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My guest for Episode #268 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Theresa Rose, a Brand and Business Crystallizer, Strategic Co-Creator, and Certified Speaking Professional who works with experts and their businesses to create one-of-a-kind visual brands they can draw on a cocktail napkin.
Using her Crystallization Process, Theresa helps thought leaders Clarify, Amplify, and Monetize their Brilliance as efficiently — and lucratively — as possible.
She has 20+ Years of consulting, marketing, and business management experience drives Theresa's strategic thinking, creativity, and sound foundational frameworks. Her career has included senior management roles in marketing and product development for a Fortune 100 company and high-growth startups.
Theresa is the award-winning author of several books, including Mindful Performance: How to Powerfully Impact Profitability, Productivity, and Purpose and Your Daily Dose of Mojo: 365 Days of Mindful Living and Working.
She has a degree in Business Management from Eckerd College, loves binge-watching The Great British Baking Show, and still has her Most Enthusiastic Award from Mr. Moseman’s second-grade class.
In this episode, Mark and Theresa discuss the journey of embracing mistakes and how they can lead to clarity and success. Theresa shares her experience as a brand and business crystallizer, emphasizing the importance of enthusiasm and authenticity in sales and marketing. They explore her favorite mistake of trying to follow in her mother's footsteps in direct sales, the lessons learned from it, and how it shaped her path. Theresa also delves into common marketing mistakes, the concept of triangulated sales, and her approach to stand-up comedy. Finally, they discuss the benefits of her ten-part video course on achieving cocktail napkin clarity for businesses.
Questions and Topics:
- What are the three aspects of sales or persuasion that you feel strongly about?
- What would you say is your favorite mistake?
- How did trying to follow in your mother’s footsteps shape your journey?
- Was direct sales your main focus right out of college, or was it a side hustle?
- Looking back, what factors do you think led to the difference in outcomes between you and your mother in direct sales?
- What are the most common marketing mistakes you see or help people recover from or even help avoid?
- How did the failures or mistakes you encountered tee you up for something better?
- When you say “unsupported,” do you mean marketing claims that aren't supported by the delivery of that service or product, or is it about not authentically representing the person?
- What do you mean by “triangulated sales”?
- How do you view a joke that bombs or a set that bombs in the context of performing comedy?
- Tell us a little bit more about your experience with stand-up and improv.
- Could you give a quick pitch or summary of why people should check out your ten-part video course and the benefits they will gain from it?
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- Quotes
- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Mark Graban:
Mistake. I'm Mark Graban. Our guest today is Theresa Rose. She's a brand and business crystallizer, a strategic co-creator, and a certified speaking professional. She works with experts in their businesses to create one of a kind visual brands they can draw on a cocktail napkin. She has more than 20 years experience in consulting, marketing and business management and that drives her strategic thinking and creativity and the frameworks that she uses. She's had senior management roles in marketing and product development for a Fortune 100 company and for high-growth startups. Theresa is an award-winning author of several books, including Mindful Performance: How to Powerfully Impact Profitability, Productivity and Purpose, and Your Daily Dose of Mojo: 365 Days of Mindful Living and Working. And I thought this was fun. From the bio Teresa has, it sounds like you literally have this award, the most enthusiastic award for Mr. Mosman's second-grade class. Like, is that framed on your wall or tell us about that.
Theresa Rose:
It's not framed in my wall. But you know what? You just gave me a really good idea. It's actually one of the, I would say the most profound accolades I've ever gotten was most enthusiastic in second grade. And I've, you know, I'm a chronic overachiever, so that's saying something. You know, when I was growing up in high school, my mom used to call it the shrine, my room, because I had so many different awards and things. But the most enthusiastic, enthusiastic award, you know, I remember it. I remember coming home with the little white certification. And by the way, this was so long ago, Mark, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, okay? It wasn't when we gave out certificates to everyone. So it was very novel to have gotten it. And it was much different than everyone else's. You know, everyone else's were like, you know, Jimmy was like, you know, best in math and greatest speller, and, you know, Eraser Helper, cleaner. Eraser Cleaner Helper. And mine was most enthusiastic. And I went home, you know, crying to my mother and said, I got this awarded. I don't even know what it means because my teacher had said, don't worry, you just ask your mom and she'll tell you. And so when I went home and told my mom that I won this award and showed it to her, she said, she snapped her long painted fingernails and said, teeter, that's the best one you ever could have gotten, Lady Jane, that is going to serve you well throughout your whole life. And you know what? She's absolutely right.
Mark Graban:
That stuck with you for sure.
Theresa Rose:
It did. It did. Because enthusiasm, to me you know, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I get passionate about, and, of course, we're going to talk about all the mistakes I've made along the way. But what I feel really strongly about in sales or persuasion or, you know, influence is there's really just three aspects to it. One is clarity, which we're going to talk about. And two is enthusiasm, which is the fuel that, you know, propels that clarity out into the world. And then there's divine timing. And so the timing we can't really control anything about, but we certainly can control, I think, those first two, which are clarity and enthusiasm.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Your enthusiasm has not faded. No, not at all.
Theresa Rose:
No. And I don't even drink coffee.
Mark Graban:
Good. Well, I do. I mean, I'm drinking tea.
Theresa Rose:
Well, I am a tea drinker occasionally, but I have kicked the habit of coffee, and I'm still enthusiastic. It's, it's just what I am.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And, I mean, think about the most enthusiastic award, like, today. Don't they say it's better to praise a child for their effort, to say, you tried really hard than it is to say, like, oh, you're so smart?
