I hit a point – ten meetings or a hundred email into my day – where anything I try feels like failure.
I can’t think clearly enough even to decide what to do next. That’s past time to do something different.
When my best friend feels stuck she has trained herself to take some kind of action. Even if it is action in the opposite direction from the outcome she wants, action begets action.
You can course correct once you’ve begun. But without that initial impetus to action, you’ll remain stuck and unproductive.
Analysis paralysis
I asked ChatGPT about this phenomenon, and it came back to me with “analysis paralysis.” I haven’t thought of that phrase in a decade.
In trying to decide what course of action to take, you follow none of them and remain stuck.
An ineffective approach
When I was in my early twenties and would get stuck, I’d sometimes just lie down for an hour in a fugue state, in a state of overwhelm. Eventually, it would pass and I’d be able to figure out some path forward.
Deeply not fun, but also a pretty ineffective approach!
Don’t be strategic
Perhaps because I grew up in a house full of runners, my first impulse has always been physical movement. Every day at 2pm, I go to the gym or for a run.
You don’t need a strategic solution to an intellectual problem, just a change of pace.
Some physical action
In my family, everyone had a physical practice. By the time I was twenty, “go for a run” was as much a metaphor as a physical act.
Step outside and go for a walk or a run. Anything physical through space can help.
Phone a friend
I started using this phrase decades ago – so much so that is now part of my vocabulary. When I feel stuck or low, I phone a friend.
I used to feel bad asking somebody else for help. Like asking a stranger for directions, I now regard it as a sign of strength.
Just do something
Many of my emotional shortcuts are physical, but when you are stuck the solution is to take some action.
Even activity in precisely the wrong direction begets more action. It is easier to course correct while in motion. Get out of your rut, and move.
I lost interest in cold call scripts, what sales people do wrong, or talking about the brute force approach of selling tickets to a conference – as incredible as Responsive Conference 2024 turned out to be!
Why selling?
Sales is tactical and measurable. Success is binary, determined by whether someone buys.
Nine months ago I wrote an article titled “Selling Snafu” and listed out the reasons that I was writing a newsletter about sales. Today, I wanted to revisit those reasons.
Support the people you love
One of the proudest moments of my adult life came when my father started exercising. Through gentle persuasion, my father changed his behavior.
To change behavior for yourself or someone you love, know what kind of reinforcement what works for them.
Each of us benefits from a mix of positive and negative reinforcement, from the carrot and stick. As I’ve told all my athletic training partners and many ex-girlfriends, if you want me to change, praise me. Give me positive reinforcement, and I’ll jump through hoops. Berate me and I shut down.
This is a form of selling, but better described as behavior change.
Authentic persuasion
Whether as a kid selling pumpkins or in negotiating complex family dynamics, I have always been fascinated by the intersection of persuasion, authenticity, and human psychology.
Unfortunately, sales has come to mean inauthentic persuasion. We learn to pressure and bully people into doing things that they otherwise don’t want to do.
I’m interested in authentic persuasion; in aligning someone else’s interests with my own and providing them a solution to accomplish their aims.
Courage to ask
Asking for what you want is hard. As a result, even those who did it well, usually do so with pressure and urgency. Most of the rest of us just don’t ask!
I set out to write about selling because most people I know and love would benefit from developing the courage to advocate for what they want.
When those of us who are nervous to advocate begin to do so – when we are courageous – the benefits are enormous.
What is selling?
As a result of the thousands of conversations between June and September, we sold out Responsive Conference. The event was a big success.
But I’m mostly uninterested in tactics for cold calling or the precise scripts needed to close a deal.
Snafu is still a newsletter about selling, but with a slight modification. This newsletter is about changing the behavior of a single individual – yourself, someone you love, a specific consumer, or within your organization.
It turns out that selling is just another way to say behavior change.
We take for granted that money compounds. The more you have, the easier it is to make.
Relationships also compound. The longer we work with a client at Zander Media, the better the work and those relationships become.
To describe the opposite, Alex Hormozi uses the metaphor of the “woman in the red dress.” He’s referencing an artificial attraction in The Matrix, which the main character Neo has to learn to avoid at his peril. Things that look appealing may, in fact, try to kill you!
Narrow your focus
I’ve come to realize that going deeper down a specific path is healthier and more lucrative than jumping around.
In our first year of Zander Media, did perhaps $100,000 in gross revenue. Within two years, we 10x our revenue. Here’s a video about the tactic I used to accomplish that.
When your business has a narrow focus, the entire company gets practice refining its processes. Employees get practice doing the same thing, over and over again. Customers know what to expect. The entire system improves. Here’s an article about my mistakes doing the opposite at Zander Media.
But compounding isn’t just about dollars, relationships, or process improvement. It applies to every area of behavior change.
If there’s one lesson I could offer myself ten years ago, it would be “go deeper.”
Homework
Write out all of the projects you are in the midst of right now.
Or, if that isn’t a lot list, all of the things you’ve started and stopped in the last three months.
This exercise, which I do at least quarterly, is one way to assess when you’ve spread yourself too thin and where you might narrow your focus.
A few weeks ago, someone told me I was the most disciplined person she knows. That feedback was disconcerting because, growing up, I was often told that I lacked discipline.
I’ve never been particularly good at forcing myself to do things that I don’t want to do, which is how I’d always defined discipline.
Discipline isn’t hard
Over time, I’ve come to see this definition as nonsensical. The things I’m told requite discipline are things that I want to do.
I want to exercise every day.
I want to get into the cold plunge every day.
I only ever do things that I want to do. Otherwise, I wouldn’t do so.
It has taken a while, but I’ve come to the conclusion that when most people say “discipline” then mean doing things that look hard to them, and doing them with routine consistency.
The first question is “What were the three ingredients?” The second is “Didn’t you get tired of the same meal?”
Once I decided, very clearly, that I was going to eat that simple diet, I wasn’t even tempted by ice cream or peanut butter.
Nothing is particularly hard when I’ve decided that I want to attempt it. Hard things are only hard when we are conflicted or not sure we’re ready to commit.
Take personal responsibility
Discipline is lauded, but the idea isn’t well defined.
Ownership – taking personal responsibility – is a better way to address the same idea.
Each of us is only doing what we want to do at any time. The path forward towards anything – great health, wealth, relationships, or just sitting in very cold water – requires recognizing what we want, knowing why, and then taking baby steps towards that desired outcome.
Getting started is the hard part
Doing difficult things isn’t hard. Getting started doing difficult things is.
I’ll procrastinate for hours getting into my cold plunge. By comparison, the difference between 1 second and 30 seconds sitting in frigid water is easy.
Now that I’ve recognized this resistance in my cold plunge routine, I’m looking for that same procrastination and avoidance elsewhere.
It is a useful cue when we notice that at the provocation we’ll stop doing something that we’ve otherwise deemed important.
Discipline and disciple share the same root
I was discussing the idea of discipline with colleague Marie Szuts recently, when she casually pointed out that “discipline” shares the same root as “disciple”.
Discipline originates from the Latin word “discipulus” which means student or learner.
When we remove the more modern punitive quality of the word, we’re left with discipline as something closer to “practice.”
The 51% philosophy of behavior
A lot of people I know subscribe to a theory of percentages of behavior.
A friend of mine will say that he both wants to do something and doesn’t. If 51% of him wants to do something, thus he does it.
It’s convenient to say that I both want to do something and don’t want to do something. But it is also inaccurate!
I can only do something or not do something.
I either get into the cold plunge or I do not.
I either eat that pint of ice cream or I do not.
A continuum of behavior doesn’t exist.
Personal responsibility
We don’t have good language to describe personal responsibility.
There’s no good language – at least in English – to describe that state where I don’t want to get in the cold plunge, but I’ve decided that I’m going to do so, thus I actually do want to, so I go ahead and get in anyway.
That’s what we’re talking about. Taking personal responsibility for our behavior and our actions.
What am I avoiding?
Currently, I’m noticing what I’m avoiding.
Just like I avoid getting in the cold plunge in the morning, the mark of success is not just whether I get in but how quickly I do so. Am I avoiding this behavior?
Homework
When I have kids I don’t want to teach them about discipline in the way it was drilled into me. Instead I want them to feel good for having done hard things.
The feeling of a runner’s high after a 5-mile run.
The feeling of your brain having been stretched after writing an essay.
When you sit and read a compelling book that challenges you to think about something differently.
My homework, then, is to do something that you “don’t want to do” and to do it with attention.
Go for a walk and notice how difficult it is
Eat very differently for one meal than you usually do, and notice how to feel afterwards
Take a cold shower, instead of a hot one.
Ultimately, I can’t prescribe something “difficult” for you because it depends on your baseline. (A cold shower isn’t hard for me anymore, even though my cold plunge still is.)
The key is to notice how you feel before you engage in this behavior. Notice your temptation to avoid that behavior, and then how you feel afterwards.
When I first read the Responsive Org Manifesto in 2015 I liked it because it was not prescriptive.
