September 30, 2025 • 33 mins
How do you solve your most challenging business problems and influence others in a way that lasts?
In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr speaks with Tara Landes, founder of Bellrock Benchmarking and Licensed Influence Trainer with The Cialdini Institute. With more than 25 years of experience advising over 300 business leaders, Tara has helped organizations implement lasting change, train managers to become confident leaders, and apply the psychology of ethical influence to achieve sustainable growth.
Tara combines practical consulting with science-backed methods, showing leaders how to stop firefighting and start creating healthier companies. She explains why influence is at the heart of leadership—41% of your workday is spent influencing others, whether you realize it or not—and how small, intentional changes can yield significant results.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Connect with Tara Landes:
Website: https://bellrock.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taralandes
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr speaks with Tara Landes, founder of Bellrock Benchmarking and Licensed Influence Trainer with The Cialdini Institute. With more than 25 years of experience advising over 300 business leaders, Tara has helped organizations implement lasting change, train managers to become confident leaders, and apply the psychology of ethical influence to achieve sustainable growth.
Tara combines practical consulting with science-backed methods, showing leaders how to stop firefighting and start creating healthier companies. She explains why influence is at the heart of leadership—41% of your workday is spent influencing others, whether you realize it or not—and how small, intentional changes can yield significant results.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why most business problems aren’t unique—and how to solve them faster
- How habits, fear, and perspective keep leaders from lasting change
- What ethical influence really means and how to apply it effectively
- Why celebrating progress is critical for motivation and retention
- How small changes in leadership behavior create outsized results
Connect with Tara Landes:
Website: https://bellrock.ca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taralandes
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
All right, welcome to the Business Roundtable podcast. My name
is David Carr, founders Steward your Business, where we bring
people together to accomplish great things. And we have a
brand new guest this week, Tara land Is from bell Rock.
We're super excited to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Tara, thank you so much for having me. David, I'm
excited too.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, it's so great you and I. What's funny, I
have mutual connection with a recording recently of Jonathan Bennett
on our podcast, which I know you guys are longtime
friends and connections, and I'm super excited to have you here.
Another guest from up in the Great White North, I
would say from those the manny folks that know strange
brew but Canada, A glad to have you here. Glad
(00:50):
to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thanks so much. I'll try to be really super nice.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
No, it's good. I love having different guests and particularly
your topic we're going to get into today about ethical influence.
How do we drive results in business? And influence is
so important more than ever, I feel like today because
there's not a lot of people that are not credible
in what they're saying, what they're showing up and people
(01:16):
are like, Oh, I don't know if I trust that.
But before we get into the meat of the meeting today,
if you will our podcast episode, tell me a little
bit more about bell Rock, Why you start at bell Rock,
you know, in two thousand and eight, and what you're
doing now.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Sure, yeah, thanks for asking. So I started in two
thousand and eight because I'd been working with small business
owners throughout North America helping them solve their problems and
doing what we call deep implementation, so like embedding a
consultant into their environment to help them solve whatever challenges
they had. And I had my first child and came
(01:53):
to my senses and realized I wanted to move back
to Vancouver, where I'm from, and I didn't want to
be on an airplane five days a week. So that's
how the company got started, or why the company got started,
and we once again work throughout North America after taking
a brief a brief pause while I stayed home with
my kid. But yeah, we focus with on smaller businesses,
(02:16):
helping them put in foundational systems, and we also run
a management training program, so we help new managers become
even better managers and existing managers become the best managers ever.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I love that. I feel like that's really in congruence
with Steward your business. I feel the same passionate terror
and we need that help to help folks transition and
become better leaders. And I work with small businesses and
their teams and so as as you're listening as a
business owner or a leader, you know, Teara is another
resource here and we love to collaborate. What I'd love
to these different voices because we all need help along
(02:51):
the way. We can go further faster when we have
folks like you tar on here and helping and sharing
some insights. Now you have done now you've doing this
for years. You have gone and helped hundreds of graduates.
You are certified with Sheldini Influence and Change Management, which
is a great another one that different perspective. Again, that's
(03:13):
why I love having you on here. Tell me you
know one of the things you're seeing in the work
that you're doing, because I think sometimes business owners are
focusing on maybe not solving the right problems, and they're
going in different areas and like, oh let's do this,
let's get another system, let's buy this program and talk
a little bit about you know, how do we solve
(03:34):
the toughest problems in business and and more permanently? But
where are we missing the mark as business owners?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Right? I? First of all, I think that most business
owners do a pretty good job. Like they're good people.
They're trying hard, parts in the right place. There are some,
you know, good for nothing people out there, but for
the most part, most people are good people trying hard.
But often, especially in small business, they haven't actually been
(04:02):
to business school. They often learned from the school of
hard knocks. They know their trade really well, perhaps but
not necessarily have the business tools, and those tools, like
most of the challenges that small businesses face are not unique.
Most of them we see across multiple industries and in
(04:25):
multiple sizes of companies, similar problem, different people. Of course,
these problems have been solved before, and so I think
one of the issues that can get in the way
is just not looking for those resources or not knowing
where to look. Because it's very unusual that a problem
(04:46):
is unique, it's usually been solved before. So that's one thing,
is just knowing where to look for the information. But
another thing that can get in the way is people's habits.
We've just been doing it this way for so darn long,
we don't even notice we're doing it anymore. It's you know,
it's that old saying about the fish and the water,
and you know, what's water? What are you talking about?
(05:07):
Because it's just all around them all the time, they
don't notice it, and so that habit piece can be
extremely challenging and finding the root cause of problems. The
other thing that really gets in the way of leaders
solving problems is just the emotional piece of it, you know, Fear,
fear of change, fear of the unknown, Fear that if
(05:28):
I pay my best project manager more than all the
other ones, the other ones are going to find out
and they're going to quit. Fear that if I don't
pay my best project manager more than all the other ones,
then she's going to find out and she's going to quit. Right,
It cuts both ways, and it's so debilitating from even
moving forward. But I think overall, I would just say
(05:50):
it's it's perspective. I mean, you have one, I have one.
We're both one hundred percent right in our perspective because
the way we see things, but our perspectives may be different.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right. That can be a challenge, absolutely well I think
that and again having somebody like yourself here come in
if you don't know, you don't know, and like how
getting some kind of assessment or baseline where are you at?
Like maybe you're doing pretty good on processes or systems
and maybe you're covered. We have different voices on this
podcast all the time. Maybe you're legal is good, or
(06:23):
maybe it's a cybercurity is covered great. But what I
found oftentimes, and this is where you specialize too, is
your people are dynamic. There's lots of things going on.