Theresa Rose:
Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. I, you know, as I think about that, I think effort is far more important than outcome. And, you know, I grew up chasing after the a's and to my detriment because I was and am smart. And so I liked that validation and the, you know, the proof, if you will, of how smart I was based on, you know, and the problem with that, of course, is that I identified my own worth often of that, where if I got, you know, the occasional, you know, lower grade, and there was a phase where I got a lot of them in a short period of time because of other things. But then you attach yourself to that. So I really do believe that it's how we show up that's more important.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Because being called smart, that's more of, like, you know, an inherent trait to some degree, as opposed to something that exhibits growth, mindset, you know?
Theresa Rose:
Exactly.
Mark Graban:
Enthusiasm and things that you can be proud of and lead to good outcomes, maybe more reliably or like you said, you know, if suddenly now you feel not smart, that's, that's a big blow.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah, exactly.
Mark Graban:
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna call you, of course, Teresa. What was the childhood nickname that you threw into the story there your mom told you?
Theresa Rose:
What, Peter?
Mark Graban:
Teeter.
Theresa Rose:
Teeter? Yeah, like Teeter totter. You know, that's kind of like how my mood was on a regular basis was Teeter tottering. So Teeter was my nickname. Yeah. And I still am.
Mark Graban:
Okay. So again, we're joined by Teresa Rose, and we're going to talk about your work and clarity and crystallizing a message. Interesting word that you use there. But the main question, the first question at hand here, what would you say is your favorite mistake?
Theresa Rose:
My favorite mistake is thinking that I could do what my mom could do. My favorite mistake was believing and hoping that I could do what she did so successfully. My mother, you know, passed away in 2006. So it's almost 20 years, and it feels like yesterday. Oftentimes we just passed away, you know, mother's day, big holiday. So I was thinking about her, and she was. She was an incredibly successful woman, and she was a revolutionary of her time. You know, I was the only child that I knew at the time, growing up that had divorced parents. I had every other friend that I had all had, you know, a stable nuclear family. At least on the surface it looked stable. And so my mom was definitely a trailblazer. And she. She went from her role as a nurse to owning her own business in direct sales. And, you know, I'll tell you, the answer is yes, she had a pink cadillac. So that answers the question that everybody who. What's on everybody's mind is, you know, did she have a pink cadillac? Yes, she did. Many of them throughout the years. And I saw firsthand growing up as a child, in the most developmentally important time in my life, I saw this company that I loved, and I could see that it provided for us. I could see that it had great product. I used to play with it, you know, I mean, in the pink showcases, the two heavy pink showcases that my mom and I would schlep around in midwest and, you know, in blizzards to strangers houses, I would open up the magic of that, of that showcase with all the different sample tubes and colors. And I thought it was amazing. I thought it was amazing that my mom could make her own hours that although they were always, she started at 09:00 on the dot every day, which told me a lot about what you needed to be successful as an entrepreneur. But, you know, I grew up thinking, of course, I had my years of time when I hated it, too, when I was dropped off in the cadillac in middle school in the height of bullying season, and I was, you know, a very awkward, weird, husky, insecure little girl. And I wanted nothing more than to be invisible. And so to be dropped off in a pink Cadillac by a full glam mother in a fur coat with diamonds and singing I will survive, you get attention. And so I, with the exception of that kind of, you know, window of my life, I thought, wow, you know, that's. I could maybe do that. And the reality is, is that I made that mistake twice, thinking that I could do it because I fell in love with the idea and. And really tried. You know, I really tried. And I was a hard worker, and I, you know, as I said, you know, I'm smart, and I could. I could. I saw it growing up, so I knew it better than anybody else did. I could mimic recruiting interviews when I was eight years old. I could.
Mark Graban:
Heard it a lot.
Theresa Rose:
I had heard it so often, and I could see the nuances, and the reality was, I wasn't destined to do that. And so, at the time, it was a mistake because. And it was a very, you know, painful mistake because I had a lot of self judgment about not doing well and not loving it the way I thought I would love it. And it turns out, when I look at it in the rearview mirror, wow, was that the best thing I ever could have done was try something that I thought was my destiny and fail at it, because then that opened up an opportunity for me to do what I'm really designed to do.
Mark Graban:
So, was that coming right out of college? I know you had a degree in business management. Yep.
Theresa Rose:
The first one was actually not when I was out of college. It was. So I. I went to college right after high school, went to California, and followed a boy. That was actually not my favorite mistake.
Mark Graban:
A mistake.
Theresa Rose:
That was a mistake, but it was not my favorite mistake. And so when I came back to my hometown after that very painful year, I. That's when I started. And I actually quit college to try to do this because of a lot of other reasons, but that was essentially the main reason, was I didn't think I needed to. So I tried it when I was 19, and then I tried it again when I was in my, I will say, late thirties, late twenties, late twenties. I tried it again before I really landed in what I was doing in a corporate role, so. And then I proceeded to go back and get my degree when I was in my early thirties.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. So was. Was that direct sales? Was that a quote, unquote side hustle before that term was popularized, or.
Theresa Rose:
That was a full time for me or for.
Mark Graban:
Well, for your mom. Did she quit nursing, or was she quit nursing?
Theresa Rose:
She quit. So she started in Mary Kay in 75. Can you imagine? I mean, oh, my gosh, the music alone in 1975 would be fantastic to be growing up, and I remember all of the things she used to listen to.
Mark Graban:
And the cadillac of that era was still pretty enormous.
Theresa Rose:
Oh, huge. So she actually had a little bit of window where she was doing both the nursing and the. And the consulting and the recruiting. But it didn't take my mom very long before she was able to create something that was full time. So it was only a side hustle for about eight months of her life.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Okay. And then, I mean, looking back at it, are there certain factors that you think led to that difference between what you wanted to do or what you thought you could do in following your mom's path? Why do you think it didn't work out for you?
