February 25, 2025 • 50 mins
We all want our work to resonate—but how do we know if it actually does? In this episode, I sit down with storytelling and speaking expert Jay Acunzo to explore the concept of resonance over reach and how we can track something that feels inherently unmeasurable. Jay shares his Unsolicited Response Rate (URR) framework, a KPI designed to measure whether your ideas truly connect with your audience. If you're tired of vanity metrics and want to focus on making an impact, this conversation is for you.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- What a KPI actually is—and why anything (even calm or resonance) can be one
- How to measure audience engagement beyond likes and follows
- Jay’s URR (Unsolicited Response Rate) framework for tracking meaningful interactions
- The importance of putting in the reps before expecting results
Connect with Jay:
Connect with Susan:
- (00:00) - Introduction to KPIs and Calm as a KPI
- (01:07) - Understanding Resonance with Jay Acunzo
- (04:18) - Measuring Resonance: The URR System
- (08:18) - Applying the URR System in Practice
- (25:59) - Becoming Your Own Data Repository
- (29:07) - Developing Resonance in Business
- (33:27) - Embracing the Creative Process
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:06):
I like to say make calm your new KPI. But can an
idea or a concept really be aKPI? I'm Susan Bowles, and this
is Beyond Margins, the showwhere we deconstruct how to
engineer a calmer business. Andfor starters, let's talk about
what a KPI even is in the firstplace. So KPI stands for key
(00:29):
performance indicator.
It's a measurable target thatshows how your business is
performing against your goals.So the point of having KPIs in
your business at all is to makeyour company's values and
priorities both explicit andmeasurable. We're basically
using KPIs to clarify whatsuccess looks like. And if you
(00:53):
have a goal or you have a value,you can totally make a KPI
around it. Anything can be aKPI, even a kind of amorphous
idea like calm or likeresonance.
Today, I'm talking to JayAcunzo. He helps business
leaders become stronger speakersand storytellers. And if someone
(01:15):
somewhere is talking aboutresonance, I can almost
guarantee that Jay's name isgonna come up. His rallying cry
to storytellers is resonanceover reach. Resonance is his
North Star in the same way thatcalm is mine.
It's his goal for his own work,but also for the work he does
with clients. And that's great.We all want our work to
(01:37):
resonate. But how do you know ifit does? Well, Jay actually
designed a KPI and a system tohelp measure resonance, and
that's what we're geeking outabout today.
Okay. So one of the main focusesof your work is resonance, this
(01:58):
idea that resonance is moreimportant than reach.
Jay Acunzo (02:02):
I don't think it should be a radical idea, but I
think it does turn some heads tosay that I do believe and
explore this concept everywhereI go, that you should prioritize
resonance over reach to growyour business, to grow your
audience even, to serve yourcustomers, your partners. It
doesn't matter. Like, reach ishow many see it, and resonance
(02:24):
is how much they care. And noamount of reach guarantees that
they care. Like, the threetiniest words that have the
biggest possible impact on yourbusiness is make me care.
And I serve as a public speakingcoach and adviser as a sort of
message designer and strategist.Like, I serve clients who arrive
with ample expertise. Maybe theylead a whole company or a team.
(02:47):
Maybe they're soloists like youand I, but they are earning a
living on their expertise andtheir competency. And so I like
to say that what they knowmatters, but what they say and
how they say it has to make thatclear.
And that's a surprisingly biggap for a lot of people. Like,
can you make me care? Can youopen your mouth or write your
words and do so in a way thatactually resonates with me and
(03:08):
gives me that energy I need towant to take an action. Like,
there's this urge to act thatyou can impart with somebody.
Maybe people listening right nowor maybe people who listen to
you in general, they feel thatwhen they hear from you or maybe
from me.
And so, yeah, like, the sort ofpunchline to all this is I wanna
help people who have substance,who have something to offer and
(03:29):
something to say, find a way tosay it to differentiate and to
resonate so that they can marketless because they matter more.
Susan Boles (03:38):
I love this, and I have loved it forever. And
literally, I have like, yourvoice is in the back of my head
all the time.
Jay Acunzo (03:46):
Sometimes literally as a podcaster. So yeah. Also
true. That helps. Helps.
Susan Boles (03:52):
And I think the idea of resonance is great in
theory. It sounds fantastic tosay, yes. Resonance is
important. It's important thatpeople care about your work.
Like comb, it's something thatis a pretty cool KPI to set,
something to aim for.
(04:12):
But the real question is, how doyou know if you're doing it? How
do you know if it's working?
Jay Acunzo (04:18):
I think of it as and we can use marketing parlance if
it's easier for people. Like,awareness versus affinity, you
can buy a lot of awareness basedmetrics and results. You can't
buy anything related toaffinity. You can buy proxies
for that or what you think needsto happen first. It'd be like
akin to walking the earth atsome giant cocktail party.
(04:38):
Let's just call that offlineparty the Internet. And you're
so obsessed with the handshake,and you can buy your way into
certain rooms to shake hands.Right? Great. But then what
happens next is you actuallyhave to, like, interact with
these people, build arelationship with these people,
earn trust with these people.
Like, the affinity part isactually the vast majority of
what we're after and what weneed to build a business. And
(05:02):
delineate between reach andresonance or just to understand,
like, what are we measuring hereis you're trying to figure out
and measure that which can onlybe earned, not purchased. So
I'll give you an example. Irecently gave a speech in Boston
to a group of marketers, and Ihave this metaphor I use about
(05:23):
me making espresso. It's, like,halfway through the speech.
It's this hilarious little bitI've been working on and
reworking and reinventing it,and it finally, like, clicks. It
works in the talk. It's about memaking espresso. Okay. A woman
ran up to me after the talk, andshe was like, Jay.
And I was so excited. I've had along night because I have a six
year old and a three year old,and I was tired. I was like, I
could use some energy from thecrowd here. Here comes a
(05:46):
compliment my way. And she goes,I gotta say, when you started
talking about espresso, I almostlooked at my phone, and I was
like, womp womp.
But then what she said next isactually a signal I resonated.
She goes, but then as you toldthe story, I stopped thinking
about espresso because I don'tlike coffee. In fact, I hate it.
(06:06):
But I started thinking about,oh, I go through something
similar when you make espressowhen I deal with my car. And I
was like, okay.
That to me is actually thestrongest sign that you have
resonated with someone, which isthey reflect back their own
story and experience because ofyour ideas. That is an instance
(06:27):
of a metric that I made upcalled URR. Because if it's not
an acronym in my world, youcan't be taken seriously. URR
stands for unsolicited responserate. Without being the frenetic
YouTuber who's like, what do youguys think?
Drop a comment below. Withoutbeing the kinda showy, chess
beating LinkedIn bro, like,comment want for my ultimate
(06:50):
guide to growth. Without gamingit, can you share something with
your audience that compels themto respond? Unsolicited response
rate. And I think the best,strongest unsolicited response
is somebody invests time andreally their reputation to do
(07:11):
something as high friction asreflect back their story as it
connects to yours.
Right? It's so much morepowerful than, like, nice.
Thanks. This is great. I'llreshare it.
That's good too. So So there's,like, a spectrum of these
unsolicited responses, but weneed to start by embracing.
Resonance is that which must beearned and can't be purchased.
(07:31):
How do you measure that whichcan only be earned? This is a
signal I've come up with, URR.
Susan Boles (07:38):
I think it is an interesting way to actually try
to grasp at something that iskind of ungraspable. We're
talking about measuringessentially a concept here, a
very high level feeling ofsomething. I'm a data geek. I
want data. I wanna know ifthings are working.
(07:59):
I want to have something to helpme evaluate whether or not what
I'm doing, whether that isfinancial, whether whether that
is making a friend, is itworking? What matters? And what
direction do I need to put myefforts? Because I'm a big fan
of let's not do things thatdon't matter and just waste
time.
Jay Acunzo (08:18):
Yes.
Susan Boles (08:19):
So talk me through how you kind of developed this
measurement system. How do youevaluate and actually quantify
that URR?
Jay Acunzo (08:31):
It started in a simple place. I'm such a fan of
comedians. It's like thisultimate almost democratization
of the material. Like, itdoesn't matter how famous or not
you are. Jerry Seinfeld has thisfamous quote where he talks
about, I get to be Seinfeld onstage for five minutes, then I
have to deliver.
And, like, they are not on stageending a joke going, please
(08:51):
laugh. Or, you know, do youagree? Laugh if it's if it's
true to you. Again, back toSeinfeld. His book title, Is
This Anything?
They just put out the joke, andthen within their head, they
step back and observe theaudience reacting. And then they
go and refine their ideas andsharpen them and improve them or
kill it. And we don't do thatenough. We don't aerate our
thinking and our thoughtsactively, publicly enough. We
(09:13):
just think of anything we dopublicly as, like, distribution
and marketing.
I actually use social media muchmore like a comedian who uses a
small comedy club. It's mesharpening my thinking. And, oh,
by the way, as I do that, I amgathering fans and followers and
customers. So, anyways, the wayI look at this is, okay, if I'm
gonna compel people to respond,it's the strength of the idea
(09:34):
I'm looking for. And I'm notjust looking for that one post.
I'm looking to create IP, likesignature stories or a signature
framework, methodologies I canteach everywhere, key terms I
can define like resonance or youhave, you know, a default
decision is something I've heardyou define before. That's one
bit of your IP. And as I'mlooking to collect and craft and
strengthen my IP, I'm alsogauging how effective I am today
(09:59):
at explaining it the right wayso it resonates.
Susan Boles (10:02):
Jay and I are almost opposites in style when
it comes to how we operate. Hetends to focus on his intuition,
but I really need to have somedata behind it. It probably
comes from having started mycareer as a data analyst. For
Jay, he spends most daysthinking about and observing
resonance. So he's developed apretty good internal compass for
(10:23):
his own work.
He can kind of intuitively tellwhether or not a particular
piece of work resonated becausehe's carefully honed his
internal dataset over the lastdecade. For you and me, probably
not the case. So Jay developedthe URR as a tool for those of
us mere mortals trying to buildour own internal dataset. It
(10:44):
works on a sliding scale whereyou can earn zero to six points
for each response or lackthereof. Here's how Jay
describes it.
Jay Acunzo (10:53):
If I'm working with I don't know who's a good
example. I know this person.She's wonderful. You should
follow her. Her name is SusanBowles.
If I talk to someone like aSusan, I might say, well, here's
a point spectrum you canactually log and track. And I've
done this for so many years. Ino longer need to, but may it
serve you, fictional human Ijust invented named Susan.
(11:13):
Here's the spectrum. So you putout a post on social media.
You put out an episode. Youdeliver your newsletter, and
you're like, did it compelpeople to respond? Do they have
the urge to act and engage? Notbecause I gained it, but because
it actually was unsolicited.Well, you get no points for no
response.
And it's not that you drop theidea. If you have conviction
(11:37):
around the idea and it got noresponse, that's still data.
Maybe it's not the problem withthe idea itself. Maybe you're in
front of the wrong crowd. Ormaybe it's actually the right
crowd, but you're notarticulating it in a way that
they need to hear it in thatmoment from you.
