“Fire warms, but it also burns. Like fire, the more you control a negotiation, the less likely you are to get burned.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“To Win More Negotiations Faster Know How To Use Fire”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Fire! What just went through your mind? If you had been in particular environments, hearing that word would have captured your attention immediately. And that is what happens in negotiations when something occurs that grabs your attention. It can spellbind you. And therein lies the power of capturing a negotiator’s attention. Thus, fire, a metaphor in this case for grabbing a negotiator’s attention, becomes a powerful tool you can use to win more negotiations faster. Here is how to do that.
Click here to discover how you can increase your negotiation efforts!
“Disasters shield opportunities. Thus, without disasters, some opportunities would never reveal themselves.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“To Win You Must Know How To Avoid Disaster In Negotiations”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Just when he thought he would close the deal, a disaster occurred. He had had a foreboding feeling that instead of happiness being abounded, tragedy was about to befall him. In reflecting upon what had happened in the negotiations, he wondered what he might have done to avoid disaster, the creeping, sickening feeling he sensed had closed in on him.
Has that ever happened to you? Right when you thought you had a winning negotiation in the bag, disaster snatched victory from you and replaced it with defeat. Well, in the future, you can avoid disaster by casting its dastardly deeds away from your negotiations. And here is how to do that.
“The Ramsey Show” is a podcast with host… Dave Ramsey, who invites his audience on a mission to achieve financial freedom and to become debt free.
A mission they have been achieving together in a really significant way.
The show’s audience has paid off over $500 million dollars in debt since the podcast began just 15 years ago!
Their Podcast Was a Major Key to Their Success
“We’re teachers at the core,” said Brian Mayfield, executive vice president of Ramsey Network. “And podcasts are an extremely useful medium, giving us another megaphone to reach people. We’ve never seen anything grow the way the podcast world has grown, so we see tremendous opportunity there to continue to increase our audience.”
The caller-driven show, now in its 29th year, shares practical answers for life’s tough questions from money expert Dave Ramsey and best-selling authors Rachel Cruze, Dr. John Delony, Christy Wright, Ken Coleman, and Anthony ONeal.
“The Ramsey Show” is the third largest nationally syndicated talk radio show in the nation, airing on more than 640 stations across the country. The podcast is consistently one of the most downloaded shows across all major platforms.
Ramsey Network podcasts help people handle their money, navigate relationships, guide their careers, become better leaders, and grow their businesses.
How David Ramsey Built a Mass Movement With a Show
Ramsey and his team invite people to take a leap of faith and join them on a journey.
They believe in a world where everyone should live debt free and without fear of their financial situation.
Who wouldn’t want that?
To date, over 5 million people have taken or attended their financial peace university course to learn practical financial wisdom.
The journey is much more powerful than if Dave’s message just said, “Buy my course on budgeting.” The podcast invited people to join something bigger.
Ramsey teaches people to live like no one else, get out of debt, and make money. Because he did it. Reminding everyone that nobody wins without paying a price.
The Importance of Telling Your Story
From a very early age, Ramsey understood the value in a day’s work. As a teenager, he started several different business ventures to earn extra pocket money.
His work ethic helped him become a millionaire by the age of 26.
He started flipping houses, and that’s where things took a turn for the worse when his local bank was bought out and the new bank canceled his loan and gave him 60 days to pay back a $2 million dollar line of credit his previous banker had approved in good faith.
At 26 with little assets, he didn’t have $2 million in liquid cash and was forced into bankruptcy to avoid a potential jail time.
Dave was crushed. But developed a new mission in life. To get as many people out of debt as possible to avoid a similar fate.
Turning Lemon into Lemonade
Since then, he’s created a business empire that revolves around using his previous money mistakes to teach smart money management practices.
Today, millions of Americans have turned to the teachings of Dave Ramsey to guide them along the path to financial security and wealth.
He now has an estimate worth of $55 million, making him living proof than anyone can turn a bad financial situation around.
Conclusion
The Ramsey show has become one of the top 4 downloaded podcasts of all time by building up a community of people sharing a journey to overcome and achieve financial independence.
The podcast medium has proven again the potential for creating movements of positive change.
About Ramsey Solutions
Ramsey Solutions is committed to empowering people in the areas of money, business, leadership and personal development using Biblically based, commonsense principles and education.
Every day, Ramsey Solutions reaches millions with nationally syndicated radio shows and columns, #1 national best-selling books, products and courses and industry-renowned podcasts and video channels. Ramsey Solutions’ world-class speakers and authors give inspiration, practical advice and hope to audiences across the country.
Recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of best places to work in the country, Ramsey Solutions and its team of more than 950 are dedicated to doing work that matters. For more information, visit ramseysolutions.com.
Long before the infamous AMC show, the term “mad men” was originally coined in the late 1950’s to describe the advertising executives of Madison Avenue.
They studied consumer behavioral psychology and were masters selling products by associating them to things customers cared about.
And they still exist. And they have some fascinating stories.
Meet Rory Sutherland.
Introducing Rory Sutherland
If you haven’t heard of Rory Sutherland yet, you have heard of his agency.
Sutherland serves as the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, the historically infamous ad agency founded by the original King of Madison Ave, David Ogilvy.
Sutherland became Internet famous a few years back after his Ted talk video went viral criticizing Europe decision to spend £6 billion to construct a high speed rail in order to increase consumer satisfaction.
Because of his knowledge of consumer behavior, he could have achieve the goal in and sixth of the cost.
Here’s the video:
Perspective is Everything
So a few years ago the UK greenlit a massive engineering project to improve the journey of the Eurostar rail line.
Why?
In order to increase commuter satisfaction, the UK decided the best way to increase the journey was to spend an enormous £6 billion to construct a high-speed rail track from London’s St. Pancras station to the coast of Kent.
This train would shorten the commute from Paris to London by a grand total of…40 minutes on an overall three and a half-hour trip.
Sutherland’s cheeky critique on the project was that the UK made a fundamental mistake (like most businesses do).
His argument was that consumer satisfaction could have been achieved much cheaper by altering consumer perception. Heres the argument:
Consumer Satisfaction. I Don’t Think That Means What You Think it Means…
The UK assumed customer satisfaction would be achieve to shorten the length of the commute and the quality of the experience was not relevant or even an option given for them to consider.
Rory suggested rather than write a £6 billion check to make the experience shorter (the proposed brand promise), the capital investment would have been better spent using a fraction of the budget to simply make the journey 10 times more enjoyable (his proposed brand promise).
Considering the budget they were consider, for a fraction of the cost (£1 billion), they could have hired male and female supermodels and pay to them serve free Chateau Petrus at $4,000 a bottle to every adult passenger on board
Effectively salvaging billions from the original budget, and in turn, passengers would have demanded the train to be slowed down, rather than save an extra 40 minutes of travel time.
There’s a War on Marketing?
Sutherland suggests that the war we face in marketing and advertising today, is that every operational role today believes that what they do is a rational science.
When human behavior economics proves we are anything but rational.
Sutherland has spent his career studying behavioral economics, a field that attempts to explain why people do what they do or more importantly why people purchase one product over another.
Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory makes the assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider real value.
For marketing to be effective, we must become as irrational as our customers perception. In a rather odd unassuming parallel, Sutherland compares this marketing mindset to military strategy. Here’s why…
What You Didn’t Know About Military Strategy
If you follow military strategy, the first thing you can’t be, is logical and efficient.
Wtf? Because that’s exactly what your enemy will expect you to do, making you susceptible to walk head-on into every trap the enemy sets for you in anticipation of your most obvious attempts to win the war.
Today’s consumers, while far from the enemy, are waiting for our much anticipated and obvious marketing tactics. They see right through them.
The strangest element which marketers face is the psychological one.
Rather than focus on rational improvements, we must make an effort to look at the far less obvious psychological innovation.
Don’t make the following mistake.
The Modern And Wrong Assumption of Consumer Behavior:
Sutherland states that the modern business assumption of the economics of a consumer purchase is as follows:
“Every purchase or exchange arrives as a standalone, individual, utility optimizing transaction between two people in a state of perfect information and trust. The conditions of which don’t exist and never happen.
The current business model sees marketing as an inefficiency, an added hard cost in the value chain because the current business framework assumes every consumer knows exactly what they want to buy and exactly what they want to pay to acquire it.”
Economics Don’t Care About Your Feelings
The economics doesn’t calibrate for human experience of emotions, feeling and instincts like trust and perspective.
The weirdness of human perception is that you can create high levels of satisfaction without high levels of expenditure if you really know what floats the customers emotional triggers.
This is Why Mirrors Are on Every Elevator
Ogilvy worked with a Midwest company that received a high level of complaints that their elevator was too slow.
So, naturally they went to Otis, (one of only 14 elevator companies in the US) who said for a few million dollars, they could replace and update the current elevator infrastructure decrease the time it took people to wait for the elevator.
