Why Chutzpah should be an essential part of your strategy to get recognition for your business.

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. Today I have a man with me who is used to getting noticed because he has chutzpah, as he calls it. Mason Harris joining us from Maryland. Welcome.

Thank you so much, Jim, and I hope my accent doesn't bother our listeners.

Well, I think either way, if we need to, we'll put subtitles, uh, for, for anyone that can't understand my accent. Mason, you've written a book called, uh, The Chutzpah Uh, Guy, tell us about it and how does this help entrepreneurs to get noticed?

Sure. The, well, first let me, if I may, before I even get to the book, how would you define the word chutzpah? I know most people are familiar with it, even if they can't define it, they have a sense that, oh, that person has chutzpah. That means what?

Well, I always think of chutzpah as being someone who's got a bit of courage and frankly the grit to go and get something done and maybe sometimes take a risk in terms of Offending people, but someone that has ambition and courage.

Okay. Well, right away, ambition, courage, grit, determination. You are now officially a member of the chutzpah tribe. Frequently, there's also a negative side to chutzpah, such as, I can't believe the chutzpah on that guy. What a thief. As if it's rude, dishonest, and quite honestly, It is both because chutzpah to me is a skillset. I describe it as a blend of personality traits and learned skills that combine to provide exceptional results. Okay. And those results can be constructive in terms of how it helps people or destructive. For example, when I say skillset, if you and I were to take classes in computer programming, We take the same courses, we end up leaving with the same skills. Maybe one of us is better than the other. It doesn't make a difference, but we have the same knowledge. You might choose to go and create an algorithm to help in healthcare, to track the benefits of a different type of treatment for the pandemic that we're experiencing right now. You might create an application for businesses. I might choose, however, using those exact same skills, to create ransomware. So the skill set is the same. It's how we choose to implement it. And that's how I look at chutzpah.

Okay, so is chutzpah a spirit or is it a series of practices? Help us with that, Mason.

It's both a combination of genetics and learned behaviors. We all have personality characteristics that we're almost born with. And for some, it's things that we learn along the way. For me, that's the greater part of it. So I've come up with 8 key behaviors and characteristics that are part of the footspit model that I identify in my new book, which is called The Footspit Advantage. I'll show you a copy for a second. Be bigger, go bigger, be bolder, and do better is kind of the tagline for it. But the advantage is a promise that these behaviors, which by the way, are not secrets. We've been doing it from the beginning of mankind. It's how we put together the model and combining them for people to say, okay, I either need to show some more chutzpah in my daily life, in my personal life or at work, or for a lot of the people that read the book, small business owners and entrepreneurs who realize that to get where they've gotten has already taken chutzpah. Now, how do they create a culture of chutzpah among their teams, among their colleagues, such that what inspires them, the behaviors that have made them successful, will now create more success within the company, more creative thinking, a willingness to take calculated risks in ways that others don't, to not stand still, but to always think in terms of scaling upwards?

Okay. So you mentioned that Chutzpah is an acronym, right? It stands for 8 different, uh, sort of disciplines or activities. Do you want to take us through those? Because, you know, some people may understand what chutzpah means, but as you're going through it, I think you're going to clarify in even more detail how people can live like that. I do want to ask you, what's the antonym to chutzpah? What would you say is the opposite of chutzpah?

I would say— I don't know that I can come up with a single word, but I would describe it as A person that allows the world to happen to them as opposed to influences what happens to them. We know that we're subject to luck at some level, both good luck and bad luck. Everybody's subject to it. And actually gets to one of the key behaviors in the Chutzpah Model. But there are things within our control. For example, we can't control necessarily how people treat us or bad events that happen to us, or even good events that happen that we can leverage into even more success, or we can squander away. I read recently about another lottery winner in the United States who won millions of dollars and within 4 years was bankrupt because friends and family had basically encouraged a spending spree. And give me I've been close to you for years. Instead of using that money to get educated, to possibly invest in a franchise, start a company, get trained, they spent as if there would be no end. And of course there is an end. So good luck doesn't always portend good luck in the future. It's how you leverage it. And bad luck can be leveraged into something positive as well. So as far as the antonym, somebody who allows things to happen. The world decides what's going to happen to that person's life, as opposed to people like us, people like your listeners who have chutzpah and say, I'm going to move forward. I have ideas I'm going to implement. And I know I may not succeed on every single one, but I can handle a little bit of failure because I know that risk is necessary for reward.

