2Bobs—with David C. Baker and Blair Enns

Blair describes to David how he was able to distill his Win Without Pitching approach into a simple formula: P=db/D Power = desirability / Desire Links Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt Economics in One Lesson Wikipedia page Henry Hazlitt Wikipedia page The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, We are going to talk about selling in one lesson. BLAIR ENNS: I know why you're laughing. DAVID: I'm laughing because you're constantly pretending that people need to hear all kinds of lessons, but if really is selling is just in one lesson, then doesn't that sort of undermine, anyway, let's just go on. I'm sorry, I'm just trying too hard here. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: So selling in one lesson. But what's interesting about this is that you have a formula, and I think we probably need to put this formula in the show notes, right? Because just being able to picture this as a, so tell us the formula and then where this came from because I find it really fascinating. BLAIR: Yeah, it's a formula. It's not really made for the audio medium but what the hell. So selling in one lesson, well let me back up a little bit. So I've been doing the Win Without Pitching thing since about 2002. And since then, people have said to me, you know, like in as few words as possible, explain how you win without pitching. So it took me a long time to get it down to two steps. And so here's how you win without pitching in two steps. BLAIR: Step one, you change the power structure in the buy sell relationship, and you do that through positioning and we could talk more about that, but we'll get into that in a bit. But that's step one. You change the power dynamics or the power structure in the relationship through the positioning of the firm. By vastly reducing the number of direct competitors you have, you change the power dynamics towards you because the client's power, their power in the sale, their power to push you around, dictate price, etc, comes from the availability of substitutes. So by narrowing your focus, building deep expertise, you become this expert firm and you change the power dynamics. So that's step one, change the power dynamics in the relationship primarily through positioning. BLAIR: And then step two is to leverage that new found power that you have to change the way your services are bought and sold. And it takes a really long time to unpack that second step because it encompasses many, many things. So, for a long time I was pretty happy with my Win Without Pitching in two step description. And then about five or six years ago, I read Henry Hazlitt's book Economics in One Lesson. And this is a book that I think it was published in 1947 and sold well over a million copies, and I'd never heard of it. And somebody mentioned it and I picked it up and I thought, well, this is something else. If somebody can really pull off the promise in the title by delivering the entire kind of school of economics, I won't call it a science because I like many others don't believe it's a science, but the entire school of economics in just one lesson that will be impressive. And he did it, like to Hazlitt's credit, he was able to distill the entire field of economics down in one lesson. DAVID: And economics is not a simple field either. So pretty complex. So you took this as a challenge. Two is not enough. BLAIR: I thought, well, he can do it in one lesson, I can do, what does it mean to win without pitching or to sell creativity or to sell expertise of any kind. I'll just broaden out to selling in one lesson. And let me read you Hazlitt's lesson because early in his book he delivers the lesson and then he goes through all of these examples of how poor economic decision making or poor economic policy arises from violation of the lesson. Here's the lesson. "The art of economics consistent looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy. It consists in tracing the consequences of that policy, not merely for one group, but for all groups." BLAIR: So, what he says essentially is that any mistake in economic policy arises from the violation of one or two things. The first thing is you didn't consider all groups who would be affected by this. You only considered one group. And the second thing is, you didn't consider the long term, you only considered the short term. It's not the only book you would read in the field of economics, but it's a book that you could read and then you could measure any other economic theory or recommendation against the lesson in that book. I think that's why it's such a powerful accomplishment that Hazlitt pulled off. And I was thinking, well, is there the equivalent in selling? And I don't know if I've arrived at it, but I have a lesson that I can distill into even fewer words than Hazlitt. I can get it down to a formula. DAVID: Yeah, and I'm picturing you in this white lab coat in t

After touching on the topic of risk in many other episodes of this podcast, David and Blair finally take a full episode to discuss at length the role of risk in entrepreneurship. LINKS "Confessions of a Recovering Consultant" by Blair Enns Hyman P. Minsky Archive Twitter exchange with Jonathan Stark on risk Strategic Coach program with Dan Sullivan "A Mission With No Exit" by Blair Enns Peter Drucker TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, what's the riskiest thing you've ever done? DAVID BAKER: I've always wanted to have a really long pregnant pause right after you start something, because you're always telling me I can regain the power with silence. The biggest risk I've taken was probably telling my wife about the risks I was going to take. BLAIR: Yeah, right. Wow. Hands up, everybody. DAVID: She's only told me there was one thing I could not do and it's so illogical. She says I cannot jump out of an airplane. She doesn't terrify flying, or race, or whatever, but I can't jump out, which seems so illogical. So, as soon as I get some, you know what, I'm going to jump out of an airplane. BLAIR: You've got some high risk hobbies. I'm not sure that you indulge in all of them, but tell us a little bit about your high risk hobbies. List them off, because it's a little bit incredible. Here's the consultant, somebody who types for a living. DAVID: Oh, that is dismissive, types for a living. BLAIR: Well, I refer to myself that way too. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: Like I'm a typist, right? I have friends who have calluses, like they're real men. You and I, we type and talk on the phone. DAVID: Okay. So, I taught motorcycle racing. I fly airplanes and helicopters. I travel to very dangerous parts of the country. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: I love the shooting sports, not shooting at each other. I'm not so much into those, and I don't hunt, but I like shooting sports. And I do a podcast with you, that's pretty up there too. What are yours? BLAIR: Yeah, right. Okay. I knew I was going to open with this question. For those of you listening, if anybody is listening, this is the risk episode, where we're going to talk about various types of risk, but to answer your question. When I knew I was going to pose this question to you, I started thinking oh, what's the most riskiest thing I've ever done? Other than some things that were driven by kind of alcohol and youth that were just outright stupid when I put my life or the lives of others in danger, other than that, I can't ... The riskiest things I've done in business have been investing in the business. By that I mean spending money, seeing something as an investment but knowing in the short-term, the expense is potentially debilitating to the business. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: But then trusting that it's going to pay off in revenue down the road. DAVID: Oh. The biggest risk you took that I can remember was when you totally changed your business model to a training model from a consulting model. That was a huge risk, to me at least it felt, maybe it didn't feel that way to you as much as it did to me. I was looking, from the outside, in marvel really. I was thinking, "Wow, that is a big risk." BLAIR: You were thinking, "Wow, that is a stupid move." I remember you telling me like a year later, "You know you could still go back to being a consultant," and I couldn't because I wrote that 3,000 word blog post called "Confessions of a Recovering Consultant." DAVID: Right. BLAIR: The reason I did it is I put it out there so that I would not ... That was my version of burning the ships so that I would not go back. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: And here we are. DAVID: But you do take some pretty significant physical risks. They may not seem like it to you because of where you live, but you hike in pretty crazy places and you poke bears, maybe not literally but close to it. BLAIR: I once said to my son, who was 15 at the time, I said, "You know, you're one of the few people in the world who has put your hand into a grizzly bear's mouth," and he responded promptly by saying, "I'm one of the few people in the world who has stuck a thermometer up a grizzly bear's butt." DAVID: Except he didn't use that word, but yes we gathered. BLAIR: He did. DAVID: He did? BLAIR: Okay. Enough about us. So, I sent you a text saying, "Hey, we should do a whole show on risk," because probably like one in three or four episodes, we keep coming back to the subject of risk, like how much risk that the principals of creative firms take. So, where do you want to start here? Do you want to start with your Minsky quote? DAVID: You know, I never used to pay any attention to economists, until you kept quoting different economists to me. So, as I was thinking about risk last night, watching a very boring TV show, I found this quote that just struck me. It's by Hyman Minsky, and it says this. He said, "Stability is destabilizing." And then there was an article on the Wall Street Journal talking about that concept and he also said, "That's because, in

