PodCrash with Matt Ebert
PodCrash with Matt Ebert
How to Make People Care About What You’re Building with Jason Feifer
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So if you can't, if you're listening instead of seeing me right now, I am uh like looking down at the camera. I'm holding a microphone. I look like I'm in a conference room. So, Matt, here's the thing that I am also doing today. You are I I I apologize, the second most exciting person that I get to talk to today. The first most exciting is Megan the Stallion. So I am at a photo studio right now. I'm at Jack Studios in Manhattan, and I'm talking to her in about an hour and a half. And I there was no way for me to make it work where I uh we had set up this time. I was excited to talk. I definitely didn't want to cancel on you, but I had to bring the studio to me so that I could talk to you and then walk down the hall and interview Megan. So uh so I'm actually in a massage room right now. Uh this studio has this sweet, this like sweet high-tech massage chair over there. And so when I asked where's a quiet space, they were like, I'll just go use the massage room. So I stacked two tables that were in the massage room up together, put my laptop on top, brought a microphone, and here we are. I'm excited to talk.
SPEAKER_01Make sure you tell Megan I said hi, we're tight, we're close. I sure will. I sure will. You know that's not true, right? No, never matter, but I think that's great. Um, yeah. So, editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine is obviously something I I gotta ask you about. And maybe from the start, so many stories over the years. What jumps out to you is like what makes a good one?
SPEAKER_00A good story. Well, you know, look, it depends upon who the audience is. That's the answer to every story. Is stories have to be meaningful to the people that you're telling them to. So you actually have to reverse engineer back from who the audience is in order to create something that's meaningful. And this is all business, right? I mean, the storytelling and making a product are the exact same thing. You have to find product market fit, which means that you have to understand what are the pain points of the audience and then backtrack into how are you a solution for them, either in something that you build or just the story that you tell. So when I think about entrepreneur, what I think about is this is a publication or anything that we produce that is reaching people who are building things for themselves. And they don't have time to just indulge a bunch of stories that are not meaningful or useful to them. They don't have time for idle entertainment. They got to know, is this gonna help me or not? And Matt, I have this first question concept, which is the first question that I believe anybody is asking whenever they encounter anything, whether it is you walk down the aisle at Whole Foods and you're looking at products on the shelf, or it's you open up Netflix and you see whatever it's recommending to you, or the very beginning of this podcast episode for everyone who's listening, you're asking the same question. And that question is, is this for me or is this not for me? And if you're in marketing, if you're in product development, if you're in storytelling, you better anticipate that people are going to ask that question. And then you have to answer it before they even ask it. And that is what I try to do with the stories that we tell at Entrepreneur. I'm always being mindful, whether I'm talking to a everyday main street entrepreneur or I'm talking to Megan the Stallion, that ultimately this has to be proven useful in a tactical, practical way for my audience of builders, or else they're gonna feel like I've wasted their time.
SPEAKER_01And you view it that way, even after the audience that you've built. They you don't get to take it for granted that they're gonna trust that this is gonna matter to them. You have to hook them every time. You never, ever.
SPEAKER_00You never, ever take it for granted. I mean, you you can't, and I think that the moment any business dies or any relationship dies is the moment in which you start taking for granted what your audience or your customer thinks and wants. So, no, I mean, even in the writing that I do outside of entrepreneur for my own personal audience, I am relentless. I call it a healthy anxiety. I am relentless about signaling at the very top what this is for, what the problem is that I'm gonna be solving for you, and then never ever straying from that. I I think that people take advantage of their audiences too much, and that's how you lose it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I learned pretty quick in conversations, you can't save the best for last, can't save it for the conclusion, nobody ever get there, huh?
SPEAKER_00That's right. You look, you have to know, you have to tell people whether you again, whether you got a podcast or you making a product and you put it on a shot, you got to tell people why it's useful to them. If you can't do that, if you can't clearly articulate why something is useful to people, there's no way for them to figure it out on their own. I have this uh framework that I love. It's not I didn't come up with it, but I I learned it from a friend of mine, Rochelle DeVoe, uh, who's a consumer insights researcher, which is if you want to connect with anybody, then you need to be able to fill out the following mad libs from your consumer's point of view. And that following mad libs is when context, I want solution, so that benefit. When context, when something's gone wrong, I want solution, I want something that fixes it, so that benefits, so that I get the thing that I actually wanted in the first place. And the reason to go through this is because we, as creators, as builders, we tend to stop on solution, right? We think I've built a great product and and I want to tell you about the product. Or it's like, oh, I just interviewed Megan the Stalin and I'm gonna tell you like a whole bunch of stuff about how much fun we had together. And like that's the solution. But no, nobody cares about solution. What they care about is benefit. What they care about is the thing that they get because of your solution. And you better lead with that. You better tell them up front what about their life or their business is gonna change because they're gonna spend the time on the thing that you just made. And you have to signal that and then you have to back it up. And if you do not, then you have lost them. And if you just focus on what you made and how cool it is, they are not interested because they're building their own cool thing and they don't care about yours.