Episode #548 - Why You Need To Be Curious And Keep Asking Questions with Heather Smith

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

It's hard to get high achievers to talk about themselves and their successes and who they know and who, what they've done and things like that. But now it sounds like you have had some pretty, pretty high level exposures out there in your world with bigger companies, you know, famous people, things like that. Give us lift the curtain a little bit and let us know who, where you've gone with this and who's, who's been involved, you know, some of the experiences and some of the places you've gone with.

Yeah, you know, it's mentioned Walmart, you know. Yeah, it's been very, very interesting. The, the companies, probably the top Fortune 100 have been very receptive to actually trying out this new methodology and experimenting with it within their own companies and things. So we've been pretty lucky. A lot of our clients are like ServiceNow and SAP and Walmart and you know, Medtronic, just very large companies and they're all doing different things with it. You know, some are doing customer service, some are doing pre sales training videos, some are doing like the, like Walmart did the Financial Mentor. They also did a program called, they called Culture Keepers where they interviewed, you know. Well, we, we actually did a digital recreation of Sam Walton. So that's a different thing. So Sam can actually talk. Sam can preserve the culture. When the employees are being trained, he can tell them himself. Yeah, and, and successful company that's institutional for institutional memory for some of these big companies, that's a huge deal, you know, to be able to have people that have been on your board since the beginning or you know, the people that ran your company or the founder of your company, you know, to pass that on, pass on their values, pass on all the stories in their own words.

Yeah. Is, is how do these companies find you? How do they find you? Or do you, you go looking for them like your marketing department right now?

Actually we've been very, very lucky that most of it's been inbound.

Is that right? Word of mouth already?

Word of mouth. So it's either they read an article. We've had a lot of PR written about us, thank God.

But how did you get that? How did you get that? How did you get that pr?

Just my, our PR company that we have just keeps, you know, asking reporters if they want to Write about it.

And so you have a, you have a pr. You have a PR company.

Yeah. You had the PR company since the beginning.

Really?

Yeah, that we knew, we knew from the very beginning, since we didn't have a lot of marketing dollars to spend on paid advertising. Yeah, we knew. We had a, we had a great story, you know, the founding of our company, the team that's worked on it, and our whole trajectory in starting story file. We have a great story. So we knew that PR would be the least expensive, the best way to actually get the word out with regard to what we were doing, and that you could do this and get the word out about educating people that this is coming and you can record yourself so that other people can talk to you and you don't have to be there, you don't have to be present. And it can apply across the board. You know, for example, we had a gentleman that was diagnosed with ALS and he started his own foundation, but we did the interview with him, but we did it a little bit late. So what he wants to do is he's giving a story file life account to everyone is newly diagnosed with als. And also, you know, when you're diagnosed with these diseases, and I know from experience, the first thing that you, you ask yourself is, oh, my God, how do I tell my, my family? How do I. What's, what's next? What can I expect? And your doctor's not going to be able to answer all of these questions. You know, you want to talk to someone who's actually gone through it. So he's, he's done this story file and he has other doctors that specialize in als and he tells, he talks about his own experience and these doctors talk about the mechanic, you know, the more technical questions that they answer. But it's an amazing story file for someone that's newly diagnosed with ALS on what to expect. You know, what happens? What can I do to, you know, what should I be thinking about?

Right.

You know, all these things you, One of the questions, you know, you probably were going to get to, to ask me is what were the things that, you know now that you didn't know to ask questions about? You know, because when you start something new, you don't know what questions to ask even.

There you go, there you go.

What you don't know. So it's really, really difficult, you know, and I, we think that story files can help people in so many different ways with that because you just kind of, the more conversations, the more questions you ask, the more you trip on like you said in the beginning, like someone's going to trip on some kind of gem of evidence, you know, and.

