The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 312: Zvi Band - How To Leverage The Power Of Your Relationships

Episode Date: May 26, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Full show notes can be found at www.LearningLeader.com  #312: Zvi Band Zvi Band is the co-founder & CEO of Contactually, the top CRM which empowers professionals in real estate, consulting, and other professional industries to build authentic relationships. Having founded Contactually in 2011, Zvi has led Contactually to $12M in venture backing, 75 employees, and tens of thousands of customers, including 8 of the top 20 real estate brokerages in the country. An engineer, a seasoned entrepreneur, developer, strategist and startup advisor, with unique both technical and non-technical operations. Thrice named a Washingtonian Tech Titan, featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Washington City Paper, Zvi was also a finalist for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. Zvi is a passionate speaker and author whose writing has appeared in Forbes, Inc, Inman News, and many other outlets. He's the author of the newly released book, Success Is In Your Sphere.  Published by McGraw-Hill (Zvi and I share the same agent, publisher, and editor). Notes: Leaders who sustain excellence = They have a level of introspection This creates self-awareness and mindfulness Take a step back... Analyze, pick apart.  Understand why something happened based on the decisions you made They are tactical 5x7 notepad -- Take blank sheet and write the exact things you need to do each day Weekly wrap up -- Capture what happened Use a daily journal to understand how you felt at that moment "It's way too easy to be reactionary."  It's not productive.  Be thoughtful and intentional Zvi at 25 years old: Quit his job His dad's cancer came back and he died The same day was officially declared a recession in 2008 How to respond? Zvi was interested in a startup "I emailed my network, and the CTO of an enterprise software company helped me out" "Relationships are our most important asset" Zvi realized he wasn't good at managing his relationships.  He was using Evernote. He wanted a proactive CRM (customer relationship management) tool to proactively work for the relationship driven professional That was how Contactually was created "It's not about staying in touch.  It's about being of value." How to make the right hiring decisions: It's values based: Be user first - solve problems for others Ownership - entrepreneur types Learn & innovate - embrace failure and learn Demonstrate the ability to learn Be excellent with each other -- "If a company has a named 'No Asshole' rules then that usually means they have a lot of assholes there."  It's a red flag. Keep it simple Be real -- Transparent How does someone demonstrate the ability to learn? Run a mock call, give feedback.  They must be coachable.  How do they respond to the coaching? Ask, 'what are you learning? We want readers We want people who are intellectually curious We want people who have a "general dissatisfaction with their current skill set." Mentor advice: Leverage your experience to know the right questions to ask. Teach them how to navigate the issues, don't just give them the answers. "Relay experience.  Don't give advice."  Don't give a prescription. Mentee advice: Establish a feedback loop Establish what to do -- follow up "Must show that you took their insights to heart and acted on them." The 'icky' feeling of relationship marketing: Avoid this.  Don't just exchange business cards. "Relationships are our most important asset." Collect intelligence on those people important to you.  Listen for the little details they share.  Pay attention.  Take notes after you talk with them so you can ask about them later. Consistency - Play the long game: Create habits:  what are your relationship goals? "We're wired to think short term."  Zag when others zig.  Think long term. Build genuine, real relationships: When we look back at success, we realize it's because of relationships Invest in them long term Contactually got acquired by Compass Zvi and his investors have been rewarded for their work

We know that if the relationships are a most important asset and the most amazing things looking off the back of the boat has happened because we knew the right people and the right people knew us, then great. That's amazing. So now we realize that those relationships are an asset and an asset, just like the money or the bank account needs a strategy to be able to grow it, to be able to manage it, to be able to manage it, to be able to. prevent too much loss. That starts to get a little icky though when that asset is human beings and our relationship out of them. This episode is brought to you by Roan. Roan is the maker of the most comfortable dress shirt ever made. The luxury performance alternative to the classic dress shirt Roan's commuter shirt utilizes your body heat to release wrinkles naturally so you can ditch the dry cleaners. It's got four-way stretch material, which leads to immense comfort. The commuter shirt fabric is soft, lightweight, and breathable so you can stay cool despite long hours at the office.

It's moisture wicking, the incredible Italian fabric wicks away your sweat to keep you dry and corner office comfortable regardless of the conditions. Some of my favorite Roan gear is found at roan.com slash hawk. That's rh-o-o-n-e-com.com. slash Hawk. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday.

Text, learners to 44222-2. In order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world, text learners to 44-222-2. Now, on a night's featured leader, it's my friend Zvi Band, the co-founder and CEO of Kintaxi, which is the top CRM to build authentic relationships. He founded Contactually in 2011. He's led Contaxially to $12 million in venture backing,

75 employees, and tens of thousands of customers. He's won multiple awards, too many to list. He's also the author of the latest book titled Success is in Your Sphere. Leverage the Power of Relationships to Achieve Your Business Goals. A few of the topics we got into. his process for hiring and specifically what he looks for and people to bring on his team. Then how to be an effective mentor and mentee. Then the keys to building genuine relationships that will be mutually beneficial long term.

Ladies and gentlemen, so good was Zvi Bann. All right, Zvi Band, man. It's so good to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome. Thanks so much. And luckily, Ryan, you and I know each other well enough that you already start off pronouncing my name correctly. So we're off to a great start. I know. Well, we had a pre-call and some texting and emailing, which has gone a long way. So it's good to officially get one of these conversations on the record. I find even though they're not necessarily formal, they can potentially bring out questions that wouldn't have happened if it's not recorded.

I just actually recorded one with my family, my dad, and my brother. And it's neat. that some of those types of questions come out that we've never asked or thought to ask one another. And so that's how I envision this one too, man. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that idea. Like there's so much emphasis I've seen in terms of coming up with the right questions. Yeah. Even like my wife and I, right, we've been happily married now for seven years.