Theresa Rose:
I think that it didn't work out for me. Well, the bigger reason why I think it didn't work out for me is because I believe that I wasn't supposed to do it. So that's number one. But. But how did it manifest itself in kind of the everyday failure was, I think, the first step. You know, when I was younger in that in, you know, still in my teens, I had a lot of other distractions. I had a lot of other distractions and I could give you the names of them, but, you know, it was just. I wasn't ready to be in that hustle environment. Right. It just was. I would have rather, at that time in my life, punch a clock, go to a temp job, show up for 8 hours, do what they asked me to do, get my time card signed and leave. That was where I was in my life at the time. And then the second time that I tried it and failed, I would say that the bigger prohibiting factor wasn't that I wasn't mature enough, because I certainly was. It was that I wasn't secure enough. I wasn't secure enough. It took a lot of courage to talk to strangers, right. It took a lot to figure out how you could do the volume enough to make it work. And my mom was really strategic about how she did it. She built her team quickly and with depth. So she very quickly moved out of the sales aspect of the role and was in leadership and was managing her team. And so I never could get past the sales part to get to the leadership. I just couldn't sell enough because I couldn't open my mouth enough because I was insecure about who I was.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, in a different product line, in a different setting. I worked in high school in a retail job at a mall selling video games, computer software. It was all right up my alley. But, you know, as an awkward, you know, shy kid, working in retail really forced me to get better at talking with strangers. You know, that was my job, and I had to at least do my best. And, like, in hindsight, it doesn't seem like that should have been such a skill to develop. I'm still working on it, I guess.
Theresa Rose:
Aren't we all?
Mark Graban:
Yeah. But, yeah, I didn't want to do that forever, but it was a fun thing to do, high school and college, and it helped me develop some interpersonal skills.
Theresa Rose:
Oh, 100%. You know, I have had so many jobs. I mean, I was a pool attendant when I was 14. I was in McDonald's at the drive thru. I was a temp for undoubtedly unbelievable amounts of jobs. You know, secretary. There's just so many different roles that I've played in my life that, honestly, I can look back now as I look at what I think is a. And feel confident in sharing, that I have a robust portfolio of services that I deliver, and I'm proud of them. I'm really, really proud of who I have become and what I deliver and the value that I deliver as a crystallizer. And I can tell you that all those. Those dozens and dozens of jobs and even the unpaid jobs like chief Washcloth runner and product fulfillment officer for my mom's business, right when I was there riding shotgun in the pink cadillac, I can tell you that all of those pieces are now about who I am. They. None of them were mistakes. None of them were mistakes.
Mark Graban:
Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
Even. Even the really, really painful ones, you know?
Mark Graban:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how you kind of mentioned earlier that the failures or the mistakes set you up for future success.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
So, you know, I'd be curious how. How that played out, whether that was through, you know, kind of initial moves or kind of leading ahead to the work that you do now. How did that tee you up for something better?
Theresa Rose:
You know, it teed me up for something better, because there's nothing quite like having a mistake land in your world. A quote unquote mistake, you know, a failure or a loss. That's really how we see mistakes, how that kind of emotionally charged experience can change you. When you have those kinds of mistakes, whatever they may be and whomever they may be, you experience it on such a visceral level that it's almost like it. You don't know the benefit of it when it's happening. You never know the benefit of it when it's happening. You just trust. Well, you learn to in your life like I'm. And even now, you know, when I make mistakes, I fall into the trap of responding to the initial negative part about it and judging myself for it and second guessing and what could I have done? And yada, yada, yada. But the reality is, as you continue to grow a human in a growth mindset, you talked about that earlier, how important that is. When you do that kind of living and working and you experiences these mistakes, what you realize is that gratitude will help you look at it with clearer eyes so that you can see the benefit in it. And the sooner you see the benefit in any sort of experience, the more you can integrate that gift, and then it becomes something that you can lean into. But if you constantly look back on things and say, oh, I shouldn't have done that, or, I wish that didn't happen, or, you know, if I could just delete that from my memory banks. When you. When you act like that, you don't get the juice, you don't get the gift of that experience.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And when you say, you know, quote unquote mistakes, and earlier, you know, you said, well, not really mistakes, I mean, that's a very kind of Zen perspective. I don't know if that's kind of accidentally, coincidentally so, or I've had a guest on who was previously in his life a Zen buddhist monk, and we kind of talked about, like, that perspective of, well, it was meant to happen. It'll lead to something. Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah. I definitely believe in that. I have a strong, strong, grounded belief in the beauty of life and the meaning of life, and that nothing is accidental and that the gift is always in there. In fact, it was the very first speech that I ever wrote. So when I got into professional speaking, it was 15 plus years ago, and I got it from writing my first book. And my first book was written as a result of my mom passing away. She was the catalyst to the entire thing. So I knew before she even died, I knew. I said to her, ma, someday I'm going to write about this, and people are going to realize that they don't have to be afraid of death. And she tapped her long painted fingernail on the acrylic coffee table and said, I have no doubt teeter, I'll be hovering. And that little seed of an idea that was happening in the depth of my grief of losing my best friend, it was the seed that became an approach to life, which is, there's always gift in the gunk, there's always blessings in the pain. There's always opportunity in the mistake. And so that kind of process of the gift and the gunk has been a belief system of mine that I have held strong with, especially during the really tough times, is find the gift. Find the gift. Find the gift. Find the gift.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. And what, I don't know if that title, the title of the book you wrote about your mother was not in the bio.
Theresa Rose:
No, it wasn't in the bio.
Mark Graban:
It wasn't in the title of that.
Theresa Rose:
Book that's opening the kimono. A woman's intimate journey through life's biggest challenges.
