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303: Dave McKeown – Moving from Execution to Excellence

303: Dave McKeown – Moving from Execution to Excellence

Dave McKeown Show Notes Page Dave McKeown was about to speak on one of his first workshops when he was faced with the dilemma of not having enough money to pay the hotel bill. Not wanting to borrow money from his girlfriend (now wife), Dave put together his very first webinar where he was able …

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Dean Lindsay Big Phat Goals

162: Dean Lindsay: I do now own my entire bio

Dean Lindsay Show Notes Page

Dean Lindsay had a client that hired him for sales training. Everything went great and participant feedback was high. But once the client learned that Dean had some minor roles as a professional actor, he terminated the remaining sessions. This caused Dean to make some changes that had some unintended consequences.

Dean was born in Irving Texas and raised in Denison Texas, a small town on the Red River. His parents divorced in his early teens and he has one younger brother named Lance.

Dean was active in many, many things in high school including student government where he was student council president, Theater and Texas High School Football. Dean is a proud member of the, Undefeated 1984 Texas 4A State Championship, the Denison Fighting Yellow Jackets. This experience of winning teamwork has lead Dean to a life-long study of what traits make a winner in sport, business and life.

Dean’s early career was as an actor and acting coach. He played one of the ‘Bad Guys’ in TWISTER and was LeAnn Rimes On-Set Acting Coach for both a Hallmark Movie of the Week and on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. It was acting coaching that encouraged Dean to look more into how to coach and inspire professionals in other fields to communicate from a place of confidence and positive strength.

Dean is the Chief Marketing Officer for Synclab Media and Host of C-Suite Network TV‘s The DEAN’s List. He’s hailed as a ‘Outstanding Thought Leader on Building Priceless Business Relationships’ by Sales and Marketing Executives International as well as an ‘Outstanding Speaker’ by the International Association of Speakers Bureaus.

His new book, How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals outlines a goal crafting process for any type of goal. Free from complicated processes, it’s more of a call to action, along with the tools of how to get it done like a pro.

Dean’s legacy is one of a thinker-through. He has focused on being open and creatively helpful which shows in his books, his music and even his children.

Dean, his wife Lena of over 25 years and their two strong and wonderfully bright daughters Sophia and Ella live in Plano Texas.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @deanlindsay to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet 

“Goal achievement isn’t the most challenging part, it’s goal commitment.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“It’s conviction that leads to commitment that leads to the action.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“You’re not going to measure something that you’re not committed to achieving.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“You don’t forget the goal, you forget why the goal.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet

“If we’re going to be influenced and persuaded by something, why not influence and persuade ourselves.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“A plan is not going to get you somewhere you’re not committed to going.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“Most of the time we have to change the plan a hundred times anyway, just move.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“Why are we not proactive? It’s because we’re not committed.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“Whatever we continually say to ourselves, our brains are going to encourage steps to make that true.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“An organization is only as strong as its individuals’ personal goals and their belief that they can move closer to their personal goals by reaching the team goals.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

“If we develop the power of conviction, then all of the other options of things we could do with our time are not sacrifices.” -Dean Lindsay Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Dean Lindsay had a client that hired him for sales training. Everything went great and participant feedback was high. But once the client learned that Dean had some minor roles as a professional actor, he terminated the remaining sessions. This caused Dean to make some changes that had some unintended consequences.

Advice for others

Learn better nutrition and make better eating decisions.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Patience

Best Leadership Advice

Breathe

Secret to Success

Breathing. Deep long slow breaths in and out.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

Empathetic humor. I try to be creatively helpful.

Recommended Reading

How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals

Man’s Search for Meaning, Gift Edition

Contacting Dean Lindsay

Website: www.deanlindsay.com

email: dean [at] deanlindsay.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/deanlindsay

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanlindsay/

Resources and Show Mentions

An Even Better Place to Work

Empathy Mapping

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

162: Dean Lindsay: I do now own my entire bio

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference retreat or team-building session? My keynotes don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So, bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more. 

 

Jim Rembach:   Okay Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because we’re going to get somebody who could probably help us with our customer-centric and digital transformations in our organization. Dean Lindsay was born in Irving, Texas and raised in Denison, Texas, a small town on the Red River. His parents divorced in her early age when he was in his teens and he also has one younger brother Lance. Dean was active in many, many things in high school including student government where he was student council president, theatre and Texas high school football. Dean is a proud member of the undefeated 1984 Texas 4A State Champion with Denison fighting Yellow Jackets. This experience of winning team work has led Dean to a lifelong study of what traits make a winner in sports, business and life. Dean’s early career was as actor and acting coach. He played one of the bad guys in Twister and was LeAnn Rimes On-Set Acting Coach for both a Hallmark Movie of the Week and on the soap opera Days of Our Lives. It was acting coaching that encouraged Dean to look more into how to coach and inspire professionals in other fields to communicate from a place of confidence and positive strength. 

Dean is the Chief Marketing Officer for Synclab Media and Host of C-Suite Network TV‘s The DEAN’s List. He’s hailed as an ‘Outstanding Thought Leader on Building Priceless Business Relationships’ by Sales and Marketing Executives International as well as an ‘Outstanding Speaker’ by the International Association of Speakers Bureaus.

His new book, How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals outlines a goal creating, crafting process for any type of goal. Free from complicated processes, it’s more of a call to action, along with the tools of how to get it done like a pro. Dean’s legacy is one of a thinker-through. He has focused on being open and creatively helpful which shows in his books, his music and even his children. Dean, and his wife Lena of over 25 years and their two strong and wonderfully bright daughters Sophia and Ella live in Plano. Texas. Dean Lindsey are you ready to help us get over the hump? 

Dean Lindsay:    Absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show. 

Jim Rembach:   I’m glad you’re here. I’ve give our listeners a little bit about you but can you tells us your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Dean Lindsay:    Current passion? Wow! The current passion is that music hardly enough we’re really doing that. I’ve got a three song EP on Spotify, beyond that people would have checked out. I’m going to have a CD this year—that’s one big passion. And then on the business front, the new book, ‘How to Achieve Big PHat Goals’ and have it continue the role, it has been a fun ride.  

Jim Rembach:   I have the opportunity to look through the book and when I first got it I was at a pause because when I compared it to the other books that are on my shelf I was like, ummm this is interesting enough itself. And when I started going through the book, I really became intrigue and engaged by it. There’s a couple of things that really stood out, and I’m sure you’re used to talking about them but when you think about goals, a lot of people heard about smart goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound, some people have added the ER to it and talked about evaluate and reviewed, but what’s so different about PHAT goals? 

Dean Lindsay:    Well, for one thing I dig smart goals and smarter goals even sounds cooler than that I’m not even against that at all.  I guess the one thing that I think people haven’t given enough respect to is—smart goals are even a plan on how to achieve goals. Goal achievement isn’t the most challenging part of it is it’s a goal, a commitment staying committed to a goal. That’s really what this book is, it’s a goal effect I call it the goal conviction book. Because it’s conviction that leads to commitment that leads to the action then you can have a smarter goals. That’s actually cool but you’re not going to measure something that you’re not committed to achieving and commitment has to come first because that goal is a great companion to a big goal or smart goal or any other system that you met, goal conviction can help you stay smart, stay on it. 

Jim Rembach:   When we listen to you talk it totally makes sense when you start putting other things together meaning that, hey, when January comes around all the gym membership just go wild and in February they’re napping years and so the benefit of the gym is that they collect  11 months of this—they never use. 

Dean Lindsay:    Speaking where the gym was, someone might forget where the gym was, they know where the gym is they didn’t forget that they didn’t forget they want to be skinny. You don’t forget the goal you forget why the goal. You remember the goal that’s the reason I’m not so excited about setting goal or putting them around. You need to remind yourself of why? That’s what big PHAT is all about, that’s P-H-A-T –Pretty Hot and Tempting—that’s what the book is about. It’s about how to make your goals the prettiest, hottest and most tempting of all the options. That’s one of the big challenges and problem we have in United States of America, we have too many good options you can’t really do one thing we have too many other choices we can rationalize and say, hey, it’s a good use of time too.  You know Netflix, been watching something, there’s tons of good things to do with our time you can’t do and have it all. We’re going to be influenced and persuaded by something why not influenced and persuaded ourselves. 

Jim Rembach:   That’s a great point. When you look at what executives are struggling with these days and in another episode said something about it’s not mission and vision anymore it’s about movement and that execution is a big problem.

Dean Lindsay:    That’s good, I like that, movement that’s exactly right. I’m all for plans but plans are not going to get somewhere you’re not committed to going. And if you have enough commitment you don’t necessarily have to have—you guys keep going it’s movement back to it. Most times we check the change of plan a hundred times anyway. Just move go, let’s see check it out. But you’re not going to do that without conviction and commitment and nobody will tell you that. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, number one is be proactive. This had been around, it’s not like it’s a new material, that’s Covey’s number one, be proactive. Why are we proactive? Because we’re not committed, that’s my point.

Jim Rembach:   And it is. So the biggest problem that executives talk about is the execution and talking about all these goals that many organizations set. Less than one percent of them are getting moved to pond so which other ones are actually getting the movement it’s probably the ones that are fat. 

Dean Lindsay:    Yes, it’s exactly right. Then there’s no base on the perceived consequences we get on—we go deeper on the book in that regard about how to necessarily make your goals PHAT which is really in my vernacular that everybody as progress to do those actions. Are they even for you that you got to view this progress and that change? I’ll dig in to that in the book, we have the six P’s sof progress and the way we from a psychological standpoint decide what we’re going to do that’s really what’s this book could have been called—the psychology of how to make decisions—but I don’t think that’s cool of a title it’s more of a textbook.

Jim Rembach:   That’s very true and this is definitely not a textbook. Your six P’s of progress—you talk about peace of mind, pleasure, profit, prestige, pain avoidance and power. But you have six rules of crafting big PHAT goals, to me I think are really powerful.

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah, thanks. The first one, I don’t know if we can go to all of them but I will share that there’s—the one that I’m trying to remember I can pretty much guess what I would say the rule is everybody had said that your goals had to be written down. And I totally agree you need to have them written down. Unfortunately, it’s how we write them down, we’re writing them down in a useful way. I’m talking about crafting a goal both crafting your goal in a verb sense but also in a noun sense did it actually writing it in such a way that it propels you towards that achievement. Our brain are trippy, our brains are complicated and they say we use between 7 and 12 percent of our brains and it’s cool. Our brain wants one thing and that is to be right. Our brains wants to be right. So whatever we continually, continually say to ourselves our brains are going to encourage us to take steps to make that true. So we need to craft a goal as if it is a copy of, I don’t put the word will do it in a claiming of what it knew reality is don’t use the word not don’t go negative don’t remind yourself a past mistakes stuff like that. It’s how we craft so that it becomes a, I don’t want to say an affirmation because that term get kind of plop around but it is self-taught, it’s how we communicate to ourselves internally. Everybody participates in self-taught everybody listening, do you participate in self-taught. Some people would say, yes and some people would say, do I or don’t I? Because we all participate in self-taught. 

Jim Rembach:   When we start talking about this I started thinking about Napoleon Hill and** really kind of brought a lot of this to the forefront of our mind in regards to visualizing which is one of the thing that you had in rule number one. 

Dean Lindsay:    Absolutely. 

Jim Rembach:   Write them but also visualize them.

Dean Lindsay:    Right, right. When I say visualize I almost mean like feel them, feel the success, feel the progress, feel the 6 P’s that you will feel when you accomplish it. When I say visualize it really means emotionally visualize not just kind of seeing it.

Jim Rembach:   And going back to the whole progress thing, if I’m thinking about an organization and where a lot of people I think make the mistake is, okay, I’m a leader and I want to vision something and I want people to get on board. The part that they really do fail in is part of your rule number two which is the whole progress piece. 

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah. Everybody’s there for themselves and that’s totally cool that’s not bad I think that’s what a paycheck is that’s what I mean by that they’re there for themselves they’re there for their career development. But what they believe is—there’s a lot of other reasons ** be there they get personal satisfaction of doing a good job or that they’re doing their career, something they’re passionate about, we go back to the 60s they’re there to try to get the 60s. What’s important as a leader is to get to know our people so well enough to be able to help them see the organization’s goals help them get closer to their personal goals. An organization is only as strong as it’s individual’s personal goals and that individuals belief that they can move closer to their personal goals by reaching team goal.

Jim Rembach:   So now you have a lot of people that are on your team. When you start talking about you and your organization how do you guys go about creating that personal connection with that person who that are kind of distance from you?

