Is there a difference between marketing and teaching? Why should you look for the “no’s” within a team? What are the different ways to hack transformation?

In this podcast episode, Sam Carvalho speaks about why there is no difference between teaching and marketing with Joe Hudson.

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[SAM CARVALHO] Welcome to the Marketing a Practice podcast with me, Sam Carvalho, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about marketing and branding your business. To find out more about how I can help you brand new business visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Joe Hudson is a sought-after executive coach and creator of the Arts of Accomplishment, an online learning platform for personal development. As a venture capitalist, Joe founded the most rewarding aspect, and the part he was most successful at was the mentorship and coaching of the leadership of his portfolio companies. This insight moved him to his present role as a coach, business consultant and teacher. He now coaches 12 CEOs and leaders in prominent companies, and runs transformative programs for both individuals and businesses. He is practicing a craft that makes big, lasting and overwhelmingly positive impacts on the lives of people in these programs and in the companies he works with. Hi, Joe. Thanks so much for joining us today. [JOE HUDSON] Hi, it’s good to be here. Thanks for having me. [SAM] Can you share with us a bit about your backstory and how you got the way you are now? [JOE] Do you mean, well, I’ll assume that you mean practically. I graduated from college and I just wanted to have every possible experience I could have, so I did everything from like, teach head start in the Hayes Valley projects to butcher fish in Alaska, to do international stock lending, to be in a rock and roll band, direct films. I just did whatever I could, just having fun and worrying about money at the time, and that was my thing. Somewhere along the line, I was actually with my wife when we were engaged to be married, she said, “I want us to do a 10-day silent meditation retreat.” That took something that was a passion in my head and put it in my body. I had an experience during that retreat, which I was just like, whatever that was, that lasted eight seconds. It was like God’s little heroin addiction. I was like, whoa, I want that again and so I just spent years pursuing it. And I pursued it really hard, everything I could do, I did nothing else. There was literally seven years where most of the time I was sitting in a room meditating. I also did every self-help program that I was drawn to, so just dozens of different experiments. Then somewhere along the line, I realized I need to make money. We decided we were going to have a kid and I was like, wow, apparently, I can’t just sit in a room and go into debt, darn it all. Yes, so I realized I would never, I had this opportunity to venture capital and I realized I’d never be successful at it at, in any way if I didn’t make it about self-development. I took every business tool that I learned, and I figured out how to make that tool bring me closer to myself and how to help that create more connection and businesses. In that process I found the tools that I was synthesizing were far better, at least for me, and for the people that took them on and used them. I think partially because we all had a passion for it was like, oh, this is the way that I can make marketing or sales feel really good in my system. Instead of something that I had to do as a chore that I didn’t want to do, that I felt like I was convincing somebody. It was like learning how to make that part of the values of the business. So then I did that and I was successful enough, but then I really, what happened is people more and more wanted the tools and then people, then I realized as an investor that the biggest leverage point that I had was basically the perspective of the leadership, and then they would recommend me. All of a sudden, I had people wanting coaching and I was saying no and then I decided to do a course so that I had enough time to coach the people. The next thing I knew, I was just like, this is my passion far more than investing, which I was okay at. I wasn’t great at. I wasn’t in the top 10%, but we made money but yes, it was just really clear like, oh, okay, this is the thing that I’m meant to do and ever since it’s just been exploding. [SAM] Well, that’s awesome. It’s awesome that you’ve pursued your passions, but then also figured out, obviously, like you say, how to make money out of it. I mean, that’s the dream. So that’s amazing. Can you share with us a bit about how self-discovery makes better businesses? [JOE] Yes, so for instance we have these online courses. For me, the way I thought about marketing them, it was twofold. The first one was, if somebody’s coming into my course, what’s the first thing I want to say to them? In a weird way, when you’re coming into a course, part of the first thing you do for the first whatever it is, first 5% of the course is that you are marketing to them. It doesn’t matter if you’re reading there’s this, I can’t remember his name right now, but he’s the father of group therapy and he talks about how letting people know that this can change their lives, letting people know that it’s up to them, how far they