Mark Graban:
Ah, okay. So people can go and find that book if they're interested. So thanks. Thanks for sharing that. Before we talk about the work you're doing now, I can't help but share the talk about the pink cadillac kind of triggered kind of a thought and a memory I'll share briefly. My first job out of college was at General Motors. In a lot of ways, especially that first year there, I thought, oh, what a mistake. It was an awful environment. It's not what I thought I was signing up for. But that job happened for a reason. Things got better. I learned so many lessons. It was. It was good that it all happened. But the sort of trivial aside is I was working at a plant that made engines for Cadillacs. An old friend of mine from high school was working at the assembly plant in Detroit, Ham Tramik, that did the Cadillacs, and he had a rotation through the paint shop. And if I remember right, I think he met Mary Kay because she would come to the factory and choose the exact, precise pink.
Theresa Rose:
Yep.
Mark Graban:
That she wanted. So I at least remember hearing about all of that, even though the Cadillacs had gotten smaller by the mid nineties.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah, you know, that's so great that you mentioned that, because that color of pink was Mary Kay pink. No other car could have that color but Mary.
Mark Graban:
It was very custom for her.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, as I am reflecting on my life and your comment, you know, when we first set up this conversation together, and you said, you know, what's your favorite mistake? And I thought about the Mary Kay issue, I want to share. When I was very young, maybe I was seven or eight, I absolutely adored my mother, and I adored the way that Mary Kay cosmetics made her feel special and then made me feel special. I loved that she won diamonds. I loved that she had bumblebee pins. I loved that she would ridden ribbons. I loved all of that. And of course, it also touched on my perfectionist overachiever who got, you know, recognition was just off the charts as far as how much I valued it. And I wrote Mary Kay Ash with a pencil on lined paper and wrote her to 87. 87 stemons Parkway. I still remember the address. And Mary Kay Ash, chair person, you know, and I basically said how much I loved the company, how happy I was that my mom was a successful director. But I had a. I had a worry. And that worry was, I don't. I really love the company, Mary Kay, but I don't know if I'm supposed to be a director. Also, I know that my mom would really be proud of me if I did. But I really feel like I want to be on stage. I want to be in the entertainment field. I really like doing comedy, and I like, you know, performing for people, but I don't know what I should do. What do you think I should do? And Mary Kay Ash wrote me back and said how impressed she was, you know, what an impressive little girl I was and how thoughtful I was and how that she wanted to give me the advice that I should pursue my heart, my dreams, and I should do what makes me happy and that my mother will be proud of me no matter what.
Mark Graban:
Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
I mean, and it was on pink paper. How cool is that? And then I look back on that. That woman was one of the most successful chief executive officers of her time, male or female, and she started that business in her sixties. She was a revolutionary.
Mark Graban:
I didn't know she started it in her sixties.
Theresa Rose:
She started it in her sixties that she was revolutionary. And so the thought that that powerful person in the top echelon of business sent a written note back to an eight year old.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
Right. I mean, that's awesome.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
I'm glad you shared that.
Theresa Rose:
Me, too.
Mark Graban:
Might ask you to share also, you know, in the work that you do with organizations and around marketing, if we'll lean into the word mistake and maybe, you know, put on pause the whole, oh, they're not really mistakes, but, I mean, I've make, you know, people do make. I would call them them marketing mistakes, and I would own up to some of those. I mean, what are the most common mistakes that you see or help people recover from or even help avoid when it comes to clarity and crystallization?
Theresa Rose:
Yeah. Well, I will say, great idea. Looking at the differentiation between the mistake from a marketing standpoint, I absolutely have made countless mistakes. Countless mistakes. And I would describe a mistake in this capacity with being something that is unclear and unsupported and expensive without the results that you seek. So that's a mistake in that way. And what I've seen are the same mistakes that I made when I started my business as a thought leader, is it's not enough to be good at what you do. You need to be able to crystallize that and clarify that to such a degree that everybody can understand exactly what it is that you do. And so what I found in my business was I was really good at what I did, but I just wasn't great at describing it and making it clear, crystal clear. And so my mistake was a not doing the deep dive work of really understanding my differentiating factors so much that I could draw it on a cocktail napkin. I could come up with some certain words, but they were all I always had to work so hard at trying to find those words right. It's like you just try to keep throwing big, huge, ten cent words at it, hoping that it lands to show that you're different than everybody else, and it never works. And so the result of that is you get really frustrated because you're spending unbelievable amounts of time, money and energy on trying to make those ten cent words work. And they don't. And so I see the mistakes that happen with people. Or, number one, they don't clarify what makes them different. They just keep throwing more and more words at it. And then the second thing is, is that they think that they can, like, buy it. They can buy the success. If I buy this PR firm or campaign, if I become a member of this networking organization, if I buy myself into this and all those different things, it'll. It'll break it open and it never does. It might do it a little bit, it might do it a little bit, but it doesn't take it to the level of catapulting it into a movement, because it really isn't you. It's like, it's like you're paying for these ten cent words to go out into the world more. When the reality is you just need to know yourself a little bit better. And because when you know yourself better so clearly that you can draw it, when you know it to that level, like a child could understand something, then you show up with that level of enthusiasm that's just authentic and real and palpable, and people feel it. You don't have to have the perfect words and the perfect pitch and the perfect call to action and the perfect case study. You can literally just show up and be you as long as it's the real, deep, true you. Right. And that only comes from a level of clarity that you can draw.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. When you talk about those three types of or three elements of a marketing mistake, unclear. That's very clear. Expensive is very clear. And then when you say unsupported, I wanted to ask a follow up question. Does that mean, like, marketing claims that aren't supported by the delivery of that service or product, or is it even just, like, unsupported and that it's not authentically representing the person?