That we have a, we, we have a core similarity in the thinking I had behind doing this podcast, which, you know, I didn't, I didn't need something else to do. But the. I'm a master of doing things you don't make money on, you know, and so why don't I start a free podcast? That would be great. But I get, it's worthwhile for me because I keep, I get exposed to positive people. You know, the world is full of so many negative SOBs and they seem, they seem to be in the spotlight and you know, the positive people doing positive things like what you're doing, you never hear about, you know, it's like, you know, we hear that's a cliche that you don't hear the good news. But where so much of the good news is for people like yourself that no one knows, you know, the whole, you know, you're, you're not going to find it on the media or this, that the other. But, you know, maybe, you know, you're, you. Hopefully people will find out. But there's so many amazing people out there with new idea and they're gung ho and they're doing things. So that's the payoff for me. But in the nature of my business, I evolved. We had a financial services business and opened up offices all over the country and U.S. canada. And so over the years you only have so many hours in the day. Over the years there's so many people I evolved into where I'm coaching the million dollar earners because there's all, again, you can only talk to somebody, return so many phone calls. And so I went for decades saying, wow, I just know there's a ton of people who would love to be eavesdropping on these conversations.

Absolutely.

People were just talking about the weather, you know, because they're going to hear things. And the deal is if there is a secret, Heather, to moving up or progressing and developing is if there is a secret thing that you can spend your time on, it's getting around listening to or reading from people who are where you want to be, you know, they're further down that road.

Right.

And the advantage of that is you, like you said it, you said it perfectly. You don't know what you don't know. You don't really know what questions to ask. As a result, you don't know what questions to ask. And the way you wind up getting this is why it's a cliche, but it's true. You know, greatness is caught and not taught because usually greatness comes from the last piece of the puzzle. You know, when you were learning the fundamentals, you got all those in there and you apply them, you have some success, but you're not quite clicking on all the cylinders. And just someone comes in and you say, oh, I never heard before. Thank you very much. And then, boom, boom, you're off to the races. So, you know, it's like we don't know what they're missing. They don't know what they're missing. But I do know if they sit and are exposed to these conversations, and this is why I told you right from the beginning, story file. Great idea, great concept. That's not the main thing I was interested in. I was interested in. The main thing is what you've learned and how you've, you know, developed as a person, as a leader in terms of being able to navigate life successfully. And that allows you to, you know, stay in, stay firm and actually bring this product to the masses. You know, and if you have not developed, you don't know how to navigate life right correctly and how to, how to work things, how, you know, coach yourself to. When you're like, knocked backwards, it's like, okay, or am I going to get.

You know, I've been fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of really amazing people as well. And you get advice and you can talk to a lot of people around you, you know, and knowing who to go to is almost as important as knowing what to ask. Because you, you're right, you only have so much time and you, you only have so much bandwidth to listen to so many people. But I, I don't know. I, I've, since I was a kid again, I go back to it is that I've always loved listening to people's stories and learning from them. And I always had this notion as a kid even that if I can learn from them what not to do or what to do, then I don't have to go through that. You know, I, I, that's exactly right. And it's just it, but it's, it's letting that taking in those stories and really internal and making them a part of who you are.

Right.

And your identity. And then you're right, it, you're made up of all of the experiences that you have in your lifetime. So just make, yeah, it's not a.

Shortcut in the sense that you don't have to do the work you got to do, the work you have to do, the repetitions you have to go, you know, have so many times where, you know, you do a belly flop and all. But the deal is you don't. You can say you, you can benefit from other people's belly flops.

Oh yeah.

If you'll take the time to, to listen to them, talk to them. And you don't have to do all the belly flops yourself.

Yeah. You just, I mean a lot of it, you have to realize exactly how your situation might be slightly different as well.

Right.

But it's, it never hurts. It can't ever hurt, you know, and having these conversations, if people had more conversations and listened more.

Yeah.

I think that everyone would be a lot better off.

Be my hope for you now that we, we have covered some ground and we, you know, we got it zoom recorded anyway that you might want to include this in your own story file about yourself talking to that new grandchild that's getting ready to be born. You know, about how you look at things and how you have navigated up to this point. So anyway, any last comment you want to send people away with as we wrap this up?

Be curious, continue asking questions. Everybody do their story file and if we can help you solve some problems and communicate better and then we're here for you.

And how do they find you? Storyfile.com all right, thanks so much, Heather.

Thank you, Larry.

Appreciate, enjoy the conversation and good luck with that. Grandbaby.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

Thank you.

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