How to Use Curiosity to Lead Meaningful Conversations with Erika Flowers

The strongest relationships aren’t built when you need them. They’re built long before that.

This week, we’re sitting down with our longtime friend Erika Flowers, Chief Client Officer at Profitable Ideas Exchange, professional trail runner for The North Face, author of “The Growth Engine”, and one of the most thoughtful relationship builders we know. We’ve had versions of this conversation with Erika over the years at Arcadia, but this is the first time we’ve captured it on the mic, and it might be one of the most tactical episodes we’ve ever recorded.

We talk about why investing in people without an immediate return is the foundation of trust, how real partnerships are strengthened through feedback and shared accountability, and why great conversations only matter if you follow through on what you hear. Erika breaks down the systems behind meaningful relationships, from facilitating executive roundtables to her now-famous note card exercise, and shares how curiosity, consistency, and credibility compound over time in both business and life.

What you’ll learn:

• Why long-term relationships outperform short-term wins in business and partnerships
• How client feedback and advisory boards strengthen trust and shared ownership
• What it takes to turn good conversations into real outcomes through consistency and follow-through

Jump into the conversation:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:44) When people get you wrong

(09:20) What Profitable Ideas Exchange actually does

(13:04) Adding value before there’s an ask

(15:07) Curiosity as a leadership skill

(19:06) Process over outcomes and why it works

(24:10) Turning conversations into real results

(30:11) Writing “The Growth Engine”

(32:28) The reality of leading a sales function

(32:50) What drives growth in professional services

(35:24) Why client feedback changes everything

(39:06) Building trust inside your team and outside your walls

(45:51) The note card habit that compounds relationships

(52:03) Rapid-fire reflections

Connect with Erika Flowers: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-flowers/ 

Check out Profitable Ideas Exchange: https://www.profitableideas.com/ 

Check out The Growth Engine: https://www.profitableideas.com/the-growth-engine/ 

Check out Arcadia: https://www.BeArcadia.com  

Connect with Sam Yarborough: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough/ 

Connect with Jason Yarborough: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yarby/ 

Produced in partnership with Share Your Genius

https://www.shareyourgenius.com 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Erika Flowers: Investing in those relationships when there isn’t necessarily an immediate return. I think that’s the foundation of a strong relationship, whether it’s professional or personal. You’re not just doing it because there’s something in it for you. You’re doing it because you one are genuinely interested in helping and connecting with that person and recognize you’re investing in that for the long term. 

[00:00:32] Jason Yarborough: Welcome to the Friends With Benefits Podcast and Arcadia Production. This is the show all about how to grow in business, lead with purpose, and live with intention. We are your co hosting couple. I’m Jason.

[00:00:44] Sam Yarborough: And I’m Sam. Welcome to the show, friends. Hello friends.

[00:00:48] Jason Yarborough: Hello.

[00:00:49] Sam Yarborough: It’s the holiday season.

[00:00:52] Jason Yarborough: This is the holiday season.

[00:00:54] Sam Yarborough: I don’t

[00:00:54] Jason Yarborough: Know the next line of that song.

[00:00:56] Sam Yarborough: I do. For the record, Jason wanted to record an episode for you guys of us just humming Christmas Tunes. Yeah,

[00:01:04] Jason Yarborough: The intro would just flow right into Jingle Bells or something.

[00:01:08] Sam Yarborough: I vetoed that. So

[00:01:11] Jason Yarborough: Fun police.

[00:01:11] Sam Yarborough: You’re welcome. Anyways, today’s guest is a longtime friend, first time guest on the pod. On the pod. She’s been a guest in many places

[00:01:22] Jason Yarborough: At our Arcadia event last year. She was there, both of them.

[00:01:25] Sam Yarborough: We had a local one and then we had our leadership experience and Miss Erika Flowers joined us for both. Erika has such a variety of skills, talents, talents, backgrounds, one of which, speaking of humming,

[00:01:42] Jason Yarborough: Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to kick off with. Anyway,

[00:01:45] Sam Yarborough: Erika and I met in high school. We stood next to each other in jazz choir. We then went very different paths. She went on to become a professional skier.

[00:01:55] Jason Yarborough: Yeah, that’s pretty badass if you ask me.

[00:01:56] Sam Yarborough: I did not do that. And then she started working at a company here locally called Profitable Ideas Exchange, PIE for short. They do phenomenal work. She’s currently their Chief Client Officer, but not only that, she has switched and is now a professional runner.

[00:02:11] Jason Yarborough: Yep. Can confirm she is a professional runner and wins just about every time.

[00:02:15] Sam Yarborough: Yeah. She was in a few races with Jason and I this summer and we didn’t ever see her.

[00:02:21] Jason Yarborough: No, that’s a starting line. Yes.

[00:02:23] Sam Yarborough: She’s also a mom, she’s a wife. She’s an author of a new book called The Growth Engine, which just came out.

[00:02:29] Jason Yarborough: Yep.

[00:02:30] Sam Yarborough: Jason is in the book.

[00:02:31] Jason Yarborough: I was a contributor to a quote. It is about business development and partnerships. So for those of you that are in the partnership space, again, I want to pick this one up. It’s a pretty good one. Happy to direct you in the right direction in the comments below, or we maybe even given away a few copies.

[00:02:48] Sam Yarborough: There is a little nugget in the episode here. So I told Jason after we recorded this episode that I feel like this is one of the most tactical episodes we’ve ever recorded, and there’s very good, easy takeaways for people to use from a business perspective.

[00:03:04] Jason Yarborough: Not to ruin too much, but there is one part in the podcast that she talked about at the Arcadia experience last year that I think just about everybody walked away implementing into their daily activities.

[00:03:16] Sam Yarborough: So without further ado, enjoy today’s episode. We appreciate you friends. Here’s Erika Flowers.

