Dr. Mark Goulston - The formula for "Gotta Have it"

"If you can figure out how to get to gotta have it, gotta work there, gotta invest there, you don't have to sell anything."

Listen in as Mark share's how he got the formula for "Gotta have it."

Mark's Website - www.markgoulston.com

Mark's Podcast - My Wakeup Call

Mark's LinkedIn profile

Transcript

Jake Wiley: 0:03

Hello and welcome to Wiley on Business with Authors. A podcast where we talk with the authors that business leaders are reading. It's a known fact that highly successful leaders are generally voracious readers, and that a great book can be one of the most efficient proxies for experience. My name is Jake Wiley and over my nearly two decades of business experience and client service, owning a business, as well as being a CFO, I've had the opportunity to see the direct impact great books and thought leaders have had on business successes. I've had the incredible fortune to be able to sit down and chat with the authors of the books, the leaders we look up to are reading and share some of the backstory and insights that led to these thought provoking books directly with you. Originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Mark goulston. His expertise has been forged in proven in the crucible of real life, high stakes situations, an influencer who helps influencers become more influential, his unique background is made an indispensable and is sought after resource and have changed facilitator to fortune 500 leaders, entrepreneurs and educators across the country. Mark has written several books including just listen, real influence, talking to crazy, get out of your own way. At the end of the show, Mark shares a special project he's working on right now based on the unprecedented year we've just had with a pandemic. When we initially recorded the podcast, Mark discussed his special project at the front of the recording and then transitioned into the plan show. As such, there was no transition to the start of this segment, we're going to pick up the conversation talking about how mark for a year and a half did a presentation of Steve Jobs coming back from the dead, complete with a turtleneck and jeans. And why did it for years, you kind of came back as Steve Jobs. And you kind of told the story. And I'd love to flesh that out a little bit like what why did you do that. And if you could share a little bit about the story that that Steve Jobs came back to tell us would be amazing.