Dean Lindsay:    You got to be available, you got to be open, you got to listen, you got to be interested in people’s lives, I don’t say they’ve got a good memory, you got to take notes and study up on your team and why are they there. Sales manager should love it when a sales rep wants to buy a boat. If I was that person’s sales manager I’ll be bringing him magazines or books, this is the book we’re going to get. Hey, you sell a car I’ll take you today I’ll go get my car and we’ll go over to look at some book, I spend an hour looking at books. Get them revved up get them connected to why it’s been (11:56 inaudible) remind people about sales quota that is not a motivator. Tell them what they’re going to do with the money that—the sales quota equals some number, it equals some number in the sense of the sales they’re some kind of commission remind them the money that you were trying to help them make—this organization would like to help you make a $100, 000 a quarter, that’s what our goal is we’re trying to help you make a $100, 000 and here’s how we’re going to help you do it. 

Jim Rembach:   So it sounds like to me—as you’re talking I started thinking that went right back to the Six P’s, is that me as a leader I have to be able to find out because all of these six p’s are going to have the same equal strength and magnitude. 

Dean Lindsay:    Exactly, well said, sir, it’s a unique blend that changes minute by minute within ourselves or at least you know—I am not hungry now I’m hungry, I didn’t have anything now I have a headache, I wasn’t trying to avoid pain now I have to try to avoid pain, everything’s in play. 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, so for me when I start thinking about my career and where I am now, and I’ll be 50 in a couple of weeks, is that—

Dean Lindsay:    Me too, what’s your birthday?

Jim Rembach:   February 2, 1968

Dean Lindsay:    Hey, man you were born two days before me. 

Jim Rembach:   I feel older. 

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah, your two days you’re two days older

Jim Rembach:   I started thinking about these six Ps of peace of mind, pleasure, profit, prestige, pain, avoidance, power and that at different stages within my life, no kids, single, no kids it’s kind of waxed and waned and all these things and it’s kind of like, what’s important to me right now and as a leader I’m reflecting back on having to supervise a couple of hundred people and while there was a couple tears within us, just trying to think about that, when were we the most effective is when we really boil it down, did a good job of identifying these things in our people.

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah, yeah and that’s real teamwork. It’s interesting they talk about together everyone achieves more and I’ve heard that forever and ever but most time I’ve ever heard of people are always talking about the first three letters they’re together focus on them together or that everyone together again, achieve we want to achieve. But the real point there is more and everybody’s more as unique everybody’s more as unique. And so that’s what you have to help them see that by being on a team they’re going to get closer to their more. Hey, I just made that up. 

Jim Rembach:   You’re the first here on the Fast Leader show. 

Dean Lindsay:    Exactly. All right

Jim Rembach:   I know going through the book and hearing about your background everything that you’re driven by a lot of passionate things and one of the things that drives us on the Fast Leader show are quotes. Is there a quote or two that can share that you like? 

Dean Lindsay:    One that I put in the book that really started to resonate with me really saw leaving and now and me discussing the book and doing workshops on the book and I probably could have dug a little bit more into it in the book is a quote about Pat Benatar. Pat Benatar says. With the power of conviction there is no sacrifice. With the power of conviction there is no sacrifice. And what that basically means to me, I really love it, if we can develop the power of conviction, we develop we work on developing strong conviction then all the other options of things we could do with our time or sacrifices we’re not sacrificing for what we know to be the greater activity. Those are just other good choices that now we aren’t focusing on because we know we’re on for something even better with the power of conviction. Where do you get the power of conviction? Again it’s a developing thing, I believe that How to Achieve Big PHAT Goals book is and I guess start process that we’re talking about today is really trying to think and think and think through think through your goal and your goals achievement so that you can get—weigh that goal down in your mind to such a degree that you have the power of conviction.

Jim Rembach:   You had mentioned another quote that kind of stood out to you as well and I really want to hear because some of the quotes that you’ve had in the book are just absolutely fantastic.

Dean Lindsay:    All right here we go. Dr. Victor Frankel the gentleman who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, amazing book. What man actually needs is not a tension less state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him 

Jim Rembach:   Dr. Frankel being a Holocaust survivor, I can only imagine what he had to withhold within himself in order to survive that.

Dean Lindsay:    Oh man, yeah, he had already come up with the concept of logo therapy prior to going in there that’s what he’s talking about, logo therapy meaning therapy—I went to a lot of his—he’s passed away but I did I have the opportunity to be in relationships with him and I had very close relationships with him. Logo therapy—he came up with it prior to going to a concentration camp. In fact, he’s considered to be the third father of Viennese psychiatry, we’ve got Freud and Adler and then Franco. When Franco was little I used to write letters to Freud, he was a big fan and he’s in to this stuff. He said some other stuff that we now take kind of is just like PHAT here and you realize that wasn’t the way we thought about humans. He’s the one who said you can’t control what happens to you but you can control your reaction.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing. I know when you started thinking about everything from the championship and struggles and business and struggles and coaching and theater and all of the things that you’ve gone through there’s humps that you’ve had to get over that really helped define and get you where you are today. Is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share with us?

Dean Lindsay:    Well sure. You know, I guess it is interesting and I do I do own now my entire bio. There was a time when I didn’t make the correlation with people that I had a performance background and oddly enough it made sense at that time because I had a client who had retained my services first from sales training programs, she was at the first one It was a great turnout got feedback sheets everything was great and over the lunch period before I got on the plane I shared that I had an acting background and I had been in Twister and Walker Texas Ranger and all that stuff. And we had a scheduled meeting on the phone she just talk about the next one and the guy got on the phone and said, I heard you are an actor, well, yeah, I had that background 15 years ago I was also a bartender and a lifeguard and he said, we thought we were getting a sales trainer not an actor. He declined the other two programs just because he thought for some reason that was something negative about the craft of acting, the best actors are so in tune with the human condition. Anyway, it just a trippy thing, so yeah, I had reason to be—but I don’t do that now it was not positive also because then I was kind of holding back the things that I can offer.  That was probably a turning point for me and can’t get over that. 

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that. That’s a really interesting point that you bring up and even going back and now reflecting up on the book—all of those things really were our drivers you’re looking at your six P’s the why you do that for that given time those things fit.

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah, yeah. It makes perfect sense to me I’m really jazzed about everything and now I am coming full circle. I have had a TV show that I host and so I’m using those skills now whereas before I was just trying to go one dimensional and that’s there reason I’m talking about the music, I’m letting my light shine.

Jim Rembach:   And we’re glad you’re doing that. You got the music you got the business you got the book you got a lot of things going on but if you were to look at one thing that was a goal, what would it be? 

Dean Lindsay:    I want to sing one of my songs on Saturday Night Live wearing a B costume.

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence with your empathy mapping workshop. You learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generally improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to www.empathymapping.com to learn more. 

Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Dean the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Dean Lindsay, are you ready to hoedown? 

Jim Rembach:   I hope, I think so, yes sir. 

Dean Lindsay:    I’m sure you are.

Jim Rembach:   Okay, so what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Dean Lindsay:    Patience. 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Dean Lindsay:    Breathe. 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Dean Lindsay:    Breathing. Let me define breathing, deep long, slow breaths in and out. 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life? Deep breathing?

Dean Lindsay:    Yeah, really, and humor–empathetic humor. I try to be creatively helpful. 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, and it can be from any genre, now of course we’re going to put a link to, How to Achieve Big Phat goals, on your show notes page as well. 

Dean Lindsay:    Well thank you for that. It would be, Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. 

Jim Rembach:  Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to www.fastleader.net/deanlindsey. Okay, Dean, this is my last hump day hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you. But you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Dean Lindsay:    Nutrition. Because I’m just now making the right choices and they’re just good choices but I just didn’t know. I’d be about 35 lbs. lighter and I’d still be able to fit in size 32 whereas now I’m just so excited if I can ever get into a 34, anyway. So yeah, nutrition got tear this temple, I would have made a commitment to egg whites and eggs much earlier. 

Jim Rembach:   Dean, it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you?

Dean Lindsay:    www.deanlindsey.com or you can email me and that would be dean@deanlindsey.com. And I’ve got to be living all over, I’ve got the whole LinkedIn and the Facebook and all that, just look up Dean Lindsey. Thank you, thank you for having me on the show. 

Jim Rembach:   Dean Lindsey, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

 

Jill Konrath Selling to Big Companies, Snap Selling, More Sales Less Time

138: Jill Konrath: I’m over the hill, I lost my mojo

Jill Konrath Show Notes Page

Jill Konrath was working with two big companies, consulting on product launches. Within three months, both of the companies eliminated outside consultants, due to pressure from Wall Street. Jill lost 95% of her work and after six months waiting for the work to return, Jill needed to get new clients. But Jill was unable to book any appointments. She lost faith in herself, lost her value proposition, and then she finally realized something that helped her to get over the hump.

Jill was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the oldest of four kids, and she was always expected to set a good example.

In her spare time, she loved fishing, reading, searching for hard-to-find items (agates, 4-leaf clovers) and solving puzzles of all types. During high school and college, she worked as a waitress—and loved getting tips.

Her first job was as a teacher, but Jill quickly got bored. After four years, she came up with an idea to start her own company. But before launching her new endeavor, she realized she needed to learn how to sell first.

Hired by Xerox as a salesperson, Jill quickly excelled. She loved the constant challenges as well as being able to impact her income through working hard and working smart. After a few years, she moved into technology sales … then finally started her own business as a consultant specializing in new product launches, ensuing she was always solving a new puzzle—and getting paid well to do it!

Today Jill is an international keynote speaker with nearly 1.3 million LinkedIn followers. She’s also the bestselling author of four books. Each tackles an emerging sales challenge, requiring her to search for new ideas and test new approaches.

Selling to Big Companies deals with setting up meetings with corporate decision makers who never answer phones or respond to emails. SNAP Selling tackles strategies for getting crazy-busy buyers to move off the status quo. Agile Selling focuses on helping reps in new sales positions get up to speed as soon as possible.

Her most recent, More Sales Less Time, is filled with ideas to help overwhelmed sellers bring in more revenue while working fewer hours.

According to Jill, her books are her gift to the world, her two kids are her most precious legacy and her cat keeps her company on a daily basis. She still lives in the Minneapolis area and is always on the lookout for new, challenging puzzles to solve.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @jillkonrath to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“People are exhausted and not bringing their best selves to life or work.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet

“I’m struggling with the same issues I tackle.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“You have to put a protection around yourself so you can be the person you want to be.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“If we’re getting caught up in distraction, we’re just a fragment of what we could be.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“All of us are trying to influence people to accept our ideas.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“In reality, the best sales people make you feel good about yourself.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“People don’t want to learn new ways and go through the pain of being incompetent again.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“Every leader is constantly selling change.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“We’re all selling change.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“Until you get your distractions under control it’s really hard to do anything else.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“Our life right now is built on distraction.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“Everybody is taking much longer to do what needs to get done.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“When you live in an online world, you have to learn how to live in it.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“We’re living in an environment that just pulls us out.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“It’s just a crime that our brains are being lost in this.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“We are a species of animal that is designed for distraction.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“There’s more of you than you know.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

“Fighting habits is hard, it’s about learning a new way.” -Jill Konrath Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Jill Konrath was working with two big companies, consulting on product launches. Within three months, both of the companies eliminated outside consultants, due to pressure from Wall Street. Jill lost 95% of her work and after six months waiting for the work to return, Jill needed to get new clients. But Jill was unable to book any appointments. She lost faith in herself, lost her value proposition, and then she finally realized something that helped her to get over the hump.

Advice for others

Mindset is more important than a piece of knowledge.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

I currently dealing with some personal issues that are holding me where I am.

Best Leadership Advice

You’re going to be awfully surprised that other people don’t work as hard as you do.

Secret to Success

That I turn all problems into challenges.

Best tools that helps in Business or Life

My voice.

Recommended Reading

More Sales, Less Time: Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today’s Crazy-Busy Sellers

The Highest Goal: The Secret That Sustains You in Every Moment

Contacting Jill Konrath

website: https://www.jillkonrath.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkonrath/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jillkonrath

Resources and Show Mentions

Time Master Manifesto

Increase Employee Engagement and Workplace Culture

Empathy Mapping

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

138: Jill Konrath: I’m over the hill, I lost my mojo

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast. Where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee-engagement, customer-engagement and customer-centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more. 

Okay, Fast Leader legion today I’m excited because I have somebody on the show today who I’ve admired her work and her for a long time. Jill Konrath was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the oldest of four kids and she was always expected to set a good example to her younger siblings, Tiny, Text and Seth. In her spare time she love fishing, reading, searching for hard-to-find items like agates and four-leaf clovers and solving puzzles all the time. During high school and college she worked as a waitress and loved getting tips. Her first job was as a teacher but Jill quickly got bored. After four years she came up with an idea to start her own company but before launching her new endeavor she realized she needed to learn how to sell first. Hired by Xerox as a salesperson, Jill quickly excelled. She loved the constant challenges as well as being able to impact her income through working hard and working smart.

