What Are People Saying About You When You Leave the Room? | RR366

You welcome back to Relationships Rule. What if

the secret to growing your business had nothing to do with

chasing people down and everything to do with what

people say about you when you're not in the room today? I'm

sitting down with someone who is a return guest on the show, and

I'm so glad to be reconnecting with him. Welcome to the show,

Michael. Michael Roderick is my guest.

Thanks so much for having

me. It's cutting out just a second, I'm just

pause there, yeah, and start again. Hi everyone, and welcome

back to Relationships Rule. I have a question for you. What if

the secret to growing your business had nothing to do with

chasing people down and everything to do with what

people say about you when you're not in the room? Well, today I'm

sitting down with someone who is a return guest to the show, and

I'm so glad to be reconnect, reconnecting with him, Michael

Roderick went from high school English teacher to Broadway

producer in two years, not because he had connections, but

because he understood something most people miss entirely. It's

not about access, it's about interest. Michael is the founder

of Small Pond Enterprises, a brand strategist, a connector of

connectors, and the creator of a fascinating new framework called

the Triple Threat, borrowed, I think, straight from the theater

world, that's changing how coaches, consultants, and

experts think about their own thinking. We are also, when we

dive into that, we are also going to talk about why, right

now, in this noisy, uncertain AI-driven world, the people who

know how to have a real conversation and build a genuine

relationship are the ones who win. They're the ones who win.

Welcome back, Michael.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be

here.

You're very welcome. I'm excited too,

Michael. You were on the show back in 2021 it was my episode

118 which was in my very first year of the podcast. Wow, and I

just shared with you off offline that I listened to it again this

morning, and actually I was pretty pleased with how it had

turned out. You were amazing, but I didn't sound so bad after

all, which I, I felt quite nervous about re-listing to,

because I don't like to listen to myself. But anyway, we lost

touch for a while, and then something strange happened. A

more recent guest, also from New York, as you are in New York,

turned out to be a friend of yours. And by the way, I don't

think I shared this with you when I shared this with you, was

that the way David was talking? My other guest, David Homan,

there was something that made me say, you're reminding me of

someone I interviewed before. Do you know Michael Roderick? So it

was me that actually picked up on something, and of course he

said yes. You were very good friends in the, that you had, he

had known you for years, and I think he said he learned a lot

from you, which I thought was, yeah, very cool, because he's an

interesting guy. I love that. Yeah, that's so cool, amazing.

And, and so, so David, who we discovered was a friend of

yours, also introduced me to two people in my city in Vancouver

that I also didn't know, and your name came up with them as

well, and so one of them, B, who I mentioned to you, he, you said

was an amazing guy, he's been on my podcast, and Michael, Mike

Desjardins, you weren't sure about, but something made me

then say I have to reach out to you again, and I'm so glad that

I did, and you know, so did you even know any of that was

happening?

Most of the time, I don't like every once

while I'll, I'll hear that a friend of mine's been on

somebody's podcast, or that I was mentioned, or you know,

those types, you know, those types of things, but most of the

time I don't like, most time I'm just kind of going about my day,

and I get a message from somebody like, oh, so mentioned

you on, you know, this show, and I figure we should, you know,

reconnect, or or talk more, and it's always, it's always really

fun to, to hear,

but that's the point, that's the point of view,

you know, the head, the header on your LinkedIn banner says get

people talking about you when you're not in the room, and I

think that's one of your, that's one of your gifts to be able to

teach that as well as make it happen. So, what does that

actually look like in practice? And why do so many smart,

talented people fail to make that happen?

