Start With A Win - How to Create Trust as a Leader | Adam Contos

Starting point is 00:00:00 People trust, again, who they see present. The leader's led, the hider's hid. I've done a ton of business as a result of these things. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we unpack franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters

Starting point is 00:00:19 at Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. I had the honor of being on the Culture Matters podcast recently, and we wanted to share it with you. This is part one of two with Jay Doran on Culture Matters. Take a look. Hello, Culture Matters podcast. Boy, am I excited for this guest. Before I introduce them, here's a quote just for this episode. What good are you as a business or as a business leader if you don't care about your people? Adam Contos, CEO. Our guest today is a friend of the Culture Matters podcast, actually a supporter since almost the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Season two, season five, episode 58. If you're listening to this episode go check out that episode our guest today uh started out as a marine server this country thank you for that uh tech founder uh SWAT commander a consultant of security and inevitably worked his way up to become the former ceo of the international remax if you heard of them today, co-founder of Area 15 Ventures, investor and advisor and coach, author of Start With A Win podcast book and Start With A Win podcast. This is where my mind starts to get jumbled.

Starting point is 00:01:41 I didn't even say his name yet. Adam Canto, CEO. Thanks for coming back to the Culture Writers Podcast, man. Hey, thanks for having me here. It's great to see you again. There's so much the last time you were on the shows, uh, where we posted it July of 2020. Oh man. My first question is if we can sum up the lessons in 2020 for the audience, you know, where do we start? Is there a word that sticks out, you know, other than win or something like that? Wow. Yeah. I would, I would say presence because that's what we lost from each other is a presence that we all had. And that's what kind of, you know, delineated between strong leaders and, and, um, you know, weak leaders

Starting point is 00:02:21 and strong culture and weak culture is how do you continue to maintain that presence? Because I've always said this presence creates trust. And once we lose that presence, we lose the trust amongst each other. So we, a lot of people had to put it back together in the post COVID period, but those you and I, we spent so much time on video with everybody that we maintained it. What is it about presence that creates trust in your view? Well, the more we see somebody, the more we are attached to them. So it's called a parasocial relationship. And what we end up doing is, realistically, regardless of what, people need to make you feel good when they see you or when

Starting point is 00:03:08 you see them, things like that. We need to reciprocate that positive feeling. But ultimately, the more we see people, the more consistent we believe that interaction is going to be. And that's where that trust is built is we're depositing in that trust account every time, you know, we see each other. As a result, we anticipate how that next, you know, interaction is going to be and therefore the trust grows. I've been watching you and following you on the Instagram and seeing you share various videos of lessons. You think there's a connection to that? The, the, the value and output or volume of sharing your thoughts and your, uh, your, your philosophies and the viewers, there's like a, there's a relationship being built because you're being seen. I'm curious what you. Yes. 100%. There is a connection there. Uh, you know, the more that you can get in front of people,

Starting point is 00:04:01 if people see you every single day, Jay, they will, that's, I mean, ultimately they're going to be connected to you at their, in their head and in their heart. And that's how this whole psychological principle of parasocial relationship came about is in the 1950s, uh, psychologists looked at how people connected to soap opera stars. So we started watching TV, listening to radio. I say, we, you and I weren't around then obviously, but, um, but back in that time, people started listening to the radio and watching TV and getting connected to these different characters and they fell in love with them. And when you think about it, you know, like let's take Taylor Swift, for example, she has done an incredible job of building a parasocial relationship with all the Swifties out there where they see her, they're endeared to her, yet they've never met

Starting point is 00:04:50 her in person simply because she's omnipresent to them and they trust her because of that. So it's a different scale that we're all involved in. But I'll tell you what, if you're a leader and you're present, even on video or on Instagram or what have you, you're going to build that relationship with the people that you connect with. Whereas if you don't, back to COVID, the leaders led, the hiders hid, and those that hid during that time fell from their companies as leaders. They weren't respected or trusted anymore. And how do you define hid in that time? I would just say not being present. You know, there's a difference between available and present or available and accessible. So, you know, if you are accessible yet not necessarily available, that's what I always say, always accessible,

Starting point is 00:05:43 never available as a leader. You know, people can reach out to you and eventually get in touch with you, but ultimately they feel like they are accessing you because they can see and hear you. They're connecting with you emotionally right now. You and I just see each other and hear each other on video yet. We're connecting emotionally. And those that listen to watch the video of this, see the clips on social media, things like that, they're listening to you and I connect, and they're part of that conversation. Because ultimately, the human brain does not know the difference between seeing somebody on the four corners of this screen here or hearing it in their head between their ears and being in person. Our memory