After a few years, she moved into technology sales then finally started her own business as a consultant specializing in new product launches ensuing she was always solving a new puzzle and getting paid well to do it. Today Jill is an international keynote speaker with nearly 1/3 million LinkedIn followers. She’s also the best-selling author of four books each tackles an emerging sales challenge requiring her to search for new ideas and test new approaches. Selling to big companies deals with setting up meetings with corporate decision-makers who never answer phones or respond to emails. Snap selling tackle strategies for getting crazy busy buyers to move off the status quo, agile selling focuses on helping reps and new sales positions get up to speed as soon as possible and her most recent more sales less time is filled with ideas to help overwhelm sellers bring in more revenue while working fewer hours.

According to Jill her books are her gift to the world. Her two kids are her most precious legacy and her cat keeps her company on a daily basis. Jill still lives in the Minneapolis area and is always on the lookout for new challenging puzzles to solve. Jill Konrath, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Jill Konrath:   I’m ready to help.

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate you being here. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better.

Jill Konrath:   My current passion is to remove the distraction that we’re all facing that’s pulling us away from our time and taking all of our time but also I think it’s really impacting our quality of thinking and our ability to be the best person that we can be. I found it was an issue that I was facing I tackled it and study for a couple years and I think it’s huge because so many people are just working their tails off and they’re getting up in the morning and jumping into email and they’re going straight through the day and at o’clock they shut down and the last thing they do is check email and they’re exhausted and they’re not bringing them best offs to their lives or to their work.

Jim Rembach:   You know I think that’s a great point. I have the opportunity to follow you and I’ve been in your list and get your content and information and pull down a lot of checklists and it’s really added a lot of value to my thinking but I see a lot of your work is really kind of set in—the practical you kind of point out the obvious that causes us to go—I knew that but I’m not doing that.

Jill Konrath:   Yes, yes. I really feel in some ways sort of like a boring person because it’s not like I’m coming up with this new theories or anything but I observe problems and I go—well, what are we going to do about this this is really an issue. And then I just set myself on—of course, in studying what it takes and experimentation and it really isn’t rocket science it’s really common sense when you come right down to it. But you’re right I’m struggling with the same issues that I tackle so its uncommon sense I guess I would say. 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a great point because a lot of times we talk about common sense not being common and definitely a lot of the things that are covered in more sales less time it’s like—okay, I just need to do a better job and this is what the book is all about creating some type of structure and plan in order to be able to get moving forward. And one of the things that I really loved that you put together that’s in the book, and we’re going to put a link in the show notes page for people to get this is Your Time Master Manifesto. And I really wanted to take—and it hit me so much and for me it’s one of those things if I didn’t tattoo it on my body I’m definitely going to have it on my desk because it’s going to help me with conditioning and that is I create my life rather than let life just happen to me. I value my time it’s all I have when it’s gone I’ll never get it back. I wake up each day refreshed ready to start my work joyfully. I begin my day with what matters most. I’m clear on my priorities. I think about what I’m doing and why (5:29 inaudible) business is craziness I work in block of time this gets me in the flow. I embrace tools that help me get more done or protect me from myself. I schedule my entire day in my calendar and adjust as needed. I create fun challenges to get me started and achieve my goals. I constantly experiment finding better ways to do every aspect of my job. I treat myself to fun energy renewing breaks throughout the day. I prevent distractions by sitting quietly till they pass. I don’t do everything I delegate or say no. I reflect at the end of each day and I accept my responsibility for creating the life I want it’s up to me. I love that.

Jill Konrath:   Thank you, thank you. It wasn’t what I started out with when I wrote the book that was not how it was living my life. I was living at the mercy of everything else that was happening in my life and doing my best to serve every master and every master it would be anybody who sent me an email sometimes. 

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s too easy especially for someone who is a caring type of individual who wants to help and even like you said about your books that your gift back to the world. That type of personality and focus it’s just so difficult to say no. 

Jill Konrath:   It’s hard to say no and it’s about providing good service and wanting to make people feel like they’re working with somebody who takes care of them and who interested in them. It’s just about being a good servant leader and doing things right. You have to learn how to put a protection around yourself so you can really be the kind of person that you want to be otherwise you get so lost in the mess that you’re not bringing your best self to table and that really bothers me and not bring my best self to the table. It should bother everybody because we’re all a gift to the world. I said in my books– we are all a gift to the world and we all have certain things that we do that contribute to the workplace, that contribute to families, that contribute to our greater community. And if we’re getting caught up and distractions that are pulling us here and there we’re not bringing any of our best self to anything and we’re just a fragment of what we could be.

I think you probably just explained why we have so much issue with depression and opioid addiction and things like that is because people are not getting that sense of fulfillment because of all of those things.

Jill Konrath:   The craziness that we’re experiencing and the push that we’re under in our whole society to do more a and more and more faster-faster-faster is actually exacerbating the problem because it makes us do behaviors that actually don’t help us to accomplish the goals that we’re really trying to accomplish.

I think it’s a great point. There’s so many statistics associated with people who like just give up   vacation time because they’re so busy doing work that they don’t feel like they could step away we’ve had this many years of this whole thinking of lean and what I think I say is that if you you’re always focused on doing more with less in fact you are going to do less because you have so much more to do.

Jill Konrath:   Yeah, that’s exactly true that is exactly true, that is exactly true. 

You just get locked up.

Jill Konrath:   Yes.

One of the things we talked about off mic and you had asked about some of the people who are Fast Leader show listeners and I had mentioned about a lot of them are actually folks working with organizations. When you start thinking about it, really everybody is in sales we are trying to get people’s attention, we still have our job that we’re supposed to be doing and a task and responsibilities associated with that but in order to move forward and really make impact we’ve got to get other people to buy in or buy what were actually selling. And so I think the whole sales concept is really a universal concept. Do you actually see that being different or do you ascribe to that?

Jill Konrath:   No I totally agree with that. All of us are trying to influence other people to accept our ideas or to try something new that would change from the status quo. Most people would not like to call it sales because they are ascribe the selling term to a manipulative, greedy, slimy, used car salesperson who wants to get them out of a lot with the biggest Commission check they can make  and they don’t care about you. That’s what people see they don’t understand that in reality the best salespeople make you feel really good about yourself and they really help you accomplish what you’re trying to accomplish and they oftentimes bring new ideas insights and information that you would never thought of that make you go, oh my god, this is really what we should be doing that would really help. And that’s what everybody who’s like a leader thinks if that’s what they’re doing so they don’t realize that is what’s selling us about it it’s curves were  doing it well, if you’re doing it. But everybody has to buy into their ideas and I think that’s the term that’s used in a corporate environment.

Jim Rembach:   Well, definitely. I mean if you want to call it persuasion or influenced in order to make you feel better internally go right ahead.

Jill Konrath:   Yeah. 

Jim Rembach:   But it’s still something that you try to get people to actually buy and accept and give up something in exchange for which is either their time or the resources it’s maybe not a monetary sale but it’s still in essence some type of give-and-take. 

Jill Konrath:   Right. If a company’s implementing a new strategy and trying to go a certain way I mean you immediately get resistance to because now people don’t want to have to learn new ways. They don’t want to have to go through the pain of being incompetent again as they have to figure things out they like the way it is. Every leader is constantly selling change and that’s really what it boils down to we’re all we’re all selling change. Whether you’re asking people to change their behaviors to get more done or to change their behaviors by doing things the new way or to bring in a new colleague and make that person feel at home I mean there’s so many different things but it’s all about selling why change is necessary and what value it will bring to the person who decides to change. 

Jim Rembach:      Certainly. And one of the things that I also liked about the book is that you have tons of resources, apps, other articles and information, the depth of research that you go through in order to be able to put together your books is quite impressive and goes back to that whole piece of—yes, it may be practical but there’s so much information that you pull in from different sources in order to validate it. But when you when you start thinking about the tips and the  tactics and all of those helpful resources and you’ve had a lot of links within your book in order to be able to people to get those, what’s the thing that people are actually downloading and wanting more of? 

Jill Konrath:   Wow, I don’t know. I think anything related to preventing distraction is what people are commenting most about. And I really believe that that is the starting point and until you can get your distractions under control it’s really hard to do anything else that will help you achieve more. Our life right now is built on distraction and we’re so attuned to checking our email like every time a message comes in and we’ve got all these alerts that constantly are pulling us here whether it’s announcing who’s ahead in the latest golf game or breaking news out of Washington and what’s happening right now. We’ve got all these alerts, buzzes pop-ups that are constantly at us in and until we can get a hold of that everybody is feeling fragmented in their thinking and everybody is taking much longer to do what needs to get done. Most people are so unaware of how this distraction is literally the root cause of the crazy business that they’re feeling. People are looking at things like Sane Box a lot of people have tried sane box since I mentioned it and unrolled at me couple apps, freedom is an app that people use. Freedom is an apps, only just explain some of these apps, sane box and unroll.me help you get control of your inbox and help you like sane box will take my emails and separate them. I get to make the decision as they come. 

Is this something I want in my main inbox or is just something I can read later like it’s from a vendor I do business with? Or it’s a newsletter that I find interesting but don’t have to read right now and it’s not essential and shouldn’t be interrupting my day versus here are the things that are crucial and I should be interrupting my day because this is what I’m following up on, so something like that is really important to people. Freedom is a protection app and it literally stops you from going online. It’s like you put a block on your computer or any of your devices, your cell phone, and you say, I want to prevent myself from going online even for 60 minutes or 90 minutes or two and a half hours. When I go online I get sucked into everything else and it interrupts my thinking and I can’t do the critical thinking that I need or the strategic thinking that I need to really come up with a good solution to my challenge. People are really interested in how to protect their time, and I strongly suggest using technology, they are there to help us too not just distract us. When you live in an online world the first thing you have to do is learn how to live in it because nobody taught us how. The iPhone is only been out for ten years and all this big problems are really things that have emerged in the last ten years since we’ve had the ability to pick up our cell phone at any time and any moment. 

Jim Rembach:   It’s interesting that you say that. One of the jokes that I always bring up about people thinking crazy things about society is that you know what? None of this stuff really happened until cable TV. 

Jill Konrath:   Interesting, yeah. 

Jim Rembach:   We never worried about the person who was doing something to some kids across the country or this one time incident that is such an outlier it hasn’t really happened in 100 years and now we start worrying about that all the time. They slice in the media and everybody wants to be covered we didn’t have that we were just—I guess in ignorant bliss prior to—

Jill Konrath:   That’s really true. It’s so funny like, I go online to—what’s the weather’s going to be like? I’m traveling someplace, what’s the weather like? Or even just what’s it like here in Minneapolis? And I go on the weather app and boom I’m sucked into the sinkhole in Florida or sucked into—you’ll never believe what this fisherman did. I watched a big shark circling a boat the other day and it’s like, Jiminy Crickets, what am I doing here I just wanted to see what the temperature was going to be like today? But we’re just living in an environment that just pulls us out and once we start getting pulled out we just go down a rabbit hole and it’s one thing after another and a half an hour can disappear. To me what’s even worse about that half hour disappearing is that the time it takes us to get back to where we were and to get our thinking back in it. And then they say it’s take 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to get your head back to where it was and so you really think of the costliness of this distractions. It’s easily an hour to a day that evaporates and then we have to work later and longer to do it and the quality of our thinking is less. We are less strategic, we come up with fewer ideas we come up with worse solutions to our problems. To me that’s just a crime that that our brains are being lost in this and the best ideas that we can come up with are just gone too. 

Jim Rembach:   We just had some bad habits and your tool helps hopefully correct some of those bad habits and sometimes we have to put on blockers on ourselves because just can’t do it. Just like what you say we get sucked in and we can’t control. And you now what? There’s people who are experts that’s causing it to happen and we’re just allowing it. 

Jill Konrath:   Yes, yes. There’s people—that is their job to distract us and we are a species of animal who is designed for distraction because we actually have a part of our brain that’s supposed to look around and go—is there anything out there I should be aware of that’s new that might come and jump at me and eat me up? Literally, when we go online our amygdala this part of the brain jumps to the forefront of our brain and says, hey guys I got it. And it literally takes over from our executive function then what part of our brain that we think it should be running the show but the amygdala takes over, Oh God, new stuff, new stuff. And then the brain releases dopamine which is a feel-good hormone and goes, good job, good job. We got more of it and so we get hooked in this dopamine addiction, because it’s highly addictive, and it feels so good. And then we recreate the interruptions even when we get offline we interrupt ourselves because we are so used to being interrupted. What we have to do is to learn to live with the technology in a way that we haven’t before because we’ve never had to deal with this.