Yeah, well, I think it ultimately comes down

to there are there are three main principles to consider when

you're thinking about referability. Say it's easy to

remember them because it spells the word aim, and the first is

accessibility, right? So we always kind of have to start

from the place of, do people feel like they get whatever it

is that you're talking about, or do they feel like they're on the

outside? Do they feel like they don't understand? Does it feel

too complicated or sort of too complex for them, but even once

somebody feels like, okay, this is accessible, I really, I

really like it. There has to be an element of influence next,

where basically you are motivated to share that concept,

that idea, that person with somebody else, and a common

misconception we have about influence is that it's about

persuasion, it's about me getting you to do something, but

real influence is when you do something without me asking you

to do it, and the reason why you're going to do that is it

makes you look better, so very often we have to think about,

okay, if I did share something, or if I did talk about

something, how is it going to make somebody else's life

better? How is it going to make them look when they share it,

you know, when they share with others? But even if you have

those first two, the last one, memory is so, so important,

because if you don't develop memory triggers, if you don't

make it easy for somebody to remember what they just heard,

then there's a very good chance that they're actually going to

forget about it and possibly share somebody else's content or

somebody else's ideas, even though yours may be stronger,

they're not packaged specifically for memory, so

usually that's the hurdle that I see is that a lot of the time

experts, especially, they're so kind of in their own expertise,

they're so sort of overwhelmed by it that they don't think

about that packaging piece of it, they don't think about how

am I going to make sure that this thing that I'm sharing or

talking about is easy to transfer, is easy to talk about

when I'm no longer there to explain it.

Wow, okay, so I'm thinking, I think I was thinking

something different, because when I think of somebody being

memorable, or I'm thinking about the person more than, yeah, than

the framework, or the thing that they're talking about, their

product, so to speak, because it's when the person has made

the impression on me, but you're saying it in it, it encompasses

all those three things.

Yeah, and I would say that you can apply it

to the product, and you can also apply it to the person, right?

So we could actually take this exact same concept, and we can

layer it on to the person. So the first hurdle: accessibility.

Does this person make you feel comfortable

when

you're talking to them, do you feel like you

would want to introduce them to somebody else because you've had

a comfortable experience with that individual, right? Like,

you enjoyed having that conversation, and you feel good

about passing them on to somebody else, you feel good

about making that introduction, and in essence, whether or not

it, you realize it a lot of the time, it makes you look good

when you share with somebody else somebody that basically you

approve of, that you think is solid, that is going to make

their life better, and sort of help them help them out, but the

thing is, we meet tons of people, right, tons and tons of

people. So the memory piece is a really important component,

whether or not we decide that we're going to share somebody

with our, with our audience. It's like, well, what do we

remember about them? You know, what is the thing that really

kind of stood out to us, and memory, does you know it lives

in the world of specificity. So, if I give you something very

specific, or if I tell you a specific story, you are far more

likely to remember me than if I tell you a generic story, or if

I share with you something that's very sort of broad and

open, so the same thing can apply whether you're talking

about a product or a person, and I'm sure you've probably

encountered that, right, where you've had guests where you're

like it kind of was interchangeable, where it's like

I feel like both of these people spoke about these things, but

there might have been another guess where you're like, I very

distinctly remember them using these words or talking about

this thing, or just their personality kind of triggered

something where I just like I think of them and I can kind of

picture them in my mind's eye, and I'm just more like. Likely

to make an intro or talk about them or sort of share what

they've shared,

yeah, that's really good point that did make

me think of a guest I had on the show who was all about

neuroscience to do with the brain affecting relationships or

connections with people and I was thinking at first, like she

was pitched to me by an agency, and I always give people an

opportunity by having an introduction call with them,

because I never know if I'm going to miss something exciting

or what. Sure, but and I was a little bit hesitant about the

neuroscience behind it, and the brain, and I'm thinking, can I

keep up with this conversation, so when I met her, loved her,

and secondly, when she came on the show, she had written a

book, I think she'd written a book, yeah, she'd written a book

about this, and she uses these examples of people, Bob is the

brains of the operation, and he keeps things going, and so on,

and and it made it so much more interesting and accessible in

that sense, so I know exactly what you're talking about in

that, in that respect. It made me also think, though, that when

people come to you with this, or whether they're coming to you

for that specific thing or not, and this comes out, do you find

that it's a certain, is it the more cerebral people, or is it

the introverted people, or is it like, do they actually know that

they're not relating to people when they're talking to them,

because I always say, read your audience, you have to know if

they're, yeah, and some people don't know how to do that.