Theresa Rose:
That's the most important part, is that it's not authentically representing. Because what I see, how I see things in my view of the world for businesses, and it's, regardless of what business it is, it could be a solopreneur and it could be enterprise level and anywhere in between, because I've crystallized and created models for all of those, is, if you look at it, it's about vision. It's about, what is this vision for this business and what makes it different than everybody else? It's like what I call a spirit print. It's like a fingerprint for a business. It's different than everyone else's. And can you see it? Right. So that first part is about. About vision, and you got to get really clear about that. And then you go to the marketing steps, which are going to create the, you know, the brand, and you're going to create the positioning, and you're going to do all of the amplification that you want to do. That's all great, too. But the reality is you don't see the money until you close the deal. Sales. Okay? So the vision is, is that clarity, drawing it on the napkin, the amplification, that's the marketing that creates the right words and making sure you're doing it in the way that that's authentic in you. And then it's that third part about it that's really about, are you closing the deal? Are you closing the deal? And if you're not supported by a level of clarity, if you're not supported by having enough confidence to show up in your authentic way, because anybody that tries to sell something that's not them, they're gonna. They're not gonna be good at it. They might be good quickly at it. This is what my mom taught me. She very, very, very rarely had what they would call chargebacks, right? So very rarely insignificant numbers of chargebacks, because she was so solid in her delivery, she was never trying to sell anyone something they didn't want, and she would notice the signs. And so she had all this really strong ability to be able to convey that, that's what I mean by supported. Are you supported by a belief in the business so strong that nothing anybody says to you will shake you? Are you supported by having the right materials that are going to easily be able to have facilitate a conversation? Right. That's that cocktail napkin. Are you supported by, by your own voice and feeling confident in how you show up in the world and being unafraid to be rejected, knowing that there's three things people can do for you. They either challenge you, support you, or reject you. I just read that somewhere and I can't remember where. I wish I could attribute it. Supported or rejected. And being okay with all three?
Mark Graban:
Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
Being okay with all three.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Well, it's making me think because it's sort of like being okay with a mistake or a failure to close the sale. Can we think about it in a way that's, that's constructive and forward thinking instead of just beating ourselves up?
Theresa Rose:
Exactly. What's the gift? What's the gift in the rejection? What's the gift and the rejection. Right. Great salespeople will always deconstruct why the clothes lost, what happened, and how can I iterate to make it better?
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Or maybe it just wasn't a fit and it wasn't meant to be.
Theresa Rose:
Exactly. Exactly.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa Rose:
So then the iteration is. Did, did I, could I have seen that it wasn't a fit before I invested a significant amount of time?
Mark Graban:
Go. Right. So instead of just blaming that factor, what, how do we learn?
Theresa Rose:
Yes.
Mark Graban:
How do we iterate? I love that.
Theresa Rose:
Yep.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. One other thing I wanted to ask you about here. When you talk about closing sales, there's a phrase on your website about triangulated sales. What is that?
Theresa Rose:
So I love to study the energy of dynamics of relationships, of transactions. And when we look at the energy of sales are the old school way of looking at it is a, is a dominant and a submissive. You have a dominant buyer and you have a submissive seller. You have someone who's in power and someone who wants it. Right. And what that can do to people when they feel that I'm, people will say, I hate being in sales, or I'm not a salesperson, or I don't want to do the sales. That is because they are falling into the pattern of the power dynamics of the traditional mark. The traditional sales where the buyer has the power and the seller has commission breath, they don't want to do that because they don't want to be rejected. So the way that I approach that is to change the dynamics, to add a third party into the dynamics of the sales conversation. And that is the cocktail napkin, that visual of who you are, what you do, how you serve, what makes you different than everyone else, that becomes almost the third party that you energize in a sales conversation. So instead of me saying, well, here's who I am, and here I hope you pick me, and I hope that you pick my business, and, and you think you're the one that's being evaluated in the sales conversation, you can triangulate that sale and then say, listen, first of all, fully listen completely, 100% to the person and hear what their real pain is and notice them. It's a full body sport, sales. When you do triangulate sales, it's a full body sport. You pay attention to everything, right? And listen to everything, because that person will tell you all you need to know to be able to execute that sale. Then you pivot. When they say, enough about me, what about you? Which will invariably happen. Then you pivot to the triangulated sales conversation, to the napkin, and you say, this is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about this thing. Not about me, not about our relationship or what the deal is, but I want to talk about this thing that lights me up. And when you do that, what you do is you change it from buyer and seller to peer and potential partner. You get excited about talking about that third part of the triangle so much that their energy starts looking at it, too. Their focus starts looking at it, too, and they go, ooh. And if you're good enough and you have the right cocktail napkin, and you're clear enough about what makes you different, that you can talk this and say, it's the hill I'm willing to die on. When you have that much energy around it and enthusiasm around it, you know that you, that person is either a yes or no. They either want it or they don't want it. And so nine times out of ten, when I talk to about my cocktail napkin in a triangulated conversation, I hear those three magic words, I need that. And as soon as you hear I need that, it's all over but the crying and the check writing.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, right between I want that or I'd like that. I need that.
Theresa Rose:
Those are the three words. If you don't hear, I need that. You don't have enough clarity.
Mark Graban:
Well, that's. I think that's, that's a good tip. And people can learn more. I can learn a lot more. I'm going to learn a lot more through. I went and got access to your ten part video course. So I want to tell the listener about that. There'll be a link in the show notes. Teresarose.com clear. Teresa with an h. Yep. If you make that mistake and skip the h, you might find someone else. Teresarose.com clear. But before asking you about that, I did want to ask ask, you alluded to doing stand up and improv.
Theresa Rose:
Yeah.
Mark Graban:
Tell us a little bit more about that. You said you wanted to perform in your doing that, but how do you view if you tell a joke that bombs or you do a set that bombs, is that a mistake? Is there a gift in that as well? How do you think about it in the context of performing comedy?
