Real Relationships Real Revenue - Video Edition | Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career

Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your favorite science, step, or tool from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training? The most interesting science for Cannon is around habits and the metaphor of the rider and the elephant for the conscious and subconscious mind. The elephant is a lot more powerful, and if you can't control it, you are not going to get where you want to go. This is where the habits and routines come in to provide alignment with your elephant. Our emotions and our habits determine most of what we do. With the right mindset around business development and our emotions and habits, we can be more successful. Cannon sees this play out in client's lives when wealth transfers to another generation. His team spends a fair bit of time helping their clients manage their own emotions. You have patterns. They are either the right patterns or the wrong patterns. Putting in deliberate time and getting out of your comfort zone is how to take away the wrong ones and instill the right ones. The key is to simply start and commit to 15 minutes of planning time each week. Combine purpose with a better pattern, and let it grow over time. The Protemoi List is a great tool you can use to create the habit of investing into the relationships that matter the most to your business development efforts. Every Friday, Cannon looks at an Excel sheet that he uses to track his business development work and make sure he is doing something every week to make progress on his most important relationships. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ccarr@cornercap.com cornercap.com

Mo asks Cannon Carr: What is your personal definition of business development? If you have a craft that you know and love and want to grow, you are naturally going to step into business development so you might as well do it right. For Cannon, business development is about connecting people and ideas. He thinks of it as purposeful engagement that connects those two things. Connecting people with ideas often becomes deeply personal. During the pandemic, Cannon noticed a number of clients struggling with aging parents so they put a lot of effort into coming up with and connecting clients with ideas to help manage the issue. Taxes and the rapidly changing legislative landscape has been another area where Cannon and his team have been working with clients to stay ahead of the curve. The foundation is always being helpful rather than looking directly for business. It's not about the revenue, it's about enriching lives. Sometimes the solution falls outside of the firm's specialty and that's okay as long as the end result is helping a person out. You have to think of your relationships as a portfolio with investements in people all the time. Being proactive and helpful will eventually pay off. Not everything will connect. You have to look for additional opportunities to be helpful and keep reaching out. Think about business development as solving problems through connecting people and ideas together. If you are doing a good job, you will naturally get your share of the business. Proactive engagement is vital for service businesses. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ccarr@cornercap.com cornercap.com

Mo asks Cannon Carr: When did you realize that business development was great? There was not one moment, but a story stands out in particular for Cannon. When his father was retiring from the firm he was working at, he told him that he was a great analyst but not a great salesperson, and if he wanted to succeed, he would need to figure that out. When a professional services firm reaches a certain revenue threshold, the same things that got them to that point won't help grow past it. Simply hiring a rainmaker won't necessarily solve the problem. You need a broader team working towards business development to tap a broader network to grow a firm. The real mindset shift that unlocks the power of business development is "Are you selling, or are you helping to solve problems?" Take the sales hat off and integrate yourself into your client's lives. Understand what their problems are, and if you can be alongside them during the inevitable transitions in their life, you can deepen the relationship. It's about relevancy and solving problems. The sales and referrals will come naturally out of that. Life has transitions that create challenges along the way. Cannon helps his clients with a wealth plan that keeps their legacy and lifestyle intact. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ccarr@cornercap.com cornercap.com

Katrina Johnson shares her business development insights pulled from years of experience and her background in social and neuroscience. Learn what it takes to convince a skeptic, why creating a habit around communication is the key to business development success, and a simple framework for training your mind to be less reactive and more focused on just doing the right thing instead of worrying about the outcome. Mo asks Katrina Johnson: Tell us the moment when you realized that business development was good and worth doing? Katrina's big aha moment was when she realized that the skill of business development can be learned. She started in academia and fell into consulting almost by accident, and she enjoyed her consulting work but she felt like her hands were tied. As a subcontractor, Katrina wasn't able to deliver the work in the way that she thought would be the most powerful for her clients. It wasn't until Katrina met Mo and learned about the GrowBIG system did she realize what was missing from