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a great formula, and that's that's so true. Most people talk about the solution they offer first. Um, talk about nobody cares. Now, speaking of entrepreneurs, you define entrepreneur a little bit broader than than most people might. Can you maybe for the audience talk about how you define entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I define entrepreneurship as making things happen for yourself. And it's that simple. It it could mean that you started a business, it could mean that you've just taken control of your career in a really entrepreneurial way. It could mean that you're functionally an entrepreneur inside of a company. And the reason I define it like that is because I believe that the tenets of entrepreneurship really scale outward. The central thing to me about entrepreneurship is this. And look, Matt, as a by way of explaining this, let me just take you back to 2018. So in 2018, I was two years into being editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and my wife and I wrote a romantic comedy. You know, we had been working on it before I got to entrepreneur. My wife and I started writing this romantic comedy novel. It's called Mr. Nice Guy, it came out a number of years ago. And when it came out and I was at Entrepreneur, I got these two super interesting different reactions to it, depending upon what kind of person I was talking to. If I was talking to a media person, then that person would say, Congratulations. That's so cool that you and your wife wrote a book. And if I was talking to an entrepreneur, they would say, Oh, that's really interesting. What are you gonna do with that? Like, are you gonna, right? You wrote romantic comedy. Are you gonna like teach romantic comedy writing? Or are you gonna open like some kind of school? Like, what's the thing that you're gonna do with it? And I thought about why I was getting those two reactions. And I realized it's because entrepreneurs think differently from everyone else. Most people think horizontally. They think, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna put it out in the world, I'm gonna move along. I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna put it out in the world, I'm gonna move along, and just on and on you go. But entrepreneurs think vertically. They think that the only reason to do something is because it becomes the foundation upon which the next thing is built. And that means that when you take some kind of action, it should lead to or open up some new doors for some new opportunities. And so that's why the entrepreneurs were wondering like, what is this book about? And why is it the start of your next journey? And we didn't have that. We we didn't have any other plans for that book. And yet I realized that I really needed to think more vertically myself. I needed to have a rigor of the projects that I commit to. I have to understand how they could lead to future opportunity. I don't need to know exactly the answer, but I need to at least have a thesis and I need to continually review and return to that thesis to see if I'm correct. Because otherwise, I'm gonna spread myself too thin in ways that don't ultimately build. And that is to me the true sign of an entrepreneur is someone who is in building mindset. So that is something you can do whether or not you're actually building a business.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it I agree that that's a great, of course, I think that way. But even though you think it's beneficial to think that way, even if you're not building a business, do you find it very often? Or is it just as rare as an entrepreneur is?
SPEAKER_00That kind of mindset.
unknownCan it be?
SPEAKER_00You know, I see that mindset all over the place. Yeah, it can be taught. It can be taught, I don't think it can be taught by just laying out a list of facts and absorbing them, but I think that it gets taught by spending a lot of time around people who think like that. That is what changed my life was getting to entrepreneur. I didn't think of myself as an entrepreneur when I first got to entrepreneur, I thought of myself as a media guy. And yet, as I spent more time with entrepreneurs and absorbed their way of thinking and saw the rigor that they put into the decisions that they make and also the flexibility that they had to discover things along the way, the more in which I felt really drawn to that and came to understand that mode of thinking and then started to apply it to the decisions that I was making. And soon enough, I was building out a whole ecosystem of opportunities for myself that looked very different from anything in the previous part of my career. So, yes, you absolutely can learn it. I don't think that it gets taught in a textbook. I don't think that you pick up one book and learn it. I do think that building the right network and spending the right time with people will alter your life forever.
SPEAKER_01That's that's great. And I've heard you comment um it before that early entrepreneurship to you um really is a lot of data gathering, which is a little bit what you were describing in that answer. But maybe further further to that, what do you mean by by by that?
SPEAKER_00You know, if you can just reframe failure as data, then everything that you do suddenly becomes useful. I I remember the first time that I think I ever encountered that insight, although I didn't have the language for it back then, was I was in college and my girlfriend in college was trying to decide between a couple different majors, and she was really interested in neuropsychology. Okay. She got an internship for a semester. It's some, I can't remember what it was, but doing something in neuropsychology. And she hated it. And you know, one day she came home and she's like, I don't like this. I'm not gonna major in neuropsychology. And I thought, well, what a waste of time. Like you went and you did this internship, and now you've wasted your time. And yet she was very pleased because to her, she got the information. She went, she did it, she discovered that it wasn't for her. And now she can refocus her energy on things that are for her or are more likely to be for her. And so having done the thing and it not working out was just as valuable a source of information than if you did something and it did work out. And now I see versions of that show up all over the place. I mean, I remember having a conversation with uh a woman named Katie Milkman who teaches at Wharton. Brilliant. She studies behavioral change. And, you know, I had asked her, Matt, I said, What is your advice for someone who is trying to decide between a couple different directions? Right. Like, you know, you need to make some kind of change, you're not sure what that change is. What should you do? And her answer was, she said, Look, this is gonna sound really simple, but it's also really impactful, and we don't do it enough, which is just treat everything like an experiment. Just treat everything like an experiment. Like go run some experiments. So if you don't know the path to take, well, then pick one of them and say, I'm gonna do this for the next four months and then I'm gonna step back and I'm gonna reevaluate. And the reason, by the way, she said that is because what we tend to do is we tend to be afraid of commitment. And we feel like, oh, if I'm gonna do this, then it's because I'm gonna be committing to this. And if I'm committing to this, I don't know if I like it enough to commit to it. So maybe I won't try. And then you just end up doing nothing. So instead, if you see it as an experiment, then you can do a little time-boxed version of it. And no matter what happens, it's a success. Because the point of an experiment is not for things to succeed. The point of an experiment is to gather data. And if you're just gathering data on the experiment and doing a thing that doesn't quite work out, or maybe it's a version of something that worked out, but it didn't quite work out like that, but it gave you some insight that you're going to use somewhere else, all of that is useful. And so we need to stop thinking about these experiences in really binary ways where I try something and it doesn't work out, and therefore I wasted my time. No, you tried something and it didn't work out and it taught you something. And you should spend some time figuring out what it is that it taught you that you can apply to the next thing. And that's vertical thinking, and that's why it works.