So every time you add a new person into the mix,
that's like I call a storm of change. And so
you know, identifying you what I found is there they
may they may not know unless they have somebody coming
(06:46):
in there and asking the questions like yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Right, m exactly, Yeah, just offering that perspective, right.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well, so, and so I guess is to your point
there and what I'm hearing is be curious as a
business owner of like what's what's working or maybe you're
breathing in and you don't realize and like getting there's
a point of like going to the doctor and getting
regular checkouts, right because we don't see some things, yep,
And sometimes it can be a little intimidating. But I
(07:13):
think finding a good consultant like yourself there is you're
not going to beat them up over the head. You're like, look,
I'm here to help you. I'm not going to like
try to make you feel bad about yourself. It's just, hey,
let's just deal with the facts of what's going on here, right,
because then you can fix it.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, yes, I agree with you. And often what we
find are things that they're good at and could be
great at. And so I think that's also important to consider,
is that when we go in and do an analysis
and take a look at what's working what's not, sometimes
the stuff that's not working isn't even worth dealing with.
It may not even be core. How did that thing
get added on there? Oh someone asked it for some
(07:49):
time ago, and now we just do it. But is
it actually providing any value? Maybe not? And meantime, we're
amazing at this thing over here, but we're not promoting
it very much, so we don't do it as well. Often, like,
I don't know what we'll find when we go in
and do an assessment, but I can say people shouldn't
assume we're looking for problems. Sometimes we're looking for taking
(08:10):
things from good to great.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I like that. I like that well, and that gets
into kind of a follow up conversation that I want
to get into because with your expertise of influence and
ethical influence a particular in leadership, because I think sometimes
we can undermine ourselves in trying to influence people and
not doing it like in our natural way, like I said, Tara,
(08:33):
and so I'd love to you and unpack a little
bit with us for those on the podcast here today,
what do you define as ethical influence? What does that
mean to you? Want to say that or sure?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, if we just start with influence. First of all,
influencing is getting basically it's getting people either at work
or at home or wherever. It's getting people to say
yes a little bit more often. You know, life is
just a little bit easier when we can get people
to say yes and agree with us. So that's influence.
(09:04):
And there are many ways to influence people. For example,
if we could use money, you know, if I pay
you a little more, will you do this thing? Like
that is a form of influence. Or we could use
force or even violence. I mean whole regimes are created
around that. The problem with those techniques is that they
(09:24):
aren't necessarily long lasting. You know how many business owners
have used I'm sure you've spoken to many who are complaining.
You know, I gave them that bonus in December and
it's January and the effect's already worn off. You know
what's going on with that? Or you know, I just
told them. If you don't do it, you know, I'm
going to fire you. And it might work for a while,
(09:46):
but it always ends up not sticking. And so what
we focus on is this ethical influence, which basically means
if it's good for you and it's good for me,
if we've got a win win here, then let's let's
keep going. Let's let's move forward. And so there are
different tactics that we can use to persuade people in
(10:07):
an ethical way.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right. I think you brought up some really good examples
of how you can influence people in a not healthy way,
like regime chains, and there's a way, yeah, in a
very unhealthy way. And I don't think some people, even
and they may not be conditioned so long maybe tear
up that they think it's actually a good thing. They're
like because look as results, right, you know, yeah, but
(10:31):
it's not good for everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, and the results may not stick. And you know,
more than anything else at Bell Rock, we're about lasting results.
We don't actually see a point in working with clients
that where it's not going to stick. It has to
stick otherwise you didn't deliver the value. And so ethical
influence really feeds into that because we want these things
(10:53):
to stick.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, well so you know, so, I know one of
the ones we author Drew Friad is like Daniel Pink
he talks about like most people spend about forty to
eighty percent of their workday trying to influence people.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yes, yeah, forty one percent. Actually, yeah, the research is
something like that. Yeah, so forty one percent, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You're right on the money. So something in that that's
a good amount of time. So can you walk us
through then, perhaps ways that we could be doing in
a healthier way.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Sure, well, yeah, so Doctor Robert Sheldini in the eighties
published a book called Influence, and in it he uncovers
the seven sort of principles of ethical influence and persuasion.
What that and we won't go through all of those today.
Of course, But what it's predicated on is some research
by a Nobel Prize winner named Daniel Konnoman. So Connoman
(11:50):
won although he's a behavioral scientist, he won the Nobel
Prize for economics, which is weird, like why is a
behavioral scientist winning a prize for economics? But what he
actually uncovered. See, before Connoman's research, the world sort of
generally accepted that humans make decisions in rational ways, that
we think through these things. But what Conoman found is
(12:13):
about ninety five percent of the time we're running on
automatic pilot. And if you've ever driven a car, when
you first learned to drive, man, you were thinking about everything.
You have to concentrate so hard you hit the gas
in the car will go, and then you hit the
break and you go like this and it was so hard.
But you know, a decade or two later, sometimes I
(12:35):
get behind the wheel in my car and then I
get to where I was going and I don't even
remember the journey. I'm so on automatic pilot, and I
hope I'm not alone in that, because otherwise I'm a
preal menace out there. But that's basically what Conoman uncovered
is that we are operating on an automatic pilot. What Sheldini
then added to that was, Okay, how can we activate
(12:57):
those automatic pilots. So, for example, there's a principle of liking.
We like to agree with people who we like. So
if we can activate on the principles of liking, we
will have a better effectiveness in terms of influence. So
(13:18):
think about that. Think about sort of the manager who
just gets along really well with his team, not lets
them get away with stuff, but they have something in
common and they kind of like each other and they've
found these things well, when they have to have a
difficult conversation, it's easier because they like each other. Yes,
and so these are the kinds of principles that we
(13:40):
talk about in ethical influence.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I mean, that's so important if you understand that. I
think the words sometimes like you said, kind of putting
this in perspective, Teldina broke it down. I think understanding that, oh,
I didn't even realize I'm doing this, like, yes, I'm
going an automatic pilot. We and then we don't under
(14:04):
don't think through that. But then when you realize, oh,
that's what I'm doing, it could either be helping me
or or hurting me in this in the relationships, right.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, and then there are all of these your bang
on and then there are all of these little things
that you can do to further activate on the principles
that he's laid out. So if I go back again
to to liking, you know what, what how can we
use that? Well? One study showed that if we build
(14:34):
rapport before getting down to business, find that liking, we
are far more likely to get a deal. So they
did a study, they actually did a study online with negotiations.
So they took two different MBA schools and broke the
different groups into teams. And with one group, they said,
(14:56):
time is money, get down to business, try to get
in a negotiated settlement with whatever this scenario was. And
in the other group, they said, before you get to business,
get to know each other a little bit, find some
common ground. And the group that found the common ground
came to resolution, came to a negotiated settlement way more
(15:18):
often than the group that just got down to business.
And that's activating on that principle of liking. We like
to do deals with people who we like, So so
do your homework, find some common ground. And so if
you're a manager of an employee, find some common ground.