So that's great, Mason. So what I like about that is if you've got 8 elements of chutzpah, My chances of getting at least 1 or 2 of those 8 right, I like those odds. So, you know, let's go through your 8, the different elements of chutzpah.

Okay, I will. And actually, for our listeners, for our audience, if you're not driving and you're at your desk and you want to do something that's a little kinesthetic that involves this model, draw a circle on a piece of paper, a large circle. And then cut the, that circle into 8 slices like a pizza pie.

Okay.

So let's start with the first one, the first C. I'm going to describe it first, but in essence, C is based on a term, a concept that goes back a couple thousand years to the days of Greek philosophers. Okay. And it's a Latin term that we're, most of us, I'm sure, are familiar with. It's carpe diem. Now, carpe diem literally means seize the day, take advantage of the day. Sometimes people use it as seize the moment. In essence, people with carpe diem have an objective, and the objective might be, for example, I'm going to write a book and I've got it all figured out, and I know that this is going to happen. And when I find the time, I'm going to do it. Carpe diem says, well, the likelihood you're gonna find that time is pretty slim because you have no plan. You have this vague objective. Carpe diem says, kind of like the Nike logo or, or, or a slogan, just do it, says just do it. Outline your book. Think of what you might put in the chapters and start writing. And when should you do that? You know, Today's as good a day as any other. So at some level as individuals, we all have objectives. Carpe diem is about seizing the moment, seizing the day and moving forward. Just do it.

So that's, that's number one, moving forward. On our second, then we've got an H.

Okay. So the H is you're working clockwise. All of us, every single day, we have ideas, we communicate with others. Sometimes it's our families. Sometimes it's our colleagues at work. Sometimes it's people That we need to persuade at work, but frankly, we're not their bosses. So the persuasion has to occur because of a sense of alignment. So H is what I call handling objections. Every good idea, and frankly, every bad idea has an objection. If you're in sales and if you are the head of a company, you've been in sales all your life, probably since you could speak. By the way, you may not have known you were in sales with those first words, Ball, but you were saying you wanted to play with that ball. You wanted something. And we get objections to every idea that we have. Sometimes if we're in sales, it's, you're going in and, you know, when you describe, I have a PR plan in place for you. Well, I don't know that I can afford that plan. Or I've tried PR and it doesn't work. There are objections that you can count on, that you can plan for. And there are objections that are legit that come about because you've developed a questioning strategy to understand that. So H is handling objections. U is what I call uncovering need, pain, and opportunity. And the very quick description of U, uncovering need, pain, and opportunity, is we all have needs. Frequently, we know that it makes sense in a proactive way to address that need. But we wait till it becomes a pain. Sometimes as a result of this, we see opportunities. So I know, for example, that, or a dentist knows that, and we know we probably should get our teeth cleaned once, maybe twice, maybe as many as 4 times a year, depending on the dental practice you're with. And that involves a regular checkup. But a lot of people skip those teeth cleanings and the regular checkups, the maintenance side. And what happens? They wake up one morning and they have a toothache. Well, that ache is a pain and that gets addressed immediately, sometimes at more cost, sometimes at a loss of something else because it's too late to address certain things when it's truly become a pain. And the opportunity is when we can think outside the box and say, for example, the founders of Uber who looked at transportation. And while others said, what are you doing? We already have taxicabs and limo services and buses and trams and trains and inner city lines. There are lots of methods people can get around, but they realized, no, there was a large group of people who would be better served by the convenience of using their phone, calling for a ride when needed, ridesharing services. And they created a company out of it despite all of the objections that that they receive, and it's because they saw this opportunity.

Okay. How many minutes? So you've got 6 minutes left. I'm keeping you on the clock, right? So you've got to T next.

Okay. T is about what I call trailblazing. Trailblazing is basically a willingness to fail. Trailblazing says, I'm going to strike out on a new path. I'm going to go where others haven't gone, either because they haven't thought of it or because they didn't do as good a job and they failed. I know that not every decision I make, not everything I implement is going to work, but I'm willing to take a couple of losses because I can recover from them. I'm going to trailblaze and try something different.

Okay. And the Z, is that trying something new from A to Z?