We bought this like stack of questions that we ask each other and like we're learning more about each other than we have before. I love that idea of like it really is all about finding the right questions to have. Ask. Interesting. I was going to go somewhere else, but I want to actually get some practical tip immediately. What is that? I mean, you give a little plug for whoever, whatever that product is. I might want to buy it. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a series of them. I think they're all called table topics. Table topics. And to surprise, like, you know, whether you're with family or friends or, you know, husband, wife, spouse, kids, whatever, the conversation tends to center around or devolve into, you know, whatever you normally talk about, be it sports, you know, how was your day,

etc. So, you know, having kind of a set of random questions, like, what was your favorite album growing up? Did you ever commit a crime as a kid or something like that? Or tell me your favorite color and why. And so, you know, my wife and I have now started, you know, when we go out on dates, kind of take out the take out a few cards. And, you know, it always sparks a very different conversation than we would have otherwise, which is, how's your day? How are things going? That kind of stuff. Yeah, gotcha. Well, Zvi, I want to, you've, I think, are one of those guys out there who has done an incredible job of surrounding yourself with high performers, with people who I would say sustain excellence.

And I'm curious from your perspective, when you think about those individuals who have been able to perform at a high level over an extended period of time, what have you found to be some things that they have in common? Yeah. So one of the things I find they have in common, which I try and exhibit to, is a certain level of interest. inspection, right? And that obviously manifests itself in mindfulness or self-awareness or what have you. But the ability for themselves to take a step back from the situation, any situation, be able to better analyze it and pick it apart. And then from there, the path forward usually becomes pretty obvious, right? Whether it's tense conversation with one of your peers,

whether it's a negotiation you're dealing with or solving a technical problem, the ability to say, hey, well, what's going on right now? And I find myself sometimes, you know, on a schedule and sometimes ad hoc, if I feel kind of my brain's a little bit of a mess, just kind of taking a step back, opening up a blank sheet of paper and going, all right, well, what is going on right now and what can we do about it? Hmm, interesting. Do you block time in your calendar to be reflective? To think, I remember talking to Michael Bungay-Standner, he said, you know, we really learn in moments of reflection.

He's adamant that you must block those times in your day to do that. And I've learned this from talking to 300-plus people that this seems to be a commonality of this ability to block time to be by oneself, to think, to reflect, to analyze. And these are with people like you who are CEOs of companies who are running really big, successful things. How do you actually put this into play? Yeah. So very tactically, there are a few different rituals I have in place.

One, and I happen to be doing this basically like from my first job out of college working for a government contractor is literally, and I have this in front of me right now, I have a five by seven note pad. It's always a five by seven note pad, nothing else. And every day I take out a blank sheet of paper off of it and just write down the exact things I need to do that day. And that alone serves the time saying, hey, well, first off, it gets things out of your head, but allows me to better prioritize saying, all right, well, what are the most important

things that I could be doing today right now? And that helps me stay out of just reaction mode because otherwise, what do you do? You open up your email, you open up your phone and you respond to whatever is there. And so now just kind of having that time, so all right, I clearly know what are the most important things that can be doing. That's really helpful. I also make sure there's a weekly wrap-up time. So usually Friday afternoons, obviously things are winding down. People are already starting to check out.

I take that time to just better capture saying, hey, like professionally, what happened this week? What am I still leaving on the field that I need to be able to come back to at a later time? And then I do a separate one, usually on Saturday afternoons. That's more just kind of like all-encompassing life, health, family, work, et cetera. It's essentially a daily journal. Yeah. And I'm not really too focused on, of course, you can ask yourself specific questions. And I have a list of really interesting questions.

You can ask yourself from time to time that could be helpful. But some people, I think, over-emphasize it. So I always say like, hey, just really just starting off, just make sure that you're just capturing saying, hey, well, like, what's going on? What's in my head? What am I thinking? What's going well? What isn't? Then you can kind of break it down from there.

But then, of course, there are certain questions you can ask yourself if you really want to be able to start digging more into kind of what's going on, how you're feeling, and how you're thinking. You said the word think or thinking multiple times, and that's another commonality is you are creating a habit. it to be thoughtful. A great, and I would say if, if there's any adjective to describe me that I really want out there, it's that. I take that as a massive compliment if somebody says, says, oh, he seems like a thoughtful guy. And it sounds simple and basic, but I, I think that's very important, being very thoughtful

with the way that you behave and act in what you say, as well as in being very intentional with your actions that follow. Exactly. That all comes from being thoughtful. Okay, Zvi, I want to... And it's, I think nowadays, you know, in this present day and age, it's way too easy. It's not that you're not thoughtful, but we become reactionary, right? We're reacting to the push notifications being thrown at us.

We're reacting to the emails being thrown at us. We're reacting to people coming to us or things coming to us expecting to do things and just kind of go in the flow instead of being more intentional around what we're trying to do. And that's honestly a lot of what we've talked about and thought about and written about more recently. All right. I want to get to that, but I first want to start with your story because I was reading through your book called Success in Your Sphere, Leverages of Power of Relationships to achieve

your business goals. There's a lot of good stuff here. We also share a publisher and editor, which is kind of a neat uncommon commonality. But first, I want to go back and maybe you can walk us through this moment. you're 25 years old and you get some of the news, the worst news possible of what could happen. Can you take us back to that time and what was going through your head at that time? There's this line out there that you can really have an incredibly bad day and things kind of stack up all at the same time. And that was really the case for me.

