88: How does Respect show up in your job and/or business?

Welcome to the Mutually Amazing Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, with the Center for Respect. The episode you're about to listen to was recorded when this show used to be called the Respect Podcast. So, you might hear that mentioned during this episode. Well, let's get to the show. Today, we have Marit Khan, formerly guest, with us who's a sales mindset expert, Keynote speaker, entrepreneur, author, and stand-up comedian. We actually first really got to know each other because Merritt came to one of my events at the University of Denver many years ago, uh, where I was speaking to a huge audience of Greek life students at the University of Denver. And that's where I really got a chance that night afterwards and all to chat and talk. And so great to have you on the show, Merritt.

Thank you, Mike. Great to be here.

Wonderful to have you on. Thank you for joining us. You talk in the corporate world. You are a keynote speaker, especially sales mindset. How do you think respect plays a role in sales?

You know, respect— I mean, respect is everything, right? So we've all heard, especially in sales, that people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Guess what's at the heart of trust? It's respect. Um, but I think where most people miss the point Yeah. Is that really in order to authentically have respect for someone else, we really have to have respect for ourselves. So when you think about respect as it relates to business, self-respect, well, in business is really not any different than what you talk about at that program for college students. Respect can be demonstrated by boundaries. You have to find a way to serve your clients without disrespecting your own boundaries.

How do you define respect?

I think really respect is me standing in my truth, being authentic to who I am, what I know to be good and true and right without disrespecting your boundaries, to really allow you to be who you are in business, for you to get the deal that you need and for me to be happy with that deal on my end as well. That's a respectful way of doing business. It's honoring what we both need to come to a good solution for everybody.

So, what would be an example? What's a way somebody can demonstrate that in that sale— selling role? You know, people hate feeling like they're being sold to. They almost feel like they're being disrespected, like they're being manipulated. So, what's a way that somebody can demonstrate respect when they are selling?

You know, I think when people really take sales seriously as a profession, they, they stop focusing on what they're supposed to say and do to manufacture the sale. And they really focus more on understanding that their value to a prospect is by asking great questions. So you really help that prospect discover for themselves what, why they really need your offer. I think the way that sales professionals demonstrate respect is first by asking permission to ask tough questions. In your world, that's asking permission to kiss someone, was something that I remember from being in your program. It's the same thing in business development. You've really got to ask permission to ask challenging questions so that you can help them discover on their own what they really need. As the solution to their problem. But my philosophy has always been, you know, I'm not doing anybody any favors by not asking them the tough questions to help them figure out whether or not I really am the right solution to help them. Because if they go through and they have that challenge, they're either going to have it in a conversation with me, which is less painful and less costly, or they're going to have that experience of that challenge and the pain that it creates in their real life. having not had the solution that I provide. So, I think a way that we can really demonstrate respect when we're in a business development role is by getting permission to ask those tough questions and having the conversation that people need to have. And then, obviously, listening is a form of respect as well, not just waiting to talk.

Well, yeah, right? And the key to that is, is your service or your product of value to the person?

Exactly.

I think that's where it becomes disrespectful when it's not a good fit and you're still selling.

Oh my God, exactly. I mean, that's in fact one, one of the pieces of my sales process that I teach people is, you know, in, in terms of presentation, it's not just presenting the solution that you have. It's the idea that you're not even gonna go through with that presentation if you've discovered through asking tough questions, challenging questions, that It's not the right solution. That's definitely disrespectful. It's also disrespectful to present a solution that's completely out of the realm of possibility. It's like the— not to throw the real estate industry under the bus, but it's like the real estate agent that takes you to the multimillion-dollar home when your budget is $500,000. It doesn't work. I can't buy it even if I want it. It's disrespectful to take me there.

Yeah, and yet they're doing it because then the $500,000 house looks doable, right? That, that's the mind game they're playing, right?

Well, maybe I'm watching too much HGTV. I don't know.

But no, and they do that on HGTV, right? There's always one out of range.