[00:03:22] Jason Yarborough: See

[00:03:23] Sam Yarborough: Y’all. Alright, Erika, we are so happy to have you on the podcast. We’ve had these conversations a few times now, which is really fun. You joined us for our in person Montana Festival, Arcadia Workshop, and then you came and spoke at last year’s Arcadia Leadership conference, which was highlight for so many people. So we’re so excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

[00:03:44] Erika Flowers: I’m so excited to be here. I know it’s like you said, we’ve chatted a bunch but never recorded it, so this’ll be fun. I’m excited

[00:03:51] Jason Yarborough: And another guest where we’re recording with someone from just down the street.

[00:03:55] Erika Flowers: I know

[00:03:57] Sam Yarborough: We love that Bozeman. There’s some really cool people here that we just need to get out of our pockets and two Bozeman locals, which is even more rare.

[00:04:06] Jason Yarborough: That super

[00:04:06] Sam Yarborough: Rare. True. Yeah. Okay. Let’s start with a totally off the wall question. Because you have such a multifaceted life and career and you’re so talented in so many ways, I want to know from your opinion, when people meet you for the first time, what do they get wrong about who you are?

[00:04:28] Erika Flowers: Oh, this is a hard question to start off right off the bat.

[00:04:33] Erika Flowers: So I think the thing that people often get wrong is they look at my background in competitive sports and assume that I’m a very competitive person. And it’s not that that’s totally wrong, but I think there’s an assumption in that, that being competitive means you always want to win. And I think I am much happier playing a role on a team that’s winning than being an individual person that wins. And I think that often surprises people. I’ve wondered sometimes in some ways if maybe that’s held back individual success. I’m a person who’s always happy to be second place on the podium, and not to say that I don’t want to be first, but it’s like I’m just as happy and second if my teammates first. I think that surprises people.

[00:05:21] Jason Yarborough: That is surprising, especially from a professional competitive standpoint. I’ve never played professional sports, but when I ran in high school and college, I was just super competitive and I feel like that just transpires into life now for whatever reason. What is it that drives you from that professional standpoint when you’re out there? First off A, tell us what you are professional, competitive athlete at, but B, what drives you when you’re out there?

[00:05:48] Erika Flowers: My, I guess initial background in professional competitive sports was in cross country ski racing. So I actually was born in Missoula, Montana. I moved to Bozeman when I was about 10 years old and my parents signed me up for the ski team to try and make some friends in addition to Little did they know. Yeah, exactly. And I think I just got hooked. Yes, on the sport, yes, on racing. But I had this amazing group of 10 other gals who were on the team at the same time and we had so much fun just playing out in the snow in the woods.

[00:06:31] Erika Flowers: And so I think that was my first intro to competitive sports. I played soccer and other things growing up, but I think that was the first time where I realized that putting hard work into something could help you get better at it.

[00:06:45] Erika Flowers: And I think I loved that process and I loved the people that I got to do it with. And so fast forward to I ski raced in college. I went to Dartmouth College and then raced for a team called the SMS T two team, which is a professional cross country ski team based in southern Vermont for six years after college.

[00:07:09] Jason Yarborough: Listen, Eric has says she’s dabbling in trail running. I’ve three races with her this past two years. Sammy ran one with her and Erika won all four of them I believe. So dabbling, I dabble, I think Sam maybe you dabble.

[00:07:23] Sam Yarborough: Okay.

[00:07:24] Jason Yarborough: Erika gets out there and freaking rips heads off and dominates the mountain. It’s incredible. Congratulations to you.

[00:07:32] Sam Yarborough: Thank you, Erika. I just got to tell the story really quick because it just cracks me up. First of all, Olson, your son is a year. Yes.

[00:07:39] Erika Flowers: Yep, exactly.

[00:07:41] Sam Yarborough: Okay, so congratulations on entering motherhood, but there’s this race here in Montana called The Rut, and I saw Erika the day before the 50 K, and I saw you late at 6:00 PM and I asked you if you were running the 50 K and you said no, and then you decided sometime between then and the next morning to run the 50 K and you won it.

[00:08:07] Erika Flowers: That was a series of fortunate events, if you

[00:08:10] Sam Yarborough: Will.

[00:08:11] Erika Flowers: I saw everyone out there racing having so much fun, and I hadn’t planned on racing. I just did another race a couple weeks earlier and figured my body wouldn’t be ready for it. I mean anyone who’s had a kid, I was like, you don’t really know how your body’s going to respond postpartum. So I was trying to be careful about that and thoughtful, but everyone seemed like they were having so much fun and I felt good and I was like, well, I might as well jump in.

[00:08:51] Sam Yarborough: It’s the best.

[00:08:52] Sam Yarborough: Okay, so I want to take a pivot here for a second because all of your roles, if we’ll call them, that are super intertwined. And I think that we’ve talked about this a little bit, but your background is a professional athlete. Now as a mom, these show up in every area of your life, but for people that are unfamiliar with the work that you’re doing now, can you just quickly explain what Profitable Ideas Exchange does and your professional journey there?

[00:09:20] Erika Flowers: Yeah, it’s a very unique organization in the ecosystem of professional services. So the simplest way of describing what we do is that we help our clients make new friends. And I think the way by which we do that is working alongside them to identify who are the relationships that are most important to the future of their business. Oftentimes that’s clients, it’s buyers of their services and how can we connect them more deeply to those people to help support the growth of their organization? A client might come to us and say, we know that the future of our business, we provide supply chain consulting and we know that in order to continue to grow as an organization and serve the market, we need to know the chief supply chain officers of the biggest companies in the world.

[00:10:17] Erika Flowers: PIE, can you help us get to know them, listen to what they care about, understand what their needs are to better position ourselves to serve them and develop substantive relationships with them over time. So when they have a felt need, we’re the first provider that they’re going to go to get help. And so we do that across all different industries, across all different types of executive functions. The clients we serve are all within professional services. So what I mean by that is accounting, legal management, consulting, that’s who hires us and then we build out communities of whoever they want to get in front of and help them capitalize on that through other things like business development training and client advisory boards and producing thought leadership, for example, based on what we hear in conversations. So we do a lot of things, but I think at the end of the day we’re helping our clients connect with the people they want to know that are foundational to the future of their business.

