Leslie Carruthers:
I wore purple because I have royalty on.
Chris Brogan:
Well, thank you. I’m wearing gray because it’s next in line.
Leslie Carruthers:
That’s a good way to do it. So there is a lot for me to say to introduce you. So may I do that first and then we can start.
Leslie Carruthers:
You’ve got some crazy good books that lots of people have read and said, we’re really great. Right? So trust agents, and the social media 101 tactics and tips. I mean, you know, your old guard and current which is kind of amazing.
Chris Brogan:
Yeah, you know, I don’t know how that works exactly, except that I always felt it was weird when people kind of rest on their laurels. So, just figured, you know, if we don’t keep up with what’s next and what’s now then how good is that gonna work over time? You know,
Leslie Carruthers:
I got it. I acknowledge you for staying relevant and for continuing talent that that’s really great. So what I love is that you and Christopher pen launch pod cap, pod camp way back in the day that is just super cool. Super cool.
Chris Brogan:
Yeah, 2006 we had just I had attended a podcast Academy event doesn’t exist anymore. And then we went to bar camp, which is kind of like the software kind of version of this sort of thing. And it was an unconference kind of format. And I looked at him and he looked to me, and I said, we could totally do it. Yeah, sure. How hard could it be? It was hard. The last day of the first ever event that we did was September 2006. We said let’s totally open source this and make it so that anyone can do one. So there’s been pod camp in Cape Town. There’s pod camp in Perth, Australia. We did one and stuff Come Sweden to kind of get Europe going. And and that’s it, and they just kind of roll on their own now.
Leslie Carruthers:
Super cool. Super cool. I’m a big fan of both of you. And I’ve been working here three words thing I can remember coach bringing that to a group of us women business owners back in 2006. When you started it, she was enthralled. And I have four words for this year. Yeah, their peace, power, space and freedom.
Chris Brogan:
I think those are super powerful words.
Leslie Carruthers:
Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Would you like to share yours?
Chris Brogan:
I’m sure one is packaging, which is to make sure that you package the stuff that you’re creating so that people get a better understanding of what you’re trying to get at. Once I kind of fake words. So it could be two words, but it’s called structure quince and the other was push, just keep pushing,
Chris Brogan:
you know, structure get pushed outwards. So strong structure and sequence.
Leslie Carruthers:
Ah, Okay,
Chris Brogan:
Because you need both. A lot of people work on structures, but then they don’t work on sequence. So it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re packing your car to go on vacation, you can get all the things in. But what you really need to think about is in what order Am I going to take these out when I get to the camp? Because I’m going to need my things in a certain way.
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah. Yeah. Excellent wisdom. I hear wisdom in that. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. So I’m just gonna dive in. If you don’t mind. You go. Thank you. So we started this show at the beginning of Coronavirus, saying, Okay, how are we going to prepare for the rebound? Because people were affected in all different kinds of ways. So I’m really curious to hear what are you seeing are the positives that have come out of COVID-19?
Chris Brogan:
Well, it’s a weirdly backhanded positive but, you know, for someone who spent well over a decade saying, Hey, everybody, you need to be willing more attentive to what you’re doing digitally. And everybody going we totally are whether they’re totally not. It’s like when you ask your little kid did you brush your teeth? And they’re like, totally the toothbrush is bone dry?
Leslie Carruthers:
Or your adult friends? Did you wash your hands?
Chris Brogan:
Oh, America. So anyway, yes. And so I feel like the sort of negative positive of this outbreak is that everyone had to realize, oh, gosh, you know, the we’re not doing what we thought we were doing with digital. And so that just means can we connect at a distance? Can we can we do all of the functions of business at a distance can we generate leads and make people care and, you know, everyone said the minute it all started locking down low, you make some more ads, there’s only so many ads, right? There’s only so much real estate for that there’s only so much interest in that. And at the end of it all, someone still has to kind of be there to talk about stuff and and create content that could go with an ad. So to me it was like stamping a validation card that I’ve been getting carrying around for 10 years and no stamps on it.
Leslie Carruthers:
Nice. I got it. And how will all this help business?