Jim Rembach:   Absolutely. We’re talking about here—being able to focus, change our own behaviors, get set in the right direction it is just associating connecting with a whole lot of emotion and one of the things that we look at on the show in order to get some better direction are quotes. Is there a quote or two that you can share?

Jill Konrath:   I can give you a call I can give you a game and I do talk about it in the book. One of the things I discovered was that me Jill Konrath is highly addictive to these things and I’m interested and curious and so for me to work in a distraction-free environment—I love distractions. I literally found that I was policing myself all the time to avoid that and I didn’t have the willpower to keep up the policing all the time it was just like constant effort to be really good with my time because it required so much change. One of the things I found and this was really ridiculous but I did decide to try to create a game to keep me plain and I created an avatar in the game that I was going to play with. The avatar I called the time master. And so I walk into my office and I was trying to be really good, but the game I set up was just a disaster it wasn’t fun and required tracking and it was worse than it started with. But when I came in as the avatar, the time master, I literally started behaving differently.

And to me that was a fascinating thing that’s simply by acting as if I was this wise time master, literally I’d stand up straighter as I walked into my office, I have a my time master poster that I created, I’d stand up straighter when I walked in I’d stare at that little sign and I got the time master and I’d sit down and I’d start behaving differently. So, it wasn’t a slogan it was literally changing my persona and saying I’m not going to be Jill today because Jill gets hooked on all these things but the time master knows how to run the day effectively. And that’s really true the time master did. So, what happened over time is that the time master slowly started seeping into my bones and the more I acted like the time master the more I realized why I really do have control and I really can take this thing and I really can set up my data to be different and the time master became who I went to run my days and then I became the time master.

Jim Rembach:   I think that’s a great story and thanks for sharing because we oftentimes don’t put enough credibility in the power of what we can do when we just change our mindset.

Jill Konrath:   Yes it was. It was fascinating to me that simply by saying I’m not going to act as Jill because poor Jill she’s incapable of managing her day effectively all she does is want to go read email and then get sucked in but by simply being the time master it changed the whole dynamic that I felt as I was operating during the day it released the pressure it allowed me to just be who I am and it was really effective. Most people don’t realize that there’s more of you than you know. You get hooked into a simple routine but you need to do is find some way to break the routine and do it easily and not constantly be fighting the habits that you’ve assumed. A fighting habits is so hard I mean anybody who’s ever dieted, which I have, knows that fighting habits is hard. It’s about learning a new way of eating and being a food master and a healthy eater and seeing yourself as that and that changes everything. We are capable of more than we know we’re really capable more than we know how. 

Jim Rembach:   Definitely. A lot of times we have to go through lessons in life in order to be able to figure those out and those are humps that we have to get over. Talking about being a young girl and having those puzzles and then wanting to help others and becoming a teacher and realizing that it wasn’t for you. There’s a lot of humps that we have to get over in order to be where we are today, is there a time where you’ve had to get over the hump that you could share? 

Jill Konrath:   I’ll just share the one that kind of sent me in the trajectory I am in today, okay. While back I was a consultant in the Minneapolis area. I was working with a number of the large corporations in town and the product launches which we talked about earlier and I had actually gotten myself  down to I was working with only two big companies that were within a 20 minute drive of my house. It was really nice and I was working in multiple business units of those corporations. What happened within a three-month period both of those companies came under pressure from Wall Street at the exact same time and eliminated all outside consultants and I had five months of work booked out ahead of me with these companies it’s 95% of my work and gone it  was literally gone overnight. 

And so I had to go back and into reinvention, actually they said it was going to come back, it took me a while and I thought it would be coming back. Then after about six months I went, oh my god, I can’t wait for them to come back I need revenue coming in the door right now what am I going to do? And then I didn’t know and I went through a crisis of faith in terms of who am I and what do I bring to the world and I was lost and I had no value proposition then I finally got myself focused again and went to market and nobody answered their phone and all calls rolled the voicemail I went, what the heck just happened I used to be good at studying up medians and now—. And then I thought, oh my god, I’m over the hill  I’ve lost my mojo and then I finally started talking to people about it and I realized that I wasn’t the only human being going through this experience. The experience was universal and virtually every entrepreneur, small business owner I was talking to was having the same problem. My sales friends were having the same issue and then suddenly I discovered that it was like this universal problem that everybody was facing. And once I was able to detach myself from it and realize it wasn’t just me then it became a problem I wanted to solve. 

And so I spent literally a full year researching what did it take to get corporate decision-makers to answer their phones return my calls respond to my emails. And then after I figure out how to do it for myself, again I was a teacher, and so now I want to say, well I don’t want everybody have to go through this horrible learning curve that I just went through how can I create a methodology that everybody can use. So, then I created my methodology then I had to extract myself and create a broader methodology that would appeal to and work with a variety of businesses. Once I did that then I wrote the book selling to big companies and then I started doing training and speaking on the topic and that was just the first step in moving from being a nice quiet consultant to being a very visible person in the greater sales field.

Jim Rembach:   You did it you’ve done a very good job with that. I know you have a lot of things going on you’ve have this new book of course and I’m sure because of someone who likes to continue to teach and learn and solve puzzles there’s more to come along. But when you start looking at all of these things, what’s one of your goals?

Jill Konrath:   Right now? My goal…my goal right now is very specific it’s to help other people with this issue of time. it’s like—to me a book is a baby I birthed this baby and I need to raise this child that I have and raising this child means letting people know and helping them understand that they can change their life that it doesn’t have to be this crazy high-stress life that we’re doing. So, for the next couple years my focused goal is to work with people and help people understand they can take back control and they can do more while working less, so, that’s a very specific goal right now. Long term, I don’t know where I’m going I kind of always wait for the next challenge to capture me and I don’t know what it is right now I just know that it won’t come until I raise my child a little bit. I know that sounds weird but that’s what it’s always happens it’s like I got take this out and share it with the world because this is stuff that I spent a lot of time learning researching figuring out and it changes smile it’s changed my life it’s changed a lot of people’s lif and so I need to share it. 

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick work from our sponsor: 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions so move onward and upward faster by gaining significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump by going to empathymapping.com to learn more. 

Alright, here we go Fast Leader listeners it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Jill, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to move us onward and upward faster. Keith Peirce, are you ready to hoedown? 

Jill Konrath:   Oh, sure. 

Jim Rembach:   What think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Jill Konrath:   Wow! The truth. The truth my husband passed away recently and both my elderly parents are sick and so I’m kind of dealing with some personal issues that are holding me where I am and keeping me from moving in new directions. 

Jim Rembach:   My deepest sympathies on the loss of your husband. 

Jill Konrath:   Thank you. 

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Jill Konrath:   The best leadership advice…I remember the first leadership advice I ever received was when my—I was being promoted into a sales management role and my boss said to me, Jill you’re going to be awfully surprised that other people don’t work as hard as you do. It was like, whoa I had no idea I thought everybody was as motivated and driven as I was and I discovered quickly that it wasn’t the case. Then I had to learn how to work with people to motivate them and to get them to be challenged and not get down and to step into new areas into trying new things. 

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Jill Konrath:   Oh, one of my secrets…that I turn all problems into challenges. 

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Jill Konrath:   My voice. 

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book, and it would be from any genre that you recommend to our listeners, and of course, lists or now of course we’re going to put a link to “More Sales Less Time” on your show notes page. 

Jill Konrath:   The book that that impacted me a lot was a book called Your Highest Goal. It says that whenever you do anything identify what your highest goal is before you do it because it will change how you tackle the challenge and it had a profound impact on what I’m doing for the last 12 years. 

Jim Rembach:  Okay, Fast Leader Legion you could find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Jill Konrath. Okay, Jill, this is my last hump day hold on question. Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Jill Konrath:   I think what I take back is my mindset more than anything. The mindset of—and I just kind of  mentioned it earlier that rather than letting myself get down about anything that everything is a challenge and to not be afraid if I haven’t figured it out it’s just temporary, I just haven’t figured it out yet, and I think the mindset is more important than a piece of knowledge.

Jim Rembach:  Jill, it was an honor to spend time with you today, can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you?

Jill Konrath:   They can connect with me via my website at JillKonrath.com where they can follow me on LinkedIn which is probably the easiest way and please tell people that my last name starts with a K. 

Jim Rembach:  Jill, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the fast leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

END OF AUDIO

100: John Lee Dumas: I invested in a mentor that kicked my butt

John Lee Dumas Show Notes

John Lee Dumas was all ready to push publish on his podcast and then all of a sudden fear took over. He pushed back his launch one week, then two, then four, then five. Finally his mentor intervened and he published his podcast and all was well in the world. But fear lurked in other places that John soon found.

John was born and raised in the classic New England village of Alfred, Maine with his younger sister.

At 18, John left Maine for Providence College, in Rhode Island, where he accepted an ROTC scholarship to pay his way through school. At 22, he graduated and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army. Before his graduation buzz had worn off, he was shipped off to Ft. Lewis, Washington. He spent the next four years as an Army Officer, stationed at no less than 5 duty stations. By the time he was 24 years old and had completed a 13-month tour of duty in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.

At 26, his active duty requirement had ended, and as a Captain he entered the reserves. He knew he was ready for some rest and relaxation, and so he took off for Guatemala, where he lived with a Guatemalan family for 4 months. While there, he explored several different parts of the country and spent time speaking, eating, and breathing the culture of Central America.

Upon returning to the US, he felt it was time to get down to business. He applied myself, and at the age of 27 he entered Law school, prepared to follow in his father’s footsteps.  One semester showed him this was not my desired path, and this time India and Nepal called him away for another 4 months of travel. While in India he played a role in a Bollywood movie, trekked the Himalayas, and immersed himself in a world very different from the one I knew back home in the grand USA.

Upon his return from this foray, he spent a few years living in some great cities, including Boston and NYC.  He had some great jobs and some not so great jobs, all of which brought with them a corporate air.

At 31, John moved back to the great state of Maine, 13 years after his departure. He took yet another professional job, which was very enjoyable for a year. Then, one rainy spring day in 2012 it happened. While listening to a podcast, I thought to himself, “I can do this. In fact, I can do this better.” Over the course of a few short months he immersed myself in his new venture, and the more research he did, the larger his passion grew.

On June 1st, 2012 he turned his notice at his job, and took off for a 3-day conference in New York City called Blogworld. 4 months and a lot of hard work later, he launched EntrepreneurOnFire.com an award winning Podcast where he interviews today’s most inspiring Entrepreneurs 7-days a week!

John current resides in Puerto Rico.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @johnleedumas to get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“Follow one passion until success.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet

“Like most people, we all have a ton of weaknesses.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Build a team around your weaknesses to focus and amplify your strengths.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Entrepreneurs fail because they don’t know how to set and accomplish goals.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Entrepreneurs that figure out how to set and accomplish goals win.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“What is the goal that’s going to get you to the next level?” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“You have to do things that don’t scale.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“What are things that don’t scale; being customer centric.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Reach out to customers and have one-on-one conversations.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Amplify things that work and fix the things that aren’t.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“One-on-one conversations aren’t scalable, but the ideas from those are.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Try not to be a person of success, but rather a person of value.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“I added value first and then success found me.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“My big hump was actually pushing publish on the podcast.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Resistance plays a huge role in our life.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“I invested wisely in a mentor that kicked my butt.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“We all have that resistance and impostor syndrome.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“I love the acronym ILT – invest, learn, teach.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“What is life without health?” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Sometimes, I wish I was that broke backpacker.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“If you can lead with value you win.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“I have a focused plan every single day that I execute one step at a time.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“If you’re able to produce quality content on a consistent basis you win.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

“Productivity is everything.” -John Lee Dumas Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

John Lee Dumas was all ready to push publish on his podcast and then all of a sudden fear took over. He pushed back his launch one week, then two, then four, then five. Finally his mentor intervened and he published his podcast and all was well in the world. But fear lurked in other places that John soon found.

Advice for others

Master the skills of productivity, discipline, and focus.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Time. I’m letting somethings pull myself in different directions that not allowing me to focus on doing deep work.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Don’t be a person of success, try to become a person of value.

Secret to Success

My commitment to discipline.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

Schedule Once, my scheduling tool.

Recommended Reading

The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Program to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence, and Happine ss

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Contacting John Lee

website: www.eofire.com

website: www.themasteryjournal.com

LinkedIn: https://pr.linkedin.com/in/entrepreneuronfire

Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnleedumas

Resources

ScheduleOnce –  A solution for powering online scheduling with your customers and prospects.

