INBOUND 2015 I&E: Joel Mark Witt "Giving Your Customers and Audience the Gift of Understanding"

Good afternoon. Welcome to today's session, how to develop rapid customer rapport with Joel Mark Witt, CEO of Personality Hacker. Joel is a speaker, writer and digital media entrepreneur with a focus on personal growth blended with transformational leadership. As a co owner and CEO of Personality Hacker, he oversees a new kind of publishing company that merges digital media with emerging models of human development focused on helping people hack their personalities and create more happiness in their lives. So welcome Joel.

Good morning. I know I have you all at like what, 2:30 or something like this? So everybody's got their afternoon lulls. My name is Joel Mark Witt. I'm really happy to be at Inbound. Thank you so much for being here with me today for this experience.

A couple years ago. Have you all been to one of those off site retreats at your company.

Where you're vice president or something, says.

We'Re going to meet together and we're.

Going to determine what the course of action is for the next year. You guys have been in one of these off site day long snooze fests you've had to go to really setting strategy and figuring stuff out. So we were all required to come to one of these a couple years ago at this nonprofit I was working at.

And one of the things she said is when you come in in the morning for the first thing, I want.

Everybody to bring an inspirational quote, something.

That really gets to you and inspires you to greatness.

I'm like, all right. So I take this serious. I decide I'm going to do some research and think about this. I look at my journals, I look through some stuff that I've been working on and I find. So I can't remember the real quote right now, but it was something effective like shifting mindset, opening your mind, learning how to think in new ways. It was like this really thing I'd spent a little bit of time looking at at least a day looking at, right? So, so we get there and everybody.

First thing we got to give our quotes.

So we start going around the table. Everybody's given this standard. They just googled it literally on the way into the meeting and they're giving their pithy, those motivational poster type quotes. Don't care how much you know unless they know how much you care. All this stuff. Mark Twain comes around to me.

I'm like third from last and I give my really cool.

I'm like, all right, this is going to be really good. This really means something to me. I give my quote to everybody that's there this thing that impacted me, and it's like, crickets. Everybody's like.

And not like crickets, but my vice.

President'S like, what does that mean? Like, whatever this was, right? And I'm like, what do you mean, what does that mean? And it's like, all right, next, we move on, and we go around the table, and I'm feeling, like, really marginalized. I'm really feeling like, what?

Like, I spent time. You asked me to do this, and do you even care that I did this?

We just went to Florida about two weeks ago with my family, and it was late at night. My kids are upset. It's late.

We're trying to get the place we're going.

And we're hungry.

Everybody's hungry in the car.

Everybody's really like, we need food, dad. So I'm like, all right, what are we going to do? My wife's driving. So I pull up my Chipotle app because I like Chipotle, and I'm putting my order in for Chipotle. And they have a little space there for you to put special instructions. And when you have kids, you know, you have special instructions. One of your children might like corn, the other one doesn't. You got to put all this extra stuff in. So when I get to Chipotle, I'm expecting.

It's paid for.

I'm expecting to pick it up. I get to walk out of Chipotle with my food and jump in the car. We get to go to our place we're staying. We get to chill out. It's starting to get late at night. It's like 9 o' clock at night, right? I get there, the order's ready most of the way.

But there's a piece of one of the kids meals that didn't have the part done.

The guy said, did you want this or this?

And I'm thinking the whole point of having special instructions was for me to write in here what you should do for the special meal I need. So I'm like, okay, well, what do I have to do to make this right?

He's like, well, the only way I.

Can do it is you've got to go back in line and go through the line to have the thing made. And I'm like, that defeats the whole point of me trying to save time.

Order this ahead of time and pick it up. And I've got a whole car full of kids ready to freak out on me. So I go through the whole thing. I take the extra 15 minutes. I get to the end and I'm fuming.

I'm angry at this guy who made me go through this process to get the order right.

In his mind, it's probably get the order right.

And in my mind it's just delaying things. And that's the whole reason we have the special instructions.

So I'm angry at this point, right. I was at a business meeting about four years ago with a friend of mine, Nicole, who just spoke earlier. Actually, here we were together to do a pitch. She had a social media company, I had a social media company. We're pitch a company on doing social media consulting work with them and some marketing stuff. So we go into this company, things are going great.

We're showing our work that we've done.

Our joint companies, we've done. We illustrate how our credentials, the kind.

Of stuff we want to do, or future pacing with them.

It's exciting.

You guys been in a pitch meeting.

And you can just start to feel things going really good, right? You're going to get the gig. Everybody in one of these things, you just know it's going to work out. You're like, yeah, no, wow, you guys are terrible pitch people. All right, that's cool. But I knew it was going to work out. We were spot on. We were nailing everything.

And then it came the time in the meeting, you're all sitting around the table talking about everything. It came the time to switch business cards.

You pull out your business cards and you fly them around the table like American Psycho style. You're comparing business cards and all this, and I'm getting the business cards.

And I am asked by the main.

Guy who's consult, you know, we're going to consult with, can I have your business card?

Like, you know, I don't.

I don't actually carry business cards. I don't really think they're important. I can text you or I can send you my information by email or.

You know, or the papers that we have right here, you can take and.