Yeah, well, I think that they're.. it's a

spectrum, right, like in terms of self-awareness, right? So,

we, you know, there, there are folks who they have kind of

gotten to a place in their life where they're almost always kind

of on autopilot, and they're not really paying very much

attention to how other people are experiencing or sort of

interacting, and then you got the folks who are kind of in the

middle, where you know, maybe they're pretty good at

communicating, but they're missing certain things, and then

you got the people who they're just so self-aware that you can

almost see them like immediately correcting something or noticing

something that most folks aren't, aren't necessarily

noticing, and aren't necessarily picking up on, right, so there's

there's that spectrum of ability when it comes to when it comes

to self-awareness, but in addition to that, there's also

the component of when we spend so much time with our content or

our material, or whatever it is that we've spent the time to

study, we start to build these shortcuts a lot of the time in

our brains, where we're like, oh yeah, well, everybody gets that,

like everybody understands that, and we just kind of rattle on,

right, and we like talk about it in our language and in sort of

our way of doing it, but there are lots of instances where, oh,

that thing actually has to be explained, right, like that

thing actually has to be explained, or this thing that

you see as so valuable in this particular context or this

particular language is actually not being seen as that valuable

by the person on the other side of the table, and I think that's

the core of a lot of the work, and the thing I often like to

say about communication is that communication is the very first

thing we learn, but it's the one thing we never truly master. So

we come out, we're born, and instantly communication is about

I need food, I need, I need help, you know, all these

things, but as time progresses, communicating our needs and

letting people know what we're doing, letting them know where

the value is, that is a constant journey, and it's a back and

forth, it's understanding well, what does this other person

actually want, and what is it that they're actually looking

for here, and how am I in the service that I have or the work

that I do supporting them, or am I not a fit for what it is that

they're actually looking for, and that they're trying to

accomplish,

but you also mentioned self awareness in that

piece, and is that something then that people can learn to

become more self aware? I would think so, talking and answering

my own question, but it's.. it's.. I don't know, some of it

seems to me to be more innate, like. Uh, paying attention to

the audience, like I said, and, and having to shift your, you

know, way of doing things. So, do these things, do they take a

long time? Do people ever see it? I don't know, like, to

make.. yeah,

I mean, I think that we're all, we're all

capable of learning, right, sort of at the, you know, at the at

the heart, but there are some of us who have a affinity to a

certain type of learning, and we're able to kind of move

quicker through some things than others, right, so there are some

people who math is very, very intuitive to them, right? Like,

they can just kind of do math and, and really feel pretty

comfortable with it, but on the same note, they may be really

stuck when it comes to literature, right, and, and

doing things that are more, more dramatic, you know, and the flip

side can also be, can also be true. So I think when it comes

to this aspect of self awareness, or the first sort of

hurdle is always like, How do I understand the idea of paying

attention to somebody else, right, like that's the first

hurdle, right, but then if there are techniques and methodologies

and things that we can learn, there are always going to be

people who are going to lean more into those techniques and

be better at those techniques from the learning standpoint,

and it takes them less time, right, to get to that, that

level of facility, but it doesn't mean that somebody who

feels, well, I just am, you know, I'm not good at this,

right, I'm not good at relating to people, it doesn't mean that

that person can't, it just means that there is a learning curve,

and that there is a, there's hard work in some cases to be

done right in order to get more accomplished in that particular

area.

Yeah, so I think about, like, do people come to

you, then they say, well, you know, I want to be referable, I

don't just.. I know all this stuff, but I want people to

remember me, so that they will refer me, and.. and can you see

right away whether they're where they are on the arc?

Yeah, most of the time I can, and, and the way

that it comes down to is, how are they referring to their

work? Right, so there's a core difference between the person

who basically spends most of the time saying, I solve this

problem, I do this, I, you know, accomplish all these types of

things, and the person who basically says my clients go

through this, right, and the way that I support them is in this

model, or in this, you know, in this process, and and the thing

that I often find is that most of the attention is put on the

solution for experts, where it's like I solve this problem for

people, and not enough attention is put on the problem that

they're actually experiencing, and making sure that they've got

some good language around that problem, so the person on the

other side of the table can say, you know, what, that's me,

that's exactly what I'm dealing with, that's exactly what I'm

going through, and now I trust you, or I feel more trust for

you to be able to share your solution, I find that there's a

lot of language and things that are very, very solution heavy

before we actually get into the weeds of, well, what is the

actual problem here, and is it a real, is it a real problem, or

is it something that is masking another problem, because a lot

of time there are deeper problems that we don't

necessarily realize until we start to sort of dig deeper,

yeah, that's so true, and that, that comes, that

actually goes back to the old days of going into a networking

event. We don't do that. Maybe more people are going back to

doing it today, but I think the same problem still applies.