[00:10:57] Jason Yarborough: That’s incredible. So it’s safe to say that you’re in the business of relationships, which is

[00:11:01] Erika Flowers: Absolutely, yeah. I basically just get to talk to people all day and ask them interesting questions, which is so fun.

[00:11:07] Jason Yarborough: I love

[00:11:07] Erika Flowers: That. It’s literally why this podcast is called Friends With Benefits.

[00:11:10] Jason Yarborough: That’s what I was about to say. Funnily enough, the running joke is that we get paid to make friends and driving certain results and benefits out of those friendships on a professional level anyway. What is it that you’ve seen or experienced that allows you to accelerate those, what I might call purpose built relationships or Aristotle would call utility relationships in a hurry with those potential prospects on behalf of your clients?

[00:11:36] Erika Flowers: So I think the key is investing in those relationships when there isn’t necessarily an immediate return. I think that’s the foundation of a strong relationship, whether it’s professional or personal. You’re not just doing it because there’s something in it for you. You’re doing it because you one are genuinely interested in helping and connecting with that person and recognize you’re investing in that for the long term. I think the reason sales leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouth is they think of the classic car salesman who is trying to make a quick buck and is selling you a lemon. And no one wants to be on the receiving end of that as opposed to someone who’s invested in understanding you, your priorities, what you’re looking for, how they can help you both today and 10 years from now, whether or not there’s something in it for them. So I think developing trust that the person’s doing what’s in the best interest for you, even when your back is turned, and also credibility, the experience that you bring to the table so that the advice or help that you’re offering is grounded in experience are kind of two of the critical things when you are looking to develop long term relationships.

[00:12:45] Jason Yarborough: So when you’re looking to reach out to someone new, so let’s say if you’re working with a client and they’re like, we want to talk to these buyers, and you’re reaching out to someone you don’t have a previous relationship with, what are you seeing that is landing and working to begin to establish connection and conversation with that company?

[00:12:45] Jason Yarborough: So when you’re looking to reach out to someone new, so let’s say if you’re working with a client and they’re like, we want to talk to these buyers, and you’re reaching out to someone you don’t have a previous relationship with, what are you seeing that is landing and working to begin to establish connection and conversation with that company?

[00:13:04] Erika Flowers: Yeah, it’s a good question. So I think the first rule of thumb is to add value first. So rather than reaching out and saying, Hey, I have all these services I want to talk to you about, say, Hey, I’m actually I’m going to connect you with peers, I’m going to connect you with others who are in similar roles in similarly sized companies so that you can ask questions not of this service provider who wants to sell you something, but of others who are in the same seat as you are to learn from them. And I think we guide our clients to treat that as the first coffee date, if you will, on a first coffee date. You’re not going to say, Hey, here’s a ring, want to get married? You’re going to going to approach it with curiosity and say, okay, my job number one is to listen, ask good questions and provide something of value, which is connecting with other people who have similar questions and hopefully also good answers. So that’s I think how we approach building out these communities and we also do it in a way that makes it easy for them to say yes, we don’t ask for a ton of their time, we make it a light lift on them. And I think that also is a lot of the value proposition, if you will.

[00:14:08] Sam Yarborough: Okay. So I think your business is so fascinating. I’ve had the privilege of being a customer in a previous role, so I’ve actually got to witness this real time. One of the things that you all are tremendous at is facilitating you facilitate conversations around, well, first of all with high level executives around sometimes pretty high stake problems, but around very different industries or use cases, yet you’re all dialed in asking great questions and making sure every voice in the room is heard and a part of the conversation.

[00:14:45] Sam Yarborough: And so I want to you a little bit about that skill of facilitating and how I think in the world of partnerships or really business facilitation is a skill that can get used so far yet is not often talked about. So we’ll hang out there for a second. What is it that you’ve learned about the skill of facilitating and what advice do you have for others?

[00:15:13] Erika Flowers: Such a good question. So I think first is that I think we have a predisposition to want to facilitate by pushing rather than pulling. And I think a good facilitator does a really good job of pulling. And what I mean by that is they’re not the one asking the questions, but they’re the one inviting others to ask questions. And I think that’s what makes people feel invested in the conversation. It’s not only talking to them ahead of time to find out what should we talk about in this conversation, what’s important to you taking time one-on-one to understand that that’s all foundational to being a good facilitator. It’s like the background research, but once you’re in the room, I think I’ve heard for example, Sam, okay, you have X, Y, Z questions. So one way to facilitate would be to say for me to just ask the group your question a better way is to ask you to ask the group the question and tune that up in a way that makes you a participating in engaged member of the conversation rather than me driving the conversation.

[00:16:08] Erika Flowers: So I think that’s a good facilitator is almost like the kind of support or sidekick to the main stars of the conversation, which is all the other participants. So that’s I think a big piece of it. I think the other is just remembering that your goal, especially if it’s a group of people that don’t really know each other, is just to help others connect with one another and find those areas of overlap. We all get so excited when we meet someone we’ve never talked to before and realize we both went to the same high school growing up or perhaps spent two years living down the street in Boston together and didn’t know we were only a block away. Those little pieces of connection are the other things that I think make people, I dunno feel like they’re a part of a community. And so if you can help make those connections, I think that also makes your job as a facilitator a lot easier because you’re creating a space where everyone else in the room feels connected to the others as opposed to you being a presenter to all individuals.

[00:17:03] Erika Flowers: It becomes a little bit more of a collective. I think there’s other basic logistical things like table setting is a huge piece of it. I think setting expectations for what the conversation’s going to look like and preparing in advance to guide it in that way is really helpful. It’s setting the rules of the road. I’m sure there’s plenty of books and philosophy fees around how to do this well. I think Priya Parker has a lot of good information on how to be intentional with the types of gatherings you’re bringing together, but I think a lot of that

[00:17:32] Jason Yarborough: Comes from

[00:17:33] Erika Flowers: Big fan Pri Parker from She’s amazing. The Art of Gathering I think is so, so foundational. It’s like what it means to bring together a good gathering and facilitate a good gathering. But a lot of that comes from expectation setting and being intentional and outset who’s in the room and what are you prepping them with so they know how to show up and what are you prepping other hosts with so they know how to show up. And so when people arrive, there isn’t uncertainty and fumbling around. Everyone’s clear on here’s what we’re trying to accomplish today, here’s how we’re going to do it and here’s how we’re going to engage with one another to make the most of the time that we have. So those are a couple of the things that I think are foundational at PIE to ensuring that everyone walks away from a conversation both our clients and hosts as well as the executives feeling like that was really valuable and they walked away with something that they can carry with them going forward.