Blair gets David to admit that he was kind of wrong about open book management being just a fad when he originally wrote about it almost two decades ago, and David offers ways that it can actually benefit both employees and clients when used appropriately. Links Financial Management of a Marketing Firm by David C. Baker TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, today we're going to talk about open book management. How does that sound to you? DAVID C. BAKER: Sounds like you think you're in charge. Why don't you say, "Can we talk about that?" BLAIR: Well, let me assert control. David, would it be okay with you if we talked about open book management? DAVID: Great idea. I like that idea. Let's do that. BLAIR: Okay, fantastic. I just happen to have an article here that you wrote. I've actually just pulled it out of your book, Financial Management of a Marketing Firm. We don't talk about that. We should do some podcasts on that book, because that's a book that every principal of a creative firm should have on their desk or their bookshelf. And the reason I had it out is, I was just on a call with the owner of a small creative firm who wants to raise his level of business acumen, and we don't have the training program that he's looking for. Ours is too specific to business development. So I said, "You need to buy this book." And then, as I was leafing through the book, I saw you had the stuff on open book management. We'd already agreed that we were going to talk about open book management. But I want to read something from this that's in the book. BLAIR: It says, "OBM, open book management, is clearly a fad. That doesn't make it wrong, just suspect!" Exclamation mark. "Open space layouts are also a fad, and time will tell how they catch on. Though there's already strong anecdotal evidence, if that's possible, that people jumped on the bandwagon and only later asked where it was headed." DAVID: So you want me to pull stuff out of here to embarrass you, as well? Or not? BLAIR: "In my opinion, open book management is a fad that will not catch on with the masses." When did you write this? DAVID: Last month. No, the first time I took a stab at writing about open book management was in 2000, so you gotta give me a little bit of slack. I was kind of wrong about that. I'm still going to be right about open plan offices, but it's going to take another decade for the world to figure out that I'm right about that. BLAIR: Really? DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: Yeah, you think we're going to go back or away from open plan offices? DAVID: You know, one of the key components was that the principal or leader or whatever should be out with all the rest of the folks, and that blew up in everybody's faces, so we've already walked away from one of the key tenets of it, and we've also walked away from other things like, now we have places for people to go off and work if they want to, and we're not making everybody sit in what looks like a call center and be all disturbed by everybody's nonsense. So, yeah, I do think it's going to be another ten years, but we'll figure that out, too. BLAIR: Okay. DAVID: But I was wrong on this one, for sure. BLAIR: Well, let's just pick up from there. What did you think was going to happen, and what's the state of the nation right now when it comes to open book management? DAVID: Well, people are more open to it for sure, and one of the things that occurred to me as I was looking back over my first foray into this is that I wrote it at a particular time in history, so this is right during a difficult economic environment, and that's typically when principals move towards more open book environment. BLAIR: Yeah, "look, I'm not making any money." DAVID: Yeah, right, so quit your whining. It's like, I'm not making any money, why do you keep asking me for more money? That's very common, like people go to open book management when things aren't going all that well, and then they're not quite as enthused about it when things are going great. But, we've matured in so many ways around that, and it think that the current approach to open book management is really good. I'm very much in favor of it, to a certain degree. DAVID: I asked a bunch of principals not too long ago, just a couple months ago, about their perspective on open book management, and you and I talked about this poll. It's really, what did you find interesting about that poll? Tell people about the results of it first. BLAIR: Yeah, so the Twitter poll that you did. You said, "As the principal of a marketing firm, my perspective on open book management is: A, everything is fair game; B, all is open but salaries; C, we share the big picture; D, financials are not shared. And the number one response, 38% people said, everything is fair game. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: And then 24% was the next, B, all is open but salaries. So 62% of the people you polled are in favor of open book management at one level or another. DAVID: Right, that surprised me. It surprised you, as well,

