out to be like, hey, does anyone know something for this? Things are shifting here. Who's doing this? And so I stay in touch with a lot of stuff that way. And one other thing, funny enough, after this call, I host a bimonthly event for my agency founders. And the next one that I'm doing in literally like an hour is like the state of what's happening in the world. And so I'm breaking all my agencies into different groups. I'm going, hey, how is things shifting within your current agency today? How's AI affecting it? What are the new things that you're doing to stay on top of it? And then I'm bringing them all together and just sharing that knowledge openly to be like, what were the best tips? And so it's like crowdsourcing the information.

Wow. I got an offer for you. If you want, I can come on to one of your, one of your bimonthly calls and teach your agency owners how to stop fights and arguments forever, both at their agency and also with their clients.

That would be great for their teams. I actually thought about that as you were talking.

I'm like, I do a, I, I have a webinar that I do. I do it publicly once a month, but I do a lot of private webinars. Happy to do it.

Yeah, 100%. We can chat about it.

So I can tell, B, that you're really passionate about what you do. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited to do all of this stuff?

So it's funny, I did a presentation yesterday for my, my, the company that I used to work for, and it was around like the 10 lessons that I learned in business. And as I went through it, I realized there's a few different reasons why people start businesses, right? Some people do it for freedom, some people do it for money, some people do it because they really enjoy just building businesses. That's just in their core.

I've seen that a lot, right?

And then the last one for me was like just enjoying the process of who you become as you run a business. That one is for me is the coolest part and why I run my business. I'm starting to realize a whole bunch of stuff about myself just through running the business that I run. And I'm realizing I love connecting. I love connecting with humans. I love connecting with people. I love connecting ideas down. I love connecting people together. Like it's just, I'm realizing my superpower is around that connection piece, which is really cool because I'm now like, I'm gonna go start speaking way more about connecting humans and bringing people together because it is my core business. But it's also something that I've over the last 6, 6 and a half years as a super connector, started picking up things that like, I'm like, if I just dissect on how I connect with humans, then others can potentially be better at connecting with humans as well, which is very similar to what you're doing. Allowing them to get through conflict, but I'm doing it in a different way. It's like, how do you connect with humans in the first 10 minutes? Because there's a difference between people who network and there's a difference between people who connect. And people who network might know a lot of different people, but they may not go into their address book and just call someone up and be like, hey, can you help me with something? Or, hey, I got something for you. Whereas a connector, they typically connect with someone so well in the first like 5 to 30 minutes that you feel very connected to them. You feel like I can go and text people that I met one time and be like, hey, I might have something for you. Does this make sense? And they'd be open to taking that intro because you've connected with them at a deeper level.

And that, that goes to listening.

Yeah.

How do you learn how to listen? That's the key to connection, I think.

I think that's a massive aspect. And it's just like being aware of the subtleties, right? Like, what are people— what are they interested in? And if— and connecting with them on those things, which is part of— yeah, you got to listen to what they're saying and how excited they are about that thing. And then you feed into that.

So I teach that there are two kinds of listening, Type 1 and Type 2 listening. Type 1 listening is where the focus is on me, the listener, and I'm just asking questions to gain information and maybe persuade you to buy my coaching or whatever. And then there's Type 2 listening, which is the connection listening. And that's where my only agenda is to make sure you feel heard and validated.

Yeah.

Understood.

Beautiful.

And most people are focused on Type 1 listening and they've never learned how to do Type 2 listening. But it sounds to me like you figured it out. How'd you figure it out?

I've done a lot of internal work.

I think I just— the self-development really helped. Yeah.

Just, you do the self-development stuff and I just interested in people. Like I just fundamentally am just interested in humans and what they do and how they think and where they're going. And I think it started out probably from a very young age, right? Because, and I'm just actually realizing this live that this is kind of where it came from. But when I was young, I wasn't really allowed out to go hang out with people. Like my mom was very protective just for for a whole other, a bunch of other reasons. So I actually may have to make a lot of my friendships and connections through like MSN Messenger, like the days of just messaging people back and forth. And that was like listening to their problems, seeing how they're doing. And that's how I would connect with people by like just making sure they felt heard. And so that's, I think what kind of grew me over time. That skillset was like built from that time. And now I just do it as, as a human where I'm like, the way that I connect with people is to understand who they are, what they're going through, how they're feeling. And I love being able to help people move past like barriers just because I, and I've done this many times and it always makes me happy when people are like, "V, that one thing you said to me like 8 months ago changed the entire trajectory of my life." I'm like, "That's cool." Like, that's, I like to do a lot of that.

Wow. So I would suspect that one of the things that has made you so successful is just what you've been talking about. One, that you love connecting with people and two, the connection is to help people so that you are adding value to people's lives by connecting with them and connecting them to others. Would that be a fair statement?