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

100: John Lee Dumas: I invested in a mentor that kicked my butt

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

 

Need a powerful and entertaining way to ignite your next conference, retreat or team-building session? My keynote don’t include magic but they do have the power to help your attendees take a leap forward by putting emotional intelligence into their employee engagement, customer engagement and customer centric leadership practices. So bring the infotainment creativity the Fast Leader show to your next event and I’ll help your attendees get over the hump now. Go to beyondmorale.com/speaking to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I’m so excited because we’re celebrating our hundredth episode and the guest that I have on the show today made a huge difference in me getting to this point. You see because through their teaching on how to podcast that made the difference for me and so many others. John Lee Dumas was born and raised in the classic New England village of Alfred, Maine with her younger sister. At 18 John left Maine for Provence College in Rhode Island where he accepted an ROTC scholarship that pays his way to school. At 22, he graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in U.S. Army. Before his graduation buzz had worn off, he was shipped off to Ft. Lewis, Washington. He spent the next four years as an Army Officer, stationed at no less than five duty stations. 

 

By the time he was 24 years old he had completed a 13-month tour of duty in Ar- Ramadi, Iraq. At 26, his active duty requirement had ended and as a Captain he entered the reserves he knew he was ready for some rest and relaxation so he took off for Guatemala where he lived with Guatemalan family for four months. Upon returning to the US he felt it was time to get down to business. He applied himself and at the age of 27 he entered law school preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. One semester showed him that that was not is desired path and this time India and Nepal call them away for another four months of travel. Upon his return from this foray he spend a few years living in some great cities including Boston and New York City. He has some great jobs and some not so great jobs all of which brought with them a corporate air. 

At 31, John move back to the great state of Maine 13 years after his departure. He took yet another professional job which was very enjoyable for a year. Then one rainy spring day in 2012 it happened, while listening to a podcast he taught to himself, “I can do this, in fact, I can do this better.” And over the course of a few short months he immersed himself in his new venture and the more research he did the larger his passion grew. On June 21, 2012, he turned his notice in and took off for a three-day conference in New York City called Blog World. Four months and a lot of hard work later, he launched entrepreneur on far.com an award-winning podcast were he interviews today’s most inspiring entrepreneurs seven days a week.  John currently resides in Puerto Rico. John Lee Dumas are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

John Lee Dumas: Yes.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, JLD, I’ve given our legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you even better?

 

John Lee Dumas: Jim, I’ve a lot of passions but I big believer also on focusing, following one course until success. Or maybe that on this case one passion till success so that would be drumroll the Mastery Journal, this is my current passion and I’ve spent a year researching and becoming an expert in productivity and discipline and in focus. I’ve mastered all three of this skills, you need too as well the Mastery Journal is your guide to do just that. 

 

Jim Rembach:    For me even when I look at the amount of productivity, the amount of content the amount of just overall work product that you do is quite tremendous. Now I also know that you’re really big into having teams in order to support you, so give us an idea of how big is the EO Fire team?

 

John Lee Dumas: Well again, I’m not trying to brag when I say that my three greatest strengths are, productivity, discipline and focus because that’s like three strengths. Where my weaknesses like are bigger than the entire screen here, like most people we all have a ton of weaknesses so I build the team around my weaknesses so that I can focus in amplifying my strengths. Productivity, discipline and focus, I can let other people take of the rest. So my team is a lovely Kate Ericson, she’s my partner in both business and life. We have three virtual assistants in the Philippines, one in Pakistan and a Puerto Rican employee in our new island home of Puerto Rico. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I have to ask, you lived in San Diego for many years, but what took you to Puerto  Rico? Why Puerto Rico?

 

John Lee Dumas: Taxes, enough said and mic drop. 

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s right.

 

John Lee Dumas: So now, it’s really interesting that you say that too because in Episode 99 of the Fast Leader show my guest Steve Mariotti who is the author of the Entrepreneurs Manifesto talked about a couple of things, one is I see there’s a gross negligence of our education system not teaching entrepreneurialism. And if you think about that as well as the controlling factors that a lot of companies have in regards to innovation, we call it business acumen in a company, with you having over 1,500 episodes of your daily podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire to reflect upon, what do you see as the common reason why entrepreneurs struggle?

 

Jim Rembach:    They don’t know how to set an accomplish goals, it’s really that simple. Entrepreneurs because they don’t know how to set an accomplish goals. In entrepreneurs who have figured out how to do that, they win. And it’s really that simple and other people, they lose, if they try to complicate things because it doesn’t have to be complicated. Like what is the goal that’s going to get you to the next level? For me back in 2012 it was one singular goal launching EO Fire, my podcast. Nothing else mattered, no distractions, one focus, I accomplished it. I knocked down and there’s domino and it started a chain reaction of awesome, it’s now turning into a multi-million dollar a year business. Over 1500 episodes, over 40 million listeners, everything has come from that one accomplishment of that goal, launching this podcast EO Fire. 

 

John Lee Dumas: And I think that’s really important for people, in fact it was so important that’s why I launch my previous passion, which was my passion project of last year, the Freedom Journal which look very similar but it’s a very different content within, it’s about how you can accomplish your number 1 in 100 days. Because I saw people struggling with this that’s why I say, “I’ll provide the guide, the step by step over a 100 days of how you can set a smart goals specific measurable attainable relevant time bound and then accomplish that one goal, one goal singular in 100 days. Over 16,000 people had bought in to this and it’s amazing the way it’s changing lives. 

 

Jim Rembach:    In the Fast Leader Legion you talked about your avatar for the Entrepreneur’s on Fire podcast being your jimmy, that’s your avatar, but for me my Jimmy is actually somebody who is working in customer care, customer experience and in an organization trying to innovate, trying to create a better culture and trying to really move things forward so that they make better connections with the customer. Now I see and have had the opportunity to see you interact with a lot of folks and you are very customer-centric and focused and you’re a great example in a lot of different ways. But if somebody isn’t an outside entrepreneur they’re intrapreneur, there inside an organization, and they don’t necessarily have the opportunity for goals for them to set them, how do they go about accomplishing things that you would see?

 

John Lee Dumas: I want to go back to your comment about being customer-centric because I think that such an important comment to kind of sit upon for one second because so many people say, “John, how can I scale my business? How can I leverage everything that I do? Like within in the world where you can do that and you should doing that on some level because it’s a great opportunity but you have to do things that don’t scale. What are the things they don’t scale? Being customer-centric meaning like reaching out having the one-on-one conversation that’s not being recorded just you and one of the person that’s a customer, that’s a client and you asking him that question, what are you struggling with?  What’s one way that when improve my business? Something you didn’t like about what I did or something that you loved about what I did, how do you find me? Ask those questions you can get the answers and you can amplify the things that are working. You can fix the things that aren’t. That comes one-to-one conversations. 

 

So those one-on-one conversations you’re having aren’t scalable but the results and the ideas that you can implement from those conversations are, so whenever anybody joins podcasts is paradise they get a one-on-one personal phone call from me, thanking them and asking them, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” and what was like your buying decision? What made you decide to pull the trigger? And so that allows me to learn who I consider my best clients, like people that are joining podcast’s paradise. I do the same thing with the freedom draw, I help on the phone call or Skype call with the random people that purchase our Freedom Journal. Of course, I haven’t dealt all those 16,000 people but I’ve it with a number of them so I can learn from them. I can have those one-on-one conversations.  So being customer centric is so important. Doing things that don’t scale is a key, and I think it entrepreneurs me to learn how to do that. 

 

Jim Rembach:    John, you’re definitely an inspirational person. You have had the opportunity to have several guests on your show that are inspirational as well. And one of the things that we look for on the Fast Leader show is quotes because they are so inspiring, is there a quote that stands out for you that you can share?

 

John Lee Dumas: There’s a quote that change my life. I mean from 26 to 32, that was my post- military years and pre-EO Fire years, six years I struggled—I went to law school I dropped out, cover finance I quit, commercial real estate I dropped that as well, it was six years of struggle of trying to find myself cause I’m trying to find my passion and finally I get 32 years old, I read this quote from Albert Einstein and he said, “Try not to become a person of success but rather person of value.” And I look back over the past six years now it just like I been just trying to chase success. Like in my version of success at that point in life was wrong like it all about money and respect and fame and fortune, it was never going to bring you what I wanted. So, I flipped it all on this head things that that quote and I just became a person of value. I developed EO Fire, which is a free, valuable and consistent podcast every single day, just delivering value. I did that for 200 episodes without getting a dollar back it was just value, value, value, my time, my energy, my blood, sweat and tears. Of course, the revenues started coming in at some point and now here we are today about three and half years later from that point, over 10M dollars in revenue. So, it worked because I added value first and then success found me. 

 

Jim Rembach:    John, without a doubt going through that process, transformation, struggling all of that there’s a lot of humps that we have to get over even when you start talking about scaling a business, from the start-up phase and those 200 episodes before anything ever came, and we have a lot of humps to get over and they really help us become better leaders, is there a story that that you can share with us about getting over the hump?

 

John Lee Dumas: My big hump was actually pushing publish on the podcast. And I think that a lot of people need to read the book, The art of work by Steven Pressfield and it is just a really good book because it show you how much resistance plays a huge role in our life. Like you get to that finish line but you have such resistance from crossing it, like I was all ready to push publish on my podcast then all of a sudden fear took over and I was like, push publish and it becomes real and if it fails then it fails then I’m a failure but if I’m in pre-publish mode then maybe it’ll succeeds but maybe it fails nobody knows so we can just keep living in this la-la land forever. So I push back my podcast launch one week, then two, then four, then five, finally my mentor came up to me and said, “John, I want to fire you if you don’t publish this podcast. 

 

So, fortunately I invested in myself wisely with a mentor that kick my butt and I publish a podcast and all was well in the world and that happened to me time and time again with the book that I publish, Podcast Launch, Podcast Paradise, with the Freedom Journal on some levels even with the Mastery Journals like it’s just like, Kate was fine and just like John it’s enough already, like it’s good enough, it’s where it needs to be. Like you’re just tweaking nothing right now, like let’s get this out in the world. So, you need those people in this world because we all have that resistance, develop that impostor syndrome that said, “Who are you to create this? To talk about that?” I love this acronym ILT, invest, learn and teach. What that means is investing yourself that can be time, doesn’t always have to be money it can be money, it’s energy bandwidth, learn that thing that you invested in and then turn around and teach it because to everybody who hasn’t invest and learn up to that point you’re the expert so turn around and teach and guide people and see what happens. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Without a doubt you expanded well beyond. You have webinar and Fire skills on Fire, just goes on and on. But moving to Puerto Rico—Kate—you have a lot of things on your plate, but when you start looking at one goal, what would it be? 

 

John Lee Dumas: Right now my one goal, my one focus is the Mastery Journal, that’s on the business side, you have to generate 23rd launch. So the kind of business goal that we have right now nothing else clouds that everything we do is focused towards that. But a life goal, this is a life goal that I think is important for me because it wasn’t a forefront goal for the first couple of years and I pay for it, it’s fitness and nutrition. Like those are two areas that I let slide and the reality is you realize what is life without health? And frankly, you have all the money in the world but you don’t have your health like you’re not going to be as happy as if you’re a broke backpack across Europe. An unhealthy rich person will trade places with that person in a second and heck sometimes I wish I was that broke backpacker right now because I think it would be fun to start all over again and try to build something up. Now that I’ve already built something up I got to keep holding up this big wave that is the multi-million dollar a year business and that takes time, energy and effort that I’m not able to do other things like travel as much as I’d want to or do this or do that. That’s why some changes will be coming in the future, maybe they won’t, well see but… you know it’s a forefront my number one goal in life is health. 

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor:

 

The number one thing that contributes to customer loyalty is emotions. So, move onward and upward faster by getting significantly deeper insight and understanding of your customer journey and personas with emotional intelligence. With your empathy mapping workshop you’ll learn how to evoke and influence the right customer emotions that generate improve customer loyalty and reduce your cost to operate. Get over your emotional hump now by going to empathymapping.com to learn more.

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, JLD, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insight fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. JLD are you ready to hoedown?

 

John Lee Dumas: First, can I steal that name and keep it forever? And not say the one    anymore because that’s so much better. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate that. So, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

John Lee Dumas: Time. I feel like time is something that is limited and I feel that there’s somethings that I’m letting pull myself and different directions does not allow me to focus on really doing deep work, which by the way is a great book by Cal Newport.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

John Lee Dumas: I miss really, really that quote by Albert Einstein, “Don’t be a person of success try to become a person of value because if you can lead with value you win.”

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

John Lee Dumas: My commitments to discipline. And by discipline I mean having a focus plan every single day that I execute on one step at a time. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life? 

 

John Lee Dumas: Definitely schedule. Once is my scheduler that I use for everything, that’s how I schedule 20 interviews today that had gone flawlessly.

 

Jim Rembach:    Now, you’ve draft several books but is there another one that you could recommend, from any genre, to our listeners? 