Yeah, there's one out of range, and then they try to like— they make you feel good about the, the $500,000 fixer-upper that they're gonna make look like your million-dollar home.

Exactly, that's right. Now You brought up earlier how important self-respect is, and I think a lot of people forget about that when they're selling. And I think there's 2 pieces to this. One, selling itself is disrespected. Why do you think sales and selling, which everybody has to do in some way, right? Because selling is getting someone to buy into something you believe in. And this, it could be a product, could be a service, but you're also selling your kids on the beliefs you have for your core values of your family. Right. They're not necessarily agreeing with them. So you're not always— they're not always gonna agree with exactly what you say. And so then you have to bring them over to that, help them understand why this is the right fit, which is selling. Why do you think people have such a, almost a creepy feeling when they hear the word selling?

Selling has a, has a bad rap. And, and I've gone through, you know, even in my keynotes, I have to really take the audience through a journey of discovering that, you know, we're all in sales for the exact reasons you just said. Um, sometimes I deliberately transplant the word sales with the word influence because essentially that's really what we're trying to do is be an influential— I don't know, I'll use the word force, but it's not really force. It's really like an opportunity to be influential. I think why sales has a bad rap is because people have learned ways to manipulate their influential Abilities, power, whatever you want to call it, and it's only for their own good, which ultimately is not good. So I think that for sales to have a better rap, it's when people really take it seriously like a profession. They understand the principles of influence that are involved and when to walk away. Um, because we're not always going to be a perfect solution for every problem. It's in those moments when we demonstrate our disrespect of what somebody else really needs as the right solution, we're actually disrespecting ourselves in that same moment. I don't know how people sleep at night, honestly, if they know that they haven't done the right deal for everybody.

So let's go there. What do you mean by disrespecting ourselves? So somebody's listening, they're going, well, I see that's manipulative. Like, you know, hey, I'm selling somebody something they don't need. How's that for the person? But how is that disrespecting myself as the salesperson? There's no doubt it disrespects the buyer, right? There's no doubt. Everybody understands that. So how does it disrespect ourselves as the seller?

Because we try to be something that we're not. We disrespect our own boundaries. Then we feel bad about it. Then maybe we're not giving the best service. I mean, there's nothing good that comes about it. And I think the reason that people disrespect themselves is that they really haven't done that deep dive to understand where they're— what their best fit is. Who should I be doing business with? Why should I be doing business with them? How do I feel when I am doing my best work for my best target audience? And how does it feel when I know I'm not the best fit? If I know I'm not the best fit, I'm disrespecting myself by taking it and that job, that opportunity, that sale. And I'm also disrespecting the client by doing something where they could have been better served in some other way. And I think that, you know, we disrespect ourselves when we really don't, like I said, do that deep dive to really understanding our own wiring. It reminds me of a story, actually, now that I'm thinking about this. There was a woman who was in a keynote that I did Oh gosh, this must have been 12 or 15 years ago. And she heard me say something that had her shift an idea. She heard me say that how you buy impacts how you sell. And what she didn't really fully understand until that moment was that she had to respect her own sense of money was different from her prospective clients. So she left my program. She was on her way to pitch a deal and she pitched a program that was $75,000 more than she would have, not because she was screwing the client, just to be clear. She had taken things out of her original proposal because she didn't understand and have respect for her own feelings and ideas about money, what was a lot of money, what, what, um, what this product— what she was worth, all of that. And so she took things out of the proposal, things that would have really helped that client. I could build a case for she had a disrespect for the client by doing that, and she also had a disrespect for her own self-worth by doing that. And when she recognized that how you buy impacts how you sell and how her money mindset was sabotaging her and her clients, she was able to put those services back in the contract. Of course, the client was, was thrilled because it was exactly what they needed. They, they bought the project and she had a shift in her own mindset that ultimately, I think, added to her level of respect for herself. And that makes her better able to serve all of her clients in the future.

Yeah, I think a great— by what you were just sharing there in that story, a great test for people to ask themselves is, if there's incongruency in my values and my beliefs, there's a lack of respect in this choice.

Yes.

