[00:00:00] Speaker A: Everybody is missing something in life. I felt prisoner to my own success. Change is hard.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Change is hard.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: I get it.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Change or die.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: I'm gonna change things.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: So what the hell can we change?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: If we can see things differently, we.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Can have some different results.
[00:00:14] Speaker C: Only on NOW Media Television Networks.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I am so excited about this segment with Jack. So as many of you know, I worked with Jack Canfield years ago when I transformed my life. I was stuck in a business. I unhappy. I was interviewed for his television show Hollywood Live.
And I said that I was overworked, overweight, and if I were a turkey, I were overcooked. And that's how I felt. I was working really hard and I was unfulfilled, unhappy. And Jack helped turn all of that around. So he introduced me to some great people who have further changed my life. I am indebted to the man forever. And I can tell you that my time with him has been great. Jack has sold billions of books. He's changed the lives of millions of people. He built a multiple hundred million dollar brand in chicken soup for the soul. He's made tens of millions of dollars for himself. He's helped me make millions of dollars. He's great, truly one of my friends, mentors, one of my favorite people on the planet. So I'm really excited to share this. Not just because I'm showing him off, because he helped me, but because of what he does and how his advice can help people in all kinds of situations.
Yes, be the giraffe. The whole brand, the whole ecosystem is built around business owners to help people grow their businesses, to increase their income, to elevate their impact and actually have a greater life.
So if you want to retire in business, in life, that's what we have be the draft for. But this segment in particular is so important for people who work for companies. I can tell you as a keynote speaker who travels the world speaking at events, that the biggest waste of time and money is events. And not just because I'm speaking and wasting your time, though that may be the case from time to time. The biggest waste is that meetings are thrown together and they're not thoughtful. People attend meetings and don't get a lot out of them. People run meetings, they have a big excitement coming from the meeting, they spend a lot of money and a lot of time and then they don't get a lot of juice for the squeeze.
So if you're in a company and you want to get more out of your people, if you want to get more out of your events, if you want to get more out of your effort, you have got to listen to Jack's fantastic advice. Then if you want to. If you're like I was and you feel like you're overworked and just, you just need to get more. Jack has great advice that really changed my life and I hope it changes yours. So if you would like to work less and do more and get more out of it, you have got to pay attention till the end of this segment because Jack is the ultimate giraffe. He's the one who helped me come up with the Be the Giraffe book. He encouraged me to do it. And I cannot wait for you to share this segment of Be the Giraffe with Jack Canfield.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Today I'm excited to be sitting here with a friend and mentor, Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the the success principles and 2,643 bestsellers.
Jack.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: 40 New York Times bestsellers.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: 40 New York Times bestsellers.
Jack has done amazing work, has been teaching transformational work for 40 some odd years and proud to say he's a mentor and a friend. And Jack, it's good to see you.
[00:03:26] Speaker C: Good to see you, my friend.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: So we've been talking a lot about sales on the program and talking about sales and sales training. And you once told me a story about working with a company when you had a chance to sell a significant deal somebody. You had an RFP and you took a very different giraffe like approach to how you approach these people. So do you want to tell me.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: A little bit about. Sure. We got to. So basically we had a request for proposal from the LA County Office of Education to design a orientation program for the people that were going to go into their welfare to work program.
And up until that time, the orientation program that we're using, 87% of the people after they went through the orientation never showed up for job training. So it was a failure.
And they put out an RFP to the number of companies, I think about five or six companies that applied.
And what happened was we're walking into the final. It got down to two people and we're walking in for the final presentation to the people who are going to make the decision.
I'm walking in with my partner, Larry Price, and I turned to him and I said, larry, I think I want to withdraw our proposal.
And he said, why? We've been working on it. I mean, we worked on, you know, all nighters, getting this thing together, et cetera. And I said, because they really didn't create The RFP in a way where if we'd give them what they wanted, it's not going to work. They didn't know what to ask for.
And so I want to go in there and say, you know, I think we're going to withdraw. And they'll probably say, why? We'll tell them. And if they don't want to change it, then I don't want to do this. It's not going to give them what they want. It was a $750,000 contract, and it's not going to make us look good when it doesn't work. So what? Nobody wins. So we went in there and I said that, and they were kind of stunned, and we left thinking, well, there you go. Lost that one. And they called back a day later and they said, you know what? We really liked your honesty. We liked the fact that you told us what you thought was wrong.
In retrospect, we now agree with you, and so we're going to give you the contract.
And I think sometimes we. I don't know if we lie or misrepresent or oversell or whatever it is to our clients. And so that's. That's what that was. And as a result of being willing to tell the truth faster, which is one of my principles of success that I teach in the success principles book, we got the contract.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: And in the sales world, there's an old saying that we're taught. I was taught, which is, sell them what they want and then sell them what they need. So there's this adage of just give them what they want, go ahead and sell them, make them a client, even if it's not good for them, and then you can go ahead and sell them later. But you went a different direction.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: We did, we did. And the result of that is that for the last, I'm going to say, 22 or three years, we've been selling that same program to about 20 counties in California. It's been an ongoing sustainable.