 

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, the Chimp Paradox is something that I never talked about but it’s a great book. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/JohnLeeDumas. In addition, JLD is giving away a free copy of the Freedom Journal to the first member of the Fast Leader Legion in the US that goes to iTunes, rates and reviews the Fast Leader Show and sends me an e-mail to let me know. Okay, JLD, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

John Lee Dumas: Productivity that would be the skill because if you’re able to produce quality content on a consistent basis you win. And so, productivity is everything.

 

Jim Rembach:    JLD, it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

 

John Lee Dumas: All the magic in my world happens at eofire.com, we have free courses on podcasting, webinars, goals, funnels it’s there for you. And the masteryjournal.com we have an amazing campaign going on in Kickstarter where you can master productivity, discipline, and focus in 100 days.

 

Jim Rembach:    John Lee Dumas, thank you for sharing thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom, the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO 

 

055: Justin Robbins: I got there and I immediately felt lost

Justin Robbins Show Notes

Justin Robbins graduated from High School with honors and was on his way to become a music teacher. But in his first semester in college he immediately felt lost. Justin then made a big decision to drop out which sent him on a three year journey to find his way. Listen to Justin tell his story of finding his passion and getting over the hump.

Justin Robbins spent much of his youth in Bloomsburg, PA, a small town in Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Valley. During his teenage years, Justin’s family moved to the suburbs of Washington, DC where he was actively involved in his school’s music and theatre arts programs.

Through Justin’s late teens and early 20’s, he lived in a variety of locations and experienced an assortment of educational and professional opportunities. By the age of 22, Justin had been a hotel general manager, a US Navy recruit, and the booking agent for a Grammy award winner. He gained exposure to unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and used these experiences to develop a well-rounded world perspective, as his career gained momentum.

Along the way, he also earned money by working in numerous frontline customer service roles from paperboy to call center agent to cashier. Eventually, Justin’s career brought him to Hershey, PA where he spent five years in the contact center for the “Sweetest Place on Earth”. While at Hershey, he became responsible for many of their hiring, training, and customer experience initiatives.

Justin is currently employed as the Community Director for United Business Media where he leads both the Incoming Calls Management Institute’s and Help Desk Institute’s brands in bringing research, best practices, and impactful content to the contact center, customer service, and IT support professional’s communities.

Justin volunteers as the Newsletter Editor of AGAPE, a mission serving his local community, as well as a high school youth leader at his church. He is a husband and father to three children and enjoys taking his family on adventures across the country and currently lives in Danville, PA.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen to @justinmrobbins and get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“The way to really build the skill is to practice it.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet

“I don’t know that it’s a matter of overcoming the fear…it’s bridling it.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“It’s a matter of using it to motivate me rather than let it get the best of me.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“I had this choice to let fear get the best of me…or I could own these fears.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Internally, we know what ignites our passion.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Be true to you.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“You’re not going to do your best work until you recognize what is true to you.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Who are you really and what are you meant to do?” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Focus on who you are internally.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Too many of us settle for something because we’re afraid.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Always be a student.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Seek and pursue people who are doing really great things.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Dream bigger, dream bigger, dream bigger.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

“Never give up, sometimes we fail…get over it, move on.” -Justin Robbins Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Justin Robbins graduated from High School with honors and was on his way to become a music teacher. But in his first semester in college he immediately felt lost. Justin then made a big decision to drop out which sent him on a three year journey to find his way. Listen to Justin tell his story of finding his passion and getting over the hump.

Advice for others

Be true to you. You’re not going to do your best work until you recognize what is true to you. Focus on you and who you are internally.

Holding him back from being an even better leader

Setting the bar too low. I don’t dream big enough. Dream bigger.

Best Leadership Advice Received

Never give up. Sometimes we fail, it’s going to be a failure, get over it, and move on.

Secret to Success

Personal drive. Being genuinely excited, enthusiastic and wanting to constantly get better.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

The insight of really great authors who are really wise and provide excellent advice and ideas for just thinking outside of my norm.

Recommended Reading

The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

Contacting Justin

LinkedIn: https://twitter.com/justinmrobbins

Twitter: https://twitter.com/justinmrobbins

Resources

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

055: Justin Robbins: I got there and I immediately felt lost

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

How do you get higher contact center agent performance? It’s when customers grade the call and the ratings and comments are used to motivate and coach agents. Uncover hidden secrets and replicate your best agents with the real-time insights from the award-winning External Quality Monitoring program Customer Relationship Metrics. Move onward and upward by going to www.customersgradethecall.com/fast and getting a $7,500 rapid result package for free.

 

Jim Rembach:    Okay, Fast Leader Legion, today I am so excited because I have somebody on the show that we get to tap in to their knowledge and their energy in order to help us get over the hump. Justin Robbins spent much of his youth in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania a small town in Pennsylvania, Susquehanna Valley. During his teenage years Justin’s family moved to the suburbs of Washington DC where he was actively involved in the school’s music and theater arts program. Through Justin’s late teens and early 20’s he lived in a variety of locations and experience an assortment of educational and professional opportunities. By the age of 22, Justin had been a hotel manager, a U.S. Navy recruit and a booking agent for Grammy award-winning artist Kevin Max of DC Talk. He gained exposure to unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and use these experiences to develop a well-rounded, world perspective as his career gain momentum. 

 

Along the way he also earn money by working in numerous frontline customer service roles from paper boy to call-center agent to cashier. Eventually Justin’s career bottom to Hershey Pennsylvania where he spent five years in the contact letter of the sweetest place on earth. While at Hershey, he became responsible for many of their hiring, training and customer experience initiatives. Justin is currently employed as the community director for United Business media were he leads both the Incoming Calls Management Institutes and Help Desk Institute branch in bringing research, best practices and impactful content to the contact center, customer service, and IT support professionals communities. Justin volunteers as the newsletter editor for Agape, a mission, serving his local community as well as a high school youth leader at his church. He is a husband and father of three children and enjoys taking his family on adventures across the country and currently lives in Danville, Pennsylvania. Justin Robbins are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Justin Robbins:     Oh, Jim, you know, I’m so excited to be here. 

 

Jim Rembach:     And I’m glad to have you. I’ve given our listeners a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you better.

 

Justin Robbins:     I think the best way to put is building community. What are the things that really got me  through all of my experiences along my career is just having that sense of belonging and knowing that there are others just like me pursuing the same types of things, experience the same types of problems that I’m experiencing, and so for me that’s my passion. It’s finding those people, helping them get connected and just kind of getting forward momentum, building relationships, gaining experiences, again it comes down to building community.

 

Jim Rembach:    I really admire that in you because I had the opportunity to meet you several years ago and it seems like just in a very short period of time we rapidly found a connection with one another. And it seems like you’re just one of those folks that of course is, gifted with that but you also nurture that in yourself and continue to grow that. What are some the things that you do in order to help you enrich and build that inherent skill that you already have?

 

Justin Robbins:     For me it’s always been a matter of immersing myself in those types of situations. My wife and I, we are polar opposites, it’s probably something really important to know about us, and my wife is—you tell her let’s go meet a bunch of strangers and spent a night with them, they’re probably a million things that she could think of that she would rather do, but for me those types of situations is actually where I get to sharpen my blade, that’s really where I get to hone this skill and figure these things out. It’s one of those things that it’s hard for me to teach someone and to tell someone how to something if I’m not able to, I don’t have the experience and the exposure to do it myself. So, for me the enriching opportunities, the way to really build this skill, is to practice it in as many opportunities and as many chances that I can get.

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s such a great point and even for myself, I know there’s certain things that I would like to get better at, kind of set the goal, but however I let fear stop me from doing that very thing. So, how do you overcome that fear?

 

Justin Robbins:     I don’t know that it’s a matter of overcoming the fear as much it is maybe bridling it and really understanding how to use it to gain momentum and just have that forward inertia in propelling you and motivating you. Taking back to high school when I got into theatre and gone into singing, I had this terrible stage fright. If I ever get in front of people, it just terrified me. And kind of got to this place internally where I realized that two choices, I could let fear get the best of me and I’d still have to get in front of people and they would see that kind of trepidation and they’d see me, I’d stumble, I’d be shaking and so I could let that fear get the best of me or I could use that fear to really drive me and say, “I have this opportunity to be in front of these people and I can give them my best, I’m going to be scared regardless.” People still say that me today, I’ll get up in front of—whether it’s 15 people 1,500 people they’re like, “Do you get nervous? Do you get…? Absolutely, every single time but it’s a matter of using it to motivate me rather than let it get the best of me. 

 

Jim Rembach:    I think a great way of putting it, don’t focus in on trying to get over that hump of that fear but bridle it and use it in order to propel you forward and thanks for sharing that. I have to share with everybody since we’re on audio and you don’t get to see us, Justin is also one of those folks that I look up to by being one of the most best dressed folks that I’ve ever seen in an event, and I’m like, “What’s Justin going to wear?” and I’m a guy, right? But the feminine side has to come out because I need to see what Justin’s wearing. Great dresser and also great person, great personality, if you haven’t had the opportunity to see Justin speak you definitely want to look out for that. Talking about your background in theater and everything that we share as far as the different experiences that you had and those are the things that can add so much to our own life and where we’re is those experiences. But we need inspiration, you’re an inspirational person, and we focus on quotes on the show to help give us that. Is there a quote or two that kind of stands out for you that provide you with that energy, that you can share?

 

Justin Robbins:    Yeah. For me, there’s one quote that, and I share this at every opportunity that I can when I’m with a group people, it’s actually by Maya Angelou and it says, “Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg.” That really does resonated with me that we so often say, “Oh, I wish I could do this, I wish I could have this change in my organization, I’d really like to see this happen differently or I wish, I wish—and we have all of this ideas and all of this intentions but really it’s a matter of what are we going to do with that? How are we going to put it into action? That’s really going to define us, nobody’s going to know a spire of wish list, and they’re going to know by what we actually made happen, and so for me that’s just kind of a personal drive and a personal motivator.

 

Jim Rembach:    One of the things that you said in there, and thanks for sharing that quote, that kind of stands out for me and what I’ve tried to do as part of a personal practice is try to share what my intent is before I start talking about a thought or an idea or trying to encourage people to have some dialogue because I don’t want them to unfortunately get a wrong perception of what I intend. If you don’t tell people your intention they’re going to make up what they perceive to be your intention and it may not be what you want so, I try to incorporate that in my dialogue.

 

Justin Robbins:    That’s a very good point, Jim.

 

Jim Rembach:    And you kind of made that stand out for me, so thanks. When you start thinking about all of the things that you’ve had experience doing and really helping you be where you are today, I know there’s been a lot of humps and not that it’s a negative in any way but doing and shifting and getting all those different experiences are from many different reasons and some of them are humps that we just can’t get over so we just divert our path and just go somewhere else but were still moving forward, that’s the intent, right?  Is there a time that there was a hump that you had to get over and it defined you to take a better path? Can you share that story? 

 

Justin Robbins:    This is actually not a commonly shared story that I’m telling, it’s probably something that a lot of people don’t know about me. When I graduate from high school I was in the National Honor Society in the program, I was kind of all through high school set that I was going to be a music teacher. And so I went in to my freshmen year of college, went in at the honors program, I was really excited about music education at a school that at that time had a really great music ed program, and I got there and I immediately felt lost like I didn’t belong not  in the sense that college wasn’t necessarily right for me, but I realize that the degree I went out for wasn’t what I wanted to do. There were variety of factors impacting my life at that time but I realize that I was kind of lost, I personally lost, I was just mentally lost, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But I did feel that right there at that time that I was just like spinning and making no forward progress. 

 

So, I made the decision at that point after part of my freshman semester of college, to dropout. And so I dropped out of college in my freshman year and for a number of years I talk about all of those things I did before I turn 22 and it was just me just trying to see what would stood out, some of there were really great, really exciting but there were also some really miserable, terrible jobs, horrible bosses, making not much money at all, and honestly for probably a period of at least three years it was not good. I mentally was kind of in a bad place at times, I would spend the little money that I had on things that I really didn’t needed and honestly Jim for the bigger part of it, I was lost. And I didn’t really know where I wanted to be and what I want to do. 

 

I was thankful to a number of mentors who are externally in my life. Externally feeding in to me who really help me regain my focus, regain my charge and step back to this place where I realize, I do have a choice. It went back to that place of fear and I had this choice to let fear get that best of me and to play this victim of circumstance where I could all this fears, all this anxieties and aligned with, what was I ultimately passionate about? What did I feel that I was really good at? And just pursue that and invest my efforts and invest my time and energy and honing myself into a very specific skill sets that would really allow me to pursue my passions, allow me to pursue the things that I thought and that I had received recognition for being good at. And so, for me that hump was, this was just a period of insecurity not really knowing who I was or what I was meant to be doing with my life over that three-year time when I decided to drop out of college.