All the contact permissions on them, but you don't need a business card. Come on. And he's just like, well, you don't have a business card. He like, goes back, sits down in his chair, crosses his arms like, you don't have a business card? I'm thinking, no, I don't. So we just kind of go on. The meeting ends very quickly. And again, I'm thinking, we're going to get this gig, right?

Two hours later, my friend Nicole calls.

Me and goes, hey, I got to tell you, we didn't get the gig. And the reason is you didn't have a business card. At this pitch, I was like, what? You got to be kidding me.

I mean, what if I just didn't.

Want to have a carbon footprint? Or what if I was channeling my inner Michael Dell or something? I didn't want to carry business cards with me. But we didn't get the gig because we didn't have business cards.

And I felt indignant at that moment. I felt like, this isn't right. We lost this job for something that.

Is so not important in my mind. What ties these three stories together? Why do I tell these three stories? We all overvalue our own experience.

All of us. We all overvalue the experience we bring to the world. And when we overvalue our own experience.

What I'm talking about is fundamentally, we.

Move through the world, and we understand.

That people communicate different and think a little bit different.

But do we truly understand that everyone's moving through the world with their experience as the primary experience they're having? This is the experience I'm having. And I'm assuming that as I communicate with other people, they're looking at the.

World the way I look at it.

They're making decisions the way I make decisions. And when they don't, when that guy on the freeway cuts me off, how is he so stupid to cut me off? He should see that I'm trying to merge over on this lane, and he just cut my car off, and now I can't get around him, and now he almost caused an accident. This guy's either obtuse, he's stupid, or he's just mean and nasty and horrible person. But we fundamentally overvalue our own experiences. We all do it. I do it, you do it. And in these moments, as these stories illustrate, things that I thought were important decisions I was making were not important to the people that were with me.

Obviously, that I was interacting with, and vice versa.

We had different criteria for how we're making decisions and what happens right before.

All these emotions I felt during these experiences at Chipotle, sitting down at that strategy meeting with our vice president, our business, and with this pitch before, I felt these strong emotions of indignation or disappointment or whatever it was, I had a moment of confusion, like, we're not on the same page here. Something's confusing. There's a disconnect.

And really, when we're talking about building.

Rapport with people, where there's confusion, where there's a disconnect, that's difficult to build rapport through.

That it's difficult to have a connection.

With somebody when you don't have the.

Same things you're looking at or you're.

Not making decisions in the same way. And it can be very challenging. So we all overvalue our own experience. And we all understand that this is what we go through the world, right? I'm talking about this overvaluing experience. Our minds are fundamentally wired differently. Our minds are fundamentally wired differently as people. And we all have different criteria that we look at to make decisions in our lives. On the contrary, to confusion, to breaking rapport. Building rapport does three things. It creates understanding so we understand each other. It builds loyalty. So I'm loyal to you. We have rapport.

We're in the moment.

Even if it's for temporary loyalty. We have loyalty together. And then trust. I trust you.

We're on the same page.

We're connected here.

So I want to talk about something.

In a minute here. A really quick tool set for you to build rapid customer rapport with the.

Clients and the customers and the people.

You'Re communicating with as digital marketers, digital communicators, PR people and sales professionals. We're gonna talk about how you can create that connection with a quick tool set that I wanna go over. And one of the things that I think is important before we do that.

Is.

We'Ve been on and on about this shift, right? I mean, Chris Brogan and Seth Godin have been writing about this for years, that it's about two way communication marketing. It's no longer one to many, it's no longer broadcast.

We're in a conversation. And as marketers, we've caught on over the last eight to 10 years.

We're all kind of up to speed that.

Yes, okay.

It's a conversation we have to enter. We have to build rapport by communicating with people.

It's a two way back and forth.

I put something out, somebody puts something back to me. And we get that as content marketers, right?

But even now, I was just watching.

Like a year ago, John Oliver on his Last week Tonight on HBO had a Twitter and corporations segment where he's talking about corporations that were trying to.

Insert themselves into the conversation by using hashtags.

And it'll be a hashtag around domestic.

Violence and a pizza company using this.

To try to market their pizzas.

It's like that's really not the appropriate place to insert yourself into a conversation about pizza. Is it around domestic violence? That's not cool. What's happening here. It's companies trying to Create that rapport, trying to do what we all know we need to do, which is connect with people in a two way fashion.

Connect with them, build that rapport, build.

That intimacy, build that connection so we.

Can have that back and forth.

So I believe what we're doing now is we're going to be shifting from.

This idea that we're focused on people's.

Behavior, what they're saying, the conversation itself.

Or what they're liking, or what they're.

Clicking on, or what they're raising their.

Hand about, whatever they're doing online.

I think we're gonna be shifting away.

From focusing so much on behavior and.

We'Re gonna still focus on that. That's like a great starting point. But what I can envision happening in.

The future is us as marketers, as content people begin to focus not just.

On the behavior people do, but start focusing on who people are and the mental wiring of their minds.

It's interesting, in our company we do a lot of consulting work and we'll go into a company sometimes and we'll.

Talk to somebody and once we understand how they make decisions, sometimes people will say, wow, it feels like you're in my head, you know what I'm thinking. And it's really not what we know about their content.

It really doesn't have to do with I can read the mind of the person and tell you, oh, you're thinking this or that.

It's just once I understand how you.

Make decisions as a person, I understand the structure of how you get to those decisions.