Theresa Rose:
Well, in the context of performing comedy, the only way that you can get out of that and move through it without having it choke you is realizing that a bombed joke is just a lily pad and a launching pad for something else funny. So if you bomb a punchline, you stay in the moment and you have something in your back pocket that you will say so that you can capture some laughter from your failure. Right. So it's this living, breathing dance between the comedian and the audience, and that's when you lean into crowd work. So again, everything that is a mistake, you can look at and go, well, what could I do to, a, learn from it, but b, can I pivot? Can I take it from a different perspective? Can I look at it with fresh eyes so I can evolve beyond that? So that's, that's what I would say. And that's part of that improv background that, that I really love is that yes. And mentality, which is. There is no no right. There is no no. You didn't tell a good joke. It's yes, you did tell a joke, and no one laughed. And you get an opportunity to now add and do a little bit of maybe physical humor, like, oh, oh, I felt that, you know, I felt your silence, whatever it might be, you can turn that into something funny that then captures their hearts.
Mark Graban:
And it seems like the best stand up is this very iterative process. Remember once watching a documentary Jerry Seinfeld did about the steps of. And now, like, you see the Netflix special that someone's done and it seems so crisp and so perfect, but that might be a year's worth of iteration in small clubs and open mics and bigger shows and, like, really, you know, they don't go out. And you know, that special is not the first time.
Theresa Rose:
No. I love talking about comedy for the everyday person. So as a crystallizer what I also do is speech writing. So a lot of people are amazing on stage, or they want to be, and they are not great at writing, or they don't want to write. They just don't. They're not great writers. I'm a word nerd, and a lot of people aren't. So what I love to do is make. Make people funnier, right. Create comedy that is in their voice. What would be funny for them to say, right. Their personality, what's interesting to them, give them the script. And that script takes time to craft and massage and what's the right word? What's. How do I do this thing? So it's not just about landing into perfection. You iterate and you make mistakes and you face plant along the way as you're doing that. So when you see something amazing with someone on stage, there has been an awful lot of work with some word nerds to make that as powerful as it is.
Mark Graban:
Yeah. Well, thanks again. We've been joined by Teresa Rose. You know, I'm interested in this idea of clarity and crystallization and thinking about how I represent my own business, which is basically a solopreneur business. So, you know, the ten part video course, the PDF on the crystallization process, us just, you know, a quick, you know, quick pitch or summary of why people should go check this out and what they, and I will, myself included, how will benefit from that?
Theresa Rose:
Yeah, I just would love to have them come see what I do on my website. You know, clarity is my jam. That is my thing. I love helping people get cocktail napkin clarity. And with you, Mark, you know, your, your brand, your. Your podcast is so great because it's so clear. Clear. It's my favorite mistake. And you know exactly what you're getting. And this it. And it's. It's compelling and it's evocative and it's emotional. So the more that you can get really, really clear, so clear that preferably you could draw it, maybe even you could create something where it's like a mistake, but then there's a heart around it, like. Like a line, you know, where you say no, a red line that you say no, but then there's a heart around it that goes the. This is why it's so wonderful. Anything that you can do. I encourage your listeners to think about whatever is that their next thing is. Whatever is their next high stakes opportunity to persuade someone. I invite them to look at, can you distill it down to its essence so clearly that you could literally take out a cocktail napkin and doodle it. Because when you can get that level of clarity where someone can see it in their mind, that's the destination to get them to. Yes. Is when they can see it and understand it and feel it. So come see me@teresarose.com and learn a little bit more about cocktail napkin clarity.
Mark Graban:
Yeah, I hope people will join me in that pursuit. So again, we've been joined by Teresa Rose. Teresa, this has been great fun. Thank you for a really fun conversation. Thank you for sharing your story and your reflections and how you've continued to iterate and grow. So thank you for all of that.
Theresa Rose:
Thanks for having me, Mark. I appreciate it.
Mark Graban:
Sure thing.
Episode Summary and More
Unlocking Business Success: The Journey of Enthusiasm and Strategic Clarity
In an era where entrepreneurial spirit is celebrated more than ever, the stories of individuals navigating their way through the ups and downs of brand and business creation offer invaluable insights. One such narrative is that of harnessing the power of enthusiasm and strategic clarity in business. These two elements are not merely additives to the entrepreneurial process but are fundamental to achieving lasting success and impact.
The Catalyst of Enthusiasm
The concept of enthusiasm as a driving force in business cannot be overstated. It is the engine that propels ideas into action and transforms vision into reality. Enthusiasm is more than just passion; it’s a dynamic energy that ignites creativity, fosters innovation, and cultivates a culture of resilience. This vibrant force was exemplified early on by an accolade received for being “the most enthusiastic” in a second-grade class, highlighting how inherent enthusiasm is in shaping one's path, even from a young age.
Enthusiasm in business is the differentiation factor that sets one apart in a crowded market. It’s the enthusiasm that a business leader or entrepreneur brings to the table that can turn challenges into opportunities and setbacks into comebacks. Embodying enthusiasm means maintaining a positive outlook, a relentless drive to overcome hurdles, and an infectious energy that motivates teams and attracts customers.
Strategic Clarity: The Blueprint of Success
While enthusiasm provides the momentum, strategic clarity offers the roadmap. Strategic clarity in how one articulates and crystallizes their business brand is crucial. It involves the ability to succinctly define what your business stands for, its core values, and how it differentiates itself from competitors. This clarity is not just beneficial but essential in navigating the complex and ever-evolving business landscape. It ensures that all efforts are aligned with the overarching business goals and that resources are optimized for maximum impact.
Delving into personal stories, we see examples of individuals who meticulously developed one-of-a-kind visual brands that could be explained as simply as drawing on a cocktail napkin. This level of clarity doesn’t just communicate the brand’s essence effectively but also engages the audience’s imagination and fosters a deeper connection with the brand. Furthermore, strategic clarity encompasses not only branding but also operational and management strategies, ensuring that the business model is scalable, sustainable, and capable of navigating market dynamics.