I think a lot of us will dropsomething after trying it one
time, but I want more highconviction storytellers and
(11:58):
communicators in the businessworld. So no response equals no
points in this scoring system,but that doesn't mean you're
done with that idea. It mightmean you go back to the drawing
board entirely or more likely isyou just have to tweak how you
were helping people get intoyour ideas. Alright. So really
quickly, the the rest of the waythrough.
For disagreement, I assign onepoint. I say something. I share
(12:19):
something. I write something,and they're like, I disagree,
and here's why. And it's notthat you're hunting haters.
I hate that idea. It's like youdon't need to hunt haters.
Right? It's like you're notsaying anything meaningful
unless you have some haters.Like, no.
That's an overlysensationalized, simplified
version probably popularized by,like, hardcore business bros.
No. But disagreement, that's ahealthy data point. You get one
point. It is a type ofunsolicited response, and and
(12:42):
you can ask questions around it.
You can go back and forth withthat person. It's really useful
for learning. So disagreement isone point. Like, general
questions they ask you,follow-up questions, that would
be two points. They're reallyinterested in leaning forward.
This is getting harder to parsebecause of AI, by the way,
especially on LinkedIn. Right?Those BS AI commenters, like at
(13:03):
susan boles. What a great way tothink about operations and
finance, period. Second sentencejust regurgitates a point from
the post, then the last sentenceis a question with, like, a
thinking emoji.
Like, it's like they're likedigital gnats. I'm just swatting
away. Anyways, so generalquestions about your ideas,
maybe follow-up questions aboutwhat you do, that's a really
(13:24):
strong sign. That's a good formof response or you are are. Give
yourself two points for that.
Passionate agreement. Like, youfeel like, oh, I have a fan
here. That's three points. It'sworth more. You have a lot of
real, like, traction with youridea and that person.
So congratulations. Pat yourselfon the back. Three points for
passionate agreement. And thenthere's three more points.
(13:48):
Building on your ideas.
That's huge. Four points.Because to build on your ideas
is to stick my neck out andinvest my own, like, reputation
in okay, Susan. That made methink of this. And here's here's
what I'm gonna say to that.
Like like, in this case, I seeit forming like this. Or, you
know, actually, if you translateit over here, I think it changes
a little bit, and here's youridea. They're spending real time
(14:08):
with you to build on your ideas,and they're also investing part
of their reputation. It's scary.They have skin in the game to
build on your ideas.
That's four points. Five pointsis much more personal questions.
Like, they're not asking aboutthe idea. They're not like, oh,
okay. So would you say that oneshould this when telling
(14:28):
stories, Jay?
They're personalizing it bysaying, like, hey. You know, in
my work or my business, I wasdoing this, and and here's some
data or in information about mequestion. That is also harder
and scarier than, like, ageneral broad theoretical
question. Five points for that.And then the tippy top is what I
mentioned before.
Six points is they reflect backtheir own story because it takes
(14:51):
the most time and the most,like, emotional labor, the most
amount of their reputation. Soif I were waltzing the earth,
preaching the message ofresonance, and someone asked how
do you measure it, I would say,u r r. And if I met some
fictional person who thinks,like, very analytically named
Susan Bowles, I would say, andhere's a scoring system you can
use. It's a sliding spectrum,and you always wanna see more of
(15:13):
it towards the top than thebottom.
Susan Boles (15:15):
I love it. And I personally I use the system now.
Jay Acunzo (15:19):
Again, purely hypothetical.
Susan Boles (15:20):
Pure purely hypothetical.
Jay Acunzo (15:22):
Me coming up with an example from nowhere.
Susan Boles (15:25):
And for me, it was really helpful. We worked
together over the last fewyears. And as we were starting
to work together and you werelike, hey. You're testing your
ideas. Are they resonating?
And when you said that, I waslike, I have no idea. How am I
supposed to note? Like Yeah.People liked my post on
LinkedIn. Right.
Does that count?
Jay Acunzo (15:46):
It's so problematic too because on LinkedIn like,
here's an example. Some oneperson on LinkedIn has a hundred
thousand followers. One personhas a hundred followers.
Followers. And I'm like, maybe.
But what if everybody of thehundred themselves are
influential? And everybody ofthe hundred thousand, they have
(16:08):
zero followers themselves. Oryou reach a company, what if you
reach the CEO, not the entrylevel employees and interns?
Right? Like, we've conflatedfollowers and influence, and
those two things have never beenfurther apart.
Likewise, I think we'veconflated engagement signals on
these platforms and with thevalue, like, the total
engagement with the value ofthat engagement. Right? It's not
(16:31):
all people created equal. It'sthe right people for your
business or for that moment intime for your ideas or whatever.
Like, I would much rather havefive let's go back to this
fictional person, Susan Bowles.
I'd rather have five Susansengaged than, I don't know,
1,500 people who are in housecorporate marketers who just
started their jobs. I lovehelping those people. I have
(16:54):
nothing to sell to them. It'snot gonna anchor my business.
But Susan Bowles representsthis, again, fictional model of,
like, the perfect client for me.
Right? And so I think what weneed to do, and this is why it
came up with that scoringsystem, is we need to weight the
type of engagement and evencould do it with the type of
person so that we're not justlike, oh, I only got three
(17:17):
people commenting. I'm like,it's not about the totals. It's
about the value. It's not aboutthe reach and how many see it.
It's about the resonance and howmuch they care. Because then on
top of that, if you wanna go fortotals, if you wanna grow your
reach, you have a much strongerfoundation to start.
Susan Boles (17:34):
As you were saying that, I am now wondering, do you
weight it by platform? So what Imean by that is maybe a comment
on LinkedIn is super easy to do,but something like somebody
listening to a podcast episode,a full podcast episode, and
sending you an email, those aretechnically the same level of
(17:58):
engagement. Say they're bothreflecting a personal story back
to you, but do you weight itbased off of which platform it
comes from?
Jay Acunzo (18:07):
I mean, that's how I built the scoring system. It's
how high friction was the actionthey took because they need more
energy to act, more motivationto act. They need to deeply,
deeply care to do somethinghigher friction. And higher
friction could mean I investedmore time to pull off this
reaction. Like, I chased Jaydown in the parking lot after
the event versus I happen to bein the front row after his
(18:29):
speech.
Right? Or it could also mean ittakes more reputation points.
I'm putting myself on the lineand what others will judge me to
be by doing or saying this. AndI do think that a past version
of me was too much colored byall the business models of the
platforms that we operate on.Those are media platforms or
(18:50):
advertising based platforms.
I don't sell ad space. And sowhat they want from us is to
manufacture free ad inventory.Right? So they're like, play to
the bottom of the pyramid, onezero one level tips and tricks
out the wazoo. You wanna createlots and lots of, like,
sensationalized hooks and allthese things.
All those platforms really careabout at the end of the day is
(19:11):
their ad business, and we'renow, like, colored by their
model. But that's not mine. Mymodel is high ticket services.
You know, public speaking,coaching, and advisory work,
storytelling and messaging,coaching, and advisory work, and
the boot camps they're in. So,like, I shouldn't care about the
same things.
I have different incentives. Sonow although I don't, like,
track this, I do pursue andappreciate the combination of it
(19:36):
was high friction, and ithappened in a place that's
actually private that won't gainme any new followers or reach or
notoriety. So an example mightbe someone reflecting back their
own personal story in a LinkedIncomment comes with it this
really ego stroking, oh my gosh.This is cool. It's happening
publicly, and look at all thecomments and look at all the
(19:58):
love.
But that person could be beingperformative. They could be
using my followers as a signalthat they should engage with me
to increase theirs. Like,there's definitely some
questions I have about thebenefit to me and also the
authenticity of that person'sintentions. If they do that same
thing in an email reply, now I'mmuch more excited, not only
(20:21):
because the context has changedwhere they clearly care about my
ideas because there's no onewatching. It's just for them
that they wanted to respond andengage.
I take that more seriously, andI have an opportunity to go back
and forth in a meaningful way.That sits closer to the bottom
of my funnel. They're closer toreally being a true fan and or
client if they respond in thesame way over email as they did
(20:42):
on social. You mentionedpodcasting. It's really clunky
and hard to do things like sharea podcast episode or hunt out
that person and contact them totell them how much they love
that show.
That's also very high friction.Like, I value that way more than
a social post. So that's the wayI'm thinking about it.
Susan Boles (20:59):
What Jay has essentially done with the URR is
quantified something that, atfirst glance, seems kind of
unquantifiable, this idea ofresonance. But really what he's
done is figured out whatpotential indicators he might
see if something did resonateand then work backwards into a
scoring system using thosesignals. So if you're trying to
create a KPI out of somethingthat initially feels like it
(21:21):
can't be quantified, the bestplace to start with this, just
brainstorm some signals thatmight indicate you're headed in
the right direction. Remember,the point of a KPI is to tell us
if we're making progress towardsour goals. So if you can
identify signals or signpoststhat you think you'll see along
the way, you can then fashion asystem out of those things.
(21:41):
For example, if you're thinkingabout, I don't know, trying to
run a calmer business, justpulled that out of thin air
really, you might think aboutwhat signals or actions would
tell you that it's gettingcalmer. Maybe something like how
much you're resting. You couldcreate a goal of days off work.
Or maybe for you it's more aboutfeeling aligned in the work
(22:02):
you're doing. So you couldcreate a rating system that you
track at the end of each day orweek.
Something like how you'refeeling seems super hard to
quantify, but it is a signalyou're on your way to having a
business that feels calmer. Buteven something as simple as
rating your day from one to fiveaccording to how you're feeling
that day, that's actually asystem you could use to quantify
(22:25):
the feeling. We're gonna take aquick break to hear from our
sponsors. But when we come back,Jay and I are going to talk
about how Jay internalized hissystem and how he uses this data
in his own work. When you werefirst thinking about this and
you were trying to build yourpattern recognition skills,
You're, like, you're trying tobuild your database of data that
(22:47):
lives in your head.
Did you actually track it? Didyou, like, tick mark and add
points and do all of thosethings in order to build up your
ability to recognize when it washappening and then kind of
intuitively know so you don'thave to track anymore?
Jay Acunzo (23:06):
No. And I'll tell you why. You could kind of place
me, you know, despite thefocuses I have on premise
development and speaking andstorytelling. Like, you can
place me more broadly into the,like, business self help genre.
And I think everybody who's inthat category as a speaker,
content creator of any kind,eventually comes to the
(23:26):
realization that, like, oh, Iknow I teach public speaking.
I know I teach finance andoperations or whatever. But at
the end of the day, what I'mreally doing is teaching others
to trust themselves more. Like,you kinda have this realization
over time. It's hard to explain.But, like, I am white, straight,
male, two loving parents,wonderful childhood, affluent
(23:47):
neighborhood and and town whereI grew up, great teachers, great
surrounding family and friends.
Like, when I was born through nofault of my own, the door was
ajar for me. And my hard workwas shoving through it, but I
was also already ajar. And thenthere are other people who they
don't shoot out of the gateautomatically trusting
themselves. And so they mightneed more scaffolding. They
(24:09):
might need me to construct astory or a framework or maybe a
scoring system that is morerobust than anything I would
ever use myself because I wouldjust trip myself up.
So, like, I am in my head makingthese calculations all the time.
I am looking at that scoringsystem and going the way a,
like, a cheesy nineteen ninetiesvideo game, like, a basketball
(24:30):
arcade game announcer wouldsound. Like, three points, two
points. Like, I'm going in myhead. Six points.