The manifesto does not say that if you pull levers in a particular order you will be able to build a perfect organization. Instead, it outlines the tensions that every organization has to balance.
The right amount of experimentation.
A balance between privacy and transparency.
Managing the tension between profit and purpose.
These are tensions that every organization has to contend with. There is no one size fits all.
And that’s why we had a very diverse array of speakers at Responsive Conference.
Over two days, some of our presenters included:
Gayle Karen Young Whyte about coherence as a strategic capability.
Jenny Sauer Klein about how to design great offsites.
The Chief Information Officer at UCSF about change within enterprise.
We sat with Carine Kanimba and V-Vonne Hutchinson as they talked about genocide and hope.
I interviewed a journalist about cults!
And even live music by a children’s orchestral group!
But Responsive Conference isn’t just about speakers on stage.
It isn’t even about the bookstore, puppies, popsicles, and an immersive venue.
Responsive Conference is about the people who attend – and the tactics, tools, stories and connectionsthat they take back to their organizations.
The grass is always greener
Throughout a decade as an entrepreneur, I’ve jumped between projects. I’ve started:
A cafe in San Francisco
A conference about work
A media agency
We ran Responsive Conference in the Bay Area in 2016. Then I moved it to New York City, and then to Las Vegas.
Running a conference is hard work, but running a conference in a different city every year is plain ridiculous.
The sign of a good leader
On Sept. 18th, we hosted a dinner with author Cat Bohannon and an amazing local chef named Romney Steele. When Cat brought Romney up to thank her for what was an incredible meal, Romney immediately began acknowledging her staff.
In an industry with a notoriously high turnover, Romney specifically thanked two of her employees, who were behind the counter and have been with her for decades years. And her first restaurant manager, who no longer works for her, but came in last night to help with dinner!
That’s the sign of a great leader.
In business, and in life, relationships compound.
When you stay the course and go deeper, things get better and better.
Relationships compound
My best friend and I have been close for 15 years. We talk every day.
Through the highs and lows, our friendship just keeps getting better. The results compound.
Even though Responsive Conference 2024 was our first work project together, my co-producer Marie Szuts and I have known each other for a decade. My other co-producer, Nicole Piechowski, and I met on the dance floor, and have worked together, on and off, since 2017.
Jonathan Kofahl and I have been making videos since before there was a Zander Media. He filmed an event I produced in 2017, and we’ve been making videos together ever since.
Take action
At Responsive Conference 2018, we had Simon Lowden, the global CMO of PepsiCo on stage. At the time, Pepsi was undergoing a massive restructuring and they were even using the word “responsive” internally to describe their change efforts.
During a Q+A at the end of their session, someone in the audience asked Simon and the PepsiCo team a question:
I’m a middle manager at a global enterprise company. My boss, and my boss’s boss, and our CEO don’t really want to change. I’m passionate about these ideas, and about building future-ready organizations. What should I do?
Simon turned to the fellow and said:
Leave. Next question.
It might sound a bit heartless, but I actually think it was the opposite. If want to change but are stymied, look elsewhere.
Your homework
Relationships get better over time – in business and in life. But what does that mean in practice?
It means putting in the time and effort.
It means following up again, even when you are tired or don’t really feel like it.
That person you met yesterday and said you’d email?
Follow up with them.
The person you had drinks with at an event?
Send them a message on LinkedIn or DM them on Instagram.
Put in the extra effort to keep those relationships alive.
Be the change
I exhorted attendees of Responsive Conference at the beginning of the conference to jump in fully.
To look for ideas, practices, people that you could learn from.
To create the companies, organizations, and work life you want, you have to take action throughout your daily lives.
As my colleague Marie Szuts said to me a few days ago: “Be the fucking change you want to see in the world.”
I have a philosophy of addiction. I’ve never done drugs, been addicted to porn or video games, or struggled with alcohol or cigarettes. But I am prone to addiction.
My grandfather was an alcoholic. My uncle died of alcohol and pills.
The things that I am addicted to most people don’t think about (sugar) or consider healthy (exercise, fasting).
Over the last decade, I’ve developed a philosophy of addiction – pursue things that are hard, but leave you feeling good afterwards.
By contrast, most of what we define as addictions are easy to do, but leave you feeling bad afterwards. Nicotine, alcohol, heroin, porn. They feel good in the moment, but have consequences afterwards.
That’s my cue of things to avoid.
But there’s another category that is difficult to do while you are in the midst of it, but leaves you feeling good afterwards. These are what I term my “healthy addictions.”
Here are few of my vices:
2 minutes of cold plunging at 39 degrees each morning
2 hours of intense exercise every day
5 days of water-only fasting twice a year
Of course, the term “healthy addiction” is a misnomer. Just like alcohol or sugar aren’t necessarily harmful in small doses, exercise or fasting aren’t healthy in the extreme.
But these healthy addictions are also self-limiting. Sit in a very cold plunge for 2 minutes, and a third minute is more difficult. Day 6 of a water-only fast is more difficult than Day 3. The more you do, the harder it becomes to keep doing the activity.
Homework
So, that’s my prescription. Do something hard that leaves you feeling good afterwards.
Two months ago I moved into a new house and promptly bought myself something that I have been lusting after for at least 3 years – a commercial cold plunge.
I grew up jumping into ice covered lakes in the High Sierra. (There’s a infamous story in my family where, at 5 years old, I didn’t jump into an ice covered lake. I’ve been doing penance ever since.)
In 2017, I built a homemade chest freezer cold plunge. The problem with using a chest freezer – beyond the slight chance of electrocution – is keeping the water cold, clean, and circulating.
So when I moved into my new house and extensive backyard, I splurged.
I’ve noticed a lot of positive benefits from sitting in freezing cold water for a few minutes every day:
It’s the best (i.e. most abrupt) way to wake up in the morning.
I feel energized for several hours afterwards.
Cold plunging is good for my physique.
But there’s one unexpected thing about cold plunge that I’m just starting to explore, and that’s my penchant to avoid it.
I’ve sat in my tub of freezing cold water for at least a few seconds every single day for two months. My daily average is two minutes at 39°.
But I will still go to extraordinarily great lengths to avoid the cold water each morning!
Some mornings I will procrastinate for 90 minutes; I’ll make tea, check email, deal with an urgent work thing, listen to a podcast. Anything to avoid the freezing cold water.
I now judge the efficiency of my day, and my wellbeing in general, by how quickly I get into the cold plunge in the morning.
Homework: What are you avoiding?
I’ve begun noticing other things that I’m avoiding.
The mark of success is not just whether I get into my cold plunge but how much I procrastinate beforehand. Whether I’m avoiding the behavior.
My homework, then, is to do something that you “don’t want to do” and to do it with attention.
Go for a hard walk and notice how difficult it is.
Eat very differently for one meal than you usually do, and notice how to feel afterwards.
Take a cold shower, instead of a hot one.
Ultimately, I can’t prescribe something “difficult” for you because it depends on your baseline. (A cold shower isn’t hard for me anymore.)
The key is to notice how you feel before you engage in this difficult behavior. Notice your temptation to avoid that behavior, and then how you feel after you’ve done so.
In the early 1970s, Bill Bowerman, the legendary track and field coach and co-founder of Nike, was determined to improve his athlete’s performance.
Frustrated with the heavy running shoes of that era, Bowerman wanted lightweight shoes with better traction.
One morning during breakfast, Bowerman looked at the waffle iron on the kitchen table and he realized that the waffle iron grid pattern could be a solution for his shoe design.
Bowerman poured urethane into his wife’s waffle iron and created the first prototype of the waffle sole.
Despite several ruined waffle irons and a lot of noxious fumes, Bowerman refined his technique and materials until he created a new and effective shoe design.
The Nike Waffle Trainer, introduced in 1974, quickly became a revolutionary piece of athletic footwear and solidified Nike’s reputation as a running company.
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight is full of these short anecdotes about both business or athletic performance.
At innumerable points for decades, the company is stuck, Phil Knight or one of his colleagues try something new, and after a lot of anguish something works and the company makes a giant leap forward.
That is how creativity works! You encounter a problem. You make little progress for what feels like forever. And then, in a moment, everything changes.
But, of course, things don’t change in a moment.
What we don’t see from the outside is the myriad steps and the gradual progress along the way.
Homework
Just because other people do things a certain way, doesn’t mean that’s the only way that task or project has to be done.
When people say “that’s how things are” it doesn’t mean that something has to be done that way. If the status quo doesn’t suit you, listen to your intuition.
One commonly held belief that I don’t believe is that “change is hard.”
A well-known businessman recently started offering workshops. My Facebook feed has been flooded with advertisements.
I attend business workshops, but more than the specifics, I was interested in their process of running, collecting my contact information, and the script they would use to persuade me to buy.
The system worked flawlessly until I got on the phone call with the salesman.
He texted me in advance of the call, even when I asked him not to. When I told him on the call that I would not be purchasing that day his first question was, “Why not?” followed closely by “What concerns do you have that would prevent you from buying today?”
He was pushy. Less interested in answering my questions than in getting me to buy.
