What do you say we get this party started then Bob Sager.
Let's rock.
All right. I have a feeling you are a rock and roll guy.
I used to be a rock star Adam. I don't know if you're aware of that. Play Guitar since I was 15 years old, and used to play in bands, I sort of tongue in cheek, say rock star. I did make some money playing music and met my first wife doing that. But yeah, that's another lifetime. Now.
How many lifetimes have you had?
At least two or three? Yeah. I think we're on Bob 3.0. Now, all right.
It's a beautiful thing.
Now, are we evolving? Is
each level an evolution?
Well, is 5g going to be better than 4g?
That's actually open for debate. But
we're where we are not Devolving. That's for sure.
Okay. All right. That's a safe assessment there. So Bob Sager, welcome to the show. This is a couple years in the making. I appreciate you being here today. I'm excited to talk about you. I'm excited to hear your story. And I'm excited for you to educate the audience on some pretty cool ways of thinking. So what do you say we get rolling?
Let's do it. All right.
So Bob, tell me what's your elevator pitch?
My elevator pitch is most businesses are not as profitable as they could be for many sluggish sales, price competition, or both are kind of the norm. And so what I do is I combine creative thinking processes, with now 35 years of business experience, and an understanding, really a deep understanding of psychology, sociology, and biology, of human action and decision making. And I use that combination of those three things to develop strategies that differentiate companies in the hearts and minds of patrons. And that transforms customer perception from nah to must have so that they eagerly buy and revenues increased dramatically.
I like that. I like that. And then what qualifies you to do this besides being a rock star?
I had somebody else asked me that the other day, and they sort of prefaced it by how the heck do you know how to do all these things? And how do you know how to do them right? And my answer is, one I've done them all wrong. have probably every possible way that you can. And when you do things wrong, and are willing to learn and admit your mistakes. And you figure out how to do things right. And so I would say more than anything, is that a school of hard knocks. It's a tough taskmaster and teacher, but it's effective. I love that.
I had I'm not sure if you know who David Meltzer is? Oh, yes. Okay, so I had him on the show. And he forgot what brought us to this point. But he's essentially said that he's paid a lot of dummy tax in his life.
I like that. I did,
too. I was gonna steal it from him. But I figured he's out there too much for me to do that. But I will give them a footnote. There you go. So I want to throw a couple rapid fire questions at you to warm you up and get you ready for the main segment. So be sure to do I'm going to throw out a couple of let's call this a speed round. And I'd like to know the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay. Okay. mindset,
positivity. Always love that.
Abundance versus scarcity.
It's a choice.
Success
is multifaceted. It's about more than money.
Tell me a habit that you have good, bad or indifferent
going to work even when I don't feel like it
LinkedIn.
Love it.
I love that too. You know, what is it about LinkedIn that you love,
the fact that it can bring together people worldwide. And frankly, I mean, I've met people and people have met me that we never would probably have the opportunity to connect with one another without that platform. And it's and I in my life has been so blessed, as a result. And I'd like to think, Adam, that I've done my share a blessing of others as well. Oh, yeah. If
you're I mean, you're all about providing value. And I'm going to get into that in a little bit. How are you using LinkedIn?
I use LinkedIn as an online platform for the same thing that I have done for years offline. I just view it as this sort of massive worldwide business networking event. And I think if you do it that way, I see people say, Oh, we got to get our message out. Right. And they view LinkedIn as sort of an advertising platform. I view it as a human engagement platform. Whoo, I
like that a lot. Actually, I think that's fantastic. The whole idea of human engagement, not selling is huge. Let's talk about the selling aspect of that. So fair to say, from your perspective, you like LinkedIn, it's got a global appeal has an opportunity to connect you and to engage you. But conversely, what could be improved on LinkedIn?
