Welcome to another episode of the big picture business podcast. We have a very special guest with us today. We're really excited to get right to it. Today joining us is Matthew Confer. And Matthew is the Vice President of strategy at Abilitie, a leadership development company based in Austin, Texas, that provides immersive business simulations to a global client base that includes over 50, members of the Fortune 500. Matt has spoken on the topic of decision making at
the TEDx conference. And I'm just going to say right now you guys have to see this. It is called Before You Decide, and we will absolutely put a link to his TEDx in the show notes because it is so fascinating. And he hosts the Learn To Lead podcast where he speaks with authors, professors, creatives, and business leaders about their leadership journey, and how they are working to develop the leaders of tomorrow. So welcome, Matthew. I'm happy you're here with us.
I'm very happy to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
And you just became a new dad. Is that right?
I did actually late last month, our little one joined us two weeks early. Super excited for him. He was super excited to join the world in 2020. So it's, it's been a year to say the least.
Yeah. Oh, congratulations. So
Matthew, tell us how did you get started with Abilitie? And how does one become the Vice President of strategy?
I started my career at Deloitte Consulting, which is an incredible place to start your career. And I spent almost eight years there. And I think one of the things that I felt at the end of my time there is I was always intrigued about what it might be like to work at a slightly smaller company, one of the things that you learn at Deloitte is It's incredible, but it's also an engine that works because there are 1000s of people that are that are making
that engine work. And I think part of what I wanted was maybe to be a little bit more of a driver of a small car where you get to impact things a little bit more directly. And one of the last things that I had done at Deloitte was I helped to design what was our new hire, onboarding, training. And in some ways, I kind of fell in love with what it meant to actually decide how somebody gets onboarded, or what sort of skills you need to succeed in a
role. And a long story short, I moved to Austin, about six years ago, still with Deloitte took a fortuitous path that via a LinkedIn connection, landed me a conversation with the CEO of ability, and we do leadership training, via simulations. And we're a small company with a big global footprint. And they were looking for a director of sales and strategy. And the fit was
perfect. And I've been here for almost three years, and it's been three of the most rewarding years of my professional career to date.
Now that you're in this role, what is it that you specifically focus on? And how do you help people?
Yeah, so I think a lot of people are familiar with with corporate training, we've all been to different corporate trainings, whether they be different skill sets that your organization is looking to get, or high potential programs, maybe you've been promoted to a new role. And you're going to go through a cohort based learning system, our offering is, in some ways gamifying, the approach to manager and leadership skills. So we actually have team based
computer based simulations. So one of them is focused on people management skills, one of them is focused on financial acumen skills. One of them is focused on decision making skills. And our goal is how do we involve you in the learning so a much more active approach to leadership training rather than maybe more of a traditional passive approach to leadership
training. So rather than clicking through and an online training, or listening to somebody present from PowerPoint slides, you're actually in an immersive simulation where you and your team are making decisions. You're having structured debriefs, you're actually competing and collaborating with the hope that we're creating this environment for real world practice in a simulated environment without obviously real world consequences.
Fascinating. I love this kind of stuff. Really is I want to do one of the simulations. It sounds fantastic. I could totally see how when you said that your current role is really rewarding, just the way in which your speaking right now I can tell you like yes, this is this is purpose right now. This is good.
What are what are some of the results that that people have gotten out of going through that program?