Blair and David analyze and then look beyond the requests for reassurance potential clients make during the late stage of a sale to address their underlying motivations. LINKS "Transtheoretical Model" (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983; Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992) TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today I want to ask you about something that I've heard you talk about for many years and it's this notion of alternative forms of reassurance. BLAIR ENNS: Yeah. DAVID: We used to do this event together and we did it for like 10 years running. BLAIR: You mean that one where I carried the both of us. DAVID: Yeah. That's the one, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely the one. I remember listening particularly attentively to this one section that you used to talk about because it was a new concept to me, but I was also really fascinated by it and I thought, mainly I thought the title was just perfect and you called it something like the alternative forms of reassurance and as I recall at a certain point in the sales cycle when an agency is in the process of landing a new client, that prospective client still wants a little bit more information and they might ask for something and this was a way as I recall, where you could kind of redirect the question and provide alternative means of reassurance. You remember those days? BLAIR: Yeah, I remember those days fondly and the way you described it, I think of a judo move. We're talking about late in the sale and I guess I'll back up in a minute and explain why reassurance is important late and it's not important at all early, but we're talking about late in the sale when your job as a salesperson is to reassure this nervous late stage client and they ask you for things. I was counseled to look beyond the request, the specific request and look at the motivation for the request and sometimes the request is the negotiation, the request is to cut price. Maybe you're just negotiating, but maybe there's something else going on here or maybe they're asking for a money back guarantee or maybe they're asking for references or maybe they're asking to do things a little bit differently. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: In a lot of those situations, you have to think about what is the client buying from you. Anytime they hire your firm, they're buying a path to their desired future state, and so when you put forward a proposal in front of them with a price attached and they look at that price, you are essentially pricing their desired future state discounted for uncertainty. In every price, there is an uncertainty discount that's built in or there's some math around an uncertainty discount that the client is doing. Looking beyond the motivation for the request late in the buying cycle, again, it might be to cut price, it might be to offer references or it might be to do the engagement differently. It's not universal, but many times they see a lot of risk in the engagement and they're simply trying to mitigate that risk. They're trying to lower that uncertainty. BLAIR: So if the engagement fails because of what's known as performance risk and that is you're the provider, your questionable ability to do the job, if in the end you don't end up doing what you say you're going to or to the quality that you say you're going to and you affect the outcome, but then the client is on the hook for that and if they think there's a great chance that that's going to happen, then if it's really high, they won't hire you at all. But if it's a little bit lower than that, maybe they'll see the risk and decide, "Well, for the level of risk that I'm taking, I want a lower price." So that's just one example, asking for a lower price where the client's really just trying to mitigate their risk, factor in uncertainty or another way of putting it is they're looking to be reassured that everything's okay and those are all different kind of spins on what is essentially the same topic, a nervous late stage client wondering, "Well, what if this goes wrong?" DAVID: So if you handle this well, can you in effect eliminate that discount a bit from a pricing standpoint? If you handle that reassurance correctly, can you close that gap and leave less money on the table? Is that part of it as well? BLAIR: Oh, yeah. I couldn't sit here and say you're going to eliminate all discounts forever and still close the deal. But the vast majority of them, especially with good clients, like a value buyer who doesn't see themselves as spending on an expense, but investing in a solution or an opportunity, a value buyer who maybe starts negotiating or asking for a discount, you can almost always offer an alternative form of reassurance as long as you're able to look past the request and discern the true motivation and see what's going on underneath. If you don't mind, I wouldn't mind backing up and just talking about why reassurance is important late. DAVID: Yeah, sure. BLAIR: I'm fond of saying that selling isn't about talking people int

David disagrees with Blair (sort of) on his model for growing existing accounts in the post-AOR era, and then offers his list of 6 ideas on the topic. Links The Peter principle The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson Tony Mikes Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Today Blair, we are coming to you live from the ReCourses Woodworking Shop, where so far I have done no woodworking, but a whole lot of podcast recording. Maybe I need to take my saws up to my office or something, but I can wander because I'm on like a corded mic and I can just look at my stuff. If you start to bore me, I just read the manuals for my saws and it's really fun. Is that okay with you? BLAIR ENNS:Yeah. I'll hear the table saw fire up in the background, right? DAVID: You know you need to start to get more interesting at that point. BLAIR: You know you're retreating further and further from civilization and identifying more and more with machinery and animals. DAVID: And the rest of the world thanks me for this. BLAIR: All right. Unabomber, what are we doing? DAVID: Today, we're talking about growing accounts. And as I was thinking about this, why are we so interested in this? I guess one alternative would be that we could just really land big accounts at the beginning but it seems like two things have changed in the world that our listeners occupy. One is that they are tending to start with relationships that begin smaller. That's one thing that I've noticed. So it makes it more critical to grow accounts. The other thing that's changed is that it's much more of a project-based world and so maybe growth isn't necessarily going to solve all of that, but we're talking about a chain of projects. So it's kind of like an AOR relationship disguised as a whole bunch of projects that follow on, which require the skills to grow an account. Why do you want to talk about this? Why is this that important? BLAIR: Yeah. And I think you're right in describing the environment. In this non-AOR environment, the emphasis is greater than it's ever been to go mine the account for the very next project because there aren't the guarantees, to the extent that there were guarantees at all in an AOR relationship. I guess in some of them, there were some form of guarantee. So you really do have to kind of eat what you kill in the modern project-based world. BLAIR: As somebody who focuses on the new business side of things, I've worked with a lot of firms where they were really good at new business and then you look at how quickly their accounts or clients move on, you think, "Man, if you would just solve that problem, you would be killing it." DAVID: Yeah. And thank goodness they were good at new business because as fast as they landed them, they left, right? BLAIR: Yeah. So you've got a list of things, pointers that we'll review on growing existing accounts. And I have one point. And I don't think you agree with my point. Is this going to be the first podcast where we disagree? DAVID: Publicly, yeah. There's been a lot of ... BLAIR: You're so polite. DAVID: Maybe I read through ... You sent me one paragraph with some ideas when I thought, "I don't know about that one." BLAIR: And a PowerPoint deck. DAVID: So this will be very interesting so you're going to talk about a concept called the account conference. Sounds very very official. And then we're going to, if you leave me any time at all. BLAIR: I'm not planning to. DAVID: Right. Then I'm going to provide just some very specific pointers, which I'm sure you'll agree with, right? DAVID: When did you come up with this idea and what was the impetus for the account conference? It sounds like this is something that's been rolling around in your brain for a while. BLAIR: Yeah. Well, I'm looking at this deck, it was from a webinar I did in February of 2014. So it's been around for almost five years. And the idea was I invented the idea of an account conference. Well actually I observed it happening in a hospital. So I was in a hospital with a family member and the surgery was about to happen. And I was watching how not just the surgeons and other doctors, but all the medical practitioners kind of handled it. They had, they called it a conference, maybe it was a patient conference. And I kind of watched from outside of the room. And I asked them questions about it later. In hospitals, you have these hierarchies, where the surgeon is at the very top and then you've got the specialists, doctor and then you've got that nurses et cetera and the other healthcare practitioners. BLAIR: So there's this hierarchy. and in any hierarchy, there's a danger that the people at the top are kind of standing on the iceberg of ignorance. So they have this sense that they know everything because they're the master in that domain. And often there's people below, who are thinking, "Well, I'm not sure that's such a good idea." So the notion of the conference in a hospital setting as I understand it, it's basically stripes down in the m