No one knows I'm doing this, andI'm not documenting it anywhere.
But I am like, okay. That essaycontained a story, framework, or
idea that caused a lot of peopleto engage in an unsolicited way.
(24:52):
And a lot of it felt to me likehigh point total types of
engagement. I will log thatessay or framework therein or
story in a file in my Notion tocome back to it, to include it
in a a speech someday, a book,to ask follow on questions so I
can keep exploring that sametrain of thought, maybe even
(25:12):
reference it, or just send it topeople where I in interacting
with a client, they might needit.
Right? So I am doing the workto, like, develop this IP. But I
think if you were to analyze mybusiness, Susan, you would be
like, okay. You're not actuallyas rigorous as I'd feel
comfortable being. And I think,yes, because that's what's
working for me.
(25:34):
It's not what other people mightneed when I teach them to do it.
So I've gone ahead and developedsomething very robust, and I use
a percent of it myself.
Susan Boles (25:42):
Yeah. I think that's sort of part of being an
expert in the same way that, youknow, when I was originally
starting out doing financialthings. It would take me a
really long time to reviewfinancials and try and evaluate
it, and I'd be looking fordifferent signals and all of
those things. And after you dothat process repeatedly for so
(26:03):
many years
Jay Acunzo (26:04):
in so
Susan Boles (26:04):
many different instances, you essentially
create an internal system. Now Ican look at somebody's finances.
In about fifteen minutes, I canidentify, like, five red flags
and, I have a question aboutthis. Please explain this. And
it's because for a long time, Idid use a very formal process.
(26:26):
And I think once you do the thesystem repeatedly, it becomes
internalized. You create thattracker Yeah. Inside.
Jay Acunzo (26:36):
What ends up happening is the more experience
you get, the more exceptions youuncover, either in others, the
way they do it is different thanthe the rule you knew or the
prescription you have, or theway you do it changes. And
you're like, I've done it fivedifferent ways. I can't tell you
the one way. So, like, in publicspeaking, you get this question
a lot where people are trying todevelop a signature talk and
(26:56):
really bring it with themeverywhere they go, whether
they're giving in personspeeches or virtual webinars, or
maybe they just wanna use partsand pieces of the speech as a
guest on a podcast, almost likethe comedian pulling from the
Netflix show when they show upon a late night show. And so the
question I get is, should Imemorize my talk, or should I
just have, like, this sort ofinternalized dialogue or
(27:18):
bulleted list or whatever?
But, like, really the the thrustis, should I memorize my talk?
And I'm like, well, think of itlike this. You want your talk to
live in your bones, not yourbrain. Because if it's in your
brain, you're consciouslyconsidering every single move
and slide and all these things,and that people can tell you
can't react naturally to theroom. You don't know how to
(27:38):
customize and pace things up andpace things down.
Like, you weaken your power.You're like an AI avatar just,
like, rewinding the talk andhitting play. That's when it's
in your brain. When it's in yourbones, you can do so much more,
and it just flows naturally fromyou, and you can avoid any tech
issues and just keep going, andyou can react to the room. That
person had a weird laugh, and weall heard it.
(27:59):
Or, you know, I have this rantybit in the middle of my speech
where afterwards, I'm shaking,and I can grab the water bottle
if there's a water bottle andshake. Or there's curtains today
in the gig I'm doing. So I'llhide behind the curtains. Like,
I can't do that if I'm in mybrain being like, what's next?
What's next?
What's next? So my answer tothat question is always,
whatever it takes for you tomake sure your speech lives in
your bones, not your brain,let's figure that out. And some
(28:22):
people do that by memorizing awhole script, and some people do
that by going, here's thebullets, and I'll go ahead and
do it several times from thebullets. And there's millions of
other ways. Right?
So that's what it feels likewith my URR measurement. It's
like it like, this work lives inmy bones. I know how to explain
it, and I'm really authenticallyexcited about it. And so I don't
(28:44):
need to agonize over, like, isthis gonna work or not? I kinda
like a comedian or a speakerwith the act in your bones, I
know all the moves and how toexpand or change gears around
it.
So I'm not like, okay. Did thatwork or not? Track it in the
spreadsheet. It can be moresensed. Would I recommend that
for everybody?
(29:05):
No. You have to find your ownway forward.
Susan Boles (29:07):
Well and I think that's the point of having kind
of a North Star KPI is to helpyou develop the system, to help
you look for indicators thatwhat you are trying to do is
working, whether that is afinancial KPI, whether that is
something kind of amorphous likehaving a calmer business or
(29:30):
having your content resonate.The point of having a KPI is to
actually track whether or notit's working. The more you track
whether or not it's working, themore you train it into your
bones. And so I love that, like,those kind of work together.
Jay Acunzo (29:46):
Yeah. And you're forcing yourself to really
interrogate the thing you'd liketo solve for. Like, I love the
sound bite from you that if youwant your business to be
different, you have to solve forsomething different. And I'm
certainly solving for resonance.I'm trying to help other people
solve for resonance.
And before I have a system,because I think we wanna leap
there too soon, I'm like, whatdo I mean by resonance? Oh, I
(30:09):
should define that. Well, how doyou sense and measure resonance?
Well, you can't buy it. It hasto be earned.
Well, how do you measure thingsthat can be earned? Well, let's
start by not you're not gamingit. It's your ideas
authentically compelling peopleto respond. You're not gaming
it. And also not all responsesare created equal.
Okay. That sounds like aspectrum or a scoring system.
(30:30):
Right? Like, eventually, as youexplore what it is you wanna be
driven by or towards severallayers deep, you might find a
system that works, whetherthat's like a visual framework
to judge your actions or informthem or a scoring system like
how to measure resonance or orany other kind of model or
scaffolding you need to, like,stand up behind whatever the KPI
(30:53):
might be.
Susan Boles (30:58):
You internalized this metric. How do you use that
then to make choices about whatyou're doing in your business?
Jay Acunzo (31:07):
Yeah. What a great question. My goal with my
content is not to distribute andmarket. That is a side benefit
of most of the places I show up.In the surface area of doing
that, you might see meoccasionally promoting something
or selling something.
But almost every time you see meshow up, I am trying to explore
(31:27):
my premise, resonance overreach,and craft and collect IP. So I
mentioned before, it's like, oh,that essay had a high URL point
total, whether that's sent by meor measured by fictional Susan
Bowles. And so I'm going to logthat in a notebook or in a in a
Notion page as potentiallysomething that I need to tour
(31:49):
around or explore more deeply.Because over time, what I'm
trying to do is develop a bigidea and all the thinking behind
it so I can show up everywhereand differentiate and resonate
and really own that idea inpeople's minds. So I like to
think of it as if you're anauthor, you have this awesome
collection of IP in the book,and you see really savvy authors
doing this where they're like,I'm gonna dip into this for the
(32:11):
speech.
I'm gonna dip into this for thepublic guest appearance. I'm
gonna have the course. I'm gonnathey they have a whole platform
driven by the book and themethod they're in. I think we
should all think a little bitmore like that. And so that's
how I'm, like, using or steeringinto or being cognizant of this
stuff.
It's I am always using mycontent to sharpen my IP, find
(32:31):
new ways of saying things,sometimes just turns of phrases,
sometimes really largeframeworks driving something.
And then all the different wayspeople access that IP are all
the things we mostly spend ourtime thinking about, hiring
people for, learning about. Sopositioning and messaging,
offers that you sell. You know,your boot camp is not gonna be a
(32:53):
% of your IP experience. Itmight be the most important
first twenty percent.
Right? Or maybe you have amaster class. That's the first
five percent. There's waysessentially through content
offers, guest appearances, andpositioning to help people
experience and access andbenefit from your IP in
different ways. So I see it asI'm exploring one premise.
(33:15):
I'm collecting IP around thatpremise, and then I am both
growing audience and awarenessthrough it and developing a
business with revenue from it.Right? But it's all centered on
the IP.
Susan Boles (33:27):
My question for you then is if everything is focused
on resonance, we're measuringthings that are resonant. But
sometimes things bomb. Right?Like, sometimes you put
something out there and it'scomplete crickets. And you said
earlier about having highconviction in your ideas, being
(33:48):
a high conviction expert orstoryteller.
When something bombs, when youtry something and it doesn't
work, how do you know when todrop it? How do you decide
whether or not it becomes in thecase here where we're talking
about, like, a KPI, which issupposed to measure what's
(34:09):
working, sometimes it alsomeasures what isn't. So how do
you approach it when it's maybenot working?
Jay Acunzo (34:17):
I have a one word answer, but I need to tee it up
first. The way I wanna tee it upis this is what frustrates me
about, say, businesscommunicators versus a lot of
other storytellers. Because inbusiness, I think the Internet
is starting to trick us too muchwith all the gurus and experts
and frameworks out there intothinking that there's always an
(34:38):
exact answer for everything. Somy one word answer, like, is how
do I know? Taste.
And, like, that's what an artistwould think. That's what a
filmmaker would think. All thesepeople that have, quite frankly,
way more passionate audiencesthan people building audience
through a business in contexthave. So we look at them and
we're like, nah. I can't learnfrom them.
(34:59):
And yet, like, Taylor Swiftcould whisper that she's got a
new podcast reading dictionarydefinitions, and she'd have a
million downloads in sevenseconds. Right? Like, god, I
want that. So, like, I am notlooking at, okay. Here's the
process.
I put out this essay, and itdidn't work. I'm now gonna try
to reengineer the intro. And ifit doesn't work, I'll reengineer
(35:21):
the body. And if it doesn'twork, I'll reengineer the
packaging and the graphics andthe headline. I don't know.
I felt really convinced thatthis idea was really strong.
Nobody seemed to give a shit.I'll try it out a few more
times, and eventually, I'lldecide, I guess it's not a
thing. What I'm using to gaugethat is just taste. It's just
like I'm literally like a chef,like, sampling the work, how
(35:43):
does it taste, adjusting alittle bit, how does it taste
from there?
Because there's just too manyvariables to consider. That's
the work. Like, you get as closeas possible with the
scaffolding, but eventually, thescaffolding has to fall away.
Like, eventually, you do have totrust yourself. And what I'm
trying to get people to do ishave a signal that carries them
forward further than the metricsprovided to them by tech
(36:07):
platforms.
But, ultimately, what I'm doingis I'm going through enough revs
of experimentation and tryingand beating my head against the
wall because I have higherconviction on this idea than the
audience is signaling they have,and then I have to drop it. And
how do I decide? Shrug emoji. Iguess it's taste.
Susan Boles (36:24):
I have found the same with content and creative
based work that I do, which isreally my issue eight years ago.
I wasn't talking about anythingdifferent. I just didn't feel
like people were listening. Andto be honest, nobody was there,
so hard to get signals whenyou're shouting to literally,
(36:45):
like, five people. Yeah.
And I gave up too early. Andthen when we started working
together, none of those were newideas. Nothing that I have put
out in the last three years isanything that I wasn't talking
about before. I just didn't tryhard enough. I didn't put in
(37:06):
enough reps.
And I think that can also applyin business. When we're talking
about KPIs, the point is to giveyou signals, whether that is a
signal of, oh, crap. I'm runningout of money, or, oh, no. I
don't have enough time. Or, hey.
