Why the Biggest Doors Open When You're Not in the Room: Lessons from Broadway on Becoming Referable

Do you ever wonder why you're not landing that coveted piece of business? What if the thing that opens the biggest doors isn't what you say about yourself, but what others say about you when you're not in the room? I'm Susan Drumm, and this is The Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each week, we spotlight cutting-edge strategies to help executives and entrepreneurs grow in leadership and in life. Today we're talking with Michael Roderick, the CEO of Small Pond Enterprises, whose focus is packaging and positioning ideas to get people talking about you in a good way when you're not in the room. Michael's unique methodology comes from his experience as a Broadway producer, using Broadway-informed branding techniques to help his clients find their innovative framework. Michael, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So tell us a little bit about the work you're doing and who it's for.

Sure. So I run a thought leadership advisory. And what tends to happen is that there are a lot of subject matter experts out there who end up running into one of 3 problems, sometimes all 3. They are either completely overwhelmed by their own expertise, and they can't figure out like, what is the big idea? Like, what is the thing that they're working on? They're underwhelmed by the audience that they are attracting. So they're attracting more of an aspirational crowd as opposed to a crowd that really respects their work. Uh, or finally, they're just whelmed. They're kind of like, I, you know, I love this business, it's, it's, it's interesting, but I'd love to spice it up. I'd love to work on turning it into something a little more interesting. I'd love to try a new offer. Usually they come to me with one of those 3, sometimes all 3, and I help them shift the messaging positioning work that they're doing.

Got it. So what's the, the point of view or insight at the heart of it?

So I have just found that very, very often some of the most talented, thoughtful people end up not wanting to think about their work in more of that, like, what's the bigger idea? What's the broader concept kind of way? Because maybe they've seen others be too big and they're like, oh, well, I don't want to be braggadocious. I don't want to be this, like, you know, this big presence. And they end up kind of getting swept under the rug, like people don't really recognize them for the brilliance that they have. So at the heart of most of the work that I end up doing, it really is this side of things. Really brilliant people just need a little bit of a push to make sure that people understand how brilliant they are.

So what led you to do this specific work?

Yeah.

And tell us a little bit about how your Broadway background, Broadway producer background, fits into that.

Yeah. So I started out as a high school English teacher and I went from being a high school English teacher to becoming a Broadway producer in under 2 years. And a lot of people were very interested in the speed of that jump, right?

Yeah.

A lot of people were very curious about it. And I was getting my master's in educational theater at NYU. And one of the things that I had learned about was the power of simulations and how if people are acting out scenarios, even though they know they're acting, they'll pretty much do exactly what they would do in real life. So I started hosting workshops where I'd have people act out networking scenarios, and I started to notice a lot of patterns in terms of how people interacted. And that led to this aspect of patterns are always the precursor for frameworks. So I started building all these relationship building frameworks and started to become kind of known in that world to the point where I was featured in some books about being a super connector. I had a conference that I ran. I did a bunch of things within that space, but I had to ask myself a question at one point of if I took networking out of the equation, if I took all the relational stuff out, what still got me into all the rooms I got into? And I had this realization that it was because people would talk about me when I wasn't in the room in a good way.

Hmm.

So that led to this sort of rabbit hole where I was like, you know what? There's a lot to the way that we package and position our ideas. And there's a lot to the way that we think think and approach things. And I think that could help open doors, make bigger opportunities happen. And that's really where this work kind of started, where I was like, oh, wait a second, like, there's all these folks who— they've got all this great stuff, but it's not packaged like a Broadway show. It's not done. It's not, like, thought about in that way of, like, okay, how could a mass audience be interested in this? How could this be a bigger, you know, a bigger idea?

Got it. Well, so fascinating. How did you know that they were talking about you in a good way when you weren't in the room?