Well, I think LinkedIn could, and they're probably, frankly, working on this. I know, behind the scenes, they're working on a lot of different things. But I think that they really could segment things a little bit more in terms of geography. And some people would take advantage of that. And some people would not. But if I'm a, if I'm a business that does business, locally, or regionally, or maybe even nationally, I would prefer probably to engage and collaborate with people who were in my market area. And so I think LinkedIn could do a better job of that and provide options for that. But like I said, Maybe they're working on some things behind the scenes. And frankly, I have some ideas and strategies for how they can do that and make it profitable, but so far, they haven't listened to me.
It's just a matter of time, Bob.
got that right. Yeah, I
mean, listen, they're getting there are some things that they've been doing that I've noticed recently, they forgot what they would have to call, but on, where they afford people the opportunity to pronounce their name, which I think is a really good idea. I used to own an executive search firm. And I know that there were people that worked for me, that wouldn't reach out to some people just because they were embarrassed because they couldn't pronounce their name. And I think that's horrible. But it's real. So, yeah.
And do you mind if I interject a point here? Yeah, please. somebody's name. getting that right. In both pronunciation and spelling is so critically to effectively relating to a person. And it's astounding to me Adam how Cavalier in their attitude some people are about people's names. It's such an unforced error in terms of effective human relations. It's amazing to me how people screw that little simple thing up. But for the people who are determined to get it right, and make people feel important, by properly pronouncing and spelling people's names, it gives them a competitive advantage.
wholeheartedly agree with you. Now, do you mind if I go back to you and I teach you a little trick that was taught to me about how to remember people's names? Certainly. All right. So So this one is good. And I learned it from Jim Quick. Do you know who Jim Quick is?
I am familiar with the name and I'm not sure why. So Jim, quick,
I think he's the memory champion. His story's fantastic. He's also has a podcast. He's been on a million podcast, he's been all over TV. Really good guy, interesting guy. Actually, he's coming on the show. We haven't booked it yet. But anyways, he teaches many things on memory. And he really breaks things down in simple forms. But he taught me how to remember names. And it's something that does take a little bit of work, but my god has it significantly enhanced my ability to remember people's names. So I'm going to walk you through an acronym that he shared, it's called BE SUAVE. And to your point, if someone's name, it's melodic to their ears. It's something that they've been called since being a baby. It's, and it's important to them. So BE SUAVE stands for you got to believe that you can remember the name, because I'm sure a lot of times people say, Oh, I can't remember your name. It's just they're just being lazy. And some names are easier than others. But I bet if I told you that, if you remembered my name, I'd give you $100,000 would you remember my name?
I think I might make the effort Adam,
you could. So the B stands for belief. And then the E stands for exercise. It takes practice, practice makes progress, as he likes to say and then you get the s, you say their name. So I say hey, Bob, you use it. The use for use it, use your name three to four times don't overkill it. The A is for ask like what you know, what's the origin of your name, Bob? Is there a story behind your name and ask them if they have a trick for remembering your name, the V is to visualize the name. So picture Bob in lights or whatever it might be that it's going to help you to visualize because we are visual people. And then the key is to end with their name, Bob, it was a pleasure having you on the show. So that's BE SUAVE to your point. That's,
that's really outstanding, Adam that makes it worth my time to come on and be interviewed on your show. All right, well, we're done.
So back to you back to LinkedIn, can you share an engagement strategy that you've either worked with one of your clients or just one that you've personally done yourself?
Yeah, one of the things that I think is the key to being successful on LinkedIn is getting off the platform. And I told somebody, somebody that was part of my Elite Business Success group that I run twice a year, I told her, I said, it's impossible to continue a conversation that's not been started. And so that's why I think if you're going to post on LinkedIn, or even if you're going to comment on LinkedIn, one of the important things in those posts is that you might occasionally do a promo post. But predominantly, you don't want to do a promo post because they're not engaging. And in those posts, you want to ask questions or tell stories. And then from there, the people who like and comment on your post, thank them and connect with them. And from there, then you can trade DMs, and if it feels right, and not sort of salesy, then you can have a conversation offline, whether that be a zoom call, or just a traditional phone call. And then you get a feel from there. And by the way, let me back up one step, have no agenda. Right. And that's the important part, I call that agenda free prospecting. In other words, you're just making a human connection. Because if you go into it with pitching somebody in mind, they're going to sense that, and you're probably going to fail, there's a lot of crappy sales training out there that says, You throw enough stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Well, that might have worked in 1985. But in 2020, that doesn't work anymore. People are hypersensitive to being spammed with pitches. So be different. And as Bob Burg says, in his book, The go giver, and go giver, sell more, make it about them, not about you.