If you have a client, find some whatever it is,
(15:39):
try to activate on that liking principle.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I like, well, that's as you guys are listening in
that gold right now. You can just take that to
the bank with you because to your point, though, I
know I've worked with people there that are like, let's
just get it done, let's get spright to the point,
and then they're underminding their influence. They are actually not
going to get the deal done. To your point, they're
just pushing this is the way it should be done, and
they missed the opportunity to you know, like you said,
(16:02):
actually think through this a little bit more, do the
homework and build that, and you're going to actually be
winning in the long run.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, exactly. They think they think it's a waste of time. Now,
this isn't foolproof, it's not one hundred percent guarantees humans
are human. But what it does is that it stacks
the odds in your favor. And really that's all we
can do, right is sort of build up these small
things that can lead to outsized results to stack the
odds in our favor.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
No, I think that's great. Now, I love to maybe
dig a little bit. You and I have worked with
professional services firms in the aec sphace, architecture and engineering,
construction technical professionals. What is you know? You mentioned this
was one problem for people beating apps and sales. Well,
what's another thing that common challenge? You see someone moving
from a technical doer to a manager or a leader
(16:52):
where they are maybe undermining their influence. And I'll give
you an example for me real quick, because I knew
I was taking over leading and I was a technical person,
and I felt like I didn't know all the answers,
like I had to like show like I knew everything.
And I realized that put a dissonance between me and
the people now that I was kind of overseeing. So
(17:15):
I didn't have the influence that I wanted to. And
I realized I was frustrated by that. And then I realized, Okay,
but then like like what do I show? How do I,
you know, influence them in a positive way? I don't
want to like just you know, show them like I
don't know what I'm doing right? So talk can you
walk through a little bit of like what do you
what do you see? In that space.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well, I definitely see what you're describing, and different people
handle it in different ways. I do think that on
one hand, there is an influenced principle of authority, so
in fact, people do tend to listen to and follow
the advice of people that they think know more about
a topic than they do. So you're right when when
(17:57):
a person becomes a leader for the first time, I'm
it's understandable why they'd feel like, oh, I don't know enough.
But there's another principle they can activate on instead, which
is the principle of unity. So unity is I'm in Vancouver, Canada.
We have a hockey team here called the Canucks, and
(18:19):
there are a lot of people here who are fans
of the Canucks. So you can activate on that principle
of liking. Bear with me here. Activating on the principle
of liking would be, oh, we both like the Canucks
and we talk a little bit about the game, but
being actually on the Canucks, if we were both Canucks,
that would be activating on the principle of unity, where
(18:41):
we're both on the same team and we're trying to
work together. So somebody who gets promoted to be a
new manager instead of trying to be all authoritative and
the boss. Another choice there is to co create, like
instead of and instead of asking for feedback, ask for advice.
Do you have any advice for me? Put yourself in
(19:03):
my shoes? What advice do you have? And now they're
co creating with that employee, not telling them what to do,
but creating it together and therefore bonding themselves more as
a team.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think this
is not just because I've lived this myself. This is
not an overnight thing. And this is where I feel
like having somebody like you or me and tera coming
alongside and guiding them, because I could watch a video
or read a book, but there's like the actual practice
of this. You speak to that a little bit about that, Tara,
Like how do you work with people? How do you
(19:36):
walk them through your program to get them more confident
in that, because that's the first time, Like I've never
done it, like riding a bike. It's like, oh, I've
never done this. Why do I create unity? I've never
done it before?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Exactly. Well, we actually offer management training programs, so people
come to classes and learn the principles sort of like
we're talking right now, and we give them specific exercises
so that they can first of all practice in class
in a group. But then they have assignments that they
have to go do with their people. They have to
try it and with all of our classes. What's really
(20:08):
important to us, as I said earlier, is that things stick.
So with every class comes one on one coaching. So
once they've gone and tried it with their team, they
then get a one on one coach to talk through
how it went, how to do it slightly different, maybe
improve the technique, maybe not have them throw the whole
thing out just because maybe one thing didn't go so well.
(20:28):
So for us, it's you know, really important principle to
me is just get started. But the other one is
stick with it. You know, stick with it and you'll
get better. It's just the driving right when you first
learn to drive. If you were just that good forever
at that first drive, oh my goodness, you'd be in trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well. And I think sometimes people in our today are
instantaneous society today, They want to see things happen so quickly,
but they don't. They lose the motivation, lose that drive.
And if they could just stick with it, like you said, longer, right, Sarah.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, and celebrate their successes instead of just finding everything
that went wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
That's a really good point too, Sarah. Like celebrating because
I remember bringing that up in a company to your
point earlier about the sales component, but just as a
different experience of like building maybe unity of like I
worked with a business owner and they just didn't see
the value and like celebrating once we've got a lot
of that. We got a lot of stuff to get done.
(21:30):
We've got a lot of things on the list. I
don't we can't spend five minutes on the agenda celebrating.
Do you speak a little bit about celebrating in the
in the workspace?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Well, yeah, I mean it's part of motivation people. It
turns out that humans aren't robots. And if you want
a robot, there are lots of them out there, so
go for it. But psychologically speaking, you know, we like
to do We like to see ourselves making progress. Progress
feels good. My fifteen year old is learning the guitar
(22:01):
and he's practicing a lot, and this is totally of
his own volition. No one's making him play this instrument.
He wants to, and when he gets just a little
bit better, he gets so excited and then he does
more practicing and again nobody's forcing this on him. Well,
what if you could apply that principle at work. What
if a manager could be applying that like, oh, well
(22:23):
you did you know, maybe we got this far to go,
but we're here, and that's is a progress makes the
person feel like, yeah, I did that, I can do more.
You know, even when I write proposals for work, at
the end of the proposal in the cover letter, I
always say and congratulations for taking this first step. Right,
(22:46):
I'm giving them this sort of endowed progress. You are
already on the path. Congratulations, let's keep going. Which, whether
you do it with me or somebody else, you're doing
good work here. And that is a debating on the
influenced principle of consistency, which is people that we should
always be consistent with others with what we say. But
(23:08):
it's more that people want to be consistent with their
own behavior. So if we can show hey, you practice
the guitar and you got this little bit of success
way to go, they're more likely to keep trying and
keep trying and keep trying so leaders also can take,
as you said, five minutes to say, see this stuff
(23:30):
that you did, please keep doing that all day long.
This is good stuff. Just to be clear, love in
this part. Now we can talk about.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This, right. I think that's so important Tara that you
broke that down, because I've seen people at times with
hold celebrating the good part because they're like, well, I
don't want to celebrate that part because we got this part,
and if I celebrate this, they're not going to focus
on on that. And I think you're breaking it down
and giving you an example of your son, like, no,
(24:00):
they make it, did they see they make progress? They
really will still keep motivated.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yes, And it's not just kids. You know kids we
were we were all kids once, so they're good, good examples.
