Jeffery: Welcome to supporters fund superhuman episode I’m your host Jeffery Potvin and let’s please welcome Rob Ryan at growth hacks relationship Catalyst coaching and storyteller as our superhuman for today welcome Rob we’re so excited to have you here today.

Rob: Great to be here buddy thanks for having me on the show I don’t know if I’m a superhuman but I definitely want to discuss what it is to be super as a human.

Jeffery: Well I think you’re a superhuman so uh I think everybody we have the opportunity to chat with and learn from are superhumans and because you guys are really diving into this I think there’s so much we can share and learn and you know just to take it back a few steps you and I met a few years back at an event in Mexico and I learned so much from you just on that Journey So today we’re going to learn even more and the way we love to start our shows off is that we want to learn a little bit more about you so if you can share all the way back to your Arizona State University days through the companies you built all the way to where you are at growth hacks today share a little bit about that and then one thing about you that nobody would know.

Rob: Okay all right so I’ll I call this my dad used to call this my sharecropper story like I grew up in a small village no this is this is how I’ll get started so born and raised in Chicago um not not an original West coaster I’m coming to you today from Los Angeles I’ve lived out here in La Southern California for more than half my life now almost 25 26 years um born and raised Chicago went to went to school in Tempe Arizona outside of Phoenix at Arizona State um proud Pac-12 uh sports fan slash alumnus um and basically started building my career there went to work for my dad so my dad was my original boss um uh because he famously told my mom one time uh didn’t tell me this until later in life but told my mom at the time that well I’m just gonna have him come to work for me because he doesn’t seem what he he knows knows what he wants to do yet uh and this way I’ll at least train him in how to build professional relationships and sell stuff to people which will guarantee that no matter how badly he screws up his life he will be employable and so that was the premise under which I went to work for my dad he became my original Mentor in sales and Business Development which is the root of my career I spent the first 10 years of my career working for other companies working for other people as I said um selling everything from Financial Services to um Hardware to software uh and I I like to highlight that sometimes not because it’s about me but because I think in our world today that you and I live in inside of the startup early stage company ecosystem um so many young Founders like are literally enamored with the founder life when they’re in college and they they’re they’re they’re just trying to create ideas or companies out of nothing and I always lean back and go like that’s not how it used to be and this is just me sounding like a old Boomer like that’s just not how it used to be like you went out into the world like I did for 10 years and you worked for companies and you worked in Industries and you built stuff for sold stuff and you you saw problems that were in existence right and that was how we started our first company so 29 28 29 30 30 I started getting the itch in in a in a pre-internet bubble one era like and end of the 90s when everybody was building startups and early stage companies and uh and I myself and my field partner were selling to Big Enterprise clients and we were selling at the time I think it was like customer service software and every time we would sell like another half million or million dollar deal we would wind up in these side discussions with our clients you know out in the middle of North Carolina or the middle of Ohio or someplace and they would take us out to dinner and they would tell us about all these other problems that they had in the and that they were looking for solutions to and and we spotted the problem which at that time would be the problems that later would make up the world of CRM uh but but it was before we ever called it CRM as an industry and so that was what gave us the impetus to launch our first company and then the rest of my entrepreneurial Journey from then to today I kind of bookend really simply I always say the story is I’ve been a part of leading or founding four different companies two of them were my own idea and then two of them were somebody else’s idea and it’s it was the first one that I just referred to which was a company called busy mobile which eventually was a precursor to CRM um and that was my idea along with my partner and then this one growth facts the work that we do now across Latin America and North America um was my idea and the middle two which was one was an investment banking business in Asia um that took me there for five years in the early 2000s uh that was a completely different business born up by someone else that I got invited into lead and then the the third the middle one was a technology company selling Hardware software uh hybrid product um into the I.T space um and again was somebody else’s idea that they brought me in to lead and build so I’ve had kind of the range of experiences in my 35 years of working since I was 19 or 36 now since I just turned 55. um and uh when people say like how do you have this many stories how did you meet these many people I’m like because I’ve worked on a lot of different things over the course of my life right well some people hone in on one job and one career in one company that’s awesome that’s just never been me.

Jeffery: So that’s amazing and I’m gonna oh before we jump in one thing about you that nobody would know.

Rob: Right sorry yes you did ask me that okay so uh no one would ever guess this if they saw me in public or online uh it was about 19. 95 and myself and my dancing partner won a salsa dancing competition uh in public at a bar restaurant against 150 other couples uh we we want this also be obviously competition the only reason we won this Gringo got taught how to salsa dance by that woman who was my dancing partner and at the time my girlfriend um for basically six months every Tuesday night we would not go out anywhere she would cook in and she would move the furniture out of her kitchen because in her little apartment she had like a linoleum floor so we could kind of slide around real easily and she literally taught me how to salsa dance from scratch and then like schooled me in it every Tuesday night because in her mind we were preparing for this New Year’s Eve dance contest that she had gone to for years and had never competed in and then when she did at number one and she was determined that we were gonna win and I was basically just along for the ride but proudly I can say we did win and uh I was also the only white guy in that entire bar that night in Phoenix Arizona um but uh maybe that was also foreshadowing of my life to come uh in Latin America

Jeffery: That’s awesome it’s a great story too because you see the drive behind somebody and they had a goal and that goal was achieved by you know teaching you how to get there and making sure she had the best team to make it work and I love.

Rob: That that’s a six-month planning process that’s what it was she was very determined and I gotta say at the time I’d much rather would have us gone to the movie or gone to a ball game or gone out for a drink or something right but you also saw a little bit of my personality because like I’m open to just about anything and in those things that I’m afraid of or I don’t know how to do it all like I just need someone who knows how to do it to like take me under their wing and be like okay we’re not I’m not gonna embarrass you like okay I’m not gonna make you look like a fool right like and so in the privacy of our our little life in her apartment and I felt safe I felt like I could she was great at making me feel comfortable which is like a good leadership lesson ironically um and we went up dating for a while after that win although we didn’t stay together for a long time but great relationship.

Jeffery: Oh that’s brilliant you know and and to kind of go back to some of the stuff that you shared earlier which I really want to kind of peel back on which I think is fantastic is that your father admittedly and benefiting himself said I’m going to help my son learn a new skill bring him into the fold teach them the business but teach them how to sell and this is going to help him in the future if he ever needs the job to be employable he’ll have this really strong skill set and why I love that is because I think there’s a lack of that today where people don’t actually understand how to properly sell they don’t understand how to make relationships or any of the above and they just assume that I’m selling something great you should just want it and I shouldn’t have to do any work to get it because why it doesn’t make a difference you need what I have and that’s how I’m going to sell and I I kind of want to peel back on that and maybe you can share a few of those things because I’ve experienced it when I first met you and and I remember the I asked you one morning when we were in Mexico and I said to Rob I watched you over the last few days and you’re phenomenal the way you gravitate to people you’re able to open doors up and they don’t even know you’ve opened the door and by the end of the conversation which could have been 60 seconds or 16 minutes they’re your best friend and I watched this and I was like wow this guy’s incredible I need to take him out for breakfast and I need to learn what this guy can do because it’s incredible how well he can engage someone and so quickly so maybe you can share some of those lessons that you learned because I think that that has helped you today at 55 which I think congrats it’s freaking awesome.

Rob: Thanks

Jeffery: That you were able to maneuver through build companies and get to a success rate which is all this learning so you said you have a lot of stories well those stories came from I think that first time that you actually learned how to sell 100 people can share what that learning was like.

Rob: Thank you at first thank you for the kind words first of all and Absentia we’ll pass those kind words along to Jack Ryan and say see Dad like we’re still living the lessons all these years later um everything you just said is completely accurate uh it took me a long time in my own personal maturity Journey as a human as a man to recognize this like that this was the brood of all right forward um and then to start kind of giving him as the kids would say nowadays giving him his flowers or giving him his props as we used to say right um but no it’s so much of my uh I I now attribute it to kind of the Duel at The Duality of my personality and then I’ll peel back on some examples of lessons he gave specific to selling but I say that everything that you get when you meet me now at this point in my life um is a combination of the DNA and then the inputs that both my parents gave me right so I was very privileged and very lucky blessed to be raised by these two incredibly good well-intentioned loving people but my mom taught me all the stuff that is the like natural empathy the love for others the loving others first and kind of taking that risk in relationships and in the public in general um you know the the service side of me if you like to say that kind of the the servant’s heart some might say um and then my dad taught me all the the science of it uh right so so his famous phrase back to kind of the professional development part his famous phrase to me was I’m going to teach you both the art and the science of professional relationship development and I now keep in mind this is not 2022 where we use words like relationships and community and all these these buzzwords now right this is 1988 89 90 91 right in a world where like for some technical context I mean think about that right like Windows 95 didn’t exist like there was no iPhone for another 20 years I mean two years into my tenure working for my dad in a financial services brokerage business which was what his career had been built in um we bought a fax machine and that was a huge deal like and although and also by the way he was completely perplexed by how to use this thing called the fax machine but at the same time that he was perplexed by this thing called the fax machine he was telling me aggressively you need to figure out how to use this fax machine because you know what this fax machine is this is just another medium through which we can communicate to others and you can use it to build relationships with people he’s like up to that point it had been male hard mail knocking on doors post cards handouts those types of things right he’s like this fax machine is just the next iteration which then made it really easy for me as I went forward in my life to then just say okay now I’m going to adapt to this new thing called the web then I’m going to adapt to this thing called email then I’m going to adapt to this thing called SMS and text messages that I’m going to adapt to this new iteration of the web which is social so to me literally like when I’m dming someone I’m dming you on social media or I’m posting something on social media today it’s not a question of like am I comfortable with Instagram of course I am because my dad helped me figure out how to be comfortable with a fax machine as an evolutionary step above writing a handwritten letter and sticking it in the U.S mail system to send it to a prospective client so he was very very focused on this idea of the art and the science and I love the the story which is a very common thing nowadays but the story that he was telling me back in that era which again keep in mind was born from his own experiences in the prior 30 40 Years of his career in life at that point right so this these lessons are embedded back to like the 1950s of of sexual you know United States kind of Chicago culture um and so he used to say I’m going to teach you the art and the science because the truth is that all the work in sales and relationship development is the science it’s the it’s the persistency it’s the follow-up it’s the sending the follow-up at the right time it’s the numbers of follow-ups and numbers of context that you have to make it’s the numbers of times you have to go knock on that door or send that message or do that follow-up that uh you know item and he says because basically when I get you to understand the science of it he says then when you are in front of people whether that be in front of a group of people or in front of one prospective client or an existing client then the artfulness of you and your personality can come out right so nowadays we fast forward and you know Malcolm Gladwell I think it was right wrote the book like 10 000 hours and talked about that concept LeBron James and the sporting Universe talks about this a lot like how many hours he puts in the gym so that when he gets on the court the muscle memory takes over and he doesn’t have to think about it anymore so good for Malcolm Gladwell good for LeBron James neither of them were born when my dad was sharing these lessons with me and when my dad was learning these lessons himself so some of this stuff as I always say Jeff is just Universal truths that I don’t care about the era I don’t care if it’s I’m talking to my 11 year old gen Z niece and or I’m talking to my 30 year old daughter or I’m talking to some young venture capitalist or 25 year old startup founder in Brazil like some of these are just universally true right is like you have to understand the mechanics the work of developing relationships and the science of that so that when you meet this crazy Canadian guy in some random City in northern Mexico and he says to you I’ve been watching you surreptitiously for two days and like it’s incredible well guess what you know what you were watching you were just watching The Artful side of me be being able to be on display and function almost subconsciously because I had by that point that you and I met in 2018 I had had drilled into me the science of human relationship development for 20 years right so it was like it was just it’s just an embed so what you see is just and I’m humbly grateful that you’re kind enough to highlight it but the truth is it’s just like an outcome right it’s not that I have a gift in the moment it’s that I might be gifted with some sets of skills or personality traits but they were sharpened by the work that my dad laid the foundation my dad was like saying like here’s your workout plan like this is how you’re gonna become fit except in his metaphor was this is how you’re going to become a credible sustainable professional relationship developer and side note quickly he used to say to me I’m I’m 19 20 21 22 years old at this time finishing University just coming out I’m desperately aware of everything that my peers think of me right I’m desperately self-conscious if I want people to like me and I want to be cool and he says to me one time he’s like and let me be clear about this this is like a month into the job he’s like let me be clear all your friends are going to tell you like your dad’s just trying to teach you how to be a Salesman and he says you know what he says you can tell those friends and off because they don’t know a fraction about sales and relationship development that I’ve forgotten over my career and he says when I’m teaching you how to do and that’s why I use the language that I have used throughout my entire career I am teaching you how to be a professional relationship developer I am teaching you the science and the artfulness of developing human connection between yourself and someone else and then how to facilitate it between other people he’s like that has that’s like byproduct of that is that you could sell stuff right but I’m not teaching you how to sell I’m teaching you how to do that and oh by the way why am I teaching how to do that because it’s been true forever that people will buy from people they like people who buy for people they trust people will buy from people that they have some affinity for right so he’s like I’m going to teach you the most important thing and then the byproduct of that will be the professional opportunities that you will get from it so now I attribute so much of it Jeff to those early lessons and it took me a long time because by the way like it wasn’t all sunshine and Roses like Dad and I were a pretty good dad son team and then Dad and I probably ruined the dad son relationship for about a decade because it was a worker you know Mentor boss relationship and that put a lot of strain on our personal relationship but we recovered all that by the time he passed away and so in context it’s all it was all worth it um because ultimately yes the person that I have been and am and will be for however long I have left um is attributable to those skills so.

Jeffery: That’s incredible and I love this story and the way you kind of brought in to your fold from your father this relationship side and I think that’s the missing key component to all of this is that when you were taught how to manage the new technology that was relatively understandable that you’re going to be faced with these new things that are going to come at you they’re just another piece to the puzzle of how you’re going to sell or how you’re going to outreach or how you’re going to communicate but the key here is how you build that relationship how you start the conversation how you manage the relationship and how you go forward and continue to benefit both parties or as you mentioned bringing in other parties into that mix to build and onto better and make things better and it kind of reminded me of a story when I was a kid I was 14 and my father uh said you need a job and I was like well I guess so and I already did a lot of things entrepreneurial things even though that wasn’t a term back then you know selling worms and my my mother reminded me that I was beer bottle collecting when I was uh a young kid every Saturday morning at 5am I’d run through the bush and collect beer bottles for the party the night before because they were behind my house and I would make you know at the time I joked and said I probably made three bucks but I do remember that I had Stacks and stacks of cases of beer maybe 150 bucks worth and I would get my father to bring me there and I’d get my money and I’d be excited right.