her work. With a background in neural science, Katrina knew that the research and material were pointing her in the right direction, but in some ways digging into the research was also a curse. Katrina sometimes falls into the habit of using research as a way to hide and avoid putting it into practice. This is where her second big realization came into play, and that she had some underlying issue that was preventing her from executing. She decided to start off small and refine the process from a place of action. She began by going to networking events and trying to follow up with people, most of those efforts didn't pan out though. She landed a few speaking engagements with small groups of people and used that as a basis to create a relationship with people. She embraced deeper relationships rather than looser connections and in doing so stretched herself outside of her comfort zone. She doesn't set out to get meetings with important decision makers, but that often flows from naturally deepening relationships with people and being helpful. Katrina learned a lot about the value of targeting over the last year. She realized that when she can work with the management of an organization in some combination of assessment and coaching she's at her best. Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your personal definition of business development? Katrina likes helping people. For her, business development is about cultivating opportunities to help people. Business development doesn't always have a great reinforcement mechanism, but having a process established makes it much more consistent. Creating a habit around communication that makes it simpler, more meaningful, and consistent is what has helped Katrina stay the course. Using the tools and communication methods that your client uses is crucial. Katrina tries to make her communications quick and useful when touching base with someone and on whatever platform works for them. Lots of little touches can be extremely powerful relationship builders. Katrina carves out time on Mondays to reach out to people, but she also has notes on her calendar and a Protemoi list that help her keep track of communications. Just having a list of names of the most important people to you can be enough to encourage you to take action. Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your favorite business development strategy from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training? Instead of a favorite, Katrina wants to emphasize one strategy that often goes unrecognized for how important it is, which is targeting. Targeting is critical to business development and as a student of minimalism, Katrina is always thinking about trade-offs. Minimalists understand trade-offs as an inherent part of life, but instead of thinking about what needs to be sacrificed, it's more about what to double down on. The subconscious emotional layer is what makes targeting tricky. We are evolutionarily primed to avoid loss and are naturally averse to subtraction. We only have so much time in our life. We can't just take on more, we have to target and figure out what are the things to go big on and what to let go of. Mo had a similar experience with the training GrowBIG. Every time he refined his method and message and who he wanted to serve by letting go of certain markets, it was a terrifying change but resulted in incredible growth over time. Working with a small niche can be scary, but it often leads to greater success as your effort is more refined and focused within your skillsett. When Katrina is doing her job well, she's often not operating at the forefront. In an ideal world, her clients are getting better and she eventually works herself out of a job. When someone comes to Katrina with a referral that isn't within her core focus, she always sets up a call with the person and leverages her own referral network to help that person. She always circles back to the person that refers them to let them know they've been taken care of. Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is a business development story that you are particularly proud of? Katrina's story occurred five years ago when she went on a trip to meet a candidate for a President role at a textile manufacturer. Katrina knew she was skeptical, but didn't realize how skeptical. After the candidate was hired, Katrina ended up working with her for the first six months and through her unique knowledge of how that particular organization functioned was able to help considerably. Her relationship with this one skeptical person led to additional relationships and business. To win her over Katrina did three things. She didn't make it about her and take the skepticism personally, she got curious about why she was skeptical and what it could teach her, and she waited for holes to open for her to go deeper. It's easy to take offense from skepticism, but Katrina had to learn early on as a physician that you have to earn respect. You can't look at things from a scientific perspective when you're stuck in your own head. Being curious about the root of the person's skepticism makes it objective and less about you. Being candid with the client and honest about her perspectives was key to building trust and winning the skeptic over. Divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on doing the right thing. Quieting the anxious and emotional part of us can lead to more creativity and effectiveness. Focusing on process instead of outcomes is how you can control that. Mo asks Katrina Johnson: If you could tape a message to your younger self about business development, what would it say? It would simply be one thing: Learn to walk the dog. When