Chris Voss Interview: Negotiation, Success & Never Split the Difference

So let's go to. You know, I will just say that we had a conversation where we were on the phone, catching up, and you were telling me about how we use an elf versus half. And I was so fascinated by what you said. I was like, we have got to share this with all the genius network members. This particular insight and awareness and skill and technique and listening that you have has been very valuable. So that's why I've got. Yeah, that's what I want to talk to you about. So I'll let you take it from there.

Yeah, well, I mean, when I first heard about it from you, it just made sense. This is a really liberating idea, and it's a little bit harder to embrace early on when you're hungry for clients, customers that there are a lot of people that you should just not take in, you should not talk to at all, period, ever. And maybe one of the key liberating moments for me was, you know, we were. We're gonna run one of those Facebook lookalike audiences things to target marketing. And, you know, Facebook is, you know, they got these insidious algorithms. You might as well take advantage of them. Right. Not just the bad guys. And they came back, and they basically said, you know, there's 2 million people that fit your perfect client profile in the US and I'm like, 2 million. Like, we're gonna walk away from the vast majority of people out there, and there's still 2 million people that we got to get to and we got to serve. And so, you know, we really began to accelerate along those lines, just, you know, adopting. Embracing the idea that, you know, that you planted. Planted in us.

Yeah.

And so. And what he's referring to is at elf versus half.

We'll get into that. I got some slides. I get.

Because I pull this weird FBI shit on me here. No, I'm kidding.

Okay, so I want to run a couple. And I want to talk. Yep. And so if you guys have put my PowerPoint up, this first one is really. It's an advertisement, but it's not really an advertisement for me. Is that thing ready?

Yes, I think it's. And there you go. You can see it up front here on the monitor. The front there. See, we're just going to have you negotiate with the technology right now. I'm guage.

Was to connect authentically with the victim, the victim's family, and with the hostage taker. Everybody really deserves to have somebody hear what they have to say. So that's not a bad video. Right. I got that directly as a result of being a member of Genius Network, we talk about, you know, the benefits of being part of Genius Network and the stuff that ends up just kind of coming your way, you know, falling out of the sky or that the universe attracts because of the people that are involved in Genius Network. And when we were at a meeting and somebody came on and they wanted. They call it the perfect intro video. We could do this perfect intro for your business. And they knew I was going to be at the meeting, and they made it for me and gave it to me. And so, I mean, there's so many additional fringe benefits from the kind of people that are attracted to what you've built. And I just want to bring that as an example, and I wanted to thank you for it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So to get into the elf half thing, and also, you know, I wanted to welcome you back. I had to put that in, you know, and I knew I was going to be late. I apologize for that. But first of all, it's not a sin to not get the deal. It's a sin to take a long time to not get the deal. Because every one of you as an entrepreneur, your most valuable commodity that's engaged in every single negotiation you're engaged in is what time. And this is why this stuff kills you. Now, it's not only a sin to take a long time to not get the deal, it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. And in my company, we've always said, no deal is better than a bad deal. And we learned that the hard way, because we had a deal in 2009, 2010 that was lucrative. The L and half could be lucrative, but it was blood money. And for a long time, we didn't think we were going to get paid. Almost a year's worth of work, a lot of money that I promised people, it just went really bad. It turned into blood money. You know, my opinion of lawyers deteriorated as we went through it until I finally found a lawyer who knew what they were talking about. By the way, if you get a dispute between states, if you're in one state, another one, the other person, if they're cheating you, is in another state, find a lawyer that's comfortable with being in the Northern District Federal court, Northern District of Virginia. The Northern District of Virginia is affectionately known as the Rocket docket. And the other side, who's trying to bury you with motions and legal fees, if they're wrong, as soon as they get to the Rocket docket, they Settle with you right away, or as soon as they find out where they are, they settle. And I went back and forth with lawyers that kept telling me there was nothing you could do. And we finally came across a female attorney, and she said, the rocket docket is where you want to be. And we settled quickly. So, just as a side note, great place to be, but it took us a long time. It was a bad deal. It was blood money. It was a lot of money, and it was blood money. And then that was before I learned what you're talking about, and so now it just makes sense. So it's a sin to take a long time to get a bad deal. All right, so else, easy, lucrative, fun, Bing. And all right, so we got little pictures for each one, because I figured hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. What does this look like? And these are types. These are types that you will see and you will start to look out for. And again, the lame, the lucrative, lucrative is still blood money. Just because there's a lot of money there. That's one of the things that's going to make you vulnerable to this whole concept. And then finally, frustrating. Now, I learned about this concept called the drama triangle way back when I was on a suicide hotline. If you've been in crisis intervention or therapy, dysfunctional behavior and dysfunctional relationships, you probably come across a drama triangle at some point in time. And so since there were some F words already used earlier, I'll go ahead and go with them because they're great adjectives for people that are making a point of fucking with you and soaking up your time and sucking the life out of you. And if they're call it suicide hotlines, then they're also business people, and they're also the people that you interact with. And they told us there were basically three types. The rescuer, the persecutor, and the victim. And then they play one role. And as soon as they suck you into a role, you know, like, I need your help. You know, if they're being victimized, you know, I'm really in a jam. You got help me figure this out. And you offer some suggestions, which we would do in a hotline, then they'd attack you for those suggestions they become. Immediately, they'd switch from one position to the triangle and another, keeping you off balance. And as I was knocking out the profiles for the halfs, I'm like, this is a drama triangle. This is exactly what this is. Because these people are gonna. They're gonna run this game on you. Some of them can't help it, some of them, because they can. You know, I went to somebody, somebody was cheating me, and I had a friend said, he didn't cheat you because he could. He cheated you because he couldn't help himself. So what their motivations are doesn't matter, but it's still happening and it's still keeping you off guard. So in our halves, this, you know, this is. I took Joe's. I thought Joe Zachary was dead on. He's got a great gun. Instinct for human behavior. Might you get sucked into it? And you know, my company, we think about the different kind of emotions because we want to diagnose what's going on. Like if I'm getting frustrated. If you're getting frustrated, the negative behavior. Frustration is about the future. You get frustrated over something that you envision was going to happen in the future and you're having trouble getting there. So if you feel frustration and you're not sure what's going on, it's very much about someone or something is denying you access to something in the future. That's what frustration is about. Annoying is about something that has happened. As you begin to isolate where this is coming from and interpret your gut instinct and then you can trace it down a little bit more. But very much like the drama triangle, they're going to move around on you when they call you on the phone or they try to engage with you for whatever it is. So it's not just one type of behavior. It's different types of behavior that bounce around and it's invisible. This is death by a thousand cuts. So we implemented this in our company early on. Our director of business development, a young lady named Davy Johnson, who's brilliant, she's just so much fun to learn to work with. And she learns fast. For her mistakes are learning accelerators. She loves making mistakes. Some people are horrified by it. She loves it. She gets smarter faster by screwing up. So I started telling her about the half elf thing, said, this is what it is. Let's start to look for it and let's develop our own profiles. What do they say? So we know right off the bat that we will turn and walk away. So we began. We've implemented this with a tremendous amount of success. And then I just recently asked her, I said, so what's it costing us?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get. Get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to Joe's freebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Because you got to, you guys got to know what it's actually literally costing you. I'm working on a book on real estate now. And the guy that I'm working on the book, it's his opinion that a half costs you two elves. Every bad customer is costing you business with at least two good customers. Start to think about how that's picking your pocket. So then I ran up past Davey, I said, what do you think the costs are of halfs versus elves? And she said, there are at least two, if not three. Now think about what you're making, what you make in an hour or you're making a gig. Like when I got out of the FBI, you know, there's some guys used to brag like, I don't work for less than $1,000 a day. And one of my friends pointed out to me about the person that said this. He said, first of all, when he gets a thousand dollar a day gig, it costs him three days. So he's really working for $300 a day. And then it cost him two months to get that gig. So he ain't working for $1,000 a day, he's working for $1,000 for every three months. But people tell them this stuff in their head, like would you take a million dollar gig? Well, what if it took you two years to get your million dollars? You didn't make $2 million, you made a lot less. So this is what they cost you. And that's just in delivery. And she said, I think they actually cost us a lot more in preparation. Probably five. The amount of time your most valuable commodity spent on one half. You could have served five elfs. And then finally, since she keeps track of that, she says n or halfs are not repeaters. The elves are the repeaters for a whole variety of reasons. So ideally it just begins to catch you. Ideally you're beginning to see how just self destructive it is to not start learning the difference and walking away. And our biggest problem and my company's biggest problem right now, having adopting this meeting the demand, intentionally walking away from more and more people. Our biggest problem is meeting the demand of the elves. You're going to have the same problem because you're going to discover them. And you hear it echoed. You've heard it echoed with the different people. You've heard talk about being successful in business. I got successful as soon as I stopped saying yes to a lot of stuff, started saying no to more. These are people that their gut instincts, whether they realize it or not, say no to the haves, the more people they said no to and then I'm real. And if you think about it, these are the people, their gut instinct is developing more and more. And there's a line that I'm going to throw out that I learned from Dan Sullivan, because Dan, he's got a line that we're going to share in a second in behavior that as soon as it comes out of somebody's mouth, they run the other direction. Just not interested in them. And so we're going to get into that. And those are on your tools. But is there anything. I've been talking the whole time, anything you want to add?

