Video: The entrepreneurial playbook for communicators | Duration: 3352s | Summary: The entrepreneurial playbook for communicators

Transcript for "The entrepreneurial playbook for communicators": Welcome everyone to episode nine of Lights, Camera, Communicate. I am Chuck here with my friend, Amir, as usual. Hey, buddy. And you notice, we've got an empty chair We we do. For this episode. We have our first in studio guest. But before we get to that, Amir, how things been going for you? Great. Great. You you're not behind the drum set because you're legally not allowed to drum today. Yep. I had this little procedure, and I can't use my right wrist or hand for a while. Which is a pretty big requirement for drummers. It is. Very big Yeah. Very big requirement. So I'm just Although the drummer from Def Leppard Right. Did just have one. Yes. So he's clearly Yeah. He's also way more than he was set for that. But yeah. Alright. Those that have joined, please go into the chat, introduce yourself. And because we were talking about our guest who will be introducing her soon, the the theme song from Three's Company came up, and we're doing all Three's Company trivia. I'm not really quite sure why, but we're reminiscing about Three's Company. So when you go into the chat and introduce yourself, come up with, like, a sitcom that you liked from back in the day and whether or not you would want that sitcom to even come back? Because I don't think they could really do Three's Company They they could the same way that they did before. A lot of those sitcoms could never come back Yep. In their original form. Yep. So go into the chat, introduce yourself, let us know where you're from. If you have questions, please try to put them in the q and a. That way we don't lose track of them. If they're in the chat, we'll try to keep track. Yes. Kristen Cook coming in with, Dream of Genie. That would be a a an interesting one to bring back. Yeah. I'm sure that could be done. Let's see. Perfect Strangers. Yeah. That was another good one. That we need to have, like, an, Perfect Strangers Without Ice because that would be a whole part of that show. Family Matters. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, Kristen. Yep. Sioux Falls, home of the FlyOver Festival. Yeah. The us and our special guests will all be in Sioux Falls We'll see. Next week for FlyOver Festival. We'll throw it back completely sold out. Beginning in back to back years. Yep. I love it. We've got And we're hosting a make me a film at the day before. Yeah. Twenty sixth, make me a film at the twenty seventh Fiverr Festival. It's gonna be great. Patrick, who I got to see in Toronto this past summer, won Seinfeld and should not come back. I agree. In Fact, there's a theory that every Seinfeld episode wouldn't have existed because they would have had cell phones. And with cell phones, it would have solved basically every problem out there. Every episode. But this has been great. Alf, that would be another interesting with Ice. What role would Ice play with Alf coming in or whoever? Anyway, enough about Ice. Enough about TV shows. Today, we are here to talk about something, Pinaki, that you Pinaki. I just ruined it. Amer, that you I know. That you and I have talked a lot about about how do we build more of an entrepreneurial mindset and spirit into what we do every day, and we've seen that happen for some communicators, but not all. So with that, well, let's bring in another fellow entrepreneur who I gave away a little bit earlier. Panaki Kathiari, CEO of Local Wisdom and founder of Resource Hero. Come on. Step into the studio. The very first live guest. Oh, even brought your, like, TV show coffee cup with you. I like it. Well done. Ali, we should get clap tracks and and laughing tracks in here. Yeah. This is, and Panaki's in vacation wear today because we're in live in Las Vegas. Thanks for joining us, Panaki. I wish I had a hammock to trip over. What is the what is the the thrill for being the first in studio guest here with us? Well, you know, I just needed another excuse to get into this awesome studio that's right over here because, yeah, this is beautiful. This is like a drum set. I would like, while you guys were doing that intro, I'm just, like, taking photos back and laughing. Couldn't get wait to jump into the conversation and Yeah. But yeah. Thank you for having me, and it pleases me to be the first. Thanks, Shireen. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a special honor. And one of the things we've talked about in promoting this is the the friendships that we have all built. Yep. Both as business owners, but also in the comms world, and this is the kind of fun stuff now we get to do together to celebrate the world of communications. But today, we're gonna talk about the convergence of communications and entrepreneurship. So I'd love for each of you to reflect, and, Pinaki, I'll have you go first. One of the first steps in being an entrepreneur is having to be accept failure, accept mistakes. How are some of the things what are the things that you've done to overcome that feeling of failure or mistakes and keep that drive going? Right on. You know, I I I say, really because I've made so many, like, little mistakes, little failures, little errors, and the idea is how else are you gonna learn? Right? You never learn how to ride a bike without falling. Right? You never learned how to ride a skateboard without falling. First time you tried to do anything in life, you probably sucked at it. And that's just part of it. And, you know, being an entrepreneur means you're kind of doing something that not that no one has done before, but no one has done in the way that you're trying to do. So no matter what, you're doing something that hasn't been done before, and I think failure has to come with that. And it's something it's a hard lesson to learn over the over the years because, you know, nobody tells you that really ahead of time. Well, and there's no there's no perfect do these 10 steps and you're guaranteed to be successful. That just doesn't Yeah. That doesn't happen. And you might two two people might do the exact same 10 steps and have been wildly different results. And I might not put you on the spot here, but if we are keeping a tally of mistakes and failures, you might be in the lead Well, and I from a business standpoint. I'm just 100% that that's a point of pride. That make make him more successful than all of us. Saying. You you've been through a lot. Talk through some of those things that you have learned along your journey. So I think failure is inevitable. You're you're eventually, if you if you if you don't feel, then you just haven't tried enough. But one of the lessons I learned, and I actually apply this not only at LucyHub, but I say this to our clients all the time. What keeps people from taking big risks is the consequence of failure. So if you bring down the consequence of failure, you're gonna take bigger risks. So what what we look at doing a lot is just testing things. You know, before LucyHub became what it is, we tested three prototypes and we threw them out. And if they failed, okay, well, we lost we lost a couple of months and a little bit of money, but we didn't lose here. So, for for me, failures are the building blocks of building what we have today or my career or whatever else it is. But but that's how I look at it. And I look at it in our company. I look at it in my life. And I tell our clients all the time, like, hey. If you're gonna build something, try something small first. Because if it fails, you're not gonna lose your job over it. Right? Mhmm. That's how I look at it. But it it it absolutely is the building block to success. And I see that a lot of times people will view rejection as failure. Yeah. That especially