I remember there's Charles Rangel has this book, and I haven't had a bad day. since. And I think that's definitely a core part of my story because, yeah, I think, you know, when I was 25, obviously I was still figuring out early in my career. I had just kind of like very abruptly quit a job that really was just incredibly unhealthy for me. And it was not a good working situation. Didn't necessarily have any clear career prospects lined up. And at the same time, My father had just had been diagnosed with cancer nine years earlier. He was all of a sudden, you know, kind of thrown into surgery. And little did I know then, he would be in and out of hospitals for the next four months before eventually, unfortunately, passing away.

To cap it all off. And again, I didn't even realize how bad it was at the time. This was the day, like literally the day in 2008 when it was officially declared that we were in a recession. And so, yeah, like, you know, again, I kind of almost, I'm glad I wasn't more introspective then because I would have then realized like how much the deck was stacked against me then. And it's only now do I realize, oh, wow, that was a really, really terrible time. Wow. What happened next? I mean, what I'm incredibly thankful for is that I'm not a networker.

I'm not an outgoing person at all. I'm actually a pretty introverted person. But I had always had this somewhat interest in getting involved in some kind of startup or learning about how people build companies and entrepreneurship and things like that. And so I had gotten to know a number of different people in the local technology community here in Washington, D.C. is pretty nascent at the time. People didn't even realize that there were startups or D.C. does actually have a really rich history of technology companies. So it had just gotten to know a number of different people. And thank God I was sitting there literally in a hospital waiting room, just kind of starting to figure out, well, what do I do? Started sending emails out to my network.

I'm just saying, hey, like, you know, I'm on the market now. I'm just looking for some projects to do. Like, let me know if something happens. And sure enough, very quickly, a number of people came forward. And sure enough, you know, there were a number of really small things like, hey, you know, my, My dad's construction company needs a new website, and can you set them up on Gmail or the design firm needs some changes to their website or things like that? But it's like small little things. But then even like and again, it's incredibly fortunate.

But someone I knew locally, he knew someone up in New York that his company had just raised funding and they're looking for CTO. And so in addition to a number of other things, all of a sudden I was CTO of an enterprise software company. And while I was kind of figuring out my life and figuring out my business, obviously in and out of the hospitals and rehab facilities, like with my family, I all of a sudden had a job and ended up being able to build a really great practice over the years. And is that the kind of the beginnings of realizing the power of relationships, I sense was created in that moment?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm to this day incredibly thankful, not just for the people that had helped me out, but for the true fundamental, life-changing power of knowing the right people and having the right relationships. Because I was able to not only become CTO of an enterprise software company, that ended up getting acquired back in 2009. Then I just kept building my consulting firm, and very quickly, I was working with a company. the likes of Ford and CBS and Volkswagen and I was able to build up a really strong practice. Again, I knew nothing about sales. I knew nothing about business development.

I happened to be a good software developer at the time. And just through these relationships and the reputation that I was able to build, people just kept coming to me. And it was truly amazing. And I still kind of pinched myself. It's like, wait, what's happening? Like, how was this all this happening? But at the same time, I started to realize the problem because while I was incredibly thankful and excited that these things were, that all this great stuff was happening,

well, I couldn't necessarily control it or I didn't necessarily know what I could do to maintain it or to grow it. And so that kind of started me on the journey of kind of understanding, well, what is it about what I've done so far that has worked well, and how do I make sure that I keep it going? Because I definitely saw there were a number of flaws in what I was doing. As far as how to manage those relationships? Yeah, exactly. So for someone who's, you know, for whom their business relied solely on word of mouth and

reputation and inbound introductions, I wasn't very good at it, meaning like I'd meet someone for coffee and then have a great conversation. And then two weeks later, you know, I would remember. Oh, yeah, I did have coffee with someone who's relevant right now. And for the life of me, could not remember their name, could not remember any information about them. Or a client project or roll off. And I was so focused on the current workload of projects that, you know, our team had that I just would never follow up. Just project to roll off, send final invoice, get paid, and never talk again.

Maybe they would reach out to me. But I was doing nothing to maintain that relationship. And so I found that like, wow, like, I am so focused on the top 50 emails in my inbox and nothing else afterwards. I know I'm missing out on gold. I saw things happen. I saw people work with people do interesting projects or go on to do other greater things that, wow, if only I'd stand in touch, we would have been much better. And so that end up being the core idea behind behind Contactually. You know, I wrote down an Evernote in May of 2011.

Like, wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of CRM that was more proactive instead of reactive? Like, would go out and figure out who you need to talk to, would figure out who you have been talking to, would be able to do a lot of things for you, all centered around this idea that relationships are this really important asset for us. What about Z? So that's how contactually comes about. And so do you want to maybe give the 30 to 60 second spiel on what Contactually is for those who have never heard of it? Yeah. So Contactually is an intelligence CRM for relationship-driven professionals. That means that if you're a professional that relies on staying engaged with relationships over a long period of time, whether it's for nurturing new business, retaining past clients, generating more referrals.

If you're always wondering, who do I need to talk to, when do I need to talk to them? What do I need to say? Contactually is an intelligent cloud-based platform that allows you to nurture those relationships. Why wouldn't you just use Salesforce.com or something like that? Yeah, and you absolutely can. And so the struggle that I found, for example, because I was using Salesforce and I also tried high-rise and sugar serum, et cetera, it's not necessarily that they're bad products. Absolutely.

It's that there are so many different ways that a serum can be used. But Salesforce is meant for a larger business to be able to organize all their information and be able to define workflow. But with Salesforce, you know, the common complaint is that, oh, I have to enter in everything myself. So we built contextually to be able to automatically aggregate all of your email conversations, you know, calendar appointments, social media interactions, notes, data from third party databases all into one place. and instead of you having to manually set tasks or build really complicated workflows to remind you of like when and where to follow up, Kit actually would automatically say, well, all right, we know that like we see this group of people over here. You say you want to stay in touch with them every 60 days. Well, this person over here you haven't talked to in 61 days.