I don't have any leads. Allwe're doing is looking for a
(37:26):
signal to know where to focusour efforts. And Yeah. Giving us
indicators of should I stay,should I go, should I pivot. I
love that for your metric, it'sreally not actually about
necessarily pivoting.
It's about tiny incrementalpivots. It's try it try it this
way, try it that way. Right. Ithink business is kind of the
(37:49):
same way. It's It's not reallyabout shifting your entire
business model if somethingdoesn't work.
It's a little tweak here, alittle test over here, a little
experiment, like, oh, I mightwanna shift my offers. Let me
throw something out. Let me goask somebody that didn't buy for
me why they didn't buy for meand see what they say. And maybe
(38:11):
that tells me something toshift.
Jay Acunzo (38:14):
We all want gold, and so we grab our metal
detectors and head to the beach.And then we just start using the
metal detectors as shovels,frenetically digging as far down
as we can or in as many placesas we can. I'm like, but you
know how a metal detector works.Right? Is it just gives beep
gives you confidence to start todig.
(38:35):
Then the digging gives youconfidence that there's actually
something in there. Like, it'stiny progress on route two, and
I have gold now. And we wannaleap from zero to 60, ignoring
all the steps along the way. Andso I think getting a small
number of people to react inimportant signal of success. And
this is my pushback to peoplewho go, Jay, I can't embrace
(38:56):
your philosophy of resonanceoverreach, because I don't have
enough followers to test mythinking.
I'm like, you reach because Idon't have enough followers to
test my thinking. I'm like, youreach somebody right now easier
than you ever have. It could befive people. It could be 5,000
people. It could be on LinkedIn.
It could be on email. It couldbe at an event. It could be in a
coffee meeting. You can reachpeople now. And when those few
people who already, by the way,like you and trust you, don't
(39:17):
respond with any level ofpassion to your ideas, why is
our reaction to go, Well, thepeople who really trust trust me
and give me the benefit of thedoubt don't care.
I should put this in front ofmore people. Like, that's not we
don't have a reach problem. Wehave a resonance problem, and we
try to hold that at arm'slength. Because if it's a reach
problem, we can blame externalforces. If it's a resonance
(39:39):
problem, we have to blameourselves and more importantly,
how we've developed or notdeveloped our ideas and how we
articulate those ideas.
Susan Boles (39:47):
Well and for me, I I actually found it reassuring
that nobody was list like, whenI started to really try and test
my ideas in, we'll go, quote,unquote, public because my
audience, very small, that wasactually reassuring. Like, me
saying I'm gonna fall on myface, there's not that many
people that are gonna see mefall on my face. And the people
(40:11):
that do are mostly my friends.Yeah. They're not gonna be mean
to me on the Internet.
They're gonna give me, you know,thumbs up emojis when they saw
my post. And, you know, when Ihave friends that are like, hey.
I'm starting to put my ideas outthere. You know, I wanna show up
and support them. And even iftheir ideas maybe aren't all
that well developed, it's socool to see people out in public
(40:32):
actually trying it.
So I find it reassuring when Ihave a small audience.
Jay Acunzo (40:36):
It's harder to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime
than it is a little speedboat.Right? Like, when you have a big
audience, when you have a bigbusiness, when the stakes feel
really, really high, it's reallydifficult to go, well, that
didn't work. I better trysomething radically different
over here. But when you'reearly, you do have that
advantage where your ego allowsyou, I think, more readily to
take radically differentapproaches on route to trying to
(41:00):
find the operationalizeddirection.
And so that's what we want. Wewant some of this to feel
repeatable. I'm not trying tosit here and go, you're building
a business. Everything's bespokeevery time out. I understand the
power of systems andrepeatability.
It's necessary for your businessto be sustainable. I also
understand if you follow mearound the Internet, a lot of
what I say rhymes or sounds verysimilar, if not exactly the
(41:23):
same. Like, there's benefits tohaving stuff that is proven. But
I disagree fundamentally withthis assessment that people have
of their own platforms that Ican't figure out what resonates
because I don't have thousandsand thousands of followers yet.
Like, the we're not that's likesaying, like, I can't figure out
if this dish is good because I'mnot serving it to a thousand
people yet.
(41:43):
Like, what do I do at home? Iturn to my wife. Is this any
good? Like, that's really mostof the work. It's not glamorous.
It's not gonna get you a presshit or invite on a podcast
necessarily, but you're alsoprotected against, you know,
bombing on a big stage. So haveat it.
Susan Boles (41:59):
One of the things that I have enjoyed about the
way that you write, and we'vetalked about this before, is
that at the beginning of yourcontent journey, you see people
who have been doing it a longtime and who do that thing very
well.
Jay Acunzo (42:16):
Mhmm.
Susan Boles (42:16):
And we think it comes out of them like that,
that they poop gold just out ofnowhere. And the truth is it
comes from a lot of reps. Youcame up with resonance over
reach over the course of I don'teven know how many years.
Jay Acunzo (42:33):
The first documented instance of me talking about
that was nine not even now it'sten years ago. Right? Like and I
ignored it. It was just like aline, and I threw it away in a
post. And I, like, sort oftalked about it and sort of
revisited it.
But it was like, I think it'sthis, and then I keep exploring
it. Nope. It's deeper. It'sthis. Then I keep exploring it.
Nope. It's actually over here.Like, it's a long journey to,
like, really figure out whatyou're trying to say to the
(42:54):
world. And I don't think themess and the friction is bad. I
think it's actually whatsharpens your thinking to work.
Susan Boles (43:00):
Yeah. And I think that applies inside of
businesses too. So, you know,people will see some of my
systems. I had a call thismorning where I was walking
somebody through my automatedonboarding client system. Mhmm.
And it is 85 steps with a bunchof automations and templates and
forms and all of those things.So now eight years of doing that
(43:23):
same offer, essentially, thatprocess is super smooth and very
streamlined. And I'm not doingit hands on, but that is an
evolution of me having messed itup 82 times the first time and
running into client red flagsabout, like, oh, I shoulda
communicated that better ordifferently, or I need to build
(43:45):
a template because this istaking me a really long time to
deliver. And, oh, maybe I couldautomate this part, and maybe I
don't need to do an interview,and I can use a form to collect
information instead. It's eightyears worth of me optimizing a
process in the same way thatResonance Overreach is eight,
nine, ten years of you hittingthe same idea in different ways
(44:08):
and finding what works, whatdoesn't, where you got tripped
up, what people thought wasannoying or stupid, what you
liked, and amalgamating that allinto one space, which is to say
that I think when we look at,especially social media, and we
see people out there saying,like, I make multiple million
dollars a year by myself with nodoing of anything and then
(44:34):
telling people that they can dothat, they get into business and
they believe that they can poopout Resonance Overreach
immediately
Jay Acunzo (44:42):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (44:43):
And berate themselves for not being able to
do it. And they think that thefact that they made one LinkedIn
post and they didn't make amillion dollars makes them a
failure.
Jay Acunzo (44:53):
You know what's so funny about this, Susan? So I
host this podcast called HowStories Happen. You've been on
it. You
Susan Boles (44:58):
had an excellent guest on there named Susan
Bowles.
Jay Acunzo (45:01):
This is a real Susan Bowles, not a fictional one.
It's people working out storiesor sharing a signature story
that's proven that they useeverywhere in their business, in
a speech, in a book, in anewsletter, what have you. And
you kinda hear how it comestogether. And to your point,
you're like, I just thoughtpeople pooped gold. Then I
listened to this show, and itwas like, wow.
It's really intentional and alot of effort, and I should feel
better about myself as a result.So I like that byproduct of the
(45:22):
show. You know, literally, it'show stories happen. So as a
result of doing that show, Irealized, like, I'm in the teens
now of number of shows I'vebuilt and launched, whether for
clients or myself. And I'm inthe the I'm close to a thousand,
like, episodes personally hostedin my career.
I can't allow people to think Ihave it all figured out. Because
(45:42):
even in doing how storieshappen, it still feels messy and
hard. And so I created this fourpart, I don't know what to call
it, YouTuber style series thatis now coming out called How How
Stories Happen happened. And theidea is to put on display my
mess and be more honest and rawabout, like, how this stuff
really unfolds behind thescenes. And I was uploading
(46:04):
episode one today, And I I lookat the name of the file, which
is always different than thetitle of the episode you give it
publicly, and the name of thefile ended v 10.
So that meant there were 10versions of this episode, and
and probably, like, 10,000 tinychoices that went into it and
changes that went into it to getto each v. So I'm like, oh, I
(46:26):
should tell people this. Like,oh, by the way, you're watching
v 10 of the behind the scenesepisode of a thing I was making
and also already own and made.Like, to describe the thing I
made, it's like, how many layersdeep do you wanna get in terms
of my meta type of business? ButI'm like, well, that's part of
it.
You don't see the file name thatsays v 10 or final final, no.
(46:50):
Actually, use this one dot m pthree. You don't see that. You
just see this final thing, andyou go, gosh. They're so good at
it.
Why is it so hard for me? AndI'm like, because either they've
done it a while, did somethingtangential a while that helps
them be good at that thing now,or you're not seeing the full
picture here. You're justgetting the final product.
Susan Boles (47:13):
What is your favorite way to make your own
work calmer?
Jay Acunzo (47:16):
I actually thought about this this morning. I swear
it wasn't because we weretalking today. It wasn't
necessarily I thought about thismakes my work calmer, but it did
quiet a lot of the voices anddistraction. I was just shooting
a video talking about a friend'sbook on Instagram. And I said
something which caused me tothink, oh, I should make a joke
(47:37):
here.
And then I made this joke. Andbasically, what I did was let my
quirks out from where they'rehiding. And so this is not some
grand strategic businessstrategy or approach. Honestly,
it is when I can wink and nod tomyself in a piece as small as an
Instagram story that'lldisappear or as large as a
speech I'm giving to thousandsof people or anything in
(47:57):
between. There's a wink and anod to myself before that goes
out the door that, like, thatlittle thing right there, yeah,
that was just for me.
And, like, I hope other peoplenotice it and appreciate it, but
I I don't care. Like, it it sortof activates the me of it all in
that piece or project. Becauseso much of business is thinking,
like, what does the market want?What will the market bear? What
works out there?
(48:18):
It really abstracts away thesoul of it all and the you of it
all. But in my line of work andI think more and more in most of
our lines of work, that partmatters. So what quiets the
discussion in my brain of what Ishould do or how it should work
or a million things I gotta getdone is just me, I guess, having
fun or at least being my trueself, finding a quirk to insert
(48:40):
in a piece, a post, a project, aconversation, and all of a
sudden, I, like, snap into flowand things feel very calm.
Susan Boles (48:51):
One of the best ways to make your business
calmer is just to work in a waythat works for you. Jay and I
have really different approachesto our work. I wanna have data
to quantify what I'm seeing orfeeling, and he's much more
comfortable being intuitiveabout it. Your KPI should be
that way too. They shouldreflect your goals, your values,
(49:13):
your approach to your work.
Trying to smash your goalstogether with someone else's
KPIs, it just won't work. So youneed to sit down, figure out
what your goals and prioritiesare, and then take a step
backwards and figure out whatthe signals or signposts you
might find along the way are.What are the indicators that
would tell you you're makingprogress? And those are what you
(49:35):
develop KPIs around. Part of mygoal with this series is to show
you all the different KPIs thatfolks have in their own
businesses and to help youunderstand how you might start
to develop your own KPIs, onesthat are personalized to you and
your business, not the defaults.