But I'll give you I'll take this a step further.
There was a study they did. You're gonna think this
is totally not check quarter, but it's not. So they
did a study about consistency with loyalty cards. So you
know those cards like you go to the gas station
(24:26):
for a car wash, and you know, you do eight
car washes and you get the ninth one free. You
know what I'm talking about little cards. Okay, so they
did a study and one of the cards that they
gave out had eight blank spaces, so you do eight
and then the ninth is free. And with that, they
found that nineteen percent of people who's they gave these
(24:48):
cards to made no progress. Okay, they didn't, they didn't
complete the loyalty card. But with people sorry, nineteen percent
of them completed the loyalty card. So they had eight
blank spaces, nineteen percent of people did all nine eight
and got one free. They in the other group, they
(25:11):
gave out a loyalty card with ten open spaces, but
they put stars in the first two, so it's like
they'd already started. They gave them for free. It was
like two free, even though either way both card they
had to do eight.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yes, got it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So on the one where they gave them two free,
thirty four percent of people completed the card. And that
that's a seventy almost a seventy nine percent increase in
results just by saying, look, you've already started, doesn't cost anything.
It's a it's an a moment of ethical persuasion. It
(25:51):
didn't cost anything more. It's good for you, it's good
for me. We're good to go, and we got you know,
almost double.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I love, I love, I love the background you're bringing,
the studies. This is why I brought Terror on Carecter.
You've got this a wealth of knowledge and experience doing this.
And I think sometimes people think, oh, this is wu
wu stuff. No, it's it's science based. It's understanding these things.
These quote unquote soft skills are very powerful and there's
(26:21):
there's backing to them, right, Tara, exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And I like that you said it's science based because
it is. They study this stuff in controlled environments to
figure out what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Right, And I think sometimes people want to just terror.
I think sometimes, like I said, I work with a
lot of companies and they want to buy you know,
the next pro like you know, system thing or software right,
the shining object and like and it's like, well, the
people don't need this, they don't, you know, And and
they don't. And that's why I found it called Steward
(26:53):
your Business. Why I founded the company about steward your
people the greatest assets. And I think that's why I
love what you're doing at bell Rock. By the way, folks,
if you want to connect with Terror, We're connected on
LinkedIn and I'll put the notes to bell Rock. You
guys can connect with her, uh and please do. She
did greats, some great I just talked with her earlier
to day. She was putting some posts on her LinkedIn
some great resources there, So go there. But I think,
(27:17):
you know, talk to whatever the mindset or maybe the
limitation that you see in the business owner or even
the individual, like am I worth it? Should I spend
the money and time on this? You know, instead of
where we only have so much time and so much money,
but the dividends that you see, like what would be
you know, how to overcome that objection in themselves? Terrace?
(27:37):
Can you speak a little bit to that?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, just clarify for me.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Will they be hesitant of like why should I spend
the time in going through a program like this, going
through getting this help? You know, because they feel like
am I worth it? Am I? Is it going to
make that much difference in my life? Right? Then?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I like the question because they're number of ways to
answer it using the principles of persuasion. So for example,
should I do it? Well, we could use social proof.
You know, thousands of other people have done it. And
found it helpful. So if those people are like you,
that might be an indication that it's a it's a
(28:17):
good idea to try. We've been doing this for twenty
five years as well, so you know that's a long time.
We've got a little bit of experience and authority. But
the biggest, the biggest objection, as you said, is usually
it's actually not cost. They're not worried about cost, they're
worried about value. Are we going to Are we going
to get the value? And that's why at Melrock, our
(28:40):
our brand promise one hundred percent is if you don't
see value, don't pay us. Like just we don't sign contracts,
don't don't pay. So basically, try it. Why wouldn't you
just get started. If you get started and it works out,
we would love you to pay us. If we get
started and it works out and you just decide not
to pay us, we may not show back up again
(29:01):
another time. When you call that, you know, we'll shake
hands and part ways and that'll be that.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Absolutely Well. I think I think you're it's all. Yeah,
value is huge, and I think I found at least
some point where there's a switch where it's like, oh, No,
I'm actually valuable. It's worth it, and I think and
I want to be at least for me, Tarah. In
my own journey, I was like, Okay, I realized if
I want to be an effective leader, I better start
(29:27):
working on myself first, because if I want people to
show up and I'm not willing to do the work,
They're probably not going to do the work. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, And I also I also think you're making me
think of something else, which is especially in architecture, engineering, construction,
sort of like the professional fields. People went to school
to learn the stuff that they've learned, and they probably
spent a lot of years doing that, and then they
spent a lot of years practicing, but it was the
technical stuff that they were learning. We're just talking about
(29:58):
a different skill set here, and you might I mean,
most people can fake it, it's true, But why would
you want to, Like, you went to school for all
those years to learn all that other stuff. There's school
for this too. How do you leave people properly and effectively?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah? Absolutely, And I think you know it's learning. You know,
we're in different worlds now, Terrea. I'm sure you know
we're not all working in the same office. Anymore. There's
different ways for communicating, whether it's text, email, whatever, the
messaging thing maybe is we're on a video recall. There's
different ways you can influence folks. And if you're not
aware of this, like you again, you said, you may
(30:37):
be interding it in an unhealthy way. And why not
get healthier? Right?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Why not? Yeah? Why not? It's usually the real reason
why not is time. But once people see the benefits,
they find that suddenly they have time.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Well, and to your point, I mean, we're doing we're
doing work. We've talked with a lot of technical folks.
But it goes. It starts perhaps in your workplace, but
I'm sure, like you said, it's and expand into your
relationship with your spouse, your children, other folks. Right, So
it's going to enrich all aspects of life hopefully.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah. You once you see these influence principles, you start
to see them everywhere. You can't just limit it to
your workplace.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah. Absolutely. I know we're getting to the end of
the podcast here. There's way more I want to go
into with you, but we just don't have enough times
this time around, So you have to come back or
maybe I'll get you and Jonathan On will do a
group right, So I haven't been a full roundtable in
a while, so I got to do another episode. But
since we've covered a lot, I'm going to make sure
(31:35):
all of your links are provided in our show notes.
And by the way, people please leave any comments you have.
We'll make sure taror gets them. Whatever format of it is,
it's on YouTube or LinkedIn wherever you're finding us. But
I always like to give our guests an opportunity terrortor
just you know, we've talked a lot of different things here.
If I've not done anything yet, I'm listening to this
and saying, where do I start? What do I do?