No, I'm just really loving this because it is just seeing the concept of ELF versus half. And in genius network meetings we do the tool where people list who are the people, the projects, the things that they're doing that are ELF and which ones are half so they can eliminate more half from their life and have more elf. But the depth that you've gone into this and then identifying phrases which you're going to share in stuff is incredibly valuable. So to me, this is validation and acknowledgement of stuff. And then this is what real collaboration is, where you take an idea and a concept and you give it to someone else who's very smart and in their particular area and they're able to use it. So to me, I'm just sitting there going, I love this. I mean, I really do. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. I don't know if it was what organization that Dan told you'd mentioned this years ago, Dan, where something like 80% of customers in some businesses are not profitable and they are supported by the 20% that are because the pain in the ass people. You know, if you want to take the 8020 rule. And of course there's nuances and variations, but the fact of the matter is, as you're saying this, I'm sitting there thinking who are the ELF genius network members? Who are the ones that have been the half and the amount you Know that whole squeaky wheel gets the oil sort of line. Well, Peter Diamandis has the flip side of that, which is the squeaky, squeaky oil gets replaced.

Right?

Not the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And there are a lot of clients. You know, that whole rule of, you know, the customer's always right. You know, Dan's talk is bullshit. Because if you think the customer's always right, you never get any sleep, you never have any free time. You know, the customer is not king. The customer's king. Well, no, they're not. The customer's a partnership. And I even my very first marketing course, it was clients, not customers. Because customer implies someone that buys something from you. Client implies someone you have a relationship with. So this really represents to me about how to develop relationships. Not just people that want something or they want to, you know, want the best price. They're skeptical and all that. So I'm just commenting. It's great. So I appreciate it.

And some of this is really hard for people, too, because you think of yourself as a good person. You don't want to abandon someone. And this is absolutely abandoning people who are just not for you. And it's not their fault. You're not blaming them, you're not getting mad at them. Bad fit. But it's just. Just not letting them soak up your life because they're going to hold you back. They're going to. They're going to do all sorts. There's just nothing good. And you're not good for them. I mean, if they're a half for you, you might be a half of them.

Yeah.

So you're not necessarily doing them any favors either.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a way to. It's a right fit or wrong fit client for you, you know, and look, people that are total leeches, there's plenty of other people, they can suck the lifeblood out of those people too. You know, if you want to just add a compassionate twist on what Chris is talking about here.

Yeah. And then, you know, these also represent the complainers, the trolls, the rock throwers. I mean, there was a comment earlier, Brett, the Canadian dude.

Yeah, Brett Wilson.

You know, he talked about people asking, you know, what about the negativity? Like, I get pretty, you know, overall on Instagram, I'm really sportive and still I get some negative comments and I put something up and some guy said to me, like, look, are you the negative comments on your post? Does that get you down? I'm like, did you look at the ratio? Like, look at the Ratio. So once you start adopting this people that are for you, you don't gotta serve everybody. Customer's not always right. The critic is not always right. You know, and the critic is usually wrong. And you know, you're just better off, like no bad on anybody. We're just going to walk away. Which also gets to. I don't have a lot of presentation on how you deal with half. But the short answer is walk away respectfully. Like, however you walk away respectfully now, that doesn't mean when you walk away, you're still not going to take some shots. And when we're teaching this in real estate, you know, one of the agents didn't want to collaborate and be victimized by a particular half and walked away. And they were unsure as to whether or not it was a proper thing to do to walk away. And got a follow up, just critical email. We were going to do business with you, but you refused to do this. And because you refused to provide the service that we wanted from you, then that's why we're not going to do business with you. And they were beside themselves. They called me on the phone, they're like, holy cow, did we do the wrong thing? And I'm like, that's predatory behavior. And a predator gets angry with a victim for not allowing themselves to be victims. So just by taking this approach, don't assume that it's going to be all sunshine and roses because the people that you will not allow them to victimize you. A predator becomes angry with a victim for not being a victim. So you're going to take some heat. No matter how respectful you are when you walk away and you need to walk away respectfully, the last impression is a lasting impression. But don't assume that because you're nice and respectful that that's always going to trigger the same type of behavior in return. You're going to take some heat. And that's confirmation that you did the right thing.

Yeah, that's great. One thing, I'll just say this and then because I'm loving this conversation, I think it was Bill Bacharach wrote value based selling for financial service people. I think it was in the 90s. And he had like five ways he categorized clients. The first one was great clients. They love you, they refer you, they're a pleasure to deal with. The second was sometimes worth helping. So sometimes they were okay. The third was fun but hopeless. They're nice people, but they never really give you any money. But they're not evil people. The third is fourth is Uses you for information. And the fifth, fifth is doesn't trust anybody. And so if you were to say take that as an 80, 20 rule, there'd be like 20% that were great clients and maybe the sometimes worth helping could be turned into a great client. Then the fun but hopeless uses you for information, doesn't trust anybody. And when I heard that, and here I was with my marketing methods. ELF marketing using free recorded messages, consumer awareness guides, education based marketing, all of these methods to sift, switch, sort and screen price shoppers, pain in the ass clients. Doing all of this marketing in advance to deliver to me people that were pretty interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to give me money. So I already had built in marketing. But then by the time you get them, there's all these other things. So Dan has the opportunity filter where there's five ways you get paid, you get rewarded with money, people utilize you, people appreciate you, people refer you, and then they enhance you. And I was always reading these books on, you know, how much is each minute of your day worth, how much time and all these books on closing and marketing. And I was like, you know, until Dan showed me that, I was like, you know, the number one criteria for me doing business with someone using Dan's model is do they enhance me, do they utilize me? That's why I have a genius network. I don't sell business opportunities. I like people that can actually do something with what we offer. So I like dealing with players with money. That works for me. Right? They've already proven something that they have a capability. So, and then you know, do they appreciate me because I like to be appreciated? Do they Refer me and 5, do they pay me? I am a capitalist, I want to make money, but that's not the number one thing that I look at. And then I, so I take the opportunity filter, the other model and then ELF versus half in my model. My brain now has just been trained to use that as a filter when I encounter people and I kind of like, is this person elf? Is this person half? If it's half, can it become elf? You know, that sort of thing. And this just adds a whole nother dimension to it because now there's a language gene that you have identified because of how much you know about negotiation and in your background there it's like, wow, this adds a whole nother layer to it. So to me I'm seeing such an incredibly useful possibility and capability here that we're now sharing with everybody. So yeah, I'm loving this stuff.