Mark Goulston: 2:14

So I give talks to entrepreneurs, I give talks to founders, you know, and there's groups of them. And you've probably heard of eco entrepreneur organization or Vistage or organizations like that. And I occasionally speak to them. And I've written nine books now and one of them is on listening and did pretty well around the world to 28 languages. And and so there was this one group of actually 10 groups of entrepreneurs in California. And I got to know the head of it. And she said, Well come in, you know, you'll talk about listening, you know, we all need to be better listeners. And I did a presentation. And I got away with it. I mean, go on a scale of a 5.0 rating scale, you know, I got a 4.2 and she said that's a great rating, especially talking about something a soft skill, which entrepreneurs don't care about. And they're not very good at. And I can usually weave in stories, I've trained hostage negotiators, and yada, yada, yada. So, you know, it was entry entertaining. But I thought to myself, this is too much hard work. That's what they need to hear, but they don't want to hear. And I thought what is something that they want to hear? And so I thought, what if I could figure out how to create gotta have it, gotta invest there, got no work there, how to create gotta, because if you can create gotta gotta buy it. Got to work there. Got to invest there. You don't have to sell anyone. And so I I figured out the formula for creating gotta have it. And I share that. The next group cuz she said, Oh, you'll come back speak to another group. And I said, great. I'm gonna speak on something else. And she looked at me and she said, Yeah, but she did pretty well. I said, Yeah, but it was too much heavy lifting. And, and I and I said to her, trust me. And she looked at me and she said, Okay, I trust you. But you know, I know that you want to change something that was working well. And so what I did is I, I came up with the formula for creating Gada which I'm going to tell you in a little bit. And someone said to me, You just figured out the secret to the Apple Store. I said, What do you mean? And it went over very well. And they said, Well, you know, when a new Apple product comes out, people line up around the Apple store because They got to have it. And I said, Oh, that's really interesting. And then I gave it to another group. And they said, You didn't figure out the secret of Apple, you figured out the secret of Steve Jobs. I said, Oh, that's really interesting. And then, the next group I spoke to, so there's a bunch where I could practice this, you know, I was able to talk about how Steve Jobs really understood this formula. And I know you're waiting, I'm going to give it to you just hang in there. And, and then, you know, and I explained how Steve Jobs, you know, understood this. So that went well. And, and then there were times when I flirted with, you know, sort of acting like Steve Jobs. And someone came up to me afterwards and said, you have to decide whether you want to talk kind of like a professor, or you want to be entertaining in your message. Because when you kind of spoke like Steve Jobs, it was kind of entertaining. And of course, you know, what I chose? Sure do. So for the next group, I showed up in a black turtleneck, Levi's jeans, five, oh, I think five oh, ones, New Balance shoes, horn rimmed glasses. And it was called Steve Jobs returns. And I played Steve Jobs coming back to Apple from 1997 to 2007. And I was him. And I was, it was kind of liberating, because you know, I'm a psychiatrist, I'm thoughtful. But you know, we all have darker parts of our personality. So I was able to sort of speak from my inner aihole. I mean, I was able to come out there and, and just talk with all that bluster of Steve Jobs, I used that reality distortion field up to the hilt. And, you know, and I was going to deliver something, and they'd be foolish to not listen to me. And, and I started getting ratings, you know, the, the highest rating for group was 5.0. And I started getting ratings and 5.3. There you go. So I said, Hey, I'm on this, I'm onto something. And so then I kept refining it. But what happened is, I was able to deconstruct the way Steve Jobs looks at the world. So here's what you can take away. The first thing, here's the formula of being a visionary leader. And you don't have to be arrogant to be a visionary leader, although the visionary leaders, we think of whether it's Elan Musk, or Steve Jobs, Bill Gates has gotten a little bit calmer, but he's a lot older. You know, but they're all a little bit arrogant. But here's the three DS, of a visionary leader. They define reality, they declare their intention to make it so and they decide on strategy, how to do it. Define reality, declare intention, decide strategy. Why that? Because people in a company look to the leader. You know, they're insecure, they're doubting, and they want that leader to be definite. Whereas when you say, here's our vision, here's our mission. It can land with a thud. It's like abstract terms. So how do you define reality? So Steve Jobs, especially when he discovered the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC, which is the mouse in the icons. That was really a turning point. His defining reality was, you know, most of the world still thinks that computers and technology is just for geeks. And it really was. But he thought to himself, technology is not going away, computers are not going away. And one day, everybody is going to have not just a computer back then there was sort of mind frame, you know, mainframe computers, big things. And then they started making the apple one or Apple two. But it was still you had to type in stuff. And so it wasn't that much fun. But he had this vision after we saw that the graphical user interface of how you can interact using a mouse. And part of that data back to the fact that one of his first jobs was at Atari. And he saw how people got so engaged, you know, with the games at Atari. And so he defined reality as one of these days everybody's going to have their own computer and it's going to be fun to use. Elon Musk said the same thing, you know, too much carbon too much combustion engines, you know, let's check out how batteries are going, Hey, you know, batteries, they could run a car. Why don't we run cars on cars on batteries? and other visionaries sort of done the same. Even Mark Zuckerberg, you know, was, it started out, you know, Facebook started out as something that he did a college that was that was that was something that a college campus is you got to see the pictures of all the other people and maybe you'd go out and date or meet them or something, right. So Facebook started out as a way of connecting with people. But he defined reality saying this is not just for college campuses. You know, we could go