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

Mo asks Nathan Barry: What’s your big idea for growing a book of business, growing relationships, and growing a career? Nathan used to play video games and he likens having an audience and a newsletter to having the cheat codes for business. Having an engaged audience that you can push content to is incredibly powerful. Some platforms have followers, like social and blogging, and others allow you to push content in front of your audience. The push method puts you in control and makes those platforms much more valuable in achieving your business goals. Many professionals don’t think of an email list as a relevant tool for building a book of business, but if you have a list of the right people that want to hear from you it can definitely be a powerful asset. Even if you’re not selling something through your email list, you can still build the mind share and reputation with your audience that increases your value in their mind. Delivering value is key. When it comes to professional services, a cadence of once a month is more than sufficient and the important thing is quality over quantity when it comes to communication. The best approach is to augment your close relationships with the vital few and combine it with a larger audience where you are delivering content. Those people are your prospective clients and finding a communication method that has leverage is how you can scale relationships considerably. Content allows someone to get to know you on a deeper level, well before you ever talk to them in person or on a phone call.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com ConvertKit.com

Luke Burgis shares the incredibly powerful concept of mimetic desire and how it shapes our behavior in fundamental ways. Learn why your mental models are the foundation for everything you do, how to figure out what motivates you at a core level, and how to eliminate the negative aspects of desire and replace them with a transcendent desire that drives you to change the world.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers? Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic. Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear. Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else. Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models. Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere. When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical. Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development. Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them. One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire. Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about. The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits. By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business? Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need. At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires. Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business. Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out. Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available. Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest. The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm. The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships? We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements. Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship. Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time. A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you. Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire. In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.   Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits? It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy. You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult. Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be. In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations. Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray. We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing? If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model? Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do. In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality. Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey. It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another. We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis. Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you. We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds. A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed. When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?” All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire. Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com/quiz lukeburgis.com lukeburgis.com/motivation winning-more.com

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Luke Burgis. Mimetic desire is one of the most powerful forces in the world. You need to harness that power in your life because if you don’t it will have control of you. We think of desire as a linear process, but we are actually running it through a model. This is often an ideal or a person that we aspire to be, and if we don’t realize who our models are our mimetic desire is yanking us around. This can lead to conflict and competition with other people and turning them into scapegoats in our minds. A practical thing you can do right now is write down who your models are, positive and negative, and then become intentional about what you want to keep and what you want to shed. When it comes to new clients, employees, or prospects there are three powerful questions to ask so you can better understand their core motivations. The first is “Tell me of a time when you took some kind of action and it brought you a great sense of satisfaction.” The second is “What specifically did you do to bring about that satisfaction?” The third is “What was it that was so satisfying?” All business development-focused professionals need to get a yes in order to serve their clients. Transcendent desire takes that idea and plays out the deeper impacts that will become possible in the future. The mantra “Think big, start small, scale-up” is a perfect example of a transcendent desire. Come at a project with a big vision and small discrete steps to get started on the process.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com winning-more.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire to hack our own habits? It comes down to having a plan. In the absence of a game plan, the negative aspects of mimetic desire wins and you will gravitate to what’s easy. You may be able to list your core values, but you need to go further and order them from most important to least important. Oftentimes our values will come into conflict and without knowing the hierarchy you make everything more difficult. Your positive models can help you escape the negative flywheel. With a positive mentor, you can measure what your time has been spent on and compare it to what you are hoping to be. In times of uncertainty imitation increases, especially the negative type. Positive models of desire like professionals and mentors can really help in these situations. Work can feel like a battlefield. When you’re in the trenches you need to have a transcendent desire to pull you above the fray. We are responsible for what other people want. Every person we come into contact with we leave wanting a little differently. Who is it in your life that has the biggest effect on what you’re doing? If you’re not putting in the time on business development that you know you should, are you lacking the model? Understanding the impact and influence we have on desire is a highly meaningful and fundamental aspect of everything we do. In order for a career progression to play out the desire has to be thick. You have to find a mentor that you respect on multiple levels to develop the perseverance to make it a reality. Look for models that are stable and have been around for a long time to avoid losing your model midway through your journey. It’s better if the lines of communication are open. Emulation of positive role models shouldn’t be done in secret. We are on the outside looking in most of the time, so we won’t really understand the process unless communication is open. Without communication we can go from one wrong false assumption to another. We don’t often know what the good is going to be in a relationship. Trust that investing in a colleague’s personal development is always going to be fruitful.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can we use mimetic desire positively to deepen relationships? We all have a core motivation that has been with us our whole lives. If you look hard enough you will probably see a pattern in a person’s motivational drive. These core motivations are less mimetic desires and you can learn them by listening to the way they describe their proudest achievements. Getting at the heart of a person’s core motivation is one of the most important aspects of building a powerful team or client relationship. Thin desires tend to be all over the place and tend to be more mimetic. Thick desires tend to follow the same path of growth throughout a person’s life and build up over time. A great starting question for a new client would be “In the past, what did a relationship you had with a partner that you consider a success look like?” Those stories are a template for the relationship they want to have with you. Think about a time in your life where you found a deep sense of satisfaction and achievement. That’s a sign of a core motivational drive and thick desire. In terms of business, ask about a win in the last few years or a relationship they were deeply satisfied with. Draw out what was specifically meaningful for them. Then ask what actions they took to achieve that, and what about that project that was so satisfying. Everyone has a different answer and understanding why they consider those things wins in the first place will help you more deeply understand the person.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com lukeburgis.com/motivation

