MKJ
Welcome back to the conversation my friends CEO mischief makers Brian Wallace is here with me and I Swear if you have not listened to the first two episodes of this This conversation you need to go back and listen to them because we are going to the gold has been dropped all along the way for you to just pick up and run with now We’re gonna get so

So we’re going to have so much information shared with you. I know I don’t know yet because we haven’t talked about this, but I know based on where the conversation has been that you need to listen. Okay. So tighten up those headsets or those earbuds or whatever, and have something ready to write with because we’re going to dive in. So first off, Brian, here we go. You ready?

Brian Wallace
We’re going to get there.

MKJ 
All right, so the first two episodes we talked about mindset, then we talked about a lot about innovation. And I love the way you unpacked innovation and how you are looking to that gauntlet, those three parts of the gauntlet. And I need you to remind us of those three things first. And then secondly, you used a word renowned. And I would love for you to dive deeper into that word. So first, the three gauntlet, then we go into renowned.

Brian Wallace
OK, so similar to the Innovate Summit that we just had, and I think I even said some of these things from the stage, there’s a lot going on. Pretty sure I said these things out loud. So the first thing is I want people to actually be good people that are caring, that are mindful of others and all of that, or you’re not getting past the other pieces of the gauntlet. You’re just stopped at the door or the.

you’re just going to hit the moat at the castle and that’s as far as you go. We’re not putting the drawbridge down for sociopaths and people who are just looking for the wrong thing and looking to just take advantage of others. It doesn’t work. Next is generosity in a good network. Now, a good network does not mean more social media followers and LinkedIn connections than the other. It means that they are really good connectors and they know the art of conversation, how to talk to people. And they’re

shy of that, they don’t believe in a scarce world, they believe in a big abundant world, regardless of their spirituality, religiosity, we all, because that’s not what we’re talking about.

I also want them to actually be good at stuff because if they don’t even know what they want to do, how am I supposed to figure it out? I can help them, I suppose, but they might be on the way and we’re always learning, but I think people need to carefully define some areas of specificity. I can get into a whole weird thing here if you want, or we could save that for later. Sure. So, all right. So I think I am of the opinion that a lot of people think that they’re good at X, they’re good at technology, they’re good

MKJ
Go. I love weird. Go for it.

Brian Wallace 
Climbing telephone poles, they’re good at soccer, they’re good at whatever, they’re expertises. I don’t know, they’re carpenters, whatever. Vocational, they fix air conditioning. It’s hot out sometimes, yeah, sure.

And then they’re creative and they their passion projects over here. And never the twain shall meet. But why? Who told you that? Who forced you to do that? Great school? Some teacher telling you no? I believe that humanity has the ability to synthesize a superset of skills and make things that are new and innovative, which I think we’ve talked about a couple of times here. Does the innovate council give us like a quarter every time we say it? I don’t even know. So there’s your three, yeah. So that’s your three step gauntlet and your superset bonus.

MKJ
Yeah. There you go. That’d be good.

Brian Wallace 
Okay, the other part that you said was renowned, right? So as alluded to on the previous podcast, I believe that the word influence has been ruined by the negative priming of the word influence, which is influencer, the people who used to buy the blue check marks and all the social networks on the black market. Craziness. For what? For fame to rip you off on some course that you don’t need? Okay, good luck with that.

MKJ
Renowned. Yes. Yes.

Brian Wallace
So people cannot disassociate this already ruined word. I feel like it’s a little bit scorched earth, which is why, even though like in our business, I say that we make the world’s ideas simple, visual and influential. I worry about that because we need to embrace at least a new paradigm and maybe a new word. So.

I don’t have a date on it yet. It’s still in development because it just hasn’t been the age and stage. And there’s been a lot of other stuff going on personally and professionally in my life. So haven’t had, it hasn’t been the season yet to launch it, but we’re going to talk about it right now. So the word is renowned because renowned could be a person who is still of respect that you want to meet that is interesting, that is generous, that has this connection and is good at stuff to help you in life. And I think that some people think that being a public speaker, being an extrovert, I don’t think you even have to be an extrovert.

You can be an introvert, you can be an ambivert, which means both. You don’t have to be like this salesy party guy that’s all loud at parties or something. You can just be like a mild -mannered person. doesn’t matter. I think it’s something that maybe some people are born with innate talent, but it is something that you can model after and reverse engineer. And I want to help show people the way.

which we are embodying and typifying in the way that we were running the first conference and hopefully one of many to come, as well as what I believe the book and all related material will entail. Yeah.

MKJ 
Well, yes, we’ll support. Yeah, I love that because you could just basically change that you use the word influence. I think you said influencing in your in your tagline and you can just change it to renown. And it that’s it.

Brian Wallace
Exactly. We need to use our influence to empower others. And that’s the thing. People don’t understand that power isn’t being the loud person with the microphone. It’s giving other people stage and the floor. Why would you not?