I'm going to tell you, you embody all of those things, there are a couple things that you've done that I think are awesome. And getting back to thinking outside the box doing things differently, which is stuff that I do want to talk to you about also. But one thing that I thought that you did was awesome. And I was thinking about trying to do something similar and just having my own spin on it. But you put on your profile description, a featured person, I can't remember if it was the day or the week on your profile. Right? Do you mind kind of talking that through? So I don't I don't mess this up. But I don't know.
It's sure.
And I'd love to hear about kind of the idea behind it, obviously, the mechanics around it. And then if you don't mind sharing, like some of the feedback that you got, and I know it's a lot of work. So I don't know how people can keep up with it. Or, you know, how long do you recommend that people do it. But I thought that was just just a spectacular idea.
I did that over the course of probably, it was probably a 90 day experiment, where what I did is I had a feature person of the week, I would do it for one week at a time. And I would take somebody that was in my network that I felt like other people ought to know. And I would feature a little blurb about them on my profile in my profile, about description, and link over their profile from there. And so it made people more aware of that person. And look, I found that a lot more people visited my profile as a result. So it was sort of, I think this terminology is a little bit overused, but it really was a win win. And I think it was a triple win, actually, because I think the people that were visiting their profile as a result of visiting mine, and vice versa, really got double the benefit from that. Thanks for the reminder of that, because I did it for about 90 days, and I was determined to do it again. And you just sort of reminded me of that Adam and so I think I might run that again for a little while because I have a lot of fun with it.
But please let me know when you do because I'd like to do I'll do like a little video that reminds people that what it is what you're doing to try to really help promote that because it's just such a positive thing. It really again like it shines light on those that maybe someone might not come across. Again, I like to call that a car Matic boomerang. You did it for the good for somebody else in here did. And you said you probably got more of a benefit. So kudos to you. I'm
glad that right. Thank you.
Yeah, you're welcome. So something else that you've done again, there's so many things we could be here all day with all the different unique and cool things that you've done. But you had put out I forgot like the 50 most kind of under the radar people on LinkedIn or something to that effect, which I thought was really cool too. Do you mind explaining that?
Yeah, and in fact, people can still Grab a copy of that. And I mean, do a second edition of that what it was a 50. See, what was the title of that was like 50…50 cool and influential people on LinkedIn or something like that. And you were one of them, by the way, Adam. And yeah, and somebody gave me a hard time. They said, Dude, you're on the first page. I'm like, Well, if I didn't have that kind of opinion to myself, what kind of, am I? So it was, that was a fun thing. And one of our entities was the sponsor of it. So we got a lot of traction out of that and brought a lot of attention to a lot of fantastic people as well. That was dope. I had a lot of fun with that. Well,
it was ironic is, so someone was referred to, I meant to tell you about this like a couple weeks ago. I'm like, gosh, that name sounds so familiar. And then when we connected or not connected, I'm like, oh, wait a second. That's how I know who you are. And it was as a result of that those 50 people. So that's, yeah, me too, to ask you about that today.
You don't remember who it was?
I do. I'll say it offline.
Okay. All right. Yeah.
And then you had another I mean, God, there's so many, that you've got so many Bob isms. I call them one. I think one was you had a guide to becoming how to become more innovative seeing the invisible, so you can do the impossible, you got so many of these kinds of things. Do you mind elaborating on those?