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that story. For me,  I had a similar scenario where I was in between a job and what I wanted to do some of the things that you said just resonated with me so much because it was a scenario were the anxiety just started overwhelmingly me. And being able to try to figure out a way out was—it was so dark, it was so difficult. The thing for me that helped too was the thing it sounds like it helped for you—yes, some good mentors but, also really focusing on one thing. I think for me I was trying to focus in on so many things that’s part of what was driving me nuts.

 

Justin Robbins:    Exactly, absolutely.

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that story. For me, I also think about, you had a heck of a lot of strengthens and some good support because mine was a couple months, years was a little bit longer than that. But definitely both of us have come out on the other side at this point and I’m so glad that you’re part of the Legion. When you thinking about all of those experiences and that time and even where you are today, all of that, if there was a piece of advice that you would give to the fast leader legion, what would it be?

 

Justin Robbins:    I thought long and hard about this one, really what I think it comes down to is, internally we know what ignites our passion, and we know what that one thing is that if we can do for the rest of our lives and not get paid a cent for it that’s the thing that we would pursue. I feel that this could be a hard advice to get, sometimes at least it was maybe hard for me to process but really my best piece of advice for the nation is to be true to you. And that might mean having to turn down some things that maybe you like, maybe they made you feel good, maybe they have make you feel good but you did them because you’ve got something out it. Whether that money, whether that was prestige, whatever that was, ultimately you not going to be satisfied, you’re not going to your best work until you recognize what is true to you, who are you really? What are your design? And what do you meant to do? 

 

That come to some people easily, they might be doing that right now. For some people they might have been trying to figure it out but still aren’t there yet. Honestly, what I just say is really focus on who you are internally? What do you feel? What your pulse racing about? Where do you get that excitement over? And pursue it, pursue it, if you do you’re going to find the satisfaction that go beyond any paycheck you could ever get. They’ll going to go beyond any level of procedure, every trials you could ever receive because ultimately you’re doing what you’re meant to do. I think to many of us settle for something because where afraid of what that might mean if we ultimately pursue what we thought called to do. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Thanks for sharing that. Another thing that stood out that as you were saying that is I started thinking about control. Oftentimes we try to control so many things and I had the opportunity to speak with this one coach as part of their marketing for their services it said something  along the lines of, “Take control of your life.” And I said, “You know what, we all want to hear that and as a concept we embrace that, we attracted that, we want that but in fact that’s the thing that harms us when we try to control so much because when you try to control and the more you try to control, you in fact, control nothing. It’s one of those oxymoron in regards to trying to thrive and find happiness, you can’t control it you just have to do what you said, focus. Think about the things you enjoy and release, that’s where the value will come from in your life. So I know for you—gosh! You have so many things in your plate including helping youth at your church being a father, raising a family, a husband, managing these communities and these brands, speaking, writing there just so many things that just so many things that you have going on right now, if you were to say you have some goals what would they be?

 

Justin Robbins:    Yeah, that’s a great question, Jim. For me, one of the biggest goals that I think is never going to change is to never, never settle for what I know about my craft and about my community and my industry. Today I think it’s really easy, particularly people leverage you as an expert in the field and people secured, I think it can really easy to fall in the trap of—“Yeah, I really know what I’m talking about. Man, I’m good, I think I’m good at where I’m as, as far as how good I am.” For me one of the goals is to never get to that point and to never be that person but to really always be a student of my craft and really always be a student of the industry and the works that I’m doing, so that’s a big goal for me. Always look for opportunities, always find somebody who’s smarter that I and find a way to surround myself with those types of people. 

 

I mean, one of my tactics for most of my career is to find people who are really great at what they do and surround myself with them, and so that’s a continuous goal for me, to seek and pursue people who are doing really great things and make them part of network of friends and my network of community. Another goal for me is to continue to figure out the whole work life balance. I think for a lot of us that’s something that we say is important to us. I been saying it’s important to me but putting a goal on making sure that—we talk about family, we talk about friends and recognizing that it’s their support, their ability to carry us through is what enables us to be successful in our careers. So, that’s a goal for me. Another goal, just rounded out with three is, I love being outdoors and a goal for 2016 is to spend a weekends doing subzero camping. That’s a goal to make it through three days in a really, really cold weather with a bunch of guys that are just awesome friends, so I don’t want to chicken out—that’s a problem with my goals right now.

 

Jim Rembach:    And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

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Jim Rembach:     Alright here we go Fast Leader Legion it’ time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Justin, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Justin Robbin are you ready to hoedown? 

 

Justin Robbins:     I’m ready to hoedown, Jim. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Justin Robbins:     Honestly, setting the bar too low. I think I just kind of set a goal and I settle for that and I don’t dream big enough. So, dream bigger, dream bigger, dream bigger.

 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have received?

 

Justin Robbins:     In line with that is just never give up. Sometimes we fail it’s going to be a failure, get over it move on. 

 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Justin Robbins:     Just personal drive. Just really being genuinely excited, enthusiastic and wanting to constantly get better.

 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps to lead in business or life?

 

Justin Robbins:     The insight of really great authors who are really wise and provide excellent advice and ideas for just thinking outside of my norm.

 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners, it could be from any genre?

 

Justin Robbins:     It’s “The promise of a pencil” by Adam Braun.

 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader Legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today show by going to fastleader.net/Justin Robbins. Okay, Justin this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you have been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why? 

 

Justin Robbins:     I can’t make a decision, Jim, this is so hard. I would say I would take back the knowledge of where I’m going to be in the amount of years, it wasn’t far ago so I’m not going to say the number of years, but just what’s going to happen in the next series of years for me, I would just take the knowledge of where I’m going to end up and really just kind of say, “Look you know you have somethings in front of you right now but just continue to work hard and continue to stay true to you and everything’s going to work out okay. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Justin, it was an honor to spend time with you today can you please share with the fast leader legion how they can connect with you?

 

Justin Robbins:     Absolutely. If you go on Twitter I’m @JustinMRobbins, also LinkedIn/JustinMRobbins, if you look on the Internet for Justin M. Robbins you’ll probably going to find me, Jim. 

 

Jim Rembach:     Justin Robbins, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the fast leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot Woot!

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader Show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the www.fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

 

END OF AUDIO

 

 

038: Jana Sedivy: That was really demoralizing

Jana Sedivy Show Notes

Jana Sedivy volunteered to run a group that collected old computers to send to developing countries. First, she tried to send the computers to Bolivia. That failed. Then she tried to send the computers to Afghanistan. And that was met with much difficulty. Listen to Jana tell her story of how she was able to persevere and get over the hump.

Jana was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and was the fifth out of six kids. Conditioned to be a mediator, Jana is also a self-professed data nerd and people nerd.

Jana spent her early life and career crossing back and forth from a people-centered path, to a science-centered path, and back again.

She started out studying acting, then marketing, then switched to computer science and physics.  Paradoxically, working with technology all day got her interested in people again.  She was fascinated with how people interact with technology, and how they use it to accomplish their goals.

After getting her Masters in Human Computer Interaction she went on to work as a researcher at Xerox PARC where she worked on a precursor to the Internet of Things.  Then later at Adobe, she discovered to her surprise that she had a passion for creating better experiences for enterprise software

She has 21 patents, has published peer reviewed articles on semiconductor lasers and human computer interaction, writes for online customer experience and user experience journals, and is a conference speaker.

These days, she has found the perfect blend of people and science for her split personality.

She has an award-winning consulting practice that helps B2B technology companies take the guesswork out of product decisions.  She has worked with Fortune 50 companies, startups, and everything in between.  If you are tired of making product decisions based on the loudest engineer in the room, she can help!  Her passion is using data to help companies give their customers a better experience.

She loves Bollywood, making pickles, and many other deeply uncool activities.

Tweetable Quotes and Mentions

Listen and @janasedivy will help you get over the hump on the @FastLeaderShow Click to Tweet

“B2B technology is the dark matter that holds our society together.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet

“It’s really easy to get bogged down…and end up majoring in minor things.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Even though you feel demoralized…you have to keep your people focused.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Sometimes stuff just happens…and you need to roll with it.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Focus on the positive and remember what’s working well.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“It helps to have someone show you and tell you…so that you’re doing the right things.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“You have to just know where you’re going and just keep showing up and do the work.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“The questions are actually not as important as how you listen to them.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Give people what they’re asking for so you can give them what they need.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“They don’t really care about the solution, they care about the symptom.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet

“Our humanity is what connects us.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Everybody has got something that they do just naturally and effortlessly.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

“Find that thing that comes really effortlessly to you…leverage that.” -Jana Sedivy Click to Tweet 

Hump to Get Over

Jana Sedivy volunteered to run a group that collected old computers to send to developing countries. First, she tried to send the computers to Bolivia. A new president cause her donors to pull out. Then she tried to send the computers to Afghanistan. And a closed border stopped her container. Listen to Jana tell her story of how she was able to persevere and get over the hump and move onward and upward.

Advice for others

Find that thing that comes really effortlessly to you and somehow figure out how you can leverage that and make that your career.

Holding her back from being an even better leader

Not carving out enough time to make sure I am focusing on the main thing.

Best Leadership Advice Received

We are all connected by our humanity.

Secret to Success

I am able to make connections with a wide variety of people.

Best tools that helps in business or Life

The ability to learn.

Recommended Reading

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

Contacting Yana

Website: http://authenticinsight.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/janasedivy

LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/janasedivy

Resources

54 Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Competencies List: Emotional Intelligence has proven to be the right kind of intelligence to have if you want to move onward and upward faster. Get your free list today.

Show Transcript: 

Click to access edited transcript

038: Jana Sedivy: That was really demoralizing

 

Intro: Welcome to the Fast leader podcast where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader, and now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner Jim Rembach.

Jim Rembach:    

 

Developing your company’s talent and leadership pipeline can be an overwhelming task but your burden is over with Result pal you can use the power of practice to develop more leader’s faster move onward and upward by going through Resultpal.com/fast and getting a $750 performance package for free.”

 

I think today will going to have an awesome show because the guest that I have today, I listen to on another podcast, and she fascinated me so much I just had to reach out and ask her to be a guest on the Fast Leader show and she accepted. Jana Sedivy was born and raised in Montréal, Canada 5 out of 6 kids, so she considers herself the mediator of the group. She is also a self-professed data nerd and people nerd. She spent her early life and career crossing back and forth from a people centered path to a science centered path and back again. 

 

She started out studying acting, then marketing, and then switch to computer science and physics, paradoxically working with technology all day long, got her interested in people again. She was fascinated with how people interact with technology and how they use it to accomplish their goals. After getting her Masters in Human Computer Interaction she went on to work as a researcher at Xerox where she worked on a precursor to the Internet of things. Then later at Adobe she discovered to her surprised that she had a passion for creating better experiences for enterprise software. 

 

She has 21 patents, has published peer review articles on semiconductor laser in Human Computer Interaction, rights for online, customer experience, and user experience journals and is a conference speaker. These days she has found the perfect blend of people and science for her split personality. She has an award-winning consulting practice that helps B2B technology companies take the guesswork out of product decisions. Her passion is using data to help companies give their customers a better experience. She loves Bollywood, making pickles, and many other deeply on collectivities but believe me she is cool. Jana Sedivy, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

 

Jana Sedivy:    I am so ready. Thanks for having me.

 

Jim Rembach:    Oh men, this is going to be good. Okay, so I’ve given our Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we get to know you better?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Right. So, these days I’m really interested in B2B technology and making those experiences better and here’s why, because B2B technology is kind of the dark matter that holds our society together, right. It’s the stuff that’s make sure trucks arrive on time, shelves are stocked, your passport application gets processed, your voting gets registered, it’s all these stuff that you kind of don’t even think about until it goes wrong and so I just love to help improve that hidden stuff.

 

Jim Rembach:    And listening to you say that and that does make so much sense is that especially these days when we have so many things on our plate, we have so many things that we need to do and then it’s one ride after the others that once one of those B2B technologies just doesn’t work right, man, it can throw everything out of whack and you spend 3, 4 hours or 3, 4 days trying to fix something that a company cannot fix for themselves and it can be so frustrating.

 

Jana Sedivy:    Exactly, exactly. And what’s interesting about that technology is often the people buying it or not the people using it, so that creates a whole other level of challenges in terms of creating a better experience for the customers as well as for the users and then the people that are interacting with that organization.

 

Jim Rembach:    Well, I can imagine being 5 of 6 kids that there is a whole lot mediating that goes on within organizations as well as with the developers of the software to be able to do just that. When you think about that mediation pace and being able to get closer to the customer, what do you think would be like the number one barrier for people improving the user experience when they’re a tool creator?