That, that would be the test that we could all follow. I mean, think about how many of us want to be paid the most for our position or paid the most for our service, but look for the cheapest option on things that matter to us.

Right.

And, right? And you say, well, that's a contradiction. If you think that you're the best and you deserve to be paid more, but you want to hire the best and pay them less, there's a disrespect there for the value of the service, the person, the vendor you're working with, because you wouldn't want to be treated that way yourself. Now, what are other ways you've seen forms of disrespect in the business setting?

Well, I've certainly seen it in, in leadership situations. I remember, and I tell this story often, but when I started my first big downtown Chicago job in radio after college, and I was so excited. I mean, it was my first big job. And it turns out the receptionist didn't know I was hired. The guy who hired me wasn't even going to be in the office that entire first week when I started. And it left me feeling like I made a mistake taking this job. I definitely didn't call it disrespect at that time. When I look back, I mean, boy, was that ever disrespectful. Here they were in the interview process telling me how excited they were to have me, and then I show up and no one is there to help me. That really didn't make me feel like I was respected as a new member of the team. Which is probably why I ended up doing this, a whole course on how to onboard people properly. Maybe now I should name it Onboarding with Respect, I guess. But actually, now that I think about it, another important piece of that puzzle is leadership, management being really clear about the expectations you have of a new hire, as an example. And I think this could apply to many different examples. But when we're not clear about what we expect of someone else, We're actually disrespecting them by doing that as well because we're not really setting them up for success. We're not really getting clear about what it would look like from their perspective to be successful and from our perspective for them to be successful. So if people want to do a good job, they want to succeed, and yet they don't know what success looks like, that seems very disrespectful to me.

Yeah, you know, I, I can think of it in a small area. If somebody's thinking, well, how does this relate to non-business? If you fly a lot like we do, you and I do, for work, and you get picked up at the airport and the person who has water waiting for you and they're so excited to see you and they're even in the airport as you come through, they just treat you like today's a special day, uh, and you love that, right? But you never do that for people you pick up at the airport, right? Why wouldn't we want to do that for the people we pick up at the airport when it means so much when we're picked up that way? And so I think we can all fall into these gaps. of how we want to be treated and how we're treating others. And that onboarding was a great example you gave, right? Everybody loves being treated like, you're here. Everybody loves that, right? Like, you're here, we're so happy you're here, we can't wait to see. And yet a lot of people don't do that for people in their lives.

Exactly. And when I talk to particularly CEOs, business owners, um, on that topic of onboarding, and we, we have this whole conversation about making The first day on the job really special. And it's a really great opportunity to teach your culture in ways that are memorable and unique, that can stand out and make somebody feel respected and appreciated all at the same time. And every single time I do that program, somebody in the audience says, I don't understand why I need to do this. No one did this for me. And I said, that's exactly why this matters, because If you're planning to stand out from the pack and you want your opportunity to be the one that somebody accepts and is super excited to give their A-game every single day working for you, then you want to do something that no one else is doing. You want to resonate with them as a much more respectful and appreciative environment right out of the gate. And, you know, sometimes they still grumble, but some of them catch on.

Yeah. It's like a CEO who says, why do I need to change how I treat my people? I've gotten to where I am. Well, I thought, I thought you were trying to get beyond where you are.

Exactly.

Right. So, how you've operated got you here and you're trying to go 3 times that, 2 times that, 10 times that, then you have to operate differently. And if you want to attract the best, then you have to know how to treat people the best.

Yes.

What do you think is the most important thing a business owner, entrepreneur, or salesperson can do to both grow their business or their sales and their sense of self-respect?

