Key distinctions

Distinctions: Serving versus Pleasing

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Serving versus pleasing: these are absolutely not the same thing, and getting the distinction between the two will make the difference between success and failure.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen. I talked in episode 7 about how “Wealth Comes from Service.” I got a few questions about that, so today I want to talk about a key distinctions between serving and pleasing.

First, let me define what I mean by a distinction. A distinction is more than a piece of information. It’s even more than a concept. It’s something that you really have to see. Once you see it, you get it deep down in your core, deep down in your gut. Then it’s something that you can’t unsee.

The distinction that I want to talk about today is called serving versus pleasing. This is a distinction that was somewhat hard for me to get, and occasionally I still get confused and forget about what I’m doing and end up pleasing people instead of serving.

You know that wealth comes through service. Wealth comes through serving others. And yet, there are people who will tell you “I and serve and serve and serve all day long and I’m not getting anything out of it.”

Well, that’s possible. It’s possible that you’re serving in a way that doesn’t that doesn’t allow wealth to come to you. Or it’s possible that you’re serving in a very altruistic way like Mother Teresa and not expecting anything in return. Or maybe you’re serving people who can’t return anything to you. But a lot of times when that’s happening when you feel like you’re serving and serving; it’s actually that you’re pleasing and pleasing people and not really serving them.

What makes people feel good short term is not the same as what truly serves them. This is almost by definition, because all growth takes place outside our comfort zone. Attaboys are important and good. But when the thing someone really needs is a course correction, the attaboy doesn’t serve them.

A large number of people who are into personal growth are also into hoping and dreaming. This is the “Disney” path to non-success, “Someday my ship will come.” If I help people to dream big and plan for what they would like to happen in the future, I make them feel good. But this is a real disservice. If they’re dreaming and planning something for the future, that means they’re not building it right now.

I had a conversation with a client recently who was unhappy with her current job and wished and hoped she could get a different job. What she really wanted was for me to sympathize with her and then maybe to visualize what life would be like with a new job. This would have pleased her. But what really served her was to identify the critical action steps she needed to take right now, this afternoon, that would get her prepared for the new job. This is not what she wanted to hear, but it is what really served her. Without that, all the wishing and hoping are a life-destroying opiate.

What pleases people is to indulge their fears and cater to their comfort. What truly serves them is to shake them up and challenge them to be uncomfortable and lean into their fears. When it gets down to it, what stops you from getting what you really want is usually one of these two things.

I’m not saying I’m always good at this. I have a sign on my wall to remind me that pleasing people is detrimental to my financial health. It says, “Wanting to be liked is the biggest check you’ll ever write.” I have plenty of experience with this. Let’s say, for example, that I have a consulting client who is not getting their part of our work together done, and they’re becoming later and later with payments. If I want to please them, I’d probably just suck it up and live with it. But that isn’t really service. This may keep them happy in the short term, but it truly does not serve them, because our work together is headed for failure.

What truly serves in this scenario might be to have a frank conversation about what’s going on, not in an accusatory or confrontational way, but out of genuine concern for their well-being. Our work together is not going to succeed if this behavior continues. What’s really behind the behavior? Is the client unconsciously afraid of what will happen if we succeed? What other areas of their life are they sabotaging with similar types of behavior? Because if there’s something that’s off in one area of their life, it’s probably off in other areas of their life as well. Can the client and I agree to eliminate this behavior in our work together? Because if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do you are not going to be successful at much. That’s a real service to the client.

Another time this comes up for me is when I’m afraid of quoting a fee for doing a project. The client has dropped hints about their budget challenges, or price shopping. That’s just their fears talking. Then, if I want to please them, I let it trigger my own fears. I may feel that if I if I beat around the bush and I don’t make an offer then they will like me better. I’m pleasing them by not talking about money. Or maybe I want to lowball the price and I’m afraid to quote a fair and reasonable price because I don’t want them to think I’m greedy. Well, that may make them feel more comfortable in the moment, but it does not serve them at all. Our work together is to help them grow their business and accomplish their goals. If I truly want to serve someone, of course I need to make an offer. They may or may not want it. That’s fine.