We did this through our nonprofit foundation, but it's allowed that foundation to exist, really, for 20 plus years because the program works. We went from 87% dropout rate to about a 7% dropout rate. We totally ran. Reversed it.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And that's all from the principle tell truth faster, faster. Which is fantastic. And what most salespeople need, right.
For a lot of that. Now, in the corporate space, too, you've done a lot of customer appreciation events where you've gone in and people have brought you in and tell me a Little bit about that and how that's worked.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Well, we've worked usually with people who have a large customer base. It could be a dental office, could be a group of chiropractors in New York together. We've done it with financial planners, done it with some companies that have big client bases where they get to bring in me or someone like me to teach what we know, which is very transformational, very fun learning experience to their clients. And their clients basically go, wow, I don't want to not be a client of this company anymore because they're bringing an extra, you know, added bonus to the table. And this one financial planning office that I worked with, they've been doing that for like 15 years. In fact, I met one of my best friends because I was on in the morning, he was on in the afternoon. I wanted to stick around and see what was happening. And as a result of that, we became good friends. But I think it's really, really important to let people know that you care about them as human beings and you care about their happiness as well as.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Their pocketbook and think about the cost that I. I don't know if you get the same thing I get, but I get gift packages from all these insurance companies and accounting firms and companies I've worked with where they'll send me Harry and David stuff, or they'll send me candies or sweets or baked goods, and they're spending hundreds of dollars per person of stuff that's going to go bad.
And sometimes it's candy, sometimes it's fruit, sometimes it's baked goods. And you don't know who's gluten free and who's got whatever other.
[00:08:10] Speaker C: Well, and how many dried apricots can you eat after Christmas?
[00:08:13] Speaker A: That's right. Or the old fruitcake, right.
It's the new fruitcake.
So instead of sending that, if they spent that money on something else, think about the effect you could have if you spent $100 or $200 per customer to bring in someone like you to teach a lesson to them or teach a lesson to the clients and their children. What an interesting opportunity.
[00:08:32] Speaker C: You know, it's interesting. There was a fundraiser down in Texas where they gave out three door prizes. One of them was a mink coat, One of them was a Chicken Soup for the Soul Book, and the other one was a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. And they got two thank you letters for the two Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Because it affected people, it touched their heart, it touched their life, it gave them inspiration and motivation. And the fur coat, which, you know, people in Texas like fur coats, no problem. And it probably cost several thousand dollars, but it didn't have the same meaning as something that was, I'd say, more human, if you will.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Right. And so what other companies have brought you in? What have been some of the more moving experiences you've had when you've gone into a company? Something that may have surprised you when you went in and talked to a group of executives or a group of salespeople?
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Well, I did a whole morning seminar for Microsoft and then they had a contest to see who could win me for lunch. I ate lunch with like five people because we broadcast this to 25,000 Microsoft employees around the world with high technology. I mean, it was really cool stuff. And at lunch I realized how siloed that organization was, how they didn't talk to each other. I think that was part of the strategy was making everyone compete together. But the stress levels were really high. I think the lack of co creativity that could have occurred with people over in this silo discovering this and this and putting it together, a lot of that got lost. And the other thing was, I said to this person, I said, why did you want to win lunch with me? She said, well, I want to be more successful, I want to be more effective, more productive. I said, well, what's your life like now? She said, well, I wake up at five in the morning, I'm here by six thirty. I work until like seven nights. I go home and I work until ten. I come back again and then, and I said, I want to give you a different perspective here. I'd like to coach you on how you can create a more balanced life. And people were pretty much burning out. And I think that was, that would shock to me. I didn't think that would be the case because you read about these high tech companies that have trampolines and gamers, ping pong tables, ping pong tables and foosball and all that kind of stuff. And so that was kind of shocking to me. But we had a really good impact there. I really enjoyed the people at Microsoft. And then I would say I've been brought into tons of sales companies both for people that want to give a reward to the salespeople. Like, you know, we want to take them all to Nevis and take them to the Ritz Carlton. And I'm the speaker for the day as a, as a reward.
Other companies that, you know, medical technology companies that are working with their sales forces to get the word out and just teaching Them how to be better salespeople, not so much teaching them about sales, which I know you're really an expert at, but teaching about what are the internal blocks that are stopping them from. From being present, listening, well, taking bigger risk, having higher goals, asking for the close. Do you know how many people don't ask for the close? It's incredible. And they study all these different closing techniques that bring in more people to teach them how to close. And it's not. What's going on is the fear of rejection, fear of worthiness, all these kind of things that can get changed. And we've seen sales go up, you know, sometimes, you know, double in a year in companies I've worked with, also worked with manufacturing companies. And you've got people on the floor that are not. The managers, aren't really managing in a way that people feel inspired to work. It's kind of an adversarial approach, you know, my way or the highway, which doesn't really create a culture of trust. And I think this is a big issue.
People feel. When they feel safe, they get creative. And so you have to be. Create a safe environment. And what does that. Well, vulnerability does that. Most people at the top don't want to be vulnerable because they think the reason people are following them is they think they know everything. They're the experts. They're afraid if I show you inside my jacket that you're going to not trust me, you won't respect me. It's just the opposite that happens. You know, people respect you more. They become safer. They start telling you the truth because you told them your truth. And when the truth starts to flow, you know this. I was working in one company down in Orange County. It was a.