SPEAKER_01Do you think that some have trouble recognizing like if it's a dead end, if it's not gonna work and stay married to it a little too long, versus you got some info, let me move on?
SPEAKER_00All the time. All the time. People do that all the time. I mean, you know, and the reason they do that is because they've been told stories of resilience. Yep. And look, I love I love a good I love a good story about resilience, right? Who doesn't? I love the story of I banged my head against the wall for years and years, and everyone said no, and I didn't listen to them, and now I built a billion-dollar company. Those are inspiring stories. But the problem is that those are not actually the vast majority of stories that come out of that situation. Most times what happens is that someone bangs their head against the wall and everyone says no to them, and then they lose all their money because everyone else was right. And uh that's not to say that you should listen to everyone, but it is to say that you need ways to evaluate whether or not the things that you're doing are actually going to get you where you want. You need benchmarks. You need to be constantly stepping back and asking yourself hard questions about why this isn't growing faster or what's not working. And if the answer that you're saying is because people don't understand, well, you know what? Then they're not going to understand because that's not their problem. That's your problem. You better explain it better, or you better have a problem that people actually want to be solved, or rather a solution to a problem that people actually want to be solved. And one of the most impactful things that anyone's ever said to me about this was I had a conversation with Annie Duke, who's a former professional poker player and now an academic. She wrote a great book called Quit, and it was about the value of quitting things. And she said to me, Matt, she said, Look, imagine if you had to marry the first person that you dated. What would happen?
unknownRight?
SPEAKER_01That's a great way to put it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because you know what would happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, or or they would have never been, they would have never put themselves in the position to make the mistake because they would have never gone out on a date. Right? Like that's the that's the point of that is is if the rule was you have to marry the first person you go on a date with, then you don't go on a date with anybody because you're afraid of that commitment. And the reason why we are able to find the people who become our, you know, hopefully our lifelong spouses or true loves or whatever, the reason we're able to do that is because we get to try and quit a lot of people. That's the reason. And so we need to take that same mindset and apply it to ideas and projects. You are dating ideas, you are dating projects. This is what Annie told me. And she's right. We have to give ourselves the flexibility to try and quit or fail at a whole bunch of things in order to find the one that actually works. And that is the reason why it's okay to pursue things that ultimately aren't going to work out and to be open to that they might not work and don't anchor yourself to that stupid story about how if you just believed in yourself more, then it would succeed. That's just often not true.
SPEAKER_01I like this messaging too. It's probably pretty valuable in like change management situations where if p if you phrase it as an experiment, um, then maybe that initial like hesitancy goes away a little bit because people aren't as afraid of an experiment as they are here's a new way we're gonna do it from now on.
SPEAKER_00Totally. It completely opens things up, it completely changes the experience to say this is an experiment. I mean, a lot of what we do or don't do comes down to self-permission. Are we giving ourselves permission to do this? And when you rethink the what of what this is, is this me putting everything on the line or is this an experiment? Those two different modalities will absolutely change the way in which you approach something because when everything's on the line, you are not giving yourself permission to fail or to question. But when it's an experiment, you're giving yourself permission to learn and to try. And learning and trying is how you actually build.
SPEAKER_01So in your best-selling book, you talk a lot about change management, uh, build for tomorrow, right? And you you kind of describe four phases of it. How did you come to think of it and realize those phases?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, it's funny. I gotta say, I I have a complicated relationship with that framework, which I'll I'll tell you. The so right, so the book is called Build for Tomorrow, and it came out in 2022. And I started writing it during the pandemic. Uh and uh and in fact, the starting point of it was that I had been writing a lot for the magazine and for my own stuff about change and how people navigate change. And a friend of mine, uh, Matt L. Blanc, who's a book agent, um, calls me up in the early days of the pandemic and he's like, hey, everyone is going through change right now. This is the time for a big book about change. And I was like, wow, you're completely right. And so I started to just pay really close attention to what I was seeing happen as everybody navigated that massive change. And the pandemic was like an interesting experiment all its own, where everyone went through the same change at the same time, but radically diverged in what they did. And I realized that no matter what path somebody took, whether it whether they moved quickly or they moved really slowly, that everyone more or less experienced change in the same four phases, which was panic, adaptation, new normal, and wouldn't go back, right? First they panic and freak out. And then they start to look around and figure out what new things are available to them. Then they build a new foundation, it starts to feel like a new kind of comfort and familiarity. And then they eventually look back at it and they say, Oh my God, I would never go back to what I had before because this new thing that I've built is so good. And that was everybody. Everybody was doing that. It's just sometimes it would take people years and sometimes it took people months. And so that is how I oriented my book. Now, the reason I said I have a complicated relationship with it is because I've since learned so much more about frameworks and how to structure great frameworks that are really actionable and memorable. And I think that if you're in the economy of ideas, then you need to understand frameworks really well. And what I came to realize about that framework is that although it's a nice story, the four phases, it's not actionable. Right? There isn't uh a specific thing that I can do to tell you about panic and about interesting.