Rob: Um You Were a hustler you were a bit you’re a young businessman.

Jeffery: I was I was and I remember my father said um you know to get this job real job at McDonald’s he said uh you know drove me there and he said go in and ask for the manager and shake his hand look him in the eye and tell him you want a job and you’ll work for free for two weeks and I said wow who the manager no and he’s like yes and tell me it worked for free I said free I don’t want to work for free and he’s like do you want the job that’s what you need to do to get the job I took that to heart and I walked in there and I asked for the manager I was probably shaking like a leaf and the manager came out I had it on my resume and I said you know hey I really want to work here I love McDonald’s etc etc and I’ll work for two weeks for free and he looked at me and he said Son you can’t work here for free.

Rob: I can’t do that

Jeffery: That’s you’re not allowed to do that right but I appreciate the effort and we’ll be calling you and they did they called me and I got the job I was working as a cook so I I think the learnings that you gain from that is that that’s the entry point into how you learn and I think back in the you know 80s and the 90s and earlier is that the learning of how you sold was that everybody had to sell that it was tough times interest rates are at 17 and you had to figure out what gave you that advantage over somebody else and what your father talked about and how your father drove that is that he created the advantage which was how do you not only create this one-time sales but how do you create a 10 time sales how do you get them coming back because you are the person they Trust and Believe in and that’s the relationship side and you know I can say that I’ve struggled with that because it’s the building that relations but what I found was that through all these little anecdotal Stories the things that you learn and reading all these different books they always came back to it is that you can sell to that same person every company you go to as long as you’re solving a problem that they can get behind because you brought value to them the first time.

Rob: Think about this in our current lingo right inside the the tech ecosystem especially where we talk about LTV right lifetime value like before that was a phrase yeah like that’s what we’re like that so my dad was teaching me that before we had that to call it I don’t know I don’t remember what he called it right but there was some annualized version of the whole potential value of a client um over time I mean now that was always I yeah it’s it’s uh again it took me it took a toll on us which was the downside of it and I was of course because he and I were very similar in so many ways I was of course the stubborn one that thought he was an for a big chunk of my adult life as a result of that but then it was again kind of mended as before he passed away and then that was all I needed and then now whether I say it which I do say it all the time um or I just live it um everything that I I’m doing is a testament to to him and to her in some ways but to him in this particular in the professional Pursuits for sure.

Jeffery: Well you learned a lot from that and I think even from that time where you and I were sitting down for breakfast and I remember sharing to you that you know I watched how you could approach somebody shake a hand and just slightly it could be uh a touch on the back whatever it was and that person just kind of melded into your domain of making a comfort level and then you were swapping numbers laughing joking and then literally an hour later you would see them and it wouldn’t be I need to avoid this guy it was like almost a hugging embracing even though you just met an hour before and I was like how did you accomplish that in an hour I’m like worried and scared and hiding but I was like this is incredible how you brought people to that ease of moment and I don’t know what obviously it wasn’t part of the context of the sharing of information but what I found is that you engaged them made it about them and that person really Drew from that and maybe you can share a little bit more of context of how you approach that relationship building even from the very first uh High I’m shaking your handpoint to how you carry through because I think that’s important to learn.

Rob: No critically important thank you for highlighting that um again thanks for the kind words about those instances as I’m listening to you tell that story of Chihuahua Mexico which is where we were everybody um I I one of the proudest memories of that for me is that like of the three or four people that sat at the same dinner table that like next night I’m still close friends with all of you can we still communicate regularly and then occasionally when I talk to the other and I say that I talk to the other there’s this like excited curiosity oh my God how is he doing like I’m the bridge right and that’s that’s just a great Testament to life but but you raise a really like from a let’s talk about like the technical side of this for for young Founders for you for investors frankly just not even young let’s just be honest for all because we could all use Professor lessons in this um you you suddenly gave away one of the keys right which is making it about the other person um you know what whether you’re selling whether you’re raising Capital whether you’re raising Capital as an investor to LPS trying to raise your own money for your fund or you’re a Founder trying to raise money from investors or you’re a Founder trying to pitch your you know products and services to your prospective markets um you’ve I can’t emphasize enough like you have to lead with making it about the other people um uh I I do it almost to sometimes to the annoyance of people in my in my inner circles because or or even people that I will initially meet because will and you and I have had this happen we’ll have a call we’ll have a zoom set up and it’s you know they have their things that they wanted to talk about or something and you know maybe it was stuff about me that they wanted to find out and then I’ll just lean into this like hey like tell me your story right and and I make it about them and then sure enough like the clock runs out on the zoom meeting or the or the time together and and they’re like wait a minute wait like I didn’t I didn’t like I didn’t we didn’t talk about you at all I couldn’t find anything I was like nah it wasn’t what today was for like I like but was it productive was it enjoyable like did you well yeah it was awesome but I mean it was all about me I’m like that’s okay like we can talk again I’m not going anywhere right so so there is a it’s not it’s first of all obviously making making every interaction about the other person um and then doing that and this would be the second key like doing that authentically right and that’s not you know personal authenticity human empathy those are things that can be learned by the way I’ve 100 realized that over my professional career and my life um so they are not necessarily personality traits that if you don’t have them well then you’re screwed you can never get them like if you’re not a naturally empathetic person all that means is you’re not a naturally empathetic person doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to be a more empathetic person which you can um so to me it’s same with like learning how to be authentically yourself right so part of part of by the time you and I met 2018 right I’m in this this chapter of my life I’m not a young kid anymore I’m a little less about you know trying to impress everybody that I interact with and I’m a lot more about just kind of like the fun joyful curiosity of meeting all these interesting people and so I’m more authentically myself at that point I’m a better best version of myself right so making it all about the other person I’ll give you a little trick like if people are looking for like okay how can I apply this in my life or my business tomorrow um I use this phrase like when I write or when I when I follow up with you or when I’m standing there in front of you like man I can’t wait to hear your story so hey what’s your story literally just what’s your story like I’ve opened thousands of conversations over the last 20 years with just hey Chad ah Jeffrey nice to meet you hey oh you’re from Canada that’s crazy so so what’s your story not and again very specific word choice not oh so what do you do which is the default at least North American question right and probably European question like what do you do right or where do you work those are the two things that we ask everybody and those are two of the worst questions of all time because the truth is like if I’m asking you what you do or where you work I’ve already Nar I’ve skipped past so much of who you are and I’ve like left us in this like Dark Lonely Alleyway that only is gonna give me one perspective on you and frankly it might not even be the perspective of yourself that you’re most excited about sharing because you might hate your job you might you might desperately not like who you are and what you do and so therefore I’m asking you a question that is setting you up to be uncomfortable right away but everybody my dad told me this three great mentors I had throughout my professional life before I started my entrepreneurial career told me the same thing everybody Jeffrey everybody in life that’s ever come out of the womb of someone else and walk this planet loves the opportunity to tell their own story now you could be you and a little bit more introverted and a bit quieter a bit more a bit less publicly loud but even you like to tell me your story that’s how I learned that you’re such an adventurer and you have such diverse interests and you you grew up in Canada and you had this like because we all just treat her naturally like to tell our own story so if if the first foray between us is me literally setting it up on a platter to invite you to tell your story I’ve already given us like a head start in the in the likelihood that we could have a deeper connection than just the other people who are going to walk up behind me in that room like if we’re in a physical room or or online or you know in the twitterverse um the other people that are going to come to be like what do you so what do you do where are you from like like those are like very specific answers and once you answer them like then what am I left with oh so you work with oh so you’re in crypto well I guess we’ll talk about that now now we’re not even talking about you right but what’s your show what’s your story or like what’s your story man like if you can tone that thing in a whole bunch of different ways and it just leaves the door open and I’ll tell you my greatest lesson that I’ve learned in my own life and it’s just been fascinating is the Myriad of directions that people will take their answer but it goes in a whole bunch of different ways although there are some typical ones that repeat themselves which then if you are if we’re being like a little technical lesson right here at this point in the show like then you can you can adjust to what you’re gonna do next based on which path they take and the typical ones they take is like someone will just lean into it because they’ve never had anybody ask them that and so then they just like excitedly vomit like everything about themselves and that’s pretty cool like it’s very empowering right and it’s it’s very graceful for another person but then other people because they’ve been conditioned to answer the what do you do or in our startup entrepreneurial economy world they’re so conditioned to like I didn’t even hear what that person said but they stopped talking and now it’s my turn to talk and so now I’m gonna pitch right now I’m gonna hit him with my it says like well so we’re building a platform and I’ll stop somebody sometimes sometimes I will stop a young founder or an investor and be like whoa whoa whoa hold on Jeffrey I didn’t ask you what you’re building like I don’t I didn’t I didn’t ask you about the fun scroll back a second on the on the tape I asked you what’s your story and then I get this like bewildered abused look of like oh my God what am I supposed to say now right and and I’ll sometimes say like dude you can start wherever you want you could say you could start with what you’re building that’s fine but I like where are you from where’d you go to school like are you married are you single like what like who’s your favorite football club like I like you know like you start with that what’s your favorite band like just talk to me and and it’s amazing but people will default it’s we’re so conditioned to ask and then to be asked though like what do you do where do you work question that even when given a clean slate of like so what’s your story we will default to that instinctive like version of the story that we pitched 70 times a day but man when I when I’ve had that happen and then I do stop people and sometimes you let them go that’s fine and then I let him finish and they’re like what do you think and I’m like that’s awesome I’m gonna put that over here for a second I want to ask you again what’s your story like what’s your story you as the human and then they’re like oh well I’m from Spain and am I like okay now we’re talking now I understand you right because and this is a storytelling tactic exercise for all founders or investors right like my buddy and we’re about to drop on our podcast kind of a refresh your summer episode um next week or today actually sorry that’ll revisit an episode from my buddy Yogi Roth and he reminds us all that whether he like he is a television producer writer uh on-air personality filmmaker author and and so it’s in the Hollywood world or in this or in or in sports or in business like us as entrepreneurs or investors we all have to answer four questions there are four fundamental questions to every story that you have to answer if you’re an entrepreneur I tell every entrepreneur if you can’t answer these questions in your own mind like you’re not ready yet right and it’s why you why this why now and why should anybody care and that’s the foundation as Yogi taught us that’s the foundation of every book in history that’s the foundation of every movie in history that’s the foundation of every television show and every early stage or successful company is that you became good at answering that and you eventually you combine it together right so it becomes why you doing this right now and then the who that like why they should care becomes the why the investors should care why the start of your your clients should care why should the market care right and and that ties back to the whole like what’s your story right this our stories are compilations of much more of us than just the thing we do or the thing we’re building or the fun we’re raising right well so what’s your story oh so we’re raising a new 27 million dollar fund like it’s fun too and I’m like whoa whoa whoa like I don’t even I’m not even I don’t even know where you’re from yet like so so those would be my big lessons right is asking someone else now speaking about asking them their story that’s a device that you could use to make it about them and then authentically so try and be your best self if you struggle with it do like you did in a miniature way in Mexico for four days and like mimic someone that you see that is doing what you think you should be doing or just flat out ask them to like help you figure out how to do it and then the last bit I guess in there like the third takeaway was just be enjoy it like be curious be quiet like I’m talking a lot right now but stop when you when you engage with someone and you make it about them and you’re doing it authentically listen just just shut up and listen take it in my dad always said to me like hey and this he was sent to us when we were kids but apply applicable as a professional we have two ears in one mouth for a reason right we should listen more than we talk and he remind he told me that when I was a little kid because I think he wanted me to talk less but then he reminded me of that as a young professional because he’s like you should literally talk less he’s like the greatest salesman in the world the greatest relationship people in the world the client will talk like 95 of the time and you’re there to guide them to the solutions that they need for their problems so that would be my three big things right like make the make it about other people ask on their story do it authentically genuinely be in the moment to be present um and and then just listen right like genuinely enjoy listening to other learning about other people um is Life’s a great adventure as I always say on social media it’s a great adventure if we just let it be.

Jeffery: Wow I love it I’m running out of paper I was writing so fast so I think there’s a couple of things a lot of things that we can unpack there but there’s a couple of them that really stood out and one of them was that and maybe this is the coaching side of you and and I’m almost thinking or I think back when I was playing Junior Hockey and and I was doing yoga and stretching and people ask me you know what thing this is later on they asked me you know what thing would you advise someone that was getting in and I would say you know what if you’re going to be an athlete do a lot of different sports and do yoga because it’ll help you strengthen muscles you never knew you had and that’ll change you dynamically and make you a better player so look at all the things you can do and now I take what you’re doing on the coaching side and I almost feel like if you’re going to start a business finish University or college or high school and go do something take a course in coaching because there’s a lot of learning that you probably will miss and not gain in the real world but you will get perspective as your father gave you and as you gain throughout life and it feels like there’s a lot of coaching elements in here that if you took a six week or a six month course in coaching you would be able to better understand yourself in this process because one of the things that really popped out to me which I think is awesome is that through all of this what you’ve done is you’ve taken your ego put it on the table beside you and you said I’m not about me in this scenario I’m going to empower you as a person so right what you got on this call or right when you get onto any call you have you say take a second and breathe and you know to your your father’s point I say uh breathe twice speak once and and you take that moment and you say I’m going to make this about you I’m not in this this isn’t about me it’s about you so I’m going to empower you and if I Empower You by saying your great line which is tell me your story and then cut them off when they start to pitch you on something and say no no no no no what I’m looking for is about you I want to know what makes you tick what is that you did this morning or you did 10 years ago that changed why you’re sitting here we wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t do x what is that what made you you and because you’re empowering people that gives them the energy to say wait a second you care you want to learn about me.