They make airplanes. And what happened was there was this guy sitting there, and I said, well, when you need to know something and, you know the guy down the hall knows the answer, do you just get up and go ask him? They said, no, I'll spend an hour looking for the answer. I don't want him to know I don't know the answer. And so that's an hour of somebody who's making 150,000 a year. You can do the math. You know, maybe it's three or four hundred dollars of productivity that just got lost for fear of not looking good. So there's a million things on the human level that once you clean that up and you get people aligned with their purpose, you. You get people aligned with the corporate purpose. You see how those overlap. You have people that are not Afraid to ask for what they need. You have people that are not blaming and complaining either. The management, the customers, the vendors, the economic reality of the world, but are taking responsibility, not making excuses, not complaining about things. Whole culture shifts. And so it doesn't matter what kind of company it is. When those things happen, the people start working together more harmoniously. There's less friction in the environment. There's less backbiting, less politicking. And you get a team that. That's working together. When you have that, you're. You're home free.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Now. I've been to a ton of seminars and spoken at quite a few. You've spoken at countless seminars. And companies spend billions of dollars flying people in having seminars, and they throw a ton of stuff at them. We talked once about the conversation that you have, the event, but it's not just the day. You're not going to change the world in a day.
What's the important formula for planting a seed at a conference and then actually following through and making it, making it actually stick? What do you see working since you've done this thousands and thousands of times?
[00:14:36] Speaker C: Well, you have to. Two things have to occur. You have to have top management supporting the program. A lot of times they'll bring in a keynote speaker at a conference or someone to do a breakout session for a day. And it was a program committee guy down here. It's not even aligned with what the corporate president is believing. So if you don't have that support, the whole thing dies. I think what's really important is if you take an initiative, we're going to do this, and then basically you have to reinforce that. What goes out in the corporate newsletter.
What is the president or the CEO or the top management saying to people when they do their little motivational gatherings? Is it consistent with that?
Do people have an accountability partner? This is one of the big issues, is that people go back into a culture, and the culture as I think it was. Warren Bennist said, one of those guys said, you know, culture eats. What does it say? Culture, culture, culture beats training, whatever it is, for lunch. Something like a cultural elite training for lunch. If you don't change the culture. And so the culture has to slowly shift.
And that requires disciplined activities, disciplined behaviors, and then reinforcing those behaviors in terms of the, you know, the reward structure within the organization. But one of the big things I like to do is get people into accountability partners and mastermind groups so that if you and I just attended a seminar and we've agreed to some principles and strategies that I'm now going to talk to you every day for five minutes in the morning, you know, two and a half minutes each, I'm going to tell you my five action steps I'm committed to taking today to achieve the goals that we set. I always have people set a breakthrough goal when they come to my seminar, even if it's a two hour keynote. We're going to set a breakthrough goal that would break through you or your company to a whole new level. And we're talking not like a 20% gain, but like doubling your income, you know, opening up a whole new market, writing a best selling book, you know, whatever it might be, that's huge. And then is like, what are the five action steps you're going to take today to achieve that? What are my five? Tomorrow we get on the phone or the intercom or we meet in the hallway, whatever, and I say, tell me your five, did you achieve them? If you didn't, I don't listen to any excuses. I simply say, are you willing to recommit to that today by Thursday? If you're telling me the same thing didn't happen, you're so embarrassed you actually stay up till midnight on Thursday to get it done because you just can't face me anymore.
And a lot of people in top management don't have anyone they're reporting to on a regular level. And the same thing's true at the lower levels as well. So now we have people managing themselves with another person. And then I would say every two weeks get together in an accountability, I mean a mastermind group. A lot of companies I work with, the people that come together for a training, they might be salespeople or from all over the place and they don't actually communicate with each other. So they're not sharing their best practices, their best ideas. They're not holding each other accountable. When you get together, say for an hour on the phone once every two weeks, everyone gets six, seven minutes to talk about what obstacles they're facing. What good ideas do you have? For me, it's amazing how much information gets shared. I was working for a company called Solar Optical Company. They make 50% of the eyeglass lenses in North America. So if you wore glasses, chances are 50, 50, you'd have their lenses on. And So I was called and I was the first person they ever called in from the outside for one of their sales conferences.
And I said, how many of you people know to the top five salespeople are in your organization? They all raise their hand. I said, yell their names out, same five names. And I said, how many of you have ever gone up to them and asked them, what are you doing differently that's allowing you to outsell everyone else? Because this wasn't like 20% more, like 400% more sales. And it wasn't just they had a better district like New York or whatever. And not one person raised their hand. And I said, why not? And they said, fear. I said, fear of what? They said, fear of rejection.
Why would they share that with me? What if they say no? And what I said, you already have a no. If you ask them, they don't tell you, you're no worse off. And if they tell you, my dad was a salesman, eventually a sales manager and eventually a branch manager and eventually head of Brazil operations for national cash register company ncr. And the secret to his success was every time he went to a national conference, he would get the top three or four salespeople and he would take them out sometimes, get him a little drunk at least buy him dinner and say, here I am, you're one of the best guys. What advice would you give me? And they would love to tell because they were flattered to think that they were so good. And so I always tell people, ask, ask, ask.