if you're bringing in new ideas, you're building something new, there's gonna be people that just don't like it. Yeah. And they're gonna reject it. How have you fought through rejection? Because I see that being very personal for communicators because it's a lot of pride in the work that you do. How do you battle through rejection? Yeah. I think I think you you, I think similar. Like, I I have a similar philosophy. Right? Like, pilot small experiments, small, fail fast, fail cheap. And, you know, I have I've had ideas. I've had, thoughts, and I wanna move this forward, and they've been met with resistance. And, you know, sometimes it's understood, like, maybe the idea just wasn't that good, but sometimes the idea is just, like, stuck in my head. Like, you know, it's not good enough for me to give up on this just because it's not being taken well by others. So let me try something. Let me do, like, a a sketch, a first version, a something to put it out there. Because a lot of times when you tell an idea to someone or even if it's, like, written down, what's happening is they're imagining something that you're trying to describe and what they're imagining might not be what you're imagining. So we need to kinda put something concrete. So my strategy in that scenario is to start building it, start putting it out there in front of other people, start getting other feedback and just make it successful because once it's Oh, it's just that easy. Right? Yeah. Just make it successful. Just make it successful. And what? And fail fast. Lessons from Panaki. If it doesn't if it's not successful, then we just hide it away somewhere. I forget about it. TV video. Just because, you know, some someone can't argue with something that's working. Right. They can't reject something that's working. How have you battled through rejection on there? So I I I heard this term years ago, and it just stuck with me, and it's rejection is redirection. Right? So if I get hit with redirect with rejection, I just say, okay, well, then that it's probably my my cue to find another path with whatever it is in life. But I also started my career, in sales, and there's a lot of rejections inside the sale. I I think everybody should do at least two years of Yep. Of sales because you learn to build thick skin, you learn that it's not personal, and you learn that, you know what, it's not it's not about you, it's about them. Mhmm. I have this this story I share with friends. Like, do you like strawberries? And someone said, yeah. I'm like, do you like blueberries? No. I'm like, well, if you don't like a blueberry, that's not the blueberry's fault. That's your problem. So it's not and it's the same thing about taking rejection with people, whether it's at work or in sales or on a date or whatever. Like, if if you're not their flavor, if you're not their flavor, you're not their flavor. Mhmm. Doesn't matter. Right? So why why take that personally? You're just not their flavor. It doesn't mean strawberries are bad. I think the comparison to sales is a really good one because for salespeople, their goal is to get to know. Mhmm. They wanna get a no because then they know to move on. We all we always say, get to knows as fast as you can because that gets you to a yes faster. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. And I think I would love to hear from, those in the chat. We've had some great let me actually go back to some of this here a little bit. We've got, my friend Tom Spalding from Indy. He wants parks and rec too. That would be that would be an interesting one. It would. Got Sarah from Athens. We've got Jamie from Newark. Hello, Jamie. Good to see you in here. This is an interesting take I'd like for you guys to comment on. This is he's this is Chris Palermo, psychology member. Controversial take, he says. I will see. And a gross stereotype, but here we go. He thinks this is all about generations. I would love for your takes on this. He's saying that Gen x was taught don't make mistakes. I believe we're all Gen x. Correct? Yep. Yep. Millennials, if you feel, at least learn from it. And and then gen x I don't know. We're talking about gen z now maybe. Seek out failure because you'll learn even more from that. Do you see that? Are you are you seeing there being a generational approach to entrepreneurship? It's interesting. I can only speak to, like, my kids. It feels like, they're more afraid of failure than than I was. I and I only like in the so this is my only anecdotal evidence. Was that your parenting style? Is that what you mean? Exactly. That's the exactly. I remember when I was, like, learning how to drive and my dad was in the car, like, teaching me. He'd there was a lot of alright. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down. And with my kids, as I was driving, the two older ones, it was like, alright. You could go a little faster. You can go a little faster. Yeah. You could speed up a little bit. Right. Like, too cautious. Too cautious. Maybe. Yeah. So I I recently, this summer, worked with this group of kids. I did these sessions in San Diego and really, really bright kids, younger younger kids who seem to all really wanna be entrepreneurs. But one of the things I do is I ask them first off, like, why they wanna be entrepreneurs. And I think I actually I'm gonna double down on this generational thing and see it's not just that. It's also, the medium we're feeding people now. Social media. Social media and influencers have created this, this, like, view of what entrepreneurship is, and it's completely misguided and misled. Right? Mhmm. But I think you're seeing the younger generation wanna be entrepreneurs for the wrong reasons. They actually think they're gonna have more time. They think they're gonna have financial freedom. Right? So it it's it's literally the opposite of everything, but but, you know, the thing with social media is the people who who are heard are the ones who, speak with confidence, not competence. And so you're getting a lot of people who are confident in what they're saying, but what they're saying is absolutely wrong. Mhmm. And so it's creating this generation of of people who wanna be influencers, who wanna be this and that, and I think that's why you're seeing it. I mean, ASU just launched an influencer's, degree. I saw that. So That's right. I have some interesting takes on that too because one, I always thought that, you know, if, somewhere someone were to go back in time and tell me what I'd go through in becoming a business owner, I might have not done it. Right? So I've said that six times, but I think Yeah. Oh, okay. I think it fits in you. It's gonna Yeah. That was at breakfast this morning, he said. Oh, yeah. Exactly. Because no. It's it's it's truly true because, like, I I think you kinda have to go into it a little bit ignorant in order to know, which makes sense, but, because it is tough. It is hard. And when days are good, they're really good. But when days are bad, they're really bad. But, so I think there is some ignorance that you need to get into it, but I agree, like, kind of knowing why you wanna be an entrepreneur and knowing what you're trying to get out of it or what type of organization, business, or future you're trying to create is a good one to have, is a good thing to know. At least you have something to aim for. I wanna get into this. This is, from our friend Zane. Had a leader say, quote, fail quickly so the lesson isn't too expensive. That's pretty close to what you were talking about. That's the consequence of risk. Right? A consequence of failure. If it's small, you're gonna take that risk because you're not gonna lose everything over it or your job or whatever it is. We do We talk about that with content creation. Historically, people were making videos and they