Speaker 1:
It makes me really happy to see when these little babies crash CNN interviews and BBC interviews.
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:00:06] hey, me too.
Speaker 1:
You get to see the reality. Sometimes I think we brush it under the rug, we cover it up, we don’t want to … but I think people are not only more accepting, but more appreciative of the real.
Speaker 2:
I think that’s probably always been true.
Speaker 1:
You think so?
Speaker 2:
I do. I think that it’s we have this idea that the image is what sells, maybe up to a point. People connect to real people. They always have. We recognize ourselves in others and then that connects us at a different level than, wow that’s impressive.
Speaker 1:
I’m laughing right now because I guess this is also going on a podcast, right Michael?
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So people who can’t see, you had a wonderful wagging tail behind you.
Speaker 2:
I’ve got a dog with his head in my lap right now. Something exciting is happening in the background here, what’s …
Speaker 1:
We have a surprise guest.
Speaker 2:
Oh my goodness gracious.
Speaker 1:
We have a surprise guest. He looks very surprised to be here.
Speaker 2:
I think he’s a little baffled. Well, this is episode 18 by the way, if you’re listening at home. It might help, can’t hurt. For those of you listening on the podcast, we’ve just had a little visitor. He’s not very big at all. How old is he now?
Speaker 1:
[inaudible 00:01:41] how old are you going to be? 11 months tomorrow.
Speaker 2:
11 months. Whoa.
Speaker 1:
We have yet another visitor, if you this guy over here.
Speaker 2:
Oh, goodness. There’s dogs, and babies and everything. It’s very exciting.
Speaker 1:
This is what I get for working from home right now. Would you like to say hi? Would you like to say hi?
Speaker 2:
Hey bud, have you been in a lot of meetings?
Speaker 1:
All like this. Off you go, buddy. Off you go. Mommy’s going to go live. Mommy is live. She’s live.
Speaker 2:
Your mommy is live.
Speaker 1:
Mommy is live.
Speaker 2:
This is real life people.
Speaker 1:
I’m just curious what you’ve been saying to people right now that might help them get in touch more with their true essence or help them through this time.
Speaker 2:
Well, I like to think I say it nicer than this, but the main thing that I say is calm the hell down. Because honestly, until you do that, people don’t want to calm down until they figured it out. But you can’t figure anything out when you’re spinning. It’s like playing pin the tail on the donkey and spinning more, and more, and more and going, why am I finding it so hard to find the donkey’s butt to stick the tail? It’s like, come on. You got to stop spinning and then you can take a look, and then you can see where can I connect? It’s a weird analogy. It’s becoming weirder. [inaudible 00:03:13] I stick my tail on. I have a point. That’s the first thing is for people to really see we genuinely don’t make better decisions when we’re freaking ourselves out. People know that instinctively. So once they’ve calmed down enough to go, of course, that’s true. They tend to actually settle down the rest of the way.
Speaker 2:
The simplest way I think I’ve put it with anyone is, you probably don’t want to start your business strategy session by scaring the shit out of yourself. Then going, okay go, creative ideas. Now once people settle down, kind of like you were saying with, well, what else? What else have you got on the back burner? What else is there? Often stuff comes to mind almost immediately that they can do differently. So there are very few people that I work with who shouldn’t be in business because they know nothing about it. Most people actually, there’s a reason they’re running their business. They know something about it. When they’ve got access to their full brain, and wisdom, and insight, and creativity, and they look at it, they’ve got a lot. They very quickly see, you know what? This is something we can implement immediately.
Speaker 2:
So it’s the difference where it’s like, I don’t know if people have come to you and done this. But where they go, I need a hundred thousand Instagram followers tomorrow. That’s probably not a good short term project. But when you start to see, what do we need to do this week? What’s been interesting is watching clients’ timeframes change. So a lot of clients live six months into the future, four years in the future [crosstalk 00:05:04] future, and are afraid that if they get totally present, they’ll lose growth. It’s actually the opposite in my experience. That the more people really sit with what’s in front of them, the more it sets them up for what might be in front of them three months down the line, six months down the line, one year down the line.
