Top of Mind

by John Hall

  Volunteer Your Personal Time

  Time is our most valuable asset, so we’ve got to be efficient with it. But sometimes, all it takes is just a few minutes. Whoever you are and whatever position you hold, you can almost always spare a few minutes now and again.

  For example, earlier this year, my cofounder, Kelsey, and I were at an event for an award we had been nominated as finalists for: EY Entrepreneur of the Year. We were busy networking and getting to know the other leaders, but I noticed that the person next to me seemed to be looking for something. When I asked, he said he was looking for a bottle opener.

  Without thinking, I got up, quickly walked to a table where I’d seen a bottle opener, and brought it back to him. It wasn’t a huge time commitment on my part, but I was able to offer a few minutes of my time to help him. (It turns out he was one of the judges for the event.)

  Personal time is both precious and scarce, and we often use it as an excuse to say no. But when you devote a chunk of your personal time to helping others, the gesture is meaningful and memorable.

  Every few weeks, I try to do a guest webinar for anyone in my network who is interested. I could easily delegate this responsibility to a team member, but (a) I enjoy doing it and (b) I want my contacts to know that helping them out will always be one of my personal priorities.

  Be generous with your time and don’t limit your helpfulness to the realm of the professional. Think about the gratitude you feel toward the friend who always helps you move houses or the friend you can call no matter how much time has passed and you still pick up right where you left off. You know the kind of friend I’m talking about: the kind who really sticks with you, whom you can always count on. You’re probably already picturing these friends or thinking of the last time they really went out of their way for you. Now what if you applied that same idea to your relationship with a business partner? How would acts of kindness and generosity humanize your professional relationship?

  Recognize People

  In the early days of Influence & Co., I went out and bought a knockoff pro wrestling championship belt. At our next meeting, Kelsey and I awarded the belt to a team member who had been doing a particularly great job. She was that week’s champion, we explained; the next week, it would be up to her to crown a new champion from among her teammates.

  As we’ve grown and spread our team across various cities, awarding the championship belt has gotten a little harder to do. Instead, everyone submits weekly reports on how they’re doing, both personally and professionally: what’s going well for them, what’s frustrating them, what they are excited about. At the end, we ask them to give shout-outs to anyone and everyone who went out of their way to help them—people who did particularly great work, went above and beyond, and helped others. These people’s names are passed up to direct supports and our leadership team so everyone is recognized for the awesome work they do.

  This sort of recognition works outside your own team, too. When I have a good experience with someone from another company, I’ll typically e-mail that person’s boss a quick note about my experience. Good work should be recognized; it also feels good to show appreciation. And you never know—people can rise through the ranks pretty quickly, and some day, the person you were advocating for could be in a position to send opportunity your way.

  It seems as if every time I fly Southwest Airlines, I end up calling yet another manager to sing the praises of yet another wonderful member of Southwest’s ground staff. Not only does this reward the individual whose hard work made my life easier, it strengthens the connection that I have with the brand—the brand that saved my butt earlier this year when I showed up at the wrong airport (who does that?) and needed last-minute exceptions so I could get to my speaking engagement on time.

  Sure, Southwest has good customer service. But it had also identified me as someone who’d worked well with its staff, advocated for the airline among other conference speakers I knew, and so on, and it did everything it could to help me when I’d made a complete idiot of myself. Southwest was there for me in my time of need because we had built a relationship together.

  Give Gifts

  To receive a gift is to experience one of life’s simple pleasures. I experienced this pleasure when John Ruhlin, one of the nation’s gifting experts and author of Giftology, sent me a thank-you gift: a set of high-end personalized Cutco knives. The knives themselves are beautiful, but John’s real expertise shines through in the delivery.

  Rather than receiving the entire set at once, a couple of personalized knives come every month, thus regularly reminding my wife and me that he exists and is a great guy. Now, I’m not saying that John is innovative simply because he sends personalized knives. What he’s done is practice that personalized gifting with a top-of-mind mindset. Giving gifts isn’t new, but doing it in a way that reminds both my wife and me each month that he exists has brought a lot of opportunity his way.

  (My wife told me once that of anyone who might invite me on a last-minute trip to Las Vegas, John Ruhlin is one of maybe three guys she’d have no problem with. She would be totally cool if I came home and told her, “John just invited me to Vegas with him, but I’ve got to leave right now.” She’s never even met him. That’s right—John’s built this kind of trust with my wife, and they’ve never met.)

  Giving someone a gift is a nice way to establish a personal connection. There are, however, some obvious caveats. When your gifts are expensive or ostentatious, you’re flirting with bribery. To say nothing of bribery’s legal and ethical implications, I advise you against it mainly because it’s ineffective and prevents real trust from forming.

