The Humans Strike Back

Latest Episodes:

How mindfulness at work enhances decision-making & builds stronger, more effective teams Jul 10, 2018

Show notes

Today I’m happy to introduce Lori Schwanbeck, a lovely human being who’s been working as a mindfulness consultant with dozens of companies and organizations like Google, the U.N., and even the ministry of Bhutan.

In fact, she was still recovering from her jet lag from coming back from Bhutan when we had this conversation.

Lori shares with us how practicing mindfulness at work can help us to enhance our decision-making, think more creatively, and build stronger teams.

Lori also shares why it’s so important to be vulnerable, human, and be yourself at work in order to create connections with others, how that actually leads to incredibly powerful teams, and why mindfulness is such a powerful tool to enable all of that.

What I loved so much about this conversation was how Lori was so willing to get personal, and how she invited me to do the same. I opened up a lot during this interview and shared a few things myself about what it is about working at Hotjar that has enabled me to do the best, most effective work of my life.

She also walked me through two incredibly quick but effective mindfulness exercises that take less than a minute each but lead to some pretty meaningful insights, so I hope you follow along and do them as well when you come to them.

I’m so glad I had the chance to talk with Lori, and I hope you feel just as at home with her as I did.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:01:30] How Lori got into mindfulness, and how that led to becoming a mindfulness consultant
[00:02:49] The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute
[00:04:03] Where Lori studied transpersonal psychology
[00:04:30] What was it that made Lori decide that mindfulness had to be a part of her life and work
[00:06:00] Lori’s background with Vipassana meditation
[00:08:25] How Lori can bring mindfulness and meditation into a workplace setting
[00:11:33] Research on the efficacy of building emotional intelligence
[00:13:28] The importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace
[00:17:13] What Lori’s workplace training look like
[00:18:53] How people could practice Lori’s teachings at home
[00:24:32] How to introduce skillful behavior
[00:26:10] What skillful behavior training looks like
[00:28:03] The importance of being able to be vulnerable in the workplace
[00:32:08] The types of companies and organizations who are interested in Lori’s training
[00:33:34] How Lori overcomes skepticism of her programs
[00:37:07] What happens when leaders of organizations Lori works with are skeptical or don’t buy into her methods
[00:39:25] What Lori would say to people who are on the fence about adopting a people-first approach
[00:41:06] Resources that Lori recommends
[00:43:43] The three-breath practice
[00:46:19] The neuroscience of breathing exercises

Caring deeply: How to hire the right people and earn your team’s trust Jul 03, 2018

Show notes

“You are who you are and that’s why we love you. That’s why we hired you. So don’t try to be someone else because we wanted you.” – Omer Molad

Today we’re talking with Omer Molad, the founder and CEO of the recruiting software startup, Vervoe, on how to bring a more human element into the hiring process.

Omer shares an incredibly personal story about how he learned to earn the trust of his team members’ while he was a platoon commander in the Israeli army in his early 20s.

That story alone is enough of a reason to listen to this episode, but Omer also talks about how he overcame the challenges & prejudices that he faced as an outsider to the tech industry in Melbourne, Australia while looking for work, and how that led him to develop a new way to hire that eventually became the heart of Vervoe.

What I loved about speaking with Omer was his complete openness and transparency, his willingness to admit that even as the CEO, he doesn’t have all the answers but is 100% willing to make the effort and find his way.

He’s definitely an inspirational figure, and I hope you get as much value out of listening to him share his stories as I did.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:01:27] What brought Omer to Melbourne, Australia
[00:02:47] The differences between working in Israel and working in Australia
[00:04:07] What the experience of trying to find a job in Melbourne was like
[00:07:13] How Omer landed his first job in Melbourne
[00:08:21] Omer’s time in the Israeli military
[00:10:54] What made Omer realize he needed to build trust with his team when he was a platoon commander
[00:17:41] How Omer’s experiences with the military apply to where he is now
[00:20:23] How psychological safety and trust can help teams perform better
[00:24:03] How Vervoe is different from more traditional companies
[00:27:14] How compartmentalization can take energy away from work
[00:28:50] How leaders should balance being vulnerable with being a positive and motivating force for the team
[00:31:35] How Omer’s past experience combined with taking a human-first approach play out at Vervoe
[00:35:19] Omer’s experiences with hiring people who might otherwise have been screened out
[00:42:35] What the first stage of Vervoe’s hiring process looks like
[00:47:05] What happens in the second stage of Vervoe’s hiring process
[00:49:05] What Vervoe applicants do after completing stage two
[00:53:44] A resource that Omer recommends
[00:55:31] What Omer has learned from talking with introverted employees