SPEAKER_01Because my question was gonna be how do you shorten the time frame of getting from phase one to phase four?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's gonna be my question. I have it. Yeah, exactly. And that and that was the question that people always ask. And I realized when I was promoting the book that I could I could speak to the panic phase easily, but everything that I was talking about kind of bled throughout the four instead of being something where it's like, okay, let's talk about step one and then let's move into step two, which is what you really need with a powerful framework. So I actually don't even use it anymore. Like when I give keynote talks and I do tons and tons of corporate talks. Um, you know, in the last year I've done Clorox, Dicks, Sporting Goods, Pfizer, Alibaba. Um, I'm in I'm at Intuit uh uh uh later this week. Uh anyway, I uh my talk doesn't even include this framework anymore because I realized it isn't actually a useful way to structure the talk. But this is all about change, right? This is this is me. I tried a thing, it was an experiment, it worked for a bit, it got me the book, but it wasn't the thing that carries me forward. And so I don't want to be anchored to it. But to answer your question, look, the the thing that you need to do is you need to develop what I call a unique personal relationship with change. And the first part of that is understanding who you are in times of change and what about you does not change in times of change, so that you can recognize your own core transferable value. The problem that we have is that we tend to anchor ourselves way too deeply and identify too deeply with very changeable things, with the products of our work, with the role that we occupy. And that stuff is just too. Changeable. So if you think of yourself in one way, I do this job at this company or I specialize in this kind of task, then whenever change comes to that, you feel absolutely discombobulated and unmoored. But if you instead can identify with the thing that does not change in times of change, then you feel grounded. Now that sounds abstract, so I'll just I'll make it personal. It's the difference between me saying, I am a magazine editor, which is extremely changeable, and this. I tell stories in my own voice. Like that phrase to me is a powerful one because it helps me recognize what my true skill set is, which is not magazines, but stories. And which do I have more control over? I have more control over stories because I can tell them here on the podcast with you. I can tell them in books and on stages and in any other way that I choose. Whereas magazines, I don't have that much control over. I don't own the magazine company. There's only so much I can do. Interesting. And I've heard versions of this, Matt, from so many people. It was the CEO of a baking mix company who said to me, I don't sell baking mixes. I bring joy to people through sweet baked goods. And it was the president of a cosmetics company who told me, I don't sell cosmetics. I help people reclaim their sense of self. So you see what's happening here? It's a short sentence. It starts with I. Every word is carefully selected so it's not anchored to something easily changeable. That's what makes the difference between I'm a magazine editor, very changeable, and I tell stories of my own voice, not changeable. So like I would really encourage everyone listening right now to spend some time, and Matt, maybe even you've thought about it for yourself. Like, how do you articulate your core transferable value in that short, clear way where you're not anchoring to something easily changeable? Is it I help teams achieve greatness? Is it I solve the most complex problems? Like, what is it? Because if you can truly live inside of that, yeah, if you can truly live inside of that, then the things that come next, even if they're change, don't feel as turbulent. So yeah, what's it?
SPEAKER_01We're a collision repair company, right? But what I say is what we're really doing is helping people in a time of need. Um, and I've got a second business that's a towing company, which does the same thing, helps people in it in a time of need. Neither one of them are purchases people want to make, but when they need them, there we are. Um, so I I don't know if that's exactly how you would go about doing it, but that's that's how I message it.
SPEAKER_00I think that's great. I think it's great because it doesn't it does a number of things. First of all, that messaging to your team helps people understand the mindset of the person who's coming to them, right? Like this may be because of a collision, but like this is actually just a personal time of need for them. And so we need to treat them with grace and care because they don't they don't want to be here. And they're gonna be thankful that we solved the problem, but they didn't want this problem in the first place. And then also it gives you license and flexibility to find other ways to serve people in that time of need. And that's not to say you, you know, I mean, you know, you're not gonna like m come up with something radically different, but like as industries change, as yeah, cars are driving themselves.
SPEAKER_01This is industry supposed to have a lot less accidents, you know, five, 10 years from now.
SPEAKER_00So right. So and if that's the case, if that actually proves to be true, then you got to adapt. And what better way to start than to say, you know, what we do is we serve people in their time of need. So, like, what is the time of need now? And what is that thing that we can apply our specialization to? And then you understand that you aren't boxed into something, but rather you always have an opportunity to serve and you're doing something that people always need.
SPEAKER_01You're on to something here, and I I can tell you that a lot of people don't think this way, especially entrepreneurs, even, because you know, where I see it is in the MA game. So a lot of times the sellers, it's it's more it's not just like, here's my business, what will you pay me for it? But it's what am I gonna do next? Like that loss of identity for for the next phase of their life, that's just as much a component of it as the price and everything else. They haven't figured out what's next, probably because they haven't thought through the exercise like this.
SPEAKER_00And and and that's why it's the starting point for moving through change faster, because the more you understand who you are in times of change, the less you're gonna panic in the first place. And the less you panic, the more clear-eyed you are, and you can start to identify the new opportunities ahead.
SPEAKER_01That's great. So a lot of corporate, I know you do a lot of corporate speaking. What is your big message that you you try to share with a with a group of people?