online, and we could, we could connect the world to each other. And so you need to be able to define reality. And then you declare your intention, I'm going to make this happen. I don't know how I'm gonna make it happen, but I'm making it happen. And that's what happened with Steve Jobs. After we went to Xerox PARC, he came back and he said, we're going to build this thing, and they call that the Macintosh. And then you have to decide on a strategy and, and of course, it was kind of convoluted, and they made the Macintosh but he just wasn't a business guy. And he had a run in with the board and they brought in john Sculley and he gets fired, and he cools his heels. And then john Sculley and the other CEOs drive Apple into the ground, you know, and then someone says, maybe we should bring Steve Jobs back, he's doing pretty well at Pixar. Right? And you know, and I don't want to go into all those sort of things. But, but going back to defining reality, so write down those three DS, are you defining reality declaring intention and deciding strategy? So one of the other things about visionary leaders, but I think this is helpful if you're an entrepreneur is one of the differences between them. And non visionaries, is they see the unknown as an adventure to be lived. They love the unknown. I love that. I mean, Steve Jobs, Ilan Musk, probably less. So. Bill Gates, right. But Microsoft really wasn't a visionary company like apple. And they, in a lot of them, they do I Alaska, they do psychedelics, because that's the unknown on steroids, right? Just a little unknown isn't enough, let's just let's just knock it out of the park. Why do they see it as an adventure to be live, because they have they have this trust that whatever the unknown is, dots will start coming together. And they'll form pictures in their mind, they'll form pictures of that reality that they can define. So that's one of the reasons many of those people love to use psychedelics, because they have a faith that they won't go off the deep end, the what will happen is it'll just throw more dots at them to connect. And when they come together, they'll come together and products or services that can change the world. And they also are what my late mentor, a fella named Warren Bennis, big leadership guy. They're also first class notices to noticing is different than looking watching and see, when you look, watch and see or an observer. But when you notice, like if you're hearing me, maybe you're noticing my tone of voice, maybe you're noticing when I raise my voice, maybe you're noticing when I emphasize something, and when you notice something you connect to it. So if you add first class noticer to unknown on steroids and seeing it as an adventure, what happens is you start to notice things and then dots come together. And here was the formula. Okay, so that's another stuff that you can take, take home. But the formula that I talked about earlier before I started playing Steve Jobs that he lives by an Elan Musk, live buy in, you're now going to live by and by the way, you need to take this to your marketing team. Noted and here's the formula. The formula is wo w h o a while wl w h Mmm. Yes. Whoa, Walton. Yes. Whoa, wow. Yes, got it. And I'll tell you what it means. So if you look up Steve Jobs, Xerox PARC, National Geographic, Steve Jobs, Xerox PARC National Geographic, you'll see a video dramatization of him discovering the mouse at Xerox PARC. It's just two minutes. And what will happen is you'll see the expression on his face So I can just describe it. So you can actually see it in your mind's eye, and I hope I do a good job. So in the video, he's there and his arms across, then he's kind of, you know, his cynical, arrogant self. And he's looking. And then he sees the Xerox PARC technician playing with this thing, a mouse, and it's connecting icons on the screen. And so as you watch the video, you see that he starts to walk forward, his eyes widen. And what he's thinking is, whoa, I can't believe what I'm seeing. I can't believe my eyes. Now, for your marketing department, you know, for whoever you're trying to reach. It's got to create Whoa, where they can't believe what they're seeing, hearing or reading. So whatever your customers see, hear a read, it's got to create Whoa, you've created wall. By the way, if you're giving a presentation to a big audience, when people are texting, and they're distracted, and you say something, and you see people elbowing each other, and they're saying, What did he say? What did she say? That's well? Or if you're saying it to someone else? They'll say, Can you repeat that again? I actually met with the CEO of all of Harvard Business publishing, and the head of their global their global unit. And when I mentioned Whoa, while he yes to them, they both spontaneously took out a piece of paper and just wrote it down. Yep. The wall Walden Yes, is a wall wall. He just didn't even know what it was. And so, so what happens is Steve Jobs is there. And he says to the technician, Can I try it? And then in the video, he sits down, and the music goes up, and he touches the mouse. And he just looks at the screen and he starts to sweat. And that's the wall. And the wall is This is unbelievable. Amazing. Astonishing. So what was I can't believe what I'm seeing hearing or reading. Wow, is this is astonishing, amazing. Unbelievable. Huh? In the video he looks at was niak and was the access to him and was the act appears in this little short video he looks at was the act and Wozniak says once they go there, they're not going back. Meaning once we make it fun, and I go back to typing, right. And then the video ends with Walter Isaacson who wrote one of the books. And Walter Isaac said said they didn't know what to do with this at Xerox PARC. They, you know, I had no idea what to do with this. But Steve Jobs took the idea back to Apple, and say, we know what to do with this. And they created the Macintosh. So the centerpiece of my Steve Jobs return. And when I work with companies, and if you're pitching to investors, if you're trying to attract the top talent, so you can be successful. You've got to create Whoa, wow. Huh? Yes. And if you don't create Whoa, wow. Yes, you're creating now? No, thanks. Nevermind, pass, right. So go to your marketing department. Look at what's on your website. And by the way, companies bring me in. Because I can facilitate brainstorming about this, right? I say give me an avatar of your customer client. And I'm able to like I could see the world through Steve Jobs, eyes. You know, once I described the customer client, I can see the world through their customer clients eyes. And, and then we facilitate what would cause your customer, a client investor, or talent you're trying to attract. To go Whoa, wow, yes. I gotta buy this. I got to invest there. I got to work there.