Why ‘feminine’ traits lead to higher revenue, performance and customer engagement Jun 26, 2018

Show notes

I’m very excited to introduce today’s guests:

Nilima Bhat & Raj Sisodia, co-authors of Shakti Leadership and pioneers of the Conscious Capitalism Movement.

They join me to talk about how qualities traditionally considered to be more ‘feminine’ – such as empathy, compassion, vulnerability and even love – are helping businesses increase revenue and create higher levels of employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

And this isn’t just their opinion. They came to this interview packed with research and studies showing that companies that embody these qualities significantly outperform businesses that prize domination, competition, aggression, and winning at any and all costs.

These two make such a powerful case for the need to bring a people-first mindset into every aspect of business that if I could make this episode required listening for business leaders, I would.

So have a listen and learn more about what traditional, profit-oriented businesses are getting wrong, and how a new generation of companies is setting itself up for long-term success.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:02:46] The existential crisis that led to Nilima leaving the corporate world and look for answers elsewhere
[00:05:08] Raj’s background and what led him to Conscious Capitalism and his current line of work with Nilima
[00:11:27] The research that shows that people are looking for more feminine qualities in leadership
[00:12:38] The concept of shakti leadership
[00:17:06] How to talk about the concept of shakti leadership in a way that’s accessible to anyone, regardless of spiritual background
[00:21:58] Raj’s experience with the concept of shakti
[00:27:30] The positive aspects of masculine qualities
[00:30:04] What it looks like for a company to embody a balance of feminine and masculine principles
[00:32:57] What companies look like when they have too many negative masculine or feminine traits
[00:37:52] How to create a company that embodies a balance of positive masculine and feminine traits
[00:45:00] The response to corporate pushback against ideas like the seven levels of consciousness
[00:52:23] Data that supports the fact that companies that follow the values of conscious capitalism do better
[00:56:34] Resources that Raj and Nilima recommend

Conscious leadership: How to create a no-drama, high-trust work environment Jun 19, 2018

Show notes

How do you cultivate a healthy, open culture that empowers employees to thrive?

In today’s episode, we’re talking with Diana Chapman, the co-founder of The Conscious Leadership Group, about how to create a more authentic, people-focused culture at work.

Diana and her team have helped dozens of organizations, including Ebay, Asana, Whole Foods and more, to increase employee engagement and performance by eliminating drama, building trust, and cultivating a culture where authenticity, vulnerability, and transparency can take root.

And they’re getting results. In fact, Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, the co-founders of Asana, actually give every single one of their employee the chance to go through CLG’s leadership training, and credit that with helping them to more effectively achieve their company goals.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How Diana went from teaching scrapbooking classes in Michigan to teaching Silicon Valley giants the importance of conscious leadership
Why authentic conversations and mindfulness matter, not just in personal relationships, but also within organizations
The need to value emotional intelligence and ‘body’ intelligence as highly as cognitive intelligence
How to cut through drama and see the underlying facts
How to change your approach to a situation by changing the way that you frame it
How to create a roadmap to get yourself and your team out of negative habits