SPEAKER_00You know, it's it's what we're on right now here. Uh when I get up in front of a in front of a group, I tell them, look, I I have a professional excuse to travel the world studying and learning from the world's most impressive leaders and entrepreneurs and study the patterns of success. And the pattern that has emerged among all others is that the most successful people are the most adaptable. And doing that requires you to develop that unique personal relationship with change that I had just mentioned a moment ago, Matt. And so then I walk them through how to do that, which requires rethinking fundamental things about the way in which you work and your relationship to your work. And so, uh, you know, in the talk, I go through five, which are identity, needs, reactions, process, and words. And so, and that that is now the framework that I use. And so uh what we were just talking about a moment ago uh falls into the identity category that I talk about, which is to how to reorient your identity around the thing that does not change in times of change instead of being anchored to the change that you know that you're writing. So, yeah, that's that's that's been the talk. And for anybody who's interested in getting into public speaking, you know, a big lesson for me and awakening was realizing that speaking and specifically the talk that I give is a product, and you need to treat it like you would any other product and find product market fit. I was saying that earlier about storytelling, but it's true for this too. Like you need to think about it as a as a product, and you then have to ask yourself, what is the marketplace that I want to compete in? And how is my product a fit in that marketplace? And the reason I got onto the subject of change was number one, because I found it interesting and it was the answer to the question that people were often asking me, which is what do the most successful entrepreneurs have in common? But also I realized that corporate events are frequently themed around change because everybody's going through it. And the common story that I hear when a client reaches out is we just went through a big re-org, or we just had a massive leadership shuffle, or whatever, whatever, whatever. And the reason that they're bringing everybody together this year is to talk about how to navigate that. And they want now somebody who specializes in it. And I've worked very hard to position myself to do that. And that is what it means to have product market fit, to recognize where is your product going to have lots of need. You know, I think people often start with, here's my story. I want to share my story. Here's, you know, but that doesn't, that doesn't work. You know, people don't care about your story. What they care about is solving their problem. And what event organizers care about is finding someone who fits into the messaging and the lessons that they're really focused on. And so you have to come at it from the audience perspective and their needs and then reverse engineer to what you produce.
SPEAKER_01That's great advice. You describe kind of a superpower of yours as being able to see people and kind of pattern recognition or communicate patterns. Um where did that ability come from? And I've heard this talked about uh in several different conversations about pattern recognition, but you really feel like everybody recognizes patterns of some sort.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know what I realized is that every human being has the same exact skill. We all have one skill, and that skill is pattern recognition. We're all good as human beings at identifying patterns. And this is how we survived as cavemen. But the thing that makes us different is that we're all good at recognizing different patterns. And the reason to point that out is to help you, listener, reflect upon what pattern you are best at recognizing. Okay. Because that is actually the key to your success. For me, for example, I think that the patterns that I recognize are how people think and how people communicate. That's it. Um, so once I understand that, I can walk into basically any situation and game it out pretty well. I mean, this is why people turn to me for business advice and why my friends turn to me for relationship advice. I actually, frankly, don't consider myself to be much of an expert in either, right?
SPEAKER_01Uh nobody comes to me for relationship advice. So you got what you went up on me there.
SPEAKER_00No, very good. Well, you can send them my way. I'm pretty good at it. Um, but it's not rocket science. Like it's all just about thinking through okay, this person is thinking this or said this. What is it that they want? What could be driving them? What could be the challenge? And you start to game out logically why someone is thinking the way that they do and what the outcome would be. And that's literally the same thing as trying to understand how or why this marketing message is or is not reaching the consumer. What is on their mind? What is bothering them? What are they seeing when they consume when they consume this marketing message? It's the same thing to me, at least, because it's just about how people think and how people communicate. And so once I recognize that, I realize that I am not stuck inside of one modality. I am not just a magazine guy. I am not just someone who can make media. I'm someone who can walk into basically any situation and game out what they're thinking and what's going on. And this is, you know, again, this is why I'm comfortable now uh in basically any environment. I mean, I'm as soon as I'm done talking to you, I'm gonna wander over there and I'm gonna get into a conversation with Megan the Stallion. We haven't met. We haven't met. I don't know exactly what she's like, but I I I know that she's really smart and really accomplished. And I know that if I spend a little bit of time talking to her, I'm gonna get a sense of how she thinks and how she communicates, and I'm gonna be able to lock in on that and we're gonna have a really useful conversation for an audience because ultimately, again, that's the thing. I don't care if I'm talking to Megan the Stallion or anybody else. This has to be about who are we serving? And so we're also gonna be backtracking from what are the needs of the people that I'm I'm serving. Um so now think about that. Think about that for yourself, anybody. Like, what are the patterns that you can recognize? Some people are great at understanding organizations, right? Some people are great at understanding um how to accelerate buildings of uh building something. Whatever it is, that is where you should lean, and that is transferable.
SPEAKER_01It's probably not easy for everyone to figure out though what patterns they're good at recognizing. If it kind of comes intuitively, they might not even recognize that it's a pattern recognition thing.
SPEAKER_00No, but that's why you spend some time with it, and that's why you think about it this way. You know, I think people don't think about patterns in in this way, but they should because that this is ultimately why does anybody learn to do anything? The answer is simply because you recognize the pattern, because you were good at recognizing the pattern. I mean, this is like just literally anything. Why why does a dog come running when you pick up the bag of food? Why? Because they started to associate the sound of the of the food pickup with you giving them food. It was a simple pattern and they figured it out and they come running every time you pick up that bag. And that is frustration.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's as simple as that. And but that's that is literally what we're surrounded by with every day, right? We are we are just processing inputs and we are trying to understand how X equals Y equals Z. Like, what is the thing that happens? So spend some time thinking about like what just makes intuitive sense to you? What situations do you walk into where you can just scan the room better than other people, or you get a better sense of what's going to happen next than other people? Because in that experience is a good insight into what patterns you're great at recognizing.
SPEAKER_01Well, this is what makes you good at what you do, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00It's it it is everything. It's everything about what you do. Yeah. I mean, I I I I Yeah, I was talking about you in particular.
SPEAKER_01That's what it makes me. Oh, me in particular? Yeah. Because you're able to see a pattern of what resonates with your audience.
