Pure Comedy

When I look back on that time of my life, I can recite the words spoken, the actions taken, the smell in the air (not that kind of smell), the songs that were played, and the people involved. I don’t remember my childhood friend because we liked the same movies, or because he would crush me in NHLPA on the Sega Genesis, but I do remember him because he was different, he never did anything under the influence of someone else, he hosted a “Kumite,” he was my best friend, and I will never so long as I live, forget him.

Unfortunately, we are no longer 11 years old and going to Kumite anymore, now we are waking up at 6:00 am on Tuesday just hoping to inject a cup of coffee as we drive our sedans to the office for the day. We are in sales, some of us are in marketing, others may be in management, possibly ownership, but most of all, we are in a routine. Every single day with the exception of our kid's activities schedules is identical. We look forward to the weekend so we can drop the routine for two days and get into something like a ball game, a social gathering, a concert, a getaway, or maybe just so we can relax and re-charge. As we get further into life, we forget things like people’s names, the places we have been, and unfortunately some of the experiences we have gathered along the way. I believe this is because we have to let go of some of the old memories to make room for some of the new ones. Do you ever get a friend request on Facebook or a connection request on LinkedIn and say, I really know this person, but I can’t think of where you know them from?

The question I ask myself when attempting to make a connection with another human being is how do I compete for space in their very limited memory. The answer in my opinion to this question transcends personal and business relationships.

BE MEMORABLE…...

Amazingly, I can have a conversation with someone who can hear the awfulness of what I am telling them about myself, only for them to pray for me right on the phone. In all my life, I have never felt I needed to feel forgiven or that I wasn't alone, but right there, at that moment, I felt different. After we prayed, Mark asked me for a favor. He asked me that I do not take it so hard on myself that we are all human- we have all made mistakes, and whether or not this happens again- we will always make them.

For just a moment, I felt a sigh of relief. For the first time in five days, I think I don't need to know all the answers. I don't need to control every situation-I just need to have faith. I know I may need forever to gain your forgiveness, but I don't want it until I have earned it. But today was a good day because I felt God's forgiveness, and since I have no idea how I will ever forgive myself, that felt a little surreal. Just when I thought I couldn't cry another tear, the "rain came."

Those are the words we tell ourselves when we "DO" care about what other people think about us.

I know it's excellent advice and essential self-talk to remind ourselves that there is only one judge in the end, but the truth is that when someone criticizes us, unfollows us, or confronts us, it hurts.

I should know. I tell myself this in "the mirror mirror on the wall" daily, but I would be lying if I said to you that it doesn't impact me. There are three significant discoveries that I have learned about myself over the past decade that I want to share with you.

Those were the words my high school hockey coach said to me the moment I decided to give up on myself and quit on my dreams. I was fifteen years old, five foot nothing, and I couldn’t have weighed in at more than 135 pounds. From the time my late father taught me to skate at the age of six, I had dreamed of playing hockey for the Minnesota Gophers one day. Instead, I shut my mouth and didn’t say a word in response. I just picked up my gear, skated off the ice forever, and never returned.

My spirit was crushed.

On November 6th, 2009, I held my son in my arms, and I called my brother on the phone to tell him I had a son. I had my back turned to the rest of the room as I held him in my arms and wept. I overheard my mother-in-law say "he's thinking about his dad" to my wife. She was right. I was.

Just two days before my son was born, my wife and I had every intention to name him Eli. We had no idea our second child would be a boy, nor did we realize that Chase Utley was about to go yard five times during the world series that night. On November 4th, 2009, Game Six, the Phillies star second-baseman hit his fourth and fifth homers that night, setting a world series record. Despite this heroic effort from Utley, Philadelphia still managed to lose the series, but the Laliberte's, well, the Laliberte's won big time. You see, when I held my son in my arms for the first time on that fall day in 2009, I never realized the significance of that moment until years later.

In 1999 I sold a stack of CDs and a pair of Lucky Brand Jeans to some guy I went to college with to impress a girl. The net was just around fifty bucks. Of which, I spent five on a low-quality car wash, ten dollars on some grocery store daisies and candy hearts, and rest on potato skins and a salad at TGI Fridays. The best part about this story is that I spent two hours cleaning out a car that wasn't even mine, with fifty cents I had to borrow from in-between-the-seats. The potato skins I ordered had to be returned to the kitchen at dinner because they had sour cream on them (not cool). Ultimately, a month later, this girl I did my best to impress by selling my personal belongings ended up dumping me. The part that really makes me upset is that "I think she was seeing another guy (couldn't help myself)." In the end, my mom wasted sixty bucks on a pair of jeans I never wore, and this 'cat' named "Emery" from Turkey was head bobbin through the halls of Bethany Lutheran College to my "Dr. Dre" CD.

The point of the story begins right here.