Diana is an incredibly open and inspiring person and was more than willing to share the exact exercises she guides companies through to help their employees to thrive.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:01:10] How Diana moved from teaching scrapbooking to her current career
[00:02:36] The class on conscious relationships that Diana took from Gay and Katie Hendricks
[00:03:07] What it was about the classes at the Hendricks Institute that made Diana want to focus on conscious leadership
[00:06:03] The definition of conscious leadership
[00:07:30] The power of being in the present
[00:09:09] What being present looks like
[00:11:29] The three types of intelligence
[00:13:50] How you can cultivate emotional intelligence and body intelligence
[00:17:09] What happened when a presentation did not go the way that Diana expected
[00:20:12] What Diana changed about her presentation•[00:22:02] How the experience of the group Diana was working with changed once she changed her approach
[00:22:58] How that presentation experience impacted the way that Diana makes presentations with other companies
[00:23:28] How to present people-first ideas to people in organizations who are skeptical
[00:25:47] Exercises that can help with presenting alternative ideas
[00:34:55] How clients can use the results of their exercises
[00:36:57] Steps organizations that want to change can take
[00:38:12] What to do when one person wants to have an authentic conversation and another person does not•[00:41:34] What kind of changes Diana has seen in organizations that have embraced conscious leadership
[00:42:26] What flow states are
[00:43:30] How Diana would help people understand the benefits of a people-first approach
[00:48:02] One resource that Diana recommends•[00:49:03] The Enneagram system

How to fix failed messaging with just 3 conversations Jun 12, 2018

Show notes

“I realized that I’m doing the same stuff as I was doing at the first launch, this is like launch number four, and I’m not growing like I should be. What’s the missing piece here?”

“What I discovered? There’s a big difference between your audience and your customers.”

- Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko.com

Today, we’re speaking with Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko.com, about the importance of talking to people in order to make sure your messaging is on point. I’ve been a fan of Brian’s for years now, and his site is one of my favorite sources for everything related to SEO and building backlinks.

Today, Brian is going to walk us through how sales of his flagship course, SEO That Works, started to stall by the 3rd or 4th launch, even though his email list was growing like crazy.

And no matter how much he looked at his analytics, he couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. UNTIL, that is, he started talking directly with his customers.

So listen closely and find out how Brian dramatically increased his launch numbers with a simple human-first approach.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:02:27] Where Backlinko was in October 2013
[00:03:33] How Brian decided to launch a flagship course
[00:04:10] How Brian got the feedback that led him to create a new course
[00:04:50] How long it took Brian to create that first course, and how long it takes to create a course now
[00:05:31] How Brian learned what people thought about SEO from reading blog comments
[00:07:19] The overall structure of Brian’s first course
[00:08:07] How Brian promoted his first course
[00:08:33] What happened when Brian launched his first course
[00:09:26] How the audience changed after the launch of the first course
[00:11:26] How many people Brian tried to sell the first course to
[00:13:39] How Brian knew he could do better than he did at his initial launch
[00:14:22] The online course that Brian took to learn more about selling, and what he learned from it
[00:14:27] How Brian went about reaching out to customers who had been successful with his material
[00:16:10] What questions Brian asked when he reached out to customers
[00:17:09] What Brian found out from asking those questions
[00:19:23] How Brian changed the messaging and course after talking to customers
[00::21:37] Why talking to people is the only way Brian could have discovered the changes that he needed to make
[00:22:35] How Brian’s next launch size tripled after making changes
[00:23:28] How Brian applied his new knowledge moving forward

How to be happier, less stressed, and more effective through mindfulness meditation Jun 05, 2018

Show notes

What does meditation and mindfulness have to do with success?

In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Sharon Salzberg, one of the first people to bring insight & mindfulness meditation to the US back in the 70s and 80s. She has taught meditation to thousands of people, including at retreats alongside the Dalai Lama.

So why meditation?

Because I’ve experienced & seen first-hand how meditation has helped me and others to develop the traits that are essential to succeeding by putting people first:
Empathy, compassion, presence, peace, decreased stress & anxiety, increased self-control, focus, and discipline, increased levels of energy, a heightened sense of well-being.

And the list goes on and on.

In fact, if there was only ONE thing that I would recommend others do if they want to succeed by putting people first, it would be making some kind of mindfulness or meditation practice a regular part of your life.