So I can basically predict in most.

Situations how you'll probably not 100% of the time, but probably make a decision.

Based on the criteria you use to make those decisions. So it's a very powerful tool for.

Marketers to have in their arsenal. So what is this model I'm talking about? Excuse me? We're talking about something that's built on the backs of Jungian psychology.

And we've identified in our company four.

Primary ways that people use criteria to make decisions. And I'm going to go through these now and I'm going to give you.

Some examples just pulled out of random.

Places on the web or marketing materials that will illustrate how people have used these in their marketing and communications. So we're going to go through these now and I'll illustrate these and I'll give some examples around it.

So one of the first ways that people create or make decisions based on criteria is something we call harmony. And each one of these asks a.

Fundamental question when they're coming up to make a decision.

Harmony is asking what gets everybody's needs method, not just the people in my immediate circle, but everybody that I'm in contact with. What gets everybody's needs met? The value focus is on other people and how they're impacted emotionally.

If people are impacted emotionally about this.

It will sway how I make a decision about it. If I'm a Harmony person, if I'm.

Using Harmony to make decisions, I'm going.

To basically make that my criteria. What gets everybody's needs met? How are other people impacted emotionally? How do they fundamentally feel about this? They need all people to be in relationship.

Again, that word harmony, right?

We want harmonious relationships. It's about social dynamics, social interaction, making sure we're all connected as people. No one's upset, no one's freaking out in the office.

No one's angry that I tweeted this thing out. It wants all people to be in.

Relationship as much as possible. They seek agreement and discussion and approval among people. And the insight that they bring to the table, Harmony users bring to the table is insight into social systems and dynamics between people and status. You can know a Harmony person usually.

But when they walk into a room.

They instinctively know who the high status people are in the room. They instinctively know who's dating who, who is sleeping with who, and no one else knows about it. They just have these instincts around social dynamics and how people are functioning. And they walk through the world making decisions based on this criteria. If you're marketing to a Harmony person.

If you're talking to Harmony people and you're looking through them, they want to.

Show genuine concern for other people, not just themselves, not just the immediate people, but as many people as they feel.

Like they impact, they want to make sure they're connecting with in a social fashion. They observe unspoken social contracts.

Some of us that are not Harmony.

People in this room, we go through.

Life and sometimes we make blunders and.

Things socially and we're like, how did.

That person know that that's not the.

Right thing to do?

They understand social contracts, unspoken social rules and contracts.

Just instinctively they understand how that's supposed to work.

They connect with people first. If you're a Harmony user, you probably prefer to connect with other people first.

And then hear their ideas. And that's that quote I said earlier, right? Nobody knows how much you know until they know how much you care.

That's a very Harmony statement.

If you're not connected to me, then.

Your ideas, like, it doesn't really matter. I want to be connected with you.

I don't want to just hear your data set yet. And using social proof is really powerful for Harmony people.

Is everybody else bought into this? Are there other people on board?

Again that social dynamic piece. Some examples from marketing Real world examples I just picked up and pulled that.

Illustrate this email capture. Put your name and email address below so I can stay in touch with you. Stay in touch with you.

Be connected to you. Again that language of Harmony an about.

Page the purpose of this community is help each other create and finance sustainable lifestyles doing what we love best on our own terms.

Money is strictly a vehicle that will.

Help us get to where we want.

To go and support the people we.

Care about the most. Very Harmony language About Me My transformation caught the eye of people around me again.

People focused people around me who wanted.

To know how I became so happy, glowing and healthy and sales letter ending.

Just a quick sample from that and never forget I believe in you.

A great example of a Harmony.

I'm going to use kind of a metaphor of car commercials with Harmony with all of these examples. Excuse me and Harmony first because we're talking about this. The Harmony car commercial is the soccer mom in the car driving with all the kids in the back she's bringing home from soccer. She's driving through the neighborhood and there's clips of a kid playing with a soccer ball in the front of the grass on some thing and it starts to cut to her and she's smiling at all the kids in the backseat that just came from ice cream from the ball game or whatever and her.

Baby'S in the five point harness with.

Bubble wrap around it and a mouth guard and six nanny cams to make sure it's safe.

So this is like a Harmony ad. You're seeing the safety, taking care of her family and then the kid kicks the ball in the street and the car comes to a screeching stop right.

In front of the kid and it's.

Like thank goodness for our anti lock.

Brakes in this whatever Subaru because your.

Family'S protected and the other people that.

Aren'T even your family are protected and cared for.

A very Harmony esque type ad. Right?

It's a very Harmony type message. Take care of the people around you.

Take care of people in your society.

Be connected and safety and this kind of thing family.

So that's very Harmony.

Harmony is asking what gets everyone's needs met. Number two, it's a mental process to.

Make decisions we've nicknamed authenticity. This is asking the question what's true to who I am, who. What resonates at the core of my being, what really gets me, what's in.

Inner alignment with me? If it's not inner alignment with me, I'm not doing it.

This is how a lot of people make their decisions.

Authenticity people.

You'll find them a lot of times.

In the arts, the creative fields, ad agencies are filled with these people in the creative departments.

And it's all about self expression.

It's all about being true to oneself.

The value focus is how the self is impacted emotionally. It's not so much it is concerned.

About other people and connection with other people, but it's really about how all.