Contrast this example – which exemplifies why we all hate salespeople – to my dating life, where I can be too hesitant.
A awkward moment in my dating life
Growing up my mother taught me to be very sensitive to the impact I was having on other people – and especially on women.
A beautiful woman working out in my gym recently. She was barefoot and doing a lot of uncommon movement – ring dips, body isolations. My kind of athlete.
In a sequence that was uncomfortably similar to third grade, I looked at her, then away. She looked at me, and then away. We smiled slightly, but didn’t say hello. When she left twenty minutes later, I considered chasing after her. But the moment had passed.
Unlike in business or in my athletic life, I still have a lot of fear in dating. I do approach strangers, but I’m also afraid that someone will take a friendly “hello” the wrong way.
The two extremes of selling
There are two extremes of selling. A lot of people are hesitant even to ask for fear of being too demanding. Most of us don’t want to pressure people into things.
On the opposite extreme, a lot of salesmen won’t take no for an answer. They don’t ask; they demand.
I want to be comfortable approaching a stranger and asking her out to coffee. I will also fight to live in a world where salespeople aren’t pushy and the women in my life don’t have to worry about men harassing them.
Follow your fear
I’ve often said that “Fear is my north star.” When I notice that I’m avoiding something, I go towards it.
In selling, you have to get used to being uncomfortable. That’s the job.
In that moment in the gym I was afraid, and I didn’t act. By contrast, that salesman on the phone call wasn’t afraid of being pushy.
My opportunity in dating is to say hello even when I’m nervous. That salesman might make more sales if he was more sensitive.
The only way to improve is by facing your fear. You have to take a step towards something that currently feel difficult. The definition of courage is action in the face of fear. So maybe all of us would benefit by attending to what we’re afraid of, and then doing more of that.
Last week I discussed Alex Hormizi’s $100 Million Dollar Offers, a book about making offers so good your customers feel stupid saying no.
This week, I’m applying his next book, $100 Million Dollar Leads to the same accounting firm Zander Media supports.
Your offer matters. The pitch you make about what you do and the value you provide has to be great in order for people to begin to be interested in your work. But in order to pitch you have to have people to talk to. You need leads.
Hand-to-hand
Throughout my career, I’ve been pretty good at the hand-to-hand combat of selling through individual, one-on-one conversations.
This work is time consuming. It takes a lot of work! But it is also effective.
But, as a friend reminded me when I opened Robin’s Cafe, nobody is ever going to care as much about your business as you are. If you want to build something, it’ll help to get good at telling your story and making sales.
Word of mouth
I believe that most success in business – and in life – distills down to positive word of mouth. Your business grows when people talk about you to their friends. And when people bad mouth your work, your business suffers.
Even things like Yelp reviews or creating a testimonial video, where people speak to their positive experiences are just a distillation of this kind of word of mouth marketing.
There are a lot of ways to generate positive word of mouth referrals. But the simplest is just to ask people to refer you to their friends.
Ask for help
One of my favorite ways to generate work is to ask for help. In the early days of Responsive Conference, long before I had any network or connections, that’s how I started the conference.
That first year of Responsive Conference, with everything on the line and no experience to speak of, I asked everyone I knew who else I should talk to. Eventually, I started asking people if they’d like to attend Responsive Conference, too.
Asking for help backfires if you start selling too quickly or with any amount of pressure. Since you are asking people for their support, you have to remain humble and request support and assistance, rather than expect it.
Teach your customers to sell for you
One concrete way of asking for help is asking your customers to sell for you. But most people don’t know how to sell or to make referrals, so you have to teach them how.
These are the basic steps:
Tell me your story
Teach your customers to tell their own story. A first person story is always going to be the most compelling reason for a prospective buyer to buy.
Where you were before the product or service?
Ask your customers to articulate to you where they were prior to use of this product or service. What was their life like? What was the pain they experienced before they themselves purchased or tried the product?
What changed for them?
How did the use of your product or service result in a change for this person?
And where they are now?
Finally, where are they now? How has their life or the problem that they had changed as a result of their experience with your product or service?
All your customer needs to do is share that personal story with others – to share the hero’s journey of their transformation – in order to persuade new buyers.
Ask your customer to share their story of change with five other people
Do free work
I believe in giving work away for free – with a couple of caveats.
I broke this approach down in a video about how I took Zander Media from doing $1000 projects to $100,000 projects.
This is exactly how I started Zander Media: doing free work for people in return for their referrals. It doesn’t always work – I’d estimate that it doesn’t work five times out of seven. But when it does, the payoff can be big.
While my accounting firm doesn’t do free work in exchange for referrals, we’re always looking for ways we can help partnering organizations by referring work their way, and generating goodwill.
Organic content and advertising
Nike has been receiving a lot of bad publicity lately because they’ve lost an incredible amount of market share and stock value.
As Trung Phan wrote about recently, this came largely due to a shift in Nike’s leadership from a brand strategy to a focus on direct response advertising against their ecommerce platform.
Content that tells a compelling story, that gets people talking about you and your work, is hard to create and even harder to measure directly. Did a referral come because they saw a video, read a review? Even if you’re able to ask them, most people don’t even remember how their first learned about you and your service!
By contrast, advertising giants like Meta and Google make it easy to pay and then directly measure successful conversions.
Organic storytelling is much harder to measure but ultimately more impactful than ads. The value of a brand – people think of when they think about you – is more useful than the specifics of a single sale.
Who else holds your audience?
The most successful way I’ve sold tickets to Responsive Conference is through leveraging other people’s audiences.
We have more than 30 speakers coming on stage at Responsive Conference 2024. Each of those people has potential people they might like to attend the conference.
As much as I am taking time to have calls with people who are considering attending – today I took a call with someone at the Secret Service, who is attending with her team – I’m also spending time with our speakers and partners, and helping them to promote the event.
Identify who else knows the people you are trying to reach. Partner with them to reach that audience.
For the last year Zander Media has been on retainer with a firm that provides bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO services.
While most of what Zander Media provides for this firm is narrative strategy, content creation, and content distribution, at various points I’ve also stepped into a more active sales role, as well.
Because who doesn’t need help with bookkeeping and accounting?
Do great work
The first, and most critical step in any business – any endeavor, really – is making sure that the quality of the work is great.
Without great work, no amount of marketing (i.e talking about it) and sales (i.e. asking people to buy) will result in success.
Good marketing of a bad product just leads to a faster failure. The first measure of any business is the quality of the product.
Develop good will
I am convinced that everything comes down to referrals. Even work that we don’t think of as referral based, like Yelp reviews at Robin’s Cafe or an abstract idea like the value of Nike’s brand, condense down to people talking about your thing.
And if all success in business comes down to getting referrals, the question becomes what is necessary in order to get people talking.
My answer: good will.
Whether we call it reviews, “brand,” or just your reputation in the market, when clients think well of your business and tell other people about you, you’re more likely to succeed.
What’s your ideal customer profile?
Every business needs an ideal customer profile – a specific set of clients that they serve to the exclusion of all else.
As I’ve written about previously, there as a period when Zander Media did not target one specific type of client. We tried to be everything to everybody and, as a consequence, burnt out a lot of employees and goodwill.
Something as generic as bookkeeping can be for everyone. Everyone needs help getting their books in order and support preparing for tax season. But choosing your ideal customers is rarely a question of whether the services you offer can work for a variety of clients. Instead, it comes down to communication.
Is how you are communicating applicable and approachable to the clients they are trying to serve?
When you don’t focus on a single ideal customer, you become generic. You speak in genetic language and offer generic things. And when you’re too broad, you’re not able to reach – or to serve – anyone at all.
Who are you?
Early on in our work with this accounting firm, we set out to distill their organizing idea. We wanted to identify the core story that is unique to the organization and gets relevant clients onboard with their mission.
It’s one thing to offer accounting. It is another, entirely, to have an offer so clear that relevant companies see, and then jump, at the opportunity.
I realized that our client didn’t just provide accounting and financial services. They helped their clients understand what those numbers mean, and then use that information to shape strategy.
They focused not just on the numbers, but on the people behind the numbers who make the company work.
Make a clear, singular offer
I recently read Alex Hormozi’s $100 Million Dollar Offers. And while the entire book is worth reading, I particularly like the subtitle: “How to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no.”
That should be the point of your marketing and your narrative. Develop a pitch so good that obviously your potential client is going to say yes to you.
If the quality of your work is subpar, see “Do great work” above. Good marketing has to start from there. But assuming you are already doing great work, you have to communicate a compelling offer.
How are you communicating about your work in such a way that the benefits to the buyer are abundantly clear?
In the case of my accounting firm this could be a variety of things:
“Make sense of your money”
Many small business owners have a lot of stress about their finances. Perhaps, they don’t know how to read a Chart of Accounts or other financial statements.
This message is perfect when directed at a small business owner who is trying to make sense of their money.
“Take the stress out of accounting”
“Accounting is stressful!” This is a great message if your client is an early stage venture capital-backed technology startup that wants to focus on their core competency. They don’t have to worry about bookkeeping and accounting because someone else will do it for them.