[00:18:24] Sam Yarborough: I think it’s so interesting because a lot of what you just talked about was just humanity, to put it softly, soft skills, making connections, making people feel seen, value and heard. And you are running a phenomenal business. And I think a lot of times, especially in the world of partnerships or sales or any type of relationship based businesses, metrics are the first thing that people look at and it’s the thing that people are measured on. So I’d love your perspective on that. How do we take these skills that are so needed to run and build trusted relationships and apply metrics to them, if at all?

[00:19:06] Erika Flowers: I feel fairly strongly, and this is something that comes from sport, that the metrics are important because they allow you to measure and track progress. You’re never going to ignore those, but I think they’re a natural outcome of doing the process things well. And so if I take that from a sports lens, it’s like you could spend all day thinking about the fact that you want to win the Olympics. That could be your goal. You could be like, okay, I know to win the Olympics, I need to qualify for the Olympics. I need to get top three in this race. I need to win this race. You could spend all day talking about the numbers you need to hit, but at the end of the day, the thing that’s going to get you there is not focusing on those outcome metrics, but it’s the pieces and processes that need to happen that will lead to that outcome.

[00:19:53] Erika Flowers: And so those things are like, I know that in order to win the Olympics, I need to train for 800 hours this year. I need to do that. I need to get a good night’s sleep every night to do that. I need to make sure I’m fueling my body well. I need to make sure I’m planning out training two to three months in advance and then adapting based on what I learned from heart rate data. There’s all these things that often view the end goal is the top of the pyramid and then all this other stuff is the bottom of the pyramid.

[00:21:00] Jason Yarborough: Love it. So in the sense of training and all the work you’ve got to do to make the Olympics, as you guys begin to set up these facilitated conversations, what does the prep work look like for that and how are you coaching your team to guide these conversations, research these conversations and people? And I’m only asking, I feel like there was a group of people that are listening that may glean from how you guys lead conversations and get to a certain point and how they’re guiding their own conversation. So what does research and curiosity look like from the perspective of someone who does this for a living?

[00:21:36] Erika Flowers: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned curiosity. I think that’s so foundational that everything that we do, even when we’re hiring, if it’s a candidate who’s applying and they ask smart question would be, okay, what do you look for in successful candidates? Who are the people who thrive at PIE? And one of the biggest answers to that is people who are curious, people who are curious about the world, who are interested to learn, who are interested to engage. And so I think in the lead up to if we’re hosting a round table session on behalf of a client, there’s a couple of things that we do to make sure we’re successful in that. One, it’s aligning with our client, what do they want to get out of this? What’s on their strategic roadmap? How do we make sure that this is aligned to their goals and what are the outcome metrics that they’re going to look for at the end of it so we can high five and feel like that was a success? 

[00:22:21] Erika Flowers: And then it’s taking that and going and talking to everyone who’s going to attend the session to interview them and do just that. Ask them, okay, what do you want to get out of this session? It’s almost like asking them the same question, what are the things that are keeping you up at night? What are the things that you continue to ask yourself and aren’t getting answers to those questions from other sources? Knowing you have other people in similar positions in the same room as you, what are the questions you’d want to ask them? I think that allows us to build, take all those, if we’re doing 30 different interviews, for example, use all those data points to create an agenda with the sticky areas of overlap that is going to be interesting and relevant to everyone in the room. I think the other thing that we do that is simple but I think goes long ways, is we actually use the executives language.

[00:23:08] Erika Flowers: So sometimes they might frame it in a way that you could put into AI and it would be a lot more polished and coherent and cogen if you did that. But I think actually using their words helps them see themselves in the agenda. And I think that’s powerful too. Sometimes our clients will be like, oh, we won’t word it that way. And you’re like, you’re right. We could change it. We could word it in the way that you’re pitching it to the market, but this is the way that your market is talking about it. So it actually resonates in a very different way.

[00:24:10] Erika Flowers: And so once we’ve done all those interviews and we’ve prepped with our client and we’ve pulled together an agenda, we have a roadmap for our call, we kind of prep with our client to talk through what that roadmap looks like, and then we have all the content from every conversation that’s helping us kind of move the conversation around the room and pull in quiet voices. We know Sam over here has a question and Jason has the answer to that question, or Jason has this question and Sarah over here has an answer. And so helping make those, it makes the job of actually facilitating a lot easier because you have this roadmap based on the research you’ve done in advance.

[00:25:24] Sam Yarborough: Okay. I just have to say really quick because first of all, I was a customer of PIE before I ever went into partnerships and then I got a partnerships role and I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

[00:25:57] Erika Flowers: No, I think that’s exactly right. And what’s funny is in some ways it’s brilliant and on the other side it’s like it’s not rocket science. It’s so simple. And I think we tell that to our clients. I think it’s why we’re very clear about what we do and how we do it because it’s not like we have some magic magic behind the scenes. I think the magic is just doing it consistently and doing it well, paying attention to the details and the consistency.

[00:27:00] Jason Yarborough: Absolutely. I want to go back to the C word. We talked about curiosity. One of the things I think it’s

[00:27:05] Erika Flowers: Like what C word

[00:27:07] Jason Yarborough: I think a lot about friends with benefits is do you believe you can teach curiosity? And if so, how would you go about coaching to curiosity or teaching curiosity?