Jake Wiley: 19:07

Let me let me ask you a question. Here. This is this is a data I've always wanted to connect, because I love this story. So Steve Jobs was an amazing storyteller, right? He he just did this. And this was his thing. And I know he practiced a lot, and I don't talk about that. But the other thing, you know, that you mentioned is that most of the stories show him being a little bit arrogant, very, like this is my way or the highway type of thing. But how did he bring his team along? Right? Because I think that that is the secret to success that really doesn't get enough light.

Mark Goulston: 19:41

So Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. They're actually visionaries. They're not leaders. Okay. So that's the difference because, you know, because they could be abusive. But here, see, here's what they did. And now you listening in, you can say, Well, you know what Steve Jobs did, what Elan musk does, what the Apollo 11 Moon mission did with feisty aerospace engineers who didn't like to cooperate. What they said to people as one want to jump on a rocket ship to the future, want to have a story that you'll be able to tell your grandchildren. And so when you come up with something that is so impossibly exciting. You you overlook. Now that doesn't excuse being abusive. But, you know, when you're doing something, you know that that still amazes you, and you get to be part of it. Now, a lot of you entrepreneurs will say I, you know, I'm just, I'm creating a better widget, right? So So, but in answer your question, I think he and musk are visionaries. But one of the things that Steve Jobs did, and Mark Zuckerberg did, is in fact, I heard Goldman Sachs wouldn't invest in Facebook unless it had Sheryl Sandberg. And Apple had Tim Cook. His they needed someone to run interference between their arrogance and the rest of the people. Okay. And the purpose of Tim Cook is not to make a nice guy out of Steve Jobs. And the same with Sheryl Sandberg with Zuckerberg. It's to do damage control. Because what will happen is some of these people, you know, they're, they're breathing their own fumes and, but if they're on a rocket ship to the future, they get away with it. But you're not going to convert them into being a nice guy. I mean, people like Steve Jobs, mellowed because he got cancer, right? I'm not sure what will cause Elan musk Camillo, you know, if he shared that he's he, he does have bipolar symptoms? Well, you know, he says crazy things. But if he went off the deep end and literally went psychotic, you know, where people started getting scared. You know, who knows? But so, so what you need is you need someone to run interference between you and your people. And especially in this day of hashtag, you know, me too. Yep. You got to be really careful now. And especially in these days of hostile workplace discriminatory practices. I'll tell you, there's nothing that cuts your momentum more than a big lawsuit. Right. You know, and, and, and so I'm just trying to give you all those pieces. So part of what I'm hoping you take away from this is the three DS define reality, declare intention to make it so decide strategy. In the way that will help you to define reality is, is to be a first class noticer. I'm not saying to take psychedelics, something else that I'm a real fan of that can help your first class noticing, is design thinking. So I didn't realize it. But I've been following the design thinking formula for over four, I've been following the formula before it came up, right? Because what design thinking is about is you have to let go of what you're selling. You got to realize that, oh, you love the restaurant that you put up and everybody who's driving past that will say they're gonna lose their family business. You know, because you love it so much. You can't believe other people don't love it, right? So you really have to empathize. You have to let go. And you have to totally tune in to what your market your customers and clients who are going to pay money. You got not only have to get where they're coming from, you have to find out what's a god I have it for them. And if you're if you're fortunate to be able to look into their future and define the reality that they got to have. But you can do that you can do that. I'm I'm friends with a company IDEO, which is an design company, and they did a lot of the Apple products. And I actually did an interview with Tim Brown, who's the now the chair, the chair of idea and he was the CEO for many years. And and one of the ways They'd go out there. And part of ideos process is they have computer scientists, they have psychologists, they have sociologists, they have political scientists, they get biologists. And they basically say, go out in the world and be a first class noticer gotten the world and see what's frustrating people have a conversation, and ask them, what's frustrating them? ask them what's really making them angry? Because boy, if you can identify something that's really frustrating and making people angry, and you can fix that you got yourself a product or service, or go out there and you see that people are really liking something, get them to open up, geez, I couldn't help notice. But but you really liked it. What excites you about that? Oh, wow, that's interesting. And so then they come back. And from all their points of view, they assembled, this was what we discovered. And so, and then they collect the dots, and turn that into a design.

Jake Wiley: 26:02

Well, let me let me jump in there with you real quick, because this, I feel like we're going in two different directions that are really, really fascinating for like your entrepreneur. So thinking back to like the Steve Jobs example. So I'm going to you're going to channel that for me again. And even going back to like Henry Ford, when he talked about if, if I'd asked people what they wanted. They wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse. Right? Steve Jobs, looked at the mouse and said, Nobody knows about this, but we're gonna bring this to the world. He looked at that, what became the iPhone, and he patted put all those things together. And then on the other hand, we're kind of talking about being a first class noticer, right? And those really, really digging in with people and understanding and listening to them, so that you can connect the dots. So I guess in your mind, are those two different paths? Because it seems like it is, or am I am I missing that?