And one of the things that we love about our clients is they think pretty creatively about how to integrate our program. So if you're a new manager at Coca Cola, for example, which is one of our clients, you may be in a six month cohorted program with people from all around your region or All around the globe. And many of our clients utilize us in different ways. But one of my favorite is utilizing a simulation as the capstone event
to a leadership program. So maybe you and 20 of your colleagues have been through a six month program where you're meeting with executives, you're going through different training modules, maybe you're doing an action learning project. And our simulation might be the end of that experience. So you and your colleagues are competing with others in your cohort to build a business from the ground up. That's one of our simulations, and you're dealing with these
external events. And you're dealing with conditions of ambiguity, and you're making decisions as a leadership team of this brand new fictitious company. And then we're coming together. And we're talking about how did your team actually structure your decision making frameworks? How did you decide who would take the responsibility when there wasn't a clear decision? And how does that reflect what's happened over the six months of your
leadership journey? So we're constantly trying to figure out ways to tie back to what else is going on in your real world and with people at your certain level. And it really serves as a nice structure for you as a leader to say, What have I done up until this point? What do I want to be in the future? And how can I have a sandbox environment to maybe practice and play and collaborate with my colleagues,
One of the things that you talked about in your TEDx talk was constraints. Now on one of our other episodes, are the one that featured Christopher Bright what we talked about was actually adding in constraints as a way to help get projects done. Right. But you have a different approach to constraints. And I really liked that I never actually thought about it in the way that that you presented it, would you be able to explain a little bit about that?
Yeah, so one thing that I wanted to do was, I wanted to take everything that we've learned from watching these rising leaders and executives and new managers at organizations all around the world, and kind of tried to distill it into a three step decision making framework. And the first step is the one that you're referencing, which I call challenge the constraints. And the reason I called it that is, I have the pleasure of facilitating some of our events. And what I find is, you throw a
problem at people. And the first thing that they want to do is they just want to solve it at all costs. And the teams and the individuals that I've seen that are the most successful in our simulations, take a huge step back and first say, what are the constraints that are maybe stopping me from being able to make a real breakthrough, it'd be great to solve the problem. And I don't just want to jump
right in and solve. Instead, as a team, we should dissect the problem uncovered a little bit and see if there's something holding us back from a major breakthrough, getting it accomplished is great. But if you want to make major breakthroughs, your first step needs to be figuring out what the constraints are. And then maybe thinking is it even plausible for you to challenge them? And I hate to use the very overused phrase of think outside the box. But I would say that
it's a powerful thing to do. And if you're going to do it, it sure makes sense for it to be your first step.
Yeah, absolutely.
If someone was to apply this, say, say they're a small business owner, for example, because I know you work with a lot of, you know, high level executives and large companies, if their small business owner, what would be some strategies that they could could use to implement something that that type of thinking in their own businesses, knowing that they don't necessarily have a team to go through that process with
One thing that a lot of us default to is what's worked in the past is inevitably our default going forward. So one thing that I like to do sometimes with intact teams, is when presented with a problem that maybe you face on a quarterly or a weekly or a biannual basis, sometimes it just becomes pretty regimented to just do what you did before.
And what if you took a step back at your next planning meeting and said, okay, you can't do that, again, even if it's worked before, we can't do that, again, we have to do something different. And you force yourself to have the brainstorming exercise or maybe you look at a competitor in your space, who does something diametrically opposed to how you do things, and maybe you're even
more successful at it. But what if you force yourself to say, Okay, if we completely deviated from what we've done in the past, what would that look like? It doesn't mean that you have to do it, it just means that the most important thing is to have those types of conversations. And what I find is that people
become pretty comfortable. A lot of the people that we work with have been relatively successful, they got to one of our trainings, because they were identified as a high performer or they've been successful and they've climbed the ranks. One of the things that's been hard is to deviate from what got you to the point that you are and training and brainstorming activities are really good opportunities for you to throw the script out and at least consider going in a completely
different direction. It doesn't mean you have to go in that direction. It just means it's powerful to have those types of conversations,
Conversations, and I and I would imagine just the ability to shift your mindset and focus in learning in a new structure, new format, I want to dive back into your framework a little bit here. That was the backdrop for your TEDx. We discussed the first step, but there's two others, right? There's there's two others to making this magic come together. So can you like can you talk to that a little bit more?