The Symbiosis of Enthusiasm and Strategic Clarity
The intersection of enthusiasm and strategic clarity is where true entrepreneurial magic happens. Enthusiasm fuels the persistence and resilience required to push boundaries and overcome obstacles, while strategic clarity ensures that efforts are not expended in vain but are directed towards clearly defined goals and objectives. This powerful combination empowers businesses to not only survive but thrive in competitive environments.
The journey of entrepreneurship is fraught with challenges, and success is not a linear path. It’s marked by trials, errors, and the occasional failure. However, embracing the lessons learned from mistakes and viewing them as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks is what differentiates successful entrepreneurs. It’s not just about having a great idea but also about how effectively you communicate that idea, rally people around it, and navigate the path to realization with unwavering enthusiasm and crystal-clear strategy.
In conclusion, the synergy of enthusiasm and strategic clarity forms the cornerstone of successful entrepreneurship. These elements, intertwined, lay the foundation for not just building a business but creating a brand that resonates, inspires, and endures. Whether you’re at the helm of a Fortune 100 company or are in the nascent stages of a high-growth startup, remembering the essence of these core principles can guide you towards achieving your business vision.
Building Teams and Leadership Skills
Growing Beyond Sales into Leadership
The transformation from a sales role to a position of leadership is a significant milestone in any business career. It requires not just the ability to sell a product or service, but to inspire, guide, and manage a team. Building a team quickly and with depth, as achieved by some successful entrepreneurs, underscores the importance of this transition. It moves beyond the individual challenge of making sales to the broader challenge of managing and leading a team effectively. This process involves recognizing individual strengths and weaknesses, both within oneself and within team members, and strategically utilizing these to the team's advantage.
Overcoming Personal Insecurities
The journey includes overcoming personal insecurities, such as the hesitation to speak up due to fear of judgment—a common barrier that many face. Yet, overcoming this can be a pivotal point in a career, transforming insecurity into strength. Every engagement with a customer or a team member offers a chance to refine communication skills and build confidence. In parallel, drawing from various job experiences can enhance one’s skill set, as seen in individuals who have taken up diverse roles before excelling in their careers. These roles, whether in retail, as a pool attendant, or in McDonald's, contribute valuable life lessons that form the bedrock of future success.
Embracing a Diverse Career Background
- Valuing a Range of Job Experiences: Acknowledging every job experience, including those that seem insignificant or unrelated, as crucial stepping stones in professional development, is vital. Each role, from front-line positions to strategic management, can offer unique insights into customer behavior, work ethic, and business operations.
- Leveraging Unique Skills and Insights: The cumulative knowledge gained from a diverse career path can crystallize into a unique set of services or a business model that sets an entrepreneur apart. It fosters a holistic understanding of the business ecosystem, enabling one to deliver unparalleled value to clients.
- The Role of Mistakes in Growth: Recognizing the role of mistakes and failures as catalysts for growth reinforces resilience. The ability to see the ‘gift in the gunk' ensures that lessons are learned from every experience, transforming obstacles into opportunities for learning and improvement.
Crystallizing Your Message and Mission
Clarifying and Communicating Your USP
- Understanding and Articulating Differentiators: One of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs and businesses make is failing to clarify and communicate their unique selling proposition (USP). Developing a clear, compelling message that explains what makes you different and why you matter to your customers is crucial.
- Avoiding Common Pitfalls: Entrepreneurs often assume that success can be bought or that a flurry of marketing activities will compensate for a lack of clear messaging. However, without a solid foundation of strategic clarity and a well-defined brand identity, these efforts can lead to frustration and wasted resources.
Learning from Every Experience
- Integrating Lessons from Failures and Successes: Embracing both failures and successes as integral parts of your personal and professional growth journey can lead to deeper insights and a more authentic, compelling brand story.
- The Power of Gratitude and Growth Mindset: Cultivating a mindset of gratitude towards all experiences, and viewing each as a stepping stone, helps in recognizing the value and lessons inherent in each.
- Planning for the Long Term: Strategic clarity not only involves defining your current business model and brand identity but also envisioning your company’s future trajectory and ensuring your strategy is scalable and adaptable.
In essence, the fusion of enthusiasm for one's work with strategic clarity about one's goals and identity forms a potent recipe for success. It enables entrepreneurs and leaders to forge ahead with confidence, overcome personal and professional challenges, and achieve their visions for their businesses and lives.
Transforming Relationships through Sales
Revolutionizing Sales Dynamics
In the realms of business and entrepreneurship, the dynamics of sales have traditionally been perceived as a binary interaction—where one party holds the dominance of decision while the other assumes a role remissive to the former’s judgement. This perspective, however, is evolving with innovative approaches that seek to reconfigure the foundational essence of these interactions. Enter the concept of triangulated sales, a pioneering strategy that introduces a third element into the traditional sales dialogue, aiming to transform the interaction from a transactional encounter to a collaborative partnership.
The Art of Triangulated Sales
Triangulated sales diverge from the conventional buyer-seller dichotomy by incorporating a visual or conceptual element that represents the core value or proposition being offered. This strategy shifts the focus from a direct exchange to a discussion surrounding a mutual interest or need. For instance, using a simple yet profound tool like a “cockball napkin” to visually convey an idea or value proposition can serve as this third element, bridging the gap between seller and buyer by focusing on the shared vision and goals.
Initiating a Peer-to-Peer Dialogue
- From Dominance to Equality: By diverting the conversation to a shared visual or conceptual focus, the power dynamics within the interaction are neutralized. Both parties engage as peers, discussing a mutual interest, which fosters a more open and equal dialogue.