No, and seeing the invisible it's, I call it the seeing the invisible guide that's available on our store on our website for 29.95. But do you mind, frankly, I'm willing to do like a special promo for your listeners. And we can set up like network wise promo code or something, and you can put it in the show notes and people can get 25% off of that. But what it is Adam is it features well, creative thinking methods that you can apply to kind of get yourself out of your own way, thinking wise. And in order to look at situations and problems differently in order to come up with different solutions, because people think they think, but what they're really doing is they're doing a mental circle, they're working really, really hard. And they're coming back to exactly the same place. So what creative thinking methods do is they give them an off ramp to get off that circular freeway and explore new territory in terms of solutions
like that. Yeah, by all means, we will put that in, I think that's something that we can all benefit from. What are other you know, why is creative thinking so important? How does it make innovation easier? Why is it more important now? More than ever? And I'd also like to know how you got involved in this. So I just threw a lot at you. I'm gonna do
well, creative thinking is I think it's always been important. But it's so much more important now. Because things that are sort of done by rote, that our routines used to be Adam. And we sort of were in a knowledge economy. And if you had knowledge about something, and you had routines, and you had right answers, and that was sort of the key to prosperity. And yet now, especially with the advent of offshoring, where you can find somebody in another country, that will work for a half, and they have all the right answers. And they can do routine tasks, or even less expensive, you got machines that can do routine tasks, then what it does is that it takes human beings, and if you can't do that, to make a living anymore, what can you do? Now, some people look at that and go, Well, a lot of people are going to be unemployed as a result. And that's true. The jobs that are routine, task oriented, are going to be done in the future, and frankly, are being done a lot of ways now by machines. And so what does that do though, it frees up human beings to do higher level tasks, and, and look at things in ways and create meanings. And people are not used to doing that. And let me expand on that a little bit further. If you don't mind. Yeah, please do. We are all born as creative thinkers. I mean, you look at children, I have two grandchildren now. And I look at them and all they do and one of them's in kindergarten, and one of them is a preschooler. And all they do all day long is learn new things, and experiment, right? Imagine new possibilities. And it's astounding to watch. And then we send kids to formalized school and that sort of gets trained out of them. And so, as adults, people are not using used to thinking that way. But they still have that ability. It's just dormant. Right? It just has to be reawakened. And I seen this constantly in the training work that we do on the subject, where people just will work with some simple creative thinking methods. And just over the course of half day training, they'll come up with ideas that they're looking around going, where in the world did that come from. And it's just astounding. But it used to be kind of a nice to do, but a new reality, where routine tasks are being done by either lesser paid people or predominantly machines. That is something that human beings are going to have, that is the most in demand. what's referred to as soft skills in the world right now has been the most in demand soft skill for the last two or three years in a row. And yet, there's almost nobody that has any sort of formal training on it. So for organizations like ours, that train on that, and or you sort of do the creative thinking for organizations in the work position pretty well.
So it was really interesting. A few years back the World Economic Forum, they did a study, they suggested that like 65% of the children that were entering primary school today, and I forgot what year this was, will have jobs that just did not exist today. They were saying that this fourth industrial revolution is predicting essentially, like 35% of jobs, not jobs, actually, it's like skills, they're just going to be completely changed by around 2020. And here we are, and pretty sure that's accurate.
Well, look, if you go back and study history, that's kind of always been the case. It's just that the pace of that change has dramatically accelerated.
Yeah. Are you familiar with singularity? That term singularity? I am? Yeah, so it's, I think it's staying at the same rate. I think they said by What 2040? Is that what the year for 2040 or 2050? They're saying that essentially that AI will be equivalent, if not surpass humans, scary, but it's happening.
Yeah, but what I envision, and I think it could go either way, it's like two sides of a coin. But what's good can be bad, right? I mean, think about water is essential to life, but there's too much of it in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's pretty devastating. Right? So it could be good or bad. But what I envision and what I think will happen is sort of a symbiotic relationship between AI and human beings.