Yeah. So step number two is what I call the embrace of pre mortem. And we're all pretty familiar with post mortems. They're pretty popular in life, they're definitely very popular in business, you wait until a project or an event is over. And then you go over with a fine tooth comb, everything that went right, everything that went wrong, and you do this elaborate post mortem, I think it's really powerful. And I've seen teams that do this, that embrace at the onset of pre
mortem. And what I mean by that is, if you're thinking about making a decision, let's say you've challenged all the constraints, you've done all the brainstorming, and you've decided this is the path you want to go. Your next step, which most people omit is you have to do the mental exercise of assuming that what you're thinking is going to be an unmitigated failure, you have to assume that it is going to fail
miserably. And then you have to tell me or talk to your team or strategize why that would have happened. And the reason it's powerful is I walk around the room if we're in person, or I move around to virtual breakout rooms, when we're giving one of our simulations in our virtual classroom, and teams can tell me 17 ways that their strategy is going to be successful. And I have to press them for them to tell me the one or two ways that
it will fail. And I think it's just a mental block that if we're strategizing with a team, we want to come up with all of the ways that we're going to be successful. If you want to be a successful decision maker, first force yourself to say, if I fail, here's the 5, 10, or even just one way, I'm going to fail, and it makes your final decision stronger. And that's why it was the second step in my decision making framework.
Wow, that's so powerful. And we make 1000s of decisions every single day in business and life. So when you really start to wrap your mind around this, like the big picture, thinking of this, it's just fascinating. Okay, so number three.
So number three is called check the basics. And as I've mentioned, I do feel very lucky that we get to work with some incredibly accomplished individuals. Sometimes I'm flabbergasted though, that you can create the most elaborate ideas, you can put together models of all of the ways that things are gonna work you you do everything, and it's the dotting of eyes and the crossing of T's that that trips
people up. So the third step was called check the basics, because what I've seen time and time again, and I think this resonates in business, and in real life, as decisions become more complex. It's sometimes the small details that trip you up, I told a story from the TEDx stage, about this massive project to study the climate of the planet Mars, and it was a huge NASA mission. And it ended up being an unmitigated failure.
And the reason was, because there were two teams working on the project, and one of the teams use the metric system, and the other team did all of their calculations in inches, feet and pounds. And what astounds me about this is you have legitimate rocket scientists who forgot to check that both teams were using the same unit of measurement. That's obviously a massive example. But I think it's actually emblematic of what happens in a lot of real world situations. As the decision gets
more complex. The small details trip you up. So that's why it was the third and final step.
Yeah, but so important. mind boggling important.
It's just so crazy that I mean, you would think like, you know, rocket scientists would figure out some of these simple things, but it just proves that anyone can make mistakes. We, you know, we've talked about that before, you know, you can, like, you're gonna make mistakes. Now, that's that lack can lead to catastrophic mistakes. And in the case of NASA, but in business, you're also going to make mistakes. And it's how you deal with those mistakes, how you handle those mistakes and
how you improve upon it. That makes a big difference. Yeah,
yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it's scary to make decision sometimes, especially if you're a leader, and you know that you're going to be the one that will be judged by the final outcome. So one of the things that kind of makes me a little bit of a of a geek for decision making frameworks and creating my own is because I think it's powerful to have something to fall back
on. Because when things get stressful and you feel like all eyes are on you or all eyes are on Your team, it's really great to have something to say I put it through the wringer. I went through this, this is why I'm going in this direction. I've stressed tested it. And I feel more confident because I did this extra due diligence.
Yeah, you gained the data, so to speak, right? You don't have that knowledge behind you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I love this. This is amazing.
Since COVID, you know, what are the largest shifts you've seen in leadership development?
It's a really great question. And it's probably been the most fascinating thing that's happened to our business in the three years that I've been here, which I don't think we're an anomaly there before COVID, only about 30% of the work that we did was fully virtual. And more often than not, it was because people either didn't have the budget to fly people together. Or they were looking for a one off solution where maybe it was a global training, but they weren't gonna have everybody
together. And so virtual was their default. We're very thankful that for the past four years, we've been working on our virtual offerings and ended up paying big dividends. This year, to me, the most fascinating conversation that we're having strategically at our organization is what does the post pandemic world whenever we get there, look like people are loving the virtual option more, though, because they're, they're
forced into it. And they still want the networking, they want the connection, they want the immersive experience. So we're benefiting from that a little bit. In a post pandemic world? Are people going to want to get back at the hotel resort or the corporate boardroom? And do their training? Or are people going to say, you know, working from home actually worked a lot better? And we're going to continue to train that way as well.