This message wouldn’t work for a later stage technology company or larger privately-owned business. These companies know that an in depth understanding of their finances can be a strategic advantage.
“More money then you knew you had”
This is a good message for a midsize business that is paying too much in taxes or not taking advantage of tax breaks. The owner or a Board of Directors knows they are missing out on financial opportunities to save or retain capital. This message is for them.
“Get strategic with your finances”
This is for the CFO, Controllers, and more strategic side of the bookkeeping, accounting, and finances.
If a client is too small, or just plain scared about the state of their finances, this message won’t resonate. However, if they know the value of a strategic view of finances, this is a message that can work.
Guilt them into buying
If you have a lot of good will, a great reputation, and a clear offer that works for your clients, a potential client can’t help but say “yes.”
It is, eventually, important to ask people “Would you like to buy” what I’m selling.
But I’m a fan of providing so much value and goodwill up front that this final sale is a foregone conclusion.
You want clients who agree to buy from you because of the value – both real and perceived – that you’ve already provided them.
When you know exactly who you are selling to, and develop a great reputation, you can guilt clients into buying from you. Working with you becomes a forgone conclusion.
50% communication
I heard a quote once that has always stuck with me: marketing is 50% doing great work, and 50% communicating about the work that you do. Making a clear, singular offer means communicating about the great work that you do!
Of course, then you have to deliver against that exceptional offer, too!
Next week, I’ll take a deeper dive into leads and the various ways I’ve been helping my accounting firm get them.
As I do every July, I spent last week with my family and a few close friends hiking in the high Sierra.
Each year, I hike up Mt. Conness, a 12,500 foot peak with a lot of hard scrabbling and some pretty terrifying moments before you arrive at the summit.
When we reached the top, we met a guy who’d just free soloed the mountain. While we were hiking up, which was hard enough, he climbed the face of the mountain without ropes or a partner.
That climber, to quote one of my friends, was “maximum stoke”. As enthusiastic and optimistic as I can be, he made me look like Eor from Winnie the Pooh.
Climbing Mt. Conness is always a peak memory from my week in the mountains, but I’ll remember this year because of that free climber who was living his best life on top of the mountain.
Sometimes, just being the most enthusiastic person is a competitive advantage.
Genuine
Now that I’m back to civilization, I’m in full production mode on Responsive Conference. As I write this, the 2-day event is 46 days away!
We released made a video about the conference, filmed at our incredible venue the Oakland Museum of California. You can watch the video here!
The video is genuine. It reflects the kind of event we are creating.
There’s an absence of authenticity in the world today. We don’t need more bombastic sales people. We need true believers; people who are convinced in the value of what they are selling.
The authentic advantage
I’m genuine. That’s authentic to me. You could say that “genuine” is part of my brand.
If you are particularly funny, or sincere, or clever, or whatever – lean into that.
The more you show up in alignment with who you are, the better you’ll be able to perform – or to sell.
Homework
My friend Adam has a big smile. He’s built his entire brand around the nickname “Smiley.”
Seth Godin always wears distinctly colored glasses. That aesthetic is now part of his brand.
I used to hide the fact that I’m an acrobat. These days, I start new business meetings with the fact that I used to perform in the circus.
What’s one character trait you have that is a bit unusual? Take something that kids in middle school made fun of you for and own it. Make it a strength.
Whether you’re a bit funny, great at remembering names, or have big ears, lean into it.
That thing – your authenticity – will make you memorable.
None of us on the Responsive Conference organizing team have had a conventional career path. From circus acrobat to lab technician, culinary magazine editor, performing artist, founder, and startup executive – each of us has worked in a variety of industries with many different kinds of teams
The common thread, however, is a focus on people.
Individually, humans can be incredible learners, capable of resilience and adaptation. But together, in well-functioning teams, we can accomplish more.
We have always been drawn to the magical, spontaneous connections that happen when exceptional people come together in the same place – whether on stage or within a hyper growth startup.
We strive to create spaces for humans to connect authentically and meaningfully.
In early 2016, I produced a day-long “Un-conference” on the Future of Work. Attendee enthusiasm was overwhelming, and he saw the appetite for an annual conference about work — thus, Responsive Conference was born.
Our goal with Responsive Conference is not just to talk about human connection, behavior, and work. Rather, we are creating a learning and connection experience where we can actually embody these ideas.
We are thrilled to be entering our ninth year of creating memorable and connected experiences through Responsive Conference—and we look forward to sharing this community with you.
Want to learn more? We’ve just launched a new video about Responsive Conference 2024.
Responsive Conference brings together 250 people from around the world for a different kind of conversation about human connection, behavior, and work.
This is my big event of the year and I’d love to see you there! Use the discount code friendofrobin for a substantial discount.
My first job out of college was bussing tables at a fine dining restaurant called La Mar Cebicheria Peruana.
It was a great first job out of school. The restaurant was just about to open and I was among the first employees. I had traveled in Peru, spoke Spanish, and loved the Peruvian food we served.
In the first few weeks, we hosted international dignitaries, food critics, and the owner of the La Mar franchise.
After the meal and surrounded by his entourage, the owner stood up to give a speech. He talked about the importance of Peruvian food and culture, our new restaurant, and what each of us staff members were doing to carry forward his legacy.
I was across the restaurant polishing glasses. With six fragile wine glasses in each hand, trying not to make noise during the owner’s talk, I stumbled and dropped several glasses. The expensive wine glasses – each worth more than I made in an hour – shattered on the floor.
I was so embarrassed that I literally hid under the counter while restaurant patrons looked around for the cause of the shattered glass.
I cringe remembering that moment, and the laughter of my fellow employees later that night.
I’ve carried that shame and humiliation for almost twenty years. But what’s fascinating is that nobody else remembers. Nobody cares.
Moments that define us
We all have moments from our lives – highs and lows – that define us forever after.
When I think of my first job, I think of that story of the broken wine glasses. Not about the ceviche, or how much I hustled to get that job, or how proud I was to take my family to the restaurant on a night off.
I think of those expensive wine glasses and, to this day, dread being laughed at. The shame and humiliation of that moment is still motivator.
Why most people hate sales
Most people hate sales because of a single bad experience:
You tried to persuade a friend in your childhood and were laughed out of the room.
You sold fewer girl scout cookies than anyone else in your troupe.
You were bombarded with calls from a telemarketer and concluded, quite naturally, that sales is awful.
We all have experiences that taught us that an industry, a type of person, or a skillset is out of reach or not worth doing.
And – like my shame around the wine glasses – those memories shape how we behave.
What if…
But what if we could wake up one morning and decide to live differently?
I, for one, don’t know how to trigger epiphany. Change rarely happens overnight.
But it is interesting to consider who might we be able to become if we decided to change.
Homework
What’s one story – positive or negative – you tell yourself? Where does that belief come from?
A childhood experience
A single great or terrible teacher
An emotionally significant experience
The best way to begin changing a behavior is to recognize where it comes from, acknowledge the origin story, and begin building evidence through incremental steps towards who you want to become.
Howard Hughes was a deeply troubled, eccentric billionaire. He was also an undeniably successful businessman.
From his earliest boyhood he was overprotected by a mother whose letters reveal that she was constantly worried about his health. She wrote concerned missives to his summer counselor expressing concerns about whether her son would be fairly treated by his peers, be given enough food to eat, and about whether his delicate constitution would be adequately protected from the rigors of his sleep away camp.
In light of his childhood, it is less surprising then that, enabled by his wealth, Hughes became a recluse, and in his last few decades never left the self-imposed confines of his bedroom.
What’s most remarkable about Howard Hughes, though, is how a few important decisions early in his life shaped everything that came afterwards.
In the 1890s, Howard Hughes’ father, Howard Hughes Sr., set out to build his fortune. In 1909, after decades of failed attempts, he succeeded in creating the Hughes Drill Bit, an important technological development in oil mining.
After Hughes Sr.’s death, Hughes Jr. quickly consolidated his power by purchasing the outstanding shares of his father’s Hughes Tool Company from his relatives – estranging himself from them in the process.
Throughout his life and career thereafter, Howard financed movies in Hollywood, flew novel aircraft, and even financed an airline company. All of these innovations were possible because of the fundamental control he had over the Hughes Tool Company, and the resources that company provided.
Without that decisive moment where he took over the Hughes Tool Company, Howard Hughes would not be the man he became. That’s the power that the right sale at the right time can have.
Growth and change happen incrementally. As Steve Jobs said in a 2005 Stanford commencement address, you can’t know your path until you look backwards. But you can prepare for the moments that matter most. You can be ready to act when it is important.
How are you preparing yourself for moments that can change everything?
When you follow up you demonstrate your character and your trustworthiness. And, anyway, we can all benefit from a few reminders.
The value of persistence
Few things contribute more to getting what you want than consistently showing up, courageously overcoming your fears, and asking for what you want.
When you get rejected, try again. And when you get told no, denied, or even scorned, use that rejection as a reminder that you are practicing persistence.