Chris Brogan: You know, I think that there’s a lot of pluses one is that the retail behavior experienced, by the way, so b2c, mostly their people suddenly kind of caught on that they should use their mobile device to really start or be part of the ordering process of anything they’re buying. So it starts easy with things like restaurants, you know, are these people even open? Or can I order takeout on my phone, and that kind of a thing. And then again, it really will start to permeate the rest of the system. And you know, even today, there are a lot of b2b elements of that, that I think are just ridiculous the way they’re operating. So for instance, if you’re like a contractor at a building site, and you’re building a bunch of corporate office space or something like that, if you suddenly find yourself a little shy of the order, and you need a whole bunch of screws or something like this, I’m making up things I don’t go buildings. So let’s pretend you need a whole lot of screws. You still gotta get on a phone call you Human ask a human something, facts, things back and forth and all this other kind of shenanigans, instead of why isn’t there just a really simple, you know, quick clicking kind of way to get stuff done. So other technologies that people really didn’t understand or have a use for, like Internet of Things, for instance, are suddenly making more sense. I made it into sorry, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, all these kinds of tools, maybe have a little more buoyancy now that people have seen some serving suggestions by being locked in
Leslie Carruthers:
Got it. So it showed a lot of missings and then showed value and relevance for things that people maybe didn’t think had those.
Chris Brogan:
I feel that way. And I think that, you know, for a guy who’s been selling online courses since 2012, you know, I could learn remotely when I’m forced to learn remotely, and those kinds of things and nothing takes away face to face. nothing except for a worldwide pandemic takes away face to face and then you got to learn how to do business.
Leslie Carruthers:
Carefully saying nothing about Hmm. So now great. Yeah, my business has been remote since 2004 distributed model. So I hear you. So what do you see as possible now because of COVID-19. That wouldn’t have been without it.
Chris Brogan:
I see a few things I want to as I see a lot more opportunity for collaboration either in small or larger sized businesses, because there’s just so much. We learned a lot of things about physical distribution of resources. For instance, food in America, for instance, just was crazy. And we realized that, you know, for the system to work, it was this sort of mass consumption, nonstop hamster wheel. And when any piece of that slowed for even a little while, huge disruptions happened. Well, in the in the wake of some of those disruptions, a lot of businesses have faltered, floundered or otherwise been dented. Friend of mine. Actually, I have to circle back with him. He did. Just a question. like three more companies. And it was just because the way things were falling out these people were all, you know, suddenly not as in demand, not selling as much. And he had some cash and was able to pick up these companies. And that means he was able to give some jobs to some of these people not kick everybody to the curb, he was able to, you know, preserve a good piece of software that other people wanted and this platform that uses it.
And so I think that collaboration is one of the big, secret, wonderful outcomes of this. And there’s a lot of pain that goes with that collaboration. It’s always important to remember that, you know, every time you see one of those cute jolly Halloween pop up stores, that means another retail business went out, but there’s a lot of chances where if people really kind of rethink who they consider their allies, that there’s some real obvious wins that could be had.
Leslie Carruthers:
Mm hmm. They could use three words so that they could see things from more dimensions than just one.
Chris Brogan:
One would hope. I mean, seeing things like airlines, you know, who also at home to help programs and rent a car kind of relationships and all that, you know, they’re making, people are flying less. So they’re marketing some of the other facets of their business. I’m seeing, for instance with JetBlue.
So there’s a lot of chances for looking for a little diversity to make your sales opportunity a little better.
Leslie Carruthers :
Yeah, diversity collaboration, looking newly. Yeah, got it. Great. So what are you seeing? I noticed that at your website that you have completely it occurred to me like you have retooled its store leader to be about the time like everything read current. To me, I didn’t get through everything, but it. I really hear that you’re in the moment like with it as it is and as it isn’t. Are you seeing that happen elsewhere? Are you an outlier?