This person over here you haven't talked to in 64 days. Why don't you go reach out to them? Here's an email template. Here's a recommended action. Here's what you've talked about recently. So it's really, you know, Salesforce is a general, like really broad platform that requires a lot of customization to be able to do pretty much anything you want. Contactually is purpose built specifically for the needs of a relationship builder, regardless

of the industry, to be able to be really focused on staying in touch with key relationships. So everything is purpose built around that. Chapter 11 of your book, this, it leads me to that. it's not about staying in touch. It's about being of value. And that's what I think for, because there are a lot of people listening who are not necessarily entrepreneurs or not even fully relationship referral. I mean, we all can benefit from that.

But that's the key point that resonates, that should resonate with everybody. When you maybe get that reminder that you haven't talked to this person who you've deemed is important for your life and whatever, for whatever reason. And it's not about writing them an email saying, hey, just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. I mean, I guess that's fine. But you're more along the lines of, and I know this because Jason Gainard, a mutual friend, he does this for me. Like, I get an email from him probably every 60 days or so. And he doesn't check and see how I'm doing.

He offers me incredible people to come on my show. Not like, I mean, they're really high-level people that he knows. are value added for my show because he's he knows that is something that he can do because he's built relationship with so many people to add value to my life. And so it's not it's not a check-in. It's a how can I add value to this person's life when I send the follow-up email? Yeah, exactly. To your point, it's not that you should never do anything like that. I truly believe that, Again, we are in a world where we're all social creatures. So being able to say, hey, I'm just checking it on you.

I care about you. Want to hear how you're doing. If that's done from a genuine perspective, then you're in great shape. Yeah. If it's just kind of like pinging you on my last email so you respond, ping you on my last email to respond, okay, that can be annoying. It may be effective, but, you know, it can be annoying. So, yeah, even kind of the act of saying, hey, long time, no talk, just thinking about you, hope you and the kids are doing great.

That's a valuable thing because that says, oh, wow, Zvi cares about me. Now, clearly we want to be able to try and as relationships become more important and more strategic to us. Yeah, we want to be able to invest more time into that, just like we would invest more time into a stock, for example. But starting off the basis saying, hey, I just care about you as a human being. that alone is better than nothing at all. Yeah, I agree, I agree. So I should have, I think you did a good job of altering a little bit about what I said. And I think part of it is that I, I think there are people who use contextually.

And there's a, and some say, oh, that's kind of like feels like it's not as genuine. And I would argue the opposite, that these people are so genuine that they know that that why would you not invest in something that can help you maintain and add value to the lives? of a lot of different people because let's just face it, it is not easy to keep track of all this stuff. We all struggle with this. You, I mean, you basically sounds like you built this product for yourself. Yeah, exactly. I did build this kind of as a chef's knife to be able to help me and kind of the craft I wanted to. Thankfully, you know, once we had the prototype, we started doing customer development and

discover that like, oh, wow, this is a lot more than just small software consultants that need this. This whole idea around relationships and the importance and pain of staying engaged with them. This applies to real estate agents, financial advisors, and consultants, to entrepreneurs and business development people. And so we kind of kept peeling back the onion and go, wow, this really is a massive opportunity. Yeah. So let's dig into the actual building of a company because I think this is where it can be very relatable to people who are listening. most people don't necessarily build a company from scratch, but they work somewhere where they need to make hiring decisions, build a team, or they desire to be in a role that does that.

And so first and foremost, I love for you to start talking about as you're looking to add people to your team, we know they need to have a specific skill set. They need to do something. If they're a computer programmer, they've got to be able to do that. I get that part. I'm talking about from a principal base about the way people think some of the characteristics. Like, what do you value in people to add to your team when you're in the process of hiring? Yeah.

And I mean, that's usually, you know, in most companies codified around the values of a company. And let's be honest, it usually is, and it's an important thing, right? regardless of anything else, it's the leadership or the co-founders that end up being the catalyst behind a lot of the values. And so that kind of radates outwards from there. So, yeah, we've made a point of codifying our values. We have six of them. And that's really helped us when it comes to hiring. So, for example, one of our core values is be user first. And so that means when we're hiring people, when we're hiring, for example, a software engineer. Yeah, of course, we really want to make sure that they understand that they know their craft and are really

excellent at it. But we want to understand and look for evidence that their focus is not just writing beautiful code, but it's really about solving problems for someone else. And I know a lot of people who love to write beautiful code and love code standards and things like that. And there's nothing wrong with that. But for us, we want to make sure that we have people that first and foremost are saying, hey, how can I do this in such a way that's going to solve a problem? One of our incredibly important core values is ownership, right? We want people who are almost like entrepreneurs and owners of their own thing. That means that for me, as CEO, we have a VP of product. He owns the product. I, as CEO, do not tell him what to do.

He owns things. So he is essentially CEO of the product. So that's really important for us. Wow. What are some of the other values? So learn and innovate is another area. There's always room for betterment, you know, embrace failure where we can analyze and learn from it. Again, that helps us make sure that the people are hiring.