Those interactions impact internally.

How do I feel about that?

How does this impact me? They need to act with inner alignment. If an authenticity person doesn't feel aligned.

Internally, they won't act.

They need to act with inner alignment.

And know that this is true and authentic to them.

They seek self expression and sympathy to sympathize with people. Really get them at a core level.

At a core gut level and connect.

With them and they have great insight into ethical implications.

The gray scale of good versus evil. Authenticity people understand more than anyone. Well, I mean everybody gets this, but.

They really have a nuanced understanding of.

How ethics are very contextual based on the environment, the condition you're in, what you're going through.

Ethics. There's a gray scale to ethics and it really matters to an authenticity person. They love this world of ethics and.

The right thing to do and the.

Moral thing to do.

This is something that resonates with them a lot. Even that word resonates is an authenticity word. One thing you can do if you're.

Marketing to authenticity people is speak to their individuality. They love to be individuals. Expressive talk in the language of championing causes. Getting behind something, standing for something, standing.

With resolve against something.

Being transparent about your core values. This is what we stand for as a company.

This is our policy on blog comments.

This is what we are going to do. These core values are important and personal stories personalize it. It's not a one size fits all.

World for the authenticity person.

It's contextual, it's personal, it resonates. It's about me as an authenticity person.

That's what they're asking.

What's true to who I am. Some examples Real life examples from email capture Enter email below for tips techniques.

Join the Revolution Stand for something Social media update Try to get focused on what people think.

Try to focus on what they're feeling and needing it's at least a thousand times more connecting.

What are people feeling and needing sales letter.

And there's nothing to be ashamed of.

You're an individual, right?

You should be proud you've taken the courage to step up and handle this problem in your life once and for all. Have courage. Don't be ashamed. Be an individual. Step up a TV commercial jingle. I gotta be me. You've seen the Dr. Pepper commercial, I.

Gotta Be Me, where they're, they're all like, I'm an individual because I drink.

The soft drink everybody else is drinking.

I don't know why they chose the authenticity message for that. But I gotta be me. I'm an individual.

I'm drinking this soft drink, right?

And from a car commercial metaphor, perspective.

Or looking at car commercials, we just.

Did the harmony one. This is the Jeep driver, right? If you see on the back of a Jeep, it's a Jeep thing, you won't understand.

It's a Jeep thing. Or there's an ad with a guy.

Staying on the Rocky Mountains with his Jeep next to him by himself. And it's like, only in a Jeep, I can handle this. It's about self expression. It's about personal identity.

It's about being individual.

I remember driving a Jeep when I was a kid.

My grandfather gave me a Jeep and.

I'd be driving down the road and.

Other Jeep owners would honk and wave.

And I'm like, do I know that guy? And I'm like, oh, oh, I've got a Jeep. That's right. It's like this thing, right? It's like self identification thing.

So this is very authenticity, it's that personal expression.

So we've got harmony, we've got authenticity. We have a question, if you want.

To ask a question.

You've got to come up to the microphone though, so we can get it on the recording.

Or we could wait till the end.

That'd be fine too. That'd probably be better. Hang in there. So number three, accuracy.

Something we've nicknamed accuracy. This is a mental process asking what makes analytical sense. This isn't concerned about social connection. Accuracy's not concerned about making sure that you love me. Before we talk about the data.

They're not worried about individual expression. Core resonance in my heart. Make sure this is the right ethical thing to do.

They want to know, does this make logical sense?

I don't even care if the janitor tells me this information or if the.

CEO of a Fortune 500 company tells me this information, does it make sense? And if it makes sense, I'll take it from anybody, a real famous person that that is an accuracy person. Richard Feynman.

He would often be seen in the.

Hallways of the university just chatting it.

Up with everyday people that were working there, getting ideas and talking with them.

Because he didn't care where it came from. It wasn't like he needed somebody really big and important to tell him this information.

He was just wanting the information itself.

Value focus. Is, is this information logical?

Are all the thoughts congruent?

Are they consistently logically?

Are they consistent?

They like to root out inconsistencies in discussion and root out bias in conversations. They're really focused on what analytical thing are you saying right now that doesn't match the thing you just said five minutes ago. Where's the incongruity here? Because I think you might either be lying or deceiving yourself or mixing two things together that should not be mixed together. Two concepts together that should not be mixed together.

Their insight is into thought systems and.

They recognize untruths very easily.

So accuracy people don't put up with bullshit marketing at all. These people have zero tolerance for bullshit marketing.

And it's about rooting out biases.

In fact, accuracy people are some of the toughest to market to on the planet because they can see through some of the stuff that people put out through marketing.

They like concepts presented clearly. They like to avoid public opinion persuasion.

So if you're like, well, everybody's doing this. That doesn't matter to an accuracy person.

They want to know, does this make sense to me? Does this accurately line up for my mind?

They like to use radically honest language. Don't be afraid to swear with an accuracy person. Have you ever read the website Itty Biz?

I have a feeling she's probably an.

Accuracy person because she just has profanity through her website. In fact, my wife, we were sending some emails. My wife is actually, Antonia is actually an accuracy person and so she'll put some profanity in some of our marketing emails and stuff. And we actually got an email from a harmony decision making person saying, I don't know man, you're putting this little bit of profanity in your email messages, I don't know what's in your programs and other stuff. This kind of seems a little weird to me. It was really turning her off and we had to evaluate a lot of our audience are harmony people and we.