Like I'm with you, I think at the end of the day, humans are good at their core, and they'll figure stuff out, it might be darkest before the dawn, but the dawn will come. I do have faith in humanity. But I like getting back to the point of just being able to be creative. I mean, I think that this is a skill that needs to be taught I hate the term soft skill. I think it's more of like a durability skill, especially as it relates to the context of this conversation about being able to recreate yourself and not not get stuck in doing all these mundane tasks. Appreciate the technology, it's fantastic. And be thankful that we're going to be in a position to open up and utilize more of our creativity. So let's learn this creative skill that Bob Sager can help you with?
Absolutely, Well listen, all growth is in the unknown. So if you're going to approach the unknown, with some with some aggressiveness, then being able to think creatively about things helps immensely. It helps to give you confidence that you can work regardless of what happens, you can attack that unknown and grow as a human being.
you've developed some awesome relationships. And I don't know if it's just because people are gravitating towards you with some of these creative strategies that you've had. And that's what I had reached out to you a couple years ago, I'd heard you on a podcast. And that's what attracted me and prompted me to reach out to you I'm like, I like the way this guy thinks. I like the way that he's creative in his thinking. And I like the way that he just thinks about people. I'd love to know you always been a people person. Have you always made relationships? So have they always been so important to you? And like, where does this come from? And how do you think about relationships?
Well, it's an evolution. Look, everybody is predominantly interested in themselves. And in fact, that's one of the things I talk about two organizations, his people do not care about you until it's important enough to them to care about you. So you've got to care about them first, and prosperity, income, whatever. It's a circular system. And this is a something I learned over time. I used to tell people I loved people until I got into selling. But that was a learning curve too. For me. is to understand that people care first and foremost about themselves. So the organizations that are the most successful and ones that will be the most successful are customer centric organizations, but they're not out there pitching, how great their, whatever is, they're focused on, what are the benefits for the customer. And probably even more importantly than that, in their messaging, is what are the benefits. And an analogy on that Adam, is people do not want quarter inch drill bit, they want a quarter inch hole, but they don't really even want a quarter inch hole, what they want to do is they want to hang a picture, and don't really want to hang a picture, they want to be able to look at that picture on a daily basis, and get the enjoyment, the emotional connection to that picture. And whether that's whether it's a piece of art, or a the last picture you ever took with your father. That's what they really want. So when you can make that connection between your product, and that benefit of the benefit to the customer of your product, that's where you've really connected with a customer. But that's something that over time, early in this conversation, we talked about how I've spent my career studying the psychology, sociology and biology of human beings, and what connects with them. Once you understand that, then you're much more able to effectively relate to people.
That's great. By the way, I love the benefit of the benefit. And I thought that analogy with the drill bit. That was great, Bob. Thank you like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt had a famous quote, it's like people don't care how much, you know, until they know how much you care. And I think that kind of piggybacks on what you were talking about before. And then I also heard somebody say once that people don't care about what you do, or who you are, but or they will care who you are, if you care about what they do or something to that effect. And I don't know, getting back to how you've been able to connect with other people. How do you go about making that connection with people when you meet them? Whether it's on LinkedIn or in person? Is it by just listening to them? First? Is it showing that you care about them? What are you doing?