Again, we know that like the skills of tomorrow will be completely. different than the skills of today. And so we need to make sure that we're bringing on people that have demonstrated the ability to learn and aren't just embodying practices from yesteryear, be excellent with each other. I hate to say, like, there's, you know, when a company has no asshole rule, that usually means that there are a bunch of assholes in the company. So our way of embodying it is saying, hey, we want to make sure that the people we hire and how we operate, everyone is excellent to each other.

and there's no talking down to people. Everyone here is, you know, from the moment you accept an offer to the moment, basically, beyond your last day, you're a part of the team and we want to do whatever we can. Keep it simple matters a lot. So we focus on, you know, and we always say, hey, just focus on what really matters and do just that. So always look for the simplest solution, not the most complex one, not the most elegant one even, but like the simplest solution, that could be really hard, but we look for evidence of that. And finally, be real.

We are a brutally transparent organization for when we were a smaller company. It doesn't always scale well. But, you know, when we were a smaller company, every week, I would tell everyone how much cash we had in our bank account, right? I want to make sure that, you know, I'm telling everyone exactly what's on my mind and exactly what's concerning me. And I expect people to do the exact same back to us, right? for them to be real right back to us. Wow. How does somebody in the interview process demonstrate the ability to learn?

There are a couple different ways. So you can either do it via case studies and scenarios. So, for example, when we're hiring a sales people, we always had kind of a two-stage sales interview, meaning that we would run through a mock call with a salesperson. we would obviously listen to that, we would give them feedback and then see, okay, on the next call, are they going to already be embodying that feedback? Because if they just kind of ignore the feedback that we'd given to them, clearly they're not coachable. They're not going to be able to learn and innovate. And then, you know, when it comes to, you know, when it comes to just across

the team, we ask them flat out, like, hey, well, what are you learning? What's exciting to you? What's new in your industry or your practice area that is really, you know, really, exciting you these days that they're digging that you're digging into and we want people that are reading all the latest blogs that are taking taking a course on nights and weekends you know that are really they may not even like be doing anything about it but they're really fascinated by artificial intelligence right now you know we want people who have this intellectual curiosity and the this kind of general dissatisfaction with their current skill set they're always looking to level up versus saying hey I know C++ and I know it really well and that's just what I do.

Did you say general dissatisfaction with your current skill set? Yeah, absolutely. I just think that's a really cool phrase. I'm going to start using that if you're cool with it. General I have a general dissatisfaction with my current skill set. Did you just, have you said that before? Yeah, absolutely, right? I mean, like, for example, you know, how chefs operate, right?

God knows you can pull up Netflix and watch so many of them. Even the most experienced ones, you know, still, they're still this innate, you know, they're not happy with how they operate, right? They know they want to do better. They know their team can do better. They know they're still refining and operating things, right? So, yeah, I think, you know, that applies to all of us too, right? Because I think, forget the accelerated world that we're living in right now.

I think just in general, there's always more we can do. And so, yeah, of course, you know, we make sure we have. hire for people like that, but we also make sure we encourage people like that, right? If any manager would say, hey, well, you know, you're doing great job. So all you need to do is, you know, keep doing the same thing. Then we've got a big problem. I don't, I think it's, it's, it's actually rare. In high performers, it's not. In general, it is. I seek out these types of people who have that general dissatisfaction for your current skill set. I think that's why I just stuck. with me when you the way you phrased it um is something that I I really like but I like being around

those types of people because then we all have this growth oriented mindset approach to what we're doing instead of saying you know I kind of got this thing figured out I'm good I'm good yeah exactly right Ryan Holiday has this book you know ego is the enemy right and I truly believe even that line alone applies you and so if you feel that your skill are good enough that you don't need to do anything anymore, that you're kind of like top of the food chain, that's a big problem. Now, I mean, I think, you know, we don't want to manifest itself in such a way that that you have zero confidence in your skills, right? Right. So, you know, that's definitely important.

Yeah, I got you. One other thing I noticed, and I'm going to get back to parts of the book, but I was, as I was doing my research on USV, is that you've actually done a lot of work around two things, really, community building, which makes sense. But also, I'm pointing this out because I think I get this question a lot on being a mentor for other people, on helping others, whether you volunteer or you're part of groups that formally do this. And so let's get tactical for a second. And I love to get your best piece of advice when it comes to how to be a fantastic mentor and how to be an effective mentee. What what those people can do to create others who want to mentor them, who create people who root for them, who want to help them. So I know this two-parter, it may take some time,

and I don't think you were expecting this question. So I'm trying to give you some time to think about this. But if you're a two-pronged approach, two pieces of advice, the mentor and the mentee, what would you say to those two, in some cases, very different types of people? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that the mentoring relationship, again, this goes back to our idea of introspection, right? A mentor quite often, you know, does two real things. One is, you know, leverages their experience to be able to know the right questions to ask so that the mentee comes to the right realization by themselves, right? Not the advice to get with the questions to ask.

Exactly, right? Because they know, you know, because they've gone through before, if you say like, hey, here's a problem and the mentor says, okay, well, here's the solution. Well, how are you really helping them, right? Would you rather give someone a fish or teach someone how to fish, right? And so you're teaching someone how to navigate these situations, how to navigate these issues. Now, believe me, I don't think it should be like, you know, a mentor, mentor's job is just to ask the right questions. I think it also is in the second. can part of a mentor and this is something, you know, I try and practice. Again, this kind of even relates to our personal relationships, right? You don't give advice. You relay experience, right? And you share, hey, like from my point of view, or this is something I've experienced or this is how I handled the problem or would handle the issue. But if you give someone a prescription, there is a much bigger chance that they will fall flat on their face versus saying, hey, well, this is, I was in a similar situation. Maybe it's not identical, but this is what I recommend you do. And then how about as the mentee in that relationship to maintain, because I, the questions