(31:57):
I know there's a problem. I know I'm not having
the implument I want to have. What would you say
to that person, that business owner, the individual, Where do
they start? What would they where would they go? Should
they do?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I would first of all tell them that they just
got started. They already started. They did just by listening
to this and coming to the end of this, and
there's probably one thing that they heard that really resonated
with them, that just that one little spark. Go try that,
try that, and remember all you're doing is learning how
to play the guitar. That's it. So you're not going
(32:29):
to be the best at it the first time you
do it, but every time you try, you're going to
get a little better. And once you get those results,
maybe you'll want to try something else.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Uh. That's great, Tara. Thank you so much for being
here with us on the podcast. Weight share it with
your network if you're interested in being on the podcast.
We love having new guests. Tara, thank you so much
for being here with us.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Thanks David, it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
All right, everybody, until next time, be well. Thanks for
joining us on the Business Roundtable podcast.
All right, welcome to the Business Roundtable podcast. My name
is David Carr, founders Steward your Business, where we bring
people together to accomplish great things. And we have a
brand new guest this week, Tara land Is from bell Rock.
We're super excited to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Tara, thank you so much for having me. David, I'm
excited too.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, it's so great you and I. What's funny, I
have mutual connection with a recording recently of Jonathan Bennett
on our podcast, which I know you guys are longtime
friends and connections, and I'm super excited to have you here.
Another guest from up in the Great White North, I
would say from those the manny folks that know strange
brew but Canada, A glad to have you here. Glad
(00:50):
to have you here.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thanks so much. I'll try to be really super nice.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
No, it's good. I love having different guests and particularly
your topic we're going to get into today about ethical influence.
How do we drive results in business? And influence is
so important more than ever, I feel like today because
there's not a lot of people that are not credible
in what they're saying, what they're showing up and people
(01:16):
are like, Oh, I don't know if I trust that.
But before we get into the meat of the meeting today,
if you will our podcast episode, tell me a little
bit more about bell Rock, Why you start at bell Rock,
you know, in two thousand and eight, and what you're
doing now.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Sure, yeah, thanks for asking. So I started in two
thousand and eight because I'd been working with small business
owners throughout North America helping them solve their problems and
doing what we call deep implementation, so like embedding a
consultant into their environment to help them solve whatever challenges
they had. And I had my first child and came
(01:53):
to my senses and realized I wanted to move back
to Vancouver, where I'm from, and I didn't want to
be on an airplane five days a week. So that's
how the company got started, or why the company got started,
and we once again work throughout North America after taking
a brief a brief pause while I stayed home with
my kid. But yeah, we focus with on smaller businesses,
(02:16):
helping them put in foundational systems, and we also run
a management training program, so we help new managers become
even better managers and existing managers become the best managers ever.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I love that. I feel like that's really in congruence
with Steward your business. I feel the same passionate terror
and we need that help to help folks transition and
become better leaders. And I work with small businesses and
their teams and so as as you're listening as a
business owner or a leader, you know, Teara is another
resource here and we love to collaborate. What I'd love
to these different voices because we all need help along
(02:51):
the way. We can go further faster when we have
folks like you tar on here and helping and sharing
some insights. Now you have done now you've doing this
for years. You have gone and helped hundreds of graduates.
You are certified with Sheldini Influence and Change Management, which
is a great another one that different perspective. Again, that's
(03:13):
why I love having you on here. Tell me you
know one of the things you're seeing in the work
that you're doing, because I think sometimes business owners are
focusing on maybe not solving the right problems, and they're
going in different areas and like, oh let's do this,
let's get another system, let's buy this program and talk
a little bit about you know, how do we solve
(03:34):
the toughest problems in business and and more permanently? But
where are we missing the mark as business owners?
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Right? I? First of all, I think that most business
owners do a pretty good job. Like they're good people.
They're trying hard, parts in the right place. There are some,
you know, good for nothing people out there, but for
the most part, most people are good people trying hard.
But often, especially in small business, they haven't actually been
(04:02):
to business school. They often learned from the school of
hard knocks. They know their trade really well, perhaps but
not necessarily have the business tools, and those tools, like
most of the challenges that small businesses face are not unique.
Most of them we see across multiple industries and in
(04:25):
multiple sizes of companies, similar problem, different people. Of course,
these problems have been solved before, and so I think
one of the issues that can get in the way
is just not looking for those resources or not knowing
where to look. Because it's very unusual that a problem
(04:46):
is unique, it's usually been solved before. So that's one thing,
is just knowing where to look for the information. But
another thing that can get in the way is people's habits.
We've just been doing it this way for so darn long,
we don't even notice we're doing it anymore. It's you know,
it's that old saying about the fish and the water,
and you know, what's water? What are you talking about?
(05:07):
Because it's just all around them all the time, they
don't notice it, and so that habit piece can be
extremely challenging and finding the root cause of problems. The
other thing that really gets in the way of leaders
solving problems is just the emotional piece of it, you know, Fear,
fear of change, fear of the unknown, Fear that if
(05:28):
I pay my best project manager more than all the
other ones, the other ones are going to find out
and they're going to quit. Fear that if I don't
pay my best project manager more than all the other ones,
then she's going to find out and she's going to quit. Right,
It cuts both ways, and it's so debilitating from even
moving forward. But I think overall, I would just say
(05:50):
it's it's perspective. I mean, you have one, I have one.
We're both one hundred percent right in our perspective because
the way we see things, but our perspectives may be different.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right. That can be a challenge, absolutely well I think
that and again having somebody like yourself here come in
if you don't know, you don't know, and like how
getting some kind of assessment or baseline where are you at?
Like maybe you're doing pretty good on processes or systems
and maybe you're covered. We have different voices on this
podcast all the time. Maybe you're legal is good, or
(06:23):
maybe it's a cybercurity is covered great. But what I
found oftentimes, and this is where you specialize too, is
your people are dynamic. There's lots of things going on.
So every time you add a new person into the mix,
that's like I call a storm of change. And so
you know, identifying you what I found is there they
may they may not know unless they have somebody coming
(06:46):
in there and asking the questions like yourself.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Right, m exactly, Yeah, just offering that perspective, right.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Well, so, and so I guess is to your point
there and what I'm hearing is be curious as a
business owner of like what's what's working or maybe you're
breathing in and you don't realize and like getting there's
a point of like going to the doctor and getting
regular checkouts, right because we don't see some things, yep,
And sometimes it can be a little intimidating. But I
(07:13):
think finding a good consultant like yourself there is you're
not going to beat them up over the head. You're like, look,
I'm here to help you. I'm not going to like
try to make you feel bad about yourself. It's just, hey,
let's just deal with the facts of what's going on here, right,
because then you can fix it.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Well, yes, I agree with you. And often what we
find are things that they're good at and could be
great at. And so I think that's also important to consider,
is that when we go in and do an analysis
and take a look at what's working what's not, sometimes
the stuff that's not working isn't even worth dealing with.