Yeah, like more cost effective to I would imagine, for many, many corporations. Yeah. It's, it's gonna be interesting, just, I mean, who knows when that's gonna happen, right? Six months, six years, like, we just don't know, hopefully, not six years, we just don't know, I have found that from my own company, as well. I do most of my work virtually. And so not a whole
lot of shifted for me. But for those who want to implement some of these very critical and important decision making leadership development factors into their own businesses right now, what would you say is like the top three things, that small business owner, even even big corporate, you know, business owner right now should focus on right now, because of COVID? Well,
I think number one is putting your decisions or putting your strategic plans through a stress test, I think is a really powerful thing to do, you can use the framework that we laid out on the show, I can walk through another quicker one that I really like. And I'll do that in a second. The second thing that I think is really powerful is sharing with your employees, why you're doing what
you're doing. So I think many times we default to saying at a company all hands meeting, okay, here's our strategic priorities coming up. What I think is the next level that most leaders maybe omit doing, is saying, and here's how I came to that decision. And here's maybe some of the things that we thought about. And the reason we're not
doing that. And what I like about that is, I think it gives you a little bit of a cover as a leader, because your people become more confident that the things that are running through their head, the I wonder if they did this, you've now gotten out in front of and said not only did we do this, here was the result of it. So I think stress testing it by yourself or with your leadership team, then sharing with your team, what you did and why you came to the
decision you came to. And then as a third thing, keeping people updated on somewhat of a regular cadence. So what we found as an organization is in the world of COVID, where we're all working much more remotely than we did previously, we're meeting for shorter bursts more frequently, whereas previously, when we were mostly in the office, we had some people remote, but mostly in the office, we were meeting for longer stretches on a bi
weekly or monthly basis. Now we're meeting quicker, like 15 to 20 minutes, but we're doing it 2, 3, 4 times a week. So have the plan. tell people what you came to and why you came to it and then update them regularly on how it's going.
Have you felt that by doing those short bursts and being together like frequently, but not for longer periods of time? Have you found that to be more effective with your team?
Yeah, one of the decision making frameworks that I love that I referenced in that last answer and then I think I omitted actually sharing it was was what Amazon does. And what Amazon does is they call it their press release method. And it's basically working
backwards. So if you want to get something approved at Amazon, you have to come with what would be the finished press release of this product or have this feature, you have to think about what the client would say or what the technology press would write about it. So you have to come with the finished product. And then the team has to decide if it's the path they want to go
on. So sometimes as a team, what I try to do is I try to say, here's the idealized state that I'm trying to get us to, here's what I considered, here's what we decided not to do, and the reasons why. And then every two to three weeks, if we do this, or every two to three days, if it's a short sprint project, I'm going to try to give you an update on how we've gotten to where we are, where we're going and where we're hoping to accomplish next.
The reason why like, I think that's a really important aspect of that. What have you found, like when you're looking at that with some of your clients, the things that they're coming up with?
I think the biggest reason why usually is a question of why not another direction. And so part of what I like about the embrace of pre mortem, step two, go back to step two, is if you force yourself to think about why things would fail, I think a lot of the times you answer a lot of the why we should go down this
direction. So if you wrack your brain and figure out the three reasons that you think this decision could fail, but you can then give an answer of why you're going to mitigate it or more importantly, how you're going to mitigate one of those three things coming to fruition, I think you do a really good job of getting in front of the perceived pushback that you might get from the rest of your leadership team, or from the staff that might need to
implement this. So if you can anticipate the why and a lot of that comes from the pre mortem, a lot of the Why's result from I think this isn't the right decision, because this could go down XYZ path. Well, here is ABC reason why or how we're going to get in front of that. I think that's a powerful way to lead and get in front of those that push back.