Blair remembers what it was like when he was an account person himself, and David shares five ways firms can treat their account people better. LINKS "How to Drive Your Employees Bat Sh*t Crazy" 2Bobs episode TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, we're talking today about how to disrespect people. This is your topic idea. DAVID C. BAKER: Yeah, I get so many requests from people that want help with this, and they naturally ask me. Right? BLAIR: Yeah. Of course they do. DAVID: "Who'd be really an expert at this? Ah, David, yeah, he could help us with this." BLAIR: Yeah. The topic is, best ways to disrespect account people. Why this topic? DAVID: I see so many firms disrespecting account people. I mean, they're obviously not doing it intentionally, but when you look at how they're treated, and how they're brought into workflow and all this stuff, it's pretty obvious that they could do things a little bit better, and so when I talk through it with them, their eyes light up, and they see, "Oh, there's another way to do this." That's the topic. I thought it might be interesting, because it just will save me time, right, in consulting, because then I won't have to answer this question every time, right? BLAIR: You just said in this podcast, "I'm just thinking." I was an account person for many years, and I was going to say, "I don't recall ever being disrespected," but it just took me about five seconds to think longer, and now these emotions have all come flooding back. There are times when, as the account person, you're on top of the world. Right? I remember some of those moments early in my career. DAVID: Just this morning, like an hour ago, I don't know, maybe it was the topic, it brought me back to this moment where I was just thinking, "I should have quit in that moment," back working for a large, multinational agency where I was disrespected. I thought, "I should have just quit right then." BLAIR: Okay. Let's get into this, so you've got a bunch of ways in which account people are disrespected. We're going to unpack these. Right? The first one on your list here is this idea of recognizing or not recognizing how difficult the role is. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: Hot potato. Over to you. DAVID: Imagine working for a president, don't think of a specific one, just imagine working for this anonymous president of a country, and you are the ambassador, and you are asked to represent your country, but also speak for the country where you are planted, basically. I believe strongly that the most difficult role, not the most important role, but the most difficult role in a firm is this account person, because you have one foot firmly planted on both sides of the fence. You're supposed to speak for the client, but you're also supposed to not give away the shop. I think it's so critical. It's why it's so important to find the right ones. They're just so important, and when you think about the degree, you talk a lot about this, to what degree does a creative firm lead or direct their clients, and then you go down the list? So much of it depends on how good the account people are, for sure. BLAIR: Yeah. They're at the front lines, making the strategy real or blowing up the strategy, if there is a strategy. I love that metaphor of the ambassador. You're saying something that you think is the party line, and all of a sudden, then the president says something completely different or even throws you under the bus. DAVID: Right. Right. BLAIR: So you're saying the first way to disrespect the account people is to not recognize how difficult their role is. DAVID: Right, how difficult their role ... These are the people who are better than anybody else in the world at sending a client to hell and helping them enjoy the trip, and not even realizing that they're going to hell, like pushing back, getting more money out of them, getting the information out that they've been reticent to share. It just goes on and on about how important they are. BLAIR: Yeah. Great. Okay. Next on your list is something about hovering over their shoulders. Is that what you mean by this? DAVID: Well, yeah, and I see this phrase. It just sneaks out, I guess, and there aren't any evil intentions around it, but you can see this happening in the early stages of closing a new account, where the principal, who has made some appearance, because it is important that they make some appearance. Maybe not physical, but at least be a part of that closing process, they'll reassure them on the flip side of saying, "I'm not going to be your day-to-day account person," and then the flip side of that is to reassure them that, "But if anything goes wrong, or if there's any time you need me, just let me know," almost planting the seed is just so disrespectful, I think, the idea that, "If you don't get your way, come to me. Bypass your account person and climb a step higher on that ladder." DAVID: I really, honestly, do not believe that principals, or even salespeople who aren't principals,

Blair offers seven mindsets that any seller of expertise needs to master so that they can behave like the expert in the sales cycle. Links "The Jedi Mindset" by Blair Enns McClelland's Human Motivation Theory, also known as Three Needs Theory, Acquired Needs Theory, Motivational Needs Theory, and Learned Needs Theory Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Good morning, Blair. You are in London. I'm in Nashville. BLAIR ENNS: Yeah, it's my afternoon, and it's your seven AM. DAVID: And don't tell me you've gotten a lot more done today already, because that's just a time change thing. Has nothing to do with productivity. Today we're going to talk about the seven masteries of the rainmaker, choke, choke. BLAIR: You're choking on the word rainmaker, are you? DAVID: Well, a little bit. I'm also, it's like seven. How come it's not six or eight? Seven sounds quite biblically, almost like we need to take an offering at the end of this or something. BLAIR: Let's do that. DAVID: I'm more choking on the idea of the rainmaker. Do you hear that term much anymore? I don't really hear it. We know what it means, though. BLAIR: No, but there was a time when you heard it often. In fact, if an agency were running an ad looking for a new business person, probably a health percentage of those ads would have the title rainmaker wanted. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: I've never liked the term rainmaker. It's a little bit funny that an agency principal would be looking for an individual who essentially has magical powers, the ability to make it rain. DAVID: Right. It's dry. The crops are going to die. All we can do is just rely on magic. So let's call on the rainmaker. We have no idea how he ... it was always a he back in those days, but we don't know how he or she does it, but this is our last resort. BLAIR: We have no positioning. We have no leads. We have no prospects. We have no formalized new business process. You absolutely need somebody who can make it rain, yeah. So I've kind of used that term tongue in cheek, but the idea of seven masteries, it really stems from the notion of mindset. Because you can master behaviors. You can master all kinds of things. And when I originally wrote about this a few years ago, I had come home to the idea that I was teaching people sales process and people were learning, so they were onboarding and understanding what it is that they knew to do in specific situations, but yet, they still couldn't bring themselves to do it. BLAIR: So I kind of went deep into the subject and realized well, the things that I'm asking them to do, because my approach, the Win Without Pitching approach to selling to new businesses is a little bit contrary to the conventional way it's done in the creative profession. So the things that I was asking them to do were contrary to their overall general pattern of behavior. And then you ask yourself, well, what sets somebody's general pattern of behavior, and the answer is it's really the thoughts in their head, the mindset. BLAIR: So I kind of arrived at this model, this idea of the seven masteries of the rainmaker. These are the seven things that are concepts that an individual needs to master in order to put themselves in the mindset, the mindset of the expert. I sometimes refer to it as the Jedi mindset, so they master those concepts. So they're in the proper mindset. Then they can begin to behave, generally speaking, across the pattern of general behavior, they can begin to behave like the expert, and then they can start to take onboard these very specific things that we teach client does x, you do y. BLAIR: If you learn those specific points of sales process, what to do in the sale, in certain situations, but you're not already operating or behaving like the expert, then they're not going to work. So this whole idea was about getting to somebody's mindset. DAVID: Okay, so we're going to go through the seven, but before we do that, let's assume that I want to embrace this way of thinking. What specifically, almost mechanically, are you suggesting I'm going to do with these seven things? Do I just write them down, and I chant them to myself? No, you're not talking about that. It's more I analyze my behavior against this list. What am I going to do with this after we get through going through the seven? BLAIR: As I walk you through the seven, you'll think about where you are on that spectrum, and in the first mastery, just ask yourself, hey, are you mastering this now, or do you have some homework to do? And then I am going to get you to chant something funnily enough. DAVID: Good luck with that. BLAIR: After we get through four of the ... I think I said to you, this is either going to be really fun, or it's going to be a complete disaster. DAVID: Right, yeah. BLAIR: So we'll just see how it goes. As I explain the mastery, you just ask yourself, well, is this something I have mastered, or do I have some homework to do? And then once we get through four, the first four, which I consider to be t