That's it. Yeah, exactly.

And you're smiling, so obviously it's extremely satisfying to you and makes you really happy when you're able to successfully—

Yes.

Connect with somebody and really provide value for them and really make the world a better place.

Yeah. That's the, that's literally the best feeling when you can do that kind of stuff. Like, it's quite a good feeling.

Yeah, absolutely. So where do you go from here, from where you are right now? What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?

Yeah, and did you say 10 years? Yeah, there's a lot. Funny enough, the call before this, I got super excited because there's a business partner or synergy with someone that— because I was trying to figure out like what's the next evolution for CJAM, right? Like we do the marketing development stuff well, and I think there's quite a few things on the horizon. So one is building an environment for communities. Like my— I want to really strengthen my marketing community and and just bring in the right value and add all the support there to make them the strongest possible because that means that they can help my customers more and more. And so that's gonna be a focus of mine with this new partner to amplify that. To realizing how much I love talking about connecting and bringing people together. I'm actually working on my next keynote, which is gonna be around that specific topic. And so I wanna start speaking a lot more on that topic. I have other conversations where I speak on how to find the right marketing partners and outsourcing and all that stuff, which is I think super valuable. But the connection piece is gonna be another thing I wanna talk about. And third, I think we chatted about it, but I'm gonna be launching my own podcast. I already played around with 2 episodes and this is gonna just be around business, marketing, and technology. And so I think for me it's just building my brand the way that I wanna build my brand, both on the CJAM front, but also on my personal, uh, side.

I think that on that second point that you made, which is building a keynote around connection, think about the how, how do you do it? How you actually connect with people, what down on the grass, down in the dirt, what is it specifically that you're doing that allows you to, one, get the deep feeling of satisfaction that you have when you are able to connect? And if you were to teach some other person, like a young person, this is how you do connection, what would be the steps that you would be teaching?

Yeah, it's a great question. And a lot of the part of this is like me just doing the self-reflection to reverse engineer what I do.

Exactly.

And, and that's fun. Reverse engineering is what I do is I'm an engineer. That's what gets me really excited about doing it. So some of the concepts, for example, that I'll, that like to be a part of this, some of the keynote speaking that I do is one, can an introvert also be a super connector? That's a, that's another thing. Like a lot of people are extroverts. A lot of people are introverts.

You're an in— you, are you an introvert?

I'm an extrovert.

Oh, I'm an introvert.

Okay. And so maybe you can verify or validate what I think about this. So my whole thing is I think. Both extroverts and introverts can be super connectors, but it takes a certain amount of energy to be a super connector. And therefore the extrovert is always gonna have more energy to give because it's just fundamentally from a foundational biological aspect. I can connect with 7 to 9 people a day and still have energy at the end of the day.

And if I do that, I am wiped out.

You're done. Like it's, and you can't do that 5 days for 6 years straight. Like that just doesn't work. And so it, it is possible, but it's like extroverts can just kind of be more shotgun approach and just meet a ton of people and build relationships and build connections. And that's just what they do. Introverts have to be much more focused and figure out like, who— what are the connections that I want to make and which ones are the most valuable? Because you have a certain amount of energy you can expend, right? And so it's like topics and concepts like that I'm really excited to just dissect more and just relay until I get it to a point where I'm like, I got this connection thing figured out.

I got it. So one of the things that would be really interesting is say, all right, so let's say it doesn't matter whether you're an extrovert or introvert, but how do you actually create a relationship with people? How— what is it that you think about? What is it that you say to them? What is it you're listening for? I mean, really down to stuff that you— many people probably don't even think about.

Yeah, yeah.

That's kind of what led me to listening, is how do we really do this?

I think once I get the presentation I send it over to you, I'm excited to see what you think.

Happy to look at it.

Yeah, yeah. I think it'll be— I think it'll be fun because it's the little things, right? Like you jump on a call, you ask where someone's from, they'll talk about a certain thing, and then maybe you share something that's a little bit vulnerable and see if they catch it. If they don't catch it, okay, cool. I gotta stay a little bit more surface level. Like, I think like the background of our brain just, or at least my brain, I don't wanna say everyone's brain, but like it's doing these little calculations of like, how deep can I go with this person and where can I connect with this person? Right. And it's figuring that part out by asking questions, listening, and also throwing things out and seeing if people catch it.

Getting reactions, right? Yeah, absolutely. So again, I think that's where listening becomes really important because you're asking, you have certain targeted questions you're asking, you're expecting a continuum of responses and you're checking the box where, okay, where is this person? And to your, something you just said there that was really important was, so I show a little bit of vulnerability, how do they react to that? If they don't react positively or they don't react at all, they're neutral to it, then I back off a little bit. Yeah. But if they all of a sudden appreciate authenticity and vulnerability, then okay, we can go down that rabbit hole a little bit more. And see what happens.