I get Zvi are, hey, I don't have any experience. I'm young or I don't have much to offer, I feel like, and I want to find a way to add value. What can I do? And so I have a few ideas around that that I, that I've, that I've shared. But what, what are some pieces of advice or what would you say the person who was the mentee in that relationship? Yeah, and I mean, maybe I'm, uh, this is more of a personal acts to grind in terms of like, you know, mentee relationships that I've had, uh, I've had, I've struggled with. It's establishing that feedback loop. Um, all too often, you know, someone, for example, we would get to a point where, you know, through a conversation, through questions, through

relating experience, we would get to a agreed upon set of actions or next steps for that mente to take or things to think about. And then we regroup two weeks later, two months later, two years later, never. And they'd be like, oh, yeah, no, that was good advice. And it didn't really do anything with that. Right. And I don't think you necessarily have to feel burden to follow through with everything that was discussed previously. But you have to show that you took those insights tart and you acted on them. Even if like you said, hey, I'm not going to do that. And or more information has come up that I don't feel this is the right next step to do, fine. You know, you're at least telling the mentor that that conversation you had was of value.

It's all about the follow-up. I mean, that's what it's about. It's about the follow-up. One simple piece that I share frequently, so people have heard this is just after the meetings you've had, write them a follow-up note, bullet pointed out. This is what I learned. This is what I heard you saying. These are some things that I'm going to implement, some things I'm going to do. let me know if I got anything wrong and ship it.

It doesn't have to be that hard, but I've said it over and over and over and over and it'll differentiate you from 97 and a half percent of people out there. Just follow up and then do what you say you're going to do. And then, you know, check back in and say, hey, by the way, six months later, I tried this and this and this. This part thing that you told me or the question you asked that led to this, it actually wasn't accurate, it wasn't correct, but these two things were. And thank you.

that's that's it and maybe maybe having something that can actually be helpful if you have a lot of mentors I don't know to manage them all but I feel like it's all about the follow up I mean that that that's that's the biggest piece of advice I would share is just follow up and do what you say you're going to do yep and there's nothing better and I absolutely love even if it's a week later or two years later someone comes to me and says hey you gave me this feedback you may not even remember who I am but it was incredibly impactful. You know, I, that honestly makes my day and makes it all worth it. Absolutely.

Okay, I want to jump back back into the book. So a lot of times when people hear networking, uh, or they think of maybe these events with the business cards, we've all kind of kind of kind of envisioned this. And so you've written about the icky factor of relationship marketing. Can you, can you go a little bit deeper there on what that's all about and how to change some of this, or at least reframe some of this perception that those who are listening are feeling right now? Yeah, absolutely.

There are kind of two aspects. One is I think there is a little bit of stigma because of what people observe, right? We've all been to networking events where you can tell that all anyone is trying to do is just kind of exchange business cards and that's it. That's the kind of stuff that we want to avoid, right? I always say when I'm on stage at conferences, how many of you are. are exchanging business cards, but realize that most likely the next time you see this business cards is when you take them out of the pocket after they run through the washing machine,

right? And I'm honestly guilty of that. I didn't launch it yesterday and I pulled out a business card. I'm like, oh, that's terrible. So, yeah, I mean, we all definitely do that. So there's definitely a little bit of a sleaze factor in that it's all about exchanging cards and that's kind of it. And all everyone's trying to do is just get that so they can market them or market

people. But we know that if the relationships are our most important asset and the most amazing thing is looking off the back of the boat has happened because we knew the right people and the right people knew us, then great. That's amazing. So now we realize that those relationships are an asset. And an asset, just like the money or the bank account needs a strategy to be able to grow it, to be able to manage it, to be able to prevent too much loss. That comes, that starts to get a little icky, though, when that asset is human beings and our relationship out of them, right? You know, I know we all sometimes feel a little bad when we're pinging someone and asking for a favor or asking for something. Or when we're actively figuring out, well, who do I talk to today and who do I not talk to today?

who's important for me and who's not, like physically, like I will walk out of conferences and there'll be business cards that I put in my pocket and I keep and those are people I want to stay in touch with and business cards that I throw in a recycling bin because honestly, like I, that person is not going to be relevant to me, my business, my company, or my career. So that does induce a little bit of ickiness. And so it's important for people to be able to get around that. What about the way that you collect intelligence on those who are most important to you, you write about this in Chapter 9 as far as how do you investigate to learn deeper. And I've been to a few workshops where I've heard how some people do this.

And it's really been helpful when it comes to paying attention, keeping notes, understanding the important parts of others' lives so that you can refer to them. And maybe you can help them. Maybe you can make an introduction that could help them in that area. But what about this part of collecting intelligence? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, if we step back for a second, if we're trying to build a relationship with someone, relationships just like relationships with, you know, our family or friends do oftentimes

center around these social objects, right? These things in our life that have happened together or the things we know about them or they know about us that provides that added connection and that realization that, hey, this person cares about me because, you know, they care about my family. They care about my wife. And so, yeah, to be able to understand those social objects about other people can be really helpful. And so, you know, a baseline, for example, is that small talk, right? Oftentimes, you know, like if we're just getting on the phone, we may be talking about what we did this weekend or what we're going to be doing this coming weekend. And oftentimes, let's face it, you are not paying attention to the answer

because you legitimately don't care. But if you step back and think about it, well, if this was a friend of mine, I would care about what they're doing. I want to know what they're doing. I like them a lot. And so that kind of switches our mindset saying, all right, well, now what I'm engaging in small talk with people before a meeting or as the meeting's wrapping up, well, I'm going to make more of a specific point to be able to actually remember what they're talking about, to be able to ask those questions, right? If they're talking about, you know, yeah, this weekend, I'm shuddling my kids between Little League practice and soccer practice and things like that.