LINKS "The Great Convergence Is Upon Us" by Blair Enns "CRM: The Train Coming At You" by Blair Enns AltGroup.net website "Eight Gauges on Your Agency Dashboard" by David C. Baker The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike "Rising From the Ashes: A New Agency Model" by Blair Enns TRANSCRIPTION DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today we're going to start over. Both you and I are going to start over. We're going to pretend to start over anyway, and the topic is If I Were Starting a Firm Now. In other words this is a firm that you and I work with, and the folks who listen to this podcast generally. If I were starting a firm like that now, what would I do differently? We're going way back in time because I ran a firm ... you worked at multiple firms, and I started and ran a firm for six years. My goodness, I would do so many things differently. If we talked about this 10 years ago, the answers would be different. If we talked about it 10 years from now, the answers would be different. But at this moment in time, what would we do differently if we were going to start a firm now? Are you up for that topic? BLAIR ENNS: I am up for it, and as you've pointed out I have never owned a firm before. I've run a small office, I've been the number two in a larger office, but I've never owned a firm. So I'll try it one, let's do this. DAVID: Okay. We're going to ping pong with some questions here, and I'm going to start by asking for your opinion on something that's really the big umbrella here. The reason I want to ask you is because you recently wrote a lot about this, and it was a provocative article the things that you talked about. I haven't talked with you to see what kind of feedback you got about it, but here is the question; what category of firm would you start? Would it be a digital firm? Or a dev shop? Or a UX shop? Or a PR firm? How would you start a firm from a category standpoint if you were starting over? BLAIR: I think the piece you're referring to is something I wrote called "The Great Convergence Is Upon Us." The convergence I was talking about is the convergence of design, which is often UX design, software engineering, and business consulting. I'm seeing most of the best lucrative, most thriving, most impactful firms that we're working with these days are in that space. I think it's really hard to think of starting a new firm today that doesn't combine those three skills, so I absolutely would combine those three skills because I think that's where the big opportunity is in the market place but that doesn't really narrow things a lot. If I look at what I know the world of selling, and also some of the world of marketing ... what I've been interested in for a bunch of years is this intersection of sales and marketing. I wrote something on this ... oh man, it's probably approaching 10 years ago now. I think it was called "CRM: The Train That's Coming At You." BLAIR: CRM as a customer relationship management software was becoming more prevalent and powerful, it's driven by the internet changing the way people buy, and the way we sell, and the way we use marketing automation. The biggest way sales and marketing has changed in the era of Google is that lead generation has moved from a sales function to a marketing function. When that happens, that changes the nature of what selling is, and it changes the nature a little bit of what marketing is. One of the implications is actually sales and marketing in your client's organizations are getting closer and closer together, and they're overlapping. That article I wrote about CRM was that the CRM application is actually the place in your client's organization ... and I know it's not an application, isn't really a place. But it's the place where sales and marketing are overlapping. BLAIR: Even pre-CRM days when I was working in the agency business, I as somebody who comes from the world of sales, I always felt like in a new business opportunity, if I could get the chief sales officers in the room as a decision maker, and I could convert him or her, if I could win him or her, I would win the account. There's just something about ... this is a long rambling answer, but there's something about where sales and marketing overlap, and the technology that's required, and the way those two different departments work together. I would focus on that space. So where sales and marketing overlap in my client's business, it would be tech heavy. A lot of that tech would be CRM. I would have this converge firm that had high level of business consulting, had technology chops like software engineering, and had really good design UX skills. I would go after sales driven organizations, and I guess the classic label would be a B2B firm. I would specialize in B2B because in a lot of B2B organizations you have this kind of handshake, or overlap in sales and marketing. Did that make sense at all? DAVID: It did. I kept thinking of t