What do you say to people who, you know, they say, oh, you're just being negative.
Hmm, I like that. I actually, I don't mind being negative, because I think that part of being negative is saying that you should have confidence in the positivity that I'm showing when we get to the final decision, because I was negative and tried to rip holes in this grandiose plan that I think is going to save our q3 or I think is going to put us in the position for the most incredible 2021 that you have ever seen. And you will be blown away. Well, a lot of that sometimes just feels like rah
rah pep talk lip service. But if you're a little bit negative, and you try to punch holes in it, I think you get a little bit more of the, the leeway to be that that rah rah cheerleader champion. And that is I think what a lot of people want, they want you to be positive about the decision that you're going to embark on. But the negativity gives you a little bit of that, that credit that you've at least thought that everything that you're thinking isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Okay, yeah.
That's a great answer. Yeah, negative. Yeah, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's an important piece of leadership, actually, just like you said, yeah,
That's why debates are so important. Like, you got to look at both sides of the situation in order to be able to make a proper and informed decision.
Okay, so I have to jump in there. Because I love what you just said. And one of my favorite things to do is if you're in a room, and let's say that you have two people who are diametrically opposed on the right path to go forward, what you should do is you should stop the conversation right there. And you should make the people
argue the opposite. So if Person A thinks you should do this, and Person B thinks you should do something else, make Person A make person B's argument and flip it and see how they put holes in their own idea. So make people play the devil's advocate for what they want to do. I think it makes it becomes too light, then what the right decision to do is,
whoa, I bet Thanksgiving Your house is fun. That's amazing. Yeah. Wow, that talk about the ultimate leadership. Directional tools like nope, stop, argue the other side. And let's let's come to an agreement here. I'm gonna use that Yeah,
I haven't heard that before. That's, that's really good advice for someone. Again, I'll bring it back to you know, someone who maybe doesn't have that sounding board. How would they approach that? If they don't have someone else to bounce it off of?
Sometimes I think we get in this state of analysis paralysis, where we just we go in circles because we almost put an infinite time loop on a decision. So one of the suggestions that I sometimes make with the people that we Coach for the organizations that we work with is you have to instill, or you have to put a
boundary on it. So if you need to get the q3 plan to get there in three weeks, break it up into chunks and give yourself two day deadline windows to make the six decisions that you have to make, you can use that in your personal life, you can use that in your professional life in some ways, the the the time clock getting closer and closer to zero forcing you to make a decision in many ways, it crystallizes your thinking.
Whereas if you don't have a timeline in place, you can go in an infinite loop of really not figuring anything out. So put time limits on even if there aren't time limits, or chunk it up and put time limits on to each chunk that you have to make a decision on.
Yeah, can you give an example of please, from your from your own personal life or something where you've done that, and it's, yeah,
I think when we do our quarterly planning, the comment I made earlier about what the heck 2021 is gonna look like for us, just because we've seen this massive growth in our virtual our in person was the bulk of our business before. And so as we plan for 2021, we're a little bit riding blind, because we don't know when the switch might get turned. And so instead of our normal plan of by the end of the year, we want to have our 2021 plan crystallized from a
hiring perspective. And all of those kind of things put in place, when instead we're doing is we're kind of trying to say, Okay, at this point, we want to at least know what we're looking at through March of 2021. And instead of trying to get some level of a high level plan for the whole year, put together just inevitably, by the end of the year, what we want is we've already got what we think q1 would look like. And then we already have the plan in place of when we're gonna meet for q2,
and q3. And we feel like there's another date that we're gonna put out there where we can adjust q3, depending on vaccines, depending on what people decide in terms of their preferences. And we're going to meet more frequently about what would normally have been a very large year long planning session, we're instead going to truncate it and put different deadlines on trying to get in front of planning with the best available information that we have.