SPEAKER_00I'm able to see a pattern of what resonates with my audience. I'm able to then also collect insights and ideas and string them together in what are hopefully useful ways, depending on the circumstance. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, just like think about what I am doing here as we've been talking for the last, you know, whatever it is, 40 minutes or something. Like what I've been doing is I am listening to your questions, and I'm therefore learning about you and your audience as a result of what you're asking me and where you're steering me. I'm also connecting your questions to ideas that I've previously had or written about or talked about. But then I'm doing a lot of mixing and matching at the same time. Like I, you know, I'm bringing in one idea and I'm connecting it to another idea, and I'm doing this all on the fly. And that's just because, again, my pattern is understanding communication and how people think. But someone else can do it with spreadsheets. If you put me down in front of those spreadsheets, spreadsheets and data, I am lost, man. I can't look at that stuff at all. I don't understand it. It doesn't, my brain doesn't process it. I can't do that. But other people can. So can you sit down and see what's wrong in a financial statement? Holy cow, that's really useful. I can't do that. So the better in which you understand how your brain thinks, the better in which you can optimize for it.
SPEAKER_01So, how often now do you see something that gets you really excited? Is it every time, or is it you can tell this would be good, but is there is there something that stands out that you're like, wow, this one's awesome?
SPEAKER_00You know, so I I tend to believe in the like the power of one thing per experience. Like I had this realization when my wife and I were planning our wedding, which was that the wedding process had gotten complicated because my wife's mom had a lot of very, very um determined thoughts, let's say, about what should uh what should happen in the planning. And it was really frustrating. And eventually I realized, wait a second. Let me think back to my friends' weddings that I have attended. How much of those weddings do I actually remember? Right. And I realized, I realized that I remember like one or two details about each one, right? And that's like it. And that's not because I was like drunk. I'm not really even much of a drinker, but it was just more because it's like you go to a lot of weddings, they start to blend together. What's the thing that actually sets them apart? And it's just one or two little details. So I thought to myself, okay, let's just make sure that we pick the one or two little details of this wedding that are really gonna matter and that we really want people to remember. And I'm gonna let go of everything else because it doesn't matter and nobody will remember it anyway. And the same is true for now when I talk. Like if you listen to this full podcast episode and you remember next week, you remember one thing that I said, success. Success. You're not gonna remember every part of it. It's too much. I've thrown too many things at you. But if you remember one thing and that thing is useful, you're gonna feel really good about me. So I am always looking in new experiences for the one thing. Like when I sit down and I talk to Ryan Reynolds, what's the one thing that he's gonna say that I'm gonna be repeating for the next five years? So I talk to The Rock, what's the one thing he's gonna say? Megan the Stalin, what's the one thing? We'll have a nice long conversation, I'll write a whole story, but like, what's the one thing that I'm gonna be repeating? And that's what I'm actually always looking for is that that that tiny little thing. Because if I can spend a whole bunch of time and come away with one little gem, then I can use that gem for the rest of my career. And that's what I'm out doing is like collecting gems.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome because I was actually gonna ask you about some of those interviews. So maybe if we rapid-fired some of those names back at you again, like what is the one thing? So, Ryan Reynolds, your conversation with him, what would be the one thing?
SPEAKER_00The one thing was when he said to me, to be good at something, you must be willing to be bad. Now he was talking about transitioning from being an actor and into business, right? He had started this advertising agency and then took ownership of Mint Mobile, Aviation Gin. And that was at the very beginning. Now he's involved in tons of stuff. But he said that transition was really intimidating. He didn't know anything about business at the start. And so he he came to that philosophy. To be good at something, you must be willing to be bad. That the thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful people is not whether or not you're good at something at the start, but whether you're willing to tolerate being bad long enough to get to good. I love that line. I actually use it all the time. I, you know, I use the recording of him saying that to me um at the beginning of my keynote talks because it's it's so powerful.
SPEAKER_01That one I do believe. I see it, I look at that when I see that with like say executives that come from outside the industry and they they don't have any biases. They they don't know that they don't know the business. So they they're good at what they do, but that curiosity to get to know the business and start from just a humble, I don't know anything about this business right now is it is how they get good pretty quick, just by asking questions.
SPEAKER_00That's right, and having that tolerance for being bad. Most people don't have it, and that's why most people will stay behind.
SPEAKER_01The rock, you mentioned him. What did you learn from The Rock?
SPEAKER_00So, I mean, that was a that was a really fascinating conversation, but the the thing that lasts with me the longest is this. I interviewed him and Danny Garcia, his business partner, and then a year or two later, I can't remember, I I wrote that book that I told you about. And I included in that book a single paragraph about them. Just something that they had shared with me that I really liked that stuck with me. And I put it in that book.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then the book came out. And I asked the publicist, uh, hey, can I just uh, you know, just as a thank you, can I just send a copy to to Dwayne and Danny? And so she gave me some address, you know, I don't know what it was, some office or something, and I nailed off the book and figured I would never hear another word about it.