How to be persistent
Persistence can be learned. It is a habit, and like any other behavior, the best way to adopt it is through incremental steps.
First, decide that being persistent is something that you want to learn.
Then, look for ways that you can practice persistence in your daily life:
Is there a skill you’re trying to improve? Practice doing it one more time each day than you’d planned to.
Are you trying to persuade someone of your world view? What’s one small action in that direction?
The 2-minute rule
In his bestselling productivity book, Getting Things Done, David Allen teaches the 2-minute rule, which states that if a task can be completed in two minutes or less, you should do it now.
I prefer a 4-minute rule. If something takes less than four minutes, I try to do it immediately.
That doesn’t always work. When I have a day of back-to-back meetings, I don’t have time to do a variety of tasks in between. But as a framework, I follow my 4-minute rule whenever possible.
If you can, follow up immediately.
Practice skills that require persistence
As I wrote about in the article Specialization is for Insects, I love meta-learning, or skills that train other skills. That’s why I like selling. Sales requires empathy, storytelling, and confronting your fears – all of which are valuable standalone skills.
I practice persistence by training towards a 60-second one-arm handstand. Handstands require a daily dedication to the craft, and very incremental progress.
Leadership requires persistence
I’m reading Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, and am fascinated by T. E. Lawrence’s skill as a leader. I hadn’t realized that T. E. Lawrence made a study of leadership. So much so that when he arrived in Arabia, Lawrence had already cultivated the commanding charisma – not to mention the language fluency – necessary to lead the Arab revolt.
Leadership is the skill of doing little things every day to keep a variety of people taking action together.
Courage to be disliked
One of the reasons that we don’t follow up is that we are afraid to be disliked.
Inaction doesn’t feel like cowardice. Whatever’s scary just feels like something that we’d prefer to avoid.
Fear is insidious. It can feel like a rational fear of rejection or self-recrimination. But fear is often the reason we don’t take action. And the antidote to fear is courageous action.
If you take courageous action – persistently ask for what you want – someone is going to take offense. That’s just the price for trying to be useful.
When you’re hesitant – ask why
There’s a lot of pressure in the world today to “Just do it.” From the Nike slogan to the popularity of men like Jocko Willink and David Goggins.
But when I try to pressure myself to do something, I feel awful. It just doesn’t work. I can’t accomplish something difficult without understanding why.
I’m often afraid to be persistent.
When I’m selling something, I don’t want people to dislike me.
When I’m asking someone on a date, I don’t want to be turned down.
But when I first spend a few minutes examining my underlying reasons, I’m often able to take action.
Persistence is a superpower. Following up is a skill that makes everything else you attempt much easier. And in the world today, we need more well-meaning people who persist advocate for what they believe.
For many years, I believed that “following your passion” was the best way to discover where you excel. Thus, my career has included everything from circus to management consulting; restaurants to kids with autism.
One thing that has been consistent throughout my life is my love of movement. Where most people struggle to get to the gym, I can’t wait to practice every day.
I love movement, in no small part, because I practice every day.
When to change careers
I’ve raved before about David Epstein’s book Range, which argues for the benefits of skill transfer and not specializing in one discipline alone.
Epstein tells the story of a man who tried a variety of professions. He initially worked as an art dealer, a career which was truncated because he was too critical towards clients. He pivoted to become a teacher, teaching at a boarding school and working as a preacher’s assistant. He studied theology with the aim of becoming a pastor, but he struggled with the academic requirements.
After a decade of moving from one discipline to another, he began to paint.
That man was Van Gough. If Van Gough had not continued to change his career, again and again, he wouldn’t have created the art he’s known for today.
Skill transfer
Epstein’s argument in Range is that pivoting can be useful. That when you take on a new discipline – and bring what you’ve learned to the next endeavor – you may bring a fresh perspective or skills that can help in this new field.
Van Gough might not have been able to become a world-famous artist if he hadn’t applied what he learned working as an English teacher and failing to become a pastor. We learn best when we take what we’ve learned previously and apply it to a new challenge.
When to quit
In the short book TheDip, Seth Godin advises knowing when to persevere and when to quit. The wrong time to quit is just because things get hard.
Quit before things get challenging, so that you don’t waste effort or forgo the benefits that come on the other side of difficulty.
The grass will always look greener on the other side. You’ll be tempted to try something different. When things are challenging is the precise time to keep going.
The practice loop
Practice makes you better. Practice also creates opportunities to fall in love with the very thing that you are practicing.
The more you do, the greater the likelihood that you will enjoy the work.
Don’t just follow your passion. Find a practice that you enjoy, practice that, and allow that practice to become love.
I practice handstands everyday. The goal is a 60-second one arm handstand. But I’m less interested in that goal than in practicing towards that goal.
By contrast, I recently lost a big sponsorship for Responsive Conference and it knocked me off of my stride. I felt like a failure for several hours.
These two things appear to be pretty different, but they both depend on practice. I practice handstands, I practice selling Responsive, and I’m always trying to get better.
60-second one arm handstand?
I’ve wanted to do a one arm handstand since before I published my first book, How to do a Fearless Handstand. But I only started training seriously for this goal quite recently.
In my physical practice, I don’t mind having an “off” day. The delight I feel for practicing dwarfs any disappointment for not hitting a personal best.
By contrast, when I lose a sale – especially one worth tens of thousands of dollars – it hits me like a personal affront.
What’s the difference?
Why, in some disciplines, do we feel great about learning, while in others we fixate on the outcome?
I don’t know. But here are some tactics I’m using to adopt a growth mindset in sales.
Enjoy the micro
Fall in love with the moments that make up a practice. The more you enjoy doing the things necessary the faster you’ll learn.
Focus on the small moments of practice that already feel good.
Love comes from practice
It is said that you ought to love what you do, but it has been my experience that you practice a thing until you come to love it.
Practice something until you come to love it.
Show me your calendar and I’ll show your priorities
I’ve structured my life to go to the gym and practice handstands at 2pm because that’s when I’m fresh.
As I did when I was a professional athlete, I have structured my life to go into the gym at least five days a week and practice handstands when my energy is peaking. That’s when I’m able to perform at my best.
Show me your calendar, and I’ll show you your priorities.
The outcome will take care of itself
I am unconcerned if it takes me another two years or another seven to achieve a 60 second one arm handstand. My joy comes from getting my handstand workout in today, and making incremental progress.
With selling Responsive Conference, by contrast, I live in a constant state of tension. A majority of conference attendees purchase in the last week. It can be nerve-racking to not know if the conference will sell out until a day or two before!
I have to remind myself that, as with handstands, if I practice everyday, I will ultimately achieve my goal. If I curate an incredible conference and connect with our global audience in a variety of other ways, we will have a successful event.
Celebrate more/appreciate the journey
I celebrate my handstand practice constantly.
If I kick up into a handstand, I feel great.
If I hit a new personal record, I feel great.
And if I take a day off – which I ought to do more often – I celebrate that, too, because it means I’m less likely to get injured.
All that celebration means that I always want to practice tomorrow.
With sales, celebration is harder. I struggle with not knowing if a potential sponsor might be a good fit for Responsive Conference. I get attached to specific deal. As a result, I get discouraged and want to practice less.
The more you celebrate, the faster you learn.
Look for areas where you already excel; where you already have a growth mindset. Notice what you do in that discipline, and transfer that flexibility and excitement over to your growth areas.
I’ve always loved the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s first meeting. Holmes is in the laboratory testing a new technique for testing the age of dried blood, when Dr. Watson is ushered in by a mutual acquaintance. They are each looking for a flatmate.
Holmes begins by listing out his faults. He’s eccentric, moody, and depressive. He plays the violin at all hours. Watson’s own list of faults includes bouts of melancholy and chronic illness. Holmes and Watson each conclude that the other’s faults don’t pose a problem and agree to move in together.
It is useful to share your failings – why someone shouldn’t want what we are offering.
Selling real estate
If you are a realtor and listing a house for sale, it is counterproductive to falsify your listing with all of the benefits of your property and none of its faults.
If the house is in a high traffic location, don’t describe it as “tranquil” because anyone walking through the neighborhood will recognize the lie. Instead, emphasize the convenience and utility that comes from living in a busy area.
When you claim your faults openly, you’ll attract the people who won’t mind or might even appreciate those constraints.
Your authenticity closes deals
When you sell with an unusual degree of authenticity, you’ll make the sale faster and generate goodwill for returning business.
When you share your faults, there won’t ever be a retraction or a rug-pull when the potential buyer steps onto your property and finds that the “tranquility” you advertised in your listing is regularly interrupted by street noise.
Who are you not for?
Declare your faults immediately and up front.
Your services are very expensive.
Your product solves a specific problem for one industry, and no one else.
Working with you requires a lot of time and commitment.
For example, Snafu isn’t for people who don’t want to learn how to sell or change behavior. If you’re uninterested in changing your behavior or don’t believe that selling can be used for good, this newsletter isn’t for you. (You can unsubscribe here.)
Knowing who you don’t serve is at least as important as knowing who you do.