Chris Brogan:
It’s really interesting to me to kind of surf around other people’s websites and see what’s going on. So one of several roles that I’ve had is a lot of professional speaking, and a lot of consulting type business. So 91% of that revenue went away for myself and a lot of people like suddenly were no conferences, we’re not getting paid to speak X, Y, and Z plays into a lot of friends of mine who all suddenly had no work to do. They all bum rush to one specific concept, which is I’ll be a virtual speaker. I can be really cool virtual events. And you know, all you have to do is buy two extra cameras, buy a couple of nicer lights and your virtual speaker. You know what I mean? It’s not It’s not rocket surgery, but for people who have just a tiny enough amount of tech savvy to come up with a couple different video views. They look you know, worlds ahead of the person who’s on zoom where it’s still the kind of look up your nose angle of the camera and all that. Yeah, yeah. But I just I, you know, I never like to swim in any other people’s lanes. I never like to kind of do their thing. So right before Coronavirus. I just launched this project called story leader, which was the idea that I wanted to do leadership training leadership workshops and information about how to use storytelling internally inside a business as well as kind of tangentially externally. I mean, I’ve sold marketing and sales information for years. When I was saying, you know, there’s a lot of people who are gonna have to work at a distance, right before the Coronavirus. I said, you know, this would be really good if you knew how to communicate better, how to be a lot more succinct, how to be a lot more brief, how to be compassionate, how to share, you know, confidence building material and all that sort of detail. And Coronavirus, hit and I was like, Oh, well, I just changed about 11 words, and I’m basically spot on the trend. So that’s how that
Leslie Carruthers:
Nice, nice. Well, you’re just reminding me, I watched them in preparation for today. Again, thank you. I watched your interview with Steve and Carol Garfield. Oh, sure. You guys were talking about how when the network’s all had to go at home go What was the word sequester at home? That’s not the right word. But you know what they said shelter at home that Jimmy Fallon and all these guys were sending them email tips on what to do with their camera and their lighting to get better and then he watched them quickly order more equipment and because it had been done for them and yeah, so when when you’re talking about people adjusting Yeah, that was that was funny.
Chris Brogan:
It is interesting to note to like all the local newscasters started doing their work from home as well. And the the odd person out invariably was the weather person, because the weather person unless they’d invested in a green screen somewhere, couldn’t stand a wall and pointed stuff that wasn’t there like they’re used to doing. And so they had to talk about really dumb science projects and all that. It really it kind of makes you really want reconsider those humans like I’m sure they’re lovely. But do you really need someone to talk for a really slow, long amount of time that is going to be 70 for tomorrow? You don’t you ask Google Hey, Google, what’s the weather tomorrow? And it goes this much and you know, you know what you need to know. So there’s I feel like Fallon and those guys as well, the evening guys. They lost a bunch of their credibility because their ability to deliver things like Carpool Karaoke goes right to zero. We can carpool with your musician acts and all that and having lots of funny games with the routes isn’t as fun if everybody’s in another building. Yeah, so I don’t know. I think that entertainment most surely kind of showed a different face. And I feel like the country in general kind of got a little tired of watching really wealthy people, you know, cry into their, you know, I don’t even know any fancy word name, so I can’t say Louis Vuitton purses or whatever. And I saw Cardi B crying because she had to eat cereal one day because she really wish she had sushi and I thought why And I feel like there is a certain
Chris Brogan:
The rich kind of experience going on in this timeframe as well, which the beauty is that we’ve all really gotten a chance to reconsider our our goals over the last handful of months as well.
Leslie Carruthers:
For sure. So, speaking of that, reconsidering goals. Is there anything that you’ve started doing or stopped doing in your business?