Rob: Dude you just hit it right there like that we got to emphasize that statement you just made wait a minute you care bro at the end of all this and I and I I probably talk about this more on social media than just about anybody else that I interact with on social media but dude this is all like we just want to be loved as people we’re human beings like like we just want to be loved and that’s a that’s a layer above like we want to be liked like of course we want to be liked like that’s but like that’s more superficial but like deep down we are desperate to be loved as human as part of a species it’s like in our DNA so to your point sadly most of society and especially business culture right has intentionally tried to like strip that truth away and like hide in the closet because they can’t talk about that right but to that person in your example is like leaning across a cable coin oh my God this person actually cares about me right like oh okay and that’s just DNA level stuff right there I mean that’s almost like a cheat code for like how do how do we and your example is an awesome one I forget that this happens because I live inside my own body but it’s fun to hear it from like someone who’s an observer outside of me in those moments but like that truth of like an hour later that person that I met an hour before when we run into each other again it’s like there’s an Embrace there’s a there is a there is a love rooted connection right that’s positive or people will say like like I just I you know you emanate good energy Rob and these are all things people say about me I’m not saying about myself I’m grateful for this but like and I recognize that this is true but like you know I I just I wanted to hang out with you like I I felt more energy your energy is infectious uh like you know all these things that are just ultimate compliments but the root of what they’re really saying is that there is this trust and connection that is unique and you’ve you’ve been kind enough to say this to me lately others say it the two phrases that I get a lot in the last couple years where we’ve been much more remote is when people interact with us on the podcast and they’re like like that was incredible like I’ve gotten a myriad of podcasts but like that conversation with you and Eliana like it felt like we’ve known each other for decades and like it was just so like I just forgot we were doing a podcast right so that’s an ultimate compliment to me um helping someone become their own like release their authentic self as someone said to me the other day and then the other one I get all the time is when we meet people in real life that we have nurtured relationships with online Twitter Instagram whatever it’s this immediate like oh my God you are literally the same person that you are online which that to me is like the greatest compliment ever right because then when they say that what they don’t know that my brain is spinning back to is well yeah because my dad taught me how to build relationships on a fax machine so so the truth is I only know to be this way and this is how I show up on Twitter and then like so I don’t have as a lot of people do and I’m not begrudging people their choices I’m just simply saying maybe there’s a more effective way to be a human is a lot of people adopt personas online right and so Twitter which I’m active on is very famous for this phrase like people to post which is some combination of being a bully in a sarcastic a-hole and picking and like picking arguments with people and I’m like that’s a whole Persona there are people who literally like I built my Following being that person and when I see that I’m like so you built you’re following being an like I’m like that’s not like so how does that how do you what do you do with that Persona when you’re at home on the weekend with your kids and your wife and your neighbors like are you a different person because if that’s true then what is the point right like because again to me Twitter email text messaging all that stuff those are just extensions of my metaphorical fax machine which my dad was saying like these are all just tools to build connection with other human beings to build relationships with other people so use the tools that are available to you because at the end of the day man as my friend Federico and Tony famously told us on our podcast one of the OG Venture capitalists in Mexico it’s all about the people Jeff it’s all about the people it really is and and what’s fascinating is that a lot of people will say it’s about the people but when you’re engaging with them they’re not about the people and they’re very pulled back because they’re not doing one thing which you really emphasized earlier on in our discussion and which I love which is ask questions yeah if you Empower somebody you can’t just ask one question and leave it you have to create engagement and engagement comes by showing that you understand where they’re coming from so you have to follow up to those questions and remember things like if you ask somebody about their childhood and then dismiss it later on they’re going to see that this was just a sales tactic and they didn’t learn from them now remember those yeah finer details they make a huge difference if I remember our engagement from uh start to end and remind you of it that memory is what brings the value back to us because it puts us back into a position where we first met or we’re friends the number of times the number of times I mean it’s it’s one of my great joys in life is revisiting mentally emotionally revisiting that experience in Chihuahua every time you and I talk because every time you and I talk no matter the context you do an incredibly masterful job of reattach to those stories and those experiences but I also now know you all enough to know like you’re doing that from the most authentic place ever because the reason that you’re reattaching us to those stories in the moment every single time we talk is because those moments meant so much to you well I learned so much from it you’re right it changes it changes the individual so you’re like I learned something so life-changing at that moment I was meant to be there to learn right that I’ve used it every day of my life from forward because of what I learned that’s it in my own form yeah like even which is which is the ideal I mean that right that’s the best version of ourselves is is as I always say in our own form right before we got on the the show I was on with a young group of of entrepreneurs from Latin America and a couple of times I could tell because I’ve done this so many ten thousand times I can tell when they’re just taking notes and they’re not really listening to what I’m saying because they’re fearful that they’re going to miss some like pearl of wisdom right and so then I stop them and I detour them and I’m like hey whoa time out remember everything I just said it’s just my opinion because we’re going to hang up and the minute we hang up I’m going to go on to a podcast with my friend from Canada and I’m going to be in a different headspace and you all are going to have to go back to take responsibility for this company because it’s yours it’s not mine I’m just giving you my opinion based on what I’m hearing and my experiences but you own this and then they’re like oh it’s like a subtle slap to the face like to get their attention again because we do this right like you got to be there you got to be in it you got to be in the moment and then do what you do we have a slide that we use in in our in a couple of our webinars that we give about how to be mentored so how to be a good mentee and then also how to be a good Mentor um in some of the work we do and one of the things we highlight is how to be an active listener and you are very good at this because and you’re doing it right now right so literally it’s the idea it’s the art of asking the question and then taking notes right we have we have a client in in the middle part of the U.S a technology company and there’s a section of that team that just famously shows up to meetings most of which I just participate on Via zoom and so I get to have this weird angle where I get to watch all these people sitting at a table which I probably wouldn’t watch all of them if I was sitting next to them um and the numbers of guys that show up with literally no notepad no pen no paper no computer nothing they just sit there and I like I have to call about then in one-on-one sessions like how like what how did you unless you’re like have an elephant memory there’s no way you remember the detail level stuff um and then I’ll pop out my little notebook which looks like yours I’m sure and I’ll be like I I just took three pages of notes on this one topic like I just asked five follow-up questions and I just kept writing stuff down right because there’s also a science as you and I both know and maybe the listeners don’t like there’s a science too even in our digital era there’s a literal biological scientific truth to the connection between the pen in our fingers and the paper and our brains and our ability to comprehend knowledge and information right so I don’t care if you love your Palm Pilot or you’re I just dated myself or your blackberry or your or your iPhone or your your Kindle writing device I don’t even know what all those things are because I just keep basically I just buy stacks of these notebook things right and I just if I go to a conference all I want is the notebooks I’m like I don’t want any other swag because I know I’m gonna need these because I’m Gonna Fill them with no it’s from conversations that I have um so there’s another kind of like bigger humanistic truth but it’s also a very tactical scientific thing that you should just do if you want to increase your ability to comprehend information connect with people my dad you’ll love this quick story because it’s the old school version of what you just said in the modern way so one of the lessons my dad would say we did knocking on doors in-person business in this in this business and it was small business people doctors lawyers and we were selling financial planning Financial Investment services so you’re trying to get into the office right past the gatekeeper for us past the front desk person trying to get into the doctor’s office one of the first tips that my dad said is when you go into these people’s offices when you do go into the office you have to learn how to mentally survey the office the physical space because then when you leave the first thing you have to do is then you have to take out your notebook in the car and you have to write down the things that you saw and he goes what this is what you’re looking for you’re looking for like the picture of him and his son fishing you’re looking for the the picture of his daughter in a ballet uniform you’re looking for the the the football on the on the Shelf the the American Football that has his signature on it and it’s got 1964 in it because that’s probably where he played college ball and you’re and you’re or oh he’s a Cubs fan or he’s a bulls fan or like and you’re and you’re just chronicling all that information because again in the physical old school world that’s how you did that by the way you can apply that in today’s world and frankly much more powerfully and comprehensive because now I can follow you Jeffrey potvin on social media and I can click there and then I can click through and I can click through and the next thing you know I’m listening to your podcast I’m reading the articles that are on Google you were interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and I got all of that available to me as as tools to help me use in a human way to get to know you better one background information but then also just to Simply have more common shared space between us right so like you and I travel I’ll famously remember when you were on our show uh uh and Ileana was interviewing here the thing that immediately bonded you to no other context in the relationship other than me the thing that immediately bought into is that you are a dedicated like hundreds of company World traveler or hundreds of countries World traveler and she is like the Wonder lost aspiring World traveler right and so she’s like I will love this Jeffrey podford guy forever and I can’t wait to beat him in person because he’s lived the life that I want to live and I just want to absorb his stories and be inspired and motivated because of maybe I’ll go be a traveler so like that’s common context because she’s asking Google questions you share some information now she knows that about you so now you guys are forever bonded right which if you never saw each other again or if you just ran into each other Guadalajara you’d sit down and have a meal partially because of the comfort zone of the podcast but mostly because in her mind she’d be like he is living a life that I want to live and I and I want to learn more about it and then you’d be like oh my God I love telling stories about my travels like I lived to tell those stories about a child so let me tell you Ileana so yeah it’s it’s you got to observe what is what is going on in the lives of the people that we’re trying to build relationships with and and to your point before like you should be trying to build relationships with the people in your circles and in your markets you should not be trying to sell them things or raise capital from them like every investor on Twitter says hey by the way build a relationship with me before you ask me for my money and some of them to your point don’t really mean that right because they’re just as bad on the other end of the relationship as others but in a base human level that’s what they hope for right dad’s old philosophy was give give ask that was just his life philosophy that was just give give ask give literally twice as much or give again before you ever get to a place of asking for something from someone and that in and of itself is like a great way to just like step out of your apartment or your house into the world that we live in and just think about how you interact with the rest of the human race that’s around us um if you want to give twice as much as you’re going to ask for it’s a not a bad way to live love it you created so many more things here I think we should just call this the cheat code of uh of podcasting but I I’m just gonna rifle a few off because we might have to make this six shows but there’s so much great Insight here that you’re sharing I love the give give ask and you know I think that’s staging it for a real relationship but the other thing that you you touched on when you were kind of exploring uh this whole process of and I’m going to call because as a past EX hack from a long time ago um that’s called fishing and fishing was learning everything about the person looking for photos looking for contacts looking for this where they had a sports match were they here were they there and then you can obviously get more information from that but that is so good genuine information that somebody can use to connect with people so just like when we go into our rapid fire questions they’re the same thing like do you like this versus that yeah you’re fishing to get information to learn enough that puts you in the same shoes or the same space as that person that’s in your while you’re empowering people you’re also figuring out and I think the context to what you shared is how you’re being vulnerable um as a host to asking these questions you’re also being vulnerable You’re opening up and sharing tidbits of information about yourself wow this process is going on while you’re creating this relationship which is opening that person up and that door for that person to do the same and when you look at relationships that are 10 20 30 40 years old and they’re Perpetual it’s because they’ve shared enough of that connection and bonding that allows them to go into more things they invest in companies together they do X and Y and that’s because there are elements there that they both see eye to eye hey we met because of this we connected because of these principles and now I think we could take it to the next level by doing X and you know if you keep looking for the right people and that really mirror you as a human and you you talked about this earlier on your empathy and how that you learn these skills you’re going to attract those types of people in your sales funnel in your in your life cycle and all of these things combined and then you’ll look back and say you know hey I’m as you mentioned it at 55 but look at all these people that have collectively come and followed me into these different buckets and if I need X I can go after X if I need y I can ask for y because you’ve collectively given enough of yourself but you’ve also helped them solve many problems and this goes back to you know earlier common comments where when you’ve built enough relationships they’re dumping more problems on you hey I had this problem and you were like hey I just came here to sell your fax machine and they’re like hey but you know what I I need um I can’t go to this trip because I need a plane and it’s a bush plane and I can’t fly to go to go fly fishing with my buddies hey can you help me out yeah I know a guy that runs a problem plate I can help you out so now you’re solving bigger problems that are tying you in deeper into this relationship and again that’s that give give get but again you’re building value and I think that that is so valuable in uh in all the things completely here and it really comes back to that is make sure you’re providing value and at the end of the day that’s what’s going to stem that relationship for each level year after year yep and make it repetitive or Perpetual as you grow 100 true I think in some ways I I have to catch myself sometimes and realize like I I do have maybe a non-traditional view of the world or I do look at things differently than everybody else does and then I have to therefore appreciate that there are other people who look at the same things differently than I do but like in my case I I often joke um or say like the you know I’ve gone through lots of highs and lows and there are times in my life uh even recent times in my life before I’ve they’ve been the like most cash poor person on the planet but I will also simultaneously be the richest person ever because in my world view whether it was instinctively shaped by my dad or it was seeds that they planted my dad and my mom and then I took to my own level as you would say and applied it to my own personality like I literally like the greatest single asset that one can own or have in their lives and then collect if you want to think about them as Collectibles is human relationships and so I like I I can’t even on my worst day in the traditional economic Realm of the world I cannot anymore feel so badly because I cannot deny that when I flip open my mental Rolodex of the human relationships that I’m blessed to have to have nurtured and to have in my life who care about me and to have accumulated or collected over the years like I I how I can’t look at that ledger anymore and be like well like oh no I’m really light socks and I’m really poor and I don’t have like resources and like that guy’s a rich guy like I just can’t do that anymore like without laughing at myself there was a period where I could do that and I would make that argument and it was a false argument right now I’ve gotten to such a point where I’m like the money or lack of money either lots of it or not enough of it it’s just an outcome like and I can’t freak out over outcomes anymore that’s just a result of something that did or didn’t get done at some prior step in the process but like the human collect the asset value I literally I would be Warren Buffett on human relationship asset value if we could attach that I would do that um and I know that now like proudly and loudly and that’s that’s very empowering um it’s very it’s very um yeah empowering it just it’s safe it’s it’s it’s it’s the thing that makes me say to friends like you like I’m the luckiest guy ever um to get to be this guy trying to live the life that I’m trying to live like because just people are just this incredible gift it’s amazing that you that you’ve you found this that you see it that you’ve learned it and that you grew for it because a lot I think a lot of us miss that opportunity to understand the empowerment that people have and what they can do for you uh indirectly just from a handshake or a phone call or whatever that might be uh but I think humans are incredible and it’s really how you work with them throughout time and the more you do it the more you learn and the more you’re able to bounce back and bounce around and you’ll you’ll find that it’s the most empowering thing you’ll ever go through just like running a podcast no you leave like you just drank 12 Red Bulls because the learning and excitement you get from it is the same thing