That's such good advice. Oh, my gosh, guys, I hope you're taking notes. For everyone listening, you better be taking some notes here, because this is like, truly what Matthew was saying, it's, it will change the course of your business and may and continue to keep it healthy. And to make sure that you're putting your best foot forward with the knowledge you have, we could talk all year long about what's going to happen at the end of q4, whatever, but we just don't
know. And I guess that's something COVID has taught us as well as business owners is let's just slow down, let's take one step in front of the other and let's make educated decisions based on what we have. Because we just don't know. And the reality is that even before COVID, we didn't know anyway, but here we are, right? Like in this in this new understanding this new mindset of like, well, let's be more strategic.
Yeah, I'm gonna throw out also that for the people who may be feel like they don't have someone to do this process with, they can also find mentors to help them. See that other side, you know, one of the things that, that I really was thinking about with your strategies in particular was that they really go against the grain of our instincts. Mm hmm. And, in, in, in life, and in business, we're just so propelled, like, Oh, we got to keep moving forward, keep moving
forward. And we just go with our instincts, go with your instincts. And it's almost like you've developed a strategy that says, hold up, those instincts aren't always right. Like, sometimes they might be, but let's, let's verify your instincts kind of. So right.
Yeah. And I also think even if you default to your instincts, 70, 80, 90% of the time going through the exercise of saying, Okay, if I rewrote the script completely, what would I do, then? How would
it fail? And then would I make sure that the basics were checked so that I didn't have, you know, a crazy disaster on my hand, that doesn't mean that you have to go down that path, but it at least forces you to on somewhat of a regular cadence to say is that normal path is that regimented, very routine paths, still the right thing to do? I think one that helps you as a leader, but also if you're a leader of a team, and you're able to share that decision making process with your team.
They have a little bit of confidence that us continuing to do what we've done quarter in, quarter out or month in month out is still the right path because we're at least having those grandiose conversations about What would it look like if we deviated completely?
Hmm, yeah.
So keeping the clear communication open? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you know, one of the things I wanted to to look at was actually your your TED Talk. Okay. So, reason I'm bringing this up is because in my main business, we focus a lot with helping entrepreneurs develop their books. And a lot of that revolves around storytelling in that when I was listening to your TED talk, I was seeing structure that very few people actually understand
and are able to implement. I want to ask you, when you were putting that TED talk together, what were you thinking as far as structured because you hit so many very quality points about how you delivered your message, the stories that you chose, and how they tie into delivering each of your three steps that you talked about? And and then how you tied it all together?
Well, I appreciate the kind words and the thing that you said, that is the through line to that talk. And what I tried to do frequently is it stories, I think stories tell the picture. So I could have very easily gotten up on the stage and said, Here are my three steps, boom, boom. And here's how you implement them. I tried to find a story of one step. And then the story that reflects why that step is powerful. And then the next step and the story from the real world that shows why that
step is powerful. And then I got through the third step told the NASA story, which was the check the basics. And then I had a story at the end of the talk that tied all three of the steps together. And I think it's the thing that I've noticed from leaders that I've had the pleasure of working with or working for those that can weave stories into why they're doing
something that they're doing. It paints the picture for people in a way that simply in many ways, just telling people what to do, doesn't go that level where you get buy in. So if you can find a story from the real world, or you can talk about a story in your planning session about a company that does this. And as a result, this is the conversation that I want to have, I think you get buy in in a way that simply just saying something doesn't
get people all the way there. So that would be my biggest piece of advice, find stories to help you tell the story or explain the decision that you're making.
Now, do you remember how you started that presentation? Your first line? Yeah, I
start with a story about Stanford University and a class on entrepreneurship. And and I think I started the talk by saying $5 and a class on entrepreneurship. And I think rather than saying, I'm going to give a talk on decision making, my goal was people in with a story.
Yeah. And I want to point out that first line, that was such a great hook, because it makes you curious.
Immediately, immediately.
Yeah. And so what's what's funny is because I had your TED Talk playing, and then another one just started playing after, and I started listening to it, I'm like, Oh, this guy doesn't get it.
Not to name a name. We're not naming names.