Well, great. Well, you already learn something. They've got multiple kids and they're into sports. Maybe you can ask some more questions like, oh, how many kids do you have, right? Or, you know, where do they play Little League? You know, what's their favorite sport? You know, seemingly honest questions that are legitimately honest. but your ability to capture them and leverage that later on to be able to show that rapport

the next time you get on the phone with them, you can say, hey, by the way, you know, how was Little League practice this past weekend? And they're like, oh, I can't believe you remembered that. Wow, I guess we do have a better relationship, right? That's kind of the mindset that's going through their head. So there's so much that can be done. But I think the important thing is, yeah, like doing everything can to be a sponge to capture as much information as possible and then be able to collect.

elected all in one place. I mean, that even goes, right, until, like, you know, what we open this interview with when we're talking about questions, right? Our friend Jason Gannard, right, has this, you know, kind of line that he uses all the time, right? If we're opening a ball of champagne a year from now, what are we celebrating, right? That's a really cool question, rather than, you know, oh, how's it going? Oh, yeah, things are really busy, blah, blah, right to be able to find those specific questions that draw out what's going on in someone's life that can be incredibly powerful yeah uh big big phrase that comes up that i think is important is consistency and couple that with playing the long game and certainly something you've written

about what is your mindset in regards to consistent behavior behavior and habits to create in order to play the long game when it comes to building relationships. One of the things that we always try and guide people on, and this is where we oftentimes see the root of where someone stumbles is, well, what are the goals you're trying to achieve? And those goals quite often are things that aren't necessarily going to pay off for months or years from now, right? Like, you could, for example, like, I'll be very honest. Like, with this book coming off, I'm going to need to call on a lot of people who, you know, I've been helping out and stay in touch with and being friends with for years. But this is something that's been like now years and years in the

making. If, you know, I am trying to get repeat referral business, well, what I'm trying to do is I'm not trying to necessarily ping them and kind of squeeze a new opportunity out of them. It's instead, I'm trying to build a relationship and maintain that relationship, such to the point in time that they are ready to buy more software. They are ready to buy a new house or something like that, that they think of me first. And so I'm just trying to stay in touch with them and not necessarily change the timeline. And so that means that the timeline is stretched out, you know, weeks, months, and years into the future. The challenge is that we've all faced is that we as human beings, you know,

we're wired to be able to think about the short term and not the long term, right? Otherwise, you know, we would never have sugary cereal. We would never have French fries and we'd be in the gym every single day, right? Well, let's face it, most of us aren't that way. And so with relationship marketing, yeah, we have to be able to switch into that mindset and be able to figure out some way of investing in something that's not going to pay off for years in the future, if ever. And so consistency in making sure that you're consistent in everyday action becomes all the more critical.

Yeah. I know I said a lot there. No, well, it made me think of a mentor relationship I had with somebody earlier in my career. It began on one of those rewards trips you went as a sales professional. We called it Circle of Excellence, the company. And I was on the trip, and I met a kind of high. level guy and and we just kind of hit it off became friends initially and then he agreed to

always take my call when I would ask and it was never formalized he would be a mentor of mine but I would ping him once a quarter with current questions and he would do a fantastic job of being a mentor and asking me questions and then challenging me and pushing me and offering advice and I would implement and I would follow up religiously with him and we did this for six years And I did this because I always wanted him in my life as someone I could bounce ideas off of. That wasn't family. He wasn't initially a friend. He was a high level worker.

And then one day, six years into our relationship as friends slash mentor mentee, he said, Hey, I have this really significant job of VP of North American sales. And I want you to do it, which was a huge step up from where I was at the time. And I got it. I mean, I got that job. Now, I never went into the relationship hoping to work for him or thinking I would work from. I went into it genuinely trying to learn, be curious, build a friendship. And that was the result.

So I think sometimes, too, the intention needs to be true and honest and genuine and not always thinking, well, I'm going to get something out of this other than just those great phone calls that we have. from a career building perspective, I don't think it should ever feel transactional. It should feel like genuine on a regular basis. And then you never know. Like you never know what could happen. The good chance is nothing will happen. And that's completely fine. But there's also a chance that something dramatic and huge could happen.

And that's really cool when it does. Yeah. And I mean, the challenges, I think, we all know, looking off the back of the vote, okay, all these amazing things happen because of relationships and because of knowing the right people. But looking forward, we kind of assume and we know that those things, same things will happen, but the challenge is, again, we're still wired for that short term, right? And so we have to go into this thinking about, well, how do I, how can I invest in the long term

knowing that short term, I'm not going to get anything. Now, and so there are obviously a number of tactics. You know, we talk about blocking off time in your calendar to be able to focus on these relationships and keeping that sacred and rituals and things like that. One thing I always love is to actually reward yourself for doing this work. For example, if you, you know, take yourself out for lunch every week if you've, like, you know, followed up with people every day or put $5 in a vacation jar or something like that, You know, do things that will be able to help you with the long term, but reward yourself

in the short term for it. That's interesting. And I think it makes complete sense. Hey, do you have a couple more minutes? Absolutely. Okay. I want to get to, we almost run out of time. So we talk about you creating contractually, the CEO of Contactually, building it up.

We talked about the people that you look for when you're hiring. We talked about your values. And then you guys were growing and growing and growing. And then what happens just recently? We had to reschedule this conversation because of this, which is really cool. What's the latest with Contactually? Yeah. No, it's kind of crazy.

But Contactually, as of late February, has been acquired by Compass. Compass, you know, is raised over a billion dollars in capital. moving incredibly quickly. They were a customer of ours and were kind of starting to really dominate the industry that, you know, we spend a lot of time in, which is real estate. And after kind of numerous conversations with them, you know, I think we decided the whole is more than some of the parts here. And so, you know, we started talking about joining forces.