Chris Brogan:
<y business had been a little bit messy for a few years right before this one. And I was like, kind of losing ground in some places just because I had taken my eye off a few things and hoped for something that didn’t happen. And so I had to really, you know, at the very beginning of this year, I was like, Okay, I’m rolling up the sleeves and I’m really going to come back now and then you know, quarantine hit. So in a weird way, I’ve got sort of tabula rasa, you know, I’ve got the clean slate. I could do whatever I want. And so I’ve done some different things. One is that I realized that it’s so easy to be forgotten Anyway, you know what I mean? So the last three years, I was not promoting myself very much. And while kind of in my soul that feels great, like, you know, self promoting people are like really annoying. If people don’t kind of remember you top of mind, they don’t remember to call you and hire you for things, which is how you get your bag of money. And so I launched a video show, I launched a daily video show because I have to be stupider than everybody. And so weekdays I do a show. And part of I mean, it’s not a revenue product, per se, but it’s already got me to business opportunities and also to weird sponsorship opportunities. So I’m very I’m aware that I’m not going to be a TV show producer my whole life, but I’m excited about the fact that in redoing this, I was testing some real basics of marketing, some graphics to be nice, I’m super anti graphics. I’m super like low tech I’m very into like, making everything just very light and and somewhat sloppy. But what I found is if I put up pretty pictures on Instagram, a lot of people make a comment. And if I put up a little ad, with a picture of the ad, it gets like way more traffic than if I just put up a link to something. And so I kind of had to remind myself that everybody wasn’t like me and everybody likes the shiny and so maybe I have some shiny back in.
Leslie Carruthers:
Got it. Okay, so you’re playing experimentation and that you took a bit of a break, and now you’re back back at it and eating more of your own dog food.
Chris Brogan:
Boy, am I eating a lot more.
Chris Brogan:
Yeah, no, I mean, I think, you know, one of the other dangers that happens with people who do things like cell marketing or sell information about marketing is no if you’re far afield from everything. It’s really easy to send platitudes. out, it’s really easy to launch, you know, what sounds like good marketing advice. But I hadn’t really, you know, fire tested it, I hadn’t really said, If I don’t do this, well, then I’m not going to get the attention. And if I don’t get the attention, then I’m not going to get whatever my business goals are. And so with all that in mind, I’m like, Oh, I need to do more of this, oh, I need to try this. I even you know, was working with someone who does a little SEO, they’re a web person, make sites and things like that. They said, Hey, have you ever looked at the SEO on your site? I said, Never. I rank for stupid things, and blah, blah, blah. And in that process, I went, Oh, there’s a lot of gaping holes in what I’ve got going on that I could fix. I could get better at the way I make my content number one, just to make it a little more SEO friendly. But then there were like some really, you know, there’s, there’s only so much that the hygienists can do, versus the oral surgeon. So I’m going to go in and do a little bit more of that. So that’s something that’s changed as I decided to take search a little minor, tiny little but we’re serious. And I say this because you know if for endless amount of time, I forever just sort of tease people when it comes to SEO and things like that, because I showed up right before the easy days were over. I showed up right is like a penguin and panda was great. That’s when everybody suddenly had to make content that people wanted. And trust, not just stuff it with links
Leslie Carruthers :
Got it.
Chris Brogan:
Yeah. And so then I realized that you know, all I can tell you how to write good blog posts, but I never circled back to safe so now other SEO people do. Seems like you’re out there. And that’s, that’s a change I made over the last few months as well.
Leslie Carruthers :
Nice. Well, I insist you let me do a work session for you on the house. It’s part of my pitching and the team would be absolutely thrilled.
Chris Brogan:
Well, you are lovely. I should I should disclose that one of your brethren is already shaking up some of my stuff just to see what he can find because Oh, nice. I was told that I was told that I was As bad person, but you know, what it means to me is it means that I will get the chance to ask you questions as well. Yeah, no,
Leslie Carruthers:
please.
Chris Brogan:
It will usually there’s only a dark art in the past. And I think it’s finally turning that right corner that it’s, you know, kind of a utility fundamental that needs to happen as well.
Leslie Carruthers :
Yeah. Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that until you do it, then you’re kicking yourself that you didn’t do it in the past because you realize how well it works. But you had holes in your face that you had to fix before you got to something that doesn’t necessarily get worse over time. You know what I mean? So I have a problem generating urgency, in essence, people don’t realize, so we’ve just started playing with a cost of inaction calculator. That’s nice. You can get some nice big, you know, six figures and, and beyond in the next six months that people are like, wait a minute, what?
Chris Brogan:
That sounds good. I mean, that’s it’s an important visibility. I mean, sort of community Hitting the need is one of those primary pieces of marketing that we all forget.
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah, everybody gets the need that they all say oh talk to me in two months. Love it.