But it was so apparent and so drastic that I was just like, yeah, you know, as I was listening, I was I was, you know, take like taking all these mental notes about the structure and things like that, that you were doing. But then I was like, most people miss that aspect of it, they don't realize that there is a structure to delivering presentations to delivering stories, that you can create an emotional connection with people through those stories.
Something else I wanted to point out, too, is you didn't introduce who you were until about the three minute mark. So you were making it about the audience about them what they're going to learn. And I love that and then you very, very quickly, like, I'm Matthew Confer, and I, you know, I work for Abilitie I'm moving on. And I appreciate that. I was like, well, I want to know more about you, but like through your
through your stories. And I love that you, you talked about Captain Sully, and that that whole, like the visual of that was like, Oh my gosh, just Whoa, yeah. So you have to go watch the TED talk a lot, but you really just got
so so many ways. You know, listen for the content, but also pay attention to the structure, especially if you're you're looking to do something like that you have to put together a presentation. Look at that model it like, there's just so like, on point yeah, of how to how to do a
great presentation. The the other side of that I wanted to ask you about is for people who are wanting to do a TED talk themselves, what tips and strategies Could you give them to be able to, you know, go out there and make that happen?
Yeah, so the TEDx organization is an incredible way. There are independent Ted events in many cities all around the world and I was contacted by the organization In the Dallas area, and you can find these organizations online and and reach out to them directly. The thing that I would say is, I think what benefited me was, I had a really tangible idea of what I wanted to say how I wanted to say it some of the stories that I wanted to interweave, because I get them.
And thank you, for all the kind words about the talk part of it was it probably in total, I had five or six conversations with some of the organizers of this specific TEDx event, I actually did full run throughs of the presentations with them, I iterated on it, I adjusted it. And a lot of the people that I've interacted with who have given TEDx talks, or who organized TEDx events, they get
a decent amount of proposals. So anything that you can do to stand out, but also show that you've put the work into, if they choose you as one of the eight people who get up on stage at one of their events, or who speak at one of their virtual events, you've already thought about what would make your talk resonate, and what would make your talk not necessarily different, but stick it out in a way and so I can't give that organization enough kudos, I truly enjoyed the opportunity to
work with them. And if you go down the rabbit hole of learning about some of the different TEDx events, some of them have different themes, and connecting with on LinkedIn, some of the TEDx organizers may be in a city near you yours. I think that's a great place to start.
Do your research, ask questions from the people who are putting on the event, because they're the ones who know what works, right. They know their audience. And I mean, you could look at a lot of things in business like that. Right? You know, it's like the same as asking your customers, you know, what is it that you want next? from us as a business? Yeah, because they're the ones who are driving the ship essentially.
Okay, so I've got kind of a random question for you, Matthew. If you are not in your current role, we love to ask everyone, this is for fun. If you're not in your current role, what would you be doing? Would you be an astronaut? What would you be doing? You know,
when I originally went to university, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, I think I had these ideas of what Jack McCoy did on on the TV show law and order. And that was to be a lawyer. I quickly learned that wasn't what it meant to be a lawyer. And I'm very happy that I didn't go in that direction. Part of what I found interesting, though, about being a lawyer was conveying an argument arguing for it, and then trying to convince people
of your your point of view. So I think that's a roundabout way of me saying, I really like storytelling. And and I think, thank you for highlighting that from the TEDx talk. And I think a lot of what I, the people who shaped me the most were the teachers that I had. So I think I would like to have probably been a professor, or a high school teacher, and be able to tell stories to students and maybe help them see or learn in a more vivid way.
Awesome. Wow, you're continuing to do that with a TEDx. I think it has something like 96,000 views, something like that. I mean, it's Yeah, it's an impressive TED Talk,
get over 100,000.
Yeah, let's do it guy. He'll do it, you'll do another TED Talk. At some point.