 

Jana Sedivy:    To think more about the people using it and to interact with users as much as possible. When you’re developing the tool you’re so many levels removed from it that it just doesn’t even enter into your world at all. So that’s one of the things that I often try to do is get people to somehow interact or observe or get to know the people that are going to be using the tool.

 

Jim Rembach:    You know, I think that’s a really important point is that you can’t even really become your own customer or just even say if you could, you have such a piece of expertise, knowledge, and understanding of the product that there’s no way you can assume or read the mind of your user.

 

Jana Sedivy:    Yeah, exactly. So, it’s really a lot about exposure and education.

 

Jim Rembach:    Well and like you said, it’s interacting with the folks that are actually using the product in order to get over that hump.

 

Jana Sedivy:    That’s right.

 

Jim Rembach:    It’s not just using it, it’s actually interacting and connecting with the users, that’s really I think a very key point to take away. Well I know, that when you start talking about this issue, I mean, it’s unfortunately nobody’s immune from it. I mean everybody has to deal with it even the organizations that are building the best B2B tools and do connect with customers, it’s still a constant battle for them because things change so much and I know they need a lot of inspiration. Here on the show we focus on quotes, cause goodness, we need the inspiration from those things. Do you have one or two quotes that you could share with us?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Yeah. So I’m not usually a big quotes person but one thing that has always stayed with me since I’ve seen it is a quote by Steven Covey, he wrote: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” I find that so important because when you’re leading people or when you’re running your own business like I am, it’s really easy to get bogged down into little details and the minutia and the little fires that keep coming up and you end up majoring in minor things and you don’t really focus on doing the important stuff that’s really going to move you forward.

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s another good point. I recently wrote an article that’s getting a lot of attention called “Got it” putting culture before CX. But we often get very sidetracked and forget the fact that if we don’t have a strong positive company culture that in order be able to improve the customer experience you have now a crutch, you have the liability and it’s going to prevent you from doing it. So, you always have to—that has to be the one thing that you’re focusing on at all time and really everything else falls after that.

 

Jana Sedivy:    I agree.

 

Jim Rembach:    So, I can imagine that you have had the opportunity to really get in some serious scenarios and situations both personally as well as with your business, being able to get people to move forward, and I know for myself, sometimes, it’s unfortunate but the walking away is really what happens but we don’t only want to focus on the walking way please, we need help getting over the humps. Can you remember a time that you’ve had to get over the hump so that you accelerated the path to success?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Yeah. I had a situation a while back. This was when I was in a volunteer role. I was running a group of people that was collecting old computers, but that were working, and sending them to developing countries. Now it turns out that getting computers is not a problem, getting the money to ship a big shipping container of 250 computers, that’s the real problem. So I worked hard, I set up a fundraising, we we’re going to set a bunch of computers to Bolivia, and we set up a fundraising session at Parliament Hill, which is the Canadian equivalent of the White house, we had the special guest a former the Minister of Foreign Affairs and we had a mining company that have interest in Bolivia, they said at that meeting that they were going to commit $10,000 to sending the shipment to Bolivia. So we were all excited but then a week later Evo Morales was elected in Bolivia and he kicked out all the mining company in his first week so they said, we’re not going to give that money anymore. So we had to regroup, think about, well what are we going to do now? We have the computers, we’re ready to go we just need to figure out where to send them. So, we’re going to send it to Afghanistan, so I got the Department of Foreign Affairs involved, got Rotary Clubs to give us some money, they do matching grants, we got people to pack the container, got local media to come out and I’m kidding you not the day we pack the container, Pakistan declared a state of emergency and nothing was moving through Pakistan. And if you look at a map the only way to get to Afghanistan is through Pakistan or through Iran, so that container sat there for months. And so, that was really demoralizing but what I really learnt from that is even though you as the leader feel demoralized you have to try to keep the people that you’re leading focused and positive and stay focused on the main thing. So, the main thing is, the computers are going to go to people who need it. It might take longer than we expect it but it will get there. Also the other thing is sometimes stuff just happens that’s outside your control and you need to roll with it and you need to be able to adapt and to pivot and to change and stay positive and keep moving.

 

Jim Rembach:    There’s so many things that you brought up in there, I’m reflecting on times that I failed to do that. And even think to yourself that, well it was just one little slip, where that frustration just kind of comes out, even facial expressions, you have to be really careful. I know that it’s really, really hard to not slip up and show that frustration, reveal that frustration. Have you found something that works for you to keep that from happening?

 

Jana Sedivy:    I just try to always focus on the positive and remember what’s working well because our human brain is really wired to focus on the negative, that’s just biology. I try to develop a practice where every day I’m thinking about what something positive, what are the three things I’m grateful about, what are three good things that happened today, and I find that just puts me, in general, in a more positive mindset. So, when something bad happens it tends to not seem like such a big deal because I have the broader perspective.

 

Jim Rembach:    I think that in Itself Is a great practice and it’s a good framework, is that three things that I’m grateful for, three things that are positive and that’s what you start your day with and you continue to focus on that throughout the day, so thanks for that tip. I know you have a lot of things going on you’ve had some experience with some extraordinary organizations, both working for them as well as consulting for them, but when you start thinking about one thing that’s really giving you an excitement and energy right now, what would it be?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Well, on the business side I’m starting to develop some online learning content. So, I’m working on developing some webinars and some online training, so I’m really excited about that. On the personal front, I’ve started doing a lot of gymnastics training, so I’m building some pretty crazy core strength and upper body strength to do handstands and pull-ups and so those are my fitness goals these days, which is always fun.

 

Jim Rembach:    So what have you found as a benefit from doing that gymnastics work?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Well it’s the best exercise as you get older, I’m starting to head into middle age. And what’s really great about that is there’s very little risk of injury as supposed to lifting heavy weights and it really focuses on overall fitness. So, you have to work on your mobility to keep flexible, to do a handstand you don’t need just strength in your arms or shoulders but you need to be flexible in your wrist and you need to be flexible in your shoulders and that’s just really great for overall strength and health as you age. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you think that doing that work has benefited your impact in regards to some of the content in the online learning and the things that you’re doing with that?

 

Jana Sedivy:    That’s an interesting question. The thing that I’m really learning from doing that training is that you have to just keep showing up and doing the work. The increment are really small so to get to doing one pull-up you have to work really hard, show up to the gym 3, 4 days a week, work hard and if you do it consistently for 6-8 weeks you’ll get one pull-up. Then if you do it consistently for another 6-8 weeks you’ll get two pull-ups right, so it’s really, really incremental but you need to be consistent and just show up and do what you committed to do. It also helps to have someone show you and tell you what you’re supposed to be doing so that you’re doing the right things. I’m a big believer in coaches that helped me on my business side because in terms of the business you have to just know where you’re going and then just keep showing up and doing the work. On any given day it might feel like you haven’t made a lot of progress, you might feel like you had a bad day, you kind of slipped, it wasn’t such a great day today, but very slowly incrementally you’re going to move yourself towards the goal you want to reach.

 

Jim Rembach:    So, it was awesome to me to see how that particular learning that you went through with the gymnastics also impacted the hump you had to get over, talking about the incremental changes and trying to get those containers, and those computers, to people who could actually benefit from them, it seems like it’s all really interrelated and synergistic, so thank you for sharing that. it’s interesting that you talk about also creating some online learning and we’re doing that as well as the fast leader show through the high-performing leader academy and so what we want to ensure is that we’re actually creating content that is most beneficial for folks and one of the things that were trying to capture information on is what’s you’re what, meaning what are you struggling with.

 

Jana Sedivy:    Yes.

 

Jim Rembach:    So when you started thinking about creating your online content, how did you go about determining what to create?

 

 Jana Sedivy:    That is such a great question cause so many people just goes away into their back cave and start creating some stuff that they think is really awesome and then they put it out there and then nobody buys it, nobody wants it, because it’s not really speaking to their need. One of the things that I’m working on is, before I go away to my back cave is it’s just talking with as many people as possible and really listening very closely to what their problems are. As an example, something that I’ve noticed that people ask me a lot about they say, “Well, part of the reason we hire you is because we don’t know what questions to ask.” To me the questions actually are not as important as how you listen to them, because sometimes people can ask okay questions, the questions are fine but they’re not listening to what people are saying because they have so much confirmation bias.

 

But sometimes you have to give people what they’re asking for so that you can give them what they need. What I really want to do is to teach people how to listen effectively. But if I say, “Hey, I’m going to teach you how to listen effectively everyone think they listen well, but if I say, “Hey, I’m going to teach you what questions to ask and then in there I slip in and you also really need to listen and here’s how you do it, here’s some concrete strategies that you can take. So you have to listen to when people describe their problems, what are the words that their using—and the other thing is, when you’re providing learning, you’re providing a solution but they don’t really care about the solution, they care about the symptom that they’re experiencing. 

 

So, for the people that I deal with the big symptom is they’re in endless meetings and decisions are getting made in this really weird way, depends on who’s the loudest engineer in the room or who’s pounding their fist on the table the most and that’s how decisions get made, that’s the symptom, and the cause is because they don’t understand their customers well enough. So I the solution is to listen to your customers better, but that’s kind of far removed from the problem that they’re experiencing in their everyday life. So I’m trying to figure out how to learn to speak to that.

 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a great point for all of us, is that I know a lot of times we want to go straight to the heart, straight to the point. And most often the wrong thing to do is that you have to do a cultivation in order to really get to the main point and that cultivation could be something else and you really have to look for that as both your indicator and your motivator. So, thanks for sharing that point, and the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on, let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

 

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Alright! Here we go listeners, it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay Jana, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster.  Jana Sedivy are you ready to Hoedown? 

 

Jana Sedivy:    I am so ready to Hoedown.

 

Jim Rembach:    Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Not carving out enough time to make sure that I’m focusing on the main thing.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

 

Jana Sedivy:    Early in my career, I was part of a team that had to give a big presentation to the CTO of Sony. I was still in my 20’s, we were all pretty young, this was the biggest thing we had ever done and we were all kind of freaking out about it and our manager’s said to us: “You know what, the CTO of Sony he’s just a person, he’s just a human being he wakes up in the morning, he goes to the bathroom, he brushes his teeth, he’s mom tells embarrassing stories about him and he probably wishes he could lose some weight, so what your job is to figure out what he cares about and speak to that. I just found that such a fantastic piece of advice because our humanity is what connects us, whether it’s the CEO of a fortune 50 corporation or your bus driver or a refugee from Syria, we all are connected by our humanity.

 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

 

Jana Sedivy:    I am able to make connections with a wide variety of people. So, I can talk to factory floor workers, administrative assistants, bankers, engineers, and I can always find a common ground and be able to relate to them.

 

Jim Rembach:    What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

 

Jana Sedivy:    The ability to learn. I love learning, I just can’t get enough of it and that’s what keeps me going. 

 

Jim Rembach:    What would be one book that you would recommend to our listeners?

 

Jana Sedivy:    I really like “Give and Take” by Adam Grant. It’s about how the most successful people are the ones who give a lot more than they take. And I find that’s just such a great way to live your life and it’s the way that I behave naturally, and I always thought that I was a bit of a champ for that but when I read this book I realize, actually this can be a fantastic path to success and it’s a win for everybody, win for you and it actually is a win for all the people around you because you’re helping people.

 

Jim Rembach:    Yeah, that’s one of my favorites too, and you’ll be able to find a link to that as well as other tools and resources and notable quotes from Jana on the show notes page which you’ll be able to find at FastLeader.net/JanaSedivy. Okay Jana, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity to go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have right now back with you but you can’t take it all, you can only take one thing back, so what one piece of knowledge or skill would you take back with you and why?

 

Jana Sedivy:   When I was in my 20’s I really wish I had known this. `I wish I had known that everybody has got something that they do just naturally and effortlessly without thinking and it’s that stuff that you do that when you do it people turn to you and say: “Wow, how did you manage to do that? How did you do?” and then you think: “That was impressive? “I just did blah, blah, blah” and so I had always thought that work had to be hard, it had to be hard work. I come from an immigrant family so hard work was really important. But if you can find that thing that comes really effortlessly to you and somehow figure out how to leverage that and make that your career then it doesn’t feel like work, it can be easy and it can be fun and I wish I had known that a lot earlier.

 

Jim Rembach:    Jana Sedivy it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you tell the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

 

Jana Sedivy:    So you can connect with me on my website which is “Authentic Insight” I guess I should spell that, authenticinsights.com and I’m on Twitter@jana Sedivy. 

 

Jim Rembach:    Jana Sedivy, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom. The Fast leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump.

 

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the Fastleader.net, so we can help you move onward and upward faster.