Episode 195: “Plan an Xtraordinary Year”

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Synopsis

Dr. Mark Goulston is back with Dr. Misner on the podcast today. (He was on Episode 127, “Get Through to Absolutely Anyone,” and Episode 128, “Turbo-Charging Your One-on-Ones.”)

This week’s topic is about planning an “Xtraordinary” year by imagining yourself in 1, 3, or 5 years and saying “Wow!”

If you applied this plan to BNI, you would imagine yourself getting referrals effortlessly, having conversations in which they could say, and you could say, “Wow, you get it! You get us! You get me!”

Think of what it is that has caused people to “Wow” you, and then do it.

Visit Dr. Goulston’s Xtraordinary Outcomes website, where he and his partner figures out how the most talented employees do what they do and help them to do it more consistently.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of BNI Podcast Episode 195 -

Priscilla:
Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the web for networking downloadables. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkley, California, and I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan. How are you and who do you have with us?

Ivan:
Hello Priscilla. I am doing great and I have a good friend on the podcast with me today, Dr. Mark Goulston. Mark is an MD but he is a business advisor. He is a consultant, trainer and a coach. He is trained as clinical psychiatrist who honed his skills as an FBI police hostage negotiation trainer, which I think is just amazing. He is the author of a book called Just Listen- Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone.

If that sounds at all familiar to some of my podcast listeners, that is because we did a podcast with Mark back on how to get through to absolutely anyone. It was such a great podcast that we carried it through to yet another podcast right after that. So if you have a chance and are listening to this podcast, go take a look on BNIpodcast.com and just type in Mark’s name. Goulston. You will find a dew podcasts with Mark, Podcast 127 and 128.

Mark, you are one of the few people who I have had on my podcast three times. You have great content. I welcome you to our podcast. I want to introduce you with one more thing. I want to tell people what led us to do this podcast today. We got together at a play recently, written by Chet Holmes, who is most well-known for his sales and management training. He did a play called Emily’s Song. It was really good. I was amazed at how skilled he is at in another area other than business. We went to dinner afterward, and you told me something at dinner that just resonated with me, and I said, “ We have to do a podcast on this.”

I appreciate you taking the time to do it, Mark. Tell everybody what the topic for the podcast is and I’ll let you run with it.

Mark:
It’s called how to plan an Xtraordinary year. We spell that X-t-r-a-ordinary. I mentioned, that a lot of times, it takes a lot of energy for people to pump themselves up and try to do a little bit better than what they are doing. But if you ask people to imagine it is a year from now or two years, three years, or five years from now, and you wake up, it’s a Monday morning, and you do a 360 of your life- you look at your job, you look at your career, you look at your wife, you look at your kids and say , “Wow”.

If you ask people to do that, they usually see much more clearly when you ask what their goals are for one, two, three and five years from now. For instance, if one of those things with regard to your business is you say , “Wow” and you’re in BNI, I think the “Wow” would be it’s really amazing that when I go to my meetings, I don’t have to ask anything. People are just coming at me to give me referrals. I have to say very little. I blush and I just say I am proud, glad and pleased to be part of BNI.

That would be a wow as opposed to, oh, do I have to do a hard sell to other people? I think most people would say how do we do that? I have even ratcheted that down to how do you do that in a meeting? I’ll tell you whenever I go to meetings now or meet people going to one on ones for lunches or breakfasts, I go there saying to myself, “What will cause them, after I leave, to say, ‘Wow. That was a great meeting! That was a great use of my time. I want more meetings like that with people like Mark.’?”

If you ask yourself to do that, I think what you would come up with if you were the other person is three things. One of the three things is the other person would say, “Gee. You really get it. You get my situation. You get my opportunities. You get the things that I am facing. You get what is happening in my business.”

The second thing is, “You get us.” If I am in a company, you kind of get our culture, our restrictions, and the kinds of things we have to deal with.”
But the real kicker is, “You get me.” Meaning, I have opened up to you and this is more than just a transactional conversation. When other people feel that “you get it, you get us, you get me,” you get them. The key is give to get.
What I write about in Just Listen is be more interested than interesting. Be more fascinated by people than fascinating. My mentor, Warren Bennis, whom I love dearly- and I’m not the only one who loves him dearly. One of my favorite lines from him is, “Boredom occurs when I fail to make the other person interesting.”

Ivan:
I think you know, Mark, that I studied briefly under Warren Bennis at USC. You went to UCLA, but you still like Warren; I’m impressed. He is truly an icon in the field of leadership. There is nobody stronger in that area.