It may not even be core. How did that thing
get added on there? Oh someone asked it for some
(07:49):
time ago, and now we just do it. But is
it actually providing any value? Maybe not? And meantime, we're
amazing at this thing over here, but we're not promoting
it very much, so we don't do it as well. Often, like,
I don't know what we'll find when we go in
and do an assessment, but I can say people shouldn't
assume we're looking for problems. Sometimes we're looking for taking
(08:10):
things from good to great.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I like that. I like that well, and that gets
into kind of a follow up conversation that I want
to get into because with your expertise of influence and
ethical influence a particular in leadership, because I think sometimes
we can undermine ourselves in trying to influence people and
not doing it like in our natural way, like I said, Tara,
(08:33):
and so I'd love to you and unpack a little
bit with us for those on the podcast here today,
what do you define as ethical influence? What does that
mean to you? Want to say that or sure?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Well, if we just start with influence. First of all,
influencing is getting basically it's getting people either at work
or at home or wherever. It's getting people to say
yes a little bit more often. You know, life is
just a little bit easier when we can get people
to say yes and agree with us. So that's influence.
(09:04):
And there are many ways to influence people. For example,
if we could use money, you know, if I pay
you a little more, will you do this thing? Like
that is a form of influence. Or we could use
force or even violence. I mean whole regimes are created
around that. The problem with those techniques is that they
(09:24):
aren't necessarily long lasting. You know how many business owners
have used I'm sure you've spoken to many who are complaining.
You know, I gave them that bonus in December and
it's January and the effect's already worn off. You know
what's going on with that? Or you know, I just
told them. If you don't do it, you know, I'm
going to fire you. And it might work for a while,
(09:46):
but it always ends up not sticking. And so what
we focus on is this ethical influence, which basically means
if it's good for you and it's good for me,
if we've got a win win here, then let's let's
keep going. Let's let's move forward. And so there are
different tactics that we can use to persuade people in
(10:07):
an ethical way.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Right. I think you brought up some really good examples
of how you can influence people in a not healthy way,
like regime chains, and there's a way, yeah, in a
very unhealthy way. And I don't think some people, even
and they may not be conditioned so long maybe tear
up that they think it's actually a good thing. They're
like because look as results, right, you know, yeah, but
(10:31):
it's not good for everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Right, and the results may not stick. And you know,
more than anything else at Bell Rock, we're about lasting results.
We don't actually see a point in working with clients
that where it's not going to stick. It has to
stick otherwise you didn't deliver the value. And so ethical
influence really feeds into that because we want these things
(10:53):
to stick.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, well so you know, so, I know one of
the ones we author Drew Friad is like Daniel Pink
he talks about like most people spend about forty to
eighty percent of their workday trying to influence people.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yes, yeah, forty one percent. Actually, yeah, the research is
something like that. Yeah, so forty one percent, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You're right on the money. So something in that that's
a good amount of time. So can you walk us
through then, perhaps ways that we could be doing in
a healthier way.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Sure, well, yeah, so Doctor Robert Sheldini in the eighties
published a book called Influence, and in it he uncovers
the seven sort of principles of ethical influence and persuasion.
What that and we won't go through all of those today.
Of course, But what it's predicated on is some research
by a Nobel Prize winner named Daniel Konnoman. So Connoman
(11:50):
won although he's a behavioral scientist, he won the Nobel
Prize for economics, which is weird, like why is a
behavioral scientist winning a prize for economics? But what he
actually uncovered. See, before Connoman's research, the world sort of
generally accepted that humans make decisions in rational ways, that
we think through these things. But what Conoman found is
(12:13):
about ninety five percent of the time we're running on
automatic pilot. And if you've ever driven a car, when
you first learned to drive, man, you were thinking about everything.
You have to concentrate so hard you hit the gas
in the car will go, and then you hit the
break and you go like this and it was so hard.
But you know, a decade or two later, sometimes I
(12:35):
get behind the wheel in my car and then I
get to where I was going and I don't even
remember the journey. I'm so on automatic pilot, and I
hope I'm not alone in that, because otherwise I'm a
preal menace out there. But that's basically what Conoman uncovered
is that we are operating on an automatic pilot. What Sheldini
then added to that was, Okay, how can we activate
(12:57):
those automatic pilots. So, for example, there's a principle of liking.
We like to agree with people who we like. So
if we can activate on the principles of liking, we
will have a better effectiveness in terms of influence. So
(13:18):
think about that. Think about sort of the manager who
just gets along really well with his team, not lets
them get away with stuff, but they have something in
common and they kind of like each other and they've
found these things well, when they have to have a
difficult conversation, it's easier because they like each other. Yes,
and so these are the kinds of principles that we
(13:40):
talk about in ethical influence.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I mean, that's so important if you understand that. I
think the words sometimes like you said, kind of putting
this in perspective, Teldina broke it down. I think understanding that, oh,
I didn't even realize I'm doing this, like, yes, I'm
going an automatic pilot. We and then we don't under
(14:04):
don't think through that. But then when you realize, oh,
that's what I'm doing, it could either be helping me
or or hurting me in this in the relationships, right.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, and then there are all of these your bang
on and then there are all of these little things
that you can do to further activate on the principles
that he's laid out. So if I go back again
to to liking, you know what, what how can we
use that? Well? One study showed that if we build
(14:34):
rapport before getting down to business, find that liking, we
are far more likely to get a deal. So they
did a study, they actually did a study online with negotiations.
So they took two different MBA schools and broke the
different groups into teams. And with one group, they said,
(14:56):
time is money, get down to business, try to get
in a negotiated settlement with whatever this scenario was. And
in the other group, they said, before you get to business,
get to know each other a little bit, find some
common ground. And the group that found the common ground
came to resolution, came to a negotiated settlement way more
(15:18):
often than the group that just got down to business.
And that's activating on that principle of liking. We like
to do deals with people who we like, So so
do your homework, find some common ground. And so if
you're a manager of an employee, find some common ground.
If you have a client, find some whatever it is,
(15:39):
try to activate on that liking principle.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I like, well, that's as you guys are listening in
that gold right now. You can just take that to
the bank with you because to your point, though, I
know I've worked with people there that are like, let's
just get it done, let's get spright to the point,
and then they're underminding their influence. They are actually not
going to get the deal done. To your point, they're
just pushing this is the way it should be done, and
they missed the opportunity to you know, like you said,
(16:02):
actually think through this a little bit more, do the
homework and build that, and you're going to actually be
winning in the long run.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah, exactly. They think they think it's a waste of time. Now,
this isn't foolproof, it's not one hundred percent guarantees humans
are human. But what it does is that it stacks
the odds in your favor. And really that's all we
can do, right is sort of build up these small
things that can lead to outsized results to stack the
odds in our favor.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
No, I think that's great. Now, I love to maybe
dig a little bit. You and I have worked with
professional services firms in the aec sphace, architecture and engineering,
construction technical professionals. What is you know? You mentioned this
was one problem for people beating apps and sales. Well,
what's another thing that common challenge? You see someone moving
from a technical doer to a manager or a leader
(16:52):
where they are maybe undermining their influence. And I'll give
you an example for me real quick, because I knew
I was taking over leading and I was a technical person,
and I felt like I didn't know all the answers,
like I had to like show like I knew everything.