I honestly think it's about being clear about your own wiring. I think probably one of the best pieces of advice I got when I was starting my career was to learn as much as I can about other people and human dynamics. And that advice served me well, but it actually fell a little bit short. And what I wished I would have known right out of the gate, which I figured out not too long later, was to learn as much as I can about myself. In particular, my own emotions and the impact that I have on other people. And they're things like assertiveness. I do an assessment, an emotional intelligence assessment that levels or that measures the level of assertiveness. Well, if that's out of whack with self-regard or empathy, if those things aren't in balance, then a high level of assertiveness is going to come across as aggressive. If I don't know that about myself, I can't shift how I might interact with somebody So that I don't appear aggressive to them. If I'm aggressive, nobody's going to get anything that they want. I might be the best solution, fall from the rainbows with pots of gold, but they won't be able to hear that as a possibility because my delivery or their experience of me was aggressive where I might have thought I was assertive. And I think that The most important thing, um, an entrepreneur business person could, could really do is really understand their own wiring and how that wiring impacts others. That is the most respectful thing we could do for ourselves as well as for the other people that we are in relationships with, whether they're business or personal.

I love it. And now that's what we can do for ourselves to be stronger. What do you think are the 2 most critical things you can do to show respect to a client?

I think paying close attention to how they prefer to communicate, to interact. You know, simple little things like, um, when I write an email, if I've, if I've had a conversation with you and I said I was going to deliver something or I was going to follow up in some way, when I do that in my email, I'm going to say As promised, here is the yada, yada, yada. And I do that because I want to show that I respect both my word and that I want to teach them that they can respect my word. And I think that's an example of showing them respect. And listening, asking permission to ask those questions, having the tough conversations, all of that.

And you do something very unique as a fun hobby, or you said to let steam out, and that is you do stand-up comedy, which is so unique for most people. Don't think of business people and stand-up comedy. How'd you, how'd you take that journey? Like, how'd you get there? What, what's the drive there? What's the high there?

I studied stand-up because I wanted to bring more deliberate humor into my keynote speeches and programs. And I wanted to really learn how to craft a good, tight joke and be deliberately funny. And I did learn that. What studying stand-up comedy did for me really is it allowed me to see everything in my life as an opportunity for humor. I started— what you learn, it was— It's probably not much different than when a photographer really learns the art of photography. It's not so much about understanding the camera and what it can do. It's really teaching you how to see. You start to look for lines and circles and unique patterns and shadows and crinkles in people's faces and expressions and emotion. And when I started stand-up comedy, for me, it was a whole new way of experiencing the things in my life that were frustrating for me, to be honest. It was, you know, wanting to do better on stage, but also wanting to process some of the challenging times in my own life. And I started to write and journal. And when you write for comedy, first, you don't write the joke immediately. You write to see what your feelings and observations are about the emotions that you're having. Why is it that that emotion is resonating with you? When you pull it from that angle, you get a chance to observe it like from 30,000 feet, and that's when the humor arrives. It's absolutely transformed my life. Once you do your first 10 minutes of stand-up and you get that laugh, it's an amazing high. And I think I know my keynote audiences really appreciate it because it's, it's kind of like being at a, at a comedy show and then you learn some stuff in between.

I love with how you just explained the whole psychology and the neuroscience of how you did— where'd you learn? I mean, where do you learn that detail of the writing, the deep diving of thought and where it comes from?

Uh, well, I'll give credit where credit is due. I have, uh, 2 Comedy coaches that I lean on for different things. There's a woman who is a professional stand-up comedian named Christina Hall, and she actually runs a workshop called Stand-Up: The Workshop. And that was my first taste. And at the end of a 2.5-week workshop, you end up doing a 7 or 8-minute set. And so that was really learning the craft of stand-up. And then there's a brilliant, brilliant professional comedian and professional keynote speaker. Her name is Karen Ruth White. She's a member of National Speakers Association, and she is my go-to person for taking the stand-up, making sure it's business appropriate, not comedy club worthy, and infusing that into my keynotes. And working with her really transformed the experience for my audiences because, you know, I came from a training background, so I'm great with interactive exercises and content, and then she really helped me put the art of the keynote and, and the comedy, you know, corporate-appropriate comedy into the program. And it, it just changed everything for me. But those 2 women were game changers, absolutely game changers.