Blair gives David some homework to identify patterns in the principals of creative practices who are successful and have that "je ne sais quoi." LINKS 2Bobs Episode 28 - "Positioning Cheats" Start With Why by Simon Sinek "Top 10 Podcasts Agency Owners Listen To" by Daniel de la Cruz Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today, we are going to catch up with the rest of the world. I can't even say that with a straight face. We're only 80 years, 90 years behind. We're going to talk about the X-Factor. Okay. And the first time that phrase was used was in 1930, and we're just now getting ready to talk about it. BLAIR ENNS: You've actually done homework. That's not fair. DAVID: Well, a little bit. BLAIR: You went and looked up the first use of the word X-Factor... But hold on - you have to explain who used it. What was the context? DAVID: Well, it was like in the urban dictionary, so it's totally unreferenced, it's just somebody's idea of when it was first used. I probably shouldn't even brought that up. But the phrase that popped up a lot when I was researching the X-Factor 'cause you really wanted to talk about this and I'm intrigued too. It's the "je ne sais quoi" which means, "I do not know more." Have you heard that phrase? BLAIR: Yeah, "je ne sais quoi." I always thought it just meant ... And I should know because I'm Canadian. It's one of our official languages. I always it meant, I don't know. So it's, I do not know more. DAVID: I do not know more, it's a French phrase "je ne sais quoi." In other words, there's this X-Factor. I don't know more. There's just something about them. There's this X-Factor about them. It was pretty interesting. We're going to talk about principals that exhibit this X-Factor. BLAIR: Principles, the people: ...P-A-L-S. DAVID: Yeah, right. BLAIR: Not ...P-L-E-S. DAVID: I never use the other word anymore 'cause I'm so used to using principals ...A-L-S. BLAIR: So principals of creative practices who are successful, who have this "je ne sais quoi," this X-Factor of success right? DAVID: Yeah. You really enjoyed saying that with such a great accent didn't you. So you gave me homework. BLAIR: Yes. DAVID: Here's what you said to me: think of one recent client - this presumes I even have clients, right? But think of one recent client who is very successful, what three things come to mind about that person? So I dutifully answered my questions here just following the script. And then you said, "Now do it for two or three more clients." And so I did that. Now what do you want me to do with this? BLAIR: I want to talk about the patterns. If you've done it for three or four clients, when you think about the attributes of that person, how common are those attributes across those three or four people? DAVID: They were just surprisingly common, and I hadn't ever really thought about it quite like this. But I almost felt like I was wasting my time as I extrapolated to others, because they all came up about the same. Maybe the order of the three things is different from principal to principle but the same ones kept coming up. Did you do the same thing? BLAIR: Yeah and I thought of a couple of people and then I just kind of thought of a group of people and made my list even a little bit longer. So I've got six things, but I would say those six things, they all roll up into one word. So if you had to take all of those different attributes that you've identified of these successful agency principals, and you had to put them all under the banner of one word, what would that one word be? DAVID: So I popped back and forth between these two. But I think the one word would be confident. BLAIR: Yeah, me too. DAVID: Really? The same word? OK. BLAIR: Yeah. So the X-Factor is confidence. But I think we'll get into this and maybe a little bit later on, we'll talk about some kind of big picture ideas around confidence and the subject of overconfidence and how important confidence is. Did you write down different manifestations of confidence or different forms of confidence? What's on your list? DAVID: The early form of confidence would be just starting the business, like, "I can do this." That's one. Another where it seems to show up a lot is just in sales or prospect conversations and I've even actually listened to them and then of course, most of the time I haven't, they're just reporting to me what the conversation was. Then that's where it probably strikes me the most is just this confidence, even when they don't have a lot of experience in the promises that they are making to a prospect. You and I have probably done this in our own practices years ago too. BLAIR: Oh yeah. DAVID: You get on the phone on the way back to the office and you're saying you will not believe what I just promised we could do? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: That's where it seems to show up. BLAIR: Well, I think some of th

Blair interviews David on what each of the three levels of success in running a creative firm looks like. Links 2Bobs Episode 39 - "Replacing Presentations With Conversations" The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth, by David C. Baker Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You,by John Warrillow Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns 2Bobs Episode 31 - "Mastering the Value Conversation" TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, it's been a while. DAVID C. BAKER: Has it? I haven't missed you all that much. Have you missed me? BLAIR: Since we've last recorded a podcast, I was listening to one that aired recently and it was talking about my first book is in its fourth printing. It's now going into its fifth printing and I realized that it just aired and we recorded that over a year ago. So if Marcus is digging into a backlog that far, that means we haven't been together for a while. DAVID: Yeah. And it's scary too because imagine how much our thinking has changed in a year? 'Cause you were wrong about so many things. BLAIR: That's an old joke, you need new material. DAVID: Okay, sorry. BLAIR: So since we've last recorded a podcast, I know they keep airing because we've got all this in the can, but you and I did an event in London and then we came home and then you and your wife came up to Kaslo and we celebrated. I was just looking yesterday at a photo of your wife and my wife in a bear den together on her birthday. DAVID: Right, I didn't want to go in it, it's why I took the picture. BLAIR: You're too smart. I took it from inside the bear den, you were outside. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: And then you went to Chile on vacation and then you've probably been in some other places. DAVID: Yes, I have. I'm kind of off the road right now. I head back out of the country on Friday but I've been back trying to get our 61 acre farm livable. So just a few minutes ago, if you'd seen a picture of me, I would have been covered in white from head to toe because I am still trying to figure out how to use a paint sprayer and I realized I have a lot of expertise to develop yet. BLAIR: That's why on a hike I was carrying the bear spray. Okay, so it's been a while since we talked. Today we're going to talk, I want to call it good, better, best but it's really the three levels of success in running a creative firm and I think you've broken it down into the categories of starting, existing and thriving. And you sent me an entire spreadsheet to help navigate this conversation. Things like utilization, positioning, financial, marketing, etc. All of these different things that should be true or should be happening or you should be aiming for at these three different levels of success. Do you want to just take a minute and talk about those three levels of success? Are there lines that delineate between starting and existing and existing and thriving? Well, I think there are. We'll find out I guess, right? But I tend to think in triads. And so as I'm getting a question from a client, I'll sometimes just play this mental game, are they starting out or are they existing or are they thriving? And there seem to be these three different categories. And then you can expand that and say, "Okay, what about financial performance? What about how they think about service offerings or how they think about positioning and how they think about management?" And so I think it's useful to think in these categories because it's not as if a single firm is all in the existing, the middle category. They might spread across different ones and just gives us an eye opening into what our world looks like from the outside. DAVID: I think it'll be kind of interesting to talk about. But you're probably going to let me know how interesting this is or not. If you rush me through these, that'll be a sign that it's not that interesting. BLAIR: Well, let's just see. Let's start with utilization which is the first thing on your list. DAVID: Right. 'Cause such an exciting word, right? Utilization. BLAIR: Yeah. So I'll just have a little nap here while you talk about utilization. DAVID: Like I said to you one day, I'm pre-interested. Okay, so starting would be subsidizing clients and the typical firm in a developed country is charging and getting paid for 42% of their time and they should be getting paid for 60% of their time. So most firms are in this starting category and they never really get out of it. It's more of a typical category. So there's some significant degree of underpricing and/or overservicing. And that's the first one, subsidizing clients. And then hopefully, we get to the point where we get paid for everything we're doing, that's the middle category of existing. And then thriving is package pricing where we're applying what you would call value pricing. Where there's very little corelation between what we're getting