Starting point is 00:06:26 serves the same purpose and says, oh, I was part of that conversation. When an employee says, oh, to an authority figure, you're too busy, or I don't want to bother you. I know how busy you are. What, what is, you think that signifies being, uh, available, not accessible if I have it right. Yeah. I think, um, you know, it, it, it seems like, well, first of all, people kind of downgrade themselves. They're like, oh, you know, I, I don't get to see you. You're too busy. Things like that. It's a little bit of, um, you know, shame on both of us. But ultimately, it comes down to they want to see you more. And I heard this. If I stopped doing video for a period of time, and I put out a video pretty much every single day during COVID.

Starting point is 00:07:17 If I stopped doing video, I would hear from people, hey, I've seen you a lot, but I didn't see you yesterday. So, you know, they have that connection. They have that expectation. If you, if you take it away from them for a day or something like that. And I've been doing video once a day for months now, um, as well, putting out product every single or content every single day to help people. They just, they want to connect with each other. We're social human beings or social beings, and this is how they connect. So it's, you're fulfilling that in their heart by just simply being in front of them. We have an audience of content creators, entrepreneurs that you're on. They're doing content like that or, and want to do more or want to jump in the game.

Starting point is 00:08:07 What advice do you have for those listening that are like, wait, one a day. Okay. How the heck, where'd you start? Let's unpack that a bit. And first of all, the, you know, let's be clear. The one a day is a couple minutes a day. And ultimately it comes down to us batch creating a whole bunch of videos. So I don't create a video every day. I create 10 videos every 10 days. And you come up with those videos. I send it off to be edited very briefly. There's nothing spectacular about it. Some sound and some light editing, maybe some words put in there. this on, you know, like CapCut or something like that. CapCut's a great app to do that. Um, in fact, TikTok, yeah, it's an app on your phone and you, and you can do that. Just set up your phone and, and create 10 different ideas that are about you that are, you know, something that you would come up with and, and mean what you're teaching. You know, my, obviously my thing is start with a win and, and the, uh, you know, personal and business growth and development. So those are the ideas around which I create content. We shoot 10

Starting point is 00:09:16 of those in, you know, really it takes like half an hour or 45 minutes at the most to shoot 10 videos that way. And it's from the heart. We put those out. There's 10 days worth of content there. And, you know, seven or eight days later, you do it 10 more, do 10 more. And you end up with so many in the can waiting to go out the door at some point. And you just keep refilling that. And what that does is, um, first of all, it makes you better at it. So practice creates perfection here. And we want to continue to improve ourselves. So why not practice, put yourself out there, content creators, and connect with your audience. And you'll see your audience start to grow. And here's the

Starting point is 00:09:57 important thing, Jay. I've done a ton of business as a result of these things. People trust, again, who they see present. And if you're there, you don't have to do this cold intro. You can say, hey, it's Adam. I see you've been watching some of my videos. I see you're connected by filling out this email form or what have you. I just wanted to touch base with you. And they're like, oh, yeah, I love your stuff. And you've already kind of broken the ice on this trust. So why wouldn't you start creating content? In essence, is that leveraging the parasocial phenomenon on a micro influencer level? I'm not Taylor Swift. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what you're doing is you're leveraging that parasocial relationship. We don't need to be face-to-face touching somebody in order to build a relationship.

Starting point is 00:10:53 We can build a relationship via video all day long. And the more you do that, the tighter the relationship. And then when you do meet somebody in person, it's hilarious because people will give you a hug. They're like, I feel like we've known each other for years, yet we've just now met in person. I've had that happen many times as you're building your brand and building this relationship. And I'm on the Culture Matters podcast here. Here's the reality. This builds your culture. This is what your culture is about. I took over as the CEO of a franchise company about 12 months ago. It's called Port of Subs. It's a sub sandwich company. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you. We acquired the business. It's an amazing company with incredible people. And we've been pushing out video constantly to these people. And I see them in person every several months. And they're like, hey, I watch your videos.