Declare your faults. You’ll weed out mismatches more quickly.
Today’s my birthday. This time last year, I wrote 37 lessons. Instead of trying to come up with another 37+1 lessons, I thought I’d expound on some of my best ideas from the last year.
Fall in love with your craft
I’m on my quest to achieve a one-arm handstand. Someday, I’ll get there and then I’m going to be disappointed.
The one-arm handstand isn’t my real objective. I’m actually obsessed with the pursuit. Once I achieve the goal I’ll have to find a new one.
I started writing Snafu a year ago because I wanted to hone my craft as a salesman, think more about human behavior, and write more. As I have on a notecard on my desk, “I like who I am when I write.”
That’s what it is to pick a craft and stick with it. Read more on the pursuit of craft.
Creative habit
When I first read The Creative Habit by legendary modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp, I saw in her writing my own desire to create.
My mother is a visual artist. She’s been making visual art for longer than I’ve been alive. My dad is a gardener. Every time I visit, he’s working in a new garden bed.
For twenty years, I’ve studied movement. Whether through jiu-jitsu, surfing, ballet, or handstands, physical practice is my creative habit.
I believe we are all happiest when we are building, making, and creating. Here’s an article on building a creative habit.
How to tell a great story
I started Zander Media in 2019 because I wanted to study storytelling.
I’ve learned a lot about storytelling in five years of telling other people’s stories for a living, but condensed into a single phrase my advise would be this:
Be fascinated by your story and your audience.
Great storytelling requires both enthusiasm and empathy. Here’s an article I wrote on storytelling.
Relentless optimism
I’m pretty happy most of the time. Not because my life is full of rainbows and puppies, but because optimism is a strategic advantage.
I’ve done a number of things that people told me were impossible – learning to do a backflip, joining a pre-professional ballet, opening up a restaurant. When you are relentlessly optimistic, you see opportunities that others don’t.
The best way to practice optimism is to practice celebrating – to actively celebrate things that could otherwise be viewed as setbacks. Here’s what I wrote about celebration.
Let’s reclaim selling
I’m not sure why it was that I initially gravitated towards sales. Maybe it’s because my grandfather sold vacuums door-to-door, but by the time I got to know him he was retired.
Or maybe it’s because my first job was selling homegrown pumpkins for Halloween. I earned $550 at five years old and I felt like I was doing something illegal.
Regardless of why, I’m on a lifelong quest to reclaim selling for the rest of us. Here’s the article on why everything is sales.
Addiction
My grandfather was an alcoholic. My uncle died of alcohol and pills. I’ve been very fortunate to avoid that path.
But whether through 40 hours a week of ballet or an accumulated 45 days of water-only fasting in 2023, I live on a fine line between healthy habits and addiction.
I’m strict in only allowing myself things that are difficult to do, and get increasingly challenging the more you do them – like cold plunging or fasting – and not things like alcohol and sugar that feel good in the moment, but have negative consequences after.
For the last 4 months, I have eaten nothing but grass-fed bison, organic zucchini, and quinoa.
I have been dealing with gut information for years and mainstream medicine has been unable to help. (I’ve recently discovered that it is due to a bacterial infection.)
In eating three ingredients for months, I’ve also discovered that sugar is a drug and that most of us don’t eat enough protein. As a result of this three-ingredient diet, I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.
Just because what you are attempting is far outside the norm doesn’t mean that it is wrong.
Pay attention to yourself.
Trust your hunches.
Experiment from there.
Professor BJ Fogg, PhD of Stanford University once told me to “Help people do things they already want to do.” He gave me this advice in reference to selling, but I actually think it is also a good life philosophy.
It encompasses generosity and empathy, persuasion and influence. You can’t help people do things that they already want to do if you aren’t first paying attention to who they are and what they want.
You have to really know someone, and yourself, before inviting them towards an outcome.
The best way to help people to change is to invite them towards things that they already want to do.
There’s a common idea that “If you don’t ask, the answer is no.”
The problem is that when we don’t ask, it doesn’t feel like rejection. The consequence is silence and inactivity, which feels less bad than an actual rejection.
Thus, we are reinforced for not asking.
I’m still nervous when I quote my hourly rate.
I still hesitate before asking a beautiful woman on a date.
But my three profitable businesses of the last decade succeeded only because I was able to overcome my fear of asking.
Here are a few ways to motivate yourself to ask for what you want.
The desire to prove yourself
Every entrepreneur I’ve met is either fueled by a chip on their shoulder or because they are chasing something they love. And, in the beginning, a majority have something something to prove.
When I started Robin’s Cafe, I had a chip on my shoulder. I wanted to do something everyone told me was impossible. I wanted to prove my parents wrong!
This isn’t what I think of as clean fuel. The desire to prove someone wrong is a great motivator, but it doesn’t leave you feeling good about yourself. It comes with consequences like self-loathing or burnout.
When you are trying to prove yourself, you make the cost of inaction more painful than the risk of being told no.
Away from pain
It is painful to ask for what you want and be rejected. But there is often an even bigger pain that won’t get solved if you don’t ask.
You can also use that impetus to move away from the shame or humiliation of defeat. What you want is what you are moving away from not happening if you don’t ask.
Loss aversion
We are motivated by more potential of loss than by gain. This is loss aversion is – the human bias to prioritize avoiding losing even over achieving the equivalent gains.
When you don’t ask for what you want, it doesn’t feel like a loss. But it is. You are losing the opportunity that you’d otherwise have had a chance to achieve.
Anytime you don’t ask for what you want you are losing the opportunity.
Towards joy
Joy, delight and enthusiasm are powerful motivators. They are also a cleaner fuel – they don’t come with the negative consequences that a chip on your shoulder does.
When I started Zander Media, I was really curious and excited to learn how to do digital storytelling on the Internet.
That motivation – joyfully pursuit of something you want to accomplish – is an incredible motivator, if you can find it.
Make your purpose clear
Have a clear purpose – a reason that you are attempting something difficult.
I started Zander Media because I wanted to figure out how to do digital storytelling on the Internet.
And I wanted to earn money.
I wanted to do great work for our clients.
Then, as I hired employees, I wanted the company to be a great place to work.
Identify the reason you are tackling a particular challenge. When you know why, you are much more likely to attempt it.
Have a lot of reasons why
Even more than a single clear purpose is having a lot of reasons why.
I started writing Snafu because I wanted to practice writing and improve as a salesman.
Then, as I told friends about the newsletter, I was writing for a handful of other people. Those few people grew into several hundred, and now this newsletter has nine thousand weekly readers!
While not all of you write back to me (you should!), that is nine thousand reasons why I do my best to write a useful newsletter each week.
We say that “If you don’t ask, the answer is no.” But that’s inaccurate. The answer is silence, which feels better than rejection.
Whether because of a chip on your shoulder, chasing joy, or serving a cause greater than yourself, hopefully this article gives you some cues towards action.
Homework
I think a lot about where your motivation comes from. My desire to do handstands, for example, stem from my joy for incremental progress.
Pick an objective you are currently chasing: trying to learn to sell something, persuade someone, or change your own behavior.
Write out five reasons why you want to accomplish that goal.
Then, examine where you draw motivation for that objective.
Are you trying to prove something to yourself or someone else, afraid of losing out, chasing your objective for the joy of it?
There are a lot of things about being an entrepreneur that I avoid, but one of the silliest is opening physical mail. When I was starting Robin’s Cafe, I got a lot of mail – plans from the San Francisco planning department, legal documents, food permitting, alcohol permitting, pest control notifications, more.
I was so busy figuring out the day-to-day of running the business that I developed the bad habit of just ignoring mail and leaving the pile to build up on my desk for weeks on end.
When I finally got around to dealing with the pile, there was always a notice that I’d ignored for too long – a vendor I was late to pay, an IRS document I’d missed, etc. As we all do when a task is too big, I came to dread opening my mail.
Failure as discouragement
When you fail at a task, the experience is often one of discouragement, and that discouragement leads to a diminished desire to attempt that same task in the future. As I discussed recently, success is usually tied to positive feelings and the release of dopamine. Negative feelings often have the opposite effect and result in a feedback loop of negativity and failure. For me, that meant avoiding the mail until I discovered late bills, which meant I’d continue to dread opening mail and let it pile up further.
Failure is often a sign that the task you are trying to undertake is too big. A trick, then, is to leverage the cue of the negative feelings of “I can’t do this” into action and try again, but make the next attempt different. One way to do this is to break the task down into smaller parts.
Make the next step smaller
When you are overwhelmed by a new behavior, the easiest way to tackle it is by making the next step smaller.
I don’t need to open and respond to all of my mail on the day it arrives. A small step is to open every envelope, even if I don’t take the mail out right away. This small step moves things forward and makes the next steps – removing the contents, reading them, responding – easier.
Take your large goal and just take one small step in the right direction.
Create positive associations
I have a letter opener that I really love – it is a beautiful folding knife with an olivewood handle. I’ve learned, in the years since Robin’s Cafe, that I derive a particular delight in opening mail with this knife.