Yeah, and the point is implement it. Yeah, I mean, you know, listen to how I'm putting it. Listening to how somebody else puts it. Listen how Joe puts it. You know, it'll begin to resonate with you as soon as you start road testing it. And you've got, and you just have to, so the parent. And a lot of people do this and a lot of people start combining these. Some of this is fascinating, but you get somebody who wants to see a listing of your cross bad sign start. You may not be ready to run for the hills now when you hear.

That.

But we are. And if you're paying, if you start paying attention and pulling your own data, which, you know, I'll show you some of the ways to do that, you're going to go run from the hills. This is a predatory move. And the parent as predator, because they're going to help you. And I've heard people on supply chain negotiations. This is one of the procurement person or supply chain person who dangled big contracts. And with this move they told me they have to be really careful about who they buy from because if they become the biggest buyer of that provider of the service, they'll put them out of business. I think about that as an ethic to start with. Like they're intentionally engaging in a practice that if they become your best customer, they will drive you out of business. And this is, this is what that looks like because they're saying like, you know, I could help. I need to see listing your calls. I saw an email once from a company that said in the interest of having a great relationship, we need to see a listing of all your costs. Like first of all, how long would it take you to pull that together? Think about the time. Suck on that. The one more thing. Always asking for one more thing. It seems reasonable. Or the parental sort of predatory move here. And as I said, these move back and forth. They want to know, well, what was the cost of this component? Because we don't want it. So when you drop that out, then we want, we want a discount. You know, this is, this is. But, and you're not sure whether or not you should comply with this because they're taking an approach that they're just helping you. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm cost optimization. I'm good at this stuff. I'm going to help you get better. I'm going to be the parent, I'm going to help your business. So we get this a lot. Need to know how you're going to do it. No, you don't. And I actually said to one company once, who's really driving at us hard on this, I said, be happy to tell you once we've made a mutual commitment. And then I kind of went dead silent because the other thing. The other thing, why they will punish you for not engaging in this behavior. There are a lot of people out there that will do it. So they've been conditioned that it's what legitimate people, business people do. It's not what real successes do. But a lot of people that are on their learning journey, on their way along the ladder, they think early on, well, they just try to. I'm collaborative, I'm cooperative. I'm trying to serve you. The customer's always right. My heart is in the right place. You don't realize that these are traps, but when they tell you, you know, we got a real problem, I need to know how you're going to fix our problem. That feels good to you. You feel like the savior. That's one of the reasons why this becoming a victim in social interactions, suicide hotline, or in business is so seductive to you, because then you get to be the savior. And that's the whole point. Or they triggered your sympathy because they're a victim. Either of you, because you're failing to cooperate or circumstances. You know, we're in a really bad place. You know, we need you to help us. We need you to save us. We need you to rescue us. Somebody's coming to you to be rescued. If you run in a charitable organization, maybe, but it's going to be very costly. And if they drop, anytime, anytime somebody's dropping the F bomb on you. The word fair in any negotiation like that is a victimizing word. Just want what's fair. We want a fair offering for you. We want a fair price. Well, if. If you don't give them a fair price, then what are you doing? You're treating them unfairly. They're becoming a victim. They've made you the aggressor. And that when we first started developing a black swan method, that was the first word that jumped out at us. Because that comes up in almost every business interaction you have. Somebody is going to drop the F bomb at some point in time on you, and it's emotional blackmail when somebody drops it.

That is really good. I'm listening to you talk about this, and I remember when I was selling my courses to carpet cleaners.

We were.

Very focused in that niche. And not less than 10 times I had received a Letter. Sometimes they came in by fax. Because I started selling these things in the 90s. And I remember one person had sent over before they were to buy my marketing course. Please send me the name of five clients. One what their phone numbers are so I could talk to them. How long they've been using your stuff, how much each one of them has made as a result of this whole list of demands. And I'm reading this, like an entire letter, like, to buy, like a course that comes with a one year, 100% money back guarantee. And they faxed it. And I wrote on the fax. No, in fact.

Yeah, clap for that one.

It was so funny. But, yeah. So this is these. These are all the things that they say. And this is. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The fair they are.

And if you. If you'd have done that, how long would it take you to do it? And you're not getting paid while you're doing that.

Right, exactly.

They're keeping you from an elf.

Yeah, no, you are. You are showing how people gaslight people in negotiations here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, maybe you guys, maybe you guys think this way and maybe you guys, if some of you start talking about win, win negotiation right off the bat, and that's a habit to get out of, if that win, win comes out of your mouth when you're talking to us, within the first minute or two, you're not far from me hanging up the phone on you. Because the Predators use win, win to soften the other side up. They're testing you to see if they can prey upon you. Anybody that gets really excited when they hear this, what the other side really means is I'm gonna win a lot. That's I win. So if it comes up early, we learned a long time ago, watch out.

Can I say this also, Chris? Because on that one, when we were talking about this and going through this, on our conversation, when we first started talking about this, you know, I thought, man, I've said win, win. I want win, win. I don't lead with it. It's not the first thing out of my mouth. And I do genuinely want win, win. And the more I've thought about this is Franklin Covey with seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I mean, he has popularized. I mean, so many people have read the book, think win, win. So I think in a lot of ways, what. He wrote a book about a lot of people that are predators have actually used that as a way to, you know, basically steamroll people.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was a really interesting Distinction. When you got me to see that and think about, okay, is it that people intentionally want to win win or is it, you know, is it they don't know any better. And it made me rethink about that whole term.

My Harvard colleagues and I can't remember which book it was in, but they put a graphic up a long time ago and they characterized, you know, the claim value win lose negotiator to create value was a win win negotiator. And then they, they put up a grid showing how people did against the other side. And when a claim value win lose negotiator comes up against a create value win win negotiator, the claim value negotiator almost always destroys them. Now the win, win, win, win, they come up with like they maybe get a B grade outcome, but the claim value, the predator knows that if the other side is really collaborative, really win win, they are vulnerable and I will destroy them. Now, have you given up on whatever is a phrase right straight out of the Black Swan method? 100%. We have taught people this, but it's contextual. Now this is ridiculously effective. Like if somebody is ghosting you.

Or.