A few years ago, a person came to me and said he was so frustrated. He and his company were so frustrated with LinkedIn. He said, because we put all this time and effort into getting our posts, right and getting the verbiage right, but he said, Can you help me with some strategies to be more effective on LinkedIn? I said, Absolutely. And so we put together what I call the LinkedIn success strategy is sort of subtitled turning LinkedIn into your golden ticket. And we have that available. Now. It was exclusive to him in his company, for a period of year. But after that, we're able to make it available. And so we've got that for I think we sell it for like 40 bucks or something on our website, and it has all those in it. But at the heart of everything that's in that strategy is this mindset, which is, it's about them, it's not about you. And when I look at people posting, and even engaging in the comments in the DMs on LinkedIn, what I see is, it's all about them, it's not about me. And that's sort of you got to flip yourself around. You know, I heard a story early in my career. And the more I think about this story, the more impact it's had on me is that two people stood on opposite sides of a curved wall. And a person on one side of the wall looks at and says that's a concave wall. And the person on the opposite side says, No, it's not as a convex wall. Now who's right? Well, from their own perspective, they both are, right. So it's that person who can go around on the other side of the wall and look at things from the other person's point of view. They can have real empathy. And that's where sort of leadership and human relations comes from, is being able to see things from the other person's point of view. And if you can't do that, you're probably going to struggle in business.
So empathy is to you. That's a paramount skill set that someone needs to have to be able to develop the right types of relationships at work like you've done
without question, and it's a choice. Yeah.
It takes practice though.
It absolutely does. It's almost so you got to go counter to human nature. Because human nature is think about your First, I mean, think about when you look at a family photo that you're in, who's the first person you notice? You always look for yourself first, right? Yeah. You know. So that's reality. So you've got to, but you've got to realize that this prosperity that you want in life, it's a circular system, it's a system of giving and receiving. But you've got to give first, think about the circulatory system in your body, you've got, when your heart's pumping out blood, it's going to go throughout your body, it's gonna take oxygen to all the rest of your body's gonna come back through your lungs get re oxygenated, and then the system continues. So that's fine. But if your heart stopped pumping out blood, you're in big trouble. So what you've got to do is you've got to be the heart that pumps out value to others first, and be willing to receive it when it comes back to you, which it always will
love all these analogies that you're just springing on us. This is good stuff, Bob, what has been some of the keys to maintaining some of these relationships that you've had over a long period of time? Are there things that you can recommend other people do?
Yeah, just always be willing to help. There's something that I say to people all the time is, in what ways can I assist you, that will help further your success. And you just have to have faith. And you can understand that there's a human principle called the principle of reciprocity, that when you help somebody, they begin to look for ways that they can help you. Now, I don't think that's the reason you ought to help somebody, you need to do it without sort of a quid pro quo mindset. In other words, it's not just, you're not just developing markers, right, where you can call like the Godfather and call in a favor, at some point in time, right that's not it, you're just doing it because you want to not because there's something in it for you. Even though you know, that karmically, you're creating your own good karma by doing that. And oftentimes, Adam, the things that come back to you in terms of prosperity, don't come from the person that you help, they come sort of out of left field, and just totally out of the blue, somebody will reach out to you and go, we've never talked. But so and so told me, you're the person to talk to you about this.
I love that it's networking works. It may not work exactly how you want it to work. Or when you want it to work, it may not even work exactly where you want it to work. But it works. It's going to benefit you somehow, in some time somewhere. But like you said, you have to believe that it's going to work.
And it does if you do it right. Good point. good at it. I mean, early in my career, my vision and my understanding of networking, was go out and meet a bunch of people and pitch them as much as you could, right? Give your elevator pitch to as many people as possible. Well, that is not the right way to network.
That's the way to get people you want to avoid,
what should people be doing right now. Because I try to encourage you don't network for need. So I try to encourage people, when you're at the top of the mountain, there's no better time to be truly networking, or what I like to call to network wise, because that's the time when you're making money, you're in a good position in life with work, your family's good, all of your moons have a line, you essentially have the most to give. And that puts you in a position to add the most value to other people. So when you're in that spot, do as much as you can, as often as you can, without expecting anything in return. And hopefully, or actually, you know, hopefully, you'll never need anything. But if you have planted enough seeds, there will be a time that maybe not necessarily you need something but there will be other people in your networks that have a need. And you will be in a position that you can you know, help them or you can have that ask, what are your thoughts on that?
Well, you know, Harvey Mackay, as a great book that people ought to read called dig your well before you're thirsty.