  If you want to secure and maintain a position at the top of someone’s mind, give gifts that are deeply meaningful to that person and come with no strings attached. You can accomplish more in the long run with a thoughtful or unique gift than you would with a briefcase full of unmarked bills. As my wife would say, “Sometimes it’s about the small things.”

  Take, for example, a senior editor at a major online publication my company works with. We’d been working together for a while, and we knew she had just had a baby. Rather than sending her some big, elaborate gift we thought would make us look nice to give, we specifically went to her registry and ordered a number of small items. We paired the items with personalized notes, coincidentally enough about how important the small things in life are and how excited we were for her.

  She later told me that we were the only people in her professional life who took the time to find her registry and give her gifts that she had indicated would be valuable.

  Like the other elements of your helpfulness practice, gift giving is more effective when you do it regularly. Aside from using software to keep track of these relationships, there are plenty of niche subscription services that deliver everything from health food and jewelry to gourmet dog treats. Paying for a subscription that matches a client’s unique interests is generous and thoughtful and also saves you time.5

  Personalize Experiences

  At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned caring about people for who they are, not what they can do for you. Beyond knowing who your audience is, a key aspect of caring about people for who they are is understanding that everyone in your audience is an individual—and each of them wants to feel like you’re communicating with only him or her.

  My friend Rohit Bhargava, author of Non-Obvious, explains in his book the importance of personalization. He mentions that Disney spent a billion dollars on personalized magic wristbands and how attendees just loved them. After attending one of his keynotes where he spoke in more detail about this idea, I took my family to Disney World to see for myself.

  I loved everything about it.

  My daughter, who was two at the time, was so happy and excited. She said, “Daddy, Mickey knew my name!” She felt special, like the whole experience was personalized just for her and all the characters she loved knew who she was. That’s how special you want your audienc
e to feel.

  I like to think about it like this: James Bond is probably one of the most iconic characters. Wherever he goes, people know his name. You want your audience to feel that special and important. And if you can up the ante by personalizing their experiences to the extent that Disney World did for my daughter, you’ve got a nearly unbeatable hand. Hotels and resorts have been using tactics like this for a while because the hospitality business is so heavily reliant on customer satisfaction. There’s greater competition in every industry, so customer service and engagement have become even more important.

  You don’t have to spend a billion dollars to create that feeling, though. It sounds clichéd, but handwritten thank you notes can be very meaningful and go a long way to forming closer relationships with people in a digital world taken over by e-mail.

  Let me describe a thank you note from my friend John Ruhlin, the gifting expert I mentioned earlier in this chapter, to show his appreciation for our relationship. He included a thoughtful, handwritten note along with a gift for my wife’s thirtieth birthday party. In his note, he expressed his appreciation for her and mentioned how much he values the friendship we share. I remember reading it and feeling blown away that he remembered so many details, let alone took the time to write it down and send it with a gift to my wife.

  For context, I only mentioned this party to him in passing—it’s not like I told him all the details and confirmed my address for him to send a cool present to her. But he remembered, and he ensured the gift she received was personalized for her.

  It’d be one thing if he just sent the gift, but he included a special note that made me feel about as special as my daughter did at Disney World. Right then, his status at the top of mind, as a good person and a valuable relationship, was cemented in my long-term memory.

  The more personalized you can make your audience’s experiences, the more special and valued you will help them feel. Sending thoughtful notes is one tactic. Remembering one detail about each person you meet is another. Next time you’re at a conference or event, make an effort to pay close attention and remember one unique detail about everyone you meet. The detail should be more substantive than hair color, for example, or company name. If you’re consciously uncovering what people find valuable, you’ll very likely come across unique details about them: their struggles at work, their new baby, a sick pet, a move to a different neighborhood. Write down one of these details after your conversations, enter it into your CRM system, and when you follow up after the event, reference the detail. If Lisa told you her youngest child was sick recently, consider opening your follow-up e-mail with, “Hey, Lisa, hopefully you’re back home and your son has gotten over the flu you were worried about when we spoke last.”

  The response rates for e-mails with personal details are much higher than those for e-mails that, for example, say something like “Hey, Lisa, good to meet you. Have you had a chance to talk with your SVP yet?” By personalizing your communication, you’re putting yourself in a better place to break down trust barriers.

  However, if it’s a fast-paced event and you honestly have no time to write down one detail about the people you meet, there is another practice you can try: remember people’s names. When someone introduces himself, repeat his name back to him and try to use it a handful of times naturally in your conversation. Then, no matter how many others you’ve spoken to, go back to everyone whose name you’ve committed to memory (or, really, added to your phone’s contacts) and say goodbye personally, using their names.

  Before you (or they) leave, stop by and say, “Hey, Mary, it was good to meet you! I look forward to chatting soon.” Not only are people generally surprised when you remember their names, but you get what I call the American Idol advantage. As the last person to approach them, engage them, and personalize communication with them, you will be the freshest in their minds, which can work in your favor.