SPEAKER_01And then did you like earmark the page so they knew where you or or did you count on a result?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, yeah, no. I'm not I'm not expecting them to read the whole book. No, no, no. No. I sent I sent the book, I wrote a I wrote a note, I thanked them and then you know, told them how meaningful this was and pointed them to the exact page where the thing was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, like uh I'm not expecting them to spend a whole bunch of time on this. And then a long while later, six, nine months, something, one day I wake up in the morning and I check Instagram, and I've got a DM from The Rock, and it's actually a voice memo, and it's 52 seconds long. And I said to my wife, like, holy shit, I have a voice memo from The Rock. And um, so I press play, and then there's his voice, you know, and he says, he says, Hey Jay, what's up? It's DJ, Dwayne Johnson. He calls himself DJ, or you know, the friends call him DJ. You know, DJ, Dwayne Johnson here just wanted to say, Man, thanks so much for the book. I really appreciate that. And and then he congratulated me and he reflected upon the things that we had talked about, and he talked about how he looked forward to catching up again in the future. And like, anyway, it was 52 seconds long. It made me feel like a champion. And and I thought afterwards, you know, that guy, that guy, he must get so much mail, he must get so many requests. There are infinite people who are clamoring for his time, and he did not need to do that, but he spent 52 seconds of his time to make me feel like a million bucks. And if number one, that tells you the power of simply responding, like the incredible power of simply responding. He spent 52 seconds on that voice memo. I've been talking about it for 10 years. Like, and number two, is it shows you how everybody has the time for that. If The Rock can send me a voice memo, then you listening right now, you can respond to whoever just emailed you. You just can. I'm telling you. Like, you don't don't tell me you don't have the time for it. You do. And if you are responding to everybody, if you are giving everybody just a little moment, they will become fans for life. They will be I've seen that too.
SPEAKER_01It doesn't have to always be a long response, just an acknowledgement, right?
SPEAKER_00Just anything. Yeah. Anything. I mean, yeah. And I and I I really I take that to heart. I do it with everybody. I try to respond to literally every email that comes into my inbox, to every DM. They're not long. You know, they're not long. They don't have to be long. It could just be thanks. Yeah. You know, or thanks and a quick comment back, just like something, anything. And people are so delighted that you responded. And I'm telling you, you don't have to be the rock, and you don't have to be the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Like you don't have to be these things in order to delight people by showing them that you care.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. Since they're leading to such good stories, maybe I'll ask one or two more. Sure. Um, Gary V. What did you learn um from an interview? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Gary. I mean, I've known Gary a long, long time. Um, and uh, and so I've learned a lot from him, but I'll tell you the moment that stuck out to me the most, which was that we got drinks once. This is so long ago, many years. Um, I was still trying to understand how to build a personal brand. And I said to Gary, I was like, you know, how do you figure out which ideas are sticky? Or like you're you're throwing out so many ideas into the world. And how do you figure out like which ones have traction, which ones are worth doubling down on, which ones are worth talking about on stage? And anyway, he pulls out his phone and he opens up Twitter, which back then was still called Twitter, and he said, he's like, this is the first draft. So so then he laid out this thing that he's that he does, which is whenever he has a quick idea, just any little snappy thing, he just immediately tweets it. And that then becomes this record of which little ideas get the most traction because he can see which ones his audience responds to the most. Okay. And then he starts to build off from there. So he'll see, oh, you know, that got a lot of traction on Twitter. Is there more I can say on that? Maybe that's worth a short form video. Maybe that's something that we expand into a LinkedIn post. And then the more in which something starts gaining traction, the more in which he might start talking about it on a live, you might start bringing it up in podcasts, you might start bringing it up on stage. And this kind of pathway I started to think of as graduating. You're graduating an idea. So an idea starts really small, and if it gains traction, you can graduate it to a somewhat larger platform, and then graduate it to a somewhat larger platform, and you just keep going until you found your main things that people are most resonating with. Uh, and it's a brilliant strategy. Um, and uh it requires throwing everything against the wall, uh, having very little hesitation about what you share in the world, but it works. And uh, and and I've been doing something like that ever since.
SPEAKER_01You know, uh I was gonna ask you before we're done. Um, maybe we can kind of last big subject. Personal brand is sure something that I've seen you feel it's pretty important. Um you know, part of what led me to doing this is trying to get the personal brand out there because nobody cares about auto-body collision, they just don't, right, unless they need it. So um we we recognize, I recognize the opportunity in in getting a personal brand out there. Um what do you think about a personal brand of maybe importance or personal brand done well uh contains what?
SPEAKER_00Okay. There are two ways to be in the world, and that is you could be interchangeable or you could be singular. And if you just think about simple supply and demand economics, when there's lots of something, the value of it is low. When there's few or one of something, the value of it is high. So when you are interchangeable, when you are one of many people who could do the same thing, your value is low. The more in which you can make yourself singular, the more in which your value increases. Because at that point, there's only one of you and people want it. And that could be in anything. I you don't have to be living in the kind of space that, like, like let's say I am where I'm building a personal brand to essentially sell access to myself, right? People are hiring me to talk because they want me, not just like some random person. And so my value is higher. But this could be anywhere. This could be because you position yourself as the person who understands this company or understands this industry or understands this consumer, so that people have to hire you because they have to promote you, because they want to pay you more to make sure that you stick around. The more in which you are viewed as a singular talent, the more in which people want you and will pay more for you. And one of the best ways to do that is to build a personal brand. Because when you build a personal brand, you distinguish yourself not just on the skills that you have, but the perspective that you have. And the perspective is unique and the perspective sets you apart. And the perspective is the reason why somebody wants to work with you because they trust you because of the things that you said, right? Look, look look, one of the one of the one of the starkest ways that this uh uh revealed itself to me many years ago was when that book came out, you know, we talked about that book, Build for Tomorrow. When that book came out, and then I got speaking requests. Now I had been speaking before that, but I discovered something really fascinating, Matt, and that was this that when a client would reach out and want me to speak, and I asked them, Oh, how did you find out about me? If the answer was that somebody read my book, either the event organizer read my bo read the book, or the CEO of the company read the book, or a board member read the book, if somebody read the book, my speaking fee was higher. Okay. I was able to charge significantly more. You know why? Because at that point, they didn't want some person to stand on the stage and talk about change. They weren't looking for just who can we find that can fit in our budget who can talk on this subject.
SPEAKER_01No, and your budget.