Mark Goulston: 26:53

Well, something else I'll throw this to the mix. Okay, Steve Jobs. And Ilan Musk, especially with psychedelics. They have the capacity, they have the capacity to have divergent thinking and then seamlessly go to convergent thinking, alright. So they can just think incredibly widely into the unknown. Just throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. But they have the ability to then do convergent thinking. Here's something that none of you will get. But I got when I was younger, I drove a BM an old BMW motorcycle, pre 1970. Steve Jobs drove one of those. In fact, when I do president used to do presentations of Steve Jobs, I would show a little video of him driving one of those. And then I'd show a video of what it's like to be on top of one of those motorcycles. And what was different about it, I hope you'll bear with me, but you have to picture this, okay? I had driven Honda's before this BM, that these this older BMW. And the Honda's were just loud screeching and, you know, and fast. But what happened with the older BMWs. And what was fascinating is the older BMWs had a, a telescopic fork that was called an Earl's fork. And what was crazy, is when you stepped on the brakes, you stayed level and you just slow down so it didn't die the way a telescopic fork would do. And so, what I loved about those BMWs in what Steve Jobs loved about them, and I'd be willing to bet anything on this is whenever you drove one of those BMWs you would feel the elegance of power. And then when you downshifted also the transmission of a BMW German motorcycle was really definite. Whereas in those older models of Honda's and Yamaha's you'd shift, you'd end up between gears you'd have to keep shifting to try and get into the right gear. But there was something about the elegance of a BMW motorcycle, we just felt this fluid acceleration. And then when you stepped on the brakes, or downshift, then you stayed level and even. What does this have to do with things think of the design of Apple products. They're not clunky. There's an elegance to them. And yet, when you need to get productivity out of them, you can get that too. Whereas all the other if you think of the other computer is they were these ugly gray computers and, you know, just something to put all the guts inside and now go doing computing. So what Steve Jobs saw was the elegance of design that when you saw something beautiful And then functional. It really was something that was built into his DNA. That makes sense, kind of

Jake Wiley: 30:10

it does. And I distinctly remember the story of like, you know, him sitting with his dad in the workshop in the garage and his dad stressing the importance of, you know, just because you can't see it doesn't mean does it mean that you need to take any less care? And that's something that he carried with him all throughout his life? And I think that's exactly what you're talking about, too. Is it from an early age, he brought it up?

Mark Goulston: 30:30

Yeah, that's exactly it, it's. Because what you want to do is you want to, you want to put a smile on people's face, as well as triggering something in their mind what they can really do with the machine. And so you know, Apple products are like that. That's why design, that's why the white box, even when you buy an Apple product, even all the way to the casing, the boxes are elegant.

Jake Wiley: 31:01

That's fascinating. So I think maybe our listeners probably need some more help to is that we're not all Steve Jobs, right? And we can probably identify with that. But we can be a heck of a lot better at listening and drawing out what's important to the other party. And you've written a book on it. several books, I actually. Because how do you how do you bring a flesh that out a little bit more?