were very, very expensive, and so they always made the same video because they knew it worked. Now that you've brought down those costs, you can make videos for hundreds of dollars. Right? Maybe thousands, whatever it is. But if it fails, you haven't lost. You've learned some lessons and you fix it the next time. I think that kinda goes along the board with any kind of risk you wanna take. I wanna go back to a bit of it. We talked about sales and their role of getting to know. And if you talk to scientists, the whole point of an experiment, the whole point of a theory is to prove it wrong. The whole point of an experiment is to fail. I would love to see communicators take some of that same mindset of, like, we're gonna do this, not necessarily in the hopes that it fails, but we're gonna see if it works or not rather than guarantee. And often I see I would love to see if this resonates with anybody in the chat who likes to claim they're a perfectionist. And if you go into the chat and say you are, you might wanna pause a little bit as I go into my rant. To me, when someone's like, oh, I'm a perfectionist, that's that's almost a built in excuse. It's almost a way of saying, I'm not gonna put something out there because we know we know in our heart of hearts, nothing is ever perfect. Nothing is ever exactly the way you want it to be. The earlier you get it out there, the more you learn earlier on. Mhmm. Have either of you ever gotten caught up into that it's gotta be perfect so then you never actually get it done? Yeah. The first time I I started a company, I and then I learned really, really fast that if if you set for perfect, the chances of you ever getting out in time are gonna be slim to none. So again, in my workshop, I do this little exercise. It's a game we created, and these kids have to do a few things. The first is they have to build a product. They have three choices, build it fast and get it out, build it perfect, or build for a whale. Those are the three options they have. Not not not one of them is necessarily wrong. There's times where you if you're gonna build a class three medical device, it better be perfect. Mhmm. Right? So I think it really depends, but the lesson I learned is fail quickly, move forward, and again, LucyHub is a good example. The first three products never really saw the light of day. I think Ali and myself and maybe five clients saw them and that's it. Mhmm. Here's a here's a take on that. I recently had a conversation with somebody about learning and education, and this might go back to what you're saying about social media right now. A lot of people go to social media to learn, which is an interesting thing because through learning, when you learn something, it kinda kinda gets baked and seared into your brain. That happens through some kind of pain. Right? Like, if you've learned anything, you've learned it through some kind of pain. You either have to study all night for this exam, you have to put a lot of hours into it, you have to fall off the bike, things like that. So if there isn't pain involved, it's not searing into your brain. So that fail fast, fail cheap mentality. I know I have failed cheap and I have failed expensive. The expensive failures are burned into my brain so that I will never make them. Right? Like, the fall that gave you the biggest cut is gonna stay in your brain and you're not gonna do that type of fall again. Yep. That's where resilience comes. Right? Yeah. So so kinda think about that even in the realms of, like, social media thinking that you're, like, learning from it. You're not, I don't think, learning it as deeply as if it was truly something that you got pain from because we don't get pain from social media. We get engagement. Yeah. I love some of these comments that are in the chat. I love Brandy's statement about I can't read that. Yeah. Let me do my job. Please read it. Brandy writes in here, my husband and I are business owners, and I hated it and eventually left to join the corporate world. I could never turn it off, which is what got to me. But it also showed me how not to be afraid to take risks. Now I support innovation team, which gives me the best of both worlds, the excitement of taking risks and the joy of knowing it's okay to fail. That's awesome. And then, Jamie, let folks know it's new or new or first and then solicit feedback. I think letting people know, hey. I know this isn't Yeah. Exactly it. And, also, I would say, to add to that, be clear on what kind of feedback you want. It's not just do you like this or not, or would you read this or not, or would you watch this or not? But what what can be done to make it better? That's I think that's important on the feedback side. And then Rachel Williams will be speaking at FlyOver Festival next week in Sioux Falls. I tend to produce quickly so stakeholders get a chance to review and edit. I find it's easier for people to react and iterate than when it's earlier on. So they get to put their fingerprints on it versus you've already got it all laid out and then expecting them to wanna make changes to it. So that so that another point that you made about, like, perfect, there's a lot of, like, entrepreneurs or people who are starting up their own consultancy or business. They come up and they tell me about their idea and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And and they're like, yeah. So I just can't wait. I'm just gonna create, like, a brochure, a one pager, a website and things like that. And then I'll start marketing and talking to people about it. And I'm like, no. No. Start talking about it. Start now. Yeah. Like, what whatever conversations you're having, you could start talking about it. You could actually get feedback. You could get things. But, like, if you're waiting for a website, that that stuff takes time, and that's time that you don't have the non profit. Well, and you don't get the input for that, whatever that product is. Right? You want that input so it's baked into the product. I think talking to people first is in fact, if you're gonna start a business, or anyone ever wants to start a business, talk to people first to see if the product is even valid or the or the service is even valuable. A lot of times people build a product or service that has no market. Yep. And that's a that's a really ugly kind of failure. Have you found this? Well, maybe it'd be better if I could ask y'all a question. Because I have found, like, the more, like, interesting innovative idea, the more, like, that it's not normal. You don't have to worry about people, like, stealing your idea. You have to worry about people being like, no, it's not a good idea. Like, that makes me uncomfortable and stuff. Well, I I think if if you're getting people to tell you it's not a good idea or they're uncomfortable, or if they're pushing within, you're doing something right. You're doing something disruptive. Because if it's not disruptive if it if it wasn't disruptive, everybody would agree with it. Everybody would be doing it. Right? But if it's disruptive, you're gonna make people uncomfortable. Ali will tell you we've made a lot of people uncomfortable at LucyHub because we changed the way people do video. And Yeah. And and That's right. It's led to something called identity threat. Right? So I think if you if they don't if they agree with you too easily, then either you've got a great product or you might wanna reconsider it. It's not really a a disruptor. I think it's the the quote that's attributed to Guy Kawasaki where he says, like, basically, I'm paraphrasing here. If you're not pissing someone off, you're not doing enough. Right. I think there's some things from that we can learn if you're not making whether it's someone uncomfortable or they have a reaction to it, if it's