SPEAKER_00They wanted me. They wanted me. And because they wanted me, they were willing to pay more for it. And that lesson has stayed with me. The more singular I can make myself, and the more singular you can make yourself, the more people will pay for you. It's that simple.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's great. So, any prediction as to what you're gonna learn from your conversation with Megan coming up?
SPEAKER_00Uh, I, you know, no prediction, but I'll tell you what I do when I go into these conversations. You know, again, whether it's any of those people that that you just, you know, meant we talked about their um, you know, the the The Rock and Ryan Reynolds and Gary or or or whatever. I mean, I've I've gotten to talk to so many of them. I always do the same thing, which is that um I go in with a couple ideas of subjects that I think they're gonna be really thoughtful about, that I think my audience of entrepreneurs would really connect with and would appreciate their insights on. And so when I'm thinking about Megan, I'm thinking uh about a couple things and we'll, you know, we'll we'll we'll kind of test them out and see which ones um end up sparking the greatest conversation. But one of them is ownership. You know, she owns all of her own masters. I think she might have been the youngest artist to do that, and uh, and she she clearly thinks a lot about um independence and owning her own owning her own everything, owning her own intellectual property, owning her own companies. Um, and so I it could be interesting to talk about the evolution of that with her. Also, she's really thoughtful and careful about um like brand aesthetics. Um, she's very detail-oriented. Nothing with her name on it goes out without uh her involvement. And so I bet that she's probably also a pretty sure, you know, she doesn't she she's an she's an artist, she's not working at a marketing agency, but I bet that she's probably really thoughtful about what we might just think of as marketing and and brand positioning and brand storytelling. So those are some of the areas that I'll I'll kind of prod at and see where we go. And you know, what I find is that whenever I sit down with somebody like that, you know, the first the first couple minutes of the conversation are kind of exploratory, and then I'll say something and their eyes will light up and they'll have something really interesting to say, and then we just go down that road the entire time. And I never know what it's gonna be until um I'm in the conversation.
SPEAKER_01It's great. I I took some notes for uh going in the podcast that way, um, which I kind of do, but I I like the way you described it even better.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. It's you know what? Look, I I really truly think that all great conversations live in the follow-up. It's just about close listening and it's about following up. Um, I would rather talk functionally about one thing and just go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep on it than go really wide and try to have a conversation with someone about like 20 things. So I and this for this reason, I almost never listen to celebrity interviews because I find most people don't do that. Most people say, What was it like to work with this person? And what was it like to do that? And what was it like to do that? And there's I don't care about any of that. Who cares? Instead, what I uh what I want to know is I want to know what is the thing that you're most thoughtful about, and then let's spend an hour talking about that. And and like to me, that is infinitely more valuable as a consumer, and it's infinitely more interesting as an interviewer. So that's what I do.
SPEAKER_01That's great. Appreciate the the I must steal the lesson there. Um so love it. Um we end this podcast with a question because we're all about championing people. So given the opportunity, um who would you champion right now and why?
SPEAKER_00Well, okay, I'm gonna champion my wife right now, and here's why. Because six years ago, Matt, six years ago, my wife, who's a journalist, was in a California prison reporting a story, and she got to talking to a uh inmate who was uh gonna be released soon.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00And he told her the craziest story you've ever heard that he is a twin, he has a twin brother, and many, many years earlier, they had been in a fight at a party, and he had stabbed and killed a man, and the twin brothers were both put in a police lineup, and an eyewitness identified the wrong twin brother. Both boys stayed silent, and the wrong twin brother went to prison for two years until the actual guilty twin brother, who had a crisis of conscience because of a very complicated and dramatic and uh you know reason, um, turned himself in and they switched places. And my wife wanted to understand why would these brothers stay silent like that? Why would they stay silent? And what environment did they come from? And what was going on in their lives, and how did this even get created? And it took her six years to earn their trust and to draw out that story, and she put it together into a podcast that is called Blood Will Tell. So after six years of watching her work on this, it just hit podcast feeds everywhere. I mean, it it was it it came out through Audible, but you can get it anywhere, Apple, Spotify, whatever. And uh it's again, it's called Blood Will Tell. It's just six episodes. It is the greatest true crime story you'll ever hear.
SPEAKER_01That's a story that leads to a movie or something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. I think I think it will. But in the meantime, um, that's who I'll that's who I'm I'm throwing some sunshine on because uh that podcast is incredible and it just came out, and uh everyone should listen to it. Blood Will Tell.
SPEAKER_01Happy to help spread the word about it. That's great and great work on her part. Uh I have all kinds of questions, but I'll I'll check out the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, check out the podcast. Yeah, she she got the answers.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much for spending the time with me this afternoon. Clearly, you're busy, so appreciate so much taking the time to do this. It's been great.
SPEAKER_00Oh, hey Matt, I really appreciate it. And and for anyone who wants to get in touch afterwards, this uh just go to my if you sign up for my newsletter, which is called One Thing Better Each Week, one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love, you can just go to one thingbetter.email, which is a web address. So you just plug that into a browser, one thingbetter.email. You'll get my newsletter. And if you hit respond uh to the newsletter, it goes directly to my inbox. And just like the rock, I will get back to you.
SPEAKER_01Great. And any social media channel to follow you on?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Uh mostly LinkedIn and Instagram. So you can just, you know, just search for me on on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm at Hey Pfeiffer. Uh so uh yeah, you know, you can reach out there too.
SPEAKER_01Great, thanks so much.
SPEAKER_00Hey, thank you.
SPEAKER_01I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want more podcrash in your life, which of course you do, make sure to like, follow, and subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Catch you next time.