Starting point is 00:11:49 I feel like I know you. I feel like we're next door neighbors or best friends or whatever. It works. It's how we've built the culture in this company around how I think the culture of a business needs to be because they hear what I'm saying every day. If you could hear what your boss says every single day, would that affect how you live your life and build your culture and run your ethics and things? Absolutely. It's simple. It's just transparency. Churchill won us the war. Exactly. Talked every day, I think. I mean, I like to read that damn lion book. It's like three

Starting point is 00:12:20 freaking, it's over here somewhere anyway that comes to mind church on the radio every day i have a question about the uh the the why then do i hear constantly that the camera isn't enough or the virtual world isn't enough for the culture well i mean why are we hearing that a lot or at least i I am. We got to get everybody back. We got to get people together. Yes. You know, there's nothing beats interpersonal communication. But the thing that's secondary to that is visual and audio. And I don't just mean crappy video. You know, yes, crappy video is okay. But the reality is high quality video, high quality audio, where the intimacy of somebody's voice between your ears and the sight of them at the same time really makes a

Starting point is 00:13:14 difference to people in their lives. If they can hear the soft caringness in your voice, it's the same as somebody you're sitting next to closing their eyes and listening to you. It goes straight to your heart. So sure. Video is secondary to being in person, but I'll tell you what, I can touch so many more people via video than I can in person. And that's what it's about. I want to spread my culture. I want to spread my beliefs. I want to spread my message because I want to help people get better with it. And this is the best way to scale that. When you were last on, we didn't have the book. So what was the inspiration? You know, it's funny because I, uh, so I, I had the podcast start with a win and I got a call from a, um, uh, a product book production company. And they said, Hey, do you want to write a book? I go,

Starting point is 00:14:05 yeah, I using you guys as, as my publisher. And they said, absolutely. I said, okay, what, what do you want to call it? And they go, how about start with a win? That's what your podcast is. So I went through this naming process and things like that. I'm like, they were right. It's start with a win. It's gotta be because it has all the different components of start with a win. I mean, I live my life based upon a set form of circumstances. I get up at the same time every day. I go to the gym. I map out my day. I keep a plan. I work my plan. I execute. I monitor my health, my relationships, my businesses, things of that nature. And that's what they wanted to talk about. And why do I live that way? So we went back into, I was in the military, like you mentioned. I was in law enforcement. I ran a SWAT team.

Starting point is 00:15:01 I built training courses. I did some tech startups, things like that. And the reality is all of these work off of the same framework. And that's kind of what we talked about. And that framework is you've got to be a good leader. You've got to be growing every day. You've got to be redelivering that growth back to the people that you're serving. Because I don't look at the people that listen to this as customers. I mean, these are the people that I serve. I want to help them be better and then be inspired to make themselves better every single day. So that's ultimately what the book is about is building yourself better and thus building your business better. What a powerful truth of the parasocial is if the institution is following you and saying, there's a whole book around this.

Starting point is 00:15:48 Absolutely. Because you got this podcast, Start With A Win. How many days did you do that show before that happened? I couldn't tell you how many. Was it a year? Yeah, we had a couple of years of Start With a win under the belt before the publisher called me. Was that daily? No, it's once a week.

Starting point is 00:16:08 Was it weekly? Once a week. And then every other week, we do something called the quick win, which is a short. But now we've got shorts coming out pretty much every day, as well as the weekly podcast. What would be your advice to someone that's been thinking about starting a podcast, but has hesitated or it just hasn't manifested? It doesn't exist. It's just an idea. Right. I would say do it. It's not difficult. Podcasting is not a difficult thing to do. I mean, you and I have been doing it for a long time, Jay. And I mean, it's, we both, we both, yeah, we, we both started someplace and it, it was

Starting point is 00:16:49 funny because I hired a, are you listening? Are you there? Yeah, exactly. It's just you and I talking buddy. So you, you start talking to somebody, just one person and you start adding to that. And then you learn about this with the parasocial. I love that term. I haven't not heard of it and I'm going to look into it. Yeah. It's, it's a fantastic concept. It is proof of concept for this whole thing,

Starting point is 00:17:11 but ultimately doing a podcast now is not, it's way easier now than it was five years ago because the technology is built for podcasting. It specifically exists and makes it super easy for somebody to podcast. But what I would say is, and they can go to my YouTube channel, how to sound. I have a video called how to sound better on a video or a podcast and go check that out. It's I think like eight to 10 minutes. And essentially we go through lighting, we go to sound, we go through camera and angle and things like that and kind of stair-step you up to how do you come. I'll send it to you, Jay. Yeah, we can coach me next. Finish what your thought is. I got more questions. There we go. But here's the reality. People will watch a bad video,

Starting point is 00:17:57 but they won't listen to bad sound. They want good sound that makes them feel good. It's the sound that makes you feel good. It's the sound that makes you feel good. It's the video that validates the sound. So if you think about it that way, that's why high-quality podcasts are so well listened to. Because people want to connect with somebody who sounds good. I want to go see what this person looks like. You've got to have that available. But ultimately, it comes down to, you gotta sound good.