How did you know that was going on? I started getting all these intros, right? So I was making a lot of intros. I was connecting a lot of people, but then I would meet with somebody and then they would tell me, I was told I have to meet you. Or can you tell me about some framework, you know, that I had put together that I guess they repeated, right? And that they told to somebody else. So the more that that kept happening, I was like, wait a second, there is So there's something to this aspect of giving people concepts, ideas, things that they can then share with others. And basically, like, it kind of circles back to you. You become like the shiny object of your network and people just start making, you know, making intros.

Yes. So what I love about your process is you noticed a pattern of something going on, right? And it was actually a pattern that's working for you. Often we work on patterns that, you know, in the work I do, the patterns that are not working for you. Important to look at what are the patterns that maybe that are working for you that, like you said, you could create a framework for, or you could create some type of repeatable process so that it's more guaranteed that that pattern will produce a specific result. And that's essentially what you did. You sort of noticed, huh, I got this pattern about who I am in the world and how I show up, and people seem to remember what I've said. They seem to seek me out in these certain ways. What am I doing here that's fostering that, right? And so what did you learn about what was it specifically you were doing that people don't know? Yeah.

So, I mean, there were so many things that to say that it is a rabbit hole is there's a lot of, a lot of things that showed up. But as you know, somebody is going to share something, you've got to distill it down to something really, really simple, right? Like you got to distill it down to something somebody can carry with them. So what I landed on specifically with referability was this concept of AIM. I am, and that is accessibility, influence, and memory. So your first hurdle is always accessibility. If whatever you're sharing, whatever you're doing causes somebody else to feel like they don't understand it or they're kind of on the outside, you've already lost when it comes to them transferring it and sort of sharing it with somebody else. But then influence is so, so important. And a lot of us see influence from the context of, okay, I'm trying to get you to do something, right? Like there's a lot of language and material around influence of I'm influencing you, but really true influence is if you do something without me asking you to do it. And the reason you do that is it makes you look good. So I realized that the influence piece was whatever you create, whatever you develop, whatever you put together, if somebody else shares it, it makes them look cool. It's not about how cool I look. It's about how cool my idea or my concept or my framework makes them look. And sort of getting it to, to that. But even then, even with those 2, if you are not memorable, if people can't hold your thing in their memory, then you're still going to lose when it comes to referability. So what I ended up realizing was, okay, well, what are the things that I've learned and discovered in my own work that have led to memory? And I came up with this concept of if you want people to remember more, You focus on less, and that is language, emotion, simplicity, and structure. You have your own language for things, your own words that you use that then sort of stick in people's head. Like if I say Venti, you have no question of which coffee company I'm referring to, right? Emotion solidifies our memory. So if we're feeling an emotion, it'll stick in our memory. If it's simple, we'll probably share it. And if there's a structure to follow, AIM, accessibility influence memory, then we're probably more likely to carry it and sort of move it to somebody else.

Yes, yes. So the memory part is so important, and I'm glad you brought in the concept of emotion because that's essentially kind of similar where I go to with music, because music builds an emotional connection, and it's leveraging these emotions that allow the new neural pathways to form in the brain. So trying to remember something is about Neural pathway forming in that, right? That's how you do it. The memory part and bringing in emotion is critical, yet many people think you're supposed to be like— to be professional, you're supposed to be unemotional. Let's talk about— I want to pull that thread a little bit over.

Yeah, of course.

How do I become memorable by tying it to emotion in your framework?

And maybe you can give us an example or story about how you So basically the thing that I've just noticed over and over again is that when you cause somebody to feel an emotion that you have felt, they will feel that same emotion. And it's this double whammy where basically they'll have their own memory that's triggered by that emotion, but you yourself are so in it that people feel things, right? And they sort of see things. So I had a client who we were doing an exercise where it was in a group that I was running where she told a story and her story was about her mother and seeing her mother in the, in the kitchen eating broken cookies. And basically she asks her mother, she goes to her mother and says, mom, I'm confused. Why, you know, why are you eating these broken cookies? Like, why, you know, do they taste better? Like, what's going on? And her mother turned to her and said, I eat the broken cookies so that you can eat the whole ones. And we talked about how much this hits because she works with women business owners. So we talked about what is the broken cookie effect of a woman business owner who is giving the good cookies to everybody else, but actually living on the crumbs or eating the broken cookies themselves. And that emotional connection ended up being a major factor in just other people getting it. Right? Like other people understanding why she was doing the work that she was doing. And I think the other really important thing here is that it was a personal story. And I think that we sometimes get so caught up in this idea of, well, I don't want to tell a personal story. I don't want to go to that emotional place. But that vulnerability is what creates the biggest levels of connections. And it's such an incredibly powerful tool.