And that's where the deepest connection gets made.

Absolutely.

When you got two people that are vulnerable and they're willing to share, like you can build a lifelong connection in less than like 20 minutes.

That's right. And I think that's because, I think that's for a couple of different reasons. One, I think that when we can be open, vulnerable, and authentic with each other without being weak, and this is a big misconception about it, as, as I'm sure, is that we can, one, we can connect with a shared experience. Of being in touch with ourselves, that builds trust. And most importantly, we feel safe with each other. And it's that psychological safety that really creates the deep connection.

That's beautiful. That makes sense.

And just so if people are curious, I keep— I always keep notes of the important stuff in front of me. I've never talked about this on this podcast before, but psychological safety has 5 elements. See how this resonates with you. Emotional safety, physical safety, moral safety— that's an interesting one— cognitive safety, and spiritual safety. And to the degree that you can create those different elements of safety, then people, you trust each other and you connect.

Love it.

And that's where the real— that's where the deep connection is.

Definitely gonna go back into my notes and pick that up and start breaking that down. 'Cause I think that's super accurate. Like we probably do this subconsciously.

That's right.

Don't realize which ones we're actually hitting as we're doing it.

And the reason that I think about this is because when I get called into high-conflict situations, often non-litigated, where there's a lot at stake and emotions are super high and people would rather shoot each other with AK-47s than talk, creating safety is, is my job as a mediator.

Beautiful.

And, and I also see creating safety in relationship as being critically important. Yeah. Because if you don't feel safe, what are you gonna do? You're gonna avoid, you're gonna defend, you're gonna withdraw. And that connection that you're talking about can't be created.

100%. 100%. Super accurate.

That's cool.

Thank you for sharing that.

Well, you're welcome. Obviously we're kindred souls. We think about this stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah.

100%. It's important. Like communication's the most important thing. Like when people tell me like, hey, what doesn't work between like the marketing and the business? Like what's the number one thing that you see that doesn't work? I'm like, it's communication. Like, right. You can't communicate as a business to your partners effectively and you guys are missing context and you're missing different levels of context. Maybe you as a founder understand marketing at a 2 outta 10 level, and then the agency understands it at a 9 outta 10 level. There's 7 layers of information being missed. And it's same with any relationship. So if you can, you, I think for any business owner and leader, like we talked about this before, I think on the podcast is like listening and being able to communicate is the most important skillset to grow because it is. You want to have people on the same page. You want people to hear you and understand you and vice versa and feel heard. Heard, because then it creates an environment of, one, safety. And when people feel safe, they'll take risks. And when they take risks, they might end up finding things for your business that ends up moving the needle way more than you thought it was going to.

Exactly. And what's really interesting, and I learned this doing the research for my fifth book that we were talking about earlier, is that we are hardwired for this kind of empathy. Goes back millions and millions of years. Because when you think about it, hominids only developed vocabulary 230,000 years ago. The ability to speak words evolved with the mutation of two genes and the mastery of fire. Before that, there was no, no speaking, no, no language of any. So how did people communicate a million years ago? Hominids, how do they communicate? Body language, emotions, facial expressions. Yeah. Stuff that we don't pay attention to today. We pay attention to it on a subconscious level.

Yes.

But we're really never trained to pay attention to it on a conscious level.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I would suspect that you're really good at that.

Yeah. I probably, yeah, I probably have picked it up and subconsciously I'm picking up on it. And I think now I'm moving it more into the consciousness because when you start seeing high-level speakers on stage or people who are able to, every movement is organized.

It's like, it's, right.

Orchestrated. Choreographed. They walk forward and they open up or they're not crossing their hands. There's all these little things that people do to be an effective communicator, speaker, and to shift. And that stuff gets me excited. That's the cool part. Like, I'm, that's like the next thing that I'm like really excited to learn is get better at storytelling and then get better at like how you orchestrate yourself or hold yourself as you're telling those stories.

I would imagine you're already pretty good at it, but if you put your head to it, I, it'd be amazing to watch you work.

I'm excited. I'm excited to see what it becomes.