go, like, those are two really important things, and again, becomes a really important part of marketing. So to me, there is no difference between the teaching and the marketing. If I create any marketing that doesn’t have the potential of creating epiphany for the person or any teaching that doesn’t create epiphany for the person, why would I do it? I would want to be able to feel great about every scent that I use. It’s the same with any aspect product development of a business, which learning how to become a better coach, better therapist, all of that stuff is. It’s all about creating deeper connection between yourself and your customer and yourself and your employees. So to me, when you see that, instead of saying, oh, I want to manage to this result to say, I would like to get this result, but I am unwilling to sacrifice my own connection or the connection to others, then the tool you use becomes better. Because a huge part of business is the interaction of people. [SAM] That’s awesome. I think it’s so cool, like what you mentioned earlier about how marking can often feel like a chore, I think that’s so good, what you said now that there’s no difference between teaching and marketing. I think if you have that perspective, then it just becomes like an integral part of your business and not something external that’s like a mission to do. That’s really good. [JOE] I also make it really fun. What do I want to share with people? What’s exciting to, what’s the thing that maybe I just discovered that I want to share or maybe what’s the thing that I see all these people that this week have discovered and how do I share that? [SAM] Yes, and then it becomes so much more organic as well, which is so nice, because I mean, that’s part of the reason why we do this podcast is because I know a lot of the people listening feel like marketing is a mission. [JOE] Yes [SAM] So can you give some insight into how to create functional teams? [JOE] Yes. I mean, yes. I can tell you what’s necessary, how to do it is a bit of a, I do that in organizations, big and small. There’s the approach when I’m working in like a 1500-person organization compared to the approach that I’m doing when I’m working with a team of 10 is going to be different. But one of the things that really helps us, transparency, any transparent, increased transparency that you can give is like shining light into the dark. But I would say one of the main things is transparency. That’s a really part of, so the more transparent it can be, the less political it can be. I’ve seen companies literally make everything that everybody says transparent, whether that’s through videos of conferences or through everything’s done asynchronously online so that there’s just very little politics that can happen. Transparency can also mean that it’s very clear what you need to do to succeed. I cannot tell you how many companies where that’s just not the case. It’s like the boss says this was good or this was bad, but it wasn’t clear upfront, this is what you have to do to succeed here. So that can create a lot of fear in the system and therefore a lot of politics. Those are some things. When I come into a team, one of the things I do is I create transparency really rapidly. The story I like to tell is I was sitting there with like a couple billion-dollar market cap company. I’m with the executive team. It’s like, I don’t know, six people. I think it was, maybe six and the CEO. CEO introduces me, takes about five, seven minutes to do it, I notice nobody’s listening. He hands it over to me. I said, “What makes it that you didn’t listen to the CEO?” I ask each person around the table and then I ask the CEO, “What made it that it’s okay that you’re, what would make you talk for seven minutes when no one’s listening to you?” What’s happening here? That’s like an immediate transparency thing. So transparency is a huge part of it. Clear goals is a huge part of it. Transparency is a lot about just letting go of politics, so that’s a huge part of it as well. There’s a lot of other tricks as well. A big one is helping the team be empowered. And there’s two main keys in empowering teams. The first one is that everybody really needs to feel, I hate using this word, but I’m going to use, it needs to feel safe to be able to express divergent opinions. The reason I hate to use the word safe is because today now people start using safe as a way to control, so they’re like, I don’t feel safe, really means stop what you’re doing, I get to control you. It is safety without trying to control people, it just means that I can say what I actually see and that’s really an important thing to get those diverse opinions out there. That’s one aspect of it. [THERAPY NOTES] Is managing your practice stressing you out? Try Therapy Notes. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. Check it out and you will quickly see why it’s the highest rated EHR on Trustpilot with over 1000 verified customer views and an average customer rating of 4.9 out of five stars. You’ll notice the difference from the first day you sign up for a trial. They offer live phone support seven days a week so when you have questions, you can quickly reach out to someone who can help. You are never wasting your time looking for answers. If you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will import your clients’ demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code [JOE], J-O-E to get three months to try out Therapy Notes for free, no strings attached, including their very reliable telehealth platform. [JOE HUDSON] The second part is empowerment. That’s a really big key. There’s two ways of doing the empowerment thing. The first one is to make sure that people feel safe. I hate using that word safe, but I’m going to use it for a second, safe to have divergent opinions. There’s this great study that Google did called the Aristotle Project, where you can look into what makes functional teams, and this is a big key. The reason I don’t like using safe is because at first safety means, oh, everybody can say something that’s true for them and they’re not going to suffer any consequences. But then people start using safety as a way to control others. They’re like, “You can’t do that because I don’t feel safe. That’s not what we’re talking about.” That’s one aspect of helping people feel empowered. The other thing is that you don’t solve problems for people. You don’t make decisions for people. This is something that I find a lot of the executives I work with have a hard time fully rocking. But instead of saying, somebody comes and says, “Hey, can I do this or this, or what should I do?” Answering the question teaches them that they, they don’t have the, it teaches them that you’re the one that has the power, not them and that’s super inefficient. So it’s far better to agree on what the problem is that they’re solving. Oftentimes, there’s not agreement there. Then agree on the criteria of success. So, hey, I want to change the HR thing. I want to change the way that, let’s say the way that we measure performance. Instead of saying, Great, so here’s how you do it, or let me make that decision, one would say, “Okay, what’s exactly the thing problem we’re trying to solve,” and come to agreement on that. Maybe that problem is get the best performance out of people. Maybe that problem is retainment of people. So there could be lots of problems that you’re trying to solve just in that. Then the second is what’s the criteria? So the criteria means, might be like, “Oh, it needs to be challenging.” The criteria needs to be something where people feel like they’re in control of the process. To some degree, the criteria might be that it needs to be measurable in such a way that everybody doesn’t feel like it’s just somebody’s opinion? Maybe the criteria has to be that you get multiple people’s opinion, not just the boss, whatever the criteria is that you agree with, and then you say to the person, okay, go find the solution that fits that, which allows them to understand the process and allows them to be empowered in it and allows it so you’re not making all the choices for the company. Instead, you’re teaching people how to make the choices. That’s another way of creating a lot of empowerment in organizations. There’s several, but transparency and empowerment are two really big things in that. The last thing I would say that’s really important is looking for the no in a team. So usually what happens is a manager has an idea of the way they want to go and they look for alignment and they get frustrated when there is an alignment. I think it’s far more effective to realize that every single no around the table has a piece of wisdom in it that can improve your solution. So how do you incorporate the nos? How do you have a, how do you get invite no’s instead of how do you overcome the no. Maybe that wisdom is just like a little bit, maybe it’s 1%, but it’s still important. [SAM] There’s some really good tips there. Again, just a different perspective on things, which I think is going to be really valuable for our audience. What are some ways to hack transformation? [JOE] There’s so many ways to hack transformation. I used to use that word all the time hacking and I think that the reason I liked using it is because it offered the possibility the transformation is not a hard long slog that you usually, it’s like, I got to fix a habit. Do that and then the habit becomes a to-do list, and the to-do list becomes a should and then the should is just part of the habit. Then you’re focused on the shame of not doing it rather than the joy of doing it. So I like the idea of hack because it allowed people to see that maybe none of that was required, maybe just recognizing the truth can change your life. Then I moved away from the word hack a little bit because what I saw was that it became a way for people to avoid the core emotional thing. So if you look at the way that our mind works, neurologically speaking, if I pulled the emotional center out of your brain, your IQ would be the same, but you couldn’t make a decision. You wouldn’t, it would take you long time to decide what to ask me in this interview, it would take you a half an hour to decide what color pen, it would take you four hours to decide where to have lunch. Your life would completely fall apart. So one of the hacks is understanding the emotional process of transformation instead of just the intellectual process. What I mean by that is that most folks know the following experience. They know that they should do something, but they don’t do it. I know I should work out, but I don’t work out. I know I should quit smoking but I don’t. I know I shouldn’t be such an asshole, but I