It appears they've given up on, the context of this is they've got something they'd have to have given up on. Now when I get this, and I get this a lot in an opening communication, you know, my gut instinct is how can I have given up on something when I never even spoke to you? But the predators are out there picking up the Black Swan method too. And they're only picking up the stuff that they know. And this no oriented questions are very, very, very powerful. And so I will always entertain a brief conversation with these people to see what they're like. Because to me that if the opening conversation is have you given up on buying my SEO or whatever the hell it is that they're hustling, I'm like, I've got a really bad feeling here. I'm going to go ahead and engage and see if I can confirm that this is a very predatory person without exception. So far it's been a predator on the other side. When this is the opening line. So some of you might be using it as your opening line, you're finding it's very effective. I can't help that my data is every single time somebody uses one of my lines on me out of context, they're using it because it's sucking a lot of people in and it's out of context. And like I said, I'll Go ahead and talk to them to confirm my data. There's a lot of this stuff. We go ahead and we go ahead and talk to people just to confirm our initial diagnosis. Most of these, my data, this hasn't failed me yet. If this is an opening line, the person on the other side is bad news or bad fit to be fair.

Yes.

And one or two, because these are two different things. But somebody says I have a great opportunity for you. Now that's either a predatory line or an incredibly naive line. And either one of them is going to suck the life out of you. Because what that means is you're going to have to do all the work. I, after all, I brought you the opportunity. Thank God for me. And it's also the way the predators will suck you in because people get taken hostage to the future. Opportunity. Yeah, I want opportunity. And you find yourself in a real downward death spiral trying to get that opportunity. When people want to put me, we get calls all the time. There's going to be 20 billionaires in a room. It's a great opportunity.

Thank you.

But no, because what does that tell me? It's such a great opportunity. They don't want to pay me anything and they're relying on me 1000% to then do all the follow on business and do all the work to mind the opportunity on the other side. And there's some very legitimate groups that are constantly trying to get me or somebody in my staff in to speak for nothing. Because the opportunity is so great because of the value of the people that are going to be in the room. You just can be lucky to be in a room with them. It's a great opportunity. And they're shocked. I mean, they get mad at us because they got a lot of legitimate people they could put in a room and we're just not there. And then the feedback that we get is that these guys are being unreasonable and all right, you could take that approach, but we're not, you know, we're not, we've seen it enough times. We're not, we're not sucked into this great opportunity thing.

So creating a compelling USP for my agency and how to find five star customers, that's the question, Dean. I mean, what I'm going to do here, since you're just kind of like just laid back and like you're freaking.

This is pretty awesome.

Yeah, well, you like the Yoda or some shit here with your guests.

I mean, this is, it feels like I'm laying here, but this is like, it's just the best place. Do you see the tone of my.

Voice that has the resentment that I can obtain for your glorious lifestyle that you have here? That's right. That's right. So go ahead, talk about how to create a compelling USP for his agency and how to identify what he calls five star customers. Do you want to say anything, Tim, before we answer?

Is he on the call with us?

Yeah, I am.

I just want to say thanks. This is really cool. It's like what you're calling my name out.

I bet.

That was just awesome. So thank you. I so enjoy these calls and what you're doing, it's so refreshing. And just writing down enter a conversation that's happening in the customer's mind is brilliant.

So what kind of agency are you?

We're a strategic digital agency. We're in our 27th year. HQ is in Seattle, we're in New York and also in Boise. And we have big clients, small clients, and we're doing fine, but we should be doing great.

Who are you trying to attract?

Well, our target customer is someone client, more than likely 300 million in revenue and above.

And.

Usually a CMO VP marketing could be higher up, could be C level. Mm.

And do you work in any specific niche or.

Question? No, not really.

All kinds of different.

Yeah, we do. We have different, we have different verticals, different categories. So it's.

Yeah, yeah.

Ag, it's automotive, it's healthcare, it's software. Um, it's tech.

Yeah. And are they all big national, big nationals like that or.

Yes. And. But we also do love having some scrappy startups in the mix that we enjoy working with as well. And usually the way we've been around for 27 years is that, you know, we're only as good as our last project. So we, Right. So we, we do, we do the first one. Well, hopefully we have a success promise and then we, we get another and another and then they leave and go somewhere else and we go there too. So that's kind of how it works. But we do compete with the big six agencies. We're fiercely independent and so it's. Nobody knows who we are.

Right, right, right.

That's. That's the issue.

I think the thing that is really intriguing to me about the agency business, both on the small scale and the large scale, is the capability stack that you have of what you can actually do. Right. What you know how to do and you know, do you work on.

On.

A performance basis or on a fee for service or a percentage of spend or that you're you're being compensated for the work or the, or the result?

Good question. We haven't, we haven't done that because we feel like, we feel like there's so many variables in that with, on their side. So no, we haven't found that that works for us. We're project based and so but we do think about, we are aggressive listeners. We're solution based. We love creating successes. Yeah.

Like it just feels like now it's so easy to integrate with other companies. Right. It's so easy to plug things in to another stream or whatever. And it feels like as an agency you've got an opportunity to, to be a vending machine. You know, we often talk about these things that people are looking for certainty when they're doing advertising. They're most of the time treating it like a slot machine where they put it in and pull the lever and hope. Sometimes money comes out.

Woohoo.

And sometimes it doesn't, but they just rack it up to, well, we just got to, we'll make it up in volume kind of thing. Or they keep going. But the other side of that is being able to have a vending machine where you can put money in and have a fixed cost for what you're getting. And so I wonder about selling leads or selling the out without it being attached to the labor of it or the. Yeah, the process, you know, because that feels like if you can focus on, you know, new banking leads or new, you know, whatever type of has a national scope, if you've got an algorithm that works, that you've discovered from one group that often the companies have a large budget for predictable outcomes. You know, if they knew that they could buy this many leads for this much money, that feels like it's a, you know, a really great opportunity there. It's a differentiator too, in a way, you know.

Yeah, good. Yeah, thanks.

After the. You know who Gary Vaynerchuk is?

Of course.

You know the thing, there's a clue kind of in his agency. This whole intention is to build up the agency doing client work to learn and get the data and get the capabilities so that at some point, if there's a downturn, he'll be able to buy a brand for $4 and deploy his team on it and ramp it up and sell it for $2 billion. You know, that that's, that's really the thing is that your capabilities deployed with a partner or with a, you know, with something that you control rather than trying to constantly parade and convince big companies to choose your agency over somebody else's for client work.

Yeah, the partnership model. That's a really a good point. Looking at partnerships that have a new avenue. Yeah, yeah.

Even if you were to think about like 20% as a. Because it sounds like you've got some, you do some big business sounds like even having 20% or some portion a division of your, like a startup within your capability set of exploring stuff like that. Like you know, if you look at the total picture of things that there's so many. There's so much private equity out right now that are holding companies buying things. If you could get aligned with a, with a holding company that's buying a company that will now drive it up that you could be that capability set for them without them having to develop it in house or that's the kind of things I would be thinking about. Dan Sullivan calls that the free zone. And I think that's something that's a pretty big opportunity going forward.

Thanks so much. You're welcome. So appreciate it.

People come to us for models and can we help them to sell and can we help them think through their business issues and leadership and structure and so on. But I think for me the stuff that people probably don't really realize is at the heart of everything we do. Business is an enormous responsibility and I think the primary starting point of that responsibility is how well and how ethically and how transparently you sell. So I've been in this pursuit for how do we create a much more transparent sales process where people are making really informed. They're not prisoner clients, you know, they're hero clients. They've bought from me to do something bigger than. So I come from this small little town where you know, you'd go down to the butchers and get meat and bring it home and once a month they'd send the account to your parents. No one ever handed money over the count. It was all trust based, you know, to business globally. And the bigger question is isn't that how business should be? So I mean there's lots of other things I could talk about. For me that's a really big driver. You know, what do we do to make business is the most noble thing.