just pure vanilla all the time, then what's the difference you're making? So I I have a story for you guys about lessons learned, failures, entrepreneurship. When Lucy Hub started, we we weren't going after the comms teams and we weren't going after marketing teams. We were going after agencies and production companies. Right? Wow. If they could do this work faster, imagine how valuable they'll be to their clients. They didn't see it that way. In fact, some of the most heated conversations I've had in my career were at that stage of LucyHub where we were getting kicked out of offices because they were saying, hey, you can't devalue what we do. There's no way you can do something we do in two weeks in two days. Right? And it was a really, really interesting lesson for us and our investors. Everybody said, oh my God, you can white label this to agencies and production companies. This is gonna blow up. Nobody wanted it. And then a guy calls me up out of the blue and says, hey, I just saw your video and I saw what you're doing. You should really call these people in the comms world because they have less budget and they have greater need. And I think you're gonna solve a big problem for them. That's how Lucien ended up in the comms world. We thought we'd built a product for production companies. So it's a good example of, you know, our product market fit wasn't really what we thought it was. And just this random person I know called me and said, hey, you should really look at this industry. Yep. Thank you, random person. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been kicked out of an office before. You've been kicked out of offices. Yes. You said have you ever been kicked out of an office? I don't think so. You gotta try harder possibly. No. You're not doing enough. I have walked out of offices, like, in a little bit of a rage, but, no, I don't think I've ever been kicked out. I mean, escorted out. Well, there was one one very famous one where the joke is we entered in through the fancy lobby, and we got sent out the Back door. The back door. Yeah. Absolutely. But let's kind of talk about some of these comms, mistakes, and entrepreneurship lessons. And the the biggest one that I see that plagues communicators is simply playing it safe. Yeah. It's just doing the basics. You know, everybody's gonna be okay with it. It's not gonna really rock anybody's world. But I'm curious, Amir, from your side, like, how do you know when to take the right risks, or do you know when to take those? You don't you don't know. That's the I mean, gosh. We fail here we fail here on a daily basis. Ali's laughing over at the at the monitor, but, we you don't know. Right? You just you just kinda take it. So one of the things I tell the team is, don't ask for permission, go do it. And we talked about this earlier. Sometimes it's just they ask for permission because they've had some horrible experiences and Mhmm. It's it's kinda like There's some there's some baggage and trauma to that. PTSD. Right? Yeah. But I'm I'm adamant about saying, I'd rather you guys fail and we try it again than we don't try anything at all because that's that's where problems happen. Right? I'm I'm gonna redirect the question to you, Pinaki, but I first want people to go into the chat. I would love to know from all of you, what's something that you're doing, this very safe thing that you're doing that you know is not making a difference, that's but it's actually costing the organization something. It's you're not delivering on what you promised, but it's safe, so you just keep doing it. I would love to hear read some examples in there from all of you. But, Prak, in the world that you're in with local wisdom, how do you coach or advise clients when they've got an idea, but they just need that nudge to to get it out there? When they know there's a bit of a risk to it, how do you encourage and coach them down that path? Yeah. I I started going down I I started talking, about, like, what are the blockers and started getting really tactical and, like, alright. Like, what are you afraid of? Well, I'm afraid of what so and so is gonna say. Alright. Let's figure out how to talk to so and so. I'm afraid of how, like, this technology thing. Well, let's answer that question. So we kind of start going into those fears and start, like, unpacking that to see, like, is it a real fear? Because sometimes it could be valid. Right? Like, I'm afraid the technology might not work and maybe the technology isn't gonna work. Let's find that out quickly. The I I think another quickest answer that's I I kind of start digging into where those fears are and starting to solve those things is my kind of quick go to. And ask them, like, the the the high level questions, like, because, you know, to the first thing is, like, you know, how much do you wanna go to bat for this? Right? If you're afraid because it's gonna make you feel uncomfortable, and you might that might not be for you. This idea might not be that great that you wanna go out on a limb for it. So let's kinda gauge there and then start going down to, like, alright. If the idea is good, you're still behind it, wanna go through it, what's the next step and the next step and the next step? And because it's all a series of small steps, right, at the end of the day. So that's what I found. If you give them a a at least just a a baseline of a plan and give them a road map, it's a lot easier to execute against. And it's also we have these things called decision checkpoints. At some point, you make a decision. Do I keep going or do I just do I just kill the project at that point? So that's how we do it. That's a key thing too. Like, a lot of people kind of once you start going down a path, you start to get momentum on it. We talked about momentum, and that's a good thing. So small steps lead to momentum. When you have a lot of momentum, it keeps going. So what Amir just said about creating these lines in the road to say that, hey. If I don't get to this place by this time, we we might need to bail. We might need to to to quit. Bail pivot. Right? Yeah. Just make make a different what do they say? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So we constantly have these decision checkpoints, and we decide, do we cut bait on this? Do we keep going on this? Or do we find a different direction to go? Absolutely. There's this one phrase I've heard. It's farm the bets, don't bet the farm. Yeah. Yep. So figure out what are all the different things out there that you can apply. Don't just go after the one big thing. And going to the chat, see we've got, we've got our brave brave people here admitting some of their things around Rachel. Depending on the attendance of a meeting, I may or may not offer a strategic approach to a situation we're discussing. I'm confident in my approach, but not confident that I have enough sway to be heard. Zane, I've had to learn to choose which hills I want to die on. Hopefully, nobody's dying at work on any hills, but I understand where you're going with this. Depending on who else is in the room, I think that is the context to what you're talking about, Amr. Sometimes it's who your manager is, who your leader is will dictate the acceptance or encouragement or toleration of mistakes, of failures along the way. And if you're in a culture that doesn't, people are gonna be less likely to even take the smartest risks. Yeah. They're not gonna do it. Chris Palermo, this is situational. I've been with companies where I knew I wasn't valued, and I never opened my mouth. Again, that comes back to that Yeah. That leadership side of things. And and things like that too. Sometimes it's changing your approach too because a lot of times you have an idea and you kinda think about, oh, I'm gonna kinda create this great