And I realized that put a dissonance between me and
the people now that I was kind of overseeing. So
(17:15):
I didn't have the influence that I wanted to. And
I realized I was frustrated by that. And then I realized, Okay,
but then like like what do I show? How do I,
you know, influence them in a positive way? I don't
want to like just you know, show them like I
don't know what I'm doing right? So talk can you
walk through a little bit of like what do you
what do you see? In that space.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well, I definitely see what you're describing, and different people
handle it in different ways. I do think that on
one hand, there is an influenced principle of authority, so
in fact, people do tend to listen to and follow
the advice of people that they think know more about
a topic than they do. So you're right when when
(17:57):
a person becomes a leader for the first time, I'm
it's understandable why they'd feel like, oh, I don't know enough.
But there's another principle they can activate on instead, which
is the principle of unity. So unity is I'm in Vancouver, Canada.
We have a hockey team here called the Canucks, and
(18:19):
there are a lot of people here who are fans
of the Canucks. So you can activate on that principle
of liking. Bear with me here. Activating on the principle
of liking would be, oh, we both like the Canucks
and we talk a little bit about the game, but
being actually on the Canucks, if we were both Canucks,
that would be activating on the principle of unity, where
(18:41):
we're both on the same team and we're trying to
work together. So somebody who gets promoted to be a
new manager instead of trying to be all authoritative and
the boss. Another choice there is to co create, like
instead of and instead of asking for feedback, ask for advice.
Do you have any advice for me? Put yourself in
(19:03):
my shoes? What advice do you have? And now they're
co creating with that employee, not telling them what to do,
but creating it together and therefore bonding themselves more as
a team.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think this
is not just because I've lived this myself. This is
not an overnight thing. And this is where I feel
like having somebody like you or me and tera coming
alongside and guiding them, because I could watch a video
or read a book, but there's like the actual practice
of this. You speak to that a little bit about that, Tara,
Like how do you work with people? How do you
(19:36):
walk them through your program to get them more confident
in that, because that's the first time, Like I've never
done it, like riding a bike. It's like, oh, I've
never done this. Why do I create unity? I've never
done it before?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Exactly. Well, we actually offer management training programs, so people
come to classes and learn the principles sort of like
we're talking right now, and we give them specific exercises
so that they can first of all practice in class
in a group. But then they have assignments that they
have to go do with their people. They have to
try it and with all of our classes. What's really
(20:08):
important to us, as I said earlier, is that things stick.
So with every class comes one on one coaching. So
once they've gone and tried it with their team, they
then get a one on one coach to talk through
how it went, how to do it slightly different, maybe
improve the technique, maybe not have them throw the whole
thing out just because maybe one thing didn't go so well.
(20:28):
So for us, it's you know, really important principle to
me is just get started. But the other one is
stick with it. You know, stick with it and you'll
get better. It's just the driving right when you first
learn to drive. If you were just that good forever
at that first drive, oh my goodness, you'd be in trouble.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Well. And I think sometimes people in our today are
instantaneous society today, They want to see things happen so quickly,
but they don't. They lose the motivation, lose that drive.
And if they could just stick with it, like you said, longer, right, Sarah.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, and celebrate their successes instead of just finding everything
that went wrong.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
That's a really good point too, Sarah. Like celebrating because
I remember bringing that up in a company to your
point earlier about the sales component, but just as a
different experience of like building maybe unity of like I
worked with a business owner and they just didn't see
the value and like celebrating once we've got a lot
of that. We got a lot of stuff to get done.
(21:30):
We've got a lot of things on the list. I
don't we can't spend five minutes on the agenda celebrating.
Do you speak a little bit about celebrating in the
in the workspace?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Well, yeah, I mean it's part of motivation people. It
turns out that humans aren't robots. And if you want
a robot, there are lots of them out there, so
go for it. But psychologically speaking, you know, we like
to do We like to see ourselves making progress. Progress
feels good. My fifteen year old is learning the guitar
(22:01):
and he's practicing a lot, and this is totally of
his own volition. No one's making him play this instrument.
He wants to, and when he gets just a little
bit better, he gets so excited and then he does
more practicing and again nobody's forcing this on him. Well,
what if you could apply that principle at work. What
if a manager could be applying that like, oh, well
(22:23):
you did you know, maybe we got this far to go,
but we're here, and that's is a progress makes the
person feel like, yeah, I did that, I can do more.
You know, even when I write proposals for work, at
the end of the proposal in the cover letter, I
always say and congratulations for taking this first step. Right,
(22:46):
I'm giving them this sort of endowed progress. You are
already on the path. Congratulations, let's keep going. Which, whether
you do it with me or somebody else, you're doing
good work here. And that is a debating on the
influenced principle of consistency, which is people that we should
always be consistent with others with what we say. But
(23:08):
it's more that people want to be consistent with their
own behavior. So if we can show hey, you practice
the guitar and you got this little bit of success
way to go, they're more likely to keep trying and
keep trying and keep trying so leaders also can take,
as you said, five minutes to say, see this stuff
(23:30):
that you did, please keep doing that all day long.
This is good stuff. Just to be clear, love in
this part. Now we can talk about.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This, right. I think that's so important Tara that you
broke that down, because I've seen people at times with
hold celebrating the good part because they're like, well, I
don't want to celebrate that part because we got this part,
and if I celebrate this, they're not going to focus
on on that. And I think you're breaking it down
and giving you an example of your son, like, no,
(24:00):
they make it, did they see they make progress? They
really will still keep motivated.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yes, And it's not just kids. You know kids we
were we were all kids once, so they're good, good examples.
But I'll give you I'll take this a step further.
There was a study they did. You're gonna think this
is totally not check quarter, but it's not. So they
did a study about consistency with loyalty cards. So you
know those cards like you go to the gas station
(24:26):
for a car wash, and you know, you do eight
car washes and you get the ninth one free. You
know what I'm talking about little cards. Okay, so they
did a study and one of the cards that they
gave out had eight blank spaces, so you do eight
and then the ninth is free. And with that, they
found that nineteen percent of people who's they gave these
(24:48):
cards to made no progress. Okay, they didn't, they didn't
complete the loyalty card. But with people sorry, nineteen percent
of them completed the loyalty card. So they had eight
blank spaces, nineteen percent of people did all nine eight
and got one free. They in the other group, they
(25:11):
gave out a loyalty card with ten open spaces, but
they put stars in the first two, so it's like
they'd already started. They gave them for free. It was
like two free, even though either way both card they
had to do eight.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yes, got it.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So on the one where they gave them two free,
thirty four percent of people completed the card. And that
that's a seventy almost a seventy nine percent increase in
results just by saying, look, you've already started, doesn't cost anything.