We do well and look, even the way you talk and I mean it's clear that you have a lot of, a lot of knowledge and a lot of doing the reps under your belt on how to present right. So and you're very non threatening and you are very much. We're going to get into drawing. So this is called I got my iPad here I'm. So I actually want to learn from you about how you interact with this too. Even before the filming of this it's is interesting, you know, just think about the setup and stuff. So I've always, you know, really liked the, the whole concept of people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. Right. So if you do selling in a certain way, it's enjoyable, you're helping lead someone to where they want to go. And I despise the unethical use of marketing and selling. I, I don't know how you would frame this, but I will often say to, to people that are early on learning about, you know, marketing, they're like, they'll have, I don't want to do anything gimmicky, I don't want to do anything too hypey. And I'll say, well you know, hype used ethically is massive enthusiasm for what you're selling. Hype used unethically is lying, misleading, bullshitting, exaggerating, saying things that simply aren't true. And they're, you know, everything is, involves selling. Everything you do is either going to attract or it's going to repel. And so going back to your whole living in a small town, people knew each other and when you're in a big open sea, a lot of people can get away with flow policing people, they can get away with selling crap in a box. They, they just find a new customer, client, patient, victim, whatever they want to call them and then they go on to the next one. So there are people that are, you know, in the transaction business and then there's people that are in the trans transformation business. Anything meaningful and good in the world, selling was involved like everything. So it's not the selling that's good or bad, it's the methodology, it's the, it's, it's the match to the person, if it's a right fit client, that sort of thing. So all of that being said, how. Let me, let me back up the person listening to this. There's people that are in service businesses, most of them are just entrepreneurs and founders. They're running their companies every day. Their ability to make a living has to do with their ability to go out and make sales and to acquire clients. There are investors, I've some people that are, you know, running billion dollar companies, but most of them are just small business owners and they're just looking for ways on how to most effectively present and package what it is they do. So when you go in to help someone, what are the Obstacles that you often see that stand in the way for them getting the results. They, they have their business, they have their product, their services, and they're just not, they're not effective at selling. What, what, what are the obstacles?

Well, I suspect you've heard this a lot of times too, right? I hate selling.

Yep.

Do you know, like, because selling's so foot in the door selling came from the door to door. Vacuum cleaners of salespeople of the 50s and 60s and they used to buy leather shoes where the sole of the shoe was wider than the foot of the shoe.

So they slammed the door.

So, yeah, put the foot in the door and then they slammed the door. They can't get the door closing. You keep shouting your pitch through the door. Right. And it was, it was an aggressive, full contact, I'm just gonna wear you down style of selling. Right. And then that evolved into pressure based selling. Gift of the gab. I'm just, I'm just going to, you know, I'm just gonna conversationally manipulate you into saying yes. I'm gonna get the triple yes pattern set up. I'm gonna find, you know, I'm gonna have 101 closes that I can, you know, pluck out and all this sort of business. And salespeople used to be the purveyors of information. So if you want to buy tv, you went to the shop and you talked to the salesperson, you said, so I want to buy tv. And they kind of educated you about what you could have and what was available. Right. Well, that's gone because everybody comes to you now having researched a bunch of stuff. Right. But you're no longer a purveyor of information. You're a purveyor of realization. And there's a big difference. Right. And so for someone to realize that they don't just need this thing, but they need you, they have to connect to you in a way that is way deeper than will ever come from. Gift of the gab, foot in the door, 101 closes. And that sort of thing, they have to connect with you at a profound level. And so what that actually means is that the business owner has to connect with what they're selling at a much more profound level. It's time to draw.

It's time to draw, if that's okay. Yeah. Now draw something. And then I'm gonna ask even how you came about the whole drawing thing, but I wanna just have you demonstrate how you communicate.

Sure.

So one of the things we've been. One of the things I Spent a lot of time thinking about is if you think about a company might sell lots and lots of products, but there is some kind of company genius that sits behind all those products. There is a central thread of genius. So if you think about the Virgin brand of companies, right, they do all sorts of different things, credit cards, airlines, like a bunch of different stuff, right. But there is a core genius that sits behind it that is common to all of them. And what is that genius? And so company genius usually starts with a whole. The founder or the originator of the idea of the thinking. Right. And there's three components to that. The first component is what is that person's philosophy about what they do and the people they serve and the competitors in the marketplace and everything else. I'll give you a classic example. I've worked for a lot of years with a company called Austal Ships in Australia. And they're currently a $51 billion company. They're now a Navy shipbuilder. They're building a reasonable percentage of the US Navy fleet they build for navies all around the world. They're also the number one high speed ferry company in the world. And One of the four guys started it 30 years ago with $20,000 each, now worth 51 billion. And one of the original founder, the main guy, a guy called John Rothwell At 14 years of age, put an outboard motor on a bathtub and drove it into the shipping lanes. He's kind of obsessed with the ocean, right? But he has a fundamental belief that there should be no lives lost at sea. That's a philosophical view like that. No matter what happens to the superstructure of the vessel, the hull should protect people on board. Right? Now that drives a whole lot of stuff about how you go about doing what you do. And then there's the high story or the history and. And these are the wins and lessons. So in life, there's really three things. There's wins, losses, and lessons. We get to make a choice about the last two. Do we interpret it as a loss or a lesson? So what are the wins and lessons they found along the way? You know, they started out building aluminium recreational boats. Then they started building crayfishing boats. And then he was on a ferry in Hong Kong. It was rocking around everywhere. People were getting sick. He said, I could build you a better boat. They said, build one and if we like it, we'll buy 50. So they built one and then they bought 50. When the tsunami hit in 2000, the US Navy had a destroyer sitting off the coast of Indonesia, ferrying stuff into shore because the port was full of sunken boats. And one of Hostel's ferries was sailing past with the brand on the side. And the captain of the US destroyer said, get me that boat. Because this thing could travel at 30 kilometers an hour, low draft. It was a catamaran, you know, it could carry 100 trucks and all this sort of business. And after they'd finished the work, he said, we could use something like that as a navy warship. And they went, yeah, we could build you something. Like, it's like one of the wins and lessons and sort of have a go. And then the expertise. What. What is the formal and informal knowledge that you've acquired, right? So that comes from the founder, the who. So it's. It's like a triangle, right? And the first side of the triangle is the who, the founder. So second side of the triangle is the what, which is the big idea that people go to market with. And that always starts with context, which is, why does this thing even matter? And specifically why with you? Like, what gives you the right to go and offer this, you know, who do you think you are kind of thing? Right? Why. Why should you actually even matter to anyone that's looking to solve this problem? The why interesting thing about context is that is usually the first thing that leaves the sales conversation. And the moment context leaves a sales conversation, all value has left the sales conversation, which is super interesting.

Yeah.

People, you know, get into product specification so quickly and the context is gone kind of thing. And so value's exited. Right. And then the second thing is concept. So this usually is where we're starting to map out. Here's what this looks like, here's how we do it, blah, blah, blah, like the product spec or the specification of service. And then the third part of the what, which sometimes people don't want to talk about as consequence. So does it work? Can you prove it? Have you got cases that show that it works? What happens if it doesn't work? What are you willing to do as a company when it didn't pan out? So you, you know, I say to clients, you know, I think companies have to take a risk. If you've taken money off somebody, you have a responsibility to say, we are all in until we get there.