Well, thanks for sharing that for our followers too. Now, if somebody— I, I always hear this debate to my friends who are comedians or humorists, and a lot of them believe you can't teach funny, which would indicate you were funny before you got into this. This just helped you draw it out. Would you agree with that, or do you disagree?

Well, Mike, I would definitely agree that I was funny before this, but I will tell you, I have shared the stage with people who have never done comedy. They're not professional speakers. My neighbor, who was an accountant, did the same course, and while I certainly thought, as a friend, she was funny. She would not have—

I love the dance you just did there. That was great.

You know, just in case she hears this.

Yes, exactly. Which, of course, she'll be listening.

But she would not necessarily have described herself like that. And she had them rolling in the aisles. So, yes, you can learn to be funny. You know, you just— You can learn to observe things and then discover why that observation could be funny. So it doesn't happen overnight. And again, I think what people mistake is they think that comedians sit down and they write a joke. That's not what's happening. And Seinfeld had a great documentary about this years ago, and I'm spacing on the name. But really, what he said there was it takes him— and he's at the top of his game— it takes him, I forget maybe exactly, but 3 days to write a minute of material. Whereas me, I'm not a professional stand-up comedian full-time, so it might take me a week, a week of writing an hour, 2 hours a day to come up with the material that will turn into—

A minute.

3 or 4 jokes.

Yeah, I think that— I think the documentary was Jerry Before Seinfeld. Does that sound right?

That sounds right. Yeah, there it— yeah, something like— yeah, that's probably it.

Yeah. Or there's another one, Seinfeld: How It Began. So there's a couple different ones there. Yeah, that people can look up, uh, which, which both can give people the insights that— yeah, I mean, I've— I think I've heard Seinfeld say that there are jokes he's worked on for 3 years.

And again, I think, you know, it really all ties back to respect because You want the audience to laugh. You want the maximum impact from every word. So a good comedian, when you really start to watch, they will— there are no extra words in their jokes. The real art is editing out all of the extra words so that you're left with the pure essence of the joke, the only words you need To get the audience reaction that you want. That really helped my writing. It certainly helped my writing of a keynote. It was really about taking things out that don't belong there, and that is showing respect to your audience.

Yes.

That you trust them to follow along with you without all the extra explanation. That people think you need.

Yeah, I love it. Thank you for sharing those insights. Now I want to make sure everybody can find you. Your website currently is meritgest.com, which is meritgest.com. Could that be changing? Because I know you said it depends on when the show comes out.

Yeah, it could, and everything will point when I get this all working right. But, uh, right now my email is merit@meritmethod.com, so that's Always a great way to, to reach me. And, um, LinkedIn.

And we'll have, we'll have your LinkedIn and all of that in the show notes.

Perfect.

So, we wanna make sure. Yes. And your book is Myth Shift. You also like the book Influence by Cialdini and Mindset by Carol Dweck. So, these are, we'll have all of that for our listeners. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. Thanks for the interview.

Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely. And for our listeners, you know what's next. That is question of the week. This week's question is, Mike, when we're being sexually active, what are assumptions we can make that we should stop making? Like, for instance, people used to think, I don't need to ask, I can just kiss you. And we now know, no, we need to ask, we need to give you a choice. What are some other assumptions people make? Well, the easiest one to point out is the one that happens after people start kissing. A lot of times people think, well, once we're making out, now I'll move my hands to where I think they can go next until they stop me. Instead of asking, what else would you like? Would— what would you like to do in addition to making out? You can figure out the words that work for you, but not making the next move. We ask for a reason for a kiss, and that should be true of the whole body, to be honored and respected, and for everyone to have a choice with every aspect of their being, their intimacy, and their boundaries. We'd love to hear your questions, your thoughts, and your ideas, and the best place to leave those with us is on our Facebook page at facebook.com/sexplanations. Mutually Amazing Podcast. Of course, you can always contact us on our website at mutuallyamazingpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe to the show so you automatically get it every week. And if you could take one moment to leave a review, that really helps other people find the show, which we are greatly appreciative of. So thank you so much for joining us. May you make today and every day a life full of mutually amazing relationships.