pitch for it and then, like, pitch it and then it's a big letdown when they say no. Sometimes it's just like, you know, pitch it as a, like, a quick passing by, like, hey. What do you think of this? Real quick and, like, you know, just to get, like, quick answers and to kinda gauge, and then you could build off of those feedbacks. Right? Because a lot of times we build something up, we hype it up, and then even when we're pitching it, we're almost pitching it in a way where we're trying to sell it. And people don't like to be sold. They do like to buy things, but no one likes to be sold. So I was recently at a a planning session for one of our clients, and, she was very adamant about how she needed to get buy in to make this work. And I love what she did. She just randomly kind of, hey, Amari is here. Can we can you come in here and talk to and she planted these seeds and got these people excited about it being their idea. Yeah. And the and literally in about thirty minutes, she had bought in her stakeholders and was ready to move on. But the way she did it was just brilliant because she made them feel like they were really valuable. Right? It was all about them, not about her. And they signed off on the spot on the on the project. It's amazing, like, the art of influence. There was a a creative director I worked with, a long time ago before Local Wisdom and he had this strategy whenever he'd like present designs like in the first round. He'd actually have a mistake in it that he knew the clients would catch. And he was like, that's a great catch. I'm gonna I think that's a great idea. So immediately once they once people have, feedback on an on a on a thing that gets implemented, that thing is now part of their thing. So they are now behind it. They're backers of it. So so I'm thinking about what happened the other day, and I wonder if she picked that conference room intentionally. It was by the break room, and she told me, she said, there's two people I want you to meet today. There's no way I can get on the calendar, but they're gonna come across Yep. And we're gonna pull them in the room. And I'm looking back now going, oh my god. She intentionally set up She gained the system. Yeah. She 100% it. Yep. Yeah. Because the best decisions aren't always in the boardroom. They're, like, in the cafe, in the, like, the call never in the boardroom. Yeah. Let's be clear. The boardroom just makes it official, I guess. Yep. I wanna go this is a great one here from Sarah. She's like, agree the way leaders respond to failure sets the tone. Mhmm. Yep. That that's that might be one of the biggest indicators of culture and the health of a culture of an organization. I wish I wish you could, like, arm everybody to just say, a a thing like, so I I understand you to be a leader who does not, appreciate failure or risk taking. Is that right? I think you just say, I heard you're chicken. That's what I just heard from you guys. I remember when it, exactly, like, you know, like do the buck buck. But I remember, like, we had one of these, events that you threw and I did the paper airplanes exercise and in there, there's an exercise where we have everybody think of bad ideas And there's a it's part of the whole, brainstorming framework. And I know afterwards, someone approached me and said, yeah. I remember somebody tried that in our organization once this is a brainstorming. And, like, one of the leaders are like, no. No. We can't do this. We just don't have time for bad ideas. So I'm just thinking, like, if you don't have time for bad ideas, you don't have time for innovation. Right. Well and I wanna go back that same event. I didn't talk about failure. Mhmm. This same event, we were in Philadelphia. Yeah. I remember this. I thought it'd be great to shoot off confetti cannons in the room, which it was. A great idea. It was a great idea. Awesome photographs. What I neglected to realize was, one, how much they sounded like a gunshot when you let them off. And the adage what goes up must come down is not true because all this confetti was hung up in the lights at the hotel and the floor was covered in it. But, again Did you get an extra, cleaning fee? You know, they they very subtly side eyed me as they were, like, slowly vacuuming this room as I we're in the heaven happy hour afterward next door. I love this line from Zane. My favorite leaders gave me enough space to chase my ideas. Think of it's not about, oh, I'm trying to fail. You're chasing your ideas. You're all professional. This is like a therapeutic light streamer communicating now. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Zane. That was really great. So many great things in the chat. This other part I wanna talk about was, I've also heard this advice from people, that if you've got some leaders that are not risk takers, rather than say, should we invest in this? Because that shows, like, you're you're making a bet on it. It's what's the smartest way to test this? What's the smartest way to test whether or not this is gonna work? I think people are good with testing things as more than they are investing because investing feels permanent for it. Absolutely. I also asked a question of, like, you know, not only, like, alright. What are the risks if we do this idea, but what are the risks if we don't sell it? Yeah. That's the cost. So one of the things that people probably tired of me talking about is instead of ROI, look at COI. Mhmm. So what's the cost of inaction? Yep. There's a price for not doing something. What does that cost out there? Next, we've we've talked enough about that one. Now let's move along for this is the one I think might be, at times, the most crippling to people without even realizing it, which is waiting for permission. Waiting to be told to do something. I don't see us having the personality types that that we often wait for permissions. However, you work with people. You have people on your teams. How do you coach them to not wait, to not ask for that? That's a good that that's a good question. I'm preaching that regularly and I I think it's been said enough that I'm starting to see really great results with it. So I'm seeing teams take initiative and solve problems, and I I always tell them, I was, hey. It's like getting a new president when you show me a new feature or when you solve a problem that we've been dealing with without me having to be involved or someone else in the team having to be involved. I just preach it. One of our core values is leadership. Be be a leader. It doesn't mean you have to have a leadership title to be a leader. Just if something's broken, fix it. If you could find a better way to do it, do it. And it's it's taken a I think it's taken us a while to you know, we've had people who I think just candidly have worked for not very good leadership who are are afraid to make those decisions. We had to just get comfortable seeing other people make the decisions and fail and see the consequences weren't were nothing. I was like, okay. Let's try it again. Right? Yeah. So It's it's wild how much is, like, some when people join, especially, when they report to me, I have they have to go through a little bit of unlearning of, like, their prior bosses and things like that, because I was they're like, you know because there's times when they're like, somebody I I brought onto the team, they used to, you know, give me their ideas. And so they, you know, pitch an idea and then immediately without having me say anything back, but if you don't like it, we could change everything. I'm just oh, no. And that's I get that one a lot. Yeah. And at some point, I was just like, you know, you you keep saying that. And I'm like, wondering, you know, why do you why do you say that? Because I think your ideas are great. And, like, you