I, you know, it has been without a doubt the thing that has allowed me to connect with people specifically on LinkedIn, and Twitter in a way that I'd never thought possible, whereas people will randomly find the talk, it's, it's to your point earlier, where you were watching my talk. And then before you knew it, you were watching another talk. It's kind of like the Netflix algorithm or the YouTube algorithm, you just find yourself watching talk after
talk. And I think I've started to become recommended next to some other talks. So people will find me and have no connection to me or our organization, or not even live in America or anywhere near me. And they'll send a message on LinkedIn and say, this really resonated about the talk. So I would love to give another one at some point, just because I think it's allowed me to expand my network. It's allowed me to learn what people are doing all around the world gotten some some coaching
and some clients from it. And so yes, I think I would be be interested in doing it again.
Yeah, one of the things that, you know, we talked about is credibility factors. What are the the key things that are going to make a difference as far as the credibility you're putting out there that make your conversations with potential clients easier. And there's things like books, being an author, a best selling author, even better, there's getting featured in the media, which really helps. And then there's things like Ted Talks, we don't
talk about TED Talks enough. But it really does make a difference as far as the audience that you're able to reach and the conversations that you then have, because I'm also sure that when you've been talking to people about your process, they're already predisposed to your ideas. So when you have those conversations with them about working with you guys. It's like, it's so much easier. Like, it's just like, Oh, yeah, you're ready to go, Okay, let's
do it. That type of thing as you're not having to sell as much, right?
I couldn't agree
more. And I also think one of the advantages of having things like LinkedIn, or just the internet in general is, I find it really powerful that a lot of the times when people reach out, they'll not just reach out with a generic, I'd love to connect and learn more, they'll reach out with a tangible, you know, two bullet point list of two things that I've done, or they've done that that reflects something that I've talked about, or I've wrote about, and they've said, you know, I'd love
to talk to you about it for 15 minutes, and you get so many generic messages that the ones that stick out are the ones that specifically call out something that you've done, or something that they've done that might be
of interest. And so that would be a huge suggestion that I would make anytime you're reaching out to somebody, do the five to 10 minutes of due diligence on them and try to pick something out, that might make your message stand out against the hundreds of other messages that that individual might get?
Well, that's exactly why we're even on this call now. Right? Because you reached out to me, I mean, it was very straightforward. And I appreciate that, yeah, I receive hundreds of messages. Oh, it's, it's overwhelming to go through them. And most of them are just, hey, let's connect, let's connect. But yours stood out right away, in large part, because you said, You know, I did a TED talk, when we watch that. And I watched it really
quick. And I thought perfect, it's gonna be really valuable for our listeners,
let's get him on the show. We just wrapped up a book that focuses on sales prospecting, specifically. And what you said is exactly what is mentioned in that and as b2b prospecting To be clear, but it does kind of translate across different mediums is that when you are reaching out to someone, do your research, you know, get, you know, make, make it personal, get to know them, read a blog post of theirs, you know, if they if they posted something on LinkedIn, read it, reference
it. Mention, you know, if you liked it, or if you Oh, hopefully you didn't, you know,
I hate it, let's
you know, exactly, find, find something that you like about what they're doing. And mention that. And you'll create that that personal connection, a lot easier, a lot quicker, and it can open doors in ways that you may not have even thought possible.
It couldn't agree more. I have a friend that says one of the most powerful ways to do cold introductions is to write something to somebody and say, here are the four things that I think you could do given this problem that you highlighted in a recent blog post, or have you ever thought about doing this, this and this for your business? And it's almost like you're doing a little bit of the work for them of saying, here's how I've almost come up with solutions for you. You don't have to take
them. But just the fact that I put that effort in, you might be more open to having that 15 minute introductory coffee or conversation.
Oh, absolutely. And you've provided value, you've taken the time to provide value. That's huge. Well, this has been so awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time.
I've really appreciated that time as well. And I'll come back to what I've said I really enjoy connecting with people. So if you if you find something in the TED talk that resonates with you, LinkedIn, Twitter, or finding us on our website at ability is the best way to get in touch and check out our Learn To Lead podcast, and thank you for this conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
Definitely we have as well.
Alright guys, we'll see you in the next one. Bye.
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