[00:27:19] Erika Flowers: I like to believe you can coach anything. So I think the short answer is yes. I think the longer answer is I think some people have an innate curiosity more than others. So I think you can coach it and you can help cultivate it. I think part of that is finding the things that are organically interesting to people and then helping them follow that innate interest to ask more questions around it. I think that’s kind of how you teach it. It has to start with something that they’re already interested in and then helping them discover how to learn more about that thing that they are already passionate about. But I do think there’s certain people who are just more innately curious about things outside of their direct passions and interest areas and about the world. So that’s my take.

[00:28:04] Jason Yarborough: It’s going back to something else you said as well. It’s like find something you’re passionate about but put a lot of the reps in to asking the questions you guys have put a lot of reps in to facilitating and getting really good at it as a result. So anytime I talk to somebody that’s trying to become more curious, you just got to put the reps in. You may not be a good question asker now, but the more questions you ask, I think the better you get at it, the more you get the results you want.

[00:28:26] Erika Flowers: Yeah, no, I have this uncle who lives in Missoula and I remember this so distinctly. I was probably, I don’t know, maybe eight or nine. And we went out to dinner, some restaurant, we were sitting around a round table, I think it was outside of Missoula. And we sat down and the waitress brought us all our menus and uncle started asking her questions and they chatted for probably 20 minutes and she finally left and put our orders in and I remember Trina and be like, how do you seem to just make best friends with this random waitress for our table? And he said, the reality is most people like talking about themselves more than they listening to other people. And he’s like, I know I can make people feel good by just asking ‘em questions. And he’s like, for me, I always learn something by doing.

[00:29:09] Erika Flowers: So he’s like, that’s kind of my rule of thumb is I like to ask questions and if you ask enough questions, you’re always going to learn something interesting and the person’s going to feel really good about themselves because they feel like someone’s interested in what they’re doing. And so I think that stuck with me and it’s really easy to show up in a room and I don’t know anyone here, there’s nothing for me here. But I think if you ask enough questions, there probably is. And there’s probably some connection or something you’ll learn from anyone in any room just asking enough in the right questions of them without making ‘em feel like they’re on the spot being interrogated.

[00:29:45] Jason Yarborough: Absolutely. I can speak from experience that it’s a blessing and a curse to be able to make best friends anywhere and everywhere you go, but different story

[00:29:52] Erika Flowers: As his partner. I can also, you literally can’t watch downtown without getting stopped in sometimes. I’m like, can we just order please

[00:30:01] Jason Yarborough: For those that do need help, you can use pie prompts to better help yourself, get more curious if you would like product plug.

[00:30:07] Erika Flowers: Oh, love the shout.

[00:30:09] Jason Yarborough: Speaking of product plugs most, we haven’t broke news yet, but Erika and I, we co-wrote a book together last year.

[00:30:16] Sam Yarborough: Someone put more work into it than the other, but

[00:30:18] Jason Yarborough: Yeah, my contribution was a quote, but I am mentioned in the book, so I’m just kidding.

[00:30:24] Erika Flowers: The quote based on years of experience though.

[00:30:27] Jason Yarborough: That’s right. That’s right. It was the backbone of the book I heard. So anyway, Erika and her cohorts at PIE put out a book called The Growth Engine. I Relationships are the real Leverage, highly encourag anyone to pick it up and read it. But Erika, real quick before we jump into the book, tell us a little bit about the book and how this one came about. This is you guys’ third book and it kind of dives into some partnership and business development stuff. So how did this one come about?

[00:30:50] Erika Flowers: Yeah, great question. So our former CEO man by the name of Tom McMakin wrote a book before I even started working at Pie called How Clients Buy. And it was all focused on how professional services firms win new logos, so how they sell to new clients. And I think Tom felt really good about that book. He had a co-author that he wrote it with and we shared it with a bunch of our clients saying, oh, here’s the guidebook, here’s how you win new work, which is what we help them do to some degree. And I think it was a executive from IBM who said, yep, yeah, interesting book, interesting content, but you wrote the wrong book. And he said, excuse me. And they said, yeah, most working professional services isn’t new logo, 80% of it comes from existing clients. You should have written a book about how to win work with existing clients, not new logos.

[00:31:37] Erika Flowers: So he said, okay, I guess we’ll go back to the drawing board. So he then partnered with our now president and wrote a second book that I helped edit that it’s called Never Say Sell. And that was all about how you land and expand within clients. So if you’re doing one thing with a client, how do you cross serve, cross-sell other types of offerings and move around the relationship map within an organization to expand your footprint. So we thought we were done, we told folks how to win new logo work and we told them how to land and expand within clients and didn’t have formal plans to write a third book until we brought on a board member for a board at PIE who former McKinsey and Country. And he said, yeah, these are both good, but man, the hardest thing for me was figuring out how to wrangle the, he called it wrangling wet cats and pirates on a pirate ship to get them coming in the same direction.

[00:32:28] Erika Flowers: And I think what he meant by that was trying to lead and grow a world-class sales function is really hard. People in sales and business development roles are their own unique beings that trying to get them all to move in the same direction to support a business is quite challenging. And there’s the people piece of it, but there’s also the systems piece of it. And so as we started to dig into this and get curious around what causes, what makes this so hard as firms look to grow and scale, I think we found a couple different key areas and themes across the conversations we started having and decided there and to write a book on, okay, how do you take a firm and professional services company that sells their expertise, not a company that sells a physical product per se, and how do you go from an entrepreneurial single shingle shop and turn it into a world-class growth engine?

[00:33:24] Erika Flowers: And so we across hundreds of different interviews asked a lot of these questions around, okay, what does service expansion look like? What does client growth and client expansion look like? What is the organizational model that you need to have in place to serve to do that work and serve those clients? What is the talent structure and who are the people you need to bring in? How do you develop that talent and what are the tools and the frameworks you need both when you have five employees and when you are world-class and have a global workforce to enable them to sell and serve clients effectively? So it was a very fun project to dig into and took probably a year and a half, two years between the research and the writing with the team. But that was our third book that it came out earlier this year in September and it’s available on Amazon and Brides and Noble and anywhere you buy books Now today,

[00:34:18] Sam Yarborough: If anybody’s listening, send me a DM with the words wet cats and we will pick somebody to send a copy of the book too.

