Thrive Loud

Lou Diamond is a dynamic speaker and master connector who will energize and motivate your organization to explode your sales, retain your clients and build a thriving culture. For over 25 years, he has been a top sales performer, speaker and performance mentor. He’s a consultant bestselling author, podcast, TV host and the CEO of Thrive, helping businesses and performers thrive through all kinds of power of connecting. He’s consulted, mentored and presented to hundreds of companies, the world over and inspires the audience to feel like they can conquer the world and make tons of great new connections doing it.

Part of the reason I’m excited is I have the pleasure of spending some time with you. I know what a treat the readers are in for. Can you take us back to your own story of origin? You can go back to childhood school, wherever you wanted, that you said, “There’s a whole thing about connecting here that I like and most people aren’t doing.”

I’m not going to go to the womb because I am connected to my mom. That was by an umbilical cord and everything. I have always been the person that likes to bring things together. When I say things, let’s go with the noun, person, place or things, all these connections from people. Remember the Justice League, like superheroes bringing all the superheroes together? I think that’s always been a thing. I love knowing what great people can do and bringing them together in a work environment, as friends, in sports, competitions and dramas on stage. Facing all these people together to see how incredible the power is of a group, where people can bring those other connected powers together or those complementary skills that one can help from one another where others can learn from them. I have always believed that when you connect people, you bring worlds together. Each person has their own world and when you bring those worlds together, each individual that you connect with arrives from that connection. You grow and you move onward and upward from that experience of just one simple connection. I have been trying to diagnose it, even more, John. That is to almost double click down and say, “Where does it all start? What is the thing that draws people in a connection?”

There’s a chemical connection between two people who are lovers. We always see them from across a crowded room and attraction component. We all know that what happens when they first meet or when anyone first meets, that first conversation that you have, that has so much power, something resonates in that particular conversation. Over the years, in roles in sales, entrepreneurship, account management, I’m thinking of all the places that I interconnect with different ideas, businesses and people. What I have recognized is, wouldn’t it be great if we can decide what it is that makes us connect faster? What’s going to increase the likelihood that there is a connection? We all know that sometimes we don’t connect. We don’t necessarily see eye to eye. What can we do to improve the chance that we connect? It’s what I have been doing, helping people do that better.

Let’s zoom out and look at how important that is from the standpoint of, if you don’t have a connection with someone, they won’t give you the time of day to even listen to your presentation or your pitch. They certainly aren’t going to remember you, to give you any referrals. The flip side is, if they do connect, you are a welcome guest. They can’t do enough for you. That is at the core and it goes beyond basic rapport building, doesn’t it?

Completely. I was talking about bringing those worlds together. I’m showing two circles. This is John’s and Lou’s world. When you first meet or your network, those two worlds just touch each other. That’s not really a connection, I would call this networking. You know that you keep someone in your network. A real connection or as I like to say in the business world, connect working or connect work, is you bring those worlds overlapped into each other. When you do that, you have penetrated and seen inside the world of someone else, almost stood in their shoes and understood what’s going on in their world. By the way, when those circles overlap, they are too. When that’s happening, you are getting a better understanding of how to help one another. It doesn’t matter whether you are selling something with someone if you are working on a team together in the work environment. Also, if you are the leader of your company and your different, amazing producers in your business, the people who help your company grow, if you have connections with them and they to you and your ideas, where you can go with this, John.

It’s so often that you recognize when things fail. Through your initial point, that connection wasn’t made, and they fall away. The effort you need to do to connect is coachable. It is actually something that you could do. That’s what I do. I help people understand what is called their connecting core and what they need to do to strengthen those muscles so they can connect with others and how to maximize the opportunity when they have a chance to connect. That’s taking and creating an engaging conversation, which is not just with you and me talking or your readers who are reading this. It’s also how you would engage a larger audience. It is a conversation that you are having. If you made your conversations more engaging, you would be badging on it’s so powerful and incredible. We also know that it’s the reason that we are continually successful, those who know how to connect.

The concept of what I hear you saying is, it’s a skill that we can learn like driving a car as opposed to, “Some people are lucky. They are conversationalists or extroverts. I’m not that person. I don’t even think I can ever improve my ability. I hate small talk.” Do you have a process that you can share with us of what people can do?

John, you are nailing it. For the readers., they need to know John just took a swat and nailed the bug while we were doing this. He just did a full swing. Was that what you were doing?

That’s what I was doing. I live in Texas. There are a lot of bugs here.

Connecting can be coached. You can learn these skills. You want me to give you the basics of the muscles that I train people through.

If we were talking to a fitness trainer they were like, “First we work your calves and then your biceps and then we whatever.”

You heard me say this, that we need to strengthen your connecting core. The core in my world is the muscles that you need to strengthen so that you have the ability to connect. You do not need to be the most loquacious person like John Livesay or a very outspoken, energetic, highly motivated type of guy like Lou Diamond, who you would like to see these Type A personalities. You can be an introvert. You can be someone that doesn’t care to have to go out and do this. The skills that I help people master is very into what you specifically are and helping to unearth your specific, special superpowers that everybody wants to connect with. It’s called the SAFE. Each letter represents a different muscle in the connecting core. Instead of a six-pack, it’s a four-pack. I will work backward.