you get from any sort of relationship that you’ve built and you’ll sit down and maybe you didn’t see the person for a year and it felt like you just were with him yesterday and I think that in time people will build these relationships and slow down and not everything has to be done at 100 miles an hour and they’ll realize they’ll get more out of it when they do take a slower approach to it take more time ask more questions Empower people and really genuinely get to learn what is actually about that person and I think you really you really stated it 100 by you know what is your story and I think that that this whole genre of what we’re talking about today is is really what is your story and I think you’ve created an incredible story and we’re gonna we’re gonna have to move on into our our next it’s been a blast first question is going to be before we get into the rapid fire questions what’s the toughest lesson you’ve learned over the last 10 years of really diving into the coaching part what’s the the biggest lesson you’ve learned um a misplaced belief or over dependence on my ability to solve all the problems and so that’s literally the lesson I’ve learned about myself and that I would say that in this example I am a proxy for every founder every entrepreneur every every executive that I’ve ever interacted with is that is the most dangerous called mistake or missed truth that catches the most of us is this this just it’s built on a sand castle or a pile of Sandman it’s this false belief that because we are the Creator the risk taker the Builder the dreamer then we believe we are endowed with that superhuman ability to solve all those really complex problems um ourselves and we’re just not and so again the leap from that the bridge from where that lesson takes you once you learn it is Ah that’s what all these other people around me are for okay let me humble myself or as you said before let me take my ego and set it aside for a moment let me subjugate myself for a bit to be able to admit I don’t know what I’m doing right here at this Crossroads I need some help I need some advice like hey I’m not even sure how to ask you this but like can we just talk about this place that I’m stuck at until I can figure out how to ask you or maybe you can help me figure out what I’m trying to say to you but I mean like that that level of humility and self-awareness that’s the key because humility isn’t easily tossed around like oh I gotta be more humble that we’re not right self-awareness man and by the way I’ve met plenty to be clear this isn’t like well because you’re old and you have wisdom and self-awareness yeah like that’s kind of how it’s played out for me but I meet plenty of like 20 year olds who are incredibly self-aware um and and are very attuned to like who they are and why they are and why we should care right and they have they carry those answers to those four questions but um yeah that’s the biggest lesson for me has been the number of times I see Founders entrepreneurs investors Executives struggling or massively failing I could usually strip it down to they just tried to fix it all themselves well said well said you know that that the helpers some always need help too we always have to go somewhere we always report up we’re down or sideways but we all brother brothers the mentor has to have some mentors here agreed and I like that’s that was a thing for me a long time I was like oh my God it’s draining I’m the mentor to ever I’m everybody’s Uncle Rob like I’m everybody’s Mentor but then I had to realize like I need mentors in my life and by the way I have some awesome ones that are like I just talked to one last week because it’s an interesting time in life right now he’s 81 years old he’s incredible for me like the wisdom and the experience but then I also have mentors that are in their 20s but teach me a different perspective well I would argue my 14 15 year old niece is a mentor of mine in some ways because she keeps me like light and like not getting too serious about things and remembering that it’s like so yeah the mentors the coach has to have a coaches the mentor the executive has to have someone that they as you say we report up we report down we report sideways yeah you can’t we can’t think of it as a singular solo thing that we have to do we don’t have to be the hero I love it no that’s good man that’s some great sharing um okay we’re gonna jump into the the 60 second rant let’s go our exciting part so I’m gonna well it’s all exciting but I’m gonna start the clock you got 60 seconds to rant about anything that’s driving you crazy Bonkers that you want to express and share I will have one rebuttal and then okay you’ll close it off and we’ll go from there are you ready yep go let’s go I’m leaning in on a tweet that I sent two days ago and by the way the most viral tweet I’ve ever sent in my life like this thing took off like tens of thousands of I like it blew me away it was two cents is one line build relationships period not connections we need to do more of that in business we need to do more of it in life but in this show let’s talk about for entrepreneurs for investors like there is such a dearth of relationship building and relationship nurturing and love and there’s such this Mad Gold Rush for connections and connections means followers and audience and subscribers and all these metrics like excuse my language it’s people man like build relationships not connections that’s my rant I love it so my revital to that would be in this fast-paced world and an environment and the high inflation High Cost of everything I’m trying to build a relationship but it feels it’s one-sided and the one-sided comes from the fact that I reach out and say I need a quote for this and not one person takes time to call me and ask me to go for a coffee or ask to meet me or just ask you anything yeah it just fires off a number and says deal with it and they don’t care they’re like I don’t need the relationship but the relationship has to come on both sides how do you make how do you make this work when you’re fighting for relationships and everybody else is fighting for a sale two two answers one two three quick answers so my dad had the three p’s rule polite professional persistence it’s like that is basically the Mantra that will get you through life polite professional persistence so sadly Jeffrey when you’re looking for that vendor or that home service provider and they’re you’re not getting you’re not getting any feeling of good customer service you know why that’s because I was right because those those companies who are the little service providers and the big ones are shitty at building relationships with their client base and they’re not nurturing those relationships in meaningful human ways and so they’re just selling stuff right and they’re just chilling goods and services and so your persistence has to be you got to keep pushing through until you find that vendor that fits you like that guy or girl that’s going to come into your house that’s going to work with your business like you got you just got to keep until you find that don’t do the cheap easy thing which is like okay I’m gonna put up with shitty customer service then I’m gonna just take the bid from that guy don’t do that because then you’re basically like you’re basically tacitly saying it’s okay that they can act like that right because we trade our vendors and our Avengers train us as customers right and so when we acquiesce we’re basically saying it’s okay you can treat me like crap United Airlines because I still keep you because I need my points like you know so so that that’s the PPP like just polite professional persistence and then the other thing is just um man you just again you just got to know who you are like there’s like there’s a lot like there are people like let’s be clear so everybody understands this there are people and vendors and business partners and all that stuff we shouldn’t you shouldn’t be doing business with like like I I don’t wake up thinking like I’m gonna apply everything we talked about today and have all eight billion people on the planet Are Gonna become my friends like I learned long ago that there’s probably 50 of the world that thinks I’m a nut case and doesn’t give a crap about me or even doesn’t like me and then there’s 50 of the world that would like run through fire with me my dad used to say stop trying to convert those and I I won’t I don’t want to be politically incorrect but my dad used to use a lot of religious references because we were Irish Catholics in the 70s so it used to be like stop trying to convert those people to become this religion that religion to become this religion and just go find the people who are the Believers in you and then just double down with that so we spend a lot of our energy as companies as salespeople as Founders as investors trying to convert the people the non-convertible leave them alone the minute that you know that’s not a good fit move on go find the Believers find your Believers find your try because then you’re unstoppable I love it I love it it’s uh your your father is a very wise man and uh you made it one hell of a fantastic student because uh you’ve now become the the teacher and sharing that wisdom so it’s absolutely brilliant uh I like the three p’s and people should live by those and I think there’s uh yeah so much good uh insight there so I like it and you’re right there’s some there’s a lot to be said about how you manage yourself and how you manage others and how you can build a real relationship you don’t need thousands of them you need five or you need ten and if you’ve spent your time just trying to figure out how to build those there would be lots of extra value that comes from them friendships included and it just takes some time to believe in what you want and figure out how to get where you’re trying to go and those are the people and and I love the fact that you’ve got 20 year old mentors and a 14 year old Mentor I think all of these all make a difference because it’s all perspective and not a perspective is what makes you a better person and and you can’t go wrong with that so I’m going to give you a quick as I know some of your audience is young hustle and Founders and then and then we got to jump into my I can’t wait for my rapid fire questions uh but uh I was on a panel three four weeks ago here in L.A at a big event and it’s my topical is to talk about how to build relationships through social media and I opened my statement by saying if you are interested in figuring out how to get a million or 10 million or 5 million followers I’m not the guy I said if you’re interested in how to figure out how to have 6 500 followers and actually no 5 000 of them I’m your guy and that speaks to what that speaks to what you just said right yeah you can you can be a channel or you can be a microphone and I guess you have to figure out which one is the most valuable for you yep exactly awesome well there’s a million things bouncing in my head that I’m gonna not say because if I say it we’ll we’ll keep going and uh yes I’m going to focus on the rapid fire questions let’s do rapid fire man whatever hey maybe there’s a part two of this show there might have to be I would do it with you in a heartbeat I love it this is good all right here we go rapid fire most famous person that pops in your mind Michael Jordan I like it fifth gear all right no idea why I always pick Michael Jordan man he’s my fifth year guy so I love it uh first brand that pops in your mind oh God now I’m gonna sound like a Michael Jordan Sports at Nike okay Booker movie ooh uh movie Superman or Batman okay quick but long answer I would have said Superman my entire life my former business partner once called me Batman and he said I’m calling you Batman because it’s the greatest compliment I could give you because Batman had no real superpowers other than his wit and his heart and he goes that’s you so now Batman I love it well for statistics and I don’t have the exact exact but from all of the podcasts we’ve done I will say that 80 90 of all investors and alike pick Batman and I believe it’s for the same reason yes it’s kind of the underdog in a sense but it’s also because they have real skills that have to make things work and I was just the typical consumer I wasn’t like a Marvel versus DC guy and my old partner was and so he was the one that like knew that reasoning right and I was like oh okay I do like Batman better now he’s just a regular Joe just happens to be rich right I love it I love it all right uh fortune cookie or birthday cake fortune cookie five minutes with Bezos or Oprah Oprah mountain or Beach ooh mountain now your a lot of your Instagram is Mountain so I would agree yeah no yeah I mean although I was a beach guy like for like up until like these last 10 years here’s the reason why mountains um there’s something about for me just emotionally there’s something about literally sitting above it all kind of like and literally physically being removed from the noise and and in that there’s like a Solitude that I I just don’t find at the beach anymore I agree with it I agree with you uh biker run bike Big Mac or chicken McNuggets McNuggets I’m a chicken guy even though even though they’re even though I don’t think there’s any chicken left at McDonald’s anymore true true uh trophy or money oof money beer wine neither anymore I’ve been a non-alcohol Drinker for three plus years now but uh would have been beer love it Ted talk or book reading look no offense to all my Ted friends but book Tick Tock or Instagram okay today Instagram three years from now tick tock Facebook or LinkedIn LinkedIn can I say neither but LinkedIn yes favorite movie and what character would you play oh my goodness this is impossible for a movie lover like me um oh my god there are so many choices but the one that I’m just going to spit out is Gladiator and Russell Crowe’s character that’s a great movie that’s literally it’s got to be one of my favorites it’s top five favorite book oh The Alchemist hands down oh good book yeah uh favorite sports team oh uh a myriad three uh three different sports three different uh Chicago Cubs um Arizona State Sun Devils college football and then Liverpool uh FC uh soccer Arsenal Arsenal yeah no I did not say her so you said arsenal we can this is we can ignore this part of our friendship although I’m a huge fan of Miguel arteta I think he’s I think he’s awesome I love the current manager at Arsenal so yeah but but I’m sorry I’m a bigger fan of New Yorker Club fair fair that’s okay I’m almost there man what is the meaning of success to you oh just living a full life working on things that you are excited about with people that you love um leaving every room and every interaction and every project a little bit better when you leave it than when you found it I love it what’s your superpower um clearly based on this episode having been born to Jack Ryan and Joyce Ryan uh because it’s produced me that I am trying to do their names justice but um my instinct and what everybody keeps telling me is my curiosity my infectious energy um and my human empathy I 100 agree with all of those you’re a fantastic superhuman and you’ve brought a lot to the world and we appreciate you and we thank you very much for joining us today this was fantastic Rob this is by far the longest podcast we’ve we’ve had today but the most energy I’m so sorry I’m so I’m so sorry for that I’ve contributed no this is good you got to break rules and make new uh New Beginnings so this is good man this is good I love it a lot of great insight as I say all the time I’ve taken millions of notes I can share good stuff uh but I I appreciate all of your time and the way we like to end our show is uh we like to give you the last word anything you want to share to the investor Community to startups to other superhumans uh we turn it over to you share how people can get a hold of you but again yeah thank you very much for all your time no thank you buddy I love you you know that I say that authentically and give you a big hug if I could um uh I’ll close with a statement and I’ll tell you how you can find me on social but I think the realization for me I teased you when we opened about I don’t know if I’m a superhuman but I love the pursuit of being a super human and I think the real takeaway from me which is again an Ode to uh my mom and dad is I think what we’ve really discovered is that my dad was a superhuman um because uh yeah that’s true we’ll just leave it at that so that that’s been my takeaway from today is I’m lucky to have been his son um and how you can get me you can find me literally anywhere I am I make it super easy on social media it is I am Rob Ryan I am r-o-b-r-y-a-n um and that is the same on Twitter now now threads which is new um Instagram Facebook like you could literally find me anywhere or on LinkedIn you just go look for Rob Ryan and then it’s the picture of the guy that looks like me um and uh yeah and please reach out like I I am the guy that has open DM so if there’s ever anything I can do to help um with you as a Founder as an investor as an executive you just need somebody to talk to you’re you’re coming to La if you’re ever coming to LA to visit you you want to visit with somebody have a cup of coffee like hit me up on DMS and I’m happy to help so thanks thanks for having me Jeffrey it’s been awesome I love you this uh fun Journey fun adventure today awesome I appreciate it thank you very much okay great great wow great conversation again really uh there’s so many tidbits that we we learn from this um Empower people make them important let them understand like these are all the cheat codes I love that line the cheat codes but yeah Empower people really help them out maybe uh you got to give up a little bit of that vulnerability understand what the vulnerability means uh give give ask you know give more than you take ask those questions you know make sure ask somebody how can I help you those are really important I like the three p’s polite persistence and professional and find where you fit and where they fit um you know learn the Art and Science of uh professional relationships and how you build them it’s going to take you and your career a lot further so thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel free to share with your friends subscribe to our YouTube channel and or please follow us on Spotify Google and or apple feel free to share an audio or video clip around our show and we may include it in one of our future podcasts you can find us on social platforms including LinkedIn at supporters funnel your support and comments are truly appreciated please visit us at supportersfun.com or startup events at openpeoplenetwork.com thank you and have a fantastic day welcome to supporters fun superhuman episode I’m your host Jeffrey potvin and let’s please welcome Rob Ryan at growth hacks relationship Catalyst coaching and storyteller as our superhuman for today welcome Rob we’re so excited to have you here today great to be here buddy thanks for having me on the show I don’t know if I’m a superhuman but I definitely want to discuss what it is to be super as a human well I think you’re a superhuman so uh I think everybody we have the opportunity to chat with and learn from are superhumans and because you guys are really diving into this I think there’s so much we can share and learn and you know just to take it back a few steps you and I met a few years back at an event in Mexico and I learned so much from you just on that Journey So today we’re going to learn even more and the way we love to start our shows off is that we want to learn a little bit more about you so if you can share all the way back to your Arizona State University days through the companies you built all the way to where you are at growth hacks today share a little bit about that and then one thing about you that nobody would know okay all right so I’ll I call this my dad used to call this my sharecropper story like I grew up in a small village no this is this is how I’ll get started so born and raised in Chicago um not not an original West coaster I’m coming to you today from Los Angeles I’ve lived out here in La Southern California for more than half my life now almost 25 26 years um born and raised Chicago went to went to school in Tempe Arizona outside of Phoenix at Arizona State um proud Pac-12 uh sports fan slash alumnus um and basically started building my career there went to work for my dad so my dad was my original boss um uh because he famously told my mom one time uh didn’t tell me this until later in life but told my mom at the time that well I’m just gonna have him come to work for me because he doesn’t seem what he he knows knows what he wants to do yet uh and this way I’ll at least train him in how to build professional relationships and sell stuff to people which will guarantee that no matter how badly he screws up his life he will be employable and