[00:34:26] Erika Flowers: Absolutely.

[00:34:26] Jason Yarborough: You can just DM me pirate and I’ll send you one as well if you don’t feel comfortable DMing wet cat.

[00:34:33] Erika Flowers: I will say we tried to name it that and our publishers said absolutely not.

[00:34:37] Jason Yarborough: Oh

[00:34:38] Erika Flowers: Yes, we tried to name it Herding Wet Cats and Pirates or something. He was

[00:34:43] Sam Yarborough: Like, no, I mean it’s kind of like our podcast name. It can only get you so far.

[00:34:50] Jason Yarborough: I was just going to ask in the writing of this book, what about partnerships did you learn that is probably the most misunderstood part of partnerships today?

[00:34:59] Erika Flowers: So I think one that is specific is I think when clients think about partnering when our clients, or I should say when growth leaders think about partnering with clients, people they want to do business with, sure they think about it as mutual and a two way street and we’re serving them, we’re not selling them. We hear that all the time. I think there’s a huge allergy to the word sales and professional services.

[00:36:03] Erika Flowers: But I think one of the things that we notice is just wildly underinvested in professional services is client feedback and client advisory boards. So not just partnering with your clients and what you’re doing from them, but also inviting them to table to help you co create the future of what you’re doing and also inviting their candid and sometimes negative feedback around what you’re doing and how you’re serving them.

[00:36:43] Sam Yarborough: I think that’s such a good call out and a few moments where I’ve noticed this, ands seen it come true. So I think most partner teams are partnered with sales to start because it’s a pipeline driving activity more often than not.

[00:38:10] Erika Flowers: Absolutely. And I think in that bringing clients to the table for those conversations, I think one of the most dangerous things is a bunch of consultants in a room with a whiteboard, you’re going to get to an answer that’s going to look really pretty, but it doesn’t have the customer or the client voice in it or IT risks not having it in it.

[00:39:05] Sam Yarborough: Totally. Okay. I want to ask because you have a unique vantage point of being both the author but also an operator. How do you actually use relationships as a growth engine inside pi?

[00:39:19] Erika Flowers: Do you mean internally or with clients or what do you mean by that?

[00:39:24] Sam Yarborough: Well, I meant externally, but now I mean both. I think internal relationships are often really overlooked as a growth lever. So I’d love to hear your perspective on both.

[00:39:36] Erika Flowers: Yeah, we did an interesting interview during the book that I keep coming back to because it was a very simple framework, but I think it’s quite useful. That speaks in particular to the internal relationship development piece. It was a woman who she leads the team at Pearl Meyer, which is a firm that does comp consulting for large firms. And she said they have this framework for when they bring in new team members where your goal from day one is first and foremost to be a trusted colleague. And then once you’ve established yourself as a trusted colleague, someone that other people in the organization trust and believe is doing good work, even when others’ backs are turned, you then develop to become a trusted resource. So you’re not only someone that people trust as an individual, but you’re also someone people trust to provide helpful information, resources, execute on tasks and provide additional help in other areas.

[00:40:32] Erika Flowers: And then once you do that, that’s when you earn the right to become a trusted advisor. So you’re not only a resource responding to us, but you’re actually then trusted advisor is someone who’s proactively advising and helping and guiding. But there’s a bit of a maturity curve even in that. And so I think when I think about internally and developing strong relationships, like I talked at the outset, I’m so much happier working on a really well functioning team that’s going after something together. And so I think about investing both at the individual level as well as in larger group settings and making sure the team feels like I’ve got their back. And I think there’s little things you can do. It’s not throwing your colleague under the bus on a group meeting. I see this all the time at PIE in the good way, and it goes a long way.

[00:41:19] Erika Flowers: I was on a call the other day with our president and there had been a mistake on an email that had been sent out and another colleague asked about it and said, Hey, why did we invite them to this session? They weren’t supposed to be there. And our president immediately was like, that was completely on me. I goofed up on that. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, even though I know it wasn’t on him. But his role in that was as the most senior person in the room to take responsibility for the mistake not to throw his more junior colleague under the bus. And that just speaks volumes to me about how you show up for your team and the people around you. And I think it breeds a lot of trust and strong relationships that there’s also not the meeting after the meeting where you have a meeting and afterward everyone’s scrolling into their offices and debriefing and judging and that sort of thing.

[00:42:04] Erika Flowers: And so I think everything that we can do to avoid the meeting after the meeting kind of take ownership and responsibility and have the back of our people, whether it’s in an internal meeting or particularly on a client meeting, not throwing, saying, oh, that was Jesse’s mistake over there. It wasn’t mine. But I think it goes a lot further when you’re taking ownership and responsibility for it. And then I think we talked about at the beginning, just investing in the human, I think recognizing that, yeah, we all have these jobs, we work in these offices, but at the end of the day, we’re all human. And I think PIE consistently puts the human ahead of the worker, if you will, and I think that goes a long way.

[00:42:40] Jason Yarborough: I think if you invest in more of the human, you’ll find that they take the responsibility and the ownership the more that you invest in them. And so it all kind of revolves and wraps around that.

[00:42:48] Erika Flowers: No, that’s absolutely true. And I guess, I mean realistically how you do that externally isn’t so different. I think what I’ve learned the longer I’ve been here is that there are lots of different ways to do that. And I think where the magic happens is when you find your own way, there are certain principles like, oh, if you have an opportunity to make a personal connection, do and come back to that and really listen and hear for that. And you can also build that by sharing your long history of everything you've done at the company. I haven't been at PIE since its start, but some people here have. And so I think that's one way that they build kind, trust and connection and credibility when they meet new people is they're able to lean on that. And I might not have that, but I think there's other ways in which I've found to connect with people in part driven by that curiosity and part driven by just listening and asking good questions and seeking to understand and actually hear what people are saying. And I think if you can reflect that back to them, it goes a long way as well.