Mo asks Luke Burgis: How can people use mimetic desire to shape the world in a positive way and bring in more business? Luke has a fundamental belief in business that you can’t understand what another person’s good is unless you actually know the person. Sometimes you need to help people get what they think they want in order to earn the right to give them what you think they need. At the beginning of Covid, there were a number of students that were second-guessing enrolling in University and College all across the country. Instead of insisting the student behave as if nothing had changed, innovative schools could help facilitate the gap year to continue serving their needs in a way that aligns with their desires. Mentorship is a very effective way to create positive change through mimetic desire. The dark side of mimetic desire can create tension with other people and can even lead to rivalry. If you can avoid that trap, mimetic desire and mentorship can be tremendously positive for building a business. Knowing that mimetic desire can be negative, you can choose to throw it out. Luke has his students reach out to a potential mentor every single semester. As adults, we are often worse at asking for mentorship. If you’re an expert in a domain take the initiative and email someone today to make yourself available. Mutually beneficial relationships are oftentimes the strongest. The opposite of transcendent desire is imminent desire. It’s critical to understand the system of desire in your business and your life because chances are you are not desiring enough. Find desires that exist outside that system, because that’s how industries get transformed. Transcendent leaders help you want more than they thought was wantable in the existing paradigm. The more we are intentional about cultivating desires beyond the current project, that helps people avoid becoming stuck.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com

Mo asks Luke Burgis: What is your big idea in Wanting that can help people deepen their relationships and grow their careers? Human desire is the fundamental basis of everything, but we don’t often think about how desire works and operates. Desire has laws just like physics and one of the most important is that desire is mimetic. Desire is fundamentally imitative. Most of us have a model of wanting that’s linear, but very little human desire works like that. When it comes to most services and products, desire is almost always mimetic, and therefore nonlinear. Desire always operates through a third party. In some cases, this is obvious, like in commercials featuring a celebrity. Getting under the surface and understanding who the models are is crucial to understanding the desires of your clients. Most people buy something because they are trying to be like someone else. Mimetic desire is a positive thing for the most part, though we also have negative models. Models change as we go through life. When it comes to client relationships, their models of desire will change as the relationship develops and they should. Otherwise, the relationship isn’t going anywhere. When it comes to business development, understanding the models that our clients have will give us a better understanding of what they aspire to do or to be, which is critical. Understanding what kind of family life or career your client aspires to is a great way to create continuity in a relationship. As there is disruption around us this allows the relationship to be grounded in something deeper and is conducive to effective long-term business development. Asking open-ended questions can be very effective in understanding someone’s models. People are looking for outlets to have those conversations but you have to signal that you are open to them. One of the key things to understand about mimetic desire is that if your model changes, your desire changes very quickly. This is the key to understanding the volatility of desire. Think about how a flywheel of desire would work in your life and for your clients. Most people have a deep desire to understand models that explain complex and deep things, and mimetic desire is one of those things. As people learn about the concept, they will look for a quick and easy introduction to what the model is all about. The flywheel of desire works by leading back to what people will want once they learn about a specific concept. If you get the sequence of wanting correct it can help you develop any number of positive habits. By decoding who you are desiring to be and assessing whether you really want to be that, you can get in control of your models and how they are impacting you.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com lukeburgis.com/quiz lukeburgis.com