Right. And then into your reading. I feel like in school like like high school that I strongly believe
that well, without a doubt. And the point to that is kind of what I'm talking about with this circulatory system, that you develop this goodwill with people. And so when you need something or you're wanting to connect somebody, I had this yesterday, and this was not for me, but it was for somebody else had it. I can't say he's a kid. He's 25 years old. I had a kid reach out to me and asked me, How do I do something and it was something career wise. And I said, Well, you should read my article that I wrote on LinkedIn called How to land your dream job. That's first you did he read that? And he got back to me said, Okay, now what do I do? And so he's in the IT field. And so I have somebody that I know a good friend, who was a career Navy man and did IT stuff in the Navy. Now he does that as a private citizen. And I said, How about if I connect you with him, and he can advise you, because that's more his field than mine. So I reached out to my friend, I said, Hey, would you spend a few minutes with this guy? And give him some advice? He's like, absolutely. So stuff like that. But if I, if I did need something Adam, if I needed a connection in some industry, there are several dozen people that I could reach out and ask them. Hey, who do you know, that's in this industry? That I can talk to? You mentioned dDavid Meltzer before, and I'm sure he said this on your show. That's one of the key questions to ask is you who do you know that can help me with this?
Oh, yeah. I mean, he's fantastic, too. I mean, it's his mindset. His story is just great.
Yep. He's on it. Yeah, he
really is. His network is everything. I mean, it's, it's what's put him on the map twice. Which is really interesting. And I think you touched on this earlier about just the mindset, the importance of that, and people look at networking as a cost of time rather than an investment. Again, getting back to that mindset and perspective. But I bet you wouldn't find it to be a cost of time when you need something from someone.
And I think what it comes down to, when people talk about cost or investment or whatever, people won't do anything in life, not long term that they don't want to. So you, you kind of have to make that a choice of wanting to an example of that doing something that you want to I decided on July 19 of this year, and we're recording this to the end of October, July 19 of this year, I was going to walk every day, I knew I needed to get more exercise, it was an area in my life that was lacking. And I just decided I was going to start walking, and I have not missed a day since then that's over 90 days. And I sort of leveraged myself by telling people I haven't missed a day since July 19. And I like saying that, so I continue to do it. But it's a choice to want to do something. And in the same way with networking, you have to want to do it, you might be able to will yourself to do it temporarily. But eventually, if you don't really want to, you're not going to keep it up. So that's the key right there is you've got to want to help people, you've got to want to network effectively, network wise, as you can say so perfectly with your company. And so you've got to want it or you're not going to do it long term.
Any suggestions on how to help people get into the mindset of wanting to do it, because I agree wholeheartedly. And that is, candidly the biggest challenge that my company does face with people because they're coming to us,
well, either companies are hiring us to it because they obviously believe in the value of what it does. But when we are working with the individuals, that is the hardest challenge, because if people don't want to do it, they're not going to do it. So I would love to get your perspective on how to help people really understand how important it is. So they do want to do it.
Well, I think what they have to do for themselves, is say, you what are the benefits of the benefits here, because that's where the emotional connection comes from. Every human action is a result of how people feel about things. And so if you can connect that, that benefit of the benefit, that real emotional connection to the action, then people are going to want to take the action. And if you don't do that, if that connection is missing, it won't happen long term. So that it for your company, what I would say is, as part of your workshops, as I would do that with our Elite Business Success group, that's one of the weeks that we have of our 12 week session is a benefit of the benefits exercise. And we talk about that in terms of their product offerings. We do that for entrepreneurs, we do that in terms of their product or service offering. But you can do that really for anything, any action that you want to take. If you'll sit there and you'll do that benefited the benefit exercise and drill down on the whys. And I think you'll really hit upon what the emotional motivator is, once you connect that feeling with the action, that feeling to the benefit that we're talking about. Then it will leverage you and you will want to.
I love the benefit of the benefit, by the way, but I think you're 100% right. And, you know, they say that it takes emotion to drive motion. So tapping into that is obviously paramount. What's the best advice that somebody ever gave you?