Had to evaluate do we want to.

Be let her accurate nature shine or, or do we want to look and kind of contextualize things for our audience. So we had to pull back a little bit for some of our marketing messages.

But don't be afraid to swear. If you're an accuracy person, that probably is very accurate for you.

If it comes naturally for you, just do it.

They also anticipate objections in logic and.

Overcome them early real world examples.

Marketing is the art of leveraging yourself. From an interview I heard an accuracy person say this.

Accuracy people love leveraging.

They almost see everything in the world as an extension of the machine that.

Is their body or their mind, depending on how they look at those things about Page.

They're brutally honest.

Usually there's no pretense to accuracy people. I was raised in a trailer park. Yeah. And I then worked at a gas station, started studying kung fu and now.

I'm the CEO of this company.

And yeah, just that's how it was, man. They don't have all that hierarchical bullshit and stuff.

Sales letter what it really consists of is scientific research that is comprehensive in its nature. A lot of data.

Accuracy people can manage a lot of data very quickly. And then a famous speaking mantra. I saw an accuracy person on stage one time pitching his stuff. He's like, buy my shit, man. That's what I'm here to do. Tell you to sell your shit. I'm not gonna bullshit you. Buy my shit. Buy my shit. Buy my shit. He just like goes on like this. Everybody's like, oh, wow. Whoa. That's really right in the face there. But he was just like, that's why I'm here. He just didn't pull any punches. So number four. So we've got harmony asks what gets everyone's needs met? Authenticity. What resonates with me? What hits me individually? What's unique to who I am? Accuracy.

What makes analytical sense. And the fourth way that people make decisions.

Evaluate criteria to make decisions is a.

Process we've nicknamed effectiveness.

Effectiveness asks a very simple question. What works? Bottom line thinking.

Tell me what works. I just need to know the answer. I don't even care if it makes sense.

I don't care if it gets everybody's needs met.

I don't care if it resonates with me.

What gets the job done?

What's realistic and works in the real.

World is the value. Focus. The needs are metrics, resources to accomplish those objectives.

So give me the numbers. Tell me, is this percentage, does it work?

If not, we'll abandon it. We'll test iterate it.

I'll figure it out.

Just give me the bottom line. Tell me the numbers and we'll go forward.

They seek to implement ideas. Effectiveness people are really good at project management and taking something in the external world and building it out, making it real, taking an idea and saying, ok, this is the logical sequence we do. We start here at step A and we go all the way through to the end and we build out this.

Thing in real life.

They're really good at that and they understand how resources work and resource management and all that stuff functions together.

In fact, so much so that effectiveness people sometimes view other people or they.

Can sometimes view other people as extensions of resource. They don't see other people sometimes as people, they see them as people.

Yes, they're not completely depersonalizing them, but.

They see them as extensions of resource.

And if somebody's not doing what they're supposed to be doing in the job.

It'S like that person's not being a good little resource. They need to be a better resource in this position.

If you're marketing to effectiveness people present.

How an idea is useful, express ideas in a functional linear progression.

They like cutting to the chase. The bottom line.

Executive summaries are for effectiveness people that.

Don'T want to read the hundred page document. They want to skim down through the bullet points and get to the core of the content. They want to know what do I need to do to implement this right away. They have no patience with marketing funnels that aren't well thought out. Some real world examples, an about page get started today.

You can experience what they deliver time and time again. Speedy results, real transformation.

It's about getting to the bottom line.

Sales letter a proven step by step process. Step by step.

Wow. That shows you exactly how to launch.

A product in precise detail. It shows you exactly what to do every step of the way, right down.

To which blog post to release, when.

And what to say in every email.

The about page. My background includes a track record as.

A top performer in direct sales, as.

A powerful and effective sales trainer and recruiter.

An email capture. Are you ready to focus and follow.

Through to get results? I just realized I didn't tell you about accuracy for car commercials, did I? Accuracy car commercial slide couple slides back.

Would be all about performance, optimizing performance. These are the car commercials with a fast car sleek design.

It's throwing out stats really quick because accuracy people see themselves an extension of.

All the tools they use. They see those tools an extension of themselves. So this car is like an extension of the human machine. The human machine has a car now that it can swerve and drive around.

So that's the type of commercial you'd see for an accuracy person and for an effectiveness person.

This is about what works.

And again what works is what gets me the results I want. So you'll have the guy in his.

40S with the graying hair, really handsome.

Hollywood guy with the graying hair in his 40s with a beautiful 18 year old by his side, blonde hair in this sleek luxury car. And the thing JP Powered Associates, JD Powered Associates gave us 5 million awards last year because we are, you know, this like all this stuff about status, about the results, about the sleek design.

Of the vehicle, about getting from point.

A to point B and they pull up to the party they're gonna go to, you know, on the keychain, he throws the keys to the valet and he walks in in his nice like suit and it's like talking about how this car FL it functions well, it operates well, it gets you the girl.

The high status club you're getting ready to go into or the high status.

Party you're going to go into and it just functions.

This is a very effectiveness type ad.