Starting point is 00:18:28 How can you, you know, let's, uh, Adam Conto, CEO, executive coach, you're looking at my setup, lay it in on me. What am I need to do better? How can I show up better? All right. Well, I'll take you through the steps here the first one yeah um i mean because i i know it's not you know that's my projection right again okay all right well the first one is your camera angle you you want to be looking straight on at the camera okay i'm not no you're looking down how am down. You're kind of looking down a little bit. I can see the ceiling behind you, buddy. You look like you're, I should have figured this out 268. Yeah. You look like you're about 12 feet tall, but I recorded 11 since the 2nd of January. You should have called me on the 2nd.

Starting point is 00:19:22 That's right. People will forgive you if they know you're working on it. I want them to see me fail. You know, like. There you go. Please help somebody. I don't know. Go on. So, all right.

Starting point is 00:19:32 So your camera angle, raise your camera up to be eye level. And. Is that? No, now it's looking up even more. Like this? You got to lift it up so that it's looking straight to you. I got to like. Like put it on a book. There you go. Look at that. I mean, wait, wait. up so that it's looking straight to you i gotta like like put

Starting point is 00:19:45 it on a book there you go look at that let me wait wait you know what's interesting is your microphone actually works better on your macbook or whatever computer you are if it's right at mouth level he's grabbing a stack of books here there you go we got adam smith you've read a lot of this yeah ogilvy, the podcast guest's grandfather. Ulysses, margin of safety is a good one for the investors. I got a question for you. Have you read Essentialism yet? I've listened to some of it.

Starting point is 00:20:18 McGowan, Greg? Yeah, Greg McGowan, yeah. There you go. I've heard great things about it. I've only listened to the intro. That's the latest one that I'm in right now it's the discipline pursuit of doing less the discipline pursuit let's get some kierkegaard okay there we go all right let's let's set this up is this too high yeah that's wait let's see oh that looks great that looks great

Starting point is 00:20:39 look at that okay is that better that way better. You actually sound better now because you don't have an echo off your desk. This is going to make a serious difference, I believe, in everything. Yeah. So, okay. So this is the first step is to raise up your camera. So it's eye level. I mean, I actually look like I'm looking across the table to you right now instead of... Can you believe that... I've got a psychological question for you what could be the reason no one's told me this up to this point uh roughly if i think about it you know there's somewhere around 460 or so podcast i mean some of them are monologues but the lion's share of podcasts right with guests right and by the way 20 to 30 recurring guests like friends come out all the time you know contemporaries what what could lead to nobody telling me this i have no idea i mean it's here's the funny thing i guess i guess yeah

Starting point is 00:21:38 so like my last producer um branding company the fantastic guy. He's the one who taught me how to podcast. He looked at, every time we would have a guest on, he'd be like, okay, we're going to fix your camera. And so he would make those adjustments with the camera, raise it up, pull the screen down a little bit. So you're looking straight on. And the reason a lot of people don't do this is very few use a stand to lift their camera up. You know, you've got the professional podcasters a lot of times also. You will see people that, you know, use a two-camera shoot or something like that. In fact, I have a videographer here or media producer here, and he was just walking around with a handheld, taking some handheld shots of me talking.

Starting point is 00:22:21 But ultimately, it comes down to how do you want to look at somebody when you're talking to them? Do you want them standing above you where you're like looking up at them? No, you don't. So it's a factor, first of all, of leadership. You don't want to be looking down on your employees when you're Zooming with them. So it creates a culture of, okay, how do I feel when I'm talking to this person? If you're looking straight across to them, it's a little more comforting because we're on the same level, if you will, to kind of put a quote to it. You've got to be on the same level as the people that you're speaking with. You don't want to be talking down to anybody that's just condescending. It's not the right culture that you want to create within your organization. So this is the first step, is just to raise up your camera. The second one would be add a microphone. Because again, we like that intimate crackle of somebody's voice instead of the echo of the room or a muffled sound.