so that was the premise under which I went to work for my dad he became my original Mentor in sales and Business Development which is the root of my career I spent the first 10 years of my career working for other companies working for other people as I said um selling everything from Financial Services to um Hardware to software uh and I I like to highlight that sometimes not because it’s about me but because I think in our world today that you and I live in inside of the startup early stage company ecosystem um so many young Founders like are literally enamored with the founder life when they’re in college and they they’re they’re they’re just trying to create ideas or companies out of nothing and I always lean back and go like that’s not how it used to be and this is just me sounding like a old Boomer like that’s just not how it used to be like you went out into the world like I did for 10 years and you worked for companies and you worked in Industries and you built stuff for sold stuff and you you saw problems that were in existence right and that was how we started our first company so 29 28 29 30 30 I started getting the itch in in a in a pre-internet bubble one era like and end of the 90s when everybody was building startups and early stage companies and uh and I myself and my field partner were selling to Big Enterprise clients and we were selling at the time I think it was like customer service software and every time we would sell like another half million or million dollar deal we would wind up in these side discussions with our clients you know out in the middle of North Carolina or the middle of Ohio or someplace and they would take us out to dinner and they would tell us about all these other problems that they had in the and that they were looking for solutions to and and we spotted the problem which at that time would be the problems that later would make up the world of CRM uh but but it was before we ever called it CRM as an industry and so that was what gave us the impetus to launch our first company and then the rest of my entrepreneurial Journey from then to today I kind of bookend really simply I always say the story is I’ve been a part of leading or founding four different companies two of them were my own idea and then two of them were somebody else’s idea and it’s it was the first one that I just referred to which was a company called busy mobile which eventually was a precursor to CRM um and that was my idea along with my partner and then this one growth facts the work that we do now across Latin America and North America um was my idea and the middle two which was one was an investment banking business in Asia um that took me there for five years in the early 2000s uh that was a completely different business born up by someone else that I got invited into lead and then the the third the middle one was a technology company selling Hardware software uh hybrid product um into the I.T space um and again was somebody else’s idea that they brought me in to lead and build so I’ve had kind of the range of experiences in my 35 years of working since I was 19 or 36 now since I just turned 55. um and uh when people say like how do you have this many stories how did you meet these many people I’m like because I’ve worked on a lot of different things over the course of my life right well some people hone in on one job and one career in one company that’s awesome that’s just never been me so that’s amazing and I’m gonna oh before we jump in one thing about you that nobody would know right sorry yes you did ask me that okay so uh no one would ever guess this if they saw me in public or online uh it was about 19. 95 and myself and my dancing partner won a salsa dancing competition uh in public at a bar restaurant against 150 other couples uh we we want this also be obviously competition the only reason we won this Gringo got taught how to salsa dance by that woman who was my dancing partner and at the time my girlfriend um for basically six months every Tuesday night we would not go out anywhere she would cook in and she would move the furniture out of her kitchen because in her little apartment she had like a linoleum floor so we could kind of slide around real easily and she literally taught me how to salsa dance from scratch and then like schooled me in it every Tuesday night because in her mind we were preparing for this New Year’s Eve dance contest that she had gone to for years and had never competed in and then when she did at number one and she was determined that we were gonna win and I was basically just along for the ride but proudly I can say we did win and uh I was also the only white guy in that entire bar that night in Phoenix Arizona um but uh maybe that was also foreshadowing of my life to come uh in Latin America that’s awesome it’s a great story too because you see the drive behind somebody and they had a goal and that goal was achieved by you know teaching you how to get there and making sure she had the best team to make it work and I love that that’s a six-month planning process that’s what it was she was very determined and I gotta say at the time I’d much rather would have us gone to the movie or gone to a ball game or gone out for a drink or something right but you also saw a little bit of my personality because like I’m open to just about anything and in those things that I’m afraid of or I don’t know how to do it all like I just need someone who knows how to do it to like take me under their wing and be like okay we’re not I’m not gonna embarrass you like okay I’m not gonna make you look like a fool right like and so in the privacy of our our little life in her apartment and I felt safe I felt like I could she was great at making me feel comfortable which is like a good leadership lesson ironically um and we went up dating for a while after that win although we didn’t stay together for a long time but great relationship oh that’s brilliant you know and and to kind of go back to some of the stuff that you shared earlier which I really want to kind of peel back on which I think is fantastic is that your father admittedly and benefiting himself said I’m going to help my son learn a new skill bring him into the fold teach them the business but teach them how to sell and this is going to help him in the future if he ever needs the job to be employable he’ll have this really strong skill set and why I love that is because I think there’s a lack of that today where people don’t actually understand how to properly sell they don’t understand how to make relationships or any of the above and they just assume that I’m selling something great you should just want it and I shouldn’t have to do any work to get it because why it doesn’t make a difference you need what I have and that’s how I’m going to sell and I I kind of want to peel back on that and maybe you can share a few of those things because I’ve experienced it when I first met you and and I remember the I asked you one morning when we were in Mexico and I said to Rob I watched you over the last few days and you’re phenomenal the way you gravitate to people you’re able to open doors up and they don’t even know you’ve opened the door and by the end of the conversation which could have been 60 seconds or 16 minutes they’re your best friend and I watched this and I was like wow this guy’s incredible I need to take him out for breakfast and I need to learn what this guy can do because it’s incredible how well he can engage someone and so quickly so maybe you can share some of those lessons that you learned because I think that that has helped you today at 55 which I think congrats it’s freaking awesome thanks that you were able to maneuver through build companies and get to a success rate which is all this learning so you said you have a lot of stories well those stories came from I think that first time that you actually learned how to sell 100 people can share what that learning was like no thank you at first thank you for the kind words first of all and Absentia we’ll pass those kind words along to Jack Ryan and say see Dad like we’re still living the lessons all these years later um everything you just said is completely accurate uh it took me a long time in my own personal maturity Journey as a human as a man to recognize this like that this was the brood of all right forward um and then to start kind of giving him as the kids would say nowadays giving him his flowers or giving him his props as we used to say right um but no it’s so much of my uh I I now attribute it to kind of the Duel at The Duality of my personality and then I’ll peel back on some examples of lessons he gave specific to selling but I say that everything that you get when you meet me now at this point in my life um is a combination of the DNA and then the inputs that both my parents gave me right so I was very privileged and very lucky blessed to be raised by these two incredibly good well-intentioned loving people but my mom taught me all the stuff that is the like natural empathy the love for others the loving others first and kind of taking that risk in relationships and in the public in general um you know the the service side of me if you like to say that kind of the the servant’s heart some might say um and then my dad taught me all the the science of it uh right so so his famous phrase back to kind of the professional development part his famous phrase to me was I’m going to teach you both the art and the science of professional relationship development and I now keep in mind this is not 2022 where we use words like relationships and community and all these these buzzwords now right this is 1988 89 90 91 right in a world where like for some technical context I mean think about that right like Windows 95 didn’t exist like there was no iPhone for another 20 years I mean two years into my tenure working for my dad in a financial services brokerage business which was what his career had been built in um we bought a fax machine and that was a huge deal like and although and also by the way he was completely perplexed by how to use this thing called the fax machine but at the same time that he was perplexed by this thing called the fax machine he was telling me aggressively you need to figure out how to use this fax machine because you know what this fax machine is this is just another medium through which we can communicate to others and you can use it to build relationships with people he’s like up to that point it had been male hard mail knocking on doors post cards handouts those types of things right he’s like this fax machine is just the next iteration which then made it really easy for me as I went forward in my life to then just say okay now I’m going to adapt to this new thing called the web then I’m going to adapt to this thing called email then I’m going to adapt to this thing called SMS and text messages that I’m going to adapt to this new iteration of the web which is social so to me literally like when I’m dming someone I’m dming you on social media or I’m posting something on social media today it’s not a question of like am I comfortable with Instagram of course I am because my dad helped me figure out how to be comfortable with a fax machine as an evolutionary step above writing a handwritten letter and sticking it in the U.S mail system to send it to a prospective client so he was very very focused on this idea of the art and the science and I love the the story which is a very common thing nowadays but the story that he was telling me back in that era which again keep in mind was born from his own experiences in the prior 30 40 Years of his career in life at that point right so this these lessons are embedded back to like the 1950s of of sexual you know United States kind of Chicago culture um and so he used to say I’m going to teach you the art and the science because the truth is that all the work in sales and relationship development is the science it’s the it’s the persistency it’s the follow-up it’s the sending the follow-up at the right time it’s the numbers of follow-ups and numbers of context that you have to make it’s the numbers of times you have to go knock on that door or send that message or do that follow-up that uh you know item and he says because basically when I get you to understand the science of it he says then when you are in front of people whether that be in front of a group of people or in front of one prospective client or an existing client then the artfulness of you and your personality can come out right so nowadays we fast forward and you know Malcolm Gladwell I think it was right wrote the book like 10 000 hours and talked about that concept LeBron James and the sporting Universe talks about this a lot like how many hours he puts in the gym so that when he gets on the court the muscle memory takes over and he doesn’t have to think about it anymore so good for Malcolm Gladwell good for LeBron James neither of them were born when my dad was sharing these lessons with me and when my dad was learning these lessons himself so some of this stuff as I always say Jeff is just Universal truths that I don’t care about the era I don’t care if it’s I’m talking to my 11 year old gen Z niece and or I’m talking to my 30 year old daughter or I’m talking to some young venture capitalist or 25 year old startup founder in Brazil like some of these are just universally true right is like you have to understand the mechanics the work of developing relationships and the science of that so that when you meet this crazy Canadian guy in some random City in northern Mexico and he says to you I’ve been watching you surreptitiously for two days and like it’s incredible well guess what you know what you were watching you were just watching The Artful side of me be being able to be on display and function almost subconsciously because I had by that point that you and I met in 2018 I had had drilled into me the science of human relationship development for 20 years right so it was like it was just it’s just an embed so what you see is just and I’m humbly grateful that you’re kind enough to highlight it but the truth is it’s just like an outcome right it’s not that I have a gift in the moment it’s that I might be gifted with some sets of skills or personality traits but they were sharpened by the work that my dad laid the foundation my dad was like saying like here’s your workout plan like this is how you’re gonna become fit except in his metaphor was this is how you’re going to become a credible sustainable professional relationship developer and side note quickly he used to say to me I’m I’m 19 20 21 22 years old at this time finishing University just coming out I’m desperately aware of everything that my peers think of me right I’m desperately self-conscious if I want people to like me and I want to be cool and he says to me one time he’s like and let me be clear about this this is like a month into the job he’s like let me be clear all your friends are going to tell you like your dad’s just trying to teach you how to be a Salesman and he says you know what he says you can tell those friends and off because they don’t know a fraction about sales and relationship development that I’ve forgotten over my career and he says when I’m teaching you how to do and that’s why I use the language that I have used throughout my entire career I am teaching you how to be a professional relationship developer I am teaching you the science and the artfulness of developing human connection between yourself and someone else and then how to facilitate it between other people he’s like that has that’s like byproduct of that is that you could sell stuff right but I’m not teaching you how to sell I’m teaching you how to do that and oh by the way why am I teaching how to do that because it’s been true forever that people will buy from people they like people who buy for people they trust people will buy from people that they have some affinity for right so he’s like I’m going to teach you the most important thing and then the byproduct of that will be the professional opportunities that you will get from it so now I attribute so much of it Jeff to those early lessons and it took me a long time because by the way like it wasn’t all sunshine and Roses like Dad and I were a pretty good dad son team and then Dad and I probably ruined the dad son relationship for about a decade because it was a worker you know Mentor boss relationship and that put a lot of strain on our personal relationship but we recovered all that by the time he passed away and so in context it’s all it was all worth it um because ultimately yes the person that I have been and am and will be for however long I have left um is attributable to those skills so that’s incredible and I love this story and the way you kind of brought in to your fold from your father this relationship side and I think that’s the missing key component to all of this is that when you were taught how to manage the new technology that was relatively understandable that you’re going to be faced with these new things that are going to come at you they’re just another piece to the puzzle of how you’re going to sell or how you’re going to outreach or how you’re going to communicate but the key here is how you build that relationship how you start the conversation how you manage the relationship and how you go forward and continue to benefit both parties or as you mentioned bringing in other parties into that mix to build and onto better and make things better and it kind of reminded me of a story when I was a kid I was 14 and my father uh said you need a job and I was like well I guess so and I already did a lot of things entrepreneurial things even though that wasn’t a term back then you know selling worms and my my mother reminded me that I was beer bottle collecting when I was uh a young kid every Saturday morning at 5am I’d run through the bush and collect beer bottles for the party the night before because they were behind my house and I would make you know at the time I joked and said I probably made three bucks but I do remember that I had Stacks and stacks of cases of beer maybe 150 bucks worth and I would get my father to bring me there and I’d get my money and I’d be excited right um You Were a hustler you were a bit you’re a young businessman I was I was and I remember my father said um you know to get this job real job at McDonald’s he said uh you know drove me there and he said go in and ask for the manager and shake his hand look him in the eye and tell him you want a job and you’ll work for free for two weeks and I said wow who the manager no and he’s like yes and tell me it worked for free I said free I don’t want to work for free and he’s like do you want the job that’s what you need to do to get the job I took that to heart and I walked in there and I asked for the manager I was probably shaking like a leaf and the manager came out I had it on my resume and I said you know hey I really want to work here I love McDonald’s etc etc and I’ll work for two weeks for free and he looked at me and he said Son you can’t work here for free I can’t do that that’s you’re not allowed to do that right but I appreciate the effort and we’ll be calling you and they did they called me and I got the job I was working as a cook so I I think the learnings that you gain from that is that that’s the entry point into how you learn and I think back in the you know 80s and the 90s and earlier is that the learning of how you sold was that everybody had to sell that it was tough times interest rates are at 17 and you had to figure out what gave you that advantage over somebody else and what your father talked about and how your father drove that is that he created the advantage which was how do you not only create this one-time sales but how do you create a 10 time sales how do you get them coming back because you are the person they Trust and Believe in and that’s the relationship side and you know I can say that I’ve struggled with that because it’s the building that relations but what I found was that through all these little anecdotal Stories the things that you learn and reading all these different books they always came back to it is that you can sell to that same person every company you go to as long as you’re solving a problem that they can get behind because you brought value to them the first time think about this in our current lingo right inside the the tech ecosystem especially where we talk about LTV right lifetime value like before that was a phrase yeah like that’s what we’re like that so my dad was teaching me that before we had that to call it I don’t know I don’t remember what he called it right but there was some annualized version of the whole potential value of a client um over time I mean now that was always I yeah it’s it’s uh again it took me it took a toll on us which was the downside of it and I was of course because he and I were very similar in so many ways