After the pandemic, I would be happy for two packs.

I’ve got to tell you, some people went fitness crazy during the pandemic and some people went the other way.

Some people learn a new language. Good for all of them.

I will work backward on the SAFE just because it’s easier to tell the story. The E is the power of Empathy. As I mentioned before, that’s the ability to stand in the shoes of another and see things from their perspective. You do not need to be the most outgoing, showy speaky person in the world to understand this. This is one very important muscle. This is the muscle of listening, within the power of empathy. That’s knowing how to be a true, proactive listener, not just passive listening. This is active listening, where you are focused incredibly on the target. Focused listening is what we need to work on. There are other components to that muscle too but at the core, you need to ask great questions that start conversations, that build relationships with who you are going to do business with. This is the part where you are asking those questions and listening to how to respond.

When you restate what someone has said, they feel like you care enough to get me. Ironically, it works almost every time like, what I heard you saying was or it sounds like you were stressed or whatever the issue is. I was having a conversation with my mom and I restated what she said. She goes, “That’s what I said,” Then I started laughing and I said, “I know. I was just restating it to let you know that I heard you.” You know moms, it usually works great.

I think you know this and I happened to be a certified coach. It isn’t my main gig that I deal with because I do coach top performers. I have learned this a long time ago, you cannot coach family members. It just doesn’t work, ever. There are too much going on. Having the power of empathy and being an active listener are very important. The next muscle, which I love to talk about, is a fearless mindset. Now a fearless mindset, John is not void of fear. A fearless mindset is knowing how to move through fear into courage. You talk about those individuals who be like, “Lou, I’m not the chattiest, outgoing person, how am I going to be a connector with everybody that I go through?” We will make it clear that some of those are fears that are just holding you back. Knowing what those fears are, even to have that powerful conversation with someone the first time you meet them, is to say, “What I can get when I gained this?”

I go through a whole exercise of how you can flip fear on its head and understand what it is and embrace it. For example, I’m afraid to go speak to this person because I don’t feel comfortable just introducing myself. I always like to flip it. If they came over to you and started talking, would you be willing to talk? What’s wrong the other way? Always take a little contrarian view with it. The whole key thing is, it’s important to know what those fears are, giving them a name and moving through them. My fear most often is mediocrity. To me, mediocrity is a failure for some reason. I’m like, “I’m just average.” I can’t even deal with average. I want to be a superstar. I want to be above average. When it comes to mediocrity, I was flipping around. That’s still better than half the people in the world. I’m going to have mediocre days but I’m also going to have great days.

One of the biggest fears is rejection. How do we flip that one?

Let me make it clear. People are afraid of the word no. True story because I know you work with salespeople and you know this is true. Some people will leave an item on their sales pipeline list. They haven’t even reached out to this person in 3, 4, 5 weeks. They haven’t called them. The reason why is they think that there’s still a chance that those people may say yes because they are afraid to hear this person say no if they pick up the phone. I want to make it clear. If you pick up the phone and call the person and say, “I’m not interested right now,” that is a win for you. I love the word no because no is going to enable me to focus on the yeses. “No, faster,” is what I tell everybody when it comes to that particular fear of rejection. You will be able to focus on winning more yeses because you need the noes.

I will lump them together in the essence of time. There is authenticity and your super why. If you think about super, why it is your superpower. It is the reason you were put on this planet, I shared with you. I was put on this planet to work with incredible people and help them thrive through connecting. Everyone has a superpower. It’s unleashing that superpower when you let someone know what that is, just as I have right here with your readers. They are already connecting with me because we love superheroes.

This goes back to when I was a kid. I want to be in the Justice League and bring those people together. We love hanging with superheroes. We want to be with superheroes. We know that when we speak to a superhero, we are in cool company because that’s the person I want to hang with. Nobody wants to connect with a dud. We want to connect with a rock star. The other part and this bring it all together. This is the linchpin of connecting. You know this to be true. That’s the A. You couldn’t be as empathetic as possible, have the fearless mindset, unleash all your superpowers but John, if you do not have an authentic bone in your body, you are disingenuous. You are untruthful. We all know that is what you remember people for and you will not want to connect with someone. You will want to distance yourself and disconnect with anyone that is not being authentically who they are and fake in that regard. Bringing out authenticity, being open, honest and coming from the heart is what draws us in and keeps us together. Without it, that whole connecting core is not worth flexing at all.

Sometimes being a little vulnerable. Let’s say you are at a networking party and you haven’t been to once in a while. You overcome your fear, move into courage, go up to somebody and you start talking because you flipped it and go well. I would talk to somebody. They came up to me. If you said something like, “I haven’t been to one of these events in a long time. I’m surprised at how nervous I am. It’s like a skill. I haven’t had add muscle. I haven’t had an exercise in a while.” I’m talking to that person. I’m going to say, “You are not alone. It’s weird for all of us.” That’s a nice way to start a conversation, I believe.