[00:43:46] Jason Yarborough: And if all those fails deliver the lanap,

[00:43:49] Erika Flowers: Deliver the lanap. Oh my gosh. When I first started pie, I was like, what is this word? I’ve never heard of this, but I think that’s something we do often. So LANAP just means it’s like the 13th bagel and a Baker’s Dozen, for example. And I think we are constantly looking for opportunities to just go above and beyond for our clients. And that doesn’t mean going out of scope, but yeah, surprise and delight. Do something that can bring joy in a small but often meaningful way. It goes in a lot of ways. So if someone has a baby or is out for a wedding, sending them a little gift and card to say, Hey, congratulations, that sort of thing. Or if they’ve had a loss in their family, making sure we’re treating them as a human first and not focusing on the work being delayed or any of that sort of thing.

[00:44:34] Erika Flowers: But even a couple years ago, what was this? It was one gal on our team who knew that her client stakeholder loved whales or something, or manatees, I can’t remember. And so for the holidays, we send out client gifts, but she’s like, I really think it would go a long way to send her an adopt a manatee thing. And so I’m pretty sure she adopted a manatee on behalf of this client and sent it over and was like, I know how much you love manatees. And she’d had a big promotion or something. So it was something related to that. But I think that ability to know your client enough to know the thing, it was maybe $25 to adopt this manatee and buy them food for a year, but it went so far with that client and it’s stuff like that that it’s fun. And it also is, I think, meaningful in ways we often don’t even realize.

[00:45:22] Jason Yarborough: Exactly. I love it. I love it.

[00:45:24] Sam Yarborough: We talked a lot about creating human connection, staying consistent, showing up in ways that isn’t just when you have your handout asking for something. You’ve shared this a few times in the previous conversations we’ve had, but explain the note card exercise to those that may be unfamiliar,

[00:45:42] Jason Yarborough: Which is one of those things that was very meaningful to our Arcadia members this year.

[00:45:45] Sam Yarborough: People are still talking about Erika, and they text me, they’re like, I did my note cards today. I love that.

[00:45:51] Erika Flowers: I mean, I have mine right here. I think the beauty of it is, again, it’s simple, but it’s doing the little things well consistently. So one thing that I’ve found is helpful and we teach anytime we’re doing a business development workshop is this note card exercise, which is get 30 note cards and write down the names on the front of each note card, one name per note card of someone you that is important to your business, to your personal network that you want to stay in touch with over the next year many years. And you can have more than 30 names and you can have less, but I’d say 30 is a good place to start. And on the front of the note card, write their name. Once you’ve kind of filled out every note card, just set them on your desk. The first thing you do every day is you get to your office, get to your desk, whatever you get back to your computer and grab the top note card and write out either a note or a text or pick up the phone and give a call to the person who’s on that note card.

[00:46:49] Erika Flowers: And it doesn’t need to be a huge, you don’t need to write them a 10 page proposal or email. You don’t need to host them for dinner. Maybe that’s what you do, but it just needs to be some sort of touch point. It could be as simple as they went to Yale and Yale are playing the Bobcats tomorrow. And so you say, Hey, go bulldogs in a quick note. It could be that you’re passing through their city in a couple weeks and would be fun to get in touch. It could be you saw something that reminded you of them. It could be you saw a really interesting article you want to share with them, or you could be asking them for advice. I think that’s one of the things that is underrated, but often so valuable. People love to give advice and I think they feel there’s a mutual feeling of investment when they give it and when you ask for it.

[00:47:37] Erika Flowers: So that’s a great one as well. But the point is that whoever’s on that note card, you need to do something to reach out to that person. Once you’ve done that, you put the note card on the bottom of your pile. When you go about the rest of your day, next morning you take the next note card on the top of your stack and do the same thing. And I think what that does is it ensures that on a regular basis you are getting in touch with the people in your note card pile at least once a month and continuing to build on the relationship there, even when there’s no work to be won, even when there’s nothing in it for you, the only thing you’re doing is just investing in that relationship. And I think that goes so far. If you can build that as a muscle over time,

[00:48:13] Jason Yarborough: Love that. Lots of folks are still talking about it, and I try to make it a point to reach out to at least one person a day and just say something, Hey, thinking about you thought about, use that as a prompt. If I thought about somebody, reach out to them, see how they’re doing, check in on them, et cetera. I’m curious, in your practice of doing this, what’s one thing that surprised you the most after you were consistently doing this practice?

[00:48:35] Erika Flowers: I knew it was a good thing to do and good hygiene. And I think I’ve been surprised how often I do that. And all of a sudden the response I get back was, I’m so glad you reached out. I was just meeting with our team. We need help with management of our strategic planning next year. Is this something PIE does? Can you help? How many times that has happened? Absolutely blows my mind. People who, they’ve been at the top of my note card, I’m like, they’re in a new role. There really isn’t any opportunity for us to work together. They’re not going to be a client of pie. I still end up dropping them a note. I was in Chicago a month ago and I went back and forth. I was like, should I even reach out? I often don’t hear back, haven’t talked to this person in a while.

[00:49:15] Erika Flowers: Should I just take them out of my note card pile? Is that not worth doing? Send them a note, expected not to hear anything. Typically what I get. And they were like, actually, I’d love to meet. Can you meet at this time? And we now have two proposals out to them for new groups because they really needed help with this chief strategy officer group. So I’m consistently surprised by that because 90% of the time when I’m reaching out, that’s not the answer I’m expecting based on what I know about the client, based on what I know about that individual. I’m like, this is just a check in. How are you doing? And so when people reach back out and they need help with something and want to have a conversation, one, it often ends up being really fun. But two, it just makes me realize how little, unless you’re asking, I always learned something.

[00:50:02] Erika Flowers: And this last Chicago trip, I reached out to one who, they’d been with a former client, that client had had some reorganization. They’d been let go. They were doing other things, but I liked them as an individual. And I said, I am going to be in Chicago, would love to get together. And he ended up inviting me over to dinner at their house with their three daughters cooking me this lovely Italian meal. It was one of the most meaningful work meetings I’ve ever had on the road. And so special to be invited into someone’s home. And so I think it’s things like that that it goes back to surprising and delighting. That was surprising and delighting to me. I was like, oh, what a gift to, no one wants to be in a hotel on the road for a week. So to be able to go into someone’s home for dinner and connect in that way. It was just so special.