Starting point is 00:23:18 And as you get further away from your computer, and sometimes people have their computer at least arm's length away, the sound gets a little worse than it typically is. I've just got the zoom thumbs up. I put my hand out. That's cool. But ultimately, and microphones don't have to be expensive. They can get a USB-C microphone for, you know, 50 to a hundred bucks, plug it in, or you can go high quality. This is a couple thousand dollar microphone I'm talking to you on. It goes into a mixer and our editing equipment, but it doesn't have to be a super expensive microphone. You know, the, also you see a lot of people who do a lot of conference calls. They have that little boom microphone on a headset.

Starting point is 00:24:01 You kind of sound like a, a little bit of a telemarketer that way, or like you're in the drive-through. I'm not a fan of that. It's a, it's a strong microphone. I would say just, you know, a 50 or a hundred R, you know, USB-C microphone does a great job of collecting good sound. And if you do have echo, um, it's simple. I can't see your desk right now, Jay. So you could simply put a pillow on the desk in front of you, and that's going to absorb a lot of the echo. Oh, yeah. It's a hardwood. Yeah. So our voices bounce off of hard surfaces. And when you don't have a hard surface for that to bounce off of, you put a little sound treatment down. Yeah, I have hardwood flooring and all that.

Starting point is 00:24:43 Yeah. It makes it worse. treatment. Hardwood flooring and all that. Yeah. It's, um, this is a carpeted room. We have drapes hanging down all over the place that eliminate echo in this room. So you can, you can kind of touch it up that way. People want to hear that you care. And when you have a more, um, a more effective microphone, you can use a softer voice that is less, I guess, less aggressive in how you're talking to people. So you can hear how I can soften my voice a little bit, how I can slow it down, how I can lower it in order to accentuate my key points. That adds to how well people remember what you're saying because it makes them feel differently. You're not preaching

Starting point is 00:25:25 to somebody. You're not lecturing them. You're actually having a great intimate conversation with them. So there could be a slight, well, yeah. So subconscious, totally how the subconscious of the counterpart takes what's being articulated. Because this is through a different medium, right? We're not in person. Right. Through the medium of attack. And so these subtleties increase or decrease deconstructive conflict or constructive conflict.

Starting point is 00:25:57 Correct. Yeah. You don't have to be overbearing, over-the-top, things like that. I mean, what happens when you're overbearing, over-, loud, aggressive people's blood pressure goes up. Um, they go into this survival mechanism, fight or flight, and they feel intimidated by what you're saying and they won't remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. And the tech has an impact on that or what have you. Yes. Great. So what else? Any, any, anything else? So, so two more, two more quick tips here. Let's talk about lighting real quick. So you have pretty good lighting there. I can see your face pretty clear. The back of the room does kind of blend in

Starting point is 00:26:40 blend together because it's not well lit. You can see, um, I know a lot of people are listening to this, but ultimately you want to have some good, uh, key lighting. So you want to have lighting in the front, maybe a little bit overhead or, um, you know, just, just be lit dramatically. I'm kind of lit dramatically. We have a large, there you go. Yeah. You got that. This thing, I have this ring. Yeah. Light ring. Those are, those work pretty good. So, I mean, you've, you've actually taken some steps to light yourself. So that's fantastic. Where a lot of people, the, if you're lighting. Is that better with it there?

Starting point is 00:27:15 Yeah. That actually looks pretty good right there. Moved it a little bit. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's, you have even lighting in your face. I've got, I have dramatic lighting. I have a big soft box. It really looks great. Thank you. And if it did, I probably, probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Well, there you go.

Starting point is 00:27:29 Yeah. And then, and then we have some accent lights in the back here. And then I have what's called a hair light, which there's a light that's bouncing off the back of my head, right, right up here. Actually right up that way that, that is kind of helping to light up the situation and push me away from the background. So if you, if you don't have any lighting in the background, see these two lamps behind me, um, those push me away from the background as well. So if you lit up a couple of little things

Starting point is 00:27:54 on your bookshelf behind you, it would actually push you towards the camera and it would clarify that shot of you a little bit more. So front lighting and back lighting, just kind of play with that a little bit. You got a good front lighting. I would throw a small, you can do like a blue light or a red light or just a different color or something like that. A little accent light on that bookshelf behind you. And you can point it at a little trinket or something like that. But ultimately you want to push yourself away from the wall behind you. Well, now I'm sweating because I better get all this done before you come back. I'm going to hold you accountable to that, buddy. Yeah. It's something

Starting point is 00:28:30 about responsibility reveals individuality, but accountability enforces it. There you go. Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok

Start With A Win - How to Create Trust as a Leader | Adam Contos

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