It's a it's an a moment of ethical persuasion. It
(25:51):
didn't cost anything more. It's good for you, it's good
for me. We're good to go, and we got you know,
almost double.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I love, I love, I love the background you're bringing,
the studies. This is why I brought Terror on Carecter.
You've got this a wealth of knowledge and experience doing this.
And I think sometimes people think, oh, this is wu
wu stuff. No, it's it's science based. It's understanding these things.
These quote unquote soft skills are very powerful and there's
(26:21):
there's backing to them, right, Tara, exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And I like that you said it's science based because
it is. They study this stuff in controlled environments to
figure out what works and what doesn't.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Right, And I think sometimes people want to just terror.
I think sometimes, like I said, I work with a
lot of companies and they want to buy you know,
the next pro like you know, system thing or software right,
the shining object and like and it's like, well, the
people don't need this, they don't, you know, And and
they don't. And that's why I found it called Steward
(26:53):
your Business. Why I founded the company about steward your
people the greatest assets. And I think that's why I
love what you're doing at bell Rock. By the way, folks,
if you want to connect with Terror, We're connected on
LinkedIn and I'll put the notes to bell Rock. You
guys can connect with her, uh and please do. She
did greats, some great I just talked with her earlier
to day. She was putting some posts on her LinkedIn
some great resources there, So go there. But I think,
(27:17):
you know, talk to whatever the mindset or maybe the
limitation that you see in the business owner or even
the individual, like am I worth it? Should I spend
the money and time on this? You know, instead of
where we only have so much time and so much money,
but the dividends that you see, like what would be
you know, how to overcome that objection in themselves? Terrace?
(27:37):
Can you speak a little bit to that?
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, just clarify for me.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Will they be hesitant of like why should I spend
the time in going through a program like this, going
through getting this help? You know, because they feel like
am I worth it? Am I? Is it going to
make that much difference in my life? Right? Then?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
I like the question because they're number of ways to
answer it using the principles of persuasion. So for example,
should I do it? Well, we could use social proof.
You know, thousands of other people have done it. And
found it helpful. So if those people are like you,
that might be an indication that it's a it's a
(28:17):
good idea to try. We've been doing this for twenty
five years as well, so you know that's a long time.
We've got a little bit of experience and authority. But
the biggest, the biggest objection, as you said, is usually
it's actually not cost. They're not worried about cost, they're
worried about value. Are we going to Are we going
to get the value? And that's why at Melrock, our
(28:40):
our brand promise one hundred percent is if you don't
see value, don't pay us. Like just we don't sign contracts,
don't don't pay. So basically, try it. Why wouldn't you
just get started. If you get started and it works out,
we would love you to pay us. If we get
started and it works out and you just decide not
to pay us, we may not show back up again
(29:01):
another time. When you call that, you know, we'll shake
hands and part ways and that'll be that.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Absolutely Well. I think I think you're it's all. Yeah,
value is huge, and I think I found at least
some point where there's a switch where it's like, oh, No,
I'm actually valuable. It's worth it, and I think and
I want to be at least for me, Tarah. In
my own journey, I was like, Okay, I realized if
I want to be an effective leader, I better start
(29:27):
working on myself first, because if I want people to
show up and I'm not willing to do the work,
They're probably not going to do the work. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, And I also I also think you're making me
think of something else, which is especially in architecture, engineering, construction,
sort of like the professional fields. People went to school
to learn the stuff that they've learned, and they probably
spent a lot of years doing that, and then they
spent a lot of years practicing, but it was the
technical stuff that they were learning. We're just talking about
(29:58):
a different skill set here, and you might I mean,
most people can fake it, it's true, But why would
you want to, Like, you went to school for all
those years to learn all that other stuff. There's school
for this too. How do you leave people properly and effectively?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah? Absolutely, And I think you know it's learning. You know,
we're in different worlds now, Terrea. I'm sure you know
we're not all working in the same office. Anymore. There's
different ways for communicating, whether it's text, email, whatever, the
messaging thing maybe is we're on a video recall. There's
different ways you can influence folks. And if you're not
aware of this, like you again, you said, you may
(30:37):
be interding it in an unhealthy way. And why not
get healthier? Right?
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Why not? Yeah? Why not? It's usually the real reason
why not is time. But once people see the benefits,
they find that suddenly they have time.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Well, and to your point, I mean, we're doing we're
doing work. We've talked with a lot of technical folks.
But it goes. It starts perhaps in your workplace, but
I'm sure, like you said, it's and expand into your
relationship with your spouse, your children, other folks. Right, So
it's going to enrich all aspects of life hopefully.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah. You once you see these influence principles, you start
to see them everywhere. You can't just limit it to
your workplace.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah. Absolutely. I know we're getting to the end of
the podcast here. There's way more I want to go
into with you, but we just don't have enough times
this time around, So you have to come back or
maybe I'll get you and Jonathan On will do a
group right, So I haven't been a full roundtable in
a while, so I got to do another episode. But
since we've covered a lot, I'm going to make sure
(31:35):
all of your links are provided in our show notes.
And by the way, people please leave any comments you have.
We'll make sure taror gets them. Whatever format of it is,
it's on YouTube or LinkedIn wherever you're finding us. But
I always like to give our guests an opportunity terrortor
just you know, we've talked a lot of different things here.
If I've not done anything yet, I'm listening to this
and saying, where do I start? What do I do?
(31:57):
I know there's a problem. I know I'm not having
the implument I want to have. What would you say
to that person, that business owner, the individual, Where do
they start? What would they where would they go? Should
they do?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I would first of all tell them that they just
got started. They already started. They did just by listening
to this and coming to the end of this, and
there's probably one thing that they heard that really resonated
with them, that just that one little spark. Go try that,
try that, and remember all you're doing is learning how
to play the guitar. That's it. So you're not going
(32:29):
to be the best at it the first time you
do it, but every time you try, you're going to
get a little better. And once you get those results,
maybe you'll want to try something else.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Uh. That's great, Tara. Thank you so much for being
here with us on the podcast. Weight share it with
your network if you're interested in being on the podcast.
We love having new guests. Tara, thank you so much
for being here with us.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Thanks David, it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
All right, everybody, until next time, be well. Thanks for
joining us on the Business Roundtable podcast.
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