know, even if I don't believe them, I I still wanna hear them because maybe you're thinking of something that I'm not seeing. And they told me that, you know what, it was just their prior manager. They just didn't know what kind of mood they were gonna walk into that day. So and I could understand not knowing what kind of lashing you're gonna get from saying anything could create some kind of, like, trauma, and then you don't wanna give ideas. So I work actively to tell people, tell me your ideas. And sometimes even if I don't agree with their idea, I'm like, you know what? I don't know if that's the best idea, but you know, we're gonna try it anyway because maybe it'll work. And Mhmm. It has at times. And I also we have our, like, kudos thing, so we give praise to each other. So I praise when things like this happen to set an example and so other people feel it's safe to do that as well. I've I've heard this mantra or things shared in the comms world of, like, from order taker to Oracle. Like, we don't wanna be seen as order takers, but often we all take orders from someone. But what is that fine line, though, between being seen as an order taker, but also being seen as responsive? Mhmm. How does that play out at Local Wisdom where people want to take a sense of ownership of things without asking for permission for it? Yeah. I I think it it comes down to everybody really understanding what ultimately we're trying to achieve beyond just the steps to take to achieve that. Right? Because, you know, there's more than one way to do the same thing. So but we just need to know where we're going, and you could take your path to get there, and there's multiple paths to get there, and they're all as long as they get there, they work. And then it turns into what's the most efficient path, but I think that's where it comes into. Like, everybody, like, it's we are we are big on process, but it's not process it's not over processed to the point where, like, you're doing the same thing every time because the world is so different and people are so different. You need to have the creativity to wiggle around and use the scenario to your advantage. So if I over process things, then it doesn't leave room for that type of nuance. So the goal is to figure out, like, what are we trying to achieve with all of these? And I also say at teams at local wisdom, they're built in a way where they work together, but they're also built in a way where they're going to conflict, because this team's goal is this, this team's goal is this. Although together both goals fit the overall goal of the organization, the scenario might be that they're not, like, jiving. So they actually have to work together to figure out what's that common ground to move forward in the way to get to that place. So Rachel just made a comment, which is what I was gonna talk about, which is alignment. Right? Everybody needs to know what they're executing towards. Everyone needs to know what the common goal is. If you haven't figured that part out, you're gonna have a lot of problems. It's exceptionally important in a smaller company. I think it's just as much, if not important, in a smaller team. And a lot of these comps teams are smaller teams. But that's one of the things that we push. We have a a series of things we talk about. One is alignment, and then we say, okay, once you've got your alignment, then go and prioritize and execute. Mhmm. And my team hears me say that all the time, and it came from a great book called Extreme Ownership, actually. Oh, yeah. Love that one. Yep. Yep. There's a 2026 report from Gallagher. I wanna read this stat for everyone. 73% of communicators want to work as strategic consultants, but only 18% actually do. So I think it's how as communicators, how do you begin to make that transition where three quarters want to do something, but only 20% actually are. Yeah. Taken from the book Extreme Ownership, if you read that stat and you ask those 18% whose fault that is in the in the words of I I forgot the author's name. Totally, like If only we had access to the Internet. Yes. We do. But the quote that I I like from that book is if you're not getting what you want, it's your fault. It's your fault because you're not asking the right person, you're not asking the right questions, you're not, you're not moving it forward. And that's, kind of partly the idea of stream ownership is to take ownership over the situation and not, like, wait for someone else to give it to your It's a Chuckle Willink and There you go. Life. Yeah. I can't remember. Willink. Yeah. Yeah. So Willink. Yeah. There we go. It's a really great book. It's Awesome book. It's intense, but it makes you realize It is intense. He's a former US Navy SEAL. Yeah. Yeah. It makes you realize Yeah. They kinda lead with that in the description of the book. Yeah. Yep. So if you're into that kind of thing, good for you. Let's move along now to the last not the last comments, but maybe the final one we're gonna talk about here today, which I think might be the one that stings the most to communicators. So, again, we're this is a this is not therapy. This is therapeutic probably. Mistaking motion for progress. Mistaking busy for success. How do we coach communicators or encourage them to get out of that cycle of mistaking motion or mistaking busyness for making progress? So with us, it's deliverables. You you have to deliver something every week, and that's that's where we lead back to this whole idea of prioritize and execute. There's a million things you could be doing. Right? But what's gonna get you through the next week and get things done? Mike who's somewhere here loves to set up meetings for me for something that's a month out or two months out, which which is great. He's always ahead of the curve. Right? But I always tell him, hey, we have to get next to the next two weeks now. So what do we have to do to get through those next two weeks? But with our team, we manage by objective. So you have objectives, you have deliverables, and you have weekly deliverables, not necessarily monthly. And then those kind of pile up to make the quarter for us. But that's how we do it. Yeah. I I I think the I think it's I think it's incredibly difficult for especially anyone who does kind of creative work, and I'll even put things like coding and developing as as part of creative work because we're doing work that we love doing. We enjoy writing or designing or filmmaking or coding. And, we get a job to do that, and then we just we're just doing it, and then we get used to doing it and doing it, and your work becomes you. And then you get to a place where you're like, okay, what's what's next? Or is there a next? Or there's a pressure to be like, what's next? So maybe now my role is not about doing this writing. Maybe it is now managing others and teaching others to do that writing. Or maybe my role is now not to do the writing, but now to start taking what I've learned about the organization and start influencing leadership or influencing strategy. Right? So what becomes difficult is letting go of things that you've done for a long time that you really enjoy, to do something that you haven't done for a long time and you're not so sure about. But that is growth. That is learning, kind of tying it back to what we started with. So I think and I know I I'm I'm in that same boat. Right? Because I still to this day, if a good project comes up, I'm like, oh, I wanna do that. But I've learned through mistakes that I can't because if I get involved in things, it takes me away from other things, which then have another kind of detrimental effect. Yeah. Those side quests. Side quests. I love side quests. But it you know, at the same time, it keeps you sharp. So, you know, there's in entrepreneurship, I think that one