So the four different decision making styles, again I'll talk about harmony. What gets everybody's needs met. Authenticity, what resonates with me internally. These are the questions people are asking. Accuracy, what makes analytical sense and effectiveness, what works. I can remember we were a couple years ago doing some consulting work with Zappos in Las Vegas. And we actually a little bit before that did some consulting work with Zappos Insights, which is a company that, it's.

Like a child company of Zappos that helps corporations, CEOs from all over the.

World, they fly in and they will.

Go through trainings and figure out how they can take the Zappos company culture.

Because it's a really fun culture. It's really exciting. It's like, you know, the parties are great. You go through their offices. If you ever get a chance to go to Zappos and tour, they've got.

Like stations of alcohol throughout their offices.

The CEO Tony Hsieh has his own like cubicle right in the middle like everybody else.

He doesn't have his own private office or anything.

And all the executives are just right out with everybody else. Very egalitarian type place. It's a really cool operation to look through. And they've really focused on company culture.

And one of the things that their Insights team does is they help other companies develop the Zappos model and implement.

It into their company culture. So CEOs from all over the world will Fly in. And when you fly in, you're in.

Your business suit, they make you cut.

Your tie off when you first come in the door and do all this weird stuff. They give you the grand tour.

And then afterward they go and sit down and show you how they created.

The Zappos company culture.

Well, we were brought in to basically, and this is what I love about.

Consulting gigs like this.

We weren't brought in to fix any.

Problems because Zappos Insights was doing a great job, but they wanted to do.

An even better job at what they were doing.

So they brought us in to do.

Some consulting to optimize how they were.

Communicating with the executives coming in. And so one of the things our company does when we go into a place like that is we basically will.

Sit down and we'll determine the decision.

Making styles that everyone's using in the company. So this is a small team, maybe 15, 20 people or so at the time. And we were determining all the decision.

Making processes they used. And what was interesting was we found.

A very large percentage, I mean, like, I think it was like 90%, maybe 80, 90% of the time, of the.

People that were working in Zappos Insight.

Were using Harmony as their key decision making criteria. What gets everybody's needs met.

This would make sense for a company that specializes, a child company of a parent company that specializes in teaching people how to create company culture, right? What gets everybody's needs met?

How.

How do you make a harmonious business environment? How do you have people connected? How do you have fun parties at the CEO Tony Hsieh's house and make it all really exciting? How do you make all this happen?

Well, they had that dialed in.

They knew exactly how to create great company culture. And that's why Zappos is so successful.

Because they've implemented that. But the challenge was, well, it wasn't really a challenge.

I mean, they did a great job. But what we noticed was a lot of their executives that were coming in.

To learn from them were not using Harmony to decide what they were gonna do. They were using effectiveness.

These are very driven CEO types. They wanna know what works. Give me the metrics, give me the.

Bottom line, give me the numbers.

And so through the course of discussion, we talked about potentially putting some more.

People on the team that were using.

Effectiveness to make their decisions.

Because if they could contextualize the numbers.

Here's a CEO coming in.

Okay, here's the bottom line.

Here's the numbers that work, here's why.

We do it, here's the Increase in sales and the percentages. Okay, cool.

I got all that handled.

Now tell me how to do company culture. So it improves the rapport building ability with the customers and clients that they were bringing into the company. So again, I want to ask you this.

What decision making style?

And we all use all of these, right? To some degree, but we all have one that's our favorite.

It's our favorite favorite that just beats.

Out all the others.

So what decision making style are you.

Personal, personally using to evaluate how you make decisions about what you're going to do?

Do you ask what gets everybody's needs met? Do you ask what resonates at the core level and my core values to me?

Do you ask, does this make analytical sense? Is this accurate? Or do you ask what works, what's effective, what's the bottom line and what are the metrics in it? What question are you asking? And then the other question would be after you ask that, what am I doing? And then what is our company doing? By extension, what are we communicating here? What are my clients and customers using to make their decisions? The bulk of them, are they a match?

Do we have a mismatch? Do we need to think about repurposing the way we speak? Because if you can give me the decision making process of a customer or client, that gives you immense amount of.

Power to create marketing language and communication.

That can instantly build rapport and it can make them feel almost like you're reading their mind. Not because you know again what's in their mind, because you understand the structure.

Of their mind, you understand the pathways.

They go to to make those decisions.

It's extremely powerful and it can really revolutionize increasing the rapid customer rapport of your clients and customers in your business. So, so we had a question over here.

I wasn't going to necessarily open up for questions, but I think we've got.

A few more minutes, like a couple more minutes here. So if you have questions, feel free to come up to the microphones. That's the only way that I'm permitted to have you ask questions. And we can go through all the questions you might have in this, by the way, if you have to take off. Because I know we start question and answer, there's usually mass exodus. Thank you for anyone that has to leave early for being a part of this experience with me. My name is Joel Mark Witt and I'm very excited that we were here experiencing this together.

So when you were talking about the authenticity type and that they're very individual, but then also you use language like join the revolution and they want to be a part of the Jeep culture or whatnot. So how do you reconcile those two desires?

Sure. For an authenticity person that is all about individual expression, it doesn't necessarily have to be solo individual expression. It doesn't have to be necessarily. That's all they do. They're not just the lone wolf.

It's more about when they're making decision. Is.

So for example, in the Jeep, if.

I own this Jeep, does this speak.

To me being an individual in society?

Yes.

I'm part of this revolution.