Yeah, right.

We have your back. So if it takes longer than we thought, it's gonna take longer than we thought. But we took your money on the concept, right? So we're all in until we get you. Cause we're meant to be able to get you there, that was the deal. Right. It's a bit like, if you think about. I'll come back to that. But if you think about. One of my favorite models is this futures model that says if we. If we're talking in the present moment and let's say I'm selling to somebody, and, you know, a lot of sales use false scarcity and urgency, like only now until the break finishes.

Right.

Or while stocks last. Sorry. Or while stock last and that sort of thing. The only urgency that matters and the only scarcity that matters is the customer's scarcity and IT agency. So I might be selling to someone saying, you know, if we look at the present moment and we, you know, time always wins. Time beats everybody. And so if you look down the track, 12, 24, 36 months, people say you can't predict the future, but we actually can. I know that in 12, 24, 36 months, you're either going to be in a green zone, where you're in an absolute ideal outcome in the context of this thing that you're struggling with, or you're going to be in a red zone where you're probably in crisis. And people think the pathway between where they are today and where they want to be is a straight line, but it's not. Time bends everything. Time compounds everything, good and bad. It doesn't care. And so if you drift, which is why that red line occurs, if you don't take action, if you don't make decisions, if you just drift, like if you don't clean your teeth, they're going to fall out of your head, right? I can guarantee that. Right?

Yes.

And it will accelerate as time goes on. Right. You'll be fine for 30 years, and then they'll just start falling out really, really fast. Because time compounds everything, but it also compounds the upside. And the only thing that drives that green line heading up is great decisions and action. The difference between ideal and crisis is the difference between drift and decision. Right. But the problem is people come to you. And if I was selling to somebody, I'd be saying, you've come to me because you feel like you're already down the track where the gap is huge between ideal and crisis. You're starting to feel some pain. That's why you've come to me. You know, you're on the red line. But right now, in this moment, we're as close to that green line as we're ever going to be. You can't be any closer than you are right now. Now, in models just kind of side note, the choreography of the model is as important as the model. I think the thing that I did. Lots of people use models, but I think the thing that I did was I applied stage magic and comedy and the choreographic patterns to walking through a model for impact and lacing punchlines all the way through the model. So right now, you're as close as you're ever gonna be as a punchline. And the idea of a punchline is there's been set up, set up, set up. And then bang, a paradigm shift in a heartbeat that they can't walk back. The moment I go right now, you're as close as you're ever gonna be. You can't walk that back. Cat's out of the bag.

Yeah.

And you've got a decision to make. Are you gonna jump onto that green line and stay there? And here's what I know. And I would draw a version of my genius model.

If this is the company, you're three circles.

I've got a framework that can put you on the green line and help you ride the curve, because no one falls off that line. They just behave their way off the line. And so we're going to keep applying that to keep you on that green line as we go up the curve. And here's a really big kind of footnote for everybody. I can't guarantee the outcome. I can't guarantee that ideal outcome. The economy could go bust. There's a whole bunch of stuff, right? But I should be willing to guarantee the pathway because I'm saying I can take people there. And it's interesting for people in business, particularly small business owners, right? When you want to put a guarantee on something, particularly if it's a complex sale, a product or a service or a physical product with something else attached or some complexity in it, you don't have to guarantee the end outcome, but you'd better guarantee the pathway. Because all people want is a sense of certainty. And if you say, I've taken hundreds of people there before, and if you follow the pathway with me, as long as you don't behave your way off that green line, we'll get there.

Yeah.

Well, let me ask you. So let's just make the assumption that in the perfect world, everybody is able to have a pathway that takes people to a bigger future, as you call it, the ideal here, that does help and benefit them. What do you do in situations, or have you been in situations where people have plopped down a good chunk of money to hire you and your team to come and develop the models, help them, and you realize your pathway sucks. I mean, this is not good. I mean, there's a lot of missing parts because a lot of marketers and salespeople think marketing and selling solves everything. And I know a lot of people that can make a lot of money, but they have very bad reputations. They've screwed a lot of people, but their marketing and their presentation skills are enormous. So along the way, because before we started recording, and I'll bring you to this, we'll talk about it, is what it does for the teams, the alignment, because we were talking about that before we started recording. And I'd love for you to talk about what comes out of this. But what I'm seeing here is, you know, this is great. This is a great model, right? I mean, you have an enormous ability to simplify complex things so people can understand them. And that's a real valuable skill for anyone. The question becomes, when do you match the ability to present this with the deliverable?

So here's the thing. If you're going to challenge somebody, right? And you know, I talk about having a fist in a velvet glove, right? If you're selling something to somebody who has a problem, you can pretty much assume at some point you're going to have to slap them with love, right? So, you know, you're going to have to do it. You have to develop the ability to be able to slap someone and have them hug you and go, thanks so much for that, right? It's way easier to slap someone when you're drawing a model because they're looking at. It's not you slapping them, it's the model. We know this model is true, right? I'm gonna host a whole lot of onboard masterminds in March for We're going to the Antarctic, right, With Peter Hillary, the son of Edmund Hillary. And he's got this, you know, he says, I've got a. There's this line called the experience line. You know, you can get people to move into action if you take them through an experience rather than just talk about it. And so part of the marketing for that, I've been doing some webinars where I'm saying to people, put aside all the agendas and all the labels. Like, forget labels like climate change and global warming and all that. Like, forget all of that stuff. Just put all the agendas aside. If there were two futures for the planet, a green one, where the planet is loved by the human species and is thriving, and a red one, where the planet's Abused by the human species and is dying. What line do you think we're on? And 100% of people say the red one. Right, well, we should do something about that. So we're gonna go to the Antarctic, we're gonna get a bunch of, you know, about 100 really great thinkers together. And we wanna do two things. We wanna have great business masterminds. We're on board. And what if you got 100 great marketers and said if climate change was the greatest product on the planet, how would you market it? Yeah, you almost certainly wouldn't say, go and sit in the road and shut down London. You know, like the Stop Oil protests. You would say, like, we need to sell this thing. Right, right. But the moment you go, is the planet on the green line or the red line? Everyone goes, it's on the red line. And you've just slapped people like, put all agendas aside and all labels aside. What line are we on? It's really obvious. So, and we know it's obvious because the pandemic cleaned up the planet. Look how fast it healed. Clear skies over China, dolphins in the canals in Venice. Again, like the planet healed in two years of no movement of the human species with planes and things like that. So we know that we are creating a red line without any other science needed. Cause we just stopped moving for two years and look what happened.

You know, this is so interesting too. So let me ask you from a real personal experience here, because like, so for instance, you know rfk, who's an environmentalist, I love his take on oceans and plastics and just, you know, pollution and all that. Also, you know, he, whenever he's asked about climate change or what, because I think climate change and the people really pushing it, I know I became Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. So I mean, I've spent a lot of times, I mean I've raised millions of dollars and a lot of it has gone to climate related stuff. And there's so much of the climate thing that is a total grift. It is people pretending like they want to help the planet and they're actually worse than the, that they're attacking. They, they use it as an excuse. It's a grift. It, it is, it is a veneering, freaking virtue signaling nonsense for a lot of it. And, and, and so I like Alex Epstein, who wrote Fossil Futures, who I think knows more about energy than almost anyone that I've ever, ever known. And so I've seen arguments on both sides of this. What do you do when you have someone that is so tied into their, like, like say they're, you know, full blown, you know, the planet, you know, because the planet can defend itself, you know.