So here's a company that had all these great salespeople and they weren't even putting them on the stage to talk to the other salespeople to say, here's what we're doing. And unfortunately that's very common in most companies. That that level of cross sharing of information doesn't happen.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: One more question for you too, and that is you talked about the Microsoft person who was working from 6am till 10pm You've helped mentor a lot of people who were overworked, over taxed, overweight, overcooked, as I may have used those words on myself when we met. And talk about how those people who seem to never be able to get the work done, who are working so hard, found a different path and they were able to better understand themselves and work less but actually accomplish more. You've got to have a time.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Well, two things we know for sure when you are well rested and you know, we could talk about recreation, which means recreation, you're recreating your spirit, your energy, you think Better, you're actually more creative. If you do things like meditate and use mindfulness techniques, you can actually go in and get better decisions, better creative ideas than you can get just from your intellectual mind alone.
We've got intuition we can tap into. We have, you know, our own subconscious creativity we can tap into. And there are techniques you can learn to accelerate the success. For example, my title, Chicken Soup for the Soul, which is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a Brand, came to me in a meditation. I was asking for a title for my book and his hand came out and wrote Chicken Soup. I said, what's that have to do with my book? And the hand said, I thought it was God's hand, but whatever, my subconscious, whatever, said, when you were sick, your grandmother gave you chicken soup. I said, but it's not a book about sick people. And the voice said, people's spirits are sick. They're living in resignation. This was back in around 91, 2, 3, the first Gulf War. There was a big downsizing. A lot of people were losing their jobs, foreclosures on mortgages. And I thought, chicken soup for the spirit. No, chicken Soup for the soul. I got goosebumps. And that little one hour meditation led to me making literally tens of millions of dollars and then led to a brand that's worth now hundreds of millions of dollars. So the reality is that sometimes you're going to get an idea that changes everything, you know, and that's one piece of it. Secondly, when you're relaxed and you feel safe, you're going to communicate more. You're more vulnerable, you're more self disclosing, if you will. You're less afraid of rejection. Then you're willing to ask for help. You're willing to brainstorm where you don't have to come up with everything yourself.
I had a woman who was like the sent woman at Microsoft and turned out when she was three years, no, she was about five years old, her father said in England there was a recession. He went, we're not going to have enough money to feed all the children. And so she said, I want to be one of the ones they feed. She didn't know that he was just blowing off steam. And so she decided to be perfect, keep her room clean, never get dirty, always get A's in school, whatever. Now she was 40, still doing that. She was on like four or five boards. She was a vice president of banks, she was a consultant. She was like planning her own wedding without a wedding planner. And again she said, teach me how to be more successful. I said, wait a second, tell me what you're doing. She resigned from two boards. She got an assistant, which she didn't have for her consulting part that she was doing on the side, hired a wedding planner and she actually making more money, more successful, happier than she ever was. So basically when you're stressed out, you make bad decisions, you're not getting enough sleep usually. And we all know about sleep deprivation, usually don't eat enough, you're not eating well, you're not exercising. We know that exercise actually makes the brain work better and longer. You're going to be around longer to be more creative. So all those things are good.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: That's great.
So again, Jack Canfield, someone you need to listen to. The man who has written not 2316 but 40 New York Times bestsellers, has built a multiple hundred million dollar brand, made tens of millions of dollars and helped companies like Microsoft and thousands of others.
You've heard of B2B business to business and you've heard of B2C business to consumer. What you really need to study is C2B Canfield to business. And that's going to help you on your path so you can get to a new level of success. You can elevate your perspective, see a better path and be more like Jack. Jack, thanks for coming.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: My pleasure. Thanks, Chris.
Chris.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Be bold, be curious, but most importantly, be patient. We'll be right back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Hello and welcome to Talking about Success. I'm your host, Jack Canfield, America's number one success coach, Chairman of the Canfield Training group and a New York Times best selling author of over 40 bestselling books including the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and the success principles. How to get from where you are to where you want to be. And I have an amazing guest here today who's a good friend of mine. You're back for the second time. I love this Chris Jarvis. He is a, an incredible, he's an amazing guy. He's written 15 books, he's a successful entrepreneur, he's a financial consultant, been a financial to millionaires, lots of millionaires and several billionaires. He's on the board of a medical school, business school and multiple startups and charities that he's involved with. And he teaches people and businesses how to see differently so they can business differently. And we'll talk about that language for a minute here.
So four years ago I interviewed you, and you had just sold your company for millions of dollars, and you started helping other entrepreneurs and business people out there in the world. But before we talk about what you're doing now, tell us the story again about why you sold your business. I think it's so interesting.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: So I was making a bunch of money like a lot of entrepreneurs, but I felt like I had. I felt like I had built a prison and shut the door with me in it. So I was overtaxed, overworked, overweight. If I were a turkey, I were overcooked. You know, I was doing so much work, and the weight of the clients and family and customers and employees and vendors, there was just so much there. But I felt like I couldn't get out of it. I was making again, making a lot of money. So I felt prisoner to my own success and said, I have to do something else. I got to get out of this. It's killing me. It's just not working.