Well, that's what makes you memorable. Just going back to otherwise people aren't going to remember. I think it's a metaphor as you think about how you need to zoom out to notice a pattern. I think it's funny when, when these kinds of things happen in real life. And exactly these, these deep stories, you always think, well, nobody really cares about that. Like, and what does that have to relate to what I'm doing? But what a powerful metaphor it was that she mentioned. And yes, now I can, I can visually see it. And it doesn't take that long to tell a story like that. Like, think about how short that was. Sometimes I think also people think I'm gonna tell this long story, or they mess it up because they're telling too many details. We don't need—

Yes.

Well, my mother, you see, she was blah, blah, blah. Like, we didn't need all that. What was the point? There was enough to set it up. And sometimes, yeah, you can add a little bit more color, but a lot of times I find it just detracts from the core message on that. Is that what you find with people too in helping them tell those types of stories?

All the time. All the time. It's always that aspect of what is absolutely essential. And I think that But as a producer, that was also a major question that you would ask, right? So if you had a show and you were reading a show, if there was a character in that show that was really just a plot device, you would ask yourself, does this character actually need to exist? Do we have to pay a salary and have an actor play this character if this other character could just take over? That line or that plot device. And I think it's the same kind of thing where there's so many times we want to kind of pile everything in, right? Like we want everybody to kind of know every detail and every element. And what we're really trying to get to is, okay, what is the absolute core of this and what is essential that we need to know? Everything else, it's just gonna bore the other person. It's not gonna be riveting. It's all about—

Yeah.

You know, even if you like, you see a film, everything that ends up on the cutting room floor is what makes that film. It's the choice of what you keep in and what you let go of that is the difference between something in the bargain bin and something that wins an Academy Award.

Yes, right. I mean, we know this phrase, like, people don't remember what you say to them, they remember how you make them feel, right?

Yeah.

We know this phrase, but I can't tell you how many times, like, people don't think about that. Right?

Yeah.

So to just to be a little bit more intentional, like that person is probably only going to remember one sentence. What's the one sentence I want them to remember?

Exactly.

One way I want them to feel about that when I leave them. So I like your framework that is like, think about like, what are they saying about you when you're not in the room? What were they saying about you, Michael?

So I had a lot of frameworks around relationship building, and probably one of the most popular ones was this concept that I called the Giver's Fix, where I talked about the fact that as a person who loves to give. When you give, there is this idea that there is this release of oxytocin or dopamine or, you know, whatever chemical it is. There is a rush that we get when we're giving, but there is no rush associated with asking for what we need. And as a result, tends to happen is that givers end up seeking kind of the next high. So it's a giver's fix. You're like pumping yourself full of this oxytocin and not actually taking care of yourself. So one of the reframes that I would give that others would then repeat back to me was this aspect of, if you are doing that, you're actually being selfish because you're robbing everyone else of the oxytocin and you're never giving them the opportunity to, to help you.

You know, it's so great you say that. It's exactly what I say to all my Type 2 Enneagram people out there, because Type 2 is called, um, the giver. They consider helpers.

Right?

When I ask them, you know, they're naturally givers. When I ask them how well they're able to accept help, it's usually, oh no, I don't like anyone to help me. Think about how you feel when you give. So you're not going to allow someone to feel that way for you? That's kind of selfish. And they're like, selfish? I'm not selfish, right? So it turns it on its head. Exactly.

Yeah, where— exactly.

Wow, I never really thought that by allowing someone to give To me, that's a way of bringing them joy because I don't even think that way, right?