People don't know how to network properly, and it's all about

what you just talked about, it's brilliant, all right. So, let's

get into your triple threat framework. This is something you

shared with me the other day, and I thought it was

fascinating. So, yeah, in the theater world, actor, singer,

dancer is a ranking, not just a list. How? Yes, and there aren't

many people, although I know you, like me, love to. Talk

about showbiz, so before we get into your framework, let's do

that. Who would you say were.. let's think of three people who

are the best examples of the triple threat. Sure,

so Hugh Jackman is a, is a classic, is a

classic example, right? And he is classic actor, singer,

dancer, correct. We don't know Hugh Jackman for his dancing, we

know Hugh Jackman for his acting, and we got to know him

for his, his singing, but his mass appeal, the traction that

Hugh Jackman got came from being a really good actor, and being a

recognizable actor,

right. We

know him as Wolverine, you know, for, for

most of the sort of mass, mass population. So that's an example

that you would see, sort of within that, you know, within

that kind of, within that kind of world,

do we have another one?

Let's see, we can go with, okay, Ariana

Grande.

Oh, really? You would put her in that category?

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, because she, she started in musical

theater, right? Like, musical theater was her, you know, was

was her growth, but all of her attraction came from singing.

Yes, and she did an amazing career as a singer.

Correct, exactly, exactly. Yep,

so she's a classic singer, actor, dancer.

Yeah,

right, like she can do musical theater, but

she's got a heck of a voice.

Yeah,

right. And she's got acting chops, right,

like she had.. she's.. she's got good performance, you know,

ability, you know. But all of her traction.. when we look at

how did her career grow, it came from that world of being that

pop star and doing those Disney Channel acting bits, right? Like

that's where she got most of, most of the traction, and most

of, and most of the opportunity. And if we go to, let's just take

her career, right? If suddenly, if, when she was first offered a

recording deal, she was like, no, I'm gonna focus on my, I'm

gonna focus on my TV acting, and you know, do some theater and

things like that. It could be argued that her career would not

have become as big, you know, as it, as it did, because she

really took off as a singer, most of the world knows her as a

singer and knows her songs,

but was that just getting a good agent at the

time? I mean, someone who you know who influenced her to go

that route,

it could be, but it also, you know, it also

could be that she impressed people with that ability, and

those people saw what she was doing, and basically said we've

got to take her that much further, right, because we can

see the talent, we can see the energy here, but Lady Gaga is

the same way.

Yeah, she's a good example, right? Yeah,

she's another great example, and she's an

example of the way that I like to think about it is that there

are lots of people who their careers are like lanes on the

highway, and there are certain people who basically they stay

behind the same car for all of their life, even though there

are other lanes. So, Lady Gaga is kind of a perfect example,

where she was in the theater, she was a performer, she lived

in that kind of world, but she became a really major pop star,

and because she became a major pop star, here's the line of all

the, you know, here's the lane of all the performers, the pop

star lane opened up, and she was able to pass all those different

performers, and then actually switch into the acting lane

later on in her career,

right,

and get anything she wanted because of

the traction,

yeah, that

she had built, right?

I have to, you have to throw in for her,

though, the writing as well, right? Yes, just right, because

she's a songwriter as well, yes, right, yeah, okay, so she

has talent there.

Yeah, so how does this idea translate into

thinking talents, and what are the three types that you have

identified? Let's talk about that.

Sure, so the way this translates into the

thinking talents is that there is also a triple threat, and

just like there are performing talents of acting, singing,

dancing, there are things. Thinking talents, which I call

the scientist, the celebrity, and the magician.