So I said, all right, what am I going to do? I could have walked away, but then I would leave my investors who helped me out. They would. They'd be out. My employees wouldn't have jobs. My customers wouldn't have way to continue doing what I had done. So I had to find another solution. And I was.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: I was lost.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: I was like, how the hell do I get out of this and not.
Not make good on my responsibilities, but do something that was there for me? I really had to. I had to find another path.
I had to get out.
[00:26:00] Speaker C: So you didn't walk away. And how'd you.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: What.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: What path did you find? What'd you do?
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Well, that's when we met the first time and started working with you and working on some coaching and decided. Decided that I was where I. Where I was in my spot that I didn't want to be in, but it was. It was on me. I was responsible for being in that spot. So rather than complain about the clients or the staff or the customers or the investors, I said, this is on me. So I have to take responsibility, 100% responsibility for where I am, and I have to find a better way. And what I realized was my business wasn't set up for sale. It was so reliant on me that I had to build the business, restructure it so that it could be packaged and sold so someone else could do it. So I had to take the corporate side of how do I change a business and make it saleable so a business can be successful for the solo person. But it's a very different business in a different form so that you can actually sell it to somebody else. And when I did that and spent a year and a half restructuring, I was able to find a strategic buyer who took on every employee, every client, paid off my investors, all their money plus a million bucks, and made a few million bucks for myself. So that was. It was a couple years in the works, and it was a lot of work, but it was a whole lot better than just walking away and leaving everybody high and dry.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Well, I was more responsible. And I imagine you learned a lot about creating a business that was sellable, creating a business that actually worked in that process.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Yeah, because at first, when you start a business, most entrepreneurs build something that works for them, and it's where you pay for your sports tickets. It's where you do a lot of interesting things. But it's not a business that's built around processes and around systems and around things that are built for growth, which a business is great, and it's able to be sold when you can extract the founder from it, whoever the key person is. And I realized my business wasn't. It was too reliant on me. So I did learn a lot of what would somebody pay for and what wouldn't they pay for? And definitely learned that lesson.
[00:27:50] Speaker C: Good for you. So now you stepped out of that and you started working with, you know, working with entrepreneurs and business owners.
What inspired you to move in that direction?
[00:28:01] Speaker A: So I had. I had been going to business school, and I had a bunch of classmates who were 20 years out of a top business school, and many people were miserable. The folks who were executives at big companies felt like they were prisoners. And the entrepreneurs, a lot of them felt like they were prisoners of their own success. And then being in a Vistage group, I worked with CEOs and saw that it's hard when you're. Whether you're in YPO or Vistage or yeo, you're with a lot of other top executives and. And you realize the same challenges, that it's lonely at the top.
And I just saw so many people, even the clients I had who had money, you would think, oh, people who have money, people who have big titles, they're all really happy. And what I found is that a lot of them weren't. And so because I had seen that with hundreds of people, whether they were clients or colleagues or classmates, I realized it was a big problem that folks weren't figuring out how to make their careers work for them, and they were unhappy and alone. And overweight and starting to look a lot like I did before I changed my business. And I said, it's just unfortunate. Really smart, caring people are unhappy. So I set out to try and help them.
[00:29:00] Speaker C: And what have you learned about helping them along the way?
[00:29:03] Speaker A: I've learned that a lot of this is.
I've learned that there's two different camps. You have the people who are executives in big companies and then you have the folks who work for themselves. And those are two very different people. I handle them a little differently. The entrepreneurs who run their own. Run their own show, so to speak, is a lot of responsibility. And for them, their lives, they're not doing. They haven't studied the transformational work, the stuff that you do that will help them figure out how to have better relationships with their clients, with their employees, and even with themselves, how are they going to interact? And when I have people take a test, an assessment, when I meet with them, they assess their life from a career standpoint, a financial standpoint, a relationship standpoint, a health standpoint, and a financial fun standpoint. And you can imagine most of these really successful people have terrible health and fun. Or a lot of times the answer I get under fun is what's that? Which is kind of how I answered it in the beginning, that they're just not. They're so into their life, it's very hard in their business that the business is becoming them. So whether it's a family business or it's a business they started, it takes on a life of its own and it's all encompassing and they can't separate. And as a result, they're overwhelmed and really unhappy.
[00:30:10] Speaker C: So that's the entrepreneurs. What did you find out about. What did you learn about the corporate people?
[00:30:14] Speaker A: So the corporate people also feel that they're. They feel trapped, but for a different reason. Now they're making a lot of money because they've worked at some corporate job for a long time. And who's going to pay somebody this much money with all these stock options and whatever else they have? And what I found with them is that they feel trapped, but they're also not hitting the same levels of success that they could in their jobs because their companies are getting siloed that they're finding that there's this movement toward people specializing in one thing. And so everybody, this group is really good at marketing and this group's great at sales, and this one is in finance. But they're not interacting and they're not talking. And so the communications are really bad so in these corporations, they say, well, that's corporate America. It's really slow, or we're just not going to get things done quickly, or we don't move quickly, or that's just the way it is. And what I found was we were talking before we got on air about Malcolm Gladwell and I saw him speak last month and he talked about his book Talking to Strangers and said that most of the problems in America are not disagreements, they're misunderstandings because people don't understand other people. They don't understand the context or they don't understand where the people are coming from. And what I found in talking to people in corporate America was they're not doing a good job at extracting the information from the people they work with.