Mark Goulston: 31:30

Well, something you could say. And I've, you know, I've consulted to companies and suggested this and seems to work, I'd say, identify your best customers and best clients. And you reach out to them, and everybody's reaching out to them. And in the subject of reaching out to them, you say, I would like to buy 15 minutes of your time to make better products. You know, and then you know, what you say is we're reaching out to you, because we've noticed, we see that you're interested in our industry, our products, whatever. And we're reaching out to you, and we'll pay you such and such or we'll give you a you know, a gift certificate to Amazon, whatever. Because we value your time. And this will take 15 minutes at the longest. And then what you say is we'd like you to imagine that it's a year from now. And you say to your friends, you spontaneously, spontaneously say to your friends, have you tried the new such and such? Or if it's an airline, you have you flown on such and such? Why? You won't believe it. So it's a year from now, let's let's get let's get them out of the transactional present transit. If your transactional mind and you're too short sighted, you're myopic, you're still focusing on how we close the number. And you say, but we'd like you to imagine it's a year from now. And you spontaneously tell your friends or ask your friends, have you tried such and such? And why do you share that, because it's kind of neat to be able to while your friends, it's kind of nice, nice to be able to delight your friends. And if you're listening in, I'm sure now the airlines are listening in. This would be really important. Because you know, COVID have hit them bad, they are going to come back. But boy, if you could find that out. And if you as an airline, you could find out and you could say we'll get you know, we'll give you 200 frequent flyer miles. We would like you to imagine a year from now. And you spontaneously say to your friends what airline Do you fly? You know, I've been fortunate because I spoken around the world and i've you know, and I flown you know, first class and Qatar or Emirates. And you know, I remember you know Wish I could just die there. I mean it was so unbelievable to be in first class and one of those airlines right we just it's like it's almost like everything else was just crummy. But I told everybody you know, you'll never You'll never believe what you won't believe this. So I would reach out and, and see what they come back. Okay, but I'd reward and see what it morphs into. Okay and see the differences. Here's another thing about human nature. A lot of people have trouble looking into the future. But people have less trouble visualizing a future time. And then telling you what they see. Right? Okay, so for instance, you know, if you go into your personal lives if you're an entrepreneur. And this would not be a bad exercise to share with someone you're dating or you're married to. And you say to your partner, I'd like you to imagine it's a year from now. And you wake up. And you say, the best single decision I've ever made in my life, was having a relationship with you. As opposed to what am I stuck in this in this in this mishmash for, but it's a year from now. And you wake up, and you wake up with a real smile thinking? When it comes to relationships? You just won the lottery? How do I act? How do I interact with you? What's our communication? Like? what's, what negative things do I stop doing? So that a year from now you can say, this is the best, this is the best decision I've ever made. And people will be able to visualize that. Whereas if you say, you know, going forward, how can we have a happy relationship? It's kind of too vague. Okay. I love that.

Jake Wiley: 36:46

Another another quote, I've heard from you, and forgive me if I don't get it quite right. But as an entrepreneur, you know, looking for money, looking for new customers. You want to get the other party to regret saying no more than saying, Yes, I get that, right.

Mark Goulston: 37:05

Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, one of the things you can do in a negotiation because I teach negotiating skills, is you going, let's say in the middle of a negotiation, and you know, and people are very wary, you know, you know, they don't want to say yes to something and regret it. And so if you picking up that weariness, and you can say, Well, is there are there any questions you have, right, or any pretty standard, usual thing, and what will happen is they will smile politely because they've already checked out. Now, they don't want to be rude. They say, No, no, no, no, no, thank you for everything you've shared. And, yeah, send us a link. Yeah, but no, no, you've lost them. And also, you know, something that I coach people to be is to be, is to be bold, without being brazen. People like boldness, because people envy that people want to be more bold, people want to be more courageous. So if you're in the middle of that conversation, you can say, Can we pause for a second. And they're going to get nervous because they pause 10 minutes ago, they just haven't figured out how to. They're smiling to be polite, but they they checked out 10 minutes ago, they just didn't want to get up and be rude. And they know what in say, Can I ask you a hypothetical question? So So let's say you're speaking to an investor. And, you know, hopefully, I mean, if they really checked out, they'll say, No, I think I'm finished. But hopefully there'll be intrigued. And they'll say, okay, say, I'd like you to imagine that it's six months from now. And your boss says to you, you know, that thing you invested in? That's the best investment we've made in five years. And I'm gonna get a raise. And I'm going to give you one. So I'd like you to imagine it six months from now. And your boss is evaluating your investments. And that's what they say to you. And let's drill down what would make that happen. And, and you might say what the number is, yeah, of course, it's the number is but, you know, essentially, we're not just a company of numbers, we make services or products. So you can tell us, you know, what is what is the problem that our company solves? What is the opportunity that our company causes people to not miss out on? That's what it comes down. People want to solve a problem or they don't want to miss out an opportunity. And so you say I'd like you to imagine that Your boss says that was the best investment. And I'm getting a raise. And so you. So you drill down, you get them to open up, right? Because they're not aware of that. But unconsciously, that's exactly what they're listening for. Right? Is this is just gonna get me a raise. But and, and if that's so they'd be hesitant to say no to it. because they'd be passing on something that could have gotten them a raise, they're passing on something where their boss said, you know, the thing you passed on and our competitor invested. It's a huge success, we blew it. So those are ways they regret saying no. To you. They'd also regret saying no, because, well, now they're going to go have another meeting with another company that they have to listen to, to figure out if they want to give money to. So they have to go through the whole thing all over again, you know, it's a lot of brain damage. Right? On the you know, on the other hand, what they're also listening for, which is probably even more powerful is they don't want to regret saying yes. So, so you want to ask them, you know, and let's talk about something where six months from now, your boss tells you that what you invested in was a piece of junk. And that, now we're gonna have to unload it in your boss has to explain it to his or her boss, right. And so that's what you want to avoid you, there's a part of you that, you know, wants to avoid saying yes to something where your boss, you know, tells you this was a bad investment, what were you thinking. But you also want to avoid saying no to something where your boss says, you know, you missed out on something big, would have been home row. So what you do is, since they're not aware of this, you get them to talk about it. But the point is, when you get them to talk about it, you don't rush them. And one of the things that I do, and you might not be able to do this, because you got a boss in your back, you know, pressuring you, one of the things that I would do is when they tell me what will be a big win for them. Sometimes I've said, Well, you know, I wouldn't hire me if I was you. And I wouldn't buy my products or services. And I'll say what, what? Yeah, because from what you told me, that will make a big win for you. There's two or three other things that you should invest your money in first. And you better get these things, right. And I'm not one of them. But you know, what, I can refer you those people, you know, I can I can tell you what those products are, you can go find them on your own, or, you know, like, look around and see who I know. And I remember I did this with someone. And he said, let me get this right. You flew here. And you're talking me out of hiring you or buying a product or service? What's that about? I said, Well, I just sold you on something that's even more valuable. So what's that I just sold you on something that you don't give out to anyone. You trust me, I just sold you on trust. Because I'm dedicated to getting that success. And because I'm dedicated to it, and I know what it is, I'm going to make introductions that might help you get that success. And you will take my calls in the future. Right as I've gained your trust, and if we play it right, you know, unless that unless that doesn't mean anything to you. We're gonna have a long term relationship. Can you see how that's a slightly different way of approaching things?