Okay,

so if scientist is your top thinking

talent, then you are a highly analytical thinker. You're very

good at breaking things down and understanding things on a

granular level. You're not really bored by research, you're

happy to kind of dig in and spend a lot of time

understanding things, but you may not be as excited about

being out in front of people, you may really just enjoy the

element of sort of spending most of your time in the lab and

thinking of things from from this sort of more structured

kind of granular way, whereas if celebrity is your top talent,

then you are way more relational driven. You love like people and

connecting with people, and you're probably more comfortable

being out front in some, in some capacity, to varying degrees,

there are some people who love the full on performance element

of celebrity, and then there are people who I've often referred

to as quiet celebrities, where they're just really, really

great at getting people to feel connected to them, getting

people to feel like they themselves are a celebrity,

right, like that's part of that thinking talent, and sort of

that you know that process, and then finally, if magician is

your top talent, you are 100% wired for novelty, so you're an

incredibly innovative thinker, you're good at sort of breaking

things down and looking at them from different angles and being

able to say okay, everybody's doing this this way, and here's

a new way to do it, but for many, many folks who count

magician as that top thinking talent, repetition will kill

you, so you know, even though it can make you more successful to

do the same thing over and over again as the magician, you're

constantly trying to find something new or something

innovative in your own experience and in your own, in

your own life. So, when we start to think about this as an actual

triple threat, and we say, okay, if I were to put these thinking

talents in a certain order, especially if we're a subject

matter expert, right? Especially where somebody who gets paid for

our brains, then just like the performers that I was just

talking about, we can actually gain far more traction and find

these different lanes that I'm talking about and possibly

switch lanes for the things that we're trying to accomplish and

that we're trying to do by actually leaning into these

talents or finding partnerships and opportunities that leverage

the other talents as opposed to pushing against the talents that

we naturally have because somebody else from a marketing

standpoint told us we had to do things in a, in a certain way,

and the one I often use, the example of the scientist who is

almost always kind of sold the idea that business success comes

from being the celebrity, and what I often like to say about

this is that it's much easier to be the Dr. Phil to somebody's

Oprah than to be Dr. Phil trying to be Oprah,

right? Right. Okay, so if I were to, after

listening to you, if I were to see where you.. and by the way,

we're all a combination, right? Yeah, but we, but there's an

order that matters, that is your primary versus your secondary,

and so on. Yes. Okay, so I'm going to guess that you are most

definitely the magician first. Am I right? Yep, you're correct,

because what you've done is you've now created a new

framework or a new structure from which to get teach people

and share with people and encourage people to bring

themselves the best of them out, best of themselves out. I think

probably I don't know about the other two, which order, because

I think you probably like to do research, but I'm going to say

that I'm going to say celebrity is the third

one interesting, so I'm actually

magician, I'm actually magician celebrity scientist. Okay, I am

not a big fan of research, actually. And what's what's

interesting about that, and this is what's so fascinating about

the triple threat, and when people sort of identify as a

triple threat, it's I, you know, use a sort of scientist quality

to be able to put together a frame. Work, right? It is a very

scientific way of thinking, of saying, like, here's one, two,

and three, to the point where I've had people basically in

very similar in these interviews say, oh, I would have placed you

as scientists first, the way that you break things down and

the way that you understand things, and you know, all you

know, and all of those elements. Yeah, so I think that one of the

important pieces of this, as well, is also the context and

the situation that you're, that you're in, and it may be that

you're actually leaning into one of your lower talents at certain

times in order to communicate something, or because the

situation demands it, right? So, in some cases, if I'm

presenting, or if I'm doing an interview, celebrity may be much

higher for me during that interaction, that you can rise

to the

occasion, because you can, yes. Okay, some people

don't have that self-awareness, don't have that ability on the

spot to do that, but I can identify that. Okay, so and I

also sort of figured out mine, I think, when we were talking

before. I think, for me, celebrity scientist magician, I

think I love it. Yeah, I don't think I'm as comfortable being

innovative, so that's yeah, yeah. And I also need to know

how everything, how does that work? What do you guy needed,

right? Okay, so how does knowing your triple threat change the

way you approach building relationships and getting

referrals, and can be a true life example of what that sure,

yeah. So, so let's take your example of a

celebrity science, celebrity scientist, magician. As a

celebrity, you are far more likely to be relational and

connect with really interesting with interesting people, but

because scientist is second, you actually like to go deep and you

like to understand things on more of that, on more of that

granular, granular level, so there are going to be people

that you're going to basically connect with better because of

that desire that scientists desire to sort of pick things

apart, right. So, as a podcast host, you are probably going to

gravitate towards magicians as potential guests, like you, are

you, and it's not that it's always going to happen, but

you're going to have moments where you're basically like that

person's doing something that I can't quite explain, and I want

to be able to explain

it. I

want to be able to break it down. I want to

be able to sort of help people understand, you know, that now

when it comes to the referability aspect of things, a

lot of the time what's going to be most helpful for you in terms

of referability and opportunities is that you are

the host of something. Being the host of a podcast is one thing,

but if you are the person who gets people together, chances

are you're going to be the person who's going to get more

referrals, and you're going to generate more of your business

that way, and the reason for that is that the relational

element is what is motivating people and sending them out to

talk about you, and because scientist is second, your

showing of your expertise and the granularity of what it is

that you have to offer is what they're going to remember when

they go to refer you, so let's just take, for example, working

with something like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a very, very broad