Look for the signals and thenbuild a system around them.
(49:56):
Thank you to everyone whosupports the show. If you're a
listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I couldn't
do the show without you. You cansupport the show by leaving a
rating and a review. It reallydoes help new listeners find the
show and hit play withconfidence.
Until next time, stay calmer.
I like to say make calm your new KPI. But can an
idea or a concept really be aKPI? I'm Susan Bowles, and this
is Beyond Margins, the showwhere we deconstruct how to
engineer a calmer business. Andfor starters, let's talk about
what a KPI even is in the firstplace. So KPI stands for key
(00:29):
performance indicator.
It's a measurable target thatshows how your business is
performing against your goals.So the point of having KPIs in
your business at all is to makeyour company's values and
priorities both explicit andmeasurable. We're basically
using KPIs to clarify whatsuccess looks like. And if you
(00:53):
have a goal or you have a value,you can totally make a KPI
around it. Anything can be aKPI, even a kind of amorphous
idea like calm or likeresonance.
Today, I'm talking to JayAcunzo. He helps business
leaders become stronger speakersand storytellers. And if someone
(01:15):
somewhere is talking aboutresonance, I can almost
guarantee that Jay's name isgonna come up. His rallying cry
to storytellers is resonanceover reach. Resonance is his
North Star in the same way thatcalm is mine.
It's his goal for his own work,but also for the work he does
with clients. And that's great.We all want our work to
(01:37):
resonate. But how do you know ifit does? Well, Jay actually
designed a KPI and a system tohelp measure resonance, and
that's what we're geeking outabout today.
Okay. So one of the main focusesof your work is resonance, this
(01:58):
idea that resonance is moreimportant than reach.
Jay Acunzo (02:02):
I don't think it should be a radical idea, but I
think it does turn some heads tosay that I do believe and
explore this concept everywhereI go, that you should prioritize
resonance over reach to growyour business, to grow your
audience even, to serve yourcustomers, your partners. It
doesn't matter. Like, reach ishow many see it, and resonance
(02:24):
is how much they care. And noamount of reach guarantees that
they care. Like, the threetiniest words that have the
biggest possible impact on yourbusiness is make me care.
And I serve as a public speakingcoach and adviser as a sort of
message designer and strategist.Like, I serve clients who arrive
with ample expertise. Maybe theylead a whole company or a team.
(02:47):
Maybe they're soloists like youand I, but they are earning a
living on their expertise andtheir competency. And so I like
to say that what they knowmatters, but what they say and
how they say it has to make thatclear.
And that's a surprisingly biggap for a lot of people. Like,
can you make me care? Can youopen your mouth or write your
words and do so in a way thatactually resonates with me and
(03:08):
gives me that energy I need towant to take an action. Like,
there's this urge to act thatyou can impart with somebody.
Maybe people listening right nowor maybe people who listen to
you in general, they feel thatwhen they hear from you or maybe
from me.
And so, yeah, like, the sort ofpunchline to all this is I wanna
help people who have substance,who have something to offer and
(03:29):
something to say, find a way tosay it to differentiate and to
resonate so that they can marketless because they matter more.
Susan Boles (03:38):
I love this, and I have loved it forever. And
literally, I have like, yourvoice is in the back of my head
all the time.
Jay Acunzo (03:46):
Sometimes literally as a podcaster. So yeah. Also
true. That helps. Helps.
Susan Boles (03:52):
And I think the idea of resonance is great in
theory. It sounds fantastic tosay, yes. Resonance is
important. It's important thatpeople care about your work.
Like comb, it's something thatis a pretty cool KPI to set,
something to aim for.
(04:12):
But the real question is, how doyou know if you're doing it? How
do you know if it's working?
Jay Acunzo (04:18):
I think of it as and we can use marketing parlance if
it's easier for people. Like,awareness versus affinity, you
can buy a lot of awareness basedmetrics and results. You can't
buy anything related toaffinity. You can buy proxies
for that or what you think needsto happen first. It'd be like
akin to walking the earth atsome giant cocktail party.
(04:38):
Let's just call that offlineparty the Internet. And you're
so obsessed with the handshake,and you can buy your way into
certain rooms to shake hands.Right? Great. But then what
happens next is you actuallyhave to, like, interact with
these people, build arelationship with these people,
earn trust with these people.
Like, the affinity part isactually the vast majority of
what we're after and what weneed to build a business. And
(05:02):
delineate between reach andresonance or just to understand,
like, what are we measuring hereis you're trying to figure out
and measure that which can onlybe earned, not purchased. So
I'll give you an example. Irecently gave a speech in Boston
to a group of marketers, and Ihave this metaphor I use about
(05:23):
me making espresso. It's, like,halfway through the speech.
It's this hilarious little bitI've been working on and
reworking and reinventing it,and it finally, like, clicks. It
works in the talk. It's about memaking espresso. Okay. A woman
ran up to me after the talk, andshe was like, Jay.
And I was so excited. I've had along night because I have a six
year old and a three year old,and I was tired. I was like, I
could use some energy from thecrowd here. Here comes a
(05:46):
compliment my way. And she goes,I gotta say, when you started
talking about espresso, I almostlooked at my phone, and I was
like, womp womp.
But then what she said next isactually a signal I resonated.
She goes, but then as you toldthe story, I stopped thinking
about espresso because I don'tlike coffee. In fact, I hate it.
(06:06):
But I started thinking about,oh, I go through something
similar when you make espressowhen I deal with my car. And I
was like, okay.
That to me is actually thestrongest sign that you have
resonated with someone, which isthey reflect back their own
story and experience because ofyour ideas. That is an instance
(06:27):
of a metric that I made upcalled URR. Because if it's not
an acronym in my world, youcan't be taken seriously. URR
stands for unsolicited responserate. Without being the frenetic
YouTuber who's like, what do youguys think?
Drop a comment below. Withoutbeing the kinda showy, chess
beating LinkedIn bro, like,comment want for my ultimate
(06:50):
guide to growth. Without gamingit, can you share something with
your audience that compels themto respond? Unsolicited response
rate. And I think the best,strongest unsolicited response
is somebody invests time andreally their reputation to do
(07:11):
something as high friction asreflect back their story as it
connects to yours.
Right? It's so much morepowerful than, like, nice.
Thanks. This is great. I'llreshare it.
That's good too. So So there's,like, a spectrum of these
unsolicited responses, but weneed to start by embracing.
Resonance is that which must beearned and can't be purchased.
(07:31):
How do you measure that whichcan only be earned? This is a
signal I've come up with, URR.
Susan Boles (07:38):
I think it is an interesting way to actually try
to grasp at something that iskind of ungraspable. We're
talking about measuringessentially a concept here, a
very high level feeling ofsomething. I'm a data geek. I
want data. I wanna know ifthings are working.
(07:59):
I want to have something to helpme evaluate whether or not what
I'm doing, whether that isfinancial, whether whether that
is making a friend, is itworking? What matters? And what
direction do I need to put myefforts? Because I'm a big fan
of let's not do things thatdon't matter and just waste
time.
Jay Acunzo (08:18):
Yes.
Susan Boles (08:19):
So talk me through how you kind of developed this
measurement system. How do youevaluate and actually quantify
that URR?
Jay Acunzo (08:31):
It started in a simple place. I'm such a fan of
comedians. It's like thisultimate almost democratization
of the material. Like, itdoesn't matter how famous or not
you are. Jerry Seinfeld has thisfamous quote where he talks
about, I get to be Seinfeld onstage for five minutes, then I
have to deliver.
And, like, they are not on stageending a joke going, please
(08:51):
laugh. Or, you know, do youagree? Laugh if it's if it's
true to you. Again, back toSeinfeld. His book title, Is
This Anything?
They just put out the joke, andthen within their head, they
step back and observe theaudience reacting. And then they
go and refine their ideas andsharpen them and improve them or
kill it. And we don't do thatenough. We don't aerate our
thinking and our thoughtsactively, publicly enough. We
(09:13):
just think of anything we dopublicly as, like, distribution
and marketing.
I actually use social media muchmore like a comedian who uses a
small comedy club. It's mesharpening my thinking. And, oh,
by the way, as I do that, I amgathering fans and followers and
customers. So, anyways, the wayI look at this is, okay, if I'm
gonna compel people to respond,it's the strength of the idea
(09:34):
I'm looking for. And I'm notjust looking for that one post.
I'm looking to create IP, likesignature stories or a signature
framework, methodologies I canteach everywhere, key terms I
can define like resonance or youhave, you know, a default
decision is something I've heardyou define before. That's one
bit of your IP. And as I'mlooking to collect and craft and
strengthen my IP, I'm alsogauging how effective I am today
(09:59):
at explaining it the right wayso it resonates.
Susan Boles (10:02):
Jay and I are almost opposites in style when
it comes to how we operate. Hetends to focus on his intuition,
but I really need to have somedata behind it. It probably
comes from having started mycareer as a data analyst. For
Jay, he spends most daysthinking about and observing
resonance. So he's developed apretty good internal compass for
(10:23):
his own work.
He can kind of intuitively tellwhether or not a particular
piece of work resonated becausehe's carefully honed his
internal dataset over the lastdecade. For you and me, probably
not the case. So Jay developedthe URR as a tool for those of
us mere mortals trying to buildour own internal dataset. It
(10:44):
works on a sliding scale whereyou can earn zero to six points
for each response or lackthereof. Here's how Jay
describes it.
Jay Acunzo (10:53):
If I'm working with I don't know who's a good
example. I know this person.She's wonderful. You should
follow her. Her name is SusanBowles.
If I talk to someone like aSusan, I might say, well, here's
a point spectrum you canactually log and track. And I've
done this for so many years. Ino longer need to, but may it
serve you, fictional human Ijust invented named Susan.
(11:13):
Here's the spectrum. So you putout a post on social media.
You put out an episode. Youdeliver your newsletter, and
you're like, did it compelpeople to respond? Do they have
the urge to act and engage? Notbecause I gained it, but because
it actually was unsolicited.Well, you get no points for no
response.
And it's not that you drop theidea. If you have conviction
(11:37):
around the idea and it got noresponse, that's still data.
Maybe it's not the problem withthe idea itself. Maybe you're in
front of the wrong crowd. Ormaybe it's actually the right
crowd, but you're notarticulating it in a way that
they need to hear it in thatmoment from you.
I think a lot of us will dropsomething after trying it one
time, but I want more highconviction storytellers and
(11:58):
communicators in the businessworld. So no response equals no
points in this scoring system,but that doesn't mean you're
done with that idea. It mightmean you go back to the drawing
board entirely or more likely isyou just have to tweak how you
were helping people get intoyour ideas. Alright. So really
quickly, the the rest of the waythrough.
For disagreement, I assign onepoint. I say something. I share
(12:19):
something. I write something,and they're like, I disagree,
and here's why. And it's notthat you're hunting haters.
I hate that idea. It's like youdon't need to hunt haters.
Right? It's like you're notsaying anything meaningful
unless you have some haters.Like, no.