Look for ways that you can create positive associations around the edges of the habit you’ve been avoiding. Positive feelings equate to feelings of success.
Play more
Play and self-judgment are antithetical. When we are being playful or curious with a habit, it is impossible to regard an outcome as a “failure.”
The best way I know how to play – especially when I’m not feeling playful – is to get profoundly curious about the task I’m trying to accomplish. Another is to make a game of the process. Personally, I get delighted when I see weeks worth of dealt-with mail pile up in my recycling bin!
Look for a step by step breakdown
You can almost always find a step-by-step breakdown of the task you are trying to accomplish. Google “how to do x” or interview someone better at that thing than you are. If you’ve hit a roadblock and aren’t sure how to make a task more manageable, someone else has likely solved this problem before you. In writing this article, I asked a few friends about how they handled their daily deluge of mail and got some interesting ideas I’ll try in the future!
At Zander Media, I receive 10x less physical mail than I did at the cafe. And while there are still remnants of my avoidant behavior, I’m excited to reframe failure as a cue for novel action. These days, I look for areas of my life where I’ve historically failed and replace the cue of failure with the understanding that I haven’t made that behavior small enough, yet.
My guest today is Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former head of People and Culture at Wikimedia (the parent company behind Wikipedia). These days Gayle is very politically active and consulting with a select group of executives on organizational and culture change.
I’ve known Gayle since she spoke at the first Responsive Conference in San Francisco in 2016, and have followed her work ever since.
In this conversation, recorded in late 2020, we talk about resilience, inquiry, the COVID-19 pandemic, and what we can all do to rise to the challenges of these times. Gayle brings wisdom, simplicity, and kindness to the questions of how to continue learning, growing, and thriving as new opportunities arise in our lives.
How would you live your life differently if you knew you were going to die tomorrow?
We’re all so busy rushing through our lives that we sometimes forget to pause and remember that we have fleeting time on this earth. Watch this short vlog for a reminder to be grateful for what you do have in your life, and the time you do have available now.
To celebrate my 30th birthday, I spent five weeks in the spring of 2017 with my family traveling through the Kingdom of Morocco. I have fantasized about visiting Morocco ever since I was introduced to the character T. E. Lawrence through the movie Lawrence of Arabia at eleven years old. I was entranced by Lawrence’s charisma and self-certainty, especially alongside the mysticism of the Berber tribes and the stark ferocity of the desert.
Unsurprisingly, Morocco wasrather abruptly different than the images of camel treks across the desert and Atlas Mountain mystics I had envisioned. What I found was even more special.
A brief word on Moroccan History
Morocco is a country dense in history and culture. Frequently called the “Kingdom of Morocco,” it is ruled by a king, who is by all reports benevolent, well-loved, and politically savvy. While not rule of law, it is customary for every establishment in the country to display a photo of the king, and most show him in cinema-perfect wilderness or religious setting. For more than 50 years, Morocco was a French colony, and French is still the language used to conduct government business today.
Morocco is on the North-Western corner of the African continent, with coasts along both the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. It has always been a export-rich country, through which salt, gold, and other valuables were ported to the coast, and from there shipped to Europe or Asia.
Overlooking the souks, Marrakesh, Morocco
Morocco is a majority (98%) Islamic country, which comes with it’s own history and philosophies. The pervasiveness of the Islamic faith influences every aspect of life, such that those few locals I met who consider themselves religiously atheist, simultaneously are still culturally Islamic. While Morocco is liberal compared to many Middle Eastern countries, a call to prayer echoes around even the smallest of Moroccan towns five times each day. On my first night in Morocco, the call to prayer woke me up in fear at 4am with long drawn-out Arabic chanting that even native speakers may have a hard time deciphering. We eventually came to recognize the most common phrase, “Allah akbah,” which means “God is great.” By the end of 5 weeks, the call to prayer had become such a comfortable ritual that my first morning back in the United States I woke up confused for lack of the pervasive chanting.
The headscarf is a mixed symbol of oppression or free speech depending on one’s perspective. In Morocco, the headscarf is not encouraged by governmental institutions, and generally frowned on by urban middle and upper classes. That said, throughout Morocco, the headscarf is very common. In the city of Fes, for example, I rarely encountered local women with their heads uncovered. To further highlight these complicated socio-political factors, in January 2017 Morocco banned the manufacturing, marketing and sale of the burqa — the full head and face covering which leaves only a woman’s eyes visible. And yet it was not uncommon to see women in full burqas in the inland cities we visited.
Prior to Islam, Morocco was inhabited by three culturally distinct tribes of Berber, which continue to exist as their own integrated-yet-distinct cultures today. In my time in the Dades Gorge, for example, I encountered several groups of locals who spoke not a word of French or Arabic, but only their local flavor of Berber. I had even learned a few words of Berber a few days before, which didn’t translate at all across the several hundred miles we’d traveled since.
Culture isn’t ever black and white
There are some truly beautiful things about Moroccan culture. If you are a guest visiting the house of a neighbor and admire something of theirs, it is customary for the host to offer the admired object to you as the guest. There’s an emphasis on family honor, that it is sacred to each individual, that another is respected and felt welcomed. As a tourist who has traveled in a variety of countries around the world, I have never felt more welcomed and included as I did in Morocco.
An abundance of figs, Ifrane
There is a tradition, adopted from the Berber, of mint tea to celebrate every occasion. Moroccan tea is made with a large bunch of fresh mint, Chinese green tea, and an overabundance of sugar. (It is not a coincidence that a preponderance of Moroccans have bad teeth.) If you stop by the house of a local in an city or town throughout the country you will be offered tea, and turning it down can be difficult to do.
Over several days of strolling the souks (open air markets) of Fes, we downed gallons of the extra-sweet mint tea. Every shop we visited had someone ready to run and fetch us a fresh brew, and the longer we stayed in a single location the more pressure to join for yet another tea ceremony.
Fes
Fes is by far the most magical city I’ve ever encountered, and often referred to as the country’s cultural capital. The narrow streets of the Fes El Bali, or old Medina, would be called alleys in any other city, just wide enough for two mules to pass abreast. The walls are of thick mud-brick, 10 feet high, overshadowing the streets. Ever few feet these streets twist and turn, and side streets branch off in a variety of directions. The side streets get smaller and smaller until they dead end to a Hobbit-sized door, which is the entrance to someone’s home.
Chaouwara Tanneries, Fes
The city has several distinct districts, including the UNECO site of tanneries, which have been used as a within-city leather manufacturer for thousands of years.
As tourist walking aimlessly through the city, you will periodically get accosted by a carpet seller and brought into his Dar (Arabic for house), while his wife or cousin runs to bring everyone tea. Dars in Fes consist of a majestic central courtyard, usually open to the sky, with a variety of rooms surrounding it. It is startling to find the majesty of these traditional Dars at the end of the dark, narrow lanes of Fes.
My family stayed in one of the five rooms at Dar Romana on the northern edge of Fes Medina. From our rooftop terrace we had a panoramic view of this mystical city, the old fortified walls of the Medina, and the surrounding countryside.
I quickly befriended Semu, one of the servers at Dar Romana, and he and I spent hours together over the next week. I taught him some of my daily physical routine and he taught me Darija, or Moroccan Arabic, which is Arabic intermingled with the variety of linguistic characteristics unique to Morocco, including French, Spanish, and Berber.
Semu and I would sit and study together for an hour each evening. We began with some basics of the language. “Hello” is “Shalom aleichem” which is from Hebrew and translates as “Peace be upon you.” The proper response is “Aleichem shalom.” I was taught that it is improper not to respond to this greeting.
My friendship with Semu also gave me the opportunity to ask all of the questions that a 30-something male has in a foreign country.
“How do you meet women?”
“What do you think of arranged marriages?”
“Do you believe in God?”
Semu, and other similar friendships I forged throughout the country, provided a brief glimpse into Moroccan culture that went beyond the superficial look allowed by more typical tourist interactions.
Time
When I opened up my cafe, I spent every waking moment for several months taking care of small emergencies. When there weren’t emergencies to solve, I spent my time afraid of the next fire that I would have to put out. I came to resent the amount of time I spent opening the cafe, establishing protocol, and picking up the pieces when things didn’t work out. In juxtaposition, a restaurateur in Fes who spent so much time teaching us how to make Moroccan mint tea to perfection, my friend Semu who taught me the basics of Darija, and the countless carpet salesmen who spent endless hours pulling rugs down from ceil-high stacks to find the perfect fit — these people didn’t attempt to calculate their time in the way I had. Looking back, I wish I had savored the process of opening the cafe, even the most difficult aspects, rather than constantly trying to optimize my time.
Afternoon tea on the rooftop of Dar Romana
While so many of us in the West are constantly set on optimizing every moment of every day, there’s a sense of spaciousness to Moroccan time. It is more important to deeply appreciate your mint tea in this moment then to rush to be on time to whatever appointments you have coming up next.