David re-reads the 2nd chapter of Blair's first book, leading to a discussion about how sales people have to choose between either presenting to clients or being present to them. TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, we are going to talk today about replacing presentations with conversations. BLAIR ENNS: The second proclamation. DAVID: Yeah, it's actually the second chapter in your book, which I'm holding right now in my grimy little hands. The book, it's black with red, looks like foil to make it look expensive, so you could charge an extra couple bucks for it probably. It says Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and the second chapter is about replacing presentations with conversations, but I think if you would let me, I'd like to make a public confession before we get into this. BLAIR: Sure. DAVID: Your book actually sells better than mine, and I want you to know that that pisses me off. BLAIR: I read a great quote the other day, maybe it was Gore Vidal who said, "Every time a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies." DAVID: I don't know if this was the third or fourth printing, but since we published the book, we got these three skids of your books. Not only do I hate the fact that your book has sold better than my last book, but I have to haul these skids of your book like for punishment, to remind me constantly that they're selling. BLAIR: That's what you get for moonlighting as my publisher. DAVID: Yeah, instead of focusing on what I should be doing, yeah. BLAIR: The fourth printing should arrive any day now, it's larger than all the other ones. Can I just keep bragging here? I'm surprised it's been, well I think it's somewhere around seven years, and sales just keep going up, I can't explain it. DAVID: I'm more surprised than anybody, because I've read it and I know you. The idea is replacing presentations with conversations, and actually I read through chapter two again, it was actually fun to read that part of the book again. You talk a lot about avoiding the big reveal, and the first thing I could think of was several episodes of Mad Men where they have the single pitch board on an easel in the conference room and it's covered, and when they say "big reveal", they mean big reveal, they lift this thing up and there's this tension in the room. You talk about the fact that we're addicted to that. I'm not sure that people would admit that they're addicted to that, can you talk more about that first, to start us off? BLAIR: Some people might listen to that and think, "Well, I'm not addicted to that," but I think you and I probably have different definitions of creativity. You might have kind of a broader look at what it means to be creative, and I take my cues from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, and he studies happiness and creativity. He says creativity is the ability to see, the ability to bring kind of a new perspective to a problem. It's not the ability to write or draw, he refers to that as "personal creativity". BLAIR: Creative people who can look at things differently, they just see things differently, that's kind of to me the hallmark of creativity, one of the things that goes hand in hand with being creative is the ability to think on your feet, so these two things, for reasons I don't fully understand, they're tied to each other. When somebody has this really strong ability to kind of bring a fresh perspective to a problem, they also have a really strong ability to go with the flow and deal with whatever kind of objections are thrown at them. If your strength is standing in front of a room, saying something, hearing an objection, and then having to react to it, and then kind of sell in the situation or recover from a situation, then you are going to look for as many situations like that that you can create. BLAIR: I'll give you a great example of a friend and a client from many years ago, creative director at a small design firm, and he was presenting a new identity to a consulting firm. He does the big reveal, and it's very quiet, and then he's a little bit nervous because it's so quiet, and he says, "What do you think?" One of them says, "Well interesting, I notice you've changed our name from XYZ Consulting to XYZ Consultants." It was just a mistake, an error on his part, and he responded immediately. He said, "Exactly, because consulting, that's what you do, consultants, that's who you are." They bought it, so they changed the name because he just responded in the moment. BLAIR: Creative people love being in that situation of presenting, having to deal with an objection, and then coming through it, because the euphoria is profound, it's huge. If that's who you are, if that's your strength, commanding a room, having to dance, having to respond to objections, et cetera, not knowing what's going to happen next, then you will create as many situations as possible where you get to do that, and the whole time you will tell yourself and tell others and tell me and tell you, "No no

There are seven patterns that almost all principals are guilty of. When David and Blair point them out, it leads their clients to say, "you must have hidden cameras in my office!"

Blair leads a discussion on how clients tend to take mental shortcuts in making business decisions, and how we can nudge clients without manipulating them to make a decision that is in their best interest. Links Rory Sutherland Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein "The Dark Arts of Leveraging Cognitive Biases" by Blair Enns Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely Richard Feynman Dunning-Kruger effect Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns "Pricing Creativity" 2Bobs episode