At one point in the middle of the night, I moved off my concrete bed, which was the middle of the jail cell floor, onto a bench seat that had just opened up. The person who was sitting there decided to abandon it for a stroll. Once he decided to return to his seat told me I need to move because "it was his seat." Keep in mind more than 30 minutes had gone by before I dared to sit there. He proceeded to tell me to "get the f*** off the bench." When I told him I wasn't moving, his response was idiotic. It was threat after threat after threat followed by the typical high school "clap" of "what do you think you're looking at?" It was at this moment where I snapped. I had this realization that nothing was going to happen. What was he going to do, shank me? No, this was the Fort Wayne "drunk tank." I was 6 inches taller, and no doubt had 60 lbs on this guy.

With no fear in my eyes or care for the consequences at the moment, I looked back at him with authority, raised my voice, and said, "what the hell do you think you're going to do about it? That's what I thought, not a damn thing. Just keep talking, buddy, and walk away."

And that's precisely what he did. He kept talking, and he didn't do a thing about it. In my entire life, I had never been more ready to "throw down" than I did at that moment. I had been in jail for only 6 hours and had already established my "street cred."

That night I spent in jail was one of the worst nights of my life, but at the same time, one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. For one, it was this horrible realization that there were consequences for my decisions, both good and bad, and two, there's no reason to complain about something you're not willing to change yourself. Getting in a fist-a-cuffs is not the ideal analogy but the confidence to ask yourself that question is.

Every day of our lives, we face life's challenges. And constantly, we are colliding with specific social issues we disagree with. With all of these challenges and disagreements, we have an option. We can choose to complain, or we can actually do something about it.

For the better part of the last five years or ever since I saw that testimony, I've spent a significant amount of time attempting to get your attention. Although not for the reasons you might believe. For some of you, it may be the impression of narcissism, for others it may be fraud, and for a very select few maybe it's exploitation. I can assure you, it's none of the above. If there were two things I would want anyone to know about me it would be that faith is unwavering and my passion for living an intentional life has everything to do with helping others. My family, my friends, and my colleagues. I'm a marketer through and through. I haven't always carried that title but that's who I am.

Fast forward 27 years and I'm not nearly as cool, but still doing everything I can to stay fresh. If I could go back and give my younger self some advice, I would tell myself to save those T-SHIRTS but that's about it. Things change and that's ok, just roll with it. This entire idea of old school got me thinking about the new "skool" of thinking centered around what I do for a living and how things have changed.

Selling pest control right out of college not only was cold calling widely accepted, walking up to someone's door was as well. Now trying walking up to a stranger’s door to talk about anything. Good luck with that! Just like those Umbros, I was all in. I cold-called everything that moved and stopped at every door with sure optimism. I believed I could convince anyone that I had what they needed, or worse, that I could bring up something that's never occurred to them. Again, I was so fresh, and so old school. That was 2004. Fast forward 60,000 cold calls, who knows how many cold emails, and here is the advice I would give to anyone starting off in sales or wanting to take it to the next level. On a side note, I'm not here to argue over tactics. If you have time for that do it with someone else. Also, read some of my old blogs if you want to debate because, in 2019, there are two major things anyone in sales needs to be doing NOW...Because this is the New Skool of thought.

Let me tell you a story.

Last week my son, who just started playing QB, was told not to throw the ball while "on the run." I thought that advice was comical, considering the following questions. "What if he knows he can confidently make the play?" "What if making the throw while "on the run" is better than the alternative." Or, "what if he has practiced throwing the ball on the run a million times?"

Because he does, because he can, and because he has. Ok, I get it. He's 11 years old, and I'm just another biased dad. That's true, and I can't deny it, but find me a father out there that doesn't believe in his son. Better yet, please find me a father who doesn't believe his kid is the greatest. You can't.

This article is really not about Football the same way Ted Lasso is not about a soccer team, but please allow me to hang on to the analogy for one more point. If you know Football, look at Patrick Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson, or even Baker Mayfield in the NFL and how they play the game. They run wild. If you're still looking at the game thinking that it needs to be played the same way you're father played it, you're probably watching Kirk Cousins from the Vikings and believing, "we're gonna win the Super Bowl this year." That's just a knock against myself (just the part about the Vikings, no offense Kirk). No, this isn't an article about Football. This article is about a box. And this box, well, this box sucks.

In my prime I was making 5-10 thousand cold calls a year. I would talk to 10 people a week, only setting 1-2 meetings. My lack of success didn't have anything to do with a lack of skill but everything to do with metrics that were outside of my control. So I started looking into what I could do differently. Now in 2017 using the approach below I have watched our engagement as a team go from 4% to 18% and currently rising. In 2012 I would have 12 conversations on the phone or email if I was lucky now it's closer to 60 conversations a week or more. Those are the leading metrics I track every week.

You don't have to agree with me, but numbers don't lie.