And you do it. Why do that? Because you, I feel like you are an entrepreneur at heart. And now I know you can, you still are running contextually, but technically you work for somebody else. I know it's so fresh that maybe it's hard to even know how you feel about this and you've, you've been running a mile a minute. But what's that feeling of, wait a second, this is this thing that was mine that I've helped build with these great people now technically belongs to someone else and I work for them. Yeah.

I mean, I think it definitely breaks down into, again, through introspection, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about, well, what's important for us and what do we want to achieve? Clearly, you know, because we've raised $12 million in capital since the founding of the company, our investors are looking for a return and we want to make sure that those, you know, that those investors are rewarded for the relationship. That's obviously one basic thing as a company, right? Companies have shareholders, even if it's just one of that shareholders looking for a return on their investment at some point, you know, now or 10 years in the future. We thought about how can we both keep investing in the grand mission behind Contactually, which is building tools that allow professionals to build and maintain personal authentic relationships. So we thought about how we can do that while, of course, you know, in allowing our team to see investment by hiring more people, giving them bigger challenges, giving them a bigger platform to work on and more users to work with. So we kind of thought about all these things.

And as we were talking to various parties, and we got to a point in the company where we were regularly getting inbound interest from potential acquires and investors. And our attitude has always been, no, no, no, not really interesting. But as we really started kind of looking and talking with the folks to compass more and more, we saw that, you know, not only did they check all the boxes for us and our team. but there was really tight cultural alignment. You know, the focus on the user as the most important thing that they're trying to solve for, the ability to innovate, the values-driven culture. And so, yeah, it was definitely a hard decision to say, all right, well, I'm not going to be captain of the ship anymore. You know, I'm going to be kind of running a part of a much, much bigger ship.

But, you know, there's been, we had every confidence that this was the right move for everyone involved. Well, congrats, man. That's that's big time. And hopefully you got to take a chunk of cash off the table and take care of your family, man. Thanks, appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. You know, I honestly, like, haven't even looked or thought about that. I mean, still goes back.

Really? You don't. I mean, honestly, no. I mean, the day after, day after close, you know, we came back into the office and we just kept working. That's really, that's honestly been, you know, our attitude, it's business as usual. Now, part of it, of course, is 70 to 90 percent of acquisitions fail. If you kind of read Harvard Business Review and other places, we want to make sure we're an acquisition that does not fail. That turns out to be one of the best decisions that both sides could have made.

So there's definitely an incredible amount more that we want to do there. But, you know, yeah, we're very excited. We're really focused on, you know, that long-term vision. When there's change like that, how do the people that you serve, the people that work on your team at Kentucky, was there fear of that change? I would imagine a large part of your time has to be talking to them about that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, no one likes uncertainty. Right.

As much as we like talk about, embrace uncertainty and things like that, no one likes it, especially when it comes down to do I have a job or not. What's my role? is V still sticking around? Is our office going to change? What's happening around us? There's no question that there is going to be a lot of things like that. So, you know, we did everything we could to say, hey, we don't know the, like, and just being honest and transparent with them.

Again, as we always have with our core value of being real. We don't know what's going to happen. You know, we know you're going to have jobs. We know that you're going to be doing something that is important and is important. it is impactful. We don't know it yet. Here's the path that both sides are going to go down and the journey that we're going to go down to be able to figure out what we're doing.

But hey, let's be open and honest that there are things. And so when people saw us being transparent and us talking about the path forward, they felt much more comfortable saying, all right, cool. Okay. I still know the answer. There's still a lot of uncertainty. But we're all in this together. and someone is looking out for me and making sure that, you know, that uncertainty is resolved.

And that seemed to have quelled most of the issues and concern right now. Well, congrats again, man. It's pretty, I was pumped for you when I saw that come out. It's really neat. And I would encourage people, I like in the manner in which you write, which makes me feel good, since we have the same editor at McGrawl Hill, maybe she's going to get to help my writing. writing look as good as yours. It was a good feeling as I was reading,

reading your book, man. It was really cool. And the book is called Success is in Your Sphere. Leverage the power of relationships to achieve your business goals. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Yeah, absolutely. So the website for the book is Success Is In Your Sphere.com. You can obviously go directly there and sign up and pre-order the book right from there,

sign for a mailing list. luckily there's only one ZV band in the world, and I'm trying to rank higher in the Google rankings for ZV. I think I'm somewhere on the first page right now, but if you just do a quick Google search for a ZVAN, ZVI, then band like rock band, you'll be able to find me pretty easily. It's a great name. I love it, man. Well, obviously, thanks again for being here, and I know we're going to certainly continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Awesome. Really appreciate Ryan.

I love the questioning today. Awesome. Thanks so much, man. Awesome. Thanks. All right. Really interesting talk with Zvi. I appreciate the willingness and ability to zoom out and in to get tactical and then high level. Thinking about his process to the 5x7 notepad and how specific he has when it comes to daily journaling, the story of when he was 25 and the terrible parts about his dad, unfortunately.

And then moving on to hiring a day. decisions and the value-based style in which they did that. And then I really like the mentor-mente part and how to be effective at both of those. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, I would greatly appreciate it if you would spread the message, tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast. Tell them to download this one with Zvi to learn on a number of different areas. And thank you again for continuing to give me the opportunity. to do what I love on a daily basis.

I will forever be grateful for that. All right. See you next week. Can't wait. This episode is brought to you by Roan. Roan is the maker of the most comfortable dress shirt ever made. The luxury performance alternative to the classic dress shirt. Roan's commuter shirt utilizes your body heat to release wrinkles naturally so you can ditch the dry cleaners.

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