market, right, and like we have a lot of people are like, I want

to be big on LinkedIn, I want to do different things on LinkedIn,

but there are specific components of LinkedIn that you

yourself have basically said I'm going to study these that much

deeper, and I'm going to understand it. So, you're going

to take something that maybe somebody was talking about, and

you're going to be like, here's three other layers to that of

how this applies to building a relationship, let's just say on

the platform. Well, the person who is part of the gathering

that you've put together, where you're sharing that expertise,

when they go to refer you, they're going to say, so I know

that there are all these LinkedIn experts out there, but

I was just talking to Janice, and she had this whole different

way of. Of looking at the direct message model that most people

are approaching that I think you would really resonate with, or

that I think would be really interesting for you, and that's

where a lot of your opportunities and possibilities

are going to come from, versus the magician, if I'm a, if I'm a

magician, all I really ever need to do is show you a magic trick,

and basically be like, here's this really cool concept, or

here's this really cool idea, and you're just going to go off

and talk about

it, yeah, to

other, other people, you're going to refer

me, because you're like, nobody, like, you're going to use my

framework or use my model with somebody, and they're going to

say, "Where did you learn that? And you're going to refer me

that way. So, magicians, the best thing that they can do is

show, not tell, like they just have to be out there doing

things on the spot. Even right now, what did I do? I didn't

say, here's an example. I literally took you as the

example, and what you gave, and in real time I am showing you

the magic trick. I am breaking down where the value is in your

thinking talent in real time. That's going to be way more

valuable for me in terms of people being interested in

listening to this, and it's going to get me far more

attraction because I'm a magician.

Yeah, that's fascinating. There's something I

just.. I had brought up. I see. Okay, wait. Oh, I know what it

was. I saw somewhere you have this black box mastermind

community, and you focus on helping you find your triple

threat, develop your big ideas, and collaborate with generous

out of the box awesome thinkers, goats, goats. Yes, and it's

invitation only, but that's what I was, I found that to be you.

be interesting, because yes, I'm, I'm curious enough about

how you operate in this framework with people. Yeah,

yeah, so if you want to talk about that for a minute,

because,

sure,

yeah, that's leading people to you,

sure. No, I appreciate it. Um, you know, the

way that I like to think about it is, in the theater world, the

black box is a space where you can kind of do anything that you

want. If you want to have a theater in the round, you can

build a theater in the round. If you want to have a proscenium

stage, you can build a proscenium stage. So the idea of

the black box is if you get a bunch of people who are

expanding their thought leadership and each of them has

a different triple threat order and different strengths within

that, there's a lot of amazing collaboration opportunities, and

there's also a lot of opportunities to be able to see

things that you're not seen, so just like in the theater world,

where we would do scene study, and I would watch somebody act

out something in the black box, somebody might explain something

or do some of their work, while the rest of the group watches,

and then we'll talk about what's landing, what's not. How do we

make this idea or this concept or this thing that you're doing

more accessible, and then very similar to the theater world,

where you do a showcase, you basically give people the

opportunity to present those ideas and those concepts and

what they're working on, and you invite an audience, so that you

can actually see, okay, well, what kind of traction is this

idea getting, and you do it in that safe space, because black

boxes are spaces in the theater world, but you get to

experiment, you get to experiment without worrying

about, okay, this is a massive audience right away, you get to

sort of play around with that, and that's the thing I just see

all the time, is that so many experts really struggle with

playing with their ideas and putting their ideas out there,

often because there isn't a lot of safe space around that, so

it's really about, okay, well, if you got together with a bunch

of really awesome, generous thinkers, right, and they helped

you with your ideas, like what could be possible, so that's

really kind of where that that concept came from, where it's

like let's look at these talents that people have and really kind

of help them figure out how do you order them and what do you

do with them and how do you support each other.