Yeah, it's so, so important. And, you know, one of the things that I've also said specifically about the giving aspect is that if you're always giving to others, if you're always helping, you know, if you're always helping others and they're asking you how they can help and you're always kind of pushing them away and being like, no, it's fine, whether or not you realize it's happening or not, subconsciously that is creating debt in their mind. Right? Like, and they start avoiding you sometimes. Like, people are like, oh, I feel like I could never actually pay you back for all the things you've done for me, so I kind of feel like I shouldn't be around you. It's amazing how often those types of dynamics come into play with that overgiving.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Fantastic, I love it. So tell us about some of the other patterns that you see people getting stuck in, or that you saw yourself getting stuck in?

Yeah.

How did you shift those patterns?

Yeah, so one of the things that I ended up— this is a fairly recent thing that has shown up. So basically, I started to notice for myself that there were certain things that I could do a lot faster than others and certain things that I would just do a lot slower than others. And the way that I started to think about this is in the theater world, we have this idea of the triple rep, right? And in the theater, we've got the actor-singer-dancer.

Yeah.

But unless you're in the industry, you don't know that the order of those things is actually incredibly important to your success. And if acting is your top talent, you should be going out for film and TV. You should be spending most of your time in straight plays. And if you're an actor-singer-dancer, you should be doing musicals with a really good book, right? Like, you shouldn't be going out for the dancing, you know, the 42nd Streets and everything Well, I ended up starting to realize while I was doing all this work with folks on the thought leadership side that there were thinking talents. And I call that the Scientist, the Celebrity, and the Magician. And if Scientist is your top thinking talent, you're a highly analytical thinker. You love research. You love digging into things and it doesn't bore you, but you may not be nearly as excited about being outside of the lab. If Celebrity is your top thinking talent, you're highly relational thinker. You're very good at being out front. You're very good at all the personality stuff, but the science doesn't feel as exciting, doesn't feel as interesting to you. And then if Magician is your top thinking talent, you're 100% wired for novelty. You're probably one of the more innovative thinkers. You can come up with lots of really interesting, cool ideas. Repetition will kill you. If you're doing something over and over again, even if it's making you successful, that desire for novelty will often sort of pull you off course. So when I realized my own order, which I am magician, celebrity, scientist in that order, one of the things I noticed was, oh, I love coming up with the new ideas. I love hanging around people. But oh my God, sitting down and coming up with a system or developing a process or making sure I'm hitting this, you know, this deadline. That's gonna be harder. So I've gotta actually carve out time and sort of step away. And now that I've started to bring this triple threat idea to clients, I've noticed that when we understand the order of that triple threat, there's so many things on the marketing side, there's so many things that they're doing that actually don't tie to that thinking talent. And when something's not working, I'm like, that's why.

Hmm, interesting. So, so I love that concept of the triple threat because as You know, I pursued acting for a little bit as well.

Yeah.

And I also think where you are in the acting world matters because I was in New York, but I was primarily, you know, stage actor or TV film. I really wanted to be in LA, right?

Yes.

Because that's where there's more of that. You needed to be a dancer or you needed to be a singer to really make it in New York where there's much more— it's much more focused on Broadway. So yeah, if we take that concept and sort of apply also in thinking like, what is required from you in where you are and what you're doing? Because as you said all that, there are different times that I like each piece of that. Some I wouldn't want to stay in there too long, but yeah, I'm always also thinking the order in which something gets birthed, let's say. For me, it would be doing the, the first piece, which is around the scientist, To kind of think through and then to take it into the Magician, like, how can I make this into a framework or something? And then the Celebrity, like, let me bring that out to the world. Is that when— because when you said all that, like, that typically would be the process I would go through. Is that true for most people or is that just me?