Chris Brogan:
Let me show you what two months does.
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah, that’s the cost. Let me show you what that’s gonna cost right? Yep, yep. So I’d like to pivot just a little bit in this conversation. It’s still relevant but I really am interested in the idea of you know, there are people who consistently take lemons and make lemonade and they have that resiliency they have that something you know, where they can see the blank slate and and come up with with something on or they see something on the slate that looks looks blank to others or looks negative. So I’m very interested in as we hopefully come out of this COVID Coronavirus period, continuing this theme in the conversations of how do we all train ourselves to build and develop our resiliency so that we are now we’re in a good spot no matter what and we have that confidence and the ability to keep moving forward.
Chris Brogan:
I mean, there’s a bunch of different pieces to that. One is that a lot of times when we we kind of get stumped by something. We take it far too personally, I we didn’t really, you know, it’s probably something I did. Maybe they don’t like me, no one loves me. As a creative person, it is forever. Like, you know, my seventh grade birthday party. And I invited everybody’s cool and I’m the only guy there. It is always that, you know, not enough people came. How come no one saw my show?
Leslie Carruthers:
Laughter recognition, man.
Chris Brogan:
All right, here you go. There it is.
Chris Brogan:
So you have to leave. That’s one of the first things you have to learn how to scrape. The other thing you have to kind of kick out the door is accept neither praise nor criticism. Because resilience is built on you’re working on your thing and you’re just going to work your thing. The other challenges had a really interesting moment of this the other day. The other interesting challenges that a lot of times people don’t quite see where you’re going yet, because you haven’t illustrated it well enough. You might have to repeat it a bunch of times. And so a lot of times we give up way too early on something, just because no one quite sees it yet, you know, when those scooters suddenly littered the West Coast of the United States, and you could like and swipe your card and take you three bucks or something to scooter around town, like a weirdo, when that first came over, like, this is the stupidest idea ever. And next thing you know, they’re a multi billion dollar valuation. 10 years ago, we had said, Hey, would you get in a car with a complete stranger and let them drive you somewhere? You’d say, what is this a kidnapping app? And now there’s, you know, at least two majors, you know, and so we never see it. Like, you know, you can’t we can’t almost nobody can. The people who make it can’t. What happens is they try something it didn’t work. They pivot a little bit trying to pivot.
So resilience comes from taking a lot of shots.
I play a lot of video games, I play a lot of shooter video games, you know where it’s you versus a human, some other part of the world would pretend digital guns and we’re shooting at each other. What happens is if my gun requires a lot of precision, I will miss every time it’s built into my gamertag. It’s bad aim bad jokes, because I can’t shoot. I can’t hit anybody. But if you give me a gun that I can use a lot of bullets, I’ll get you.
Chris Brogan:
I just have to use all the bullets I can find anywhere in the vicinity. I’ll have to go find more bullets after Hang on a minute, guys. I’ll collect more bullets, shoot some more at them. They’ll be like, you’re not winning. And I’m like, I’m going to win. And you do they always you know Wayne Gretzky, what was it you know, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take my my variation on that is if you take 100 shots and you hit two. It’s usually to better than anyone else who took none. And that’s a kind of helps you a little because 100% of the shots you don’t take makes you want to punch someone. It’s like one of those like live laugh, love things that you just don’t want to hear. But if I take 100 sets and beat you only has to one that that’s like your cost of not doing anything. You go oh man. I just could have tried 100 stupid things. And the other thing is we also think that everyone sees us all the time wisely. We think that everyone’s watching our every move. I had a friend. I’m going to be launching my website today, but I’m not ready to launch it tomorrow. We announced it to whom CNN? Is Queen Elizabeth coming by. Are there aliens landing for this? Who gives a so anyway, you know, it’s all good. No one cares. No one cares about it as much as you do.
And just do it. And you’ll find that it always works. And if you mess up, do everything you can do the three ways. Acknowledge. Oh, man, did I just mess up? Apologize. Really sorry, that didn’t go the way it intended to go. and Act. Here’s what I’m gonna do to fix this. Here’s how I’m going to do so it doesn’t happen again.