Mark:
What’s fascinating, because I have been going to a lot of tributes to Warren is he will be interviewed, often by a very respectable person, and it’s fascinating because when the other person talks, you nod in kind of respect to the other person, but when Warren speaks, he speaks with you and you lean into him. The reason he speaks with you is he really is interested in you.
I think the secret to an Xtraordinary year is to project yourself into the end of this. And the secret to an Xtraordinary conversation that will increase business is what is it that comes out that will cause them to say “Wow”? I think what will cause them to say, “Wow” is you get it. You get our situation. You kind of get our company, what we’re going through, and you get me.

I have a really fascinating anecdote. A good friend of mine is the CEO of Abbot Medical Optics. He told me how Abbot Laboratories bought his company called Advanced Medical Optics. They make the opthomalic solution, Blink. What my friend, Jim Mazzo, said is, that the CEO of Abbot Laboratories flew in from Chicago to Orange County. What Jim told me is, “He didn’t tell me anything about Abbot Laboratories. He told me everything about my company, and he told me about me- where I was in my career, how I really wanted to expand my business. If another company took us over, I still wanted to be able to run my successful company the way it was being run- and that I want to do that.” That is exactly what Abbot gave him. And he said to me, “ How could I say no?”

Ivan:
That’s powerful. That’s a powerful story. Let me ask you a question. You say project yourself. Would it be safe to say that you can project yourself backwards? I tell BNI members to look where you want to go and then reverse engineer it. How did you get there? Would you say that in order to say, “Wow” a year from now, the have to look back and say how did they get to the wow? Did they do this, this and this?

Mark:
Absolutely. I would say for them to practice. As you are driving to the meeting. Imagine to yourself that it’s the end of the meeting and when you leave, you say to yourself that was the best meeting yet. That was the best meeting yet for me. Some people will say that’s because everyone had all these referrals for me. Okay, let’s think why would people have all these referrals to give you? I think part of it is because there is something that you did for them that triggered generosity and gratitude. What would it be that would trigger that? I will give you at tip that you and I know very well. There is a saying that if you do something for someone, they will thank you. If you do something for one of their children, they will never forget you. So care about the person and their family outside of the business negotiation, and see how you can help them.

Something I do, and some people would be uncomfortable, but I can get away with it because I was trained as a clinical psychiatrist- sometimes when you are having a conversation with someone, if you can pause, look them in the eye, and say, “What’s really going on with you?” But say it like you care. And say it because you care. Don’t just say it because you are going to shift them into a sale or a close. It’s interesting. One of my mentors who I just listened and dedicated to said, “If you just listen for pain and fear and stress in people, they will open up and share it with you. And then they will share their dreams and hopes with you, and they will be grateful to you forevermore.

Ivan:
That’s powerful information for our BNI members. I think what you have given us, Mark , is basically the law of attraction with some hands on application. How do you attract that end life? How do you take this where you want to go and apply it. We are almost out of time, Mark. Any wrap up closing comments that you have?

Mark:
Maybe one of the ways to produce “Wow” in a meeting is think of the conversations that you’ve had with someone that wasn’t just strictly I’ll give you a referral. Think of what it is that has caused people to wow you and then do the same to others.

Ivan:
Now, you have a website that talks about some of this. It’s in progress, but you’ll be adding content. I wanted to share it with everybody. It’s called Xtraordinaryoutcomes.com. What will you be having up there very soon, Mark?

Mark:
Well, what we’ve discovered is the difference between an outcome and a goal. A goal is often something that you aim a dart at in the future and it’s built upon a wing and a prayer. But an outcome is preceded by something. An Xtraordinary outcome is preceded by extraordinary actions and lousy outcomes are preceded by lousy actions. So what we are focusing on is what are the extraordinary things that occur that cause an Xtraordinary outcome?
My partner, Doc Barrum, one of the things that he does- and I am so honored because he is a genius at this. One of the things is to try to hold on and preserve talent. One of the things that we can do is take your most talented sales person, manager or operations person that you can’t reproduce and we can figure out the way they do it so they can do it more consistently. Also, we can teach others- we can basically clone your best and give it to the rest. That produces Xtraordinary outcomes.

Ivan:
Mark, thank you very much for being on our podcast. I love the concept. It’s a year from now and you say , “ Wow.” How did you make that happen? That’s what we talked about here today. It’s Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen- Discover the Secret to Get Through to Absolutely Anyone. A great expert in this field and a person I consider to be a friend. Mark, I thank you very much for being on our podcast today.

Mark:
It’s always extraordinary to be with you, Ivan.

Ivan:
Okay, thank you. Priscilla, back to you.

Priscilla:
Okay, thank you so much. Thank you both. I think that is it for this week. I would just like to remind the listeners that today’s podcast was brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we hope that you will join us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.