I was of course the stubborn one that thought he was an for a big chunk of my adult life as a result of that but then it was again kind of mended as before he passed away and then that was all I needed and then now whether I say it which I do say it all the time um or I just live it um everything that I I’m doing is a testament to to him and to her in some ways but to him in this particular in the professional Pursuits for sure well you learned a lot from that and I think even from that time where you and I were sitting down for breakfast and I remember sharing to you that you know I watched how you could approach somebody shake a hand and just slightly it could be uh a touch on the back whatever it was and that person just kind of melded into your domain of making a comfort level and then you were swapping numbers laughing joking and then literally an hour later you would see them and it wouldn’t be I need to avoid this guy it was like almost a hugging embracing even though you just met an hour before and I was like how did you accomplish that in an hour I’m like worried and scared and hiding but I was like this is incredible how you brought people to that ease of moment and I don’t know what obviously it wasn’t part of the context of the sharing of information but what I found is that you engaged them made it about them and that person really Drew from that and maybe you can share a little bit more of context of how you approach that relationship building even from the very first uh High I’m shaking your handpoint to how you carry through because I think that’s important to learn no critically important thank you for highlighting that um again thanks for the kind words about those instances as I’m listening to you tell that story of Chihuahua Mexico which is where we were everybody um I I one of the proudest memories of that for me is that like of the three or four people that sat at the same dinner table that like next night I’m still close friends with all of you can we still communicate regularly and then occasionally when I talk to the other and I say that I talk to the other there’s this like excited curiosity oh my God how is he doing like I’m the bridge right and that’s that’s just a great Testament to life but but you raise a really like from a let’s talk about like the technical side of this for for young Founders for you for investors frankly just not even young let’s just be honest for all because we could all use Professor lessons in this um you you suddenly gave away one of the keys right which is making it about the other person um you know what whether you’re selling whether you’re raising Capital whether you’re raising Capital as an investor to LPS trying to raise your own money for your fund or you’re a Founder trying to raise money from investors or you’re a Founder trying to pitch your you know products and services to your prospective markets um you’ve I can’t emphasize enough like you have to lead with making it about the other people um uh I I do it almost to sometimes to the annoyance of people in my in my inner circles because or or even people that I will initially meet because will and you and I have had this happen we’ll have a call we’ll have a zoom set up and it’s you know they have their things that they wanted to talk about or something and you know maybe it was stuff about me that they wanted to find out and then I’ll just lean into this like hey like tell me your story right and and I make it about them and then sure enough like the clock runs out on the zoom meeting or the or the time together and and they’re like wait a minute wait like I didn’t I didn’t like I didn’t we didn’t talk about you at all I couldn’t find anything I was like nah it wasn’t what today was for like I like but was it productive was it enjoyable like did you well yeah it was awesome but I mean it was all about me I’m like that’s okay like we can talk again I’m not going anywhere right so so there is a it’s not it’s first of all obviously making making every interaction about the other person um and then doing that and this would be the second key like doing that authentically right and that’s not you know personal authenticity human empathy those are things that can be learned by the way I’ve 100 realized that over my professional career and my life um so they are not necessarily personality traits that if you don’t have them well then you’re screwed you can never get them like if you’re not a naturally empathetic person all that means is you’re not a naturally empathetic person doesn’t mean that you can’t learn how to be a more empathetic person which you can um so to me it’s same with like learning how to be authentically yourself right so part of part of by the time you and I met 2018 right I’m in this this chapter of my life I’m not a young kid anymore I’m a little less about you know trying to impress everybody that I interact with and I’m a lot more about just kind of like the fun joyful curiosity of meeting all these interesting people and so I’m more authentically myself at that point I’m a better best version of myself right so making it all about the other person I’ll give you a little trick like if people are looking for like okay how can I apply this in my life or my business tomorrow um I use this phrase like when I write or when I when I follow up with you or when I’m standing there in front of you like man I can’t wait to hear your story so hey what’s your story literally just what’s your story like I’ve opened thousands of conversations over the last 20 years with just hey Chad ah Jeffrey nice to meet you hey oh you’re from Canada that’s crazy so so what’s your story not and again very specific word choice not oh so what do you do which is the default at least North American question right and probably European question like what do you do right or where do you work those are the two things that we ask everybody and those are two of the worst questions of all time because the truth is like if I’m asking you what you do or where you work I’ve already Nar I’ve skipped past so much of who you are and I’ve like left us in this like Dark Lonely Alleyway that only is gonna give me one perspective on you and frankly it might not even be the perspective of yourself that you’re most excited about sharing because you might hate your job you might you might desperately not like who you are and what you do and so therefore I’m asking you a question that is setting you up to be uncomfortable right away but everybody my dad told me this three great mentors I had throughout my professional life before I started my entrepreneurial career told me the same thing everybody Jeffrey everybody in life that’s ever come out of the womb of someone else and walk this planet loves the opportunity to tell their own story now you could be you and a little bit more introverted and a bit quieter a bit more a bit less publicly loud but even you like to tell me your story that’s how I learned that you’re such an adventurer and you have such diverse interests and you you grew up in Canada and you had this like because we all just treat her naturally like to tell our own story so if if the first foray between us is me literally setting it up on a platter to invite you to tell your story I’ve already given us like a head start in the in the likelihood that we could have a deeper connection than just the other people who are going to walk up behind me in that room like if we’re in a physical room or or online or you know in the twitterverse um the other people that are going to come to be like what do you so what do you do where are you from like like those are like very specific answers and once you answer them like then what am I left with oh so you work with oh so you’re in crypto well I guess we’ll talk about that now now we’re not even talking about you right but what’s your show what’s your story or like what’s your story man like if you can tone that thing in a whole bunch of different ways and it just leaves the door open and I’ll tell you my greatest lesson that I’ve learned in my own life and it’s just been fascinating is the Myriad of directions that people will take their answer but it goes in a whole bunch of different ways although there are some typical ones that repeat themselves which then if you are if we’re being like a little technical lesson right here at this point in the show like then you can you can adjust to what you’re gonna do next based on which path they take and the typical ones they take is like someone will just lean into it because they’ve never had anybody ask them that and so then they just like excitedly vomit like everything about themselves and that’s pretty cool like it’s very empowering right and it’s it’s very graceful for another person but then other people because they’ve been conditioned to answer the what do you do or in our startup entrepreneurial economy world they’re so conditioned to like I didn’t even hear what that person said but they stopped talking and now it’s my turn to talk and so now I’m gonna pitch right now I’m gonna hit him with my it says like well so we’re building a platform and I’ll stop somebody sometimes sometimes I will stop a young founder or an investor and be like whoa whoa whoa hold on Jeffrey I didn’t ask you what you’re building like I don’t I didn’t I didn’t ask you about the fun scroll back a second on the on the tape I asked you what’s your story and then I get this like bewildered abused look of like oh my God what am I supposed to say now right and and I’ll sometimes say like dude you can start wherever you want you could say you could start with what you’re building that’s fine but I like where are you from where’d you go to school like are you married are you single like what like who’s your favorite football club like I like you know like you start with that what’s your favorite band like just talk to me and and it’s amazing but people will default it’s we’re so conditioned to ask and then to be asked though like what do you do where do you work question that even when given a clean slate of like so what’s your story we will default to that instinctive like version of the story that we pitched 70 times a day but man when I when I’ve had that happen and then I do stop people and sometimes you let them go that’s fine and then I let him finish and they’re like what do you think and I’m like that’s awesome I’m gonna put that over here for a second I want to ask you again what’s your story like what’s your story you as the human and then they’re like oh well I’m from Spain and am I like okay now we’re talking now I understand you right because and this is a storytelling tactic exercise for all founders or investors right like my buddy and we’re about to drop on our podcast kind of a refresh your summer episode um next week or today actually sorry that’ll revisit an episode from my buddy Yogi Roth and he reminds us all that whether he like he is a television producer writer uh on-air personality filmmaker author and and so it’s in the Hollywood world or in this or in or in sports or in business like us as entrepreneurs or investors we all have to answer four questions there are four fundamental questions to every story that you have to answer if you’re an entrepreneur I tell every entrepreneur if you can’t answer these questions in your own mind like you’re not ready yet right and it’s why you why this why now and why should anybody care and that’s the foundation as Yogi taught us that’s the foundation of every book in history that’s the foundation of every movie in history that’s the foundation of every television show and every early stage or successful company is that you became good at answering that and you eventually you combine it together right so it becomes why you doing this right now and then the who that like why they should care becomes the why the investors should care why the start of your your clients should care why should the market care right and and that ties back to the whole like what’s your story right this our stories are compilations of much more of us than just the thing we do or the thing we’re building or the fun we’re raising right well so what’s your story oh so we’re raising a new 27 million dollar fund like it’s fun too and I’m like whoa whoa whoa like I don’t even I’m not even I don’t even know where you’re from yet like so so those would be my big lessons right is asking someone else now speaking about asking them their story that’s a device that you could use to make it about them and then authentically so try and be your best self if you struggle with it do like you did in a miniature way in Mexico for four days and like mimic someone that you see that is doing what you think you should be doing or just flat out ask them to like help you figure out how to do it and then the last bit I guess in there like the third takeaway was just be enjoy it like be curious be quiet like I’m talking a lot right now but stop when you when you engage with someone and you make it about them and you’re doing it authentically listen just just shut up and listen take it in my dad always said to me like hey and this he was sent to us when we were kids but apply applicable as a professional we have two ears in one mouth for a reason right we should listen more than we talk and he remind he told me that when I was a little kid because I think he wanted me to talk less but then he reminded me of that as a young professional because he’s like you should literally talk less he’s like the greatest salesman in the world the greatest relationship people in the world the client will talk like 95 of the time and you’re there to guide them to the solutions that they need for their problems so that would be my three big things right like make the make it about other people ask on their story do it authentically genuinely be in the moment to be present um and and then just listen right like genuinely enjoy listening to other learning about other people um is Life’s a great adventure as I always say on social media it’s a great adventure if we just let it be wow I love it I’m running out of paper I was writing so fast so I think there’s a couple of things a lot of things that we can unpack there but there’s a couple of them that really stood out and one of them was that and maybe this is the coaching side of you and and I’m almost thinking or I think back when I was playing Junior Hockey and and I was doing yoga and stretching and people ask me you know what thing this is later on they asked me you know what thing would you advise someone that was getting in and I would say you know what if you’re going to be an athlete do a lot of different sports and do yoga because it’ll help you strengthen muscles you never knew you had and that’ll change you dynamically and make you a better player so look at all the things you can do and now I take what you’re doing on the coaching side and I almost feel like if you’re going to start a business finish University or college or high school and go do something take a course in coaching because there’s a lot of learning that you probably will miss and not gain in the real world but you will get perspective as your father gave you and as you gain throughout life and it feels like there’s a lot of coaching elements in here that if you took a six week or a six month course in coaching you would be able to better understand yourself in this process because one of the things that really popped out to me which I think is awesome is that through all of this what you’ve done is you’ve taken your ego put it on the table beside you and you said I’m not about me in this scenario I’m going to empower you as a person so right what you got on this call or right when you get onto any call you have you say take a second and breathe and you know to your your father’s point I say uh breathe twice speak once and and you take that moment and you say I’m going to make this about you I’m not in this this isn’t about me it’s about you so I’m going to empower you and if I Empower You by saying your great line which is tell me your story and then cut them off when they start to pitch you on something and say no no no no no what I’m looking for is about you I want to know what makes you tick what is that you did this morning or you did 10 years ago that changed why you’re sitting here we wouldn’t be sitting here if you didn’t do x what is that what made you you and because you’re empowering people that gives them the energy to say wait a second you care you want to learn about me dude you just hit it right there like that we got to emphasize that statement you just made wait a minute you care bro at the end of all this and I and I I probably talk about this more on social media than just about anybody else that I interact with on social media but dude this is all like we just want to be loved as people we’re human beings like like we just want to be loved and that’s a that’s a layer above like we want to be liked like of course we want to be liked like that’s but like that’s more superficial but like deep down we are desperate to be loved as human as part of a species it’s like in our DNA so to your point sadly most of society and especially business culture right has intentionally tried to like strip that truth away and like hide in the closet because they can’t talk about that right but to that person in your example is like leaning across a cable coin oh my God this person actually cares about me right like oh okay and that’s just DNA level stuff right there I mean that’s almost like a cheat code for like how do how do we and your example is an awesome one I forget that this happens because I live inside my own body but it’s fun to hear it from like someone who’s an observer outside of me in those moments but like that truth of like an hour later that person that I met an hour before when we run into each other again it’s like there’s an Embrace there’s a there is a there is a love rooted connection right that’s positive or people will say like like I just I you know you emanate good energy Rob and these are all things people say about me I’m not saying about myself I’m grateful for this but like and I recognize that this is true but like you know I I just I wanted to hang out with you like I I felt more energy your energy is infectious uh like you know all these things that are just ultimate compliments but the root of what they’re really saying is that there is this trust and connection that is unique and you’ve you’ve been kind enough to say this to me lately others say it the two phrases that I get a lot in the last couple years where we’ve been much more remote is when people interact with us on the podcast and they’re like like that was incredible like I’ve gotten a myriad of podcasts but like that conversation with you and Eliana like it felt like we’ve known each other for decades and like it was just so like I just forgot we were doing a podcast right so that’s an ultimate compliment to me um helping someone become their own like release their authentic self as someone said to me the other day and then the other one I get all the time is when we meet people in real life that we have nurtured relationships with online Twitter Instagram whatever it’s this immediate like oh my God you are literally the same person that you are online which that to me is like the greatest compliment ever right because then when they say that what they don’t know that my brain is spinning back to is well yeah because my dad taught me how to build relationships on a fax machine so so the truth is I only know to be this way and this is how I show up on Twitter and then like so I don’t have as a lot of people do and I’m not begrudging people their choices I’m just simply saying maybe there’s a more effective way to be a human is a lot of people adopt personas online right and so Twitter which I’m active on is very famous for this phrase like people to post which is some combination of being a bully in a sarcastic a-hole and picking and like picking arguments with people and I’m like that’s a whole Persona there are people who literally like I built my Following being that person and when I see that I’m like so you built you’re following being an like I’m like that’s not like so how does that how do you what do you do with that Persona when you’re at home on the weekend with your kids and your wife and your neighbors like are you a different person because if that’s true then what is the point right like because again to me Twitter email text messaging all that stuff those are just extensions of my metaphorical fax machine which my dad was saying like these are all just tools to build connection with other human beings to build relationships with other people so use the tools that are available to you because at the end of the day man as my friend Federico and Tony famously told us on our podcast one of the OG Venture capitalists in Mexico it’s all about the people Jeff it’s all about the people.