Shawn Blanc shares how margin impacts every area of your life, and why every professional who is serious about building authentic business relationships needs margin to do it. Learn how margin allows you to say yes to the most important things, how to create genuine relationships, and why slowing down and planning can save not just your business, but also your life.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: What big idea do you have that professionals can use to do a better job at business development? Margin, also known as breathing room, is the space in our lives between the stuff that we do and the limit where we fall off the cliff. It’s very easy, especially in the world of business, for people to push their energy to the absolute limits where there is zero margin in our lives. Margin can apply to more than just business, it can apply to all areas and relationships in your life. Having breathing room in Shawn’s life helps him lean into his strength as a Yellow thinker. Shawn feels the constant need to fill every moment in his life with something productive, so the reminder of building in the margins is critical to doing his best work. Working on projects that are due weeks ahead instead of the next morning allows you to work more effectively with less stress. For business and your personal life, margin exists to benefit your relationships. When you have no margin in your life you are tapped out in your schedule and physically, and this leaves little strength left over for your relationships, including business development.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we use margin to grow our book of business and get more opportunities? Shawn shares the parable of the good samaritan and how margin relates to opportunities. The ability to say no to certain opportunities is as important as the ability to say yes. When we are not clear around our priorities or have no margin within our schedule, it can be easy to say yes to everything and become overwhelmed. This puts strain on your work when truly great opportunities come your way. Margin can enable us to say yes to the most important stuff. It also helps us know when to say no to certain things so that we can show up with our greatest strength during times of opportunity. Evaluating opportunities is not binary, it’s an organic process. The first step is knowing your values and understanding how you work within your daily schedule. Does the opportunity align with what you care about? If it does, what are the most important things on your schedule, and do you have enough resources and time to say yes to the opportunity? Lastly, if it is important and time is tight, is there something you can give up on to take the opportunity on? Business development is probably one of the most important things you can do for your career, yet it’s one of the first areas the professionals let slide when time gets tough. Great rainmakers have a roadmap for what they are going to do in terms of business development. You have to be proactive with your time and have the clarity to know what the most important things are so they don’t get pushed aside. Shawn’s team works in eight-week cycles which have been transformative for his business. The first six weeks are focused work time for clearly defined projects and the following week is a buffer for review. The eighth week is time off for the entire team. This work cycle structure allows Shawn’s team to accomplish more in less time while also building in time to recover and celebrate what they have achieved.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How can we use margin and apply it to long-term relationships? Margin exists for relationships. We need to have breathing room in our time, in our money, and in our energy to be able to build relationships. Margin allows us to build and strengthen and grow long-term relationships as well as new ones. People often view the business of business development and sales as an impossible environment to build authentic relationships but it doesn’t have to be that way. You can build the relationship first and it can result in additional business, but if not that’s okay too. Margin is the foundation for being truly authentic in a relationship. Without it, you will find yourself in meetings because you need the business and it will come across in the conversation. Margin helps us with perspective and allows you to create relationships in the long term. Great business development is about creating a better future for other people. Your core expertise is how you impact people in a positive way and relationship-oriented business development is how you do that. In Shawn’s experience, providing a lot of value upfront and being clear about the nature of the relationship is what leads to long-term success. The idea of serving is paramount instead of converting each user to a customer immediately. Having confidence in your ability to help people is the key to turning them into a customer. The imposter syndrome is what prevents people from understanding the value they can actually add to their customer’s lives. Pulling people from one side of complexity to the other is immensely valuable. For some people, you need to charge enough money just to get their attention. A big part of your pricing is who your target customer is, and what price you need to charge to deliver your best work. For Shawn, the number is high enough so that the client will take it as seriously as he will.   Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done? There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life. Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit. Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you. You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out. It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you. The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop. Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area? Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule. If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.   Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc. You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time. Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks. When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way. Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them. If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy. If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com  

Mo shares his insights from the habits of Shawn Blanc. You need to have a plan around business development. A great business developer has a roadmap and knows what they are focused on over time. Great rainmakers not only have an annual plan, but they also have it broken down into monthly, weekly, and daily tasks. When everything is mapped out, you can evaluate opportunities accurately against your plan and understand what is worth your time. Without the plan, you are probably just saying yes to everything that comes your way. Margin can be applied to the four areas of how we think. If you’re feeling stressed about your metrics, you need to expand your pipeline. If you feel stressed about deadlines, you need to pull back and create space to do your best work. If you don’t feel like you have any goodwill left in your relationships, you need to add margin by giving back. For strategy, you need to get down to three main focuses and measure against them. If you feel like you don’t have the time to make a plan, that’s the signal that you need a plan. Start with looking at what you can delegate or eliminate to free up time so you can come up with a plan and create margin in your strategy. If you don’t take the time to slow down and breathe, your body will force you to eventually.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com

Mo asks Shawn Blanc: How do we apply margin to better manage ourselves and get more done? There are five components of a focused life. The final section is on margin and maintaining breathing room in your life, because that’s the make or break it for your life. Margin is the space between your load and your breaking point. Finances are the only area of your life that can be lived beyond your means, every other area has a hard limit. Having breathing room within your schedule, relationships, and emotions allows you to continue doing the things that matter the most to you. You hack your habits by giving yourself the healthy breathing room you need to sustain it without getting burned out. It sometimes feels impossible to create this margin in your life, but burnout is impossible to sustain as well. You can either recognize it and make the choice to create margin in your life, or your circumstances will make those choices for you. The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you are born and the year after you retire. We run our lives near the redline all the way to retirement which often results in an untimely demise when we abruptly stop. Where in your life are you redlining that you need some breathing room in? What can you do now to reduce your load in that area? Shawn has a simple process that he uses to assess the tasks in his life and figure out what can be eliminated to either reduce his load or increase his limits. If you don’t think you have time to start planning, the first thing you need to do is eliminate something from your schedule. If you’re already on the edge of burnout, it’s not the time to take on new things. When you have no flexibility in your schedule, you have no time for anyone.   Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com thefocuscourse.com