That's an overlysensationalized, simplified
version probably popularized by,like, hardcore business bros.
No. But disagreement, that's ahealthy data point. You get one
point. It is a type ofunsolicited response, and and
(12:42):
you can ask questions around it.
You can go back and forth withthat person. It's really useful
for learning. So disagreement isone point. Like, general
questions they ask you,follow-up questions, that would
be two points. They're reallyinterested in leaning forward.
This is getting harder to parsebecause of AI, by the way,
especially on LinkedIn. Right?Those BS AI commenters, like at
(13:03):
susan boles. What a great way tothink about operations and
finance, period. Second sentencejust regurgitates a point from
the post, then the last sentenceis a question with, like, a
thinking emoji.
Like, it's like they're likedigital gnats. I'm just swatting
away. Anyways, so generalquestions about your ideas,
maybe follow-up questions aboutwhat you do, that's a really
(13:24):
strong sign. That's a good formof response or you are are. Give
yourself two points for that.
Passionate agreement. Like, youfeel like, oh, I have a fan
here. That's three points. It'sworth more. You have a lot of
real, like, traction with youridea and that person.
So congratulations. Pat yourselfon the back. Three points for
passionate agreement. And thenthere's three more points.
(13:48):
Building on your ideas.
That's huge. Four points.Because to build on your ideas
is to stick my neck out andinvest my own, like, reputation
in okay, Susan. That made methink of this. And here's here's
what I'm gonna say to that.
Like like, in this case, I seeit forming like this. Or, you
know, actually, if you translateit over here, I think it changes
a little bit, and here's youridea. They're spending real time
(14:08):
with you to build on your ideas,and they're also investing part
of their reputation. It's scary.They have skin in the game to
build on your ideas.
That's four points. Five pointsis much more personal questions.
Like, they're not asking aboutthe idea. They're not like, oh,
okay. So would you say that oneshould this when telling
(14:28):
stories, Jay?
They're personalizing it bysaying, like, hey. You know, in
my work or my business, I wasdoing this, and and here's some
data or in information about mequestion. That is also harder
and scarier than, like, ageneral broad theoretical
question. Five points for that.And then the tippy top is what I
mentioned before.
Six points is they reflect backtheir own story because it takes
(14:51):
the most time and the most,like, emotional labor, the most
amount of their reputation. Soif I were waltzing the earth,
preaching the message ofresonance, and someone asked how
do you measure it, I would say,u r r. And if I met some
fictional person who thinks,like, very analytically named
Susan Bowles, I would say, andhere's a scoring system you can
use. It's a sliding spectrum,and you always wanna see more of
(15:13):
it towards the top than thebottom.
Susan Boles (15:15):
I love it. And I personally I use the system now.
Jay Acunzo (15:19):
Again, purely hypothetical.
Susan Boles (15:20):
Pure purely hypothetical.
Jay Acunzo (15:22):
Me coming up with an example from nowhere.
Susan Boles (15:25):
And for me, it was really helpful. We worked
together over the last fewyears. And as we were starting
to work together and you werelike, hey. You're testing your
ideas. Are they resonating?
And when you said that, I waslike, I have no idea. How am I
supposed to note? Like Yeah.People liked my post on
LinkedIn. Right.
Does that count?
Jay Acunzo (15:46):
It's so problematic too because on LinkedIn like,
here's an example. Some oneperson on LinkedIn has a hundred
thousand followers. One personhas a hundred followers.
Followers. And I'm like, maybe.
But what if everybody of thehundred themselves are
influential? And everybody ofthe hundred thousand, they have
(16:08):
zero followers themselves. Oryou reach a company, what if you
reach the CEO, not the entrylevel employees and interns?
Right? Like, we've conflatedfollowers and influence, and
those two things have never beenfurther apart.
Likewise, I think we'veconflated engagement signals on
these platforms and with thevalue, like, the total
engagement with the value ofthat engagement. Right? It's not
(16:31):
all people created equal. It'sthe right people for your
business or for that moment intime for your ideas or whatever.
Like, I would much rather havefive let's go back to this
fictional person, Susan Bowles.
I'd rather have five Susansengaged than, I don't know,
1,500 people who are in housecorporate marketers who just
started their jobs. I lovehelping those people. I have
(16:54):
nothing to sell to them. It'snot gonna anchor my business.
But Susan Bowles representsthis, again, fictional model of,
like, the perfect client for me.
Right? And so I think what weneed to do, and this is why it
came up with that scoringsystem, is we need to weight the
type of engagement and evencould do it with the type of
person so that we're not justlike, oh, I only got three
(17:17):
people commenting. I'm like,it's not about the totals. It's
about the value. It's not aboutthe reach and how many see it.
It's about the resonance and howmuch they care. Because then on
top of that, if you wanna go fortotals, if you wanna grow your
reach, you have a much strongerfoundation to start.
Susan Boles (17:34):
As you were saying that, I am now wondering, do you
weight it by platform? So what Imean by that is maybe a comment
on LinkedIn is super easy to do,but something like somebody
listening to a podcast episode,a full podcast episode, and
sending you an email, those aretechnically the same level of
(17:58):
engagement. Say they're bothreflecting a personal story back
to you, but do you weight itbased off of which platform it
comes from?
Jay Acunzo (18:07):
I mean, that's how I built the scoring system. It's
how high friction was the actionthey took because they need more
energy to act, more motivationto act. They need to deeply,
deeply care to do somethinghigher friction. And higher
friction could mean I investedmore time to pull off this
reaction. Like, I chased Jaydown in the parking lot after
the event versus I happen to bein the front row after his
(18:29):
speech.
Right? Or it could also mean ittakes more reputation points.
I'm putting myself on the lineand what others will judge me to
be by doing or saying this. AndI do think that a past version
of me was too much colored byall the business models of the
platforms that we operate on.Those are media platforms or
(18:50):
advertising based platforms.
I don't sell ad space. And sowhat they want from us is to
manufacture free ad inventory.Right? So they're like, play to
the bottom of the pyramid, onezero one level tips and tricks
out the wazoo. You wanna createlots and lots of, like,
sensationalized hooks and allthese things.
All those platforms really careabout at the end of the day is
(19:11):
their ad business, and we'renow, like, colored by their
model. But that's not mine. Mymodel is high ticket services.
You know, public speaking,coaching, and advisory work,
storytelling and messaging,coaching, and advisory work, and
the boot camps they're in. So,like, I shouldn't care about the
same things.
I have different incentives. Sonow although I don't, like,
track this, I do pursue andappreciate the combination of it
(19:36):
was high friction, and ithappened in a place that's
actually private that won't gainme any new followers or reach or
notoriety. So an example mightbe someone reflecting back their
own personal story in a LinkedIncomment comes with it this
really ego stroking, oh my gosh.This is cool. It's happening
publicly, and look at all thecomments and look at all the
(19:58):
love.
But that person could be beingperformative. They could be
using my followers as a signalthat they should engage with me
to increase theirs. Like,there's definitely some
questions I have about thebenefit to me and also the
authenticity of that person'sintentions. If they do that same
thing in an email reply, now I'mmuch more excited, not only
(20:21):
because the context has changedwhere they clearly care about my
ideas because there's no onewatching. It's just for them
that they wanted to respond andengage.
I take that more seriously, andI have an opportunity to go back
and forth in a meaningful way.That sits closer to the bottom
of my funnel. They're closer toreally being a true fan and or
client if they respond in thesame way over email as they did
(20:42):
on social. You mentionedpodcasting. It's really clunky
and hard to do things like sharea podcast episode or hunt out
that person and contact them totell them how much they love
that show.
That's also very high friction.Like, I value that way more than
a social post. So that's the wayI'm thinking about it.
Susan Boles (20:59):
What Jay has essentially done with the URR is
quantified something that, atfirst glance, seems kind of
unquantifiable, this idea ofresonance. But really what he's
done is figured out whatpotential indicators he might
see if something did resonateand then work backwards into a
scoring system using thosesignals. So if you're trying to
create a KPI out of somethingthat initially feels like it
(21:21):
can't be quantified, the bestplace to start with this, just
brainstorm some signals thatmight indicate you're headed in
the right direction. Remember,the point of a KPI is to tell us
if we're making progress towardsour goals. So if you can
identify signals or signpoststhat you think you'll see along
the way, you can then fashion asystem out of those things.
(21:41):
For example, if you're thinkingabout, I don't know, trying to
run a calmer business, justpulled that out of thin air
really, you might think aboutwhat signals or actions would
tell you that it's gettingcalmer. Maybe something like how
much you're resting. You couldcreate a goal of days off work.
Or maybe for you it's more aboutfeeling aligned in the work
(22:02):
you're doing. So you couldcreate a rating system that you
track at the end of each day orweek.
Something like how you'refeeling seems super hard to
quantify, but it is a signalyou're on your way to having a
business that feels calmer. Buteven something as simple as
rating your day from one to fiveaccording to how you're feeling
that day, that's actually asystem you could use to quantify
(22:25):
the feeling. We're gonna take aquick break to hear from our
sponsors. But when we come back,Jay and I are going to talk
about how Jay internalized hissystem and how he uses this data
in his own work. When you werefirst thinking about this and
you were trying to build yourpattern recognition skills,
You're, like, you're trying tobuild your database of data that
(22:47):
lives in your head.
Did you actually track it? Didyou, like, tick mark and add
points and do all of thosethings in order to build up your
ability to recognize when it washappening and then kind of
intuitively know so you don'thave to track anymore?
Jay Acunzo (23:06):
No. And I'll tell you why. You could kind of place
me, you know, despite thefocuses I have on premise
development and speaking andstorytelling. Like, you can
place me more broadly into the,like, business self help genre.
And I think everybody who's inthat category as a speaker,
content creator of any kind,eventually comes to the
(23:26):
realization that, like, oh, Iknow I teach public speaking.
I know I teach finance andoperations or whatever. But at
the end of the day, what I'mreally doing is teaching others
to trust themselves more. Like,you kinda have this realization
over time. It's hard to explain.But, like, I am white, straight,
male, two loving parents,wonderful childhood, affluent
(23:47):
neighborhood and and town whereI grew up, great teachers, great
surrounding family and friends.
Like, when I was born through nofault of my own, the door was
ajar for me. And my hard workwas shoving through it, but I
was also already ajar. And thenthere are other people who they
don't shoot out of the gateautomatically trusting
themselves. And so they mightneed more scaffolding. They
(24:09):
might need me to construct astory or a framework or maybe a
scoring system that is morerobust than anything I would
ever use myself because I wouldjust trip myself up.
So, like, I am in my head makingthese calculations all the time.
I am looking at that scoringsystem and going the way a,
like, a cheesy nineteen ninetiesvideo game, like, a basketball
(24:30):
arcade game announcer wouldsound. Like, three points, two
points. Like, I'm going in myhead. Six points.
No one knows I'm doing this, andI'm not documenting it anywhere.
But I am like, okay. That essaycontained a story, framework, or
idea that caused a lot of peopleto engage in an unsolicited way.
(24:52):
And a lot of it felt to me likehigh point total types of
engagement. I will log thatessay or framework therein or
story in a file in my Notion tocome back to it, to include it
in a a speech someday, a book,to ask follow on questions so I
can keep exploring that sametrain of thought, maybe even
(25:12):
reference it, or just send it topeople where I in interacting
with a client, they might needit.