Imagine a waiter coming out in a restaurant and being afraid to offer somebody the menu because the person might not want to order. Or the diner asks, “What are the specials today?” and I’m afraid of including the filet mignon because I think it might be too expensive for them. Then I’m really not serving them. It may be something that they want! So being willing to make an offer and say “Hey, I can do that for you for X amount of dollars” is a real service. And quoting a fair price and a good fee that will allow me to do an excellent job for the client is also a service to them.

I provide digital marketing services for clients, designing and building websites, and all the activities that enable their ideal customers to find them online. But our consulting work is very holistic and touches much more than the website. I’ve directed operations at a biotech manufacturer and been the CEO of a software company. When I work with my client, I may see things that are not working well in their business. Do I tell my client that they’re doing a great job there so they feel good and I can get the sale? Or do I call it out, even if it means that our digital marketing work needs to get postponed until the other thing is fixed? That’s what it means to serve people.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Distinctions: Serving versus Pleasing

Twice for Transformation

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I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.
– Bruce Lee

The first time I read something I can get some good information. The second time I read it, it starts to sink in and transformation takes place. The third time I read it, it starts to crystallize inside me.

Once for information.

Twice for transformation.

Three times for crystallization.

There’s a fallacy that growth, forward progress and success is about getting more information. If I just read enough books, go to enough seminars, listen to enough audios, watch the right videos, then I’ll get the information that I need to be successful.

That’s why the self-help industry, and the info-marketers in particular, are making billions of dollars. People go from one how-to system to another, from one seminar to another, from one home study course to another, looking for the magic information bullet.

It doesn’t work that way. It’s not about information. If information worked to change our lives, we’d all be beautiful, healthy, thin, rich and popular. Transformation starts to take place the second time you go through the material. And the real shifts happen on the third and fourth time through, as you are practicing what you learn.

As Bruce Lee said, the formidable opponent is not the one who has learned 10,000 kicks. It’s the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

You don’t need to read 10 sales books to be successful in sales. You don’t even need to read everything in one book. You can take one chapter and practice it over and over until you become formidable.

Sometimes in my emails, I’m sending out what is (hopefully) good information. But often I’m focused on creating distinctions. Distinctions are the insights that come, the things that you see that you can’t unsee. Like how gravity works. If you let go of a book, it’s going to fall. You don’t know it because you learned that as a fact in school; you know it because you’ve seen how gravity works and you’ve internalized it as part of your reality. Believe it or not, before Galileo, people didn’t understand quite how gravity worked. But after Galileo showed them, they saw it and it couldn’t be unseen.

So if you read something to help you with your business, read it from a different place. Create a space in your reading where insights can come and “ahas” can happen. Slow down. If something moves you, read it again. Then again. And practice and apply what you read. Because otherwise it’s just information.

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Antifragile

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We hear a lot about resilience. People talk about being okay in spite of circumstances. And we’ve all experienced the opposite, being hurt by something that happened to us, either physically or psychologically.

But there’s a third state of being that we all have access to that may benefit us even more.

The scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this third state of being in his book Antifragile. He observed that there are things which are easily broken (fragile), and things which are not easily broken (resiliant). He coined the word antifragile to describe things which are made stronger by volatility, stress and adversity.

There are materials that illustrate this. Glass is robust up to a certain point, but then it shatters with the right amount of stress in a sudden shock. Brass is fairly resilient. You can drop it, step on it or throw it and it will not shatter. But a bicycle frame made out of carbon nanotubes actually gets stronger when you pound on it. Instead of labeling, “Fragile. Handle with care,” you could label the antifragile package, “Benefits from shock.”

A fire is also a good illustration. A candle is fragile, and is easily blown out by a slight breath. A blow torch is resilient. It is not easily blown out, even in very windy conditions. But a forest fire is antifragile. The more you blow on it, the hotter it burns. If you throw logs in front of a forest fire to try to stop it, you only feed the fire.

Our bodies are mostly antifragile. Without stress, our muscles and bones become weak. Stress, resistance and a constantly changing outward environment is what makes us stronger (within reason of course).

What we don’t realize is that fragility, resilience and antifragility are also emotional states that we can choose in response to any situation. Say something bad about me, and I could crumble (fragile), or I may not care (resilient). Or I may decide to work harder to prove you wrong (antifragile).