There's a lot of telling your employees what, what to do or telling your staff how you're going to do things, but there's not a lot of asking, there's not a lot of this transformational, let me understand my own biases and shortcomings and faults, which when you do that, you start to become more tolerant of other people's stuff. And so again, all the transformational stuff that we worked on years ago is the stuff that these corporations need so that people can have more meaningful conversations with their employees, with their vendors, with their customers.
And so there's so much of that missing in the companies that do use that and really open up and push for communication are seeing fantastic results, but there's just not enough of it.
[00:32:05] Speaker C: So as you've been doing this work now for a while, who are some of the people you've helped? Give us a little background of some of the people you've worked with and some of the results you've seen.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: So some of the really interesting ones, I had a salesperson, someone who was in one of my seminars and did an all day training, which you're familiar with how those work.
So he did an all day training. And this was a guy who was overweight and unhappy and working in sales. And immediately at the end of the day rather when he said, I said, what are you going to do differently? He said, I'm going to take up art. And you wouldn't think at a sales conference the big takeaway would be, I'm going to take up my art habit, my art hobby. And he did wood burning. And so he sent me a note two days later, a little text, and it was a picture of a wood burnt giraffe that he had done and said, I did this this week. I took A day off, and that's my form of meditation. I can get into my art and do something for me.
And then I find out three months later, he's run a 10K. And this is a guy who was overweight and didn't look like somebody who ever ran. And now he's reaching other sales conferences. And I hear that his career has really taken off. So you find some people at that level who are, it's just me. This is what I do.
Doing really cool stuff and having a great experience.
At the other end of the spectrum, we had a corporation we were working with where they were so focused on every unit has to be profitable. And they have these crazy, overwhelming positions of every group is going to make this much money and every group is going to be this efficient. And what they realized was you can't be great at everything. And so they found a business unit that was not working for them. It was a different culture. They were different kinds of clients. When they asked the questions, they realized this is isn't the same business. It's all in the insurance world. But health insurance is really different from property and casualty insurance. They're just different kinds of things. And they found that they could take a business unit that was not working well and was actually not profitable. They were losing money and they sold it and made a profit. And then the company skyrocketed in value and they sold it a couple years later. So again, it might seem really different, but it was asking the questions of what's really happening? Are the things that we're doing connected? Are the people the same? Are the clients the same? Are we well suited?
It really was interesting to see how those two case studies were very different, but had very positive results.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: So as you've been out there working with all these people, have you noticed anything about different kinds of companies, different sizes of companies that are different as you approach them?
[00:34:27] Speaker A: So the first two examples I gave you were one was a really big company and the other was a solo salesperson.
But I've had the chance to work with medical schools, law schools, privately held companies, public companies.
And what I find is they're all struggling in some way. They all could use better communications. They all, everybody I talk to wishes the people who worked for them were more aligned with their goals. They wish that they had better, more efficient operations. They all wish they had better inclusion and diversity and the culture was a little better. They wish people were a little nicer to each other. They all wish that they had better connections to their customers. So in this High tech, Amazon type world where everything has to be done quickly, cheaply, that everyone's worried about bottom line, and so they're worried about the client relationship is what can we do to be different? So everyone is struggling with the human connection at any level, whether it's for profit, nonprofit, big or small. It's across the board. And it seems to be the bigger the company, the more people that are involved, the greater the need because there's just more variables, more interaction, more places where it can break down.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: We're just taking a quick detour through the savannah. Don't wander off. We'll be back with more Be the Giraffe.
This is Be the Giraffe with Chris Jarvis. It's time to evolve and elevate.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: It seems to me that this, I'm going to call it the human factor, doesn't get taken into consideration. The one thing that every company has is human beings in it. All human beings. From my work, I'm sure you've seen the same are people that have flaws, people that have compensatory behaviors, that come from their own wounding, etc. And so they're not fully present in a way that can listen clearly, that can have empathy, that can be creative, that can be inclusive. Would you agree with that?
[00:36:32] Speaker A: I would. And that's where the work is so valuable that when you start to understand your own, understand and expect. And one thing that I've learned from working with you is you start to put out there what your shortcomings are. So rather than early in my career when it was try to be the smartest guy in the room and hide all your flaws, you realize that when you share your flaws and you're open with them, you actually make better connections. And so when companies do that, they actually build relationships with their customers. When they come right out and say, we made a mistake, there's a whole lot better than we're perfect and we're just going to put you through some customer service phone tree for the next three hours until you're tired of going through it.
So I do find that the companies who take that idea or that human factor into consideration to say, we are all human and we're not perfect and you're not perfect and everybody who works here is going to have some unique positives and negatives, that those seem to have a much stronger culture and better relationships with their customers.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: So you say that transformational work is different from self help. What do you mean by that?