Jeffery: It really is and and what’s fascinating is that a lot of people will say it’s about the people but when you’re engaging with them they’re not about the people and they’re very pulled back because they’re not doing one thing which you really emphasized earlier on in our discussion and which I love which is ask questions

Rob: Yeah

Jeffery: If you Empower somebody you can’t just ask one question and leave it you have to create engagement and engagement comes by showing that you understand where they’re coming from so you have to follow up to those questions and remember things like if you ask somebody about their childhood and then dismiss it later on they’re going to see that this was just a sales tactic and they didn’t learn from them now remember those yeah finer details they make a huge difference if I remember our engagement from uh start to end and remind you of it that memory is what brings the value back to us because it puts us back into a position where we first met or we’re friends.

Rob: The number of times the number of times I mean it’s it’s one of my great joys in life is revisiting mentally emotionally revisiting that experience in Chihuahua every time you and I talk because every time you and I talk no matter the context you do an incredibly masterful job of reattach to those stories and those experiences but I also now know you all enough to know like you’re doing that from the most authentic place ever because the reason that you’re reattaching us to those stories in the moment every single time we talk is because those moments meant so much to you

Jeffery: Well I learned so much from it you’re right it changes it changes the individual so you’re like I learned something so life-changing at that moment I was meant to be there to learn.

Rob: Right

Jeffery: That I’ve used it every day of my life from forward because of what I learned that’s it in my own form.

Rob: Yeah like even which is which is the ideal I mean that right that’s the best version of ourselves is is as I always say in our own form right before we got on the the show I was on with a young group of of entrepreneurs from Latin America and a couple of times I could tell because I’ve done this so many ten thousand times I can tell when they’re just taking notes and they’re not really listening to what I’m saying because they’re fearful that they’re going to miss some like pearl of wisdom right and so then I stop them and I detour them and I’m like hey whoa time out remember everything I just said it’s just my opinion because we’re going to hang up and the minute we hang up I’m going to go on to a podcast with my friend from Canada and I’m going to be in a different headspace and you all are going to have to go back to take responsibility for this company because it’s yours it’s not mine I’m just giving you my opinion based on what I’m hearing and my experiences but you own this and then they’re like oh it’s like a subtle slap to the face like to get their attention again because we do this right like you got to be there you got to be in it you got to be in the moment and then do what you do we have a slide that we use in in our in a couple of our webinars that we give about how to be mentored so how to be a good mentee and then also how to be a good Mentor um in some of the work we do and one of the things we highlight is how to be an active listener and you are very good at this because and you’re doing it right now right so literally it’s the idea it’s the art of asking the question and then taking notes right we have we have a client in in the middle part of the U.S a technology company and there’s a section of that team that just famously shows up to meetings most of which I just participate on Via zoom and so I get to have this weird angle where I get to watch all these people sitting at a table which I probably wouldn’t watch all of them if I was sitting next to them um and the numbers of guys that show up with literally no notepad no pen no paper no computer nothing they just sit there and I like I have to call about then in one-on-one sessions like how like what how did you unless you’re like have an elephant memory there’s no way you remember the detail level stuff um and then I’ll pop out my little notebook which looks like yours I’m sure and I’ll be like I I just took three pages of notes on this one topic like I just asked five follow-up questions and I just kept writing stuff down right because there’s also a science as you and I both know and maybe the listeners don’t like there’s a science too even in our digital era there’s a literal biological scientific truth to the connection between the pen in our fingers and the paper and our brains and our ability to comprehend knowledge and information right so I don’t care if you love your Palm Pilot or you’re I just dated myself or your blackberry or your or your iPhone or your your Kindle writing device I don’t even know what all those things are because I just keep basically I just buy stacks of these notebook things right and I just if I go to a conference all I want is the notebooks I’m like I don’t want any other swag because I know I’m gonna need these because I’m Gonna Fill them with no it’s from conversations that I have um so there’s another kind of like bigger humanistic truth but it’s also a very tactical scientific thing that you should just do if you want to increase your ability to comprehend information connect with people my dad you’ll love this quick story because it’s the old school version of what you just said in the modern way so one of the lessons my dad would say we did knocking on doors in-person business in this in this business and it was small business people doctors lawyers and we were selling financial planning Financial Investment services so you’re trying to get into the office right past the gatekeeper for us past the front desk person trying to get into the doctor’s office one of the first tips that my dad said is when you go into these people’s offices when you do go into the office you have to learn how to mentally survey the office the physical space because then when you leave the first thing you have to do is then you have to take out your notebook in the car and you have to write down the things that you saw and he goes what this is what you’re looking for you’re looking for like the picture of him and his son fishing you’re looking for the the picture of his daughter in a ballet uniform you’re looking for the the the football on the on the Shelf the the American Football that has his signature on it and it’s got 1964 in it because that’s probably where he played college ball and you’re and you’re or oh he’s a Cubs fan or he’s a bulls fan or like and you’re and you’re just chronicling all that information because again in the physical old school world that’s how you did that by the way you can apply that in today’s world and frankly much more powerfully and comprehensive because now I can follow you Jeffrey potvin on social media and I can click there and then I can click through and I can click through and the next thing you know I’m listening to your podcast I’m reading the articles that are on Google you were interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and I got all of that available to me as as tools to help me use in a human way to get to know you better one background information but then also just to Simply have more common shared space between us right so like you and I travel I’ll famously remember when you were on our show uh uh and Ileana was interviewing here the thing that immediately bonded you to no other context in the relationship other than me the thing that immediately bought into is that you are a dedicated like hundreds of company World traveler or hundreds of countries World traveler and she is like the Wonder lost aspiring World traveler right and so she’s like I will love this Jeffrey podford guy forever and I can’t wait to beat him in person because he’s lived the life that I want to live and I just want to absorb his stories and be inspired and motivated because of maybe I’ll go be a traveler so like that’s common context because she’s asking Google questions you share some information now she knows that about you so now you guys are forever bonded right which if you never saw each other again or if you just ran into each other Guadalajara you’d sit down and have a meal partially because of the comfort zone of the podcast but mostly because in her mind she’d be like he is living a life that I want to live and I and I want to learn more about it and then you’d be like oh my God I love telling stories about my travels like I lived to tell those stories about a child so let me tell you Ileana so yeah it’s it’s you got to observe what is what is going on in the lives of the people that we’re trying to build relationships with and and to your point before like you should be trying to build relationships with the people in your circles and in your markets you should not be trying to sell them things or raise capital from them like every investor on Twitter says hey by the way build a relationship with me before you ask me for my money and some of them to your point don’t really mean that right because they’re just as bad on the other end of the relationship as others but in a base human level that’s what they hope for right dad’s old philosophy was give give ask that was just his life philosophy that was just give give ask give literally twice as much or give again before you ever get to a place of asking for something from someone and that in and of itself is like a great way to just like step out of your apartment or your house into the world that we live in and just think about how you interact with the rest of the human race that’s around us um if you want to give twice as much as you’re going to ask for it’s a not a bad way to live.

Jeffery: Love it you created so many more things here I think we should just call this the cheat code of uh of podcasting but I I’m just gonna rifle a few off because we might have to make this six shows but there’s so much great Insight here that you’re sharing I love the give give ask and you know I think that’s staging it for a real relationship but the other thing that you you touched on when you were kind of exploring uh this whole process of and I’m going to call because as a past EX hack from a long time ago um that’s called fishing and fishing was learning everything about the person looking for photos looking for contacts looking for this where they had a sports match were they here were they there and then you can obviously get more information from that but that is so good genuine information that somebody can use to connect with people so just like when we go into our rapid fire questions they’re the same thing like do you like this versus that yeah you’re fishing to get information to learn enough that puts you in the same shoes or the same space as that person that’s in your while you’re empowering people you’re also figuring out and I think the context to what you shared is how you’re being vulnerable um as a host to asking these questions you’re also being vulnerable You’re opening up and sharing tidbits of information about yourself wow this process is going on while you’re creating this relationship which is opening that person up and that door for that person to do the same and when you look at relationships that are 10 20 30 40 years old and they’re Perpetual it’s because they’ve shared enough of that connection and bonding that allows them to go into more things they invest in companies together they do X and Y and that’s because there are elements there that they both see eye to eye hey we met because of this we connected because of these principles and now I think we could take it to the next level by doing X and you know if you keep looking for the right people and that really mirror you as a human and you you talked about this earlier on your empathy and how that you learn these skills you’re going to attract those types of people in your sales funnel in your in your life cycle and all of these things combined and then you’ll look back and say you know hey I’m as you mentioned it at 55 but look at all these people that have collectively come and followed me into these different buckets and if I need X I can go after X if I need y I can ask for y because you’ve collectively given enough of yourself but you’ve also helped them solve many problems and this goes back to you know earlier common comments where when you’ve built enough relationships they’re dumping more problems on you hey I had this problem and you were like hey I just came here to sell your fax machine and they’re like hey but you know what I I need um I can’t go to this trip because I need a plane and it’s a bush plane and I can’t fly to go to go fly fishing with my buddies hey can you help me out yeah I know a guy that runs a problem plate I can help you out so now you’re solving bigger problems that are tying you in deeper into this relationship and again that’s that give give get but again you’re building value and I think that that is so valuable in uh in all the things completely here and it really comes back to that is make sure you’re providing value and at the end of the day that’s what’s going to stem that relationship for each level year after year.

Rob: Yep

Jeffery: And make it repetitive or Perpetual as you grow

Rob: 100 true I think in some ways I I have to catch myself sometimes and realize like I I do have maybe a non-traditional view of the world or I do look at things differently than everybody else does and then I have to therefore appreciate that there are other people who look at the same things differently than I do but like in my case I I often joke um or say like the you know I’ve gone through lots of highs and lows and there are times in my life uh even recent times in my life before I’ve they’ve been the like most cash poor person on the planet but I will also simultaneously be the richest person ever because in my world view whether it was instinctively shaped by my dad or it was seeds that they planted my dad and my mom and then I took to my own level as you would say and applied it to my own personality like I literally like the greatest single asset that one can own or have in their lives and then collect if you want to think about them as Collectibles is human relationships and so I like I I can’t even on my worst day in the traditional economic Realm of the world I cannot anymore feel so badly because I cannot deny that when I flip open my mental Rolodex of the human relationships that I’m blessed to have to have nurtured and to have in my life who care about me and to have accumulated or collected over the years like I I how I can’t look at that ledger anymore and be like well like oh no I’m really light socks and I’m really poor and I don’t have like resources and like that guy’s a rich guy like I just can’t do that anymore like without laughing at myself there was a period where I could do that and I would make that argument and it was a false argument right now I’ve gotten to such a point where I’m like the money or lack of money either lots of it or not enough of it it’s just an outcome like and I can’t freak out over outcomes anymore that’s just a result of something that did or didn’t get done at some prior step in the process but like the human collect the asset value I literally I would be Warren Buffett on human relationship asset value if we could attach that I would do that um and I know that now like proudly and loudly and that’s that’s very empowering um it’s very it’s very um yeah empowering it just it’s safe it’s it’s it’s it’s the thing that makes me say to friends like you like I’m the luckiest guy ever um to get to be this guy trying to live the life that I’m trying to live like because just people are just this incredible gift.

Jeffery: It’s amazing that you that you’ve you found this that you see it that you’ve learned it and that you grew for it because a lot I think a lot of us miss that opportunity to understand the empowerment that people have and what they can do for you uh indirectly just from a handshake or a phone call or whatever that might be uh but I think humans are incredible and it’s really how you work with them throughout time and the more you do it the more you learn and the more you’re able to bounce back and bounce around and you’ll you’ll find that it’s the most empowering thing you’ll ever go through just like running a podcast no you leave like you just drank 12 Red Bulls because the learning and excitement you get from it is the same thing you get from any sort of relationship that you’ve built and you’ll sit down and maybe you didn’t see the person for a year and it felt like you just were with him yesterday and I think that in time people will build these relationships and slow down and not everything has to be done at 100 miles an hour and they’ll realize they’ll get more out of it when they do take a slower approach to it take more time ask more questions Empower people and really genuinely get to learn what is actually about that person and I think you really you really stated it 100 by you know what is your story and I think that that this whole genre of what we’re talking about today is is really what is your story and I think you’ve created an incredible story and we’re gonna we’re gonna have to move on into our our next it’s been a blast first question is going to be before we get into the rapid fire questions what’s the toughest lesson you’ve learned over the last 10 years of really diving into the coaching part what’s the the biggest lesson you’ve learned.