  Turning Practice into Habit

  If you implement at least a handful of these strategies, you’re on your way to developing a comprehensive helpfulness practice. The challenge is to sustain this practice so that it becomes second nature.

  To be helpful is to continually connect the dots between people, resources, and opportunities. It is easier to connect the dots when you can see all the dots in one location, such as a spreadsheet or CRM system. A detailed log of connections, referrals, opportunities, and resources can optimize your helpfulness practice. There are plenty of powerful CRM platforms designed to help you do exactly that.6

  I’ve said that even the most thoughtful act of kindness will not generate long-term top-of-mind status if it’s a one-off. Thriving relationships take time and energy to develop and maintain—to nurture a relationship, you need to engage the person through multiple touch points regularly. Set up a rule for implementing these touch points on a cyclical basis. For example, I try to help out most of my important contacts at least once every three months and others at least once a year.

  If that seems daunting, create a set of rules around how much time you want to spend implementing these strategies. Because I write so many referral e-mails, I give myself a three-minute time limit for drafting each one. That allows me to fire off dozens of referrals without getting overwhelmed or derailed. I also use a tool called Mixmax to help me develop some basic templates that I can customize, schedule e-mails, and track opens, clicks, and downloads, but there are tons of tools out there, from Salesforce and Infusionsoft to HubSpot (which my team uses) and more, which you can find in the Resource Library, that can help you make this process faster and easier, too.

  Even if you’re not a rigid scheduler or you just hate tracking things on spreadsheets or software, you can simply adopt a rule that when people in your network identify something to you that they would really enjoy or would make their lives easier, consider getting it for them. All it takes is listening, and if you embrace this mindset, I assure you that these small changes can make big differences in your relationships.

  It doesn’t have to be huge. A rule like this wouldn’t last very long if everything you got for key members of your audience was extravagant. Simple is usually enough.

  One of my key employees looked at my wallet phone case and said, “Man, I need to get one of those. I hate carrying around both.” So I went to Amazon, ordered one just like it, and shipped it to his house. It took me all of 30 seconds and $20, and he was so appreciative.

  Cultivating Helpfulness Everywhere

  I’ll be very honest with you: five years ago, this whole chapter would have seemed a little crazy to me, not to mention a big waste of time. But because of the opportunity I’ve seen come from this mindset and these practices, I’m a believer—and a happier person in general.

  Rules and hacks for can be very useful for automating and streamlining your helpfulness practice. However, to truly make helpfulness second nature, you need to integrate it into every aspect of your life.

  It could be doing something to help out your partner, brother, sister, friend, or even finding an organization or initiative with a mission that speaks to you; it might be a nonprofit organization, your child’s school, and the like. Either way, the more time, energy, and soul you put into helping others—especially when the only thing you stand to gain is personal satisfaction—the more helpfulness becomes a fundamental part of who you are.

  Take a minute to write down three ways you can be more helpful to others using the practices from earlier in this chapter. Consider what you’d like to do and how you make its practice a habit. (I promise, it’s addictive in the best way.)

  Helpfulness Exercise

  Think of three people you are close to—friends, family, coworkers you see every day. What do you know about them? Is one of them feeling more stressed out lately? Maybe another recently had a child and could use an extra hand.

  Whatever it is, identify one thing that would be valuable to each of them. What can you do to make their lives easier? Is there anything you can do to connect t
hem to that valuable item or favor? I challenge you to act on that.

  I further challenge you to do this once a month. As you’ll learn, consistency is critical to becoming top of mind, and it’s necessary to help train your brain to identify these opportunities for helpfulness more naturally.

  4

  BEING TRANSPARENT AND LIKABLE

  SOCIAL MEDIA HAS radically transformed interpersonal relationships. Never in human history have we had such immediate access to the intimate details of one another’s lives.

  We can fulfill our nosiest impulses with just a few clicks. In fact, we’re so accustomed to life in this state of perpetual exposure that we get suspicious of people who choose to remain private. Think about how rare and strange it is to meet someone without a Facebook account. What’s that guy trying to hide, anyway?

  This suspicion is even more heightened when it comes to business and political leadership—and certainly more justified. Growing up hearing about Enron, Madoff, and WikiLeaks, our generation has come to associate a lack of transparency with devastating corruption. We’ve learned to see evil in the opaque.

  For all these reasons, nearly every business leader—even the most corrupt—pays lip service to corporate transparency. Thankfully, amid all the hypocrisy and double-talk, there are leaders who take the concept to heart in inspiring ways. Pat Flynn is one of them.

  Pat is the entrepreneur behind Smart Passive Income, a website dedicated to teaching people how to launch and run profitable online businesses. Given the common knowledge that many of the people selling products and promising to help you make a ton of money over the Internet are probably con artists, Pat must overcome massive trust barriers to succeed. And by being transparent, this is exactly what he’s done.