And I think part of it too is we're both individuals, we both own Jeeps.

You're cool because you're an individual.

I'm cool because I own a Jeep.

I'm an individual.

We're individuals together in something bigger.

And it sounds almost like what I was talking about, harmony connection.

But it's not really about that. It's about our individual expression, co expression.

Together in that way. Does that answer your question? Hopefully.

So I want to thank you for showing up today because I really enjoyed this. And it looks almost as though you could put the four into like Myers Briggs and that we kind of move around or our customers. But my question is, can we in our Personas, can we utilize these to help us create our content per each one of the four?

So if I understand your question, what I think you're asking me is can I take some of the ideas on.

Speaking directly to these kind of people.

These four people, can I create individual custom marketing messages for each of these.

Four decision making styles?

Yes. HubSpot calls them Personas that you develop a blog or an email for.

Okay, so you're talking about customer avatars, like a Persona. Customer avatar. Gotcha.

Yes.

In fact, you probably have a customer avatar in your business if you've developed one.

And they probably have one of these.

As their primary way of making decisions. And so yes, I would absolutely think.

In terms of when you're creating that customer avatar or that Persona, think in terms of, okay, how are they making decisions and contextualize your messages to that avatar.

Absolutely. In fact, that's exactly how you can use this to be done.

And again, most of our businesses, and I want to get to your question in a second.

The most of most of our businesses.

Are going to be speaking to people of all four decision making styles. But I bet you you're gonna attract one or two that are gonna be your primary customers.

For example, in our business, we track a lot of effectiveness people, a lot of harmony People? Yeah, mostly harmony, then effectiveness. And we really bring them in the drove, so we speak to them a lot in our marketing. One of the advantages we have is.

In our marketing funnels, we're able to.

Determine people and who they are when they come into the business. So we have a lot. We not only know their judging, like.

Their decision making criteria, we actually also know how they learn information.

So we add a whole nother element onto that, which just gives us even more wealth of information to be able to contextualize things directly to that customer or. What's up, Joel? What's up, man?

So you were doing social media consulting, which tends to be in execution, more harmony, listening to people, bringing people in.

What did you do personally when you.

Were pitching to people that come from that accuracy mindset? Because I see that a lot of times the decision making is either in effectiveness or if it's like medical, then it's accuracy. But you're pitching something that is more about harmony. So how did you address that in a pitch?

Yeah, with accuracy. So you're.

I guess what I want to make.

Sure I'm understanding when I'm talking to an accuracy person. How would I communicate language specifically for them when I'm pitching them?

Right. So if you're pitching them social media, you're pitching them something that is inherently more harmony and value, but the person themselves is in an accuracy mindset.

Absolutely. Great question. So you're right. Let me take a drink of water. Hang on one second. You are correct that social media tends to be a harmony focused place a lot of times and an authenticity focused place. Quite frankly, when I'm talking to an.

Accuracy person about that, I'm gonna talk.

About a lot of things that make sense for them. So I'm talk about the data points, I'm gonna data dump.

When you're working with an accuracy person, it is totally okay if you know.

Their accuracy to data dump them and say, listen, if we do this, it's gonna make this many, you know, this.

Many numbers, it's gonna have this, this happen. Does that make sense? And literally the language that I'll use.

When I'm talking to accuracy persons, does.

That make sense to you? If I know they're an accuracy person.

I'll use that language. I'm talking to authenticity person, I'll say.

Does that resonate with you?

Talking to a harmony person, does that.

Feel like you get somebody's needs met? Does this feel good to you? Does this feel like it's going to help?

So with accuracy person, I will Definitely use language contextual to them. And I would talk about all the data points and I probably wouldn't sell very hard. I wouldn't push and I wouldn't use social proof. I would talk about, listen, when we.

Do these Twitter posts, this is the.

Kind of metrics we get. When we do these kind of blog posts, these are the metrics we get.

And I won't even tell them the bottom line, what works.

Like I would for an effectiveness person.

I would let that accuracy person make.

Those connections for themselves because that's what they love. They love all of the information spread on the table data, dump them, give them as many bullet points and numbers and all of that non contextual, let them contextualize it and optimize it and.

Precision, focus it for what they want.

To use it for. So that's how I would approach pitching to an accuracy person.

Most people that I found in higher.

Up leadership positions, I wouldn't say most, there's a high percentage of people in high up leadership positions that are effectiveness people because these are the people that get things done in the outer world. And accuracy people tend to be more on the tech teams, they tend to be more into the technical element of things. And there are like Tony Hsieh from Zappos is an accuracy person.

So Obviously there are CEOs that use.

Accuracy as their decision making criteria, but often they're not the movers and shakers typically at the top of a company or the person you're pitching to. So that's the other part of the answer too. But does that answer what you.

Yeah, it does, man.

Okay, cool question.

Yes. What you've been talking about here pretty much focuses on marketing. If I'm hearing it right in terms of marketing to the various types.

Sure.

I've got a client who's told a friend of theirs in the same business that they should call me because they really like our product and services. That client gets on the phone, what am I doing? What am I saying? What am I asking to make the determination as to how I should proceed to determine which of these that this person falls under.

So I want to make sure I understand your question. You're saying I get a call from a client who wants to do business with me, how do I know what decision making style he's using?