Right? So I am doing the workto, like, develop this IP. But I
think if you were to analyze mybusiness, Susan, you would be
like, okay. You're not actuallyas rigorous as I'd feel
comfortable being. And I think,yes, because that's what's
working for me.
(25:34):
It's not what other people mightneed when I teach them to do it.
So I've gone ahead and developedsomething very robust, and I use
a percent of it myself.
Susan Boles (25:42):
Yeah. I think that's sort of part of being an
expert in the same way that, youknow, when I was originally
starting out doing financialthings. It would take me a
really long time to reviewfinancials and try and evaluate
it, and I'd be looking fordifferent signals and all of
those things. And after you dothat process repeatedly for so
(26:03):
many years
Jay Acunzo (26:04):
in so
Susan Boles (26:04):
many different instances, you essentially
create an internal system. Now Ican look at somebody's finances.
In about fifteen minutes, I canidentify, like, five red flags
and, I have a question aboutthis. Please explain this. And
it's because for a long time, Idid use a very formal process.
(26:26):
And I think once you do the thesystem repeatedly, it becomes
internalized. You create thattracker Yeah. Inside.
Jay Acunzo (26:36):
What ends up happening is the more experience
you get, the more exceptions youuncover, either in others, the
way they do it is different thanthe the rule you knew or the
prescription you have, or theway you do it changes. And
you're like, I've done it fivedifferent ways. I can't tell you
the one way. So, like, in publicspeaking, you get this question
a lot where people are trying todevelop a signature talk and
(26:56):
really bring it with themeverywhere they go, whether
they're giving in personspeeches or virtual webinars, or
maybe they just wanna use partsand pieces of the speech as a
guest on a podcast, almost likethe comedian pulling from the
Netflix show when they show upon a late night show. And so the
question I get is, should Imemorize my talk, or should I
just have, like, this sort ofinternalized dialogue or
(27:18):
bulleted list or whatever?
But, like, really the the thrustis, should I memorize my talk?
And I'm like, well, think of itlike this. You want your talk to
live in your bones, not yourbrain. Because if it's in your
brain, you're consciouslyconsidering every single move
and slide and all these things,and that people can tell you
can't react naturally to theroom. You don't know how to
(27:38):
customize and pace things up andpace things down.
Like, you weaken your power.You're like an AI avatar just,
like, rewinding the talk andhitting play. That's when it's
in your brain. When it's in yourbones, you can do so much more,
and it just flows naturally fromyou, and you can avoid any tech
issues and just keep going, andyou can react to the room. That
person had a weird laugh, and weall heard it.
(27:59):
Or, you know, I have this rantybit in the middle of my speech
where afterwards, I'm shaking,and I can grab the water bottle
if there's a water bottle andshake. Or there's curtains today
in the gig I'm doing. So I'llhide behind the curtains. Like,
I can't do that if I'm in mybrain being like, what's next?
What's next?
What's next? So my answer tothat question is always,
whatever it takes for you tomake sure your speech lives in
your bones, not your brain,let's figure that out. And some
(28:22):
people do that by memorizing awhole script, and some people do
that by going, here's thebullets, and I'll go ahead and
do it several times from thebullets. And there's millions of
other ways. Right?
So that's what it feels likewith my URR measurement. It's
like it like, this work lives inmy bones. I know how to explain
it, and I'm really authenticallyexcited about it. And so I don't
(28:44):
need to agonize over, like, isthis gonna work or not? I kinda
like a comedian or a speakerwith the act in your bones, I
know all the moves and how toexpand or change gears around
it.
So I'm not like, okay. Did thatwork or not? Track it in the
spreadsheet. It can be moresensed. Would I recommend that
for everybody?
(29:05):
No. You have to find your ownway forward.
Susan Boles (29:07):
Well and I think that's the point of having kind
of a North Star KPI is to helpyou develop the system, to help
you look for indicators thatwhat you are trying to do is
working, whether that is afinancial KPI, whether that is
something kind of amorphous likehaving a calmer business or
(29:30):
having your content resonate.The point of having a KPI is to
actually track whether or notit's working. The more you track
whether or not it's working, themore you train it into your
bones. And so I love that, like,those kind of work together.
Jay Acunzo (29:46):
Yeah. And you're forcing yourself to really
interrogate the thing you'd liketo solve for. Like, I love the
sound bite from you that if youwant your business to be
different, you have to solve forsomething different. And I'm
certainly solving for resonance.I'm trying to help other people
solve for resonance.
And before I have a system,because I think we wanna leap
there too soon, I'm like, whatdo I mean by resonance? Oh, I
(30:09):
should define that. Well, how doyou sense and measure resonance?
Well, you can't buy it. It hasto be earned.
Well, how do you measure thingsthat can be earned? Well, let's
start by not you're not gamingit. It's your ideas
authentically compelling peopleto respond. You're not gaming
it. And also not all responsesare created equal.
Okay. That sounds like aspectrum or a scoring system.
(30:30):
Right? Like, eventually, as youexplore what it is you wanna be
driven by or towards severallayers deep, you might find a
system that works, whetherthat's like a visual framework
to judge your actions or informthem or a scoring system like
how to measure resonance or orany other kind of model or
scaffolding you need to, like,stand up behind whatever the KPI
(30:53):
might be.
Susan Boles (30:58):
You internalized this metric. How do you use that
then to make choices about whatyou're doing in your business?
Jay Acunzo (31:07):
Yeah. What a great question. My goal with my
content is not to distribute andmarket. That is a side benefit
of most of the places I show up.In the surface area of doing
that, you might see meoccasionally promoting something
or selling something.
But almost every time you see meshow up, I am trying to explore
(31:27):
my premise, resonance overreach,and craft and collect IP. So I
mentioned before, it's like, oh,that essay had a high URL point
total, whether that's sent by meor measured by fictional Susan
Bowles. And so I'm going to logthat in a notebook or in a in a
Notion page as potentiallysomething that I need to tour
(31:49):
around or explore more deeply.Because over time, what I'm
trying to do is develop a bigidea and all the thinking behind
it so I can show up everywhereand differentiate and resonate
and really own that idea inpeople's minds. So I like to
think of it as if you're anauthor, you have this awesome
collection of IP in the book,and you see really savvy authors
doing this where they're like,I'm gonna dip into this for the
(32:11):
speech.
I'm gonna dip into this for thepublic guest appearance. I'm
gonna have the course. I'm gonnathey they have a whole platform
driven by the book and themethod they're in. I think we
should all think a little bitmore like that. And so that's
how I'm, like, using or steeringinto or being cognizant of this
stuff.
It's I am always using mycontent to sharpen my IP, find
(32:31):
new ways of saying things,sometimes just turns of phrases,
sometimes really largeframeworks driving something.
And then all the different wayspeople access that IP are all
the things we mostly spend ourtime thinking about, hiring
people for, learning about. Sopositioning and messaging,
offers that you sell. You know,your boot camp is not gonna be a
(32:53):
% of your IP experience. Itmight be the most important
first twenty percent.
Right? Or maybe you have amaster class. That's the first
five percent. There's waysessentially through content
offers, guest appearances, andpositioning to help people
experience and access andbenefit from your IP in
different ways. So I see it asI'm exploring one premise.
(33:15):
I'm collecting IP around thatpremise, and then I am both
growing audience and awarenessthrough it and developing a
business with revenue from it.Right? But it's all centered on
the IP.
Susan Boles (33:27):
My question for you then is if everything is focused
on resonance, we're measuringthings that are resonant. But
sometimes things bomb. Right?Like, sometimes you put
something out there and it'scomplete crickets. And you said
earlier about having highconviction in your ideas, being
(33:48):
a high conviction expert orstoryteller.
When something bombs, when youtry something and it doesn't
work, how do you know when todrop it? How do you decide
whether or not it becomes in thecase here where we're talking
about, like, a KPI, which issupposed to measure what's
(34:09):
working, sometimes it alsomeasures what isn't. So how do
you approach it when it's maybenot working?
Jay Acunzo (34:17):
I have a one word answer, but I need to tee it up
first. The way I wanna tee it upis this is what frustrates me
about, say, businesscommunicators versus a lot of
other storytellers. Because inbusiness, I think the Internet
is starting to trick us too muchwith all the gurus and experts
and frameworks out there intothinking that there's always an
(34:38):
exact answer for everything. Somy one word answer, like, is how
do I know? Taste.
And, like, that's what an artistwould think. That's what a
filmmaker would think. All thesepeople that have, quite frankly,
way more passionate audiencesthan people building audience
through a business in contexthave. So we look at them and
we're like, nah. I can't learnfrom them.
(34:59):
And yet, like, Taylor Swiftcould whisper that she's got a
new podcast reading dictionarydefinitions, and she'd have a
million downloads in sevenseconds. Right? Like, god, I
want that. So, like, I am notlooking at, okay. Here's the
process.
I put out this essay, and itdidn't work. I'm now gonna try
to reengineer the intro. And ifit doesn't work, I'll reengineer
(35:21):
the body. And if it doesn'twork, I'll reengineer the
packaging and the graphics andthe headline. I don't know.
I felt really convinced thatthis idea was really strong.
Nobody seemed to give a shit.I'll try it out a few more
times, and eventually, I'lldecide, I guess it's not a
thing. What I'm using to gaugethat is just taste. It's just
like I'm literally like a chef,like, sampling the work, how
(35:43):
does it taste, adjusting alittle bit, how does it taste
from there?
Because there's just too manyvariables to consider. That's
the work. Like, you get as closeas possible with the
scaffolding, but eventually, thescaffolding has to fall away.
Like, eventually, you do have totrust yourself. And what I'm
trying to get people to do ishave a signal that carries them
forward further than the metricsprovided to them by tech
(36:07):
platforms.
But, ultimately, what I'm doingis I'm going through enough revs
of experimentation and tryingand beating my head against the
wall because I have higherconviction on this idea than the
audience is signaling they have,and then I have to drop it. And
how do I decide? Shrug emoji. Iguess it's taste.
Susan Boles (36:24):
I have found the same with content and creative
based work that I do, which isreally my issue eight years ago.
I wasn't talking about anythingdifferent. I just didn't feel
like people were listening. Andto be honest, nobody was there,
so hard to get signals whenyou're shouting to literally,
(36:45):
like, five people. Yeah.
And I gave up too early. Andthen when we started working
together, none of those were newideas. Nothing that I have put
out in the last three years isanything that I wasn't talking
about before. I just didn't tryhard enough. I didn't put in
(37:06):
enough reps.
And I think that can also applyin business. When we're talking
about KPIs, the point is to giveyou signals, whether that is a
signal of, oh, crap. I'm runningout of money, or, oh, no. I
don't have enough time. Or, hey.
I don't have any leads. Allwe're doing is looking for a
(37:26):
signal to know where to focusour efforts. And Yeah. Giving us
indicators of should I stay,should I go, should I pivot. I
love that for your metric, it'sreally not actually about
necessarily pivoting.
It's about tiny incrementalpivots. It's try it try it this
way, try it that way. Right. Ithink business is kind of the
(37:49):
same way. It's It's not reallyabout shifting your entire
business model if somethingdoesn't work.