Makes sense… but just before investing $2,000,000 on the project, someone said no.
Instead, they suggested, installing floor to ceiling mirrors on the walls outside the elevator. While people waited for the elevator, they participated in small acts of voyeurism and would pass the time looking at themselves in the mirror.
And that’s when they discovered something weird.
What they discovered was that people were complaining about the speed of the elevators. But what they meant was they were just getting really bored waiting for the elevator to arrive.
Once the mirrors were installed, all complaints about the elevators completely vanished. Proving again psychological insight is just, as if not more powerful, then high-cost physical advancements.
Advertisers have become masters at creating intangible or “perceived value.” But intangible value gets a bad rap in business operations because it’s much more difficult to quantify.
When Marketing Fails. Take It From GoPro
Most marketing goes wrong when we focus on solving external conflict resolutions to solutions that are really internal.
For example, GoPro didn’t reinvent the video camera.
They changed the experience we had with every camera prior to GoPro. Before GoPro, it was difficult to simultaneously capture and experience life’s greatest moments while others participated with us as we captured our adventures through our own lens in a way that was never before possible.
One of GoPro’s greatest features is its easy-to-use video editing software that users access for free.
In addition to sharing life experiences, GoPro simplified producing and distributing videos with ease.
Conclusion: Marketing is, oftentimes, seen as creating a form of “fake” value…
But the truth is, all value is perceived.
Businesses that better understand consumers and what goes into their purchase decisions have the advantage.
When addressing innovation, it is critically important to know consumer psychological behavior.
The key to getting ahead was then linked to your ability to establish a personal equivalent of the Nike swoosh.
The conclusion: “It’s that simple, that hard, and that inescapable.”
Fast forward almost 25 years. Peters and his original article still remain a leading authority on the topic.
But now, because anyone can be positioned as an expert, everyone is.
“The Brand Called “YOU.” You Can’t Move Up if You Don’t Stand Out.”
The Rise of Thought Leaders
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a growing rate of increased competition for subject matter experts and ideas.
With so many “experts” right now, how will B2B businesses differentiate themselves to their desired customer in an era when everyone is a consultant, speaker, author, and coach?
How will we find customers in such a crowded space?
The good news is that demand for information is at an all-time high. The bad news?
The rapidly increasing supply of on-demand content. It’s definitely becoming difficult to stand out from the crowded room of other experts.
Based on a simple LinkedIn search using titles, there are:
22 million consultants
12 million authors
6 million experts
300,000 coaches
300,000 trainers
40,000 speakers
6 Million Experts
The Rise of Coaches
6,109,719 people identified themselves as “experts.” There’s an expert on every topic!
Consultants surpassed experts with a whopping 22,009,581 million results.
Fortunately, if anyone desires to be coached, they will only be able to find the best fit by searching and meeting with the 5,904.507 available to assist you.
Even celebrities are coaches. For instance, Gwen Stefani identifies as a “music coach” because she is a judge on “The Voice,” a television show that evaluates musicians for the “next big star.”
The Rise of Media Brands
Today, every person and business has access to the same distribution tools as the largest publishers and media networks.
Today, anyone can create a brand reputation on any topic.
While it may appear that the rise of people as brands is a relatively new phenomenon, in reality it has been a 50-year overnight development in the making.
Later that year, one of the original founders of the magazine, John Battelle, was recognized as being one of the first media moguls to point out the fact, that for the first time in history, there’s absolutely nothing stopping brands from actually becoming media companies.
The emergence of digital communication platforms has enabled brands to attract customers seeking information online by creating content that educates, informs, and inspires communities to support their mission.
Own Versus Rent
In the past, brands had to pay publishers like Wired and others, to advertise to a specific audience they wanted to reach in their industry publications, magazines, newspapers, TV programs, and trade shows.
Until now we had to rent consumer attention from publishers.
Today, we can build our own. All of the tools to create an audience for our businesses are everywhere.
Playing the Long Game
The long game is building a digital audience for our businesses.
We now have the ability to build an online following of people who share similar interests and passions.
Today, there’s nothing stopping us from becoming the publishers for the audiences we aim to serve.
But What’s the Catch?
Unfortunately, when consumers can choose from limitless amounts of content, on their own terms and on their own devices, the battle for their attention becomes the obstacle.
Over time, companies have recognized these developments and we’re all reaching the same conclusion.
We all are in the media business now…
Ready or not, we’re all in the media business. We just happen to be selling products and services.