Jake Wiley: 44:04

Absolutely. And I mean, I like I like to point to specifically that you made about being bold, right? There's gonna be times when you're talking to people and you know, they're checked out. And most most of us probably just push on through, you know, hoping that like, there's a hail mary in there that, you know, they'll come back around. But you know, you identify a point where they're probably checked out. And you just take a totally different tact, and you're bold, and you call it out there.

Mark Goulston: 44:31

Well, I'll tell you, there is nothing bolder than being focused on their success, and helping them to clarify it. So they see it better. I'll give you an anecdote. This is I think, a good anecdotes I've spoken in Russia. And five of my books are bestsellers in Russia. And so they arranged for me to have an interview with one of their biggest business people. Till RBC, et cetera. Yeah, it's not the Wall Street Journal, but it's it's one of their biggest publications. It goes, I was coming there. And so they arranged for me to speak to aelia. So I speak to Ilya, he has a thick accent. And I said earlier. Let me tell you what I want out of this interview. So of course, he thinks I'm just as pushy American. He said, What's that? I said, My only objective is that you write an article that gets you a raise or promotion. It's the only thing I care about. That's the good news. The bad news is I talk in tangents I pulled in stories of, you're going to have to sometimes pull a pony out of this, all the stuff we're going to talk about. And so I don't know if you can do that. But I want you to be able to write a story that gets you a promotion or a raise. He was quiet. We have the interview. So eight months later, I go to Moscow. And the invent company says, you know, that article they wrote about where they interviewed you. It's in the top five viewed articles ever in the history of the publication 460,000 views. And a publication where you know, stories get maybe 50,000 60,000. So looks like I want aelia over, right. Not only that, you know, I could leave our interview and say, oh, maybe I should check in with aelia. See how he's doing. he'd write another story, right, if I'm interested. But that's the power of being focused on the success of the other person. But what you need is you need an enlightened boss above you. Who's not so hungry, that they're pushing you pushing him close, get more money get more? Well, you know, maybe what you should do is play this interview that you and I are having Jake, to your boss, right? Yeah. What do you think of I take this approach? Would you support me? Right? And what I would tell you, this is a bold statement. If you have a boss, who sees no value in what I just suggested, you need another boss. Yep. I agree with that. So you know, so hopefully, there's a few ponies and what we talked about here, Jay,

Jake Wiley: 47:46

there were, and I know, we gotta we gotta wrap it up. But, Mark, this has been great. I always love hearing what you have to say, and you have such a good way of putting it.