David and Blair compare each other's competitiveness, and then offer some specific ways principals can actually collaborate with their competitors as a part of building beneficial business relationships. TRANSCRIPT BLAIR: David, today we're going to talk about how to crush your competition, is that right? DAVID: Instantly I got very excited about the concept, that's really not what we're going to talk about, but I love that idea. Oh my God, I'm just too competitive, but that's actually the opposite of what we're going to talk about I think, unless you want to switch it at the last minute. BLAIR: No, I was with a bunch of guys the other night, and had this little men's night retreat thing, and maybe more than half of them were entrepreneurs. One guy was winding down a business, and he was saying, "I'm not sure if I'm competitive enough to be in business." I didn't say anything, but I thought, I suppose that's vital for you to be competitive in your nature to succeed in business, would you agree with that? DAVID: Yes, I would, but there's something wrapped around competitiveness that is just as important to me, and that's risk-taking. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: It does seem like the two of those are related, that's why I quit doing a few things outside of work, because I realized I was not as competitive as some of the young fools that were willing to sacrifice their body, and I wasn't. It's not that my body is so precious, it shouldn't be sacrificed, it was more I was allergic to the pain. Yeah, there's something about competitiveness and risk-taking yeah, for sure. I'm competitive, do you think of yourself as competitive? BLAIR: I've measured my competitiveness and your competitiveness, and you're more competitive than I am. I'm as competitive as the average person, but the makeup of that competitiveness is a little bit skewed. You can break down competitiveness into different forms, so I think of myself as average competitiveness. DAVID: Okay, this is more about how do we tame or tamp down some of our competitiveness for our advantage, and for the advantage of the world really. BLAIR: You really want to talk about this idea of collaborating with your competitors, is that correct? DAVID: Right, yeah, and it's something I've learned in my own business life, but I've also tried to coach my clients to do it as well. It's been really interesting, it's a concept that strikes us like, did he really just say you should be more collaborative with your competitors, or did I mishear him? No, that's really what I mean. BLAIR: Okay, so we think of being in business just like my friend said the other night, we think of it as business is highly competitive, and we need to be cutthroat, and we need to always have an eye on our competition. We're trying to best them, I'm fond of saying that positioning is an act of relativity. You position relative to your competition, and in endeavoring to position your firm against your competition, you're trying to kill them. BLAIR: Now that's an overstatement, but that's the prevailing view, right? The competitors are there, people that ... It's your job to beat, it's your job to win against them, and you want to fly in the face of that a little bit, so where did this idea come from? DAVID: Well it's been rooted really in 20 plus years. I did something a little crazy back in the late 90s. I wanted to start an event, and that was obvious to me, I wanted to start an event. Okay, so what kind of an event would it be? Well it needs to be an event that's going to attract a lot of people. How do we do that? Well, the content has to be fantastic, it's like okay, then I just stopped in my tracks, because I'm thinking, well if the content's going to be great, then I've got to invite a lot of my competitors there. DAVID: We don't see eye to eye on everything, but I need to have them there, because they're very smart. People are going to come and want to hear from them as well, like what kind of a stupid conference would it be where I'm the only one speaking? That's not a conference, that's like your own personal platform. I was faced with a decision, do I really want to give my competitors a platform? DAVID: I was nervous about it, other people were a lot more nervous about it than I was, they thought I was crazy to be doing that. I thought, this is a worthwhile experiment, and maybe there's some value in being the person who organizes the conference, and does the programming for it. There turned out to be that value, but it was a wonderful experience. It opened up my eyes entirely to the fact that I don't have to make somebody else lose in order for me to win. DAVID: That I can let my guard down, and it actually translated into the way I run events now. People come to an event for the first time, and they're surprised that within about an hour, an hour and a half of the start of the event, people are starting to share stuff that they would not have thought they'd see themselves sharing at the beginnin

Blair and David come up with descriptive words that help clarify each of the four parts of what David calls the "pantheon" for new business: positioning, lead generation, sales, and pricing. Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour Mastering the Value Conversation podcast episode

David and Blair explore the big topic of personality assessment tools that can help firms "get the right people on the bus." Not Your Typical Personality Types →

Blair and David dive into a discussion on ownership structures, looking at the results of a survey that David did recently about partnerships.

Listeners on Twitter wanted to know what clients actually want from creative firms, so David makes a list based on his experience of what good clients want, while Blair's reaction is "who cares what clients want... all they wanted was a 'faster horse.'"

David gets Blair to expound on his statement that "the value conversation is where value pricing theory goes to die," and how crucial that conversation is within the sales framework he lays out in his new book, "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour."

David and Blair take a stab at answering the complicated question of what success looks like for each of them personally, as well as what it means for their clients.

Blair and David try to wind each other up by going through a list of phrases they hear from their clients way too often.

David is bothered by the notion of helping people cheat, especially at positioning. So Blair discusses 10 ways firms could succeed even if they either aren't ready or don't believe in the idea of tight positioning. You'll feel dirty.

Expertise, selling, marketing, entrepreneurship, branding, positioning, and consultant. Blair and David do their best to come up with definitions for terms that they use regularly with clients.

Blair revisits David's new book, "The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth" in front of a live audience in London, who get to ask their own questions.

Blair talks about his new book, "Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour," and the process it took to write it. David gets him to share three of the main rules laid out in the book that firms should apply in order to see significant increases in profit.

David and Blair each share some goals that they have for their clients and themselves for the upcoming year, which turns into somewhat of a therapy session.

Blair and David discuss why, when, and how principals sell their firms, and Blair reveals he is skeptical about selling his own firm.

David picks Blair's brain about new business compensation, and what principals need to consider in finding their firm's place on the spectrum between full commission and salary with no incentives.

Blair has some questions this week and David has answers. The topic is profit - what it is and the targets firms should be setting.

David offers to help Blair remember all the times he's been wrong over the past couple decades. Then Blair says he'll be happy to reveal all of the places he's wrong now but doesn't even know it yet.

David reveals some of the science behind the extensive research he has done over the past couple decades to develop a key part of his Total Business Review. Blair asks him to explain the three roles principals cannot let go of, along with the three roles they should give up first if they want their firms to really thrive.

Blair revisits David's new book, interviewing him on the two chapters that cover the important topic of positioning: "Distinguishing Between Vertical and Horizontal Expertise," and "Principles for the Less Exchangeable Positioning of Expertise."

David and Blair discuss a list of words Blair came up with that you should avoid to keep you out of trouble and in control of the buy-sell relationship.

Blair needs a vacation. And David is blown away by how little time principals take off.

David asks Blair to describe his work and his passion for the creative entrepreneurial community, and they discuss how where he lives has such a huge impact on what he does.

The issue of how principals manage their employees continues to pop up for David year after year, and Blair is worried that he might have this problem in his own firm.

Blair restrains himself from going off on a rant about who his clients choose to learn from.

Blair interviews David about who he is and why people should pay attention to what he has to say - if they should at all...

Blair lays out a year-long experiment where he significantly increased his writing and online publishing commitment.

David Baker wrote a book! And Blair asks him about his authoring process, publishing, and the book's topic.

David and Blair list good and bad things that can happen when the principal steps away from their creative firm for a period of time, which is based on David's blog post on the matter.

Blair revisits the first piece of thought leadership he ever wrote, taking a look at why firms may or may not do for themselves what they do for their clients.

Blair questions David on an article he wrote about identifying the risks on either side of the road and navigating a path between both extremes.

Blair does his best to reform David's skepticism of sales, discussing what works well and what fails miserably in the sales process.

What keeps you up at night? Blair interviews David about the five most common fears that he has seen in the consulting work he has done with over 900 firms.

David and Blair discuss how the nature of entrepreneurship is changing and what the new entrepreneur is facing today.

Do you have trouble talking about money with clients? David makes seven common statements about money and Blair states whether they are true or false and why.

David interviews Blair about the art of effectively communicating with clients and coworkers.

David and Blair make a list of the common mistakes that people make in trying to portray themselves as experts.