This Changes Everything…
In the past businesses only competed against 3 differentiating factors; Speed, quality, and price.
Businesses today are competing on a 4th factor, getting customers to follow their content.
Moving forward, the success for most businesses will be judged on their ability to create engaging content.
If you need a place to build content for your B2b brand go to C-Suite.Media to learn 5 ways to take your digital influence to the next level.
“If stress were deeds, some people would never complete some actions.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)Click here to get the book!
“How To Control Increasing Stress Better In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
Depending on the stakes of negotiation, the level of stress can be high. And, unless you control it, it can become the source that destroys the negotiation. Thus, the better you contain the level of stress, yours and that of the other negotiator, the more in control you’ll be throughout the negotiation. The following is how to achieve that goal.
“To expose anything hidden, you must recognize its hiding place and possess the means to uncover it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (click to Tweet)
“How To Expose Hidden Body Language To Your Advantage In A Negotiation”
People don’t realize they’re always negotiating.
During negotiation, what body language signals do you observe to gain greater meaning into your opposition’s thoughts, words, and offers? Do you take into consideration the hidden body language signals you may be missing? Being able to provoke and then detect undisclosed body language signs can give you a considerable advantage in a negotiation. And here’s how you can uncover those signs to gain that advantage.
Why are some women in business more successful than others? Is it their skills, education, genetics, good looks, hard work, luck, or one of a thousand other reasons? Nope, while these can be contributing factors, beliefs about yourself and what is possible are the fundamental determinants of your success. Your beliefs are your continuous thought processes that dictate your attitudes, actions, and ultimately your outcomes.
If you believe that you can create a successful global business or career, have a happy, fulfilling family life and ideal health you will marshal the resources and opportunities to fulfill those beliefs.
In contrast, if you believe that it is impossible or unrealistic that you could ever write a bestselling book, run a 26.2-mile marathon, make a successful career change or do anything audacious and important to you, you will probably not achieve these grand desires.
However, positive achievements will only happen if you commit and act on those empowering beliefs; even without seeing immediate results. Acting with courage and confidence, you will move beyond the upper limits of what you think is possible and probable into the zone of the unknown and uncomfortable.
Are Your Beliefs Really Serving You?
Some of your beliefs have served you well; however, if there is an area of your life that is not working as you desire, examine what you REALLY believe about it. You may have conscious or unconscious beliefs such as “I’m not good with money”, “If I pursue my interests, I’m being selfish”, “I’m not smart enough, disciplined, connected, or you, the reader can fill in the blanks” that are sabotaging your success.
Break Through Your Upper Limits!
Your “Upper Limits Success Strategy ™” goes beyond “positive thinking” to a new dimension of generating consistent and positive results. As it’s often said, “Success leaves clues.” Model the patterns of what works and what doesn’t work – if you are willing to look carefully. Everyone has their own scotomas or ‘blind spots’; areas where we cannot see all of the opportunities, options, and choices due to rigid, preconceived ways of thinking and viewing the world. Ask yourself, “If there wasn’t an upper limit to my success and happiness, what would I be thinking and doing?” Then think those thoughts and take those actions. Repeat. Get a coach or mentor to help you construct a constellation of empowering beliefs with new habits and an upward spiral of positive momentum will begin to form.
Mastery and Courage Strengthen Your Resolve.
Practice and reinforce your new beliefs and strengthened courage that you can handle anything that comes your way. Learn from your past failures (yes, everyone has them). Do not let them hinder or define you. You now have knowledge about what has not worked for you. New levels of success can change the dynamics in your career, relationships, and your old, preconceived notions of what you can achieve. Yes, there will be unintended consequences and often there is a downside when you get what you want. There may be a loss of privacy if you would like to pursue a political career or extensive travel to build a global business. It is common to avoid being on the world stage for fear of being criticized or risk failing in a public way.
Put yourself on the upward path to success. Be bold and confidently develop strategies and plans to overcome the roadblocks and limits in the way. The world needs for you to succeed, pay it forward and model the way for greatness!
Kathleen Caldwell is the CEO of Caldwell Consulting Group, a business strategist, success hypnotherapist, and founder of the C-Suite Network Women’s Leadership Council ™. Kathleen can be reached at 773.562.1061, https://c-suitenetwork.com/councils/womens-leadership-council/
Setting seemingly unattainable goals is the best way to succeed, stay focused, and execute in business living happily and fulfilled. Jim Collins, in his book co-authored with Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last, posed the idea of a BHAG. Establishing a Big Hairy Audacious Goal that visionary companies used to inspire bold missions as powerful ways to stimulate progress. The thinking behind such an approach is that to generate exceptional focused growth, a “moon shot” goal is needed. The manned lunar mission led to countless innovations in manufacturing, technology, computing, and human physiological support and nutrition resulted from this endeavor.