am. This is when the intellect gets it, but the body doesn’t fully get it. The emotions don’t fully get it. That’s usually a huge hack, is to see what’s the emotional experience that you’re avoiding, and to not avoid it, to embrace it, to love it, to give it the attention that it deserves instead of avoiding. For instance, most entrepreneurs that I know that are very successful emotionally speaking, they embrace failure. They’re like, “Cool, I’m going to fail. I know I’m going to fail. This is great.” They’re like that cheesy pickup guy at a bar who’s like, flirts with like 30 women and is okay getting rejected 29 times but they get the one — [SAM] Keeps going. [JOE] Yes, but they keep going. [JOE] Entrepreneurs are a lot like that, “I’m just going to face the rejection over and over and over again.” Since they’re happy to feel that feeling of failure, then they can be very successful, whereas if someone’s trying to avoid that feeling of failure, then they don’t iterate, they don’t try multiple things. They try to get it perfect, which means they spend a ton of money and they never get it perfect because perfection or really good only comes, I don’t believe in perfection, but really good only comes because you’re iterating off of it, off of the customer base. You’re not iterating in your own head and you’re trying to experiments, whether it’s building a tank or whether it’s creating a marketing piece. You want to interact with it and you want to run little experiments and some of those fail. So just avoiding the feeling of failure can prevent you from being a great entrepreneur as an example, just one example of the emotional stuff that constrains us. So those are some of the best hacks are, is to help people learn to love their emotions. This is an incredibly in-depth topic, but you can, we have on our podcast Art of Accomplishment, if you don’t mind me saying that. We can cut this out. I don’t know if it’s — [SAM] No, no, that’s perfect. [JOE] Okay, so in our podcast, in Art of Accomplishment, we have a whole thing on the emotional series and all the hacks that are there. [SAM] Awesome. Definitely go check that out if you guys want to hear more about that. Joe, I believe that you have a free gift for our listeners. Can you let them know what that is? [JOE] I just found out from you what it is about. I’ll tell them. It’s a 10% off the connection course. The connection course is like five, two-hour sessions. It’s the situation where you just press play and you go through a series of exercises. It’s like watching a movie, we really wanted to make it fun and require no discipline. What it does is it teaches you the skills of being in connection, particularly around business, so how to have the conversations that are difficult, how to have the conversations that are, that some people would say are conflict, who are conflict and would avoid, how to have the conversation with your customers, how to be in that space that allows these difficult conversations, whether it’s marketing or product development to be successful. [SAM] Awesome. [JOE] It’s just fun. It’s a fun course. It goes deep. It’s fun and I just have to warn people, you will discover stuff, you will be pushed in it. [SAM] Amazing. We’ll definitely have the link to that in the show notes and you guys can use the coupon code Carvalho, my surname. It’s tricky to spell. So we’ll include the show, we’ll include the spelling of that in the show notes as well. So thanks so much for that. Joe, if people wanted to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that? [JOE] The website Art of Accomplishment, there’s ways to contact us. Probably, it won’t be me directly, but it’ll be Sarah. Then also through the podcast, there’s ways to interact with the podcast that you can find on the podcast page, also Art of Accomplishment. [SAM] Awesome. If every private practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [JOE] I had such a great answer for this when I was asked it before, but right now, the immediate answer I would just say is you have no excuse not to love yourself. Whatever excuse you have not to love yourself is bullshit. That’s what I would say. [SAM] Awesome. That’s a good note to end on. Thanks so much for being on the Marketing a Practice podcast. [JOE] A pleasure. Thank you for having me [SAM] Once again, thank you so much to Therapy Notes for sponsoring this show. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and telehealth a whole lot easier. If you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will import your client’s demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code [JOE], that’s J-O-E to get three free months to try out Therapy Notes for free. Thanks for listening to the Marketing a Practice podcast. If you need help with branding your business, whether it be a new logo, rebrand, or you simply want some print flyer designed head on over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/branding. If you’d like to see some examples of my design work, be sure to follow me on Instagram at Samantha Carvalho Design. Finally, please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast on iTunes if you like what you’ve heard. Talk to you soon. Marketing a Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic, Imperfect Thriving, or Faith in Practice, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.