thing is there's no black or white. Like, you gotta fail, but you can't fail too much. You know, you gotta you know, things like that. There's this concept of of working about working and how much time we spend working on work versus actually producing Mhmm. The stuff. And I'm curious, Panaka, when you and Local Wisdom go in, you get to work with some really great comms teams. But are there some things that you see comms teams doing that just aren't viable, that they're just losing time Yeah. On? Yeah. And that's a premise that that we come in with. We have, like, a a subscription model that who the the the aim or the goal is to take, oh, take the things that comes that that are burdening comms teams that stop them from growing or being more capable or being more influential in the organization. But there is a a let go thing that becomes an issue. Like, you know, I've known this. I'm been doing this. So I think I think massaging that and and the other way around comes into place. Like, you know what? I wanna own this. So we'll take the other things that you're not, that you don't want. Because sometimes, you know what? I just really enjoy writing, and I don't wanna be a manager or a teacher or a strategist. So we're like, alright. Cool. Let's fill in the blanks in the other areas. A lot of times, other side of the fence though, I I like I bet. Leadership decisions and, what we're talking about, like leaders who are not open to try new things are also stunting, like, approaches and things like that. They're they're just kinda keep it the same or just trying to, lead with too much tactical, like, you know, the goal is not to, like, you know, the goal is x, but they're thinking about the goal is x, so we should do da da da da. So I was like, you know, listen, just give me the goal, we'll figure it out from there. You know? One assignment I have for you, Amer, when you can go back to drumming, is we need a parody of the danger zone, but to the comfort zone. So I need a I need a rock song called the comfort zone. There's no, you know, in it. Right into the comfort zone. Right into the comfort zone. There you go. The comfort zone. Through the comfort zone. What what, Amer, how do you approach discomfort? How do you so get people out of just doing what's safe, doing what they know works, like how but when we know that that's not always good enough, how do we coach discomfort in a very positive way? So I have a mantra, learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable. That's the only way you grow, and I push that on the team regularly. And I'll challenge them to do things I know that they haven't done in the past, and I don't care about the result. I care about them going through the motion and actually doing it. One of the things we're doing look, we're building agentic, frameworks for for LucyHub and video. We have to be better than the people doing it. And so my team, my entire team right now has to be building things that they're not comfortable building, and they're building some amazing things and learning some great things. And one of the reactions I got yesterday is, hey, this is a lot of fun. I didn't realize how much fun this is. Right? But I think we we push here. I push for uncomfortable as you have to to grow, and we're a start up that has to grow exponentially. So I think the entire team is constantly pushing them themselves to their limits here. Mhmm. For the, fans of of data and research, present company included, here's a good one from Asana. About 60% of the day goes to work about work, and only a quarter to actual skilled work. So that means, basically, you're still only spending a couple hours a day doing what you're what you're really good at doing. Over a year, that's roughly a hundred and three hours of unnecessary meetings. I actually think that's probably under calculated because I feel like there's way more than that throughout a year, and two hundred and nine hours on duplicate work per person. Yeah. Two hundred and nine hours. Five weeks out of the year that's simply duplication across systems. So I find myself duplicating my own work. Like, I'm doing something. I'm like, wait a minute. I've done this before. And And then I find it. Sorry. I forgot to hear you. No. No. I would say one of the things we do to kind of encourage creativity is, especially on the product side, these guys get together regularly just to solve a really tough problem. And it's not just engineers. It's all different likes and and minds so that they can take a different approach to it. So, you know, someone from, I mean, someone from the the developer the delivery team is gonna be involved in a project. The two engineers are trying to figure out because he or she's gonna give just a different perspective on how that should get done. Someone who's not an engineer at all. And so, you know, connecting dots between different teams helps us build better product and solve problems much different ways than, a team might traditionally do it. Diversity of thought is a thing. Actually, you know, when I ask the question of how do we make people comfortable with uncomfortable, I thought about before anything, one of the the the basics of it all is around relationships because, you know, we all work with people. We all have to do uncomfortable things, and we all work with certain people for that. But the relationship makes you more comfortable. Like, imagine going to a dentist who just made you uncomfortable. Like, you wouldn't say, ah. Right? Like, you'd you'd not you'd be afraid to at least. As opposed to a dentist who really does make you feel comfortable and sets that rapport. You'll feel calm and safe and ready, and you could kind of switch any type of, like, profession in that. So what I concentrate on first beyond anything is the relationship. Like, I wanna set up a relationship where I if I have to give you negative feedback or tell you what I really think, I won't be worried that our relationship is at stake, you know, and that we have a good enough relationship where we could talk it talk about it and talk it through in that way. And that makes it much easier to to talk through things like that. And it's weird because in in our world of have to be super productive, have to be, you know, just always on and producing, that that time to build relationships is not viewed as productive, but I see it as incredibly productive because it shaves so much of that talking time and back and forth, and that thinking time like, woah, what was Pinaki really thinking? What what does he mean by that? They they just feel comfortable enough to ask. I agree and it's it's that old adage of psychological safety. Yeah. Right? If you're comfortable with people and, you're working with you're gonna and you know there's the consequence of risk isn't gonna be I'm gonna get fired or whatever. You're just willing to do more and make yourself more uncomfortable. We have we have a team that does that on a daily basis, and I just love it because sometimes I'll jump on a call. I'm like, hey, check this out. Like, oh, it's like Christmas. I gotta have an opening for present. You know? Yeah. I just wanna know. Start a start a business of having, like, lunch meetings and coffee meetings with, like, people you feel uncomfortable with so we could just, like, talk and just build rapport. Right? Like, because I I think think about somebody in the chat who said, it depends on who's in the room. Yeah. So who is in the room that makes you uncomfortable to sell that idea and work them? Like, let's let's figure out that relationship and see, you know, can we get coffee? Can I understand you more? Because maybe I have a misunderstanding, maybe you have a misunderstanding. If we could clear that up, that would make so much more Yeah. Just so we're clear, if I'm uncomfortable with someone, I'm not having lunch with them or a coffee with them, just so we're clear. I wanna go back with a with a final point. I'm not having lunch with them. Sorry. Oh. With Randy talking about don't be afraid to toot your own horn, which this is one of the unique it shouldn't be a challenge, but it does seem to be a challenge, especially with internal communicators, that they seem to equate talking about what you're doing is tooting your own horn. So inside psychology, we have a space called look what I'm doing, And people view that as bragging, which is fine, but I see it as as just talking about what you're working on. We had that at breakfast this morning. We were all talking about all the things that we were working on and we were learning from each other because we were sharing. That was the that was the first that was the first meeting of Entrepreneurs Anonymous. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But I but think about that from a comm standpoint. We so many people see it as bragging when it's really sharing and people then learn and ask questions and get inspired by. So so it's certainly nothing wrong with tooting your own horn, but it it's not always that. It's really just sharing your you know, what you're working on. We have a celebration channel, and I love I love it because I don't run it. Actually, Mike run Mike and Catherine, I think, run it. But I love seeing the celebrations because not everybody's involved in every facet of this business. Right? So a lot of times the product team doesn't see, you know, the the eye popping I see when we show something to a client or when we we win a client over or when a marketing campaign goes with, you know, Ali on it or something like that. So I love that celebration channel because it shows the team what we're doing collectively to make this company work and and how it's it's coming together. So I think it's great. I I want I want all of my team members to Yeah. Brag about what they're doing. Important important, like, entrepreneurship lesson is celebrate the victories because, it gets so easy to get mired in the work. You do something great, but then the next thing is right there. So you just jump right into it. It is I've had to work on stopping and just enjoying that moment, enjoying enjoying that moment of victory, even if it's by myself, and then moving to the next thing. And for entrepreneurs, that moment of victory is what gets you the next six months. Mhmm. Or the next three months or whatever it might be. Yeah. Because it's it's a tough lonely road. And it might not come for another six months. And I'm not. Yeah. And so you take it away. Okay. This is great. This is why I'm doing this because it's not for any other reason. I'm doing it for this, and it gets you another it puts gas in the tank for another few weeks or months. Okay. We've got just a few minutes left, and I'm a I want your reaction to this statement. K? Internal comms attracts more introverts than not. Agree or disagree? I think so. Yes. You you agree with that statement? So. I from the people I've met, I I would disagree. Yeah. Two out of three. I disagree as well. Alright. But I don't think so. I don't think we know that. I think we tend to think because the work stays internal and people maybe aren't allowed to share, don't think they're allowed to share what they're working on. And I also I don't like the labels of introverts and extroverts because we all have the natures. I'm I am definitely an extrovert. That doesn't mean I don't like moments of solitude and quiet and and no different than someone who's more interested. It's just all where do you get your energy from. So I think that's an interesting comment that that Chris put in there. It's not Chris's comment. It's Priya Bates wrote that. I think that's where people are just sort of modeling the behavior they see in the industry of, like, oh, this is how we're supposed to act. This is how we're supposed to behave. Instead of learning from our friends in marketing where you do talk, you do share. Mhmm. You do articulate your ideas out there for other people to learn and see from. But because the work tends to stay inside the four walls of the business, we don't feel like that can happen. I will tell you this as an outsider because I didn't I haven't had a comms career. Right? I have seen some of the best communicators and some of the most em empathetic people I've ever worked with in my career. And I keep saying, boy, if they could just push what they're what they're doing and how they're doing it to the rest of an organization, the organization should be way better. Yeah. They go way better. Yeah. No. No. I I think, like, as as far as, like, entrepreneurs, I'm like, I've started, like, work with Local Wisdom since I was like 21 or 22. So around that time, I had to go network, go into places where I don't know. Baby. I was just a wee baby starting this. So and I realized that, like, yeah, from an early career standpoint, I'm networking, talking, trying to trying to literally sit at the lunch table with the VP while I'm, like, in a specialist role, and I got there. Right? And so I'm just doing things like that. And I realized after going into, like, the work world that not everyone is thinking like that or works like that or is comfortable with that, which is probably where I kind of get this this thought from. Mhmm. Got a couple comments here that, Rachel Williams says we're all introverts who are over functioning. That could be some of us. Zane Zane claims to really like people but really dislike corporate nonsense. I mean, yeah. We can agree with that. Agreed. We don't need to like everyone. We like most people. Brandi is like, I'm an extrovert, but I get uncomfortable talking about the things I'm accomplishing. But we're talking about you have that's okay to be uncomfortable doing that. And it's always not just what you're accomplishing. It's just what you're doing so that other people can then learn Can you from that? Can you put it in the chat what you're accomplishing so we could just say it out loud for you? I would love to do that. Please share. This is where this is how we, We'll be our cheerleaders. Oh, somebody is anonymous. I'm an introvert, but I can take it. Oh, Brandy's not she's like, OMG. No. She's not sharing what she's accomplishing. Come on, Brandy. Anonymous said, I'm not sure if I can take it. I know. But I could take it. I think that's where we talk about the the dangers of sharing saying, oh, you better bring your whole self to work. No one should be expected to bring their whole self to work. Work is not always the safest place for people to bring their whole selves, and work hasn't earned that Mhmm. Either for people. Right. Bring who you're comfortable with. Brandy saying, I make my leaders look like rock stars, not like rocks. Yeah. There we go. That's good. Brandy, thank you, Brandy. You. Star of the show. Alright. We are at time. I wanna first thank our audience here, the people you have joined us say. Fantastic chat. Great to see those perspectives in there and respond to what we're sharing. Ali, as always, thank you for leading the show from behind the cameras. Thank you. Panaki, our very first in studio guest here for Lights, Camera, Communicate. Amra and I will be back in October. Yep. Hopefully, you'll maybe be behind the drums. We'll do Maybe have another in studio guest. We'll see. Do you wanna come in? Yeah. Lights gamer communicates and join us. Can I come in the next episode and just play drums? Yeah. You can. We'll we'll do highway to the comfort zone. Yeah. Yes. Right. There we go. Alright. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back in October. We appreciate you being here. See you next time. Thank you, everybody. See you soon.