Fantastic. Okay, so we're living through a moment

where AI is changing everything, and the political landscape

feels uncertain and exhausting. Emphasis on exhausting. You

would think, even last night, I said to my husband, because

we're not even American, but we've always. Got the American

stuff on to know what's going on, and I have family down

there, and I'm like, this is exhausting. I don't want to

watch it anymore, and that's kind of, yeah, so you'd think

that that that that might make people pull back from

connection, but you seem to believe the opposite. Why is

this actually the greatest moment for genuine connections,

and I believe it is too. I believe,

yeah, because ultimately, when we're in very

divided experiences, whether it be you're on the side of

technology or you're not on the side of technology, you're

following this ideology or you're not following it, like

when you're in all these divided scenarios, people will naturally

feel alone. It's just, it's just like it's just one of those

things where it's like, whatever, I, whatever side, or

even just being in the middle, you feel alone, right? You don't

feel connected, and when you talk to somebody else, you

realize that you're not alone, and you realize that somebody

else is also feeling what you're feeling and what you're going

through, and I think that you know there are so many people

right now. I'll use AI as sort of the example. There's so many

people now talking to their bots that talking to a human is going

to feel so different and so refreshing, because they're

spending 90% of their day talking to whatever you know,

Terminator, you know, you want, you know, yeah,

yeah. Oh my goodness, so true. I just

realized what timing is, because I could talk to you forever, and

I probably.. I've got to start thinking about making these

shorter and doing two of them at the same time. You know what I

mean, because I haven't.. yeah. So lots of nuggets here, lots of

things to think about. You actually.. I thank you for doing

that analysis on me, because I do say to people that you know

my take on LinkedIn is this, which I hope I don't say that,

but I hope is different from someone else's, because you

always want to be unique, you want to stand out from the

crowd, but but it comes from an honest place, and that's what I

like people to to know upfront, because if you're not a

relationship person, then we're, it's not going to work. If

you're like, yeah, how many messages can I get out in a

month, and how many responses can I expect? I'm not about the

numbers, I'm about the connections, so that to me just

fit with what you said, so, so much. But whether I'm getting it

out to the right people in the right way, and whatever, that's

another whole story. So I think that's where people get benefit

from working with people like you, right? So, thank you for

being here, Michael. Michael, Michael, I'm looking at that's

so funny. I'm, I moved you over, and I'm not seeing Michael, and

then I just had a flash of that wasn't your name. Oh my god.

Okay, so what I loved about the conversation, that it reminds

us, though, that referability isn't an accident, it's

something you can build you intentionally by understanding

how you think, how you connect, and what you want people to say

about you when you walk out of the room, it's just.. it's..

it's so amazing that in a world that's moving faster than ever,

the people who slow down long enough to invest in real

relationships and real conversations are the ones who

will always have a seat at the table. Now, if people want to

learn more about you, Michael, and your company, Small Pond

Enterprises, where will they find you?

Yeah, they can just go to Small Pond

enterprises.com and all the info is there. I've written a daily

email since probably 2017 so you can sign up to be on the daily

email, and you'll get all sorts of different insights and ideas

and thoughts from that, and yeah, just feel free to poke

around and and say hello.

Are you ever putting those daily emails into

a book?

I have thought about it. I've had a number of

folks talk to me about it. It may, that that may be something

that comes up in in the future,

because that's a lot. I mean, that is 2017

absolutely. And they're interested, one topic, one thing

per day, right? Do you write them every day, or do you write

them in batches? I have to know, because,

sure,

yeah,

yeah, most of the time I write every day,

every once in a while, if there's travel. Or if there's

something where I know I'm going to be away, I'll do a batch,

like I'll write weeks worth things like that, but I like to

write,

come to you usually daily, like what am I

going to write about today, or

most of the time, yeah, most of the time I'm

just kind of walking around and I'll have a thought and I'll

just sort of jot something down, or at the end of the day, I'll

be doing the dishes, and a couple of things will sort of,

like, you know, pop up, and then I'll be like, okay, gonna write

about that today.

Love it. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for sharing

everything. And to my audience, if this episode, if this episode

spoke to you, please share it with someone in your world who

most deserves to to be discovered. Until next time,

remember it really is all about relationships,

you.