49. People Pay with Attention then Checkbooks

Foreign. Hey my friend, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven, mind you and I've been gifted with it. It's not a curse, I promise. It's a gift and we are looking forward to crushing it today together with episode 49. People vote with attention, then checkbooks and, and so, you know, for a lot of years I've kind of talked about the fact that you know, the market votes with their checkbook. If you want to know if you've got an attractive offer in business, are people voting with your checkbook? Are you attracting enough team? Then they're voting with their checkbook meaning that you're going to make deposits into their checkbook. Right. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. But I want you to just really think today about attention. And there's all these different studies about oh, attention is, you know, attention spans are changing and obviously all the images and all the different things coming at us and all the different ways that people are competing for our attention. And you know, it's amazing to me just the full on attention assault I'll call it, that happens on a daily basis. And you know, when I disconnected and went to Costa Rica for almost a month, I, I was just, it was fascinating. We didn't even listen to the radio at all. Like, I mean hardly any music, no TV at all anywhere. And so very little social media, very little email. I, I coached my clients that I coach one on one. I was involved in some team meetings and, and I built, worked on some projects that I had. But I was not just constantly getting barraged. And I get back and I'm like, well I don't watch the news so I eliminate that negativity. But guess what, you turn on the radio and in between radio you're going to get commercial, you're going to get DJs giving you snapshots of what's going on. When you open up your cell phone, you're going to have alerts, you're going to have different things. Those of you that are on, on progressive software gonna have notifications nonstop hitting you up all day. You're gonna have different areas and ways that things get your attention. I'm a big fan of turning off notifications. I'm a big fan of taking technology breaks. I'm a big fan of creating space. I don't, I encourage not having any technology anywhere near you in the bedroom when you sleep, different things like that. It's totally up to you. You can oh, Kenny, you don't have kids, you don't understand. Whatever. I'm just telling you that the more you're around technology and the more you allow it to, it's going to grab attention. And so you go, okay, cool. It is what it is. All pain comes from resisting what is. And so the reality is there's a lot of platforms, a lot of technology, a lot of ways to, to get your attention. Now, every streaming service, meaning that, or I should say every social, social platform. I'm not into TikTok, but if you look at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, I would assume TikTok works the same way. Why? Because there's a scrolling feature, there's a feed that gets your attention and holds your attention and tickles your FOMO gene and make sure that you keep on scrolling to keep your attention. Why? Because the more attention you give a certain thing, the more money they can turn around and sell your attention for now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just the way that it is. So I'm not going to resist it. I'm just going to understand it and build my life accordingly for how I want to feel. And emotional regulation is number one for me. And so if I want emotional regulation, I can't be constantly getting bounced around like a pinball all day about what so and so said or what color Cardi b's sweatpants are. I don't know. Good. Good grief. Right? Not sure why that even came to my mind. I guess a social media influencer that does crazy stuff to get people's attention, right? And so, so I want you to think about how does attention show up? So what you want to do is get people's attention. So if attention is such a massive commodity, you've got to have people's attention first, then they vote with their checkbook. So no different than kind of talking about the social media, the news, whatever it is. Same is true for you as a leader and in business. Guess what? You want to sell your company, then you've got to get your competitors attention, you've got to get private equity money's attention, you've got to get leaders in the space, their attention by running a good business, by making a splash in the water, by making sure that you're doing certain things that get people's attention. Then somebody might come along and write you a check. People vote with their attention first and go, huh? What's going on over there? I didn't realize that's happening. What have they assembled? What are they trying to do, they're voting with attention. Then they go, wow, that's pretty awesome. I want a part of that. I want to get an ROI on that. Then they vote with their checkbook. How about flip it around? Let's say that you want to acquire. A lot of our clients at Blue Collar are making acquisitions right now. Wall Street's the only, not, not the only entities that are buying. We've got businesses as small as, you know, a couple million, million five buying businesses. I got a 10, I got two, two acquisitions and clients I work with individually that are going on right now. And so I want you to think about, you know, what if you want to buy to help your growth. I'm a big fan of acquisition to scale. I bought five, I think five companies in my service business career. I'm a big fan of that. But guess what, you have to get people's attention first. One of the best acquisitions I two of my best acquisitions I bought a company called Excel Plumbing and Heating that was a two truck operation that they were stuck at just a few hundred grand a year and I was moving and shaking and one of the best marketers in town and I was a plumbing only company and they came to me and they were just burned out on the day to day and wanted to get out. And they were H Vac only, I was plumbing only. And because I had their attention of the marketer, I was the team that I had assembled the equipment that we were running. They said, man, we would love it if you would buy our business and we could join your team and we'll open up an H Vac division together. And boom, lo and behold, we did that. And one of the partners was our technical guru and the other partner was a salesperson. Now in hindsight and transparency, you don't buy a competitor that has a hard time and make both of them leaders in your organization without having a recipe for some complexity. But that being said, it was a good acquisition because it got me into the AC business and I learned a lot through the process. Would not have happened if we didn't have their attention. Same is true with another great acquisition I made with All Seasons Plumbing. This gentleman was, I was working him. He was quite a. Quite a bit