- Enhancing Understanding and Engagement: This method facilitates a deeper understanding as both the seller and buyer collaboratively explore the potential of the offering, allowing for a richer engagement beyond the surface level of transactional exchange.
- Building Partnerships through Shared Vision: The ultimate goal of this approach is to transform the potential buyer into a collaborator or partner, united by a common vision or interest highlighted through the triangulated element of the sales process.
Embracing Clarity and Authenticity
Incorporating a triangulated approach to sales emphasizes the importance of clarity and authenticity in business interactions. By presenting an idea or value proposition in its simplest, most genuine form—so clear that it can be depicted on a cocktail napkin—entrepreneurs and salespeople invite an authentic engagement with their audience. This paves the way for realizing a vision that is not only shared but deeply connected to the values and aspirations of both parties.
Essential Elements for Effective Triangulation
- Clear and Concise Visualization: The ability to distill complex ideas into simple, engaging visuals or narratives is crucial. This clarity helps in making the value proposition easily understandable and relatable.
- Authentic Expression: The power of genuine enthusiasm and belief in what one is offering cannot be overstated. Authenticity resonates, building trust and rapport, which are essential for effective collaboration.
- Adaptation and Improvement: Feedback, whether in the form of acceptance, challenges, or outright rejection, should be seen as an opportunity for growth and refinement. Each engagement provides insights for evolving and enhancing the approach or offering.
Leveraging Comedy and Improvisation
Comedy as a Catalyst for Connection
The principles of comedy and improvisation offer valuable lessons for enhancing business communications and relationships. By embracing the spontaneity and adaptive responses essential to successful comedic performance, professionals can learn to navigate the uncertainties and challenges of the business arena with grace and agility.
Improvisation and Adaptability
- Yes, And Philosophy: Adopting the improvisational principle of “yes, and” encourages a mindset of openness and adaptability, essential for innovation and creative problem-solving.
- Learning from Every Experience: Just as comedians learn from each performance, regardless of its reception, business professionals can benefit from viewing each interaction as a learning opportunity, extracting lessons from both successes and setbacks.
Enriching Engagement through Humor
Injecting appropriate humor and light-heartedness into business interactions can enhance engagement, making complex or challenging topics more accessible and relatable. Furthermore, humor can serve as a powerful tool for disarming tension and fostering a positive, collaborative atmosphere.
Cultivating a Comic Mindset
- Embracing Vulnerability: Acknowledging and sharing one's imperfections or mistakes through humor can humanize professionals, making them more relatable and trustworthy to their audience.
- Iterative Learning: Like crafting a comedy set, developing effective business strategies or sales pitches involves an iterative process of creation, feedback, and refinement. Each iteration offers insights for improvement, driving closer towards achieving clarity and impact in communication.
Conclusion
In the quest to revolutionize sales dynamics and enhance leadership and team building, the integration of clear, authentic communication, alongside the strategic and thoughtful application of humor and improvisation, holds transformative potential. By fostering genuine connections, encouraging creative collaboration, and embracing an iterative mindset, professionals can elevate their impact, driving forward not just in sales, but in all facets of business and personal growth.
Leverage the Power of Simplicity and Emotion
Simplicity as a Pathway to Understanding
In today's fast-paced world, the essence of effective communication lies in simplicity. The practice of distilling complex concepts into simple, easily digestible visuals or ideas—akin to doodling on a cocktail napkin—can significantly enhance understanding and retention. This method not only makes the message accessible but also fosters a deeper connection between the communicator and the audience.
Strategies for Simplifying Complex Ideas
- Focus on the Core Message: Identifying and concentrating on the main idea you wish to convey helps in stripping away the non-essential elements, leading to a clearer presentation.
- Use Metaphors and Analogies: Relating new concepts to familiar situations through metaphors and analogies can bridge the gap between understanding and confusion, making the unfamiliar familiar.
- Engage with Visual Aids: Whether it’s a simple sketch on a napkin or a well-designed infographic, visuals can convey what words sometimes cannot, enabling a quicker and deeper understanding.
Emotion: The Heart of Connection
The emotional aspect of communication is a powerful driver for action. When people feel an emotional connection to an idea or a cause, their engagement levels rise, paving the way for greater influence and persuasion.
Building an Emotional Bridge
- Narrative Storytelling: Sharing stories that resonate on a personal level can captivates the audience’s attention and makes the message more relatable.
- Highlight the Impact: Showcasing the real-world implications of an idea or solution, especially how it benefits or affects people, can tap into the emotional cores of the audience.
- Incorporate Values and Beliefs: Aligning the message with the audience’s values and beliefs strengthens the emotional bond, making the communication more impactful.
Continuous Iteration and Growth
The journey of refining one’s ability to communicate clearly and emotively is ongoing. Feedback plays a crucial role in this process, serving as a guide for improvement and adaptation. Embracing an iterative approach—constantly tweaking and evolving one’s strategy based on responses and results—ensures that the message remains relevant and resonant.
Embracing Feedback for Refinement
- Seek Constructive Criticism: Actively seeking out and being open to feedback can provide insights into how your message is received and areas where it can be improved.
- Experiment with Different Methods: Don’t be afraid to try new ways of communicating your ideas. What works well in one context may not in another, and vice versa.
- Celebrate the Process: Each attempt at conveying your message, whether successful or not, is a step forward in your growth journey. Embrace each opportunity to learn and develop.
Conclusion
The fusion of simplicity and emotional engagement with the audience lies at the heart of transformative communication. By practicing the art of distilling complex ideas into their essence and tapping into the emotional currents that drive human action, individuals can significantly enhance their ability to persuade and influence. Continuous learning and adaptation, fueled by feedback and reflection, are key to mastering this art.