someone walks a dog, we assume that the person is in control, but that's not always the case. Our brains work in a similar way. The dogwalker is the prefrontal cortex, and the dog is the limbic system that responds and detects threats. The big question is who is in control? The truth is that the dog is in control most of the time. Everytime we stick to known associates instead of unknown prospects, or when we expect every email to get a response, the dog is in control. The sooner you can learn to walk the dog, the sooner you get to do the work you care about on your own terms. Even with the best tools and strategies at our disposal, most of the time we are only half as effective as we could be because we are being dragged around by our limbic system. It's not an issue of ego, as much as it is the part of your brain that has evolved to perceive threats. Threats aren't always tigers, they can also be getting rejected, feeling embarrassed, or losing status. The first job is to get out of your own way so the tools and strategies can do the work. Katrina focuses on awareness first about her emotions and experiences. A quick, simple label can be very effective in reducing the limbic system's response. Reframing it and considering other reasons something may or may not have happened makes it less emotional. Give your emotions context, label them, and reframe them. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. This is a foundational skill in business development. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mo asks Katrina Johnson: If you could tape a message to your younger self about business development, what would it say? It would simply be one thing: Learn to walk the dog. When someone walks a dog, we assume that the person is in control, but that's not always the case. Our brains work in a similar way. The dogwalker is the prefrontal cortex, and the dog is the limbic system that responds and detects threats. The big question is who is in control? The truth is that the dog is in control most of the time. Everytime we stick to known associates instead of unknown prospects, or when we expect every email to get a response, the dog is in control. The sooner you can learn to walk the dog, the sooner you get to do the work you care about on your own terms. Even with the best tools and strategies at our disposal, most of the time we are only half as effective as we could be because we are being dragged around by our limbic system. It's not an issue of ego, as much as it is the part of your brain that has evolved to perceive threats. Threats aren't always tigers, they can also be getting rejected, feeling embarrassed, or losing status. The first job is to get out of your own way so the tools and strategies can do the work. Katrina focuses on awareness first about her emotions and experiences. A quick, simple label can be very effective in reducing the limbic system's response. Reframing it and considering other reasons something may or may not have happened makes it less emotional. Give your emotions context, label them, and reframe them. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. This is a foundational skill in business development. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is a business development story that you are particularly proud of? Katrina's story occurred five years ago when she went on a trip to meet a candidate for a President role at a textile manufacturer. Katrina knew she was skeptical, but didn't realize how skeptical. After the candidate was hired, Katrina ended up working with her for the first six months and through her unique knowledge of how that particular organization functioned was able to help considerably. Her relationship with this one skeptical person led to additional relationships and business. To win her over Katrina did three things. She didn't make it about her and take the skepticism personally, she got curious about why she was skeptical and what it could teach her, and she waited for holes to open for her to go deeper. It's easy to take offense from skepticism, but Katrina had to learn early on as a physician that you have to earn respect. You can't look at things from a scientific perspective when you're stuck in your own head. Being curious about the root of the person's skepticism makes it objective and less about you. Being candid with the client and honest about her perspectives was key to building trust and winning the skeptic over. Divorce yourself from the outcome and focus on doing the right thing. Quieting the anxious and emotional part of us can lead to more creativity and effectiveness. Focusing on process instead of outcomes is how you can control that. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your favorite business development strategy from the Snowball System or GrowBIG training? Instead of a favorite, Katrina wants to emphasize one strategy that often goes unrecognized for how important it is, which is targeting. Targeting is critical to business development and as a student of minimalism, Katrina is always thinking about trade-offs. Minimalists understand trade-offs as an inherent part of life, but instead of thinking about what needs to be sacrificed, it's more about what to double down on. The subconscious emotional layer is what makes targeting tricky. We are evolutionarily primed to avoid loss and are naturally averse to subtraction. We only have so much time in our life. We can't just take on more, we have to target and figure out what are the things to go big on and what to let go of. Mo had a similar experience with the training GrowBIG. Every time he refined his method and message and who he wanted to serve by letting go of certain markets, it was a terrifying change but resulted in incredible growth over time. Working with a small niche can be scary, but it often leads to greater success as your effort is more refined and focused within your skillsett. When Katrina is doing her job well, she's often not operating at the forefront. In an ideal world, her clients are getting better and she eventually works herself out of a job. When someone comes to Katrina with a referral that isn't within her core focus, she always sets up a call with the person and leverages her own referral network to help that person. She always circles back to the person that refers them to let them know they've been taken care of. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mo asks Katrina Johnson: What is your personal definition of business development? Katrina likes helping people. For her, business development is about cultivating opportunities to help people. Business development doesn't always have a great reinforcement mechanism, but having a process established makes it much more consistent. Creating a habit around communication that makes it simpler, more meaningful, and consistent is what has helped Katrina stay the course. Using the tools and communication methods that your client uses is crucial. Katrina tries to make her communications quick and useful when touching base with someone and on whatever platform works for them. Lots of little touches can be extremely powerful relationship builders. Katrina carves out time on Mondays to reach out to people, but she also has notes on her calendar and a Protemoi list that help her keep track of communications. Just having a list of names of the most important people to you can be enough to encourage you to take action. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mo asks Katrina Johnson: Tell us the moment when you realized that business development was good and worth doing? Katrina's big aha moment was when she realized that the skill of business development can be learned. She started in academia and fell into consulting almost by accident, and she enjoyed her consulting work but she felt like her hands were tied. As a subcontractor, Katrina wasn't able to deliver the work in the way that she thought would be the most powerful for her clients. It wasn't until Katrina met Mo and learned about the GrowBIG system did she realize what was missing from her work. With a background in neural science, Katrina knew that the research and material were pointing her in the right direction, but in some ways digging into the research was also a curse. Katrina sometimes falls into the habit of using research as a way to hide and avoid putting it into practice. This is where her second big realization came into play, and that she had some underlying issue that was preventing her from executing. She decided to start off small and refine the process from a place of action. She began by going to networking events and trying to follow up with people, most of those efforts didn't pan out though. She landed a few speaking engagements with small groups of people and used that as a basis to create a relationship with people. She embraced deeper relationships rather than looser connections and in doing so stretched herself outside of her comfort zone. She doesn't set out to get meetings with important decision makers, but that often flows from naturally deepening relationships with people and being helpful. Katrina learned a lot about the value of targeting over the last year. She realized that when she can work with the management of an organization in some combination of assessment and coaching she's at her best. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com katrina@kcjconsult.com

Mike Duffy shares his insights into business development and creating relationships that move the world forward. Find out how Mike transformed his career in sales with one fateful and shocking conversation with his sales manager, why Mike's philosophy on asking questions is what allows him to always add value to his relationships, and why treating your profession the same way that a doctor does theirs is the key to sustained success. Mo asks Mike Duffy: When was the moment that you decided that business development was important and you needed to get great at it? Mike's dad started in sales so he had a front row seat on making sales from the very beginning. He started his sales career by selling ad space in a travel magazine, and once he got out of college, Mike started selling ladies clothes in California. He took a $500,000 territory and in 18 months turned it into $2.5 million. He won salesman of the year at the age of 24 and ended up having a beer with his sales manager which led to a conversation that changed everything for him. Mike took a deep dive into discovering what really makes a good sales program and he became a student of sales for the rest of his career. Mike teaches lawyers business development now under the assumption that he has to sell the idea to his students. The goal is to help them understand that adding value to a relationship or closing a deal is sales by another name. If we want to live the life we want, we have to get great at growth. Start with the people you are going to call and how you can have a conversation that creates curiosity. That allows you to learn about what they need. Business development is about helping people. Business development habits set you apart when it comes to employment as well. It's hard to ascertain someone's technical expertise in a 30-minute interview, but it's obvious when you care, listen intently, and make the conversation about the other person. You always have to be thinking about the long game. Some prospects may not turn into clients for years, so you need to focus on just moving the ball a little bit further each day. Be transparent, have humility, and be honest. Tell people when they are your #1 target and allow them to shape the relationship in a way that's valuable for them. Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your personal definition of business development? Simply put, business development is helping others, connecting dots, and developing healthy and long lasting relationships. When you understand who your client is, whoever that happens to be in the moment, and add value for them, that's how you get stuff done. Where is the value chain and how are you adding value? It doesn't end with the person you are talking to right now. Servant leadership is the foundation for Mike's relationship philosophy. He's always asking himself internally about how he can be helpful to not only his client, but also his client's clients. When you ask the right questions, you get some interesting answers. Questions allow you to understand what motivates and drives someone, what concerns them, and what brings them joy. When you're in a dot-connecting mode, all of that info helps you know who to link up. Helping people when there is no chance of commercial gain is your moment of truth. Connecting dots for people is how you leave a legacy. It's worth the fight. Choose your attitude every day and build your resilience over time so you can keep pushing forward. If your definition of business development is helping people, getting a no every once in a while is not an issue. Mo asks Mike Duffy: What is your favorite science, step, or story that you learned from GrowBIG Training or The Snowball System? Mike has a top 4: "Walk Around the Brain", "Build It Together", "MITs", and "Give to Gets". Mike has writing pads all over his office to help him write down questions that cover all four quadrants of the brain and to make sure he's prepared for every meeting. When he's in the meeting Mike always makes sure that the client has their fingerprints on the plan. MITs help Mike move the ball forward every week and Give to Gets allow prospects to get a sample of what it's like to work with him. The four quadrants of the brain consist of the why, the what, the how, and the who. When Mike is getting ready for a meeting, he develops two or three questions for each quadrant and then he pays direct attention to the language the client uses so he could build those words into the plan. He's always looking for questions that someone else hasn't asked so he doesn't sound like everyone else and can differentiate his firm. You can have a great idea or product, but if you don't engage the client, there is no guarantee they will want to take you up on your offer. A client's engagement during a meeting is a good measure of how good a job you are doing. Mo asks Mike Duffy: Tell me about a business development story that you are particularly proud of. One of Mike's top business development efforts happened after a major company went under and all the audits they were doing went out for RFP. Instead of going into a presentation around pitching for the audit, Mike and his team just acted like they were starting the audit right then. The preparation was in understanding their business inside and out, interviewing their people and learning what it's important in their world, and building the audit in front of the client. This approach led to winning 87% of their pitches. That story stands out for Mike because it showed him exactly what his team was made of and how they could excel together. He was also able to look back and analyze the reasons for his success, and those bold moves became the basis for much of Mike's foundation for growth later on. Covid was a godsend to sales people and professional services. This was the perfect opportunity to figure out how to be creative and add value to people. You could outsell your competition by not being the same and providing a bit more. Mike was once asked how he has survived in professional services for so long, and his answer was, "Giving away all the credit and taking all the blame." That's Mike's philosophy in a nutshell. If Mike was forced to admit one of his qualities, it would be being willing to be blunt and honest when the project is going down the wrong path and pulling people back on track. Mo asks Mike Duffy: If you could record a message to your younger self about how they should think about business development, what would it be? Mike's message would be to essentially to cold call for a couple months right at the beginning to get used to hearing no. He would also tell himself to feed his brain. Read books and consume information that keeps you moving. Treat your profession like a profession. If you treat your profession the same way that a doctor does and invest in continuing education every year to be a better leader and sales person, you will be successful. Mike invests in programs that he's heard about on podcasts and consumes books referenced in other books that have made an impact on him. You have to invest in yourself if you want to get better. Mike also builds relationships with people that are learning themselves and is curious enough to find out more about them. He's always thinking about how he can add value to a conversation or relationship, and thinking about the questions that allow him to dig deeper. When you ask questions, you learn. When you learn, you connect dots, and when you do that, everyone gets better and the effect can snowball. Asking the right questions is instrumental to Mike's ability to grow. Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com Mike Duffy on LinkedIn