Speaker 2:
We had it personally, where we had a growth target this year that we’ve already hit. Totally not in any way we planned, but simply by responding week by week to what was coming in. Just this longterm setup that we thought was going to be this epic two year project just happened. It really came out of getting out of the future, getting out of the past, getting present and going, what’s in front of me? I always say this, but we’re really good at eating what’s on our plate. We’re really bad at eating what was on our plate yesterday. We’re really bad at eating what we think is going to be on our plate tomorrow. We’re not made for that. We’re made for what’s on our plate today. When people stop being scared of that, actually it’s really fun. They remember why they do it. They remember the thrill of actually helping people and actually growing from that and actually being rewarded for that. That’s why people, most people, do what they do.
Speaker 1:
I love that you said that Michael. I think what’s really fascinating too, was one of the things that we work with our clients on is, I was telling the team yesterday, internally I was having a conversation. I said, well, so much of what we do is moment management. These long five-year, 10 year marketing plans, they don’t work. You don’t even know where you’re going to be six months. Any company that’s got a five-year marketing plan, boy. I’m quite impressed that you know the future, because things just change so quickly where I think what’s working so well in this environment is rapid change. Things that produce dramatic results, that you can do very quickly in taking advantage of things moment to moment. So with COVID, we saw so many of our clients actually have amazing success, hit their goals, go past it because they were very much like you said, leveraging that moment, being in the present. Not saying, what can we do tomorrow?
Speaker 1:
Not, what did we do yesterday? What can we do right now? What makes sense? I’ll forever be grateful. I know that the clients feel good about it. That when I approach them, they say, “This is your moment. Here’s why you have to do this and here’s why you have to do this now.” They listen and they say, “Ah, okay, I get it.” These are the clients that get ahead. I always tell people we have this other problem right now of the wait and see. I’m going to wait and see. The wait and see game. I don’t know what you’re waiting for. I don’t know what you’re waiting to see, but I think if you constantly play that game, it can be very not just disruptive, but very destructive to your business because you’re constantly waiting on other factors.
Speaker 1:
You’re constantly trying to wait, perfect that timing. Where it’s much better to say, what do we have right now? What can we use to our advantage? There’s so many conversations happening in the media for example. We have one client that I thought this was fascinating. They do a medical training, medical training for professionals like injecting Botox and things like that. They’ve always of course, done it physically because they usually need physical people to test things on and do that. We were able to take all of that and move it completely remote. We had the first couple of classes, really successful pilot programs to see, how do students respond? To the point where we could literally send dummies to their homes with saline injections that they could practice, just like we’re doing right now. The doctor could give feedback. The class could watch the technique and give feedback. So in some ways it’s so great because it’s like, you’re staying home. Why not get better? Why not build that muscle? Why not … do you have two dogs?
Speaker 2:
I do. Yes. So one dog is pepper and the black dog is salt.
Speaker 1:
Of course.
Speaker 2:
Of course.
Speaker 1:
Of course. I saw a white tail and now I just saw black tail. I was like …
Speaker 2:
I know.
Speaker 1:
Which funnily, we have one [inaudible 00:09:40] which is the white fluffy dog. I don’t know if you guys saw briefly. We’re getting another puppy this week because we’re nuts like this. So this puppy is three months old, hence the barking and the playful. There’s only so much you can do to control a puppy. We’re getting a second puppy this week, a giant schnauzer. We love giant schnauzers. We lost our dear giant schnauzer a month ago. We’re still broken hearted over it. We got the nephew, his nephew.
Speaker 2:
Oh wow.
Speaker 1:
He’s coming from California. We’re really excited. So we’re going to have similar of white and a black doggy. We just love the giants and we’re going to have two big dogs, and a baby and a business. We’re a little nuts around.
Speaker 2:
That is, to me, speaks to the fun of being responsive, as opposed to trying to control the future. It is so much less pressure to respond to … you know that phrase necessity is the mother of invention?
Speaker 1:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
So clearly most people have experiences of that. But what they don’t get is that the reason necessity is the mother of invention is because of necessity, you got really present with what is. Of necessity, you stopped wishing. Oh, I wish this hadn’t happened or I wish I did … It’s like, you still probably wish that, but it’s like, whatever. I don’t have time to wish that. I need to pay attention. I need to look at what’s going on around me and I need to tap into whatever creative potential I’ve got. Because otherwise, we’re going down. Well, you can do that anytime. You don’t have to wait for COVID. You don’t have to wait for a challenge to your business. You don’t have to wait for it. You can literally show up that way to work every day.