MKJ 
Yes. And here’s the difference between what I used to do, which was exactly what you were talking about. It was the technical things, right? I would build chat bots. I would do things with AI. I would do things with conversational design. Basically, the purpose was, at least from my client’s perspective, when I had this agency, which I just shut down at the beginning of the year, the purpose was to persuade people to buy their stuff.

And so we’re talking about lead generations, tactics, excuse me, lead generation. Well, I’ve switched that because my whole goal during that whole time was conversational design, designing conversations to allow the potential buyer to take their own adventure with your products and services and your business and your brand and your renowned status, to take their own adventure with that. That’s to me, conversations. That’s what we’re all about.

Brian Wallace 
Can I give you a rabbit hole? Can I give you a rabbit hole on this? There’s something to examine.

MKJ 
Go, let’s go.

Brian Wallace 
So everybody thinks that humanity and they themselves have all these strongly held opinions that they march around online and their posture a certain way and they like this and they support that whatever. But a lot of reality of the human mind is that it is not as sophisticated as you might think. And all these so -called strongly held opinions are weakly held that can be uprooted by other thoughts and paradigms that they haven’t considered yet. So you could actually, it’s not mind control, we’re not joining a cult.

So, you all you called us to be, don’t take any notes here. just chill. Calm down. The same for you. It’s just like good humanity. Please stick, please stand up. So yeah, like you can actually give people better ideas that they never considered. Think about like, it’s crazy. Like the stuff people believe and how it got there is wild.

MKJ 
Yes, calm down. Yeah.

MKJ
Yes, yes.

Brian Wallace 
permit me a little bit more tangent and then we can jump into more of the nuts and bolts. But this is important. It’s important to understand the mental model to get to the end of it. So have you ever read or heard about the story of how breakfast became a thing, breakfast cereal? Have you ever heard of cereal? Breakfast cereal invented the category of breakfast, to sell cereal. There is a commonly held phrase or knowledge in the world.

MKJ
yeah, because I’m going. Yeah. I’m right there. Yep.

MKJ 
No. yes. For a cereal I have, yes. Yeah.

Brian Wallace
that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And then you say, interesting, where did it come from? I think I heard my parents, or I saw something about scientists with lab coats, pretty sure they were actors. It was invented by cereal companies in the 1930s. Okay, we’re closing in on 100 years ago, people. What are we talking about? So you’re influenced of an entire category of food, because people just eat leftovers or steak or whatever.

MKJ
Thank you.

Brian Wallace
and they invented it because they were bad at selling cereal and they started sugar coating it and making a bunch of weird claims that I’m not gonna get into, but do your own research on that. Trust me, it is a weird rabbit hole. I’m gonna leave it at that. All this to say that you actually can influence people for good by helping them along that

MKJ
Thank you for bringing that up because I’m also going to go into another thing. My degree is from UC Berkeley was in nutrition and food science at the height of the food pyramid being high carb, low fat, low protein. So it wasn’t just that cereal is the most important meal or breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It was the whole that then that went into the next one. They’re like, that worked. Let’s go to the next one and say, this is really what’s healthy for you. And fat is really

bad. So yeah, you don’t want me to go down that rabbit hole. But I get it. And so what I meant, what I meant when I said influence or when I said persuade, I wasn’t meaning persuasion in the fact that we can share new ideas. I was meaning persuasion in the fact that I want you to do what I want you to do, which is pay me more money for whatever I think you need to buy. That’s excuse me, Bass -Ackwards.

Brian Wallace
No.

Brian Wallace 
right.

MKJ 
Most people, especially in today’s internet, I could cite all kinds of statistics. B2B sales, at least 72 % of B2B sales, the person purchasing wants a representative free buying process. In other words, they don’t wanna talk to your salesperson. They wanna do their own research, they wanna find out what they like.

Brian Wallace
sure is.

MKJ 
and then they decide and call you up and say, I want your thing. No, I don’t need you to persuade me and tell me all this big sales pitch. I already know it because I did my research. So that kind of persuasion, that’s the difference between lead generation and a new term that I don’t know if you’ve heard yet. I’m sure you have demand generation. You put your, and this brings us right to what you do, storytelling. You tell stories about what companies do and then let the potential buyer.

understand what they do through that story. So is that true? First off, is that true? Yes. And so now…

Brian Wallace 
Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, we’re capitalists here, right? Like, we still want to make money. But I think something that gets lost in the noise of silly thoughts all over the Internet is that people want to do business with people that they know, like and trust. They don’t want to talk to a chat bot that has like one of those like fake Facebook silhouettes or I don’t want to talk to a logo like, OK, Wendy’s is funny on Twitter, but I usually don’t want to talk to a brand.

MKJ 
course.

Brian Wallace 
I want to know who’s behind the brand and what do they want to say.

MKJ 
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. So and I can go into all kinds of ways that I’m doing and helping people with this because to me exactly what you just said, we don’t build relationships with the brand. We build relationships with humans. So who are you? And the more you tell that story, not just you personally, we don’t need to know all the details of, you know, your dog died yesterday. I mean, obviously I’m going to say, I’m so sorry. But for, of course, that’s right.