Correct.

Now when you go to the model, I mean, the way you framed it, it's great. I mean, whatever, whatever side you're on, you just gave a sort of perspective on doing it. What do you do when you run across someone who's like, okay, the, the climate change thing, it's a total hoax, it's total bs. And there's this, you know, it's just being used to exploit and you have that sort of. How would you use the model to explain to.

Yep. So if you think about this model, you know, if you think about it in two parts, there's this first thing about need to jump onto the green line. Like right now, we're as close as we're going to be. We need to jump on the green line. Right. And the jumping onto the green line, and this is true in group coaching programs, it's true in almost all products. Honestly, to jump to the green line is almost always some kind of cleanup or reset or recalibration. So it still links to what you said before. When you know someone, really, they're not on the path at all, or they can't even get onto the path and you're going to take them on as a client or whatever, how do you have that conversation with them? We would say to them that jumping to the green line is going to be a reset, a recalibration or a cleanup. We need to find your mess and fix it. And because they already know they're on the red line at some subconscious level question has to be, what's the mess you're hiding? Consciously or unconsciously, there's three levels of conversation in every conversation. The first one is the known conversation. This is the problem they know about and they know you know about it, and we can talk about it. There's the second level, which is the hidden conversation. It's the problem that they know about and you know about it, they just don't want to talk to you about it. And then there's the unknown conversation. You have an insight on it and they're not even aware that it's there. And that's the hardest one to open up. Right. And so, you know, it's a prospective client who's not even close to ready to work with you. You know, you might say, listen, in your circumstances, we need to find out if, if we're gonna be able to Jump over that reset line when we get to it. And it's just the model doing the heavy lifting. It's not you making a judgment. You're just going, if you want to get on the green line, clearly we've got to reset something. We've got to clean up. We've got to recalibrate. If it was the climate thing and someone's saying this whole climate stuff is bs, I'd go, so let me draw a model for you. Do you think we're on the red line or the green line? Like, once I get to the end of the choreography, I think we're on the green line. Really? Explain how the planet healed itself during COVID when we just stopped moving around. I mean, put all this science aside. I'm not even going to try and quote any scientific studies or anything else. What's your reason for how the skies cleared over China and India, how the water's cleaned up globally? You know, when. When. When human impact on the planet significantly reduced? How do you explain that if you think we're already on the green line? And, you know, sometimes people say, oh, you know, there's this. They can hear it. They know that. They go, yeah, well, I. You know, like, it doesn't matter. We're still on the green line. Now you get to say, does that sound like a really intelligent response? Because the model's doing heavy lifting.

Yeah.

And I'm just sitting there thinking from the devil's advocate position, from, let's say. And again, because I'm really seeing, like, to what. Where. Where does it break down? And how do you address it? Because I know you've had these conversations a thousand, ten thousand times. I mean, you.

You've.

I mean, you're the world's expert in this area, as far as I know, in terms of this. This method of presenting communication through drawings. So let's take the COVID example of the skies cleaned up.

Yeah.

Well, then you say, well, okay, maybe the sky's cleaned up, but look at the damage to humanity that happened in the process. The oppression, the mandates, the generational psychic trauma. At what point does. You know. So I'm still not sold that that is a thing. What would you do?

So then I might say, well, maybe there's a third line. This is this whole idea of choreography, right?

Yeah.

You hold back stuff until you need it. Okay, what if there was a line in the middle that was actually an amber line that's just going up and down from highs and lows? So we had good moments, and we had Bad moments, is that acceptable? And people go, well, no, that's not acceptable. No, because every low moment is just one step away from the red line. And why can't we get from the high moments and get onto the green line? So let me ask you this question. Is the green line a reasonable goal to go after? Because when people are arguing a point, they're usually arguing. So there's this. There's a hierarchy.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I got a cartoon of a guy lying on the road and a car's about to run over him. And the caption says, encumbered with a low self image. Bob takes a job as a speed bump, Right? And if you said to Bob, what do you do for a living? He'd say, I'm a speed bump. And he's describing his role at the task or activity level. Now, if I'm Bob's new team leader, clearly Bob's not engaged in his job. So I come along, you elevate the conversation by asking people, why, Bob? Why would we have you lying on the road being a speed bump? And Bob goes, because I work in the traffic slowing process. Interesting, Bob. Now, I've done this in conference rooms full of people. So then I say to the room, is a speed bump in a traffic slowing process valuable? Everybody goes, yes. I go, not on an autobahn in Europe. It's completely context dependent. So process and task has no inherent value. It's just stuff, right? So then I say, bob, why would we have a traffic slam process? Now, for about 10 years, I facilitated the Road Safety Council in Western Australia and that we had set a goal for zero harm by 2020. Every other state said, that's ridiculous. You can't hit a goal of zero. We're going, what other goal makes sense like a thousand deaths? Is that a good goal? That's nonsense, right?

Yeah.

And the three big components of road safety is road design, vehicle design, and driver behavior, right? And so you get to outcome. So we run this process to get to an outcome. Safer drivers or better road design or better vehicle design. Now, the proponents of each of those three will argue with each other over which one of them is more important, right? So Then you say to Bob Wye, for what purpose do we want to have better road design? In this case you're a speed bump and there's this line that exists across here. Above the line is problem, below the line is solution. Above the line is what I call compelling self evident value. So I say Bob, why do we want safer roads? And at that point Bob will probably say to me, I don't know, you're the boss, you tell me. Because people peg out of the conversation about two levels above where they spend most of their thinking time. I say Bob, 100 metres up the road from where you're lying on the road, we've got a school bus pick up and drop off point and we have to protect kids lives. You know when they're leaving school and coming to school at the start and the end of the day you're not a speed bump Bob, your job is to protect kids lives in a heartbeat. His whole view of his job just changed. So he might want to still take a sick day before he thinks he's protecting kids lives. If he's supposed to start at 8am and he wants to take a sick day, he just might not ring in until 9 o' clock when he knows he's protecting kids lives. He still could take a sick day but he'll call in the night before, right? And here's the thing about this is a hierarchy between abstraction and oops, sorry and specificity. And what happens is If I put 100 reasonable people in the room and say what should we do to protect children's. Children's lives? They'll say whatever it takes. None of them will say well whatever we can afford. I'll just say whatever it takes. But the moment I put 100 people in a room and start saying should we focus on road design, vehicle design or driver behaviour? They'll start to argue. People only ever argue about solutions, they don't argue about problems. And so if I want to talk to people about climate control, my question is going to be should we pursue the ideal line for planet health where humans and the planet coexist in a symbiotic way that does no harm to either? Should we pursue a green line pathway that offers coexistence without harm? And most reasonable people would say absolutely. Is it fair, is it reasonable for us to tolerate an amber line that you know, that harms and then doesn't? Harms and then doesn't. And is there anyone that would suggest that we should be okay with this red line where we're existing on the planet. But you know, either humans or the planet have to be harmed for that to happen. Yeah.