When you joined this platform you had an expectation. Most likely that expectation centered around making connections and furthering your professional career through absorbing wonderfully written and compelling content. There’s one problem though, when you logged into LinkedIn today it wasn’t filled with wonderfully written content, well some of it was I guess. Most of it was a combination of selfies and low-quality videos. You know the kind of pictures that seem like they would have been so much better and they just asked someone to hold their phone and videos that were filmed in the front seat of someone’s car, most likely while they were driving it.

The last thing that would ever cross your mind certainly wasn’t a quote for the single greatest piece of cinema in history, but if it was, it was probably closer to John Denver being full of it than Lloyd introducing you to what I am wanting to discuss. I’m talking about a little place called Asssspeeeen. Ok, I’m joking, this is all about the social pipeline.

Before I begin, you have to understand what a marketing funnel is first. Marketers [the digital kind] distribute content to very specific people at different stages in their buying process. As a certified Hubspot aficionado, I’m inclined to describe their version of inbound marketing to you but for the purposes of this blog, I will save that for another day. Hubspot breaks the buying process down into three categories each designed to direct the reader/prospect towards the next step in the funnel. Marketers may call this nurturing or a workflow, regardless of what it’s called, we are all currently in someone’s workflow. And no, I’m not going to waste time proving that to you.

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I was working on two projects simultaneously, each of them was attached to a deadline, and they were easily 100+ hours of work. I also managed a team, led a recovery ministry, served on a board, coached both of my kids' sports teams, and was planning a second mission trip to India. I was sitting at my desk doing my best to hold it all together when someone walked in and dumped another task on me. Something happened to me at that moment. I could feel my body temperature spike and my heartbeat through my chest. I got lightheaded and thought I had a heart attack. I got up, excused myself, said I would be right back, walked outside the parking garage straight to my jeep, and drove myself to the ER.

"I'm not going to die today. I'm not going to leave my wife and kids without a husband and father."

"ax you what your interests are? Who you be with? Things that make you smile, what numbers to dial?"

I was twenty rows back patiently, waiting for Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote. I was sitting next to three colleagues, two of whom were in marketing and the other on our sales team. It was HubSpot's annual Inbound Conference, and I wasn't there to learn anything about Inbound Marketing. Instead, I was there to soak up everything I could possibly absorb on the topic of Sales Enablement. Then Gary Vee came on stage and confirmed everything that was turning inside my brain. "Stop caring what other people think, figure out what you're good at, and get tunnel vision."

That story has nothing directly to do with the presidential election but what happened on November 9th does.

I had to laugh because I'm 100% self-taught.

Thanks, Roger. This one is for you.

Our friends were over at the house. My kids were outside asking where I was and when I would be off work. Meanwhile, my amazing wife was holding it down while I did everything I could to catch up. At the one time, I knew no one would need to reach me on a Saturday night. But this wasn't my company's fault. It wasn't my boss telling me I had to work. If you had told him we were working at that moment, he likely would have called me to say to me shut it down. No, I was on our leadership team. I was partly responsible for our process, for setting the example and the tone for our culture. I was the one who has always told my team how valuable "discretionary effort is." I was just as much to blame as anyone else. I was the one that did this to himself.

For as long as I can remember, this country has been dissecting the "great resignation" and trying to understand why so many companies are not only losing people but, more importantly, can't find good people to replace them. I believe it's a fair topic to discuss because I think it's a significant problem. Every single fast food restaurant in the small community I live in is only open because they have a drive-thru. All of the lobbies are closed. Some of them even have a sign on their doors that asks for empathy and understanding from customers. Recently, I heard a story about a grocery store clerk who was sobbing in the restroom because everyone was "so rude to her." My brother, who works construction, has been six days a week for as long as he cares to remember. When my brother is not working six days a week, he's easily putting in a dozen hours a day. I could go on and on about teachers, nurses, doctors, factory workers, servers, and don't even get me started on the guy who delivers your packages on Sundays.

Doesn't that sound awesome? You know it does!

I figured out that my mom could walk into my room and tell me to get off the phone. I just needed a way to signal to her from my bedroom. I devised a plan to hit the mute button and knock on the wall. Less than 30 seconds later, she would barge in, telling me I needed to let my girlfriend go (off the phone, that is).

"Sorry, gotta go. Love you, bye!"

My mom doesn't know it, but she was the original Elon Musk.

Thousands of professionals are facing the content issue on a daily. It's an exciting topic because social relevance's significance and pressure are more prevalent than ever before. I happen to believe that we overthink what to post as the answer is right there in front of us, staring us in the face. It's not something you pull out of thin air either. It's much more methodical than that. No, the answer to this question is a collaborative effort, and it's not even close to as difficult as you think it is. Content is Eazy.

I'm picking up a lot of chatter across the wire about the significance of posting content on LinkedIn. Apparently, it's a big deal to have a personal brand these days. Side note, it is, but that's not what I'm talking about here, so before I get into it, let me ask you a question, can you relate to these scenarios?