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars”
– Norman Vincent Peal
The NASA space program and the Kennedy mission demonstrated that great feats can come of extraordinary dreams. But of course, most businesses don’t have the entire financial might of the US government behind them when they start out.
What about other businesses?
In 2001, Elon Musk had the idea to colonize Mars and by 2007 he was stating it publicly. Within a few years, SpaceX was created, and the path was set. Today, Musk believes this will be a reality in 2026. Innovation and evolution have occurred along the way. With one of the most important being a reusable rocket which enables huge financial and technical advantages to allow multiple launches and easier commercialization of space travel. This created a funding mechanism to keep the program moving forward. Other advancements in solar energy, battery storage, tunnel boring technology, and electric vehicles across all his companies were either borne out of the big vision or supported it. Along the way, the impact of Musk’s big thinking has inspired competition, innovation, and cultural change.
When Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in 1997, he put the focus squarely on an ideal. That was “to build an enduring company that prioritized people”. Given the excess of the late nineties and rising stock market bubble, the focus on people-not-profit was aspirational. In the following decades, Apple would make user enjoyment and design the focus while they delivered some of the biggest evolutions in modern consumer electronic history. They literally changed industries from computer chip improvements by suppliers and operating systems, to hardware design and industry disruptions including music and cameras. Bill Gates and Paul Allen had the vision to “put a personal computer on every desk and in every home”, well it worked. Had they really understood the acceleration of their goal, they might have said: “to put a computer in every pocket”. Microsoft along with its competitors and suppliers ensured it. By creating the simple software that interfaced with average human and business users, computers quickly became ubiquitous. In time, size was reduced, and capability was vastly improved. The computational power of technology that once occupied entire floors in buildings now rests in the palm of our hand.
Be SMART
Putting a human on Mars seems like a goal for Elon Musk, but not everyone. Maybe your big goal isn’t quite that size, but it must stretch you beyond today. Of course, you might have been taught that goals should be “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely). In fact, the principle seems to imply that goals should always be within reach. Inherently that approach wilts in the face of such audacious goals as described above. Maybe it is semantics and we’re really discussing dreams versus goals. Every dream or massive goal can be smashed into hundreds, thousands, or even millions of small “smart” goals that when achieved incrementally, produce an exponential impact. These pieces become the road map – or business plan – to reach that dream.
With what I call a “BFG” (Big F’n Goal) you can see the future through your future self’s eyes, and you are not constrained by the financial, geographic, or technical realities of today. What is needed to accomplish the goal, but doesn’t exist today can be invented or created in time. All dreams can be deconstructed and built step by step.
A cosmic ripple
Now, I am looking to make a cosmic ripple effect. I once set a goal to help direct $1 million to charity every year. Creating a business platform, assembling the right people and processes to deliver just that we exceeded $12.5 million in just six years! That Big F’n Goal changed my life and legacy. Today, we look beyond that to a new one-for-two-billion challenge by creating a billion dollars of wealth and a billion dollars of charitable impact. We know there is a multiplier, and it will just take a spark to ignite the imagination and vision releasing the energy of one hundred special, impact-minded entrepreneurs, and business owners to commit to their own Grow Get Give process to make that a reality.
We might not be going to Mars, but our impact will be inter-stellar.
LEGACY
Big goals can be accomplished one step at a time or all at once. When contemplating my legacy, I realized I didn’t want to wait. I had to ask myself the question, “What will give me the greatest possible reach to be that spark to energize others?” It is going to take an engaged community of a thousand, impact-minded, thought leaders and business owners, and we need just one hundred of the right entrepreneurs in our Grow Get Give Coaching family to light this match.
I asked, “How will they find me?” I could continue growing one or a few at a time years, trying to rise above the digital noise, but if I could reach millions of people at once, we could accelerate this. That is when I decided to join the biggest platform available today. In January I agreed to join creator Christopher Lavoie and The Social Movement TV Series as a producer.
We are assembling innovators, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to share their genius, giving them just “4 days to save the world”. If you think you have what it takes to tackle the world’s greatest problems and want to learn how this will elevate your personal, professional, and brand currency, just watch this trailer and schedule a time to speak with me.