Rob: Um a misplaced belief or over dependence on my ability to solve all the problems and so that’s literally the lesson I’ve learned about myself and that I would say that in this example I am a proxy for every founder every entrepreneur every every executive that I’ve ever interacted with is that is the most dangerous called mistake or missed truth that catches the most of us is this this just it’s built on a sand castle or a pile of Sandman it’s this false belief that because we are the Creator the risk taker the Builder the dreamer then we believe we are endowed with that superhuman ability to solve all those really complex problems um ourselves and we’re just not and so again the leap from that the bridge from where that lesson takes you once you learn it is Ah that’s what all these other people around me are for okay let me humble myself or as you said before let me take my ego and set it aside for a moment let me subjugate myself for a bit to be able to admit I don’t know what I’m doing right here at this Crossroads I need some help I need some advice like hey I’m not even sure how to ask you this but like can we just talk about this place that I’m stuck at until I can figure out how to ask you or maybe you can help me figure out what I’m trying to say to you but I mean like that that level of humility and self-awareness that’s the key because humility isn’t easily tossed around like oh I gotta be more humble that we’re not right self-awareness man and by the way I’ve met plenty to be clear this isn’t like well because you’re old and you have wisdom and self-awareness yeah like that’s kind of how it’s played out for me but I meet plenty of like 20 year olds who are incredibly self-aware um and and are very attuned to like who they are and why they are and why we should care right and they have they carry those answers to those four questions but um yeah that’s the biggest lesson for me has been the number of times I see Founders entrepreneurs investors Executives struggling or massively failing I could usually strip it down to they just tried to fix it all themselves

Jeffery: Well said well said you know that that the helpers some always need help too we always have to go somewhere we always report up we’re down or sideways but we all brother.

Rob: Brothers the mentor has to have some mentors here

Jeffery: Agreed

Rob: And I like that’s that was a thing for me a long time I was like oh my God it’s draining I’m the mentor to ever I’m everybody’s Uncle Rob like I’m everybody’s Mentor but then I had to realize like I need mentors in my life and by the way I have some awesome ones that are like I just talked to one last week because it’s an interesting time in life right now he’s 81 years old he’s incredible for me like the wisdom and the experience but then I also have mentors that are in their 20s but teach me a different perspective well I would argue my 14 15 year old niece is a mentor of mine in some ways because she keeps me like light and like not getting too serious about things and remembering that it’s like so yeah the mentors the coach has to have a coaches the mentor the executive has to have someone that they as you say we report up we report down we report sideways yeah you can’t we can’t think of it as a singular solo thing that we have to do we don’t have to be the hero.

Jeffery: I love it no that’s good man that’s some great sharing um okay we’re gonna jump into the the 60 second rant let’s go our exciting part so I’m gonna well it’s all exciting but I’m gonna start the clock you got 60 seconds to rant about anything that’s driving you crazy Bonkers that you want to express and share I will have one rebuttal and then okay you’ll close it off and we’ll go from there are you ready.

Rob: Yep

Jeffery: Go let’s go

Rob: I’m leaning in on a tweet that I sent two days ago and by the way the most viral tweet I’ve ever sent in my life like this thing took off like tens of thousands of I like it blew me away it was two cents is one line build relationships period not connections we need to do more of that in business we need to do more of it in life but in this show let’s talk about for entrepreneurs for investors like there is such a dearth of relationship building and relationship nurturing and love and there’s such this Mad Gold Rush for connections and connections means followers and audience and subscribers and all these metrics like excuse my language it’s people man like build relationships not connections that’s my rant.

Jeffery: I love it so my revital to that would be in this fast-paced world and an environment and the high inflation High Cost of everything I’m trying to build a relationship but it feels it’s one-sided and the one-sided comes from the fact that I reach out and say I need a quote for this and not one person takes time to call me and ask me to go for a coffee or ask to meet me

Rob: Or just ask you anything

Jeffery: Yeah it just fires off a number and says deal with it and they don’t care they’re like I don’t need the relationship but the relationship has to come on both sides how do you make how do you make this work when you’re fighting for relationships and everybody else is fighting for a sale.

Rob: Two two answers one two three quick answers so my dad had the three p’s rule polite professional persistence it’s like that is basically the Mantra that will get you through life polite professional persistence so sadly Jeffrey when you’re looking for that vendor or that home service provider and they’re you’re not getting you’re not getting any feeling of good customer service you know why that’s because I was right because those those companies who are the little service providers and the big ones are shitty at building relationships with their client base and they’re not nurturing those relationships in meaningful human ways and so they’re just selling stuff right and they’re just chilling goods and services and so your persistence has to be you got to keep pushing through until you find that vendor that fits you like that guy or girl that’s going to come into your house that’s going to work with your business like you got you just got to keep until you find that don’t do the cheap easy thing which is like okay I’m gonna put up with shitty customer service then I’m gonna just take the bid from that guy don’t do that because then you’re basically like you’re basically tacitly saying it’s okay that they can act like that right because we trade our vendors and our Avengers train us as customers right and so when we acquiesce we’re basically saying it’s okay you can treat me like crap United Airlines because I still keep you because I need my points like you know so so that that’s the PPP like just polite professional persistence and then the other thing is just um man you just again you just got to know who you are like there’s like there’s a lot like there are people like let’s be clear so everybody understands this there are people and vendors and business partners and all that stuff we shouldn’t you shouldn’t be doing business with like like I I don’t wake up thinking like I’m gonna apply everything we talked about today and have all eight billion people on the planet Are Gonna become my friends like I learned long ago that there’s probably 50 of the world that thinks I’m a nut case and doesn’t give a crap about me or even doesn’t like me and then there’s 50 of the world that would like run through fire with me my dad used to say stop trying to convert those and I I won’t I don’t want to be politically incorrect but my dad used to use a lot of religious references because we were Irish Catholics in the 70s so it used to be like stop trying to convert those people to become this religion that religion to become this religion and just go find the people who are the Believers in you and then just double down with that so we spend a lot of our energy as companies as salespeople as Founders as investors trying to convert the people the non-convertible leave them alone the minute that you know that’s not a good fit move on go find the Believers find your Believers find your try because then you’re unstoppable.

Jeffery: I love it I love it it’s uh your your father is a very wise man and uh you made it one hell of a fantastic student because uh you’ve now become the the teacher and sharing that wisdom so it’s absolutely brilliant uh I like the three p’s and people should live by those and I think there’s uh yeah so much good uh insight there so I like it and you’re right there’s some there’s a lot to be said about how you manage yourself and how you manage others and how you can build a real relationship you don’t need thousands of them you need five or you need ten and if you’ve spent your time just trying to figure out how to build those there would be lots of extra value that comes from them friendships included and it just takes some time to believe in what you want and figure out how to get where you’re trying to go and those are the people and and I love the fact that you’ve got 20 year old mentors and a 14 year old Mentor I think all of these all make a difference because it’s all perspective and not a perspective is what makes you a better person and and you can’t go wrong with that so.

Rob: I’m going to give you a quick as I know some of your audience is young hustle and Founders and then and then we got to jump into my I can’t wait for my rapid fire questions uh but uh I was on a panel three four weeks ago here in L.A at a big event and it’s my topical is to talk about how to build relationships through social media and I opened my statement by saying if you are interested in figuring out how to get a million or 10 million or 5 million followers I’m not the guy I said if you’re interested in how to figure out how to have 6 500 followers and actually no 5 000 of them I’m your guy and that speaks to what that speaks to what you just said.

Jeffery: Right yeah you can you can be a channel or you can be a microphone and I guess you have to figure out which one is the most valuable for you.

Rob: Yep exactly

Jeffery: Awesome well there’s a million things bouncing in my head that I’m gonna not say because if I say it we’ll we’ll keep going and

Rob: Uh yes

Jeffery: I’m going to focus on the rapid fire questions.

Rob: Let’s do rapid fire man whatever hey maybe there’s a part two of this show.

Jeffery: There might have to be

Rob: I would do it with you in a heartbeat

Jeffery: I love it this is good all right here we go rapid fire most famous person that pops in your mind.

Rob: Michael Jordan

Jeffery: I like it fifth gear

Rob: All right no idea why

Jeffery: I always pick Michael Jordan man he’s my fifth year guy so I love it uh first brand that pops in your mind

Rob: Oh God now I’m gonna sound like a Michael Jordan Sports at Nike

Jeffery: Okay Booker movie

Rob: Ooh uh movie

Jeffery: Superman or Batman

Rob: Okay quick but long answer I would have said Superman my entire life my former business partner once called me Batman and he said I’m calling you Batman because it’s the greatest compliment I could give you because Batman had no real superpowers other than his wit and his heart and he goes that’s you so now Batman.

Jeffery: I love it well for statistics and I don’t have the exact exact but from all of the podcasts we’ve done I will say that 80 90 of all investors and alike pick Batman and I believe it’s for the same reason

Rob: Yes

Jeffery: It’s kind of the underdog in a sense but it’s also because they have real skills that have to make things work.

Rob: And I was just the typical consumer I wasn’t like a Marvel versus DC guy and my old partner was and so he was the one that like knew that reasoning right and I was like oh okay I do like Batman better now he’s just a regular Joe just happens to be rich right

Jeffery: I love it I love it all right uh fortune cookie or birthday cake

Rob: Fortune cookie

Jeffery: Five minutes with Bezos or Oprah

Rob: Oprah

Jeffery: Mountain or Beach

Rob: Ooh mountain now

Jeffery: Your a lot of your Instagram is Mountain so I would agree

Rob: Yeah no yeah I mean although I was a beach guy like for like up until like these last 10 years here’s the reason why mountains um there’s something about for me just emotionally there’s something about literally sitting above it all kind of like and literally physically being removed from the noise and and in that there’s like a Solitude that I I just don’t find at the beach anymore.

Jeffery: I agree with it I agree with you uh bike or run

Rob: Bike

Jeffery: Big Mac or chicken McNuggets

Rob: McNuggets I’m a chicken guy even though even though they’re even though I don’t think there’s any chicken left at McDonald’s anymore.

Jeffery: True true uh trophy or money

Rob: Oof money

Jeffery: Beer wine

Rob: Neither anymore I’ve been a non-alcohol Drinker for three plus years now but uh would have been beer.

Jeffery: Love it Ted talk or book reading

Rob: Look no offense to all my Ted friends but book

Jeffery: Tick Tock or Instagram

Rob: Okay today Instagram three years from now tick tock

Jeffery: Facebook or LinkedIn

Rob: LinkedIn can I say neither but LinkedIn yes

Jeffery: Favorite movie and what character would you play

Rob: Oh my goodness this is impossible for a movie lover like me um oh my god there are so many choices but the one that I’m just going to spit out is Gladiator and Russell Crowe’s character.

Jeffery: That’s a great movie

Rob: That’s literally it’s got to be one of my favorites it’s top five

Jeffery: Favorite book

Rob: Oh The Alchemist hands down

Jeffery: Oh good book yeah uh favorite sports team

Rob: Oh uh a myriad three uh three different sports three different uh Chicago Cubs um Arizona State Sun Devils college football and then Liverpool uh FC uh soccer

Jeffery: Arsenal Arsenal

Rob: Yeah no I did not say her so you said arsenal we can this is we can ignore this part of our friendship although I’m a huge fan of Miguel arteta I think he’s I think he’s awesome I love the current manager at Arsenal so yeah but but I’m sorry I’m a bigger fan of New Yorker Club.

Jeffery: Fair fair that’s okay I’m almost there man what is the meaning of success to you

Rob: Oh just living a full life working on things that you are excited about with people that you love um leaving every room and every interaction and every project a little bit better when you leave it than when you found it.

Jeffery: I love it what’s your superpower

Rob: Um clearly based on this episode having been born to Jack Ryan and Joyce Ryan uh because it’s produced me that I am trying to do their names justice but um my instinct and what everybody keeps telling me is my curiosity my infectious energy um and my human empathy.

Jeffery: I 100% agree with all of those you’re a fantastic superhuman and you’ve brought a lot to the world and we appreciate you and we thank you very much for joining us today this was fantastic Rob this is by far the longest podcast we’ve we’ve had today but the most energy.

Rob: I’m so sorry I’m so I’m so sorry for that I’ve contributed.

Jeffery: No this is good you got to break rules and make new uh New Beginnings so this is good man this is good I love it a lot of great insight as I say all the time I’ve taken millions of notes I can share good stuff uh but I I appreciate all of your time and the way we like to end our show is uh we like to give you the last word anything you want to share to the investor Community to startups to other superhumans uh we turn it over to you share how people can get a hold of you but again yeah thank you very much for all your time.

Rob: Thank you buddy I love you you know that I say that authentically and give you a big hug if I could um uh I’ll close with a statement and I’ll tell you how you can find me on social but I think the realization for me I teased you when we opened about I don’t know if I’m a superhuman but I love the pursuit of being a super human and I think the real takeaway from me which is again an Ode to uh my mom and dad is I think what we’ve really discovered is that my dad was a superhuman um because uh yeah that’s true we’ll just leave it at that so that that’s been my takeaway from today is I’m lucky to have been his son um and how you can get me you can find me literally anywhere I am I make it super easy on social media it is I am Rob Ryan I am r-o-b-r-y-a-n um and that is the same on Twitter now now threads which is new um Instagram Facebook like you could literally find me anywhere or on LinkedIn you just go look for Rob Ryan and then it’s the picture of the guy that looks like me um and uh yeah and please reach out like I I am the guy that has open DM so if there’s ever anything I can do to help um with you as a Founder as an investor as an executive you just need somebody to talk to you’re you’re coming to La if you’re ever coming to LA to visit you you want to visit with somebody have a cup of coffee like hit me up on DMS and I’m happy to help so thanks thanks for having me Jeffrey it’s been awesome I love you this uh fun Journey fun adventure today.

Jeffery: Awesome I appreciate it thank you very much okay great great wow great conversation again really uh there’s so many tidbits that we we learn from this um Empower people make them important let them understand like these are all the cheat codes I love that line the cheat codes but yeah Empower people really help them out maybe uh you got to give up a little bit of that vulnerability understand what the vulnerability means uh give give ask you know give more than you take ask those questions you know make sure ask somebody how can I help you those are really important I like the three p’s polite persistence and professional and find where you fit and where they fit um you know learn the Art and Science of uh professional relationships and how you build them it’s going to take you and your career a lot further so thank you for joining us today if you enjoyed this conversation please feel free to share with your friends subscribe to our YouTube channel and or please follow us on Spotify Google and or apple feel free to share an audio or video clip around our show and we may include it in one of our future podcasts you can find us on social platforms including LinkedIn at supporters funnel your support and comments are truly appreciated please visit us at supportersfun.com or startup events at openpeoplenetwork.com thank you and have a fantastic day.