What do I use to get me close to understanding and moving in the right direction with that person?

Yeah. So here's where we run into a little bit of technical expertise in understanding how to use the system that I just presented to you, there are some things you could ask the person on the phone, you know, some leading questions. If you had, let's say you an inbound sales team and you could, you could create maybe a quick list of your induction questions. You know, when you're, you're bringing somebody into the fold to ask a few.

Determining questions to get a kind of.

An idea of the way they would make decisions. Knowing what you're doing with a set of questions I think would probably the best way to do that for a salesperson to go through that like that list. The other piece would be if you've, if you've steeped yourself enough in it or your salespeople or the people that are dealing with others have steeped themselves enough in the types of ways that people show up when they're using these different processes, you will instinctively have a working knowledge of that. Like if I talk to somebody, I have a pretty good idea what they're not always, but often because I've used this so much in my life, I.

Have a pretty good idea of what.

They'Re using to make decisions in their life or business decisions in this case. So part of it comes. It's an art and a science. I guess the science would be you could create a methodology almost like you're assessing the situation. Just like any qualification process for a sales lead. This could be part of that process, I guess. And then there's an art to it. If you have an embodiment of it, you would know just based on your own experience. I would also guess, does that help you or do you have a follow up to that? And then this guy right behind you, he's got a question too.

Okay, do you have some suggestions where book or ideas as to the kinds of questions you would ask? In other words, talking to someone here who has no experience who heard this approach for the first time, can you point me in a direction that would say, look, if you're going to be meeting with someone and you really don't know, are there some questions, are there some thoughts, are there some websites I could go to?

Yes. The reason I'm hesitant to give you.

This right now is I don't want.

To give you misinformation based on a sound bite answer. If you'd be willing to talk to me afterward, we can talk about this. Unfortunately, I apologize. And it's not, I promise it's not like I'm holding anything back. It's just I don't want to give you a piece and it's not complete. I want to give a complete answer. And I'm running out of time, so if you'll hang around in the back afterward, I'd love to answer your question and talk with you more about it.

Hey Joe, how's it going, man?

I'm good, how are you? Good.

Awesome. Awesome talk. Awesome talk. I was just wondering where, where the four categories came from. Is it based off like a Myers Briggs kind of thing or like the research? Is it from just wondering where the team from personality hackers kind of came up with it.

These are based on Jungian psychology, which.

Is what Myers Briggs is based on.

So there's going to be some similarities. What Carl Jung was focused on is really high technical. So. But what Carl Jung was focused on was the, again, the mental wiring of people's minds, not just like a personality type. He was working on the way that what's the technical definition is cognitive functions the way our brains learn information and make decisions. And so this is based on that. And there's four ways that we learn information. There's four ways that we make decisions. And today I didn't talk about the ways we learn information. I only talked about the four ways that we make decisions. But you're right, there is a connection here because Myers Briggs is based on the same stuff that similar things that.

This is based on.

Yeah, it had the same kind of vibe with it.

Absolutely. Yeah. So you guys, couple of you have really already pattern recognized the fact that this is very similar in tone.

What Myers Briggs does is it gives.

You that four letter code that's your personality type.

And what that code actually is is.

It'S just a decoder ring. To get to this really is to.

Get to underneath the wiring of your mind.

It's not so much about behavior in the Myers Briggs system. For example, I'm an enfp. But that doesn't tell me much more than just some behaviors that maybe other ENFPs share. But what it really tells me is the cognitive function you are too.

It shows me the cognitive function, the wiring of my mind.

So I'm an authenticity person.

I make decisions based on authenticity. What resonates with me.

And I learn information based on something we call exploration. I like to push buttons in the external world. I like to see patterns emerge.

I like to play with things and.

See what comes out of that. So really that four letter code that Myers Briggs uses just gets to the underwiring of all this stuff which then starts to predict how the structure of the mind is formed. Does that make sense? Yeah. So yeah. Thank you Anybody else?

We're good.

Oh, over here. Yes.

Just so I noticed on your website that you and your wife, I guess, both have your Myers Briggs type and your Enneagram types. Are you using all three of these in your work?

Yes, we're mixing a lot of different typology models and methods to determine. Determine someone's personality, basically, and how they're made up and how they're, again, learning information and making decisions. Yeah, we do use all of them. Again, this is the primary model that we prefer at the outset, and we're still developing a lot of the interplay between these and how we do things.

So I have one other.

Sure.

Question is related. You're the first consulting firm I've seen that does work like this.

Do you have.

Well, you have to have competitors. Anyone who says, no, we don't have competitors is not working. But are there other companies who do things?

There are a lot of companies, in.

Fact, most people that when they're in this space, do consulting work with businesses. A lot of people do. A lot of the writers and authors that have written books around these subjects. I have to stop, by the way, but. Sorry, last question.

Yeah, a lot of authors and writers.

Do consulting with businesses around this. There's a ton of people that actually do this.

Our tact is actually once you understand who you are as a person, you.

Make decisions and how you learn information, make decisions. What are you going to do with that information?

How are you going to enter the.

World now being a better version of yourself?

So we really do a more personal.

Growth focus and personal growth in the context of business or in your personal life. So that's really our take on it. But there are a lot of people.

So thank you everybody for coming.

I got to quit. I'll be outside if you have any more questions. Thank you.