[00:37:34] Speaker A: So when I tell people about transformational work, they say, oh, that's self help, that's psychology, that's woo woo. That's all stuff about yourself and what you tell yourself. And that's you essentially avoiding the psychiatrist or psychologist. And I said, well, I'm not saying that transformation work isn't good for the human, but what you do with that, once you leave your meditation or you leave the moment that you work on yourself, every other interaction in your life is with another human being.
And so if you don't take that into consideration that most of your interactions are with other people, I think transformational work is actually more valuable when you're talking about a multi person interaction because the more aware you are of your own stuff, the more aware you are of the fact that people aren't perfect or that they're doing the best they can with whatever they have, that it gets rid of resentment, it gets rid of anger, it gets rid of all those negative things that stop meetings from being productive, that stop politicians from working on working together, that stop just things from getting done when people are on other sides. I mean, everything is a compromise. And if you're so set in your ways and don't realize that you could be wrong, it's hard to make any headway. So I think transformational is more important. Transformation work is more important in the multi person situation than it is in the solo. You need to have your own stuff and know who you are. I think that's pretty important. But most of your life is not spent in a vacuum or on a mountaintop by yourself.
[00:38:56] Speaker C: So let me ask you this. How important is it for people to ask themselves the question, how could I do it differently?
[00:39:02] Speaker A: So I think it's for me the whole see differently, business differently tagline that you joked about in the beginning.
It's so important to do things differently because there's so many companies out there doing the same thing. You don't have monopolies and you're not supposed to at least. And so there's many people doing multiple things out there. Whether you're selling goods or you're manufacturing something, or you're giving a service or whatever it is you happen to do that how you're different is going to be, is how you're going to be have some competitive advantage. If you just do the same thing somebody else is doing, you have a late start. When I do conferences and I do a keynote, I ask the question, how many folks here came to get a good idea? And they raise their hands and I say, don't do that ever again. It's A terrible idea. And people say, how can you say that? Well, you don't go to an industry conference to find out what everybody in your industry is doing. You come to find out, to follow them. You come to the industry conference to see what they're doing so you can do something else.
And so if most companies are focusing on bottom line and reducing expenses and outsourcing things to China or whatever they happen to be doing, what can you do to be different? And since most companies are going to automation, maybe the right move for companies is to be a little more into the human touch and find a way to do something somebody else hasn't done. And so to be different, you're gonna have to stick your neck out a little bit and do something someone else isn't doing. Not just do what the other three big players in your market are doing. Do something different. And you might see some really different results.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: Well, speaking of doing something different, sticking your neck out, you have this work you do around. Giraffe. Giraffes have long necks, which they obviously stick out. Talk a little bit about that.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: So the giraffe is the symbol that I use in the new book that's going to come out is be the giraffe. And the tagline we use is elevate your perspective, see a better path, Be the giraffe. And what I love about the giraffe is, and this is symbolic of the work, the transformation that I did after meeting you some years ago is the giraffe is the only animal that has evolved to become more vulnerable. So every other prey animal in its evolution has found a way to hide or a way to have camouflage or crawl or dig a hole, burrow or climb up a tree. A giraffe at 18ft and thousands of pounds is not climbing a tree and certainly isn't going to hide. So the giraffe has this elongated neck and the neck is the pressure point that every predator looks for. So it can either break the neck or cut off the airway. So a giraffe has become more vulnerable and somehow is still around. And it's the trade off that the giraffe that wasn't afraid and didn't go into its shell or burrow or hide, is it stuck its neck out, is able to see things others can't and reach things that others won't. And I find that companies that make a big leap in some industry are doing that. They're sticking their neck out so they can see something someone else isn't and reach something that someone else won't and so I really think that be the giraffe idea for companies is what can you do? How can you stick your neck out so that you can possibly see something, see that better path that someone else isn't seeing because they're so keeping everything close and they're afraid to connect or afraid to open up or afraid to ask the question, what am I doing wrong?
And so I think the giraffe, the vulnerable thing, has it changed my life when I started being more vulnerable and stopped trying to be the smartest guy in the room. And my clients, it's the same thing when they open up. It seems, seems that new things come.
[00:42:15] Speaker C: I remember reading, I think it was a guy might have taken over one of the major auto companies, forget which one.
And he went in there and he brought all his top executives, you know, division heads together and he said, okay, I want you to have on my desk tomorrow everything that's not working in your division. And nobody wants to report that. You know, it's like everyone wants to say it's great, I'm doing great, blah, blah. But they did. And then they began to solve that. And within a couple years, this company just took off. And that was like a bold move, big ass to be that vulnerable. But that vulnerability and telling the truth because you can't get anywhere if you don't have the truth really makes a huge difference. And then like sticking your neck out to be willing to share that is a big deal.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: It takes time and you have to be that way and promote that. And not everybody's there. So some folks are more ready than others. But it really does, it's asking that question. I think you asked me the question once. So you said, you challenged me to go home and ask your wife, on a scale from 1 to 10, how well am I doing as a husband? And I thought that's a terrible question to ask.