Yeah. Good for you. One more question and I'll let you go, B. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Huh, that's a good question. The amount of internal work that I do to be who I am, I don't think people realize how much work goes into that. Like, I've done— so I think back when I'm 23, 24, I decided, I figured out, oh, there's a bunch of stuff that I don't know, that I don't know about myself. And so I actually started taking counseling, and the guy's like, why are you here? I'm like, Listen, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't know, that I don't know about myself, and I wanna figure out what that stuff is. So that's what I'm here for. He's like, okay, there's nothing like you're dealing with like upfront. I'm like, no, I'm here proactively to figure out what I don't know. And so I've done that for the last 10 to 11 years, once a month ongoing. And it's been one of the most valuable things on personal growth that I do. So a lot of people don't know that's the amount of work that I put in. And I do a ton of journaling. I got a, Man, I got journals on journals and ChatGPT's doing like counseling stuff. So I'm always doing self-reflection. I'm always asking what do I want as I get older so that I have the least amount of regrets. And a lot of that work is through the personal and self-development world. And the more I understand who I am and how I function, the better I am actually at connecting with others because I can see that internal struggle in them and it allows me to become such a better connector. Just do that.

Absolutely. That, that— I'm impressed. And what we don't realize is how similar we all are to each other.

Yeah.

And so as you are able to unpack all the layers of who you are and what— how life has created you, and all the pressures and cultural and environmental and family factors that created who you are, as you begin to unpack that and begin to understand it, then you begin to see the same stuff in other people.

Yeah, yeah.

That's when you develop compassion. Yeah. Because you can see that other people who are not quite as aware are suffering from the same things that you've suffered from. And now you can understand why they are where they are and think about ways— how do I help this person?

100%. And I, I resonate with this a lot because one of the biggest things I say is whenever someone has a goal or dream or they're doing something very specific. When I see someone just acting out of reaction, like they're just reactive versus they've proactively chosen the thing that they're going down, it hurts me when I see people just reacting and I try to go, listen, is that truly what you want? Have you thought about that?

Yeah.

If it, if you've truly thought about it and you've decided that my goal is to make a ton of money, like that's what I wanna do, and you've truly thought about that proactively, great. Go do that. Go make the money. You, that's the decision you made. But then there's people that just are doing it reactively because they're just like, that's gonna fill some sort of internal hole for them.

Exactly. And they're miserable.

I hate seeing that because you can spend 15, 20, 25, 30 years of your life trying to chase this goal of this, the money, and then realize at the end that you're going to be so depressed because that didn't give you what you wanted. And now you have to do the internal work. Just do the internal work now that you don't regret this.

You're so right on the, I, every day I say this is so unnecessary. This is so unnecessary. This is, I watch people fight and argue and I, the first thing that I think, I'm sorry, this is so unnecessary. They are suffering. They don't need to suffer. All they need to do is learn how to listen, and this all goes away. Yeah. So, yeah, and I don't know what it is that makes it so difficult for people to do the inner work. Hard.

It's, it's not easy to do inner work because you have to get comfortable with uncomfortable emotions.

And yeah, that's true. And that, and that's pain. It can be internally painful.

Internally very hard. Long time, Doug.

Yeah.

I've been doing this for 10 years. I just realized something literally this last 2 weeks with my counselor, but I've been seeing for 10 years. This was nothing I'd never even realized that I was like, oh, this emotion is the same emotion I had when I was 5 doing this specific thing. That didn't come up until today. Wow. And so people don't realize like when you do counseling or you do business coaching or that kind of stuff, like they think that there's gonna be like big movements through each session. That's not it.

Mm-hmm.

It's like there, every 6 to 8 sessions, there's a nugget and that nugget does an internal shift. Every single time. And it's interesting because like my counselor will say, hey B, like we unpacked a lot today, like in this last session. Let's— we're going to be meeting again in 3 or 4 weeks anyways. But like now my brain is— I can paying attention to my brain processing this in different ways and catching it. It's— and you can feel it shifting slightly each time. So yeah, it's so interesting and so cool because you become such a more open person as you unpack and let go of a lot of this.

And this is the key that you're pointing out here is we're Always look for incremental improvement. Never look for perfection.

Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly—

that's the key.

Yeah.

Obviously we could talk for hours about that. But we are coming to the end of the show. I just really wanna thank you so much for being— for showing up today. And I know that myself and my audience have learned a tremendous amount from you, and I really look forward to our connection moving forward.

Me as well. Thank you for having me, and I hope everyone gets value out of the podcast.

Absolutely. By the way, if people wanna contact you, how can they do that?

The best way, two ways. You go to my website, so www.cjammarketing.com, and if you're hiring marketing agencies, there's resources at the bottom that you can use for asking the right questions and all that stuff. So feel free to use those or find me on LinkedIn. Bedad Jamshidi is where you'll find me on my LinkedIn. I do a lot of content there as well.

Wow. C Jam, C Jam Blues, Oscar Peterson. I'm a jazz violinist, so love it.

I'm gonna have to look them up.

Yes. Go. Yeah. Get it. Just. Put in Spotify, CGM Blues.

I will. All right.

Thanks a lot, B.

Thanks, Doug.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes. Go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.