The best advice somebody ever gave me. I'll tell you a quick story that I had a mentor of mine when I was about 30 or 31 years old. So it's long time ago now. And he looked at me one day. And he said, Bob, you know what your problem is?
Pandora's box.
Well, I sort of stunned me, right. Like, I didn't even realize I had a problem. And after sort of a pregnant pause, I said, what he said, as far as you're right. And after I got done being ticked off at it, I started thinking about it. And what he was really saying was, stop being such a damn know it all. Right? You don't know it all. You can learn from other people. If you stop thinking that you already know everything. I had another mentor of mine that said, it's what you learn after you know it all that makes all the difference. And believe me, I used to be a know it all, and Adam, I think the older you get out and the more you realize there's so much that you don't know that you don't know. And so, always keep an open mind. I have found that when you do that virtually everybody that you encounter, there's something that you can learn from them. Again, alluding to David Meltzer, he calls it or the way he terms that is be more interested than interesting. Yeah. Do you mind if I interject one other thing here, oh, go on LinkedIn, I play a game. I play a game on LinkedIn, over the course of a week, a week Max, like a five Monday through Friday week, I play 20 questions. And what that means is, I have to on, go on a minimum of 20 separate people's posts, and ask an engaging question regarding the post. And sometimes even you read the comments from other people and ask engaging question of genuine interest on their comment. And that one simple thing right there. If people will do that simple thing, please play 20 questions every week and ask those a minimum 20 questions. They'll engage with more people and develop more relationships over the course of a month, and they probably got in last year.
I believe that? I definitely believe that.
How did that come to be
through thinking creatively. But there's a creative thinking method called go opposite. And it's sort of what it sounds like, is you look at sort of what you know, to be true, or what everyone else is doing. And you do the opposite. Just ask yourself, what are my competitors doing? And what's the exact opposite of that? Or look internally as an organization and say, how do we do things, right. And an example of that is Zappos which is now an Amazon company. But even before they were an Amazon company, one of the things that they did is after people's initial 30 day training period, they paid them to leave. They said, Look, we appreciate your time with a company. But we always give people the option after their first I think was 30 days might have been 90 days is we'll give you $2,000 to leave our company right now. And what they found, Adam, was that by doing that, the people that stayed were the people that really believed in the culture. And the people that would leave for a little bit of money. didn't really believe in their company and their culture. And so they found that the people that stayed a lot longer and really bought into what they were doing as a company. It's brilliant.
Isn't it? Brilliant? Absolutely. Brilliant. Yeah. And I love
it. It's so counter. So opposite of what other companies do.
Bob, I gotta thank you for coming on today. I knew that you were going to enlighten us. I knew there are going to be a lot of Bob isms. You shared a lot of wisdom today. I love that one of the benefit I love go opposite. I love your thoughts on engaging with people. I like the way that you think about relationships. You're all about taking the long game. There are a lot of people that can learn a lot of things from you. We will put those links in the show notes. I appreciate you offering those and if there's something that we haven't touched on today, please let me know.
One. Thank you for having me on. And if I have Wisdom, Adam, it's wisdom born of pain. Again, as I told another host of a show that I was on, I had to get my nose bloodied a lot before I stopped getting punched.
Well, you know, getting back to, you know, you referenced Harvey Mackay before, and we were talking about best advice. I mean, he always says the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.
I like that. I love that. Yeah.
And you would reminded me when I'd asked you about that before about some of the best advice you've had, I really concur that the more that I've learned, the more I learned the less than I know.
Right?
Yeah. And it humbles you. Right? Once you realize that, and that sometimes it's one of two things. It's either people don't have enough self confidence with too much, right. They're not open enough to learn and, frankly, was my problem early on, and I'm hoping that I've developed some humility over the years, and then I'm not such a no at all.
Yeah, I don't think anyone's gonna call you that. At least anymore. Yeah,