Mark Goulston: 47:57

Well, look, thank you for giving me a long leash. And if you're listening in, thank you for hopefully selecting some nuggets you can use because I'm passionate, but I wander. So thanks for having me on. And I hope people will check out. I've a couple of things going on. Few things, you can go to my website, Mark goulston, calm because I have a case of blog area. So I just blog. I think of things I throw them up there. I have a podcast called my wake up call where I interview, I guess thought leaders and powerful people, people running for president and Larry King and about what matters most to them in their wake up calls. And then I have a LinkedIn live show called no strings attached. Where I giveaway and my guest giveaway. You know, any of the nuggets that we hope are usable by you immediately. And there's no strings attached. You can monetize them, you can create courses, you can take credit for them. You know, it'd be nice if you attributed that to us, but we don't care. Because my first guest was Marshall Goldsmith and Marshall and I are both in our early 70s. And one of the things we both agree on is we got a lot of ideas that could help people and you know, just sitting on them, you know, because you're worried about an NDA or you're worried about you know, not monetizing it. You know, it's a shame bad ideas that can help people sit and so no strings attached, which I hope you'll check out if you go to Mark goulston no strings attached, you can find the episodes. And I you know if you liked part of my wanderings on this podcast, you'll you'll you'll find that show to be much more focused.

Jake Wiley: 49:55

Well, that's awesome. And for the listeners out there, I will put all those links in the show notes. So you don't have to take notes or pull over while you're driving, I'll make sure we have those. Mark, thank you. Again, this has been one of the best hours I've ever spent. And now we'll transition to Mark's special message.

Mark Goulston: 50:14

Well, what's really important to me will only be important to some of your audience. Something that you probably know about my background, but your audience does and is I was a suicide prevention specialists, psychiatrists for and for 25 years, none of my patients killed themselves. And I finally discovered what it is that I did that caused them to not kill themselves. And I have a recent book called why cope when you can heal, which is how to heal from trauma. And I introduce what it is that I realized, help suicidal patients. And what we're calling it is surgical empathy. And what that means, and you won't appreciate this, unless you've been suicidal. And if you have been, or if you have a child you're worried about, then this might help them to feel you get where they're coming from. One of the things that I discovered is that death is compassionate, to hopelessness, that won't go away. So if a person's feeling hopeless, and the psychological pain of living is too much, they attach to death as a way to relieve it. And what surgical empathy does, is it goes in, and what I learned to do, and I have a book called just listen, which became a topic and listening in the world, it's in 27 languages that I speak around the world, except in America, because Americans don't want to listen, they want to be listened to. So I speak in Russia, Canada, India, Great Britain. And but Americans, you know, they want to be listened to they don't want to listen. And but what happens, what just listen is about is how do you cause people to feel felt? Because suicidal people feel felt by death, because it'll take the pain away. But when they can feel felt by you, they'll let go of the death and grab on to you. So part of what I'm excited about. And again, I guess we have some, all the time we need is a friend of mine, he became a friend, he reached out to me because two years ago, his 14 year old son killed himself. And he reached out to me and he did a TEDx talk. And I became a mentor to him. And we did a talk to eo entrepreneur organization in Arizona. And it went over really well, because people brought their spouses and they're worried about their kids. And so what I'm really excited about, and I don't know if it'll happen is I'm in conversation with the head of all of global learning for all of eoe around the world. And we may do a zoom call globally, about this. And if you look up team mental health webinar, there's a video that has sort of a black face, it says teen mental health webinar. And you'll see the gold cast video from Jason read that on gold cast got 9 million views where he talks to about a dozen male founders about he felt it was his fault that his son killed himself. Because as he talked about in that nine minutes, he said, You know, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're a dad, you don't talk about your fears. You know, we're used to failing, but you're the guy. You're strong. And but what happens is you give solutions. When your kids is hurting, you give them solutions, what do you do about it? But what happens is when that pain is so deep, and they feel so alone, and they don't want a solution, they want relief from the pain that death will give them or feeling felt will give them what happens. And what happened is his son killed himself and they discovered a couple of suicide notes. And one of them had the past codes to his son's computer. And they went on the computer and he'd been looking for ways to kill himself for months. So if you look up team mental health webinar, you'll see his gold cast video, which is riveting, and then for the next 25 minutes. There is there's me talking, giving advice to parents if you're worried about someone, if you're worried about a kid This is how you might be able to get through to them.

Jake Wiley: 55:03

That concludes this week's show. Thanks for listening. Please leave a review on your favorite podcast platform or directly on the site. Your comments are truly appreciated, good, bad or indifferent, and we'll help make the show better. This is Jake Wiley with Wiley on business and we'll talk again two weeks