No, it's different actually for everybody. And the way that I like to think about this is that the thinking talent order is tied to what I would consider your processing power. Right? So if we think about computers and how fast an Apple computer can process images and things like that versus another computer that can't do it, it's the same kind of thing where whatever's on the top, you can do the fastest. It's the easiest for you. There is no friction whatsoever. Whatever's in the middle, there's a little bit of friction. And whatever is on the bottom, there is a decent amount of friction in that processing power. You actually have to work or find somebody who's going to satisfy that component. So even if you think about what you were talking about with your process, there are some people who the research part feels like the easiest thing in the world for them and they love it. Like it is the fastest process in the world. And then there are others where the research feels like a slog and they know they have to do it, but it feels like a slog. And on the flip side, there are people who have to do the magician piece of like coming up with like, okay, what's the framework? What's the model? How are we going to use the language? You know, for this, that can feel like second nature. They've got it within seconds, and then others, it is so much work. They sometimes even have to hire somebody else to help them with it because it just doesn't quite hit. And the same thing on the celebrity side. There are some folks who relationally, they can just charm anybody. They've got you know everything kind of on lock. There's no no thought really. It's almost it's almost automatic. And then there are others who like they really have to think very carefully about their rela Relational dynamics. They, they have a lot of trouble with that side of things.

Yeah. So I wonder then if you need to think about what is giving you energy and what is depleting your energy when you think about those 3 things.

Yes.

Because I think for me, in any one of them, I don't want to stay there too long. I like them all. Probably the relational piece is the easiest for Yeah. In what I do and where it feels like motion, like I don't have to think about it. But too much of that is also like too much of that for me, right? I need a balance of those 3 things. Once somebody sort of understands the order of this, what's the implication? What should they do about that?

Yeah, so a lot of the time it's about— it ends up being about the traction that they're getting within their business and within their industry. So if somebody understands, let's say, that celebrity is at the top for them and it's really, really easy, then they probably probably should be spending more time in relational environments. They're actually probably gonna get way more business by going to a conference or an event or hosting their own thing than they are, you know, going and writing a bunch of articles or trying to create a funnel or doing any number of those types of, those types of things. You know, that's one example. But the same if we flip it and let's say somebody is really a scientist at heart, a lot of the time, especially in the thought leadership space, they're being told to like get on the socials and do the tips and tricks and all those types of things. But the strength of the scientist is the fact that they've actually done the research, they understand things. So a scientist writing a very long-form piece where they're breaking down all of those things, that's going to attract the audience that respects their level of scientists and completely repel the audience that doesn't have an interest in that side of things. And, you know, same with the Magician. A lot of the time it's like if you're innovative, but what you're creating or what you're crafting or what you're doing doesn't tie to that innovation, doesn't use that tool, you're not going to get nearly as much traction because you're not leaning into the fact that you're that innovative.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense. What would you recommend a leader do, or leader entrepreneur, let's say this week or tomorrow to help make themselves more memorable? If we go back to that being the key piece, right?

Yeah. There are 2 things that I think are probably the strongest choice. So the first is what I refer to as challenge a dominant narrative. Identify something within your industry that you disagree with and your lived experience has caused you to disagree and say it, because there's always going to be a wizard in your industry and there's always going to be an Elphaba. And you can be alpha, right? Like, like it's okay. The other thing that I would say is come up with your own language for something. I often refer to this as a target problem where there is an issue that your industry has. Most people are using generic language around that problem. If you come up with a specific name for that problem or phrase, that name and phrase is going to be associated with you. Pretty much across the board. So you're going to be significantly more referable because people will be talking about that particular problem and referring it back to you.

Yeah, great. Okay, I love it. That sounds good. Well, where can people find out more about you and your work?

Sure, just go to smallpondenterprises.com. Go there, there's— I've got a daily email that I write. I've got a bunch of stuff on there that you can check out, different services and things like that. And then of course I'm all over the socials, the LinkedIn, the Book of Faces, you know, all All the fun places. You can come and say hi there too.

Well, thank you so much for joining the show with us today. And if you like this episode, you're not gonna wanna miss my interview with Jay Baer, bestselling author and Hall of Fame speaker, who talks about when everyone has AI, who will stand out? And the leaders who thrive will be the ones who strengthen the uniquely human capabilities technology cannot replace. Let's lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of The Enlightened Executive.