older than me at the time. Well, I guess always has been and always will be older than me. And I was trying to get him to go to upfront pricing way back in the day. He was time and material. I'm like, Jack, I want you to embrace upfront pricing. I would take him to coffee, take him to breakfast. And finally he's like, kenny, I know it's the right thing to do. I just don't have the gumption to go through it. I just don't have the ability to do it with. Gonna keep doing things our way. Well, I had Jack's attention because he knew I was the top competitor in the market. He knew I was young and excitable, and he knew that I was passionate. He knew I was gonna take care of business. And when it came time for Jack to retire because unfortunately he had a health situation that arise and retirement came on the table sooner than originally planned. My phone call was from Jack, and Jack said, hey, I wanna entrust you to buy this business and take care of my family for retirement. And so, because I had his attention, the checkbook came out on my end and he was able to place his checkbook in my hand. So if you want to sell, you got to have attention first. You want to buy, you got to have attention first. What about team? Big challenge in the world today is, oh, attracting quality team and different things. As you start to eat out a little bit more as the world opens up and you see different things, you're going to realize there's a big struggle for quality service again, because people have been on the sidelines, people have been unemployed, people have not been working and dealing with people. And all of a sudden it's like, what happened to customer service in the world? You want to attract better team, you want to attract quality team. Here's how you attract quality team. Have vision in execution, but you got to have vision no matter what, right? So first we got to have the clarity and some things that we talked about last week. But it's important that your vision is in execution, because vision is one thing, but when it's being executed now you get people's attention. Now is when people start going, hey, what are they doing over there? What's going on? That's pretty awesome. I kind of like what I'm seeing. Many of you are having a hard time attracting quality team right now. I've got clients that are just like, literally can't. I mean, they. They're hardly even running ads because they are doing so many cool things in the marketplace in super competitive markets. It's like, holy cow, how are you? I. I mean, Denver, Atlanta, Boston, we're seeing like, well, these are very competitive markets. And yet clients are able to add team like crazy because they have the market's attention. And remember, people vote with their checkbooks up and down, meaning that you want people to. You want your clients to vote with their checkbooks by paying you. You want to attract team to vote with their checkbooks by you paying them. Still voting with checkbooks at the end of the day. Right? So here's what I want you to really think about, though, and I'm going to give you a quick writing exercise before I get you out of here today. But one of the things I want you to be mindful of is attention. Cannot ignore authenticity coupled with consistency. And so last week, I talked a lot about consistency was so powerful for people to eliminate fear from knowing. Like, oh, who are we gonna get? What type of Kenny are we gonna get? I talked about that last week. Go listen to episode 48 if you skipped over that or haven't listened to it yet. And so today, it's about authenticity. You get people's attention when you are yourself, when you show up and you go, hey, this is who I am in my life. In my world, I was as authentic as I possibly could be at the level that I thought I could be. And then when I got sober, I quit drinking. I got super clear, a whole new level of awareness. And true to myself, I went, holy cow. And all of a sudden, the world went, oh, now we get it. You know, I don't believe that God responds and the universe responds to lack of clarity. And if you're not clear, then you can't be authentic or you're not owning your authenticity or you're not owning your clarity. So when you're authentic and you couple it with consistency, the world starts showing up. People start coming out of the woodwork. Deals start showing up. People are like, hey, we want to play your game. We want to be with you. Trust me when I say this, if you. It's incredibly powerful. I'm just blown away almost on a daily basis, certainly on a weekly and monthly basis, of the opportunities coming my way. And I keep on listening to Steve Jobs in my head. One of my favorite quotes, what are you most proud of at Apple, Steve? And he said, man, you know, bless his heart. He was like, I'm most proud of the things I didn't do right now. Because we have people's attention at blue collar. I have to say, no way more than I say yes. Because people want to play our game, whether it's team, whether it's acquisition, whether it's partnerships, whether it's whatever. People want to be involved in what we're doing because we're changing lives every single day. And let me plug that if you're not a member of blue collar, you're not getting coached by blue collar. You might want to hit up blue collarsuccessgroup.com and check it out. I'm just the CEO, but I'm a big fan, right? So here's the writing exercise. Let's do this. How do I become an attention magnet? Write that down. How do I become an attention magnet? And then just don't overthink. Just write. I'm a big fan of writing. I talk about that a lot. I'll continue to talk about on these podcasts with our time together. If you want to get people's attention first and then they vote with their checkbook. How do I become an attention magnet? How do I become attention magnet? In my business, I've got a buddy that's trying to find the right intimate relationship in his life. Well, he hasn't yet done the work of how does he become an attention magnet. But for that specific person that's out there that's wandering around lost, that's why I talk about magnet. Magnets are powerful because they attract and they oppose. That's what it's all about, my friend, is who do you want to bring into your life? How do you want to become an attention magnet? It takes clarity, it takes confidence, it takes truth, it takes authenticity, and it takes you doing the work of this writing exercise. Write it down. How do I become an attention magnet? Jot through it. Be happy to have you shoot it to me. Kennykennychapman.com if you want to share it with me, would love to see that. And also, please just give us a rating. Give us a review, make sure you're subscribed. But I would love a like and I would love if you would give us some sort of a rating and review that really helps us. This is episode 49. People vote with attention, then checkbooks. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Until we talk, make it a better than fantastic week, my friend. See you real soon. Thanks, Sam.