The more I am conscious of this choice that I have, the better my life will be. In my life, at any given moment there are things that I am upset about (fragile), things that I am indifferent to (resilient), and things that have me upping my game (antifragile).

We love movies about antifragile people. Rocky. Rudy. Remember the Titans. How much more powerful we will be in our business and in our daily lives when we choose to live the same way. Antifragile is a place to come from, in the way we work, in the way we interact with people. Put a label on yourself, “Benefits from shock,” or, “Benefits from adversity.” Be the kite that rises against the wind.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Antifragile

Wealth Comes from Service

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A lot of people have the misconception that wealth is things and comes from having things. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, wealth comes from service. Put another way, wealth comes from our relationships with other people.

Here’s a brief thought experiment inspired by the work of Rabbi Daniel Lapin. Imagine that everyone in the world has made you their heir, and then suddenly everyone dies. You are now the owner of trillions upon trillions of dollars. You own all of the gold in the world, all of the silver in the world, even all of the banks in the world. Every car, every private jet, every yacht, and every expensive toy on the planet belongs to you. You own all of the world’s real estate, including every high-rent office building in every city on the planet.

But all of your gold, silver and cash cannot buy you anything. There are no new goods being produced, and no one to hire to provide you with any service. There is no pilot to fly your private jet, and no one running the oil refineries to produce fuel for your jets, yachts, boats and cars. There is no one to maintain the roads. Your high-rises are worthless because there is no one to rent anything, and there is no one who will maintain them for you.

The toys are fun (for a few days), but lose their appeal quickly because there is no one to enjoy them with. The worst part is that the tens of thousands of people who used to labor to provide you with groceries, electricity, running water, medical care, and everything else that made your life comfortable are now no longer available. You are quickly reduced to eking out a subsistence living as a hunter/gatherer in a decaying landscape. And the purpose you used to find in your life via your career, your family and the communities you served no longer exists.

None of the things that you own provide any real wealth. So we confused cause and effect. Real wealth results in having things, but having things is not wealth. True wealth comes from serving others and being served by others.

In sales and in business, it’s also easy to confuse this cause and effect. Success in sales and business IS a matter of serving others, and is its own reward; the tangible rewards that come later are the effect of that service.

Every day in driving to and from my office through the Denver Tech Center, I pass billions of dollars worth of property — more wealth than I could ever need or use in a lifetime. And yet none of that has any meaning apart from the people that I am also surrounded by — and that I am put on the planet to serve.

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Wealth Comes from Service

Be a Shark

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One special characteristic about sharks is that they have to keep swimming forward or else they die. If you think about it, all life is like that. Either you’re growing or you’re dying. There’s no middle ground.

Either you’re nurturing your relationship with your spouse, or that relationship is withering and dying. It can’t stay in neutral.

The same is true with a tree, with a dog, with a human being.

As an entrepreneur, as a professional in your field, and as a human being, are you constantly growing and learning? Or are you stagnating and dying? The choice is yours.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Grow or die.

Fallacy to think we can get to the point where we can coast in our sales or in our business. “I’ve spent enough time on building my business.” You can’t violate the laws of nature.

Keep Moving the Goal Post

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I used to really struggle with goal setting. I hated setting my goals low, but I felt like such a failure if I set them too high and didn’t achieve them. And I was embarrassed to share them with anyone. Then one of my coaches shared with me three concepts from Heidi Grant Halvorson’s book Succeed that really changed my relationship with goal-setting.

1) Goals are to keep us aiming in the right direction. They are not for us to arrive at. Goals should be big and challenging and should keep us moving forward. If you’re consistently accomplishing your goals, you’re probably setting them too low.

2) Goals are not about proving that I’m good enough to hit them. Goals are about constantly growing and improving my skills. Dr. Halvorson says, “Focus on getting better, rather than being good.” If we set goals that we know we can achieve, then there’s no growth involved. Setting goals that require us to learn, to acquire new skills, and to go outside of our comfort zone are what cause us to grow.

3) My goals are not my identity. My goals are a tool to help me grow. Not hitting my goals says nothing about me. Constantly growing and getting better says a lot about me.

So set high goals. Work hard to reach them. And be happy when you don’t. The only reason they’re there is to help you get better and better. And when you do reach them, keep moving the goal post.