Of all the things I could ask, that is not the one I should ask. But I did. And then obviously the follow up question is, well, anything less than a 10 is, you know, what can I do differently? And I routinely ask my wife and my kids that. And it's amazing to ask that question what you get and when people, when your customers or anyone in your life complains about something, they're giving you a chance to fix it. And that's the big thing, that if you solicit the response and you ask what's going wrong, if they tell you they are giving you a chance, if they didn't want you to fix it, they would just, they would have left.
[00:43:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: So it is cool.
[00:43:44] Speaker C: Well, I think it's also important to ask that as a manager or a leader of a company or entrepreneur, to ask that of your staff. You know, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the experience of working here?
And you know, anything less than a 10? Some people, I love this because I learned this question from a guy, this aspect of it. He said, someone said three in this company he was working with. And he said, why so high?
And he said it wasn't a one, it wasn't a zero. So at least he started with, well, I like this, I like this, I like this. He said, okay, great. So if we were going to raise it one point to a four, what would have to happen and what could you do to make that happen? Putting the responsibility back on the employee. But I think that's important to have that kind of a conversation because it's going on anyway behind your back and you're not aware of it. And you can't fix it if you don't know what it is.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: You know, it's funny, I have a client in North Carolina. So Dan runs an insurance agency that specializes in disability stuff, of all things high end disability for really highly paid executives. And he asked his staff, when he brought me in, we had the question, what's the biggest problem here? And they said, what's the biggest problem with Dan's management style? And the people said, it's always a fire drill here. Like most of my day. The follow up question was, how much of your day is scripted versus just chaos and it's going to change as the day goes on. And they said anywhere from 75 to 100% of their day is chaos. This changes.
So what came from that was, what if Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, nobody can send an email before noon. If I gave you 12 hours a week to have uninterrupted work, how much could you get done? And everybody in the staff said, I could do my whole week's work if I just had those 12 hours of not being bothered. Because if you're in the middle of doing something and someone interrupts you very hard. Think about writing books which you've written a lot more than I have. But getting interrupted, you can't just pick up. You can't pick it up again.
[00:45:28] Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: It's hard at any project, whether you're working on a spreadsheet or a proposal, you really have to dive into something. So we came up with quiet hours that there's just no bothering anybody in the morning on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, which is only 12 hours of the 40 hour week. But it was huge because he asked the question, what's not working? And they said we just run around like crazy people all the time and there's no rhyme or reason. And he didn't want to do it at first, but then said, okay, I'll give it a shot. And all of a sudden productivity is up and people are getting work done.
[00:45:53] Speaker C: I love it.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: So it's pretty cool.
[00:45:55] Speaker C: I love it.
So if you had one main message for everyone that's watching right now, what would it be?
[00:46:02] Speaker A: One message. Now it's really hard. I couldn't think of one question before and now I'm trying to narrow it down to one so it's a little harder.
[00:46:07] Speaker C: I could have three main messages.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: I guess I could. I think the first thing is you have to be honest with where you are and, and ask for the problems. Try and solicit what's not working from the people who are there because that's where the growth is going to happen. That you've got to ask your employees, your staff, your vendors, your customers, your family, what you're not doing well or what they'd like to see different. I think that's shining light on that and being vulnerable and putting that out there is really important. Otherwise you won't be able to. If you don't stick your neck out, you will never see what's going on. So I'd say that's one thing.
The second thing would be you've got to be different, which is also consistent. Consistent with sticking your neck out. But figure out how are you different and what are you going to do that other people aren't doing and be thinking about how do you do that and whether it's in your pricing or is it in your product or is it in how your company works. What does it look like?
I think that's really important to think about doing something different. And for a lot of these companies that have a lot of people, that transformational work is something to seriously consider that this is not just some HR thing, that this is all going to change the way that you communicate and it's going to change the way that you. That people interact with each other. And since you have a lot of people in your organization, it's kind of important that those things go well.
[00:47:15] Speaker C: Very good.
So if someone wanted to get in touch with you, find out about your book, you have this wonderful book, six Secrets of Leveraging Success. You have your new book coming out not too long for now. And the giraffe. Be the giraffe. Be the giraffe. If they want to hire you as a consultant, where do they go?
[00:47:32] Speaker A: So you can find
[email protected] thechrisjarvis. That's right. That's right. The chrisjarvis.com was taken. So thechrisjarvis.com will work for now. I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook and arvischris on Twitter and all the social media stuff shouldn't be too hard to find.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: Very good. Very good. Well, thank you for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Always good to see you.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: I always love talking to you. You're so fun. Well, thank you for watching today. And get a copy of his book and it'll take you to the next level and go to his website, check out what he can do. He's a great consultant. We're working together now, doing some projects together. So I'm excited about that. And you shared a lot of wisdom today. I really want you to take some of the things you heard and ask yourself the question of, on a scale of 1 to 10, being a better listener, being willing to stick your neck out, so forth. So for the next week, be the giraffe. And until then, I'll see you next week at Talking about Success.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: You love the show. Now read the book, be the giraffe 14 paths to reach Higher in Business and Life.
Check it out.