The Gender Gap
Juxtaposed with these beautiful aspects of the culture, there are many that I find less favorable. I am quite social and befriend new people everywhere I go. As a tourist in Morocco, I befriended dozens of local men. Over the same period I met exactly three local women. Women in Morocco work and socialize mostly in the home, so my experience is understandable, but far outside my day-to-day norm.
While there are no laws forbidding women to work, it would be very strange for a local woman to sit down for cafe noir, a national favorite consisting in equal parts of espresso and sugar, at the men’s-only cafes that exist on almost every street. It would be even more strange for a woman to serve customers at any one of these cafes. Highlighting my own lack of expertise in Moroccan culture, female friends who have had homestays in inland Morocco describe the interior of the home as the women’s domain. All those men, drinking cafe noir and smoking endless cigarettes in street cafes, are reported to have been kicked out of the home by their domineering wives. I don’t know the truth of this gender dynamic, but it is clearly complex and substantially different than my own day-to-day.
My father, looking out at the Sahara
Young People Everywhere
After Fes, and a brief visit through the Sahara Desert, we traveled through the south of Morocco over a stretch known as the 10,000 Ksars. A Ksar is a mud-brick fortified village, usually around a small oasis, and inevitably surrounded by hectares of parched, dusty, desert countryside. Most of these 10,000 villages are abandoned or have fallen into disrepair. However, we discovered one in the town of Tinejdad, that had be repaired and re-inhabited.
We spent a single night in Tinejdad. Late that night, after my family had gone to bed, I found myself in a conversation in broken French, English, and Arabic with a couple young men in their early 20s who were working the front counter at our hotel.
Gite Elkhorbat, Tinejdad
The conversation began because, with the four foot thick mud-plaster walls and desert temperatures, I was searching for an extra blanket. I asked how to say “blanket” in Darija, and my hosts, who turned out to be brothers, spent several minutes in friendly bickering about word choice and pronunciation. My new-found friends asked where I had learned Darija, and I explained about my friend Semu and our lessons. I asked questions about the various languages they spoke and they launched into a description of Berber, interspersed with good-natured sibling squabbles.
Half an hour into this conversation, a young woman who also worked for the hotel, joined us. She sat down on the couch next to us and began looking through my notebook. She was clearly well-educated and curious, and flipped through my entire notebook, correcting my spelling, offering pronunciation suggestions, and changing several of my most frequently-used phrases to the local dialect. In return, I taught her words in English that she struggled over as she read my notes on our previous day’s travel.
I sat and watched, intrigued but also a bit stunned, since this was the most familiar interaction I had had with a woman on the entire trip. Looking back at my notebook, I’m also in awe of the amount of diligent correction and adjustment she offered.
So many carpets, Azrou
Our lesson ended when her fiancé called, as translated to me by the two brothers, who had continued their playful bickering throughout. In the midst of my new-found friend’s call with her fiancé, one of my companions turned to me and asked quite frankly, if I was married. I explained that I was not. He nodded in understanding and said that he, too, was “searching for a wife.”
There are so many parts of that evening that stand out in my mind — the openness of the brothers, the familiarity of my tutor and her insatiable curiosity, and that short exchange with another single man. It could have been a conversation with a acquaintance in the San Francisco Bay Area, discussing a recent date. In a country, frequently strange and magical, that was a refreshing reminder that young people are young people everywhere.
Culture is a felt-sense.
Walking paths in the Dades Gorge, which that have seen constant human habitation for 3000 years, or through the narrow alleyways of Fes, which has been lived in for 4000 years, there was a permanence of place unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Throughout so much of our lives, there is a sense of impermanence, the idea that things might change so quickly that you wouldn’t even notice.
Madrasa Ben Youssef, Marrakesh
As much as I might explain about Moroccan culture, words aren’t nearly as important as experiences. You can watch Lawrence of Arabia for images of the Sahara (actually filmed several hundred miles from the Sahara), or Indiana Jones for Marrakech (this time filmed in Hollywood), but none of these compare to the lived experience of a Saturday night in the Marrakech Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square, or a week wandering through the narrow alleys of Fes. There is a depth of lived experience in these places that cannot be fully understood unless experienced.
It seems obvious when I state that you cannot know Morocco without traveling in the country, and I would argue without living there for years. Culture is a felt sense. It has to be experienced to be even partially understood. There was a richness I experienced throughout my time in the Kingdom of Morocco: aspects that I loved, others less so, and many that I will never understand. I’ll always be somewhat haunted by the country and its people, and grateful.
There’s a concept in cognitive psychology called priming. In its most abstract, this means that if we are given a reminder of a stimulus before being presented with that stimulus, we are more likely to behave favorable towards that stimulus. People who are shown pictures of money before being asked to calculate the cost of groceries are more rapid in their calculations and people who are reminded of aging through subtle cue words like “Florida” and “retirement” are more likely to walk slowly immediately afterwards.
Some of these priming examples have unfortunate consequences (like the so-called old-aging “Florida priming” example) but I’d like to look at how we might use these realities to improve our performance, too.
Asian Test priming: asian students who are reminded of their ethnicity prior to tests, perform better than the same students not reminded that of asian-students-make-good-test-takers stereotype. In this case, students are simply being reminded of the biases they themselves might hold. My curiosity then is how else might we use our current beliefs to stimulate behavior in accordance with those beliefs?
Age priming: In the “Florida priming” example, participants in the study walk more slowly due to the reminders of behaviors of the elderly. In this example, participants are performing according to the dictates of a different stereotyped group. How then could we stimulate performance according to the group different then our own?
I am going to examine both of these cognitive biases from the perspective of learning ballet, but the lessons can be applied across any physical or mental discipline.
I recently gave a talk at Ignite San Francisco. The presentation was well received and fun to deliver. Below are my slides from the talk. In this post I’ll break down my process for becoming one of the speakers (hint: just ask!) and how I built my talk.
If you don’t know Ignite, take a look at some of these. I learned about Ignite from my friend Karen Cheng, who had given talk previously. I asked for an introduction to the organizers and asked Karen’s advice on how to get chosen for a position among the speakers.
Ask For Help
Which brings me to the first things I learned from this experience: Ask for help! Even if you don’t need it, but especially if you can use it – ask people you respect for their thoughts and opinions. When possible, ask from a place of excitement rather than desperation. I’ve been on both sides and know that asking from desperation or being asked from a desperate person are both no fun. Karen gave me two pieces of advice. The first was an introduction to the organizers. The second, which I would never have thought to do myself, was submit three talk requests to be considered. I don’t know which of these made a bigger difference, but together they worked.
Introductions Matter
This idea is tossed around a lot but my experience of speaking at Ignite reinforced the idea. Having a friend on the inside, of course, means I’ll be more likely considered for a speaking position. This isn’t biased and unfair treatment, it just makes sense that the organizers are busy, have limited time, and are more likely to choose someone who is, by affiliation, not crazy, than someone they don’t know.
Scratching For An Idea
I take the word “scratching” from Twyla Tharp, who discusses scratching as a part of the creation process in The Creative Habit. My scratching looked like this:
I have given a lot of talks in the last couple of years. I’ve used the same set of public speaking skills to give presentations ranging from autism to how to learn handstands and how not to stretch. I am currently attending a course on public speaking and group facilitation at the Option Institute in Sheffield, MA and decided to put down some of these tools in writing.
Most of the time when I give a short speech I have two goals:
The Content
The Ask
The Content
For many introductory talks I am the content. Even when giving a talk on advanced topics what makes the content stick is my personal stories. The content is only relevant to the extent an audience can connect with the speaker. Throughout my life I get many of the same questions. Probably most people do. “What do you do for work?” And for me: “What did you do in the circus?!” A short presentation designed to share a story from my life is a chance to share the answers to a lot of those basic questions so that I can rapidly move relationships on to some more advanced topics and areas of play. I’m happy to talk about my dance company or a workshop I am putting on. And if I can get the basics out of the way in a group it saves us time for more juicy topics later.
The Ask
The ask is a bit more complicated and depends on the audience and the context of my talk. Almost always when I’m giving a talk, though, I have a clear purpose behind the situation, something that I’d like to get, teach or contribute. When I have a clear ask I usually save it for the end to give my audience something clear to remember when they think of my talk.
Recall is heavily weighted towards the combination of the beginning and end. Thus, I like to start out my talks with something pretty hard-hitting about myself (when that’s the topic of the talk) and end with a clear ask (when I have one). What comes in between established authority or context for my talk, tells the story.
My taxi driver was gesticulating wildly, swerving in and out of traffic, as he impressed upon me his opinions of Argentine politicians. I was very silent in the back seat.
I have been warned to avoid discussing politics with Argentinians, but I was silent for a completely different reason: I was too scared to talk. Growing up in California I was exposed to a lot of Spanish and have a good ear for the language. So long as we are speaking slow and in the present tense, I have about the capacity for conversation of a precocious 4-year-old. The reason I was silent in that back of that taxi was that I was more scared of speaking poorly then I had interest in engaging in the conversation.
I’ve just returned from two weeks in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in this post I’ll share my fears of language learning and the newly launched Start-Up 100, which I’ll be using to overcome that fear.