[00:50:42] Jason Yarborough: That is great.

[00:50:42] Erika Flowers: I love that.

[00:50:43] Jason Yarborough: How often are you rotating these cards out? You mentioned maybe for a year. Do you keep the same ones for a year? Do you find yourself rotating cards and names?

[00:50:51] Erika Flowers: I haven’t actually rotated any of mine out so much. Maybe a handful, but I think I’ve just added more to the pile.

[00:50:59] Jason Yarborough: So like 45 50 now.

[00:51:01] Erika Flowers: Yeah. But I think sometimes there’s some that I might set aside for a bit that it just feels like ships are going different directions and it doesn’t make sense. But the ones that are really important, they’re important for a reason and so they don’t really go anywhere. You may be at a couple here and there and some are work and some are personal. I have some that are consider on my personal board of advisors and I’m trying to connect with at least once a month just because one, I want to continue to stay connected with those people. They’ve been super helpful and hopefully I want to be able to provide some value to them.

[00:52:03] Erika Flowers: I think of one who they’re building a house and so sent her a couple referrals to who did the wood floors in our home. I know that she liked them and so it’s things like that. And then at the same time, she comes from the world of professional services and so has given me advice in terms of what I was coming into this role. I asked her, I had some agency to choose the title, which was interesting, and she was just a helpful sounding board to ask. I was like, what should my title be based on the work? What resonates in the marketplace? You come from this world. So stuff like that.

[00:52:03] Sam Yarborough: Love that. Okay. We are coming up on time as always. Literally every time I talk to you I learn something. So thank you for sharing with us. We’re going to do a quick little rapid fire. Okay. You are, as we’ve mentioned, a very accomplished athlete. You are a C-suite executive, you are a mom, you are a wife. That’s a lot going on. So what’s harder, motherhood or marathons, and for you that would be an ultra marathon, but

[00:52:35] Erika Flowers: Marathons. Not to say that having a kid isn’t harder, but it’s so uniquely joyful that I feel like it just dissolves anything hard about it. Whereas running marathons it’s like it’s just suffering. It brings, I’m so glad to hear you say that about running. You don’t get the payback that you get from having a kiddo, so no one is,

[00:53:04] Jason Yarborough: This is true.

[00:53:05] Erika Flowers: Smiling at you on balance. Yeah, having a kid’s pretty incredible, which I wouldn’t have expected to be honest.

[00:53:14] Sam Yarborough: I love that. I love that. Has your definition of ambition changed since becoming a mother?

[00:53:20] Erika Flowers: In some ways, yes. And I know this is rapid fire, but I think the short answer is that as I’m sure it just puts a lot of things in perspective. I care a lot about my work. Sure, I care a lot about running and racing and skiing, but how much I care about those is, it just pales in comparison how much I care about my kid and family, and so I think it has leveled out a lot of work stress and while I’m still ambitious in work and still ambitious on the trail, I think I don’t hold as much weight to the outcomes as maybe I used to.

[00:53:54] Sam Yarborough: Okay, love that. Are you reading anything right now? And if not, what book would you recommend?

[00:53:59] Erika Flowers: I am. My dad just gave me a book and I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s this wild one about a sorority. I’m pretty sure there’s a murder involved. It’s a very non heavy fiction book that I’m hoping will get me back into reading after taking a bit of a hiatus. But what I’d recommend is Unreasonable Hospitality if you have about Live Madison Park in New York. We actually had the chance to go there this fall as a team and it was delightful, especially after reading that book. So that’s a fun one that I think talks about a lot of what we’re talking about here today.

[00:54:31] Sam Yarborough: Okay. What is one thing you wish more people knew about Relationships? The hard parts make them good.

[00:54:38] Jason Yarborough: That’s great.

[00:54:39] Sam Yarborough: That’s really good. Okay, and last one, what is your

[00:54:42] Erika Flowers: Current mantra? It’s one that’s been it for a while, but I think it’s just up and up. I like the idea of just always building on the thing before and I think it plays to, I tend to be a bit of an optimist and to assume kind of best intent and that you can always build and go up.

[00:54:59] Jason Yarborough: Outstanding. I wanted to ask a question about Better Choir partners, but I wasn’t going to go there.

[00:55:08] Erika Flowers: Should we end with a duet? Is that we’ve been preparing for years.

[00:55:13] Jason Yarborough: You guys have been practicing the Friends with Benefit intro song, just a song version, so let’s hear it. Just kidding.

[00:55:21] Erika Flowers: Jason, if you got us started, we will back you up.

[00:55:23] Jason Yarborough: Yes, here we go. Are you ready? This one is about Lon app. Just kidding. For those that are still listening and curious, what’s going on here? Sam and Erika, we’re in choir class, choir group, whatever you call it. Together in what? Middle school? High school.

[00:55:37] Erika Flowers: High school.

[00:55:39] Jason Yarborough: So this friendship goes deep. Erika, this has been awesome. So grateful for you to join us and share some of your insights. Can’t wait to get our hands on the book and get some out. To our listeners, thank you for allowing me the chance to participate in it. It was truly awesome to get to meet you and some of your team, and again, thanks for all you’ve done to help us out with Arcadia. This has been an excellent conversation.

[00:56:01] Erika Flowers: Likewise. Thank you both so much. This is such a treat to get to spend some time with you, and it’s been fun to obviously get to know you both and reconnect with Sam and just excited about the work you’re all doing. So appreciate considering me, having me on the pod here and looking forward to seeing you around town.

[00:56:18] Jason Yarborough: Absolutely. And on the trails.

[00:56:18] Erika Flowers: Absolutely.

[00:56:19] Jason Yarborough: Just not the podiums

[00:56:20] Erika Flowers: Exactly

[00:56:22] Sam Yarborough: Yet. Yes. All right. Up and up friends, thank you for joining us, Erika. A pleasure as always. We’ll see you next time.

[00:56:29] Jason Yarborough: See y’all.