Starting a conversation, John. I know you are a fellow speaker as well, that is how I opened my conversation with a new company. It was the first in-person event in a very long time for many of us because of social distancing and the pandemic. I started out and said, “What do I want to say? I always do this. How am I feeling?” If I’m pumped up and excited, that’s usually where I lead with. The reality was, is that one, I missed it. I missed being in front of people. I said, “I want you to know I am legitimately and honestly happy to be here.” Also, I’m unbelievably excited because this is the first time that I can reach out and I was allowed to touch people.

As opposed to looking at a screen of a myriad of people like we have in Zoom for 2020. I highlighted that. I think every single person in the room was also like, “I totally am in the same boat. We have a speaker here that’s talking to us.” That’s connecting right out of the gate with your authenticity from the start. That’s the thing that draws people in. If you are not that way, I won’t be in the room with those people. That’s quick. Those connecting core and those muscles, there are lots of exercises to do. If you flex those muscles every day, think of where you can take things, think of how you can develop your relationship.

I could see you do a half-day workshop or more on the super why.

The best exercise or the one I love doing the most, I would say I agree with you, is the superhero exercise. It’s the one that the audience loves the most because it’s a lot of fun. The most engaging and powerful I have ever walked through is, we call it the FOBIA workshop, Fear Of Being Immediately Authentic. That’s the fear muscle. We walk through the fear. We have had tears and real breakthroughs. For people, it’s probably the most powerful, not as much fun as the superhero but definitely a lot of fun. We do those and I love those workshops. They are great, engaging.

I think you said something there that I want to underline which is how important it is to use it like a muscle. We know we have to brush our teeth every day, whether we feel like it or not. We have to look at these muscles of empathy, listening, overcoming some fear and recapping or refining what our superpower is. We are going to get better at it but we can’t just do it once a month and think, “I’m still not good at this.”

I want to let you know and I know, John, your personality would obviously be a natural connector as well. You adapted it. I have been doing this for a very long time since those little days of always bringing those people together and connecting the dots. It is something you can always work on, improve upon and get better on. When we will get to the plug section, I’m going to give a challenge to your readers of things that they can do. It’s something that I’m working on now. We have decided what you need to do to not only improve the way that you connect and do exactly what we were talking about and flex those muscles but you also can grow your world and your business just by doing something for ten minutes a day. Imagine, thinking about that ten minutes a day and the ability of what that can do and all the opportunities in and not only that but also business opportunities they can do and bring you to more connections.

That’s called an open-loop and storytelling so we will come back and close that.

What about people who feel like they need to get a lot of credit for making an introduction or making a connection? What are your thoughts on that?

I will ask that question that you are referring to the sense, “I want to get compensated for making an introduction.”

Do you think people should close the loop? If somebody makes an introduction to me, it was strictly like, “This is somebody you might enjoy knowing. You may or may not have some business potential together.” We had a great conversation. I decided to go ahead and just go on the initial email where they were introduced and reply all go, “Thanks again. Your instincts were 100% right. We had a great chat.” I think people appreciate that because they go, “I’m going to keep making introductions.” If you make an introduction and it’s avoided, I go, I wonder if they ever spoke. If I run into them and they say, “My best friend” and they forget that I introduced him, my feelings will be hurt. There’s a wide range of introducing and forget, no expectations or I need to be acknowledged for it. It’s different personalities.

I have the big belief that the greater connector you are, the less ego you have as it relates to it. If you are trying to bring two people together, this is a selfless act. You have to recognize that you are the one who sees the value in the connection and part of your job in that connecting might be addressing how you guys can be good connectors. I joke about this all the time, John. I used to show this image when I spoke. I talked about how I see people.

For some reason, I have never been talented to draw. I would say I’m creative but I’m certainly not artistically creative. When I see people, I almost see logos or icons of the things that I recognize with them. It’s almost like there’s an orb of things around them, maybe the school they went to or the business they work for, the sports teams they work for, the cities they come from. I will see those and I will be trying to match them up and not actually within like, “You know this individual because you both ended up going to school together. You may also have worked at the same company. You are both in the same field.” Sometimes, though, I recognize, let them figure out where those worlds can connect because you can’t always force a connection.

I like to sometimes just say, “I hope you guys connect.” If you are a good connector, you are already connecting with these people frequently anyway. You will learn that, whether that connection has happened. It’s probably good form for those that were introduced to say, “Thank you so much for introducing me. That was a great conversation.” Whether they do or not, I do recognize this is a busy world. Who knows where their world is at that point? The key part is it also identifies opportunities for me. Maybe I can help those people continue to be better connectors if they were not connecting where they should, I do think that. I will tell you, from my perspective, if I don’t need the gratitude or the ego for where it comes in, there are companies that hire me to bring in sales, people or make the connections.

While I’m being managed on that, I do believe that your job on this planet is to try to make as many connections. If you could help someone make a connection, in the Jewish religion, it’s like making a mitzvah. It’s an honor and high regard when you bring people together. It shouldn’t be something that you have to make sure, “You should have thanked me for that introduction.” That’s not enough. That’s taking your ego and making it all about you and not about them. It’s certainly not being empathetic.

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