Chris Brogan:
That’s it. You’re done. You do the things you have to do
Leslie Carruthers:
Now that’s that’s great. Your Thanks, man. Well, takes one to know one. Oh, hey, the dogs up my door. Hey Laurie. This is a Great Dane. So beautiful. I love it. Yeah.
Chris Brogan:
I play a dog game that I play with dogs of any size. And I once did it with a great day named babe. And it’s that game where you know, in dogs outdoors and they kind of like spread their paws a little lower and dunk their head and they’re like we’re gonna, we’re gonna attack each other right now for fun. I did it with a Great Dane. She’s 70 pounds. I’m like 260 so I’m still bigger than this creature but hundred and 70 pounds bolting at you. I felt it for a few weeks,
Leslie Carruthers:
especially just like bullets because they’re so treman focused, aren’t you?
Chris Brogan:
Yeah, it looks mighty. Sorry people who can only listen to this I feel for you. All right.
Leslie Carruthers:
We’ll do the video. We always do the video too. But so. So what surprised you via the Coronavirus in general what’s your plan or the the turn of events in your business and what you’re doing with your marketing
Chris Brogan:
everything surprised me I you know I there’s that there’s that one of those would you rather’s where they’re like, would you be rather, you know, be surprised by nothing or surprised by everything? Yeah, man, that’s gonna be really annoying to be surprised by everything. There’s lemons, you know, water. It’s cold. You know? That would be annoying. But the opposite would be terrible. If you weren’t surprised by anything if there was no wonder. I think most people can argue that they should rather be surprised. What surprises me is, you know, humans absolute clinging to the inability to follow basic, simple, scientifically obvious information. That’s one that could somehow become political. That surprised me. What it What surprised me is just how different the political landscape is becoming. I’m a very non political person. But the last few years another thing that has surprised me is that I’ve been I’ve been made to be like, I have to be here. In some way, or people that I care about and movements that I care about and, and REITs that I care about are being attacked right now. And so what surprises me is how that’s trickled to business. I read an article a million years ago, might have been three and three quarters ago that Jimmy Fallon had to get off the fence, because all the other nighttime TV show guys had an opinion on the newly elected President Donald Trump. And, again, this is not a political statement. It was just an interesting note that they were bringing Jimmy Fallon for trying to stay neutral. You can’t be Switzerland. And I think that’s surprised me a lot. And I think that you know, if I had to pick anyone, I would just say that it’s
Chris Brogan:
it’s a time where my message to businesses is you can’t pretend not to notice. You can’t pretend not to care. You do have to plant your flag in the ground and You’re going to lose customers one way or another, but you’re going to gain some from the side that you put the flag on. So you got to pick and it’s it’s not in the political sense of, you know, one party versus another, but just pick whatever the thing is. Take a stand. Anyone,
Chris Brogan:
whatever, anyone. Great, dangerous life,
Chris Brogan:
you know, fine. But I feel that you know, this video show that I launched one of the things that I’ve been doing with it is as many people of color as many women, as many lesser heard voices, as many you know, people from spots in the fringe that don’t normally get some attention. What little shining a spotlight I have left. Can I give it to other people passing the mic?
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah, no, I got it. And your point earlier about fallen, it’s almost like become almost become like a target audience thing. Vanilla just doesn’t work. And nobody’s interested in vanilla because everybody’s polarized.
Chris Brogan:
really are and that means it’s harder for even just a basic marketer, you just want to sell your dumb socks. You know, I just love socks and I want you to buy my socks. Well, those socks better have some hash tag on them. Because it just seems that the the no charity
Leslie Carruthers:
project or a bigger footprint
Chris Brogan:
a bigger footprint, Leslie I like it your socks have a bigger footprint than other people. Oh, you’re clever, or reduced footprint. Maybe they recycle plastic out of the ocean, you know?
Leslie Carruthers:
Right, right. Well, I’ve got big feet. So I would go for a reduced footprint if someone could Promise me that it didn’t hurt.
Leslie Carruthers:
So is there a question I haven’t asked you that you’d like me to?
Chris Brogan:
Never? Nope.