Brian Wallace 
Correct.

Brian Wallace 
I mean, it’s okay to say that, but you don’t have to say that. You can overshare too, right?

MKJ 
That’s right. That’s right. So in that situation, how do you tell, let’s get into the details of it. How do you help people tell those kinds of stories so that they can build what are no like and trust so that the customer can make their own decisions?

Brian Wallace 
So there’s two things I want to say here. I challenge people and I say, if you can’t be the best call of that person’s day,

maybe you haven’t really kind of gotten the point. something like one of my superpowers in the world is to have like an uncanny amount of ability to gain more intimacy, platonic, not like that, intimacy and trust quickly, because I’m not asking about how the weather is. You can look outside, you can see if it’s sunny or raining or whatever. You don’t need me to be the weatherman. I mean, I grew up in the suburbs of New York where I think we’re trained.

our accent to sound like the weatherman but go watch the weather channel go watch espn you don’t need me for the sports updates

MKJ 
Yeah.

Brian Wallace
If you want to talk about politics, I don’t know, that’s a great way to get divisive sometimes. I think we should be able to have a free exchange of ideas, and that’s part of what’s wrong with the world. what if instead of the surface nonsensical, plastic, smiley, pseudo things, that we just think that the object is to wait for the pause in the other person’s conversation to just shove some sales thing down their throat?

What if we actually could get to know people a little bit better? That it’s almost to the extent that they had a great time, that they learned a lot, that they saw that you’re good at stuff, and you somehow strung through three conversations worth of conversation in the first conversation. And then what if, before you even had the conversation with the person, what if your content, what if your public persona on all your socials and your blogs and wherever you show up in podcasts got a little bit of who you are?

Like, everybody listening, does everybody listening have to sit down with me after this whole three -part conversation? No, they do not, because who I am and how I think spills out into, even if your structure wasn’t as good as it was, I would still find a way to kind of fit it in, because I don’t read from cue cards. It’s just not in my nature. think

is it holds people back. People think that they need it and they don’t. So what if the best conversation that you had was from somebody like that and then you typified that, internalized it and brought that out to the world. And before you had that conversation, again, very important. If your content did that, you didn’t need all these slick AI lead gen tools. I’m not a Luddite, like we are on the computer here and we’re on the internet, we’re not in the same place. But what if your content primed the pump for people to have conversations with you like

that you already had part of the conversation in before you even talked to each other. And then by the time you dive in, how many people read my LinkedIn profile and listen to podcasts on it and click on things and they’re like, wow, I listen to your story, it’s so powerful. I’m like, wow, yeah.

Brian Wallace 
Really neat. Like you’ve gone far enough in the rabbit hole or as the salespeople would say, the buyer’s journey. See, we’re still doing it. We’re still making sales, but guess what? We’re also making friends because guess what? Like I can go to different cities throughout the world and throw an event or I could go to a place for lunch or coffee and like have multiple meetings one after the other. Why? I mean, why can’t other people do that? Am I above average at it? I guess, but I also have had a lot of practice at it and everyone can do this.

MKJ 
I just love it. I promise you, everyone listening, we will have another conversation. Because the main reason I say that though is because so much of our world right now is follow this formula. I’m a guru, I’ve done this, I’ve made billions and gazillions and whatever I’ve made and had these leads and that leads. Follow my formula and you can too. So much of the influencers are doing that. Whereas if we enable people, if we open people up and say,

Brian Wallace 
Nice.

MKJ 
you know what? Yeah, you might want to do things this way. Yes, you might want to tell your stories in an infographic, but it’s your story. It’s not my formulaic story. It’s yours. And so what would you say to those people who are used to going and following some guru’s formula or framework or recipe or blueprint or whatever, so that they can actually bring themselves out in their storytelling?

Brian Wallace 
It’s a simple exercise. I’m going to give, if you ever see me on stage, pretend you didn’t watch this part or listen to it. So very often, and I honestly do not remember where I saw this from. did not invent it. I tell everybody there’s a bit of a social experiment where we’re going to actually move our body a little bit and get into the mindset of what we’re about to talk about.

And then I’m sitting, standing, whatever, in front of a crowd of people. And I challenge everybody to raise their hand as high as they can. And then you have everybody that goes like this. For those of you who are not watching this in a video, I’m holding my hand up around to where my head is. And then I say, now raise it higher. And everybody has like another six inches. Some people go wild and they stand on a chair and then I make a joke about not falling off a stage and I don’t know that we have that hazard insurance or whatever.

And it is because everybody thinks that they need the okay from a blueprint and a formula and some guru and a piece of paper and a certificate and permission from the world for greatness. You do not need that with any external validation. And if you do, you can go with the, you know, non -regional dialects at Metro New Yorker to say that you have permission for greatness. There you go.