It's a little tweak here, alittle test over here, a little
experiment, like, oh, I mightwanna shift my offers. Let me
throw something out. Let me goask somebody that didn't buy for
me why they didn't buy for meand see what they say. And maybe
(38:11):
that tells me something toshift.
Jay Acunzo (38:14):
We all want gold, and so we grab our metal
detectors and head to the beach.And then we just start using the
metal detectors as shovels,frenetically digging as far down
as we can or in as many placesas we can. I'm like, but you
know how a metal detector works.Right? Is it just gives beep
gives you confidence to start todig.
(38:35):
Then the digging gives youconfidence that there's actually
something in there. Like, it'stiny progress on route two, and
I have gold now. And we wannaleap from zero to 60, ignoring
all the steps along the way. Andso I think getting a small
number of people to react inimportant signal of success. And
this is my pushback to peoplewho go, Jay, I can't embrace
(38:56):
your philosophy of resonanceoverreach, because I don't have
enough followers to test mythinking.
I'm like, you reach because Idon't have enough followers to
test my thinking. I'm like, youreach somebody right now easier
than you ever have. It could befive people. It could be 5,000
people. It could be on LinkedIn.
It could be on email. It couldbe at an event. It could be in a
coffee meeting. You can reachpeople now. And when those few
people who already, by the way,like you and trust you, don't
(39:17):
respond with any level ofpassion to your ideas, why is
our reaction to go, Well, thepeople who really trust trust me
and give me the benefit of thedoubt don't care.
I should put this in front ofmore people. Like, that's not we
don't have a reach problem. Wehave a resonance problem, and we
try to hold that at arm'slength. Because if it's a reach
problem, we can blame externalforces. If it's a resonance
(39:39):
problem, we have to blameourselves and more importantly,
how we've developed or notdeveloped our ideas and how we
articulate those ideas.
Susan Boles (39:47):
Well and for me, I I actually found it reassuring
that nobody was list like, whenI started to really try and test
my ideas in, we'll go, quote,unquote, public because my
audience, very small, that wasactually reassuring. Like, me
saying I'm gonna fall on myface, there's not that many
people that are gonna see mefall on my face. And the people
(40:11):
that do are mostly my friends.Yeah. They're not gonna be mean
to me on the Internet.
They're gonna give me, you know,thumbs up emojis when they saw
my post. And, you know, when Ihave friends that are like, hey.
I'm starting to put my ideas outthere. You know, I wanna show up
and support them. And even iftheir ideas maybe aren't all
that well developed, it's socool to see people out in public
(40:32):
actually trying it.
So I find it reassuring when Ihave a small audience.
Jay Acunzo (40:36):
It's harder to turn an aircraft carrier on a dime
than it is a little speedboat.Right? Like, when you have a big
audience, when you have a bigbusiness, when the stakes feel
really, really high, it's reallydifficult to go, well, that
didn't work. I better trysomething radically different
over here. But when you'reearly, you do have that
advantage where your ego allowsyou, I think, more readily to
take radically differentapproaches on route to trying to
(41:00):
find the operationalizeddirection.
And so that's what we want. Wewant some of this to feel
repeatable. I'm not trying tosit here and go, you're building
a business. Everything's bespokeevery time out. I understand the
power of systems andrepeatability.
It's necessary for your businessto be sustainable. I also
understand if you follow mearound the Internet, a lot of
what I say rhymes or sounds verysimilar, if not exactly the
(41:23):
same. Like, there's benefits tohaving stuff that is proven. But
I disagree fundamentally withthis assessment that people have
of their own platforms that Ican't figure out what resonates
because I don't have thousandsand thousands of followers yet.
Like, the we're not that's likesaying, like, I can't figure out
if this dish is good because I'mnot serving it to a thousand
people yet.
(41:43):
Like, what do I do at home? Iturn to my wife. Is this any
good? Like, that's really mostof the work. It's not glamorous.
It's not gonna get you a presshit or invite on a podcast
necessarily, but you're alsoprotected against, you know,
bombing on a big stage. So haveat it.
Susan Boles (41:59):
One of the things that I have enjoyed about the
way that you write, and we'vetalked about this before, is
that at the beginning of yourcontent journey, you see people
who have been doing it a longtime and who do that thing very
well.
Jay Acunzo (42:16):
Mhmm.
Susan Boles (42:16):
And we think it comes out of them like that,
that they poop gold just out ofnowhere. And the truth is it
comes from a lot of reps. Youcame up with resonance over
reach over the course of I don'teven know how many years.
Jay Acunzo (42:33):
The first documented instance of me talking about
that was nine not even now it'sten years ago. Right? Like and I
ignored it. It was just like aline, and I threw it away in a
post. And I, like, sort oftalked about it and sort of
revisited it.
But it was like, I think it'sthis, and then I keep exploring
it. Nope. It's deeper. It'sthis. Then I keep exploring it.
Nope. It's actually over here.Like, it's a long journey to,
like, really figure out whatyou're trying to say to the
(42:54):
world. And I don't think themess and the friction is bad. I
think it's actually whatsharpens your thinking to work.
Susan Boles (43:00):
Yeah. And I think that applies inside of
businesses too. So, you know,people will see some of my
systems. I had a call thismorning where I was walking
somebody through my automatedonboarding client system. Mhmm.
And it is 85 steps with a bunchof automations and templates and
forms and all of those things.So now eight years of doing that
(43:23):
same offer, essentially, thatprocess is super smooth and very
streamlined. And I'm not doingit hands on, but that is an
evolution of me having messed itup 82 times the first time and
running into client red flagsabout, like, oh, I shoulda
communicated that better ordifferently, or I need to build
(43:45):
a template because this istaking me a really long time to
deliver. And, oh, maybe I couldautomate this part, and maybe I
don't need to do an interview,and I can use a form to collect
information instead. It's eightyears worth of me optimizing a
process in the same way thatResonance Overreach is eight,
nine, ten years of you hittingthe same idea in different ways
(44:08):
and finding what works, whatdoesn't, where you got tripped
up, what people thought wasannoying or stupid, what you
liked, and amalgamating that allinto one space, which is to say
that I think when we look at,especially social media, and we
see people out there saying,like, I make multiple million
dollars a year by myself with nodoing of anything and then
(44:34):
telling people that they can dothat, they get into business and
they believe that they can poopout Resonance Overreach
immediately
Jay Acunzo (44:42):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (44:43):
And berate themselves for not being able to
do it. And they think that thefact that they made one LinkedIn
post and they didn't make amillion dollars makes them a
failure.
Jay Acunzo (44:53):
You know what's so funny about this, Susan? So I
host this podcast called HowStories Happen. You've been on
it. You
Susan Boles (44:58):
had an excellent guest on there named Susan
Bowles.
Jay Acunzo (45:01):
This is a real Susan Bowles, not a fictional one.
It's people working out storiesor sharing a signature story
that's proven that they useeverywhere in their business, in
a speech, in a book, in anewsletter, what have you. And
you kinda hear how it comestogether. And to your point,
you're like, I just thoughtpeople pooped gold. Then I
listened to this show, and itwas like, wow.
It's really intentional and alot of effort, and I should feel
better about myself as a result.So I like that byproduct of the
(45:22):
show. You know, literally, it'show stories happen. So as a
result of doing that show, Irealized, like, I'm in the teens
now of number of shows I'vebuilt and launched, whether for
clients or myself. And I'm inthe the I'm close to a thousand,
like, episodes personally hostedin my career.
I can't allow people to think Ihave it all figured out. Because
(45:42):
even in doing how storieshappen, it still feels messy and
hard. And so I created this fourpart, I don't know what to call
it, YouTuber style series thatis now coming out called How How
Stories Happen happened. And theidea is to put on display my
mess and be more honest and rawabout, like, how this stuff
really unfolds behind thescenes. And I was uploading
(46:04):
episode one today, And I I lookat the name of the file, which
is always different than thetitle of the episode you give it
publicly, and the name of thefile ended v 10.
So that meant there were 10versions of this episode, and
and probably, like, 10,000 tinychoices that went into it and
changes that went into it to getto each v. So I'm like, oh, I
(46:26):
should tell people this. Like,oh, by the way, you're watching
v 10 of the behind the scenesepisode of a thing I was making
and also already own and made.Like, to describe the thing I
made, it's like, how many layersdeep do you wanna get in terms
of my meta type of business? ButI'm like, well, that's part of
it.
You don't see the file name thatsays v 10 or final final, no.
(46:50):
Actually, use this one dot m pthree. You don't see that. You
just see this final thing, andyou go, gosh. They're so good at
it.
Why is it so hard for me? AndI'm like, because either they've
done it a while, did somethingtangential a while that helps
them be good at that thing now,or you're not seeing the full
picture here. You're justgetting the final product.
Susan Boles (47:13):
What is your favorite way to make your own
work calmer?
Jay Acunzo (47:16):
I actually thought about this this morning. I swear
it wasn't because we weretalking today. It wasn't
necessarily I thought about thismakes my work calmer, but it did
quiet a lot of the voices anddistraction. I was just shooting
a video talking about a friend'sbook on Instagram. And I said
something which caused me tothink, oh, I should make a joke
(47:37):
here.
And then I made this joke. Andbasically, what I did was let my
quirks out from where they'rehiding. And so this is not some
grand strategic businessstrategy or approach. Honestly,
it is when I can wink and nod tomyself in a piece as small as an
Instagram story that'lldisappear or as large as a
speech I'm giving to thousandsof people or anything in
(47:57):
between. There's a wink and anod to myself before that goes
out the door that, like, thatlittle thing right there, yeah,
that was just for me.
And, like, I hope other peoplenotice it and appreciate it, but
I I don't care. Like, it it sortof activates the me of it all in
that piece or project. Becauseso much of business is thinking,
like, what does the market want?What will the market bear? What
works out there?
(48:18):
It really abstracts away thesoul of it all and the you of it
all. But in my line of work andI think more and more in most of
our lines of work, that partmatters. So what quiets the
discussion in my brain of what Ishould do or how it should work
or a million things I gotta getdone is just me, I guess, having
fun or at least being my trueself, finding a quirk to insert
(48:40):
in a piece, a post, a project, aconversation, and all of a
sudden, I, like, snap into flowand things feel very calm.
Susan Boles (48:51):
One of the best ways to make your business
calmer is just to work in a waythat works for you. Jay and I
have really different approachesto our work. I wanna have data
to quantify what I'm seeing orfeeling, and he's much more
comfortable being intuitiveabout it. Your KPI should be
that way too. They shouldreflect your goals, your values,
(49:13):
your approach to your work.
Trying to smash your goalstogether with someone else's
KPIs, it just won't work. So youneed to sit down, figure out
what your goals and prioritiesare, and then take a step
backwards and figure out whatthe signals or signposts you
might find along the way are.What are the indicators that
would tell you you're makingprogress? And those are what you
(49:35):
develop KPIs around. Part of mygoal with this series is to show
you all the different KPIs thatfolks have in their own
businesses and to help youunderstand how you might start
to develop your own KPIs, onesthat are personalized to you and
your business, not the defaults.
Look for the signals and thenbuild a system around them.
(49:56):
Thank you to everyone whosupports the show. If you're a
listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I couldn't
do the show without you. You cansupport the show by leaving a
rating and a review. It reallydoes help new listeners find the
show and hit play withconfidence.
Until next time, stay calmer.
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