Chris Brogan:
You know, I think that’s one of those weird interviewer questions that I’ve never quite understood. I mean, I always think about something really crazy. The minute you ask it, like, you know, so what do you think have already talked
Chris Brogan:
about catching monkeys? How about Protagoras or you know, they like
Leslie Carruthers:
I hate to say it, but it’s a great little trap when you’re interviewing somebody, they will say all kinds of crazy things at the end that show you who they are and help you sidestep missteps. Interesting, huh?
Chris Brogan:
I wonder I mean, that’s a it’s an interview. It’s a whole interesting process anyway, right? I mean, it’s Yes, I we just like that guy talking about a show. But we just did this episode today where, you know, it’s a little different the guy that I was speaking with a little different live and in video than it was in email, and I was thinking owner how I could have known just so I can at least help him understand how maybe to tune his tune his performance, and I’ll take it as my failure. But what I what I think is, how do you know to ask questions, that don’t get you exactly the answer you want. Like if I’m interviewing for a job and I’m like, Leslie, we like real. You know, we like starters, we like people could just really start So, are you a starter?
Chris Brogan:
I mean, who says no?
Leslie Carruthers:
Right? Right. But you’re supposed to ask, tell me a time. Tell me about a time when you bla bla, or whatever, right? Yeah, I’m happy. I have three actually really good tips for hiring that I’m happy to share more when you hear them. Yeah, let’s go. Ready, go. Okay, so there’s this book called top grading. The john who wrote it used to work with jack welch at GE, and jack attributes a lot like some of his success to this guy, the books quite long. And the first half of it is why you should listen to it. So my recommendation is you go to the middle, and you start listening to what the guy says. And he’s got a software and an incredible system. If you had volume, you needed volume hires and HR would be great. But my three biggest takeaways from this book which was which were well worth the read of the whole thing were. One is you give people a simple set of instructions for applying. So send an email to this address. Use this Subject line and tell me these three things, and doesn’t even really matter what those are. It’s just Can you follow instructions, which most people cannot. So then you don’t have to talk to those people who cannot follow instructions who will make you crazy if you hire them. And then the second thing was, at every stage in the interview process, you say, I will require you to set up calls with me, for me with your former bosses and teammates. You don’t do a current boss, and you have to set it up for me, right? So the C players are going to be gone. Because they can’t that won’t work for them. The B players will be iffy and a players would be like, okay, yeah, because they know what the former bosses and teammates are going to say maybe they didn’t stay in touch with everybody, but they know what they’re going to say. So that makes it really easy. And then the third thing was he has a list of qualities that are green, yellow and red. So he recommends that before you hire before you interview, you create a list of your gods. Your nice to haves and your these would be bonuses and I don’t have to have them. And then you make sure that your gotta haves are green for all the people you’re interviewing, because you know, when you need somebody, and you’re talking to them, and you just please work, please work, you will trick yourself. So if the greens are the things you have to have are green, that means you can teach it. Yeah, I didn’t say this one. So well rewind a little bit. But the green qualities are the teachable quality. So if someone’s disorganized, I can work with that. Right? A yellow quality is I can teach it if they are really hungry for it. You know? What would that be right now? I don’t have it. Yeah. But uh, read. I’m sorry.
Chris Brogan:
I got nothing.
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah, a read quality. You can’t teach someone’s honest or has integrity or they’re not.
Chris Brogan:
You’re right.
Leslie Carruthers:
So if, I require somebody in that I’ve got that quality on there, and it’s read quality and I’m really honest with myself and you don’t have it, you’re off the list. So Those three things were awesome. And I top grading. That’s cool. It’s a great book. Well, I don’t
Chris Brogan:
Add top grading for your show notes.
Leslie Carruthers:
Yeah, right. We’ll make it another Bradford smart. Wonderful. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. The other reason I asked that question is just because maybe there’s something that you really want to talk about because it’s I don’t have a problem with you promoting yourself a bit or saying something or resource are
Chris Brogan:
already amazing. Like I couldn’t believe it.
Leslie Carruthers:
Hey, that’s right. Bomb. All right, cool. Thank you. Thank you. This was really fun.