You know, it's so interesting as I sit and watch this because I have to kind of remove my personal biases and things that I feel that I know not anywhere in expert level because I always seek out people that know more about stuff with me. And I see more exploitation being done under the guise of environmentalists and save the planet. So I already have this built in bias of distrust and what I don't like about it and I see it being very exploitative of people. And the people that seem to suffer the most of energy restriction are people that need it the most. Poverty stricken people to low poverty. And the ones that complain the most about it and are trying to act like the champions are many of the people that go and speak at three letter organizations that run the world and fly there in their private planes while simultaneously talking about we got to save the planet, the biggest con artists. And I'm like thinking, okay, so I could see them using this to get everyone to see, oh, we're going towards the red line while. While they're simultaneously just full of crap.

Yeah. And so I mean these are tools, models are tools, right?

Yeah.

And all tools. The ethic of any tool is attached to the person holding it, not to the tool. Like, you know, I can put a scalpel in two different people's hands and one's gonna harm and one's gonna heal.

You've probably never seen my video of selling evil, have you?

No, I don't think so.

I did it. Oh, it's so funny because you're talking about. People would go into stores, they would talk about TVs and stuff. I use an example of a DVD player. Like if anyone types in is selling evil into Google or any search engine, there pops up a three minute and 50 second video that I was being filmed for. And I think it was 2010 and it was for a movie, a documentary. And this part never made it into the movie. It was B roll. And one of my team members happened to watch it at the time and he's like, this is really good. Click, uploaded it on YouTube and then it's became this video that's been used in universities to explain selling. And I give my favorite definition of selling, which I'll use this as a segue to ask you about, you know, what people want. You have a great model and I'd love to have you draw it. Where I say my favorite definition of selling came from my friend Dan Sullivan. And I had asked Dan, you know, several years ago, you go, you know, what's your definition of selling? And he just said, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And then I go on to say, well, the key word is good for them because you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in a future result that kills them, like cigarettes or like, watch porn or eat crappy food or harm people or whatever. So in. In order to use selling in a way that's not evil, you want to, you know, help people get to a better future that's good for them. And then I say that, you know, everything that I say, you say, anyone says is designed to attract or repel. And you can use marketing. You can use it like a gun, you can use it for self defense, or you can use it to rob people, to harm people, to kill people. And so the key is to make that distinction. But I said that, you know, when you go to a store, and again, you got to understand the time, it's funny, people watch it now, like, what the hell are you talking about? A DVD player? No one buys DVDs anymore. But at the time, you know, people, I mean, they still sell DVDs to like, Best Buy and stuff. But in 2010, like, you know, we've still not made that transition. Right. And so what I say is, you know, salespeople are the biggest educational force on the planet. Where do you learn most things about financial services and financial instruments or about anything? There's a salesperson who's incentivized that does the education. So now the world has shifted, of course, in a lot of ways. And so what. What was you said earlier? I actually wrote it down on my iPad. You said, you know, we're purveyors of realization, right?

Yeah.

And so, you know, the funny thing is, I used the DVD player. I said I would never go and read a manual on how a DVD player worked. How did I learn? There's a salesperson that I was in some store that showed me this stuff. So is there a quick way to tell how you met Sandy and what you said to her? Not well, if you go through the how you met her, that could take a long time, because I know this story. It's great. But when you sat down with her on your date and you asked her a question, could you tell that story? Because I think it's not only useful in terms of Keith Cunningham dating advice, but I also Think it's actually really relevant to people's clients and customers and simply finding out what is important to them.

So we're on our first date. We had known each other 15 years prior and hadn't seen each other in 15 years. This is the first time we had seen each other. And it's a first date. We're three hours into the first date. It is a spectacular first date. And I looked at Sandy at the end of three hours, and I said, I'm about to ask you a question I've never asked another woman in my whole life. And she kind of braced herself and said, okay, what is it? And I said, what do you want? And she said, I mean, what do you mean, what do I want? I said, what do you want in a man? What do you want in a relationship? I said, at the time, I was 50 years old. I said, I've been single for 10 years. And I said, I have been playing whack a mole and pin the tail on the donkey with every woman I've been out with for the last 25 or 30 years. And I'm tired of it. I need to know what you want. She looked at me and said, oh, that's easy. She said, I want to be loved and adored. And I asked the waiter to come over and bring me a pen and a piece of paper. And I wrote down, Sandy January 4, 2001. Loved and adored. And I looked at her and I said, now tell me every single thing that needs to happen for you to feel loved and adored. And I started writing. And she talked for an hour and a half, talking, high maintenance here, right? And I'm writing it down, writing it down. And at one point, literally at one point in this hour and a half, she said, and I want a note every day. I said, you must be kidding me. I tried to make myself right. I couldn't, I couldn't. I said, every day, Day, My God, what if I forget? She said, I'll remind you. And she, she does, right? I mean, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, if there's no note that's been sent, she'll send. She'll send me a little text and say, did the mailman break his leg? I go, oh, shit. I start, so the idea, to me that you're referencing, the idea is, look, find out what they want. The key is find out what they want, not what you want. Don't fall in love with what you want. Fall in love with your customers, what do they want? And we make the mistake of business Owners of believing that the key is to figure out what we're passionate about. We don't.

We're.

We don't have the money. Our customers have the money. Why don't I fall in love with the customers? Why don't I fall in love with something that can love me back? Falling in love with my product, falling in love with what I do is, to me, intergalactically stupid. Why would I fall in love with something that doesn't love me back? Let me fall in love with customers, find out what they want. Go and get it. Go and get it, and give it to them. If I can do those three things, it turns out I love writing the note because Sandy loves getting it. And if you would have asked me what the key to this woman's heart was and asked me to think about it for a hundred years, at no point in time would I have written down or thought, oh, she wants a note every day. Find out what they want. Go and get it. Give it to them. Sandy's very smart. She. Here she is right here. She's prettiest woman I've ever met in my whole life. And thank you for loving me.

Thank you.

Sandy's very smart. She asked me for the piece of paper. When she finished, she wrote down, what do you want? I said, okay, let me tell you all three things, right? There's only three. So I told her all three, and it's been really, really good. Thank you. Thank you very much.

You know, it's got me thinking a lot, too. The impact filter, the tools, what me and Jason Fladlin have been doing, talking to prospects. I mean, I'm doing the biggest deep dive into what do Genius Network members, what do Genius Network prospects, what do they actually want? Because there's so many different places that people could get learning and devote their time. And the challenge is, you know, it's the whole paradox of success sort of thing, or the paradox of choice. There's so many choices available that I really, you know, I really want to know what my clients and members really want and looking for. Because me and Alex Mendozia, we did a program in 2003 called Stick Strategy Secrets, and it to this day is one of the best training programs that I've ever done that, you know, we've. People have made millions with that program and implementing it. And so we're doing a stick strategy secrets 2.0 that we're going to start recording in the beginning of next year. And so much of it has to do with what do people want and teaching people like, you know, Dean Jackson, who I do my podcast with, is here. You know, he has his before unit, during unit and after unit, before the sale, during and after the sale. And so, so much of just being a relationship marketer and having clients coming back and back is, you know, it's the difference between the pickup artists that get a phone number or an email versus someone that actually sustains a relationship. And so all of this, the reason I'm bringing this up is that, you know, all the things that I'm doing that you see me doing, even the impact filter at the beginning here, is all based on just learning what it is people want and delivering it to the best of my ability. Every speaker here, every person, every, you know, people, the dominoes that they're telling me would be important to them. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.