Actually, no, but that's a good guess. The Z, or the Z as I call it, but the Z is zigzag. That's what happens when you run across obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. And this really reflects how persistent are we. I'll give a good example. There was an author actually based in the United Kingdom of all places, and the author was turned down by 12 publishers. The 13th publisher said, you know, we don't really do books like this, but I'm going to let my daughter read what you've given me and we'll see what she thinks. Well, a day later, that daughter comes back and says, this is the best thing I've ever read. When can I get the rest of it? When's the next book coming out? Do you wanna guess who the author is?

Is it Game of Thrones?

Uh, actually no, but that's another good one as well. It happens to be J.K. Rowling. Oh, the Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling was turned down a dozen times.

A bit like the Beatles being turned down, right? So you've gotta zigzag. And then, I don't mean to, and I don't mean to sort of keep you going too quickly here, but you've got the P. We've still got 3 letters and 4 minutes.

You got it. P is about purpose. Ultimately, bad things happen. Things get in our way. A pandemic, basically, which aside from the health issues and caused the deaths of millions across the world and serious illnesses, also bankrupted businesses. It caused people to live off of their savings because they couldn't get to work. It's caused a lot of emotional issues. Purpose is what gets you through these things. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, I would recommend for those who want to understand purpose and how it can get you through the deepest, darkest moments in your lives. The A is about ambiguity elimination. How do you get by and work with a model to help you make decisions more quickly, more efficiently, and more correct? And then the final H is one of my favorites and one of the most unexpected, and that has to do with humility. People with chutzpah, particularly on the constructive side, know how to share the success with those that helped bring them there. There's an old adage that success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan. Okay? Everybody claims success. Well, the person that's successful And knows that it's the team that he or she has built that got him there, shares that. The person that says, look what I've accomplished after the team has worked so hard, loses his or her best people. That's the model in 20 minutes or less.

And forgive me for trying to compress what is obviously a huge body of work into such a short amount of time. I also thought H might have been humor. Well, I guess the stem of humor and humility is the same because one has to have a good sense of humor as well, right? And as an entrepreneur, because you've got to laugh at things not always going the way you plan. Mason, what about you as an entrepreneur? You've been a public speaker and an author. This is your second book. How do you go about getting yourself noticed for those entrepreneurs out there that would like to do what you're doing and become well-known and get A business around your skillset?

Well, the tools in our tool bag for public relations, for getting noticed, for reaching out to people change, but the objective is always the same. And sometimes what we know, I had described earlier that chutzpah is a blend of personality traits and learned skills that combine to provide exceptional results. Well, effective public relations, which is what you do and what all of our listeners need. There's a blend of strategy, media options, and proper implementation that combine to provide exceptional results. So what works for me may not work for somebody else, but what I am focused on right now, for example, is podcasts. Because for me to share what I believe are valuable— is valuable information and a set of skills that will help people move forward, podcasts is a wonderful way to do it. I also write articles. I have my book. I post a lot on LinkedIn and somewhat on Facebook. I find for my market, which is business people, and there are a lot of people interested in self-help, that LinkedIn is probably the best overall platform for me. And of course, video is becoming more prominent now in my world. So I'm in the process of learning video and have created a YouTube channel. I am also this week, coincidentally this Wednesday, starting the first of a 4-part live series on a platform based in the US called superpeer.com. So it's a live series, 45 minutes each, where I give the time to the footspit advantage, the rules with the stories that resonate more than just the pizza diagram so that people get a better sense and can say, now I know how to implement, how to share, how to teach, how to create that culture in my company. So those are the primary methods I'm using.

Okay, Mason, that's wonderful. Now, if people want to find out about you, how can they do that?

Well, I have a website. It's called thechutzpahguy.com. So it's T-H-E, the chutzpah, C-H-U-T-Z or Z-E-P-A-H, chutzpah, and then guy, G-U-Y.com. And on LinkedIn.

Amazing. You had chutzpah because you reached out to me and that's how this all started. So thank you so much for having chutzpah and sharing your chutzpah methodology with the unnoticed entrepreneurs out there.

Well, I thank you. And frankly, in our discussion, I know that you have a lot of chutzpah and look forward to the day when we can talk more about that. Uh, maybe even your audience would love to see and learn more about your history and your chutzpah.

Well, let's see if anyone, uh, is interested in a, in a tired old English entrepreneur in the countryside. I'd love to do that with you. Thanks so much for joining me on this show today.