But don’t just take my word for it. Let’s listen to Sharon talk about her own experiences in bringing mindfulness meditation to a skeptical audience, what got her hooked to meditation, the scientific evidence behind the benefits of meditation, and how to easily get started without a lot of fuss.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:03:00] Whether Sharon has needed to hold another job during the 40 years that she’s been teaching meditation.
[00:04:41] When Sharon realized she could teach meditation full time and make a living from it
[00:06:14] What led Sharon to get into meditation and make it her life’s work
[00:09:14] Sharon’s trip to India when she was in college
[00:09:39] What about meditation had such a strong impact on Sharon
[00:12:13] Why you should continue with meditation even when it brings up negative emotions
[00:15:53] Some of the scientific findings behind the benefits of meditation
[00:22:53] How people can get started with meditation and make it part of their daily lives
[00:25:59] Which styles of meditation are best to start with
[00:27:52] Why even Type-A personalities can benefit from meditation
[00:29:55] Sharon’s book, Real Happiness at Work
[00:32:10] Sharon’s experience with perfectionism
[00:35:11] What a Loving Kindness practice is
[00:37:16] Sharon’s experience with the Dalai Lama
[00:41:28] How Sharon would convince people to adopt a people-first mindset
[00:44:37] Resources that Sharon recommends

Scaling the unscalable: How 1-to-1 conversations with customers help Drift grow May 29, 2018

Show notes

What happens when you go from being customer-centric to customer-obsessed?

In today’s episode, you’ll hear from David Cancel, the CEO of Drift, the company behind conversational marketing, which emphasizes 1-to-1 conversations with your potential customers over a more traditional sign up-to-drip email series.

So why are we featuring a company that starts these conversations with a chatbot, instead of humans?

Because David, a 5-time startup founder and former Chief Product Officer at HubSpot, has without a doubt one of the most human approaches to understanding his customers that I’ve ever come across.

But he wasn’t always this customer-focused. In fact, he stumbled onto this approach almost by accident 10 years into his now 20 year stretch in SaaS, and it’s what has helped set Drift apart in the already crowded messaging market.

In this episode, David and I discuss:

How not having enough money to afford a proper support team led to the biggest breakthrough in his career, and how that helped him evolve from being customer-centric to customer obsessed
Why the only metrics that matter for measuring individual and team performance within a company are customer-related metrics
How doing the unscalable is critical to a company’s success
Why it’s so important for employees to discover their ‘superpower’ in order to thrive (as well as what David’s superpower is).

He also shares the biggest insights that he himself has gotten from his personal interactions with customers.

Honestly, David was a GOLDMINE of information on how to run a customer-focused company. So have your favorite pen and notebook handy, and get ready to take a ton of notes.
Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:02:27] The story of a time that David’s 11-year-old daughter came to his office to do a pricing study on baked goods
[00:06:38] The difference between a company that’s customer-centric and one that’s customer-obsessed
[00:07:09] How David got the idea for his business model at Drift
[00:011:07] What it looked like to have engineers communicating directly with customers
[00:011:43] What Drift’s methodology looks like now
[00:15:22] Which customer metrics Drift measures
[00:17:55] How customer metrics tie into the performance of the team
[00:20:15] How Drift is doing cohort analysis
[00:20:56] Whether individual performance is tied to customer metrics
[00:22:48] How Drift keeps different members of their product teams in touch with customers
[00:25:42] Why David switched away from having engineers take support calls and chats
[00:27:42] How the leadership team at Drift communicates with customers
[00:28:41] What one-to-one marketing means and how it works
[0032:00] The biggest insights that David’s gotten from meeting personally with customers
[00:34:17] Steps that David took to make his product easier to use for customers
[00:35:38] How Drift segments different types of customers in order to better serve different markets
[00:39:08] What Drift is doing in their company culture to ensure that their teams are successful
[00:43:10] Why David thinks it’s important for employees to find their superpower
[00:44:22] How to find your superpower
[00:49:03] What David considers to be his superpower
[00:49:58] How David would convince others to adopt a people-first approach
[00:52:11] Resources that David recommends

Speaking human: Using storytelling to build trust with your customers May 22, 2018

Show notes

Just how much of an impact can being transparent and vulnerable have on your business?

In today’s episode, we’re talking with Alaura Weaver, a copywriter who specializes in helping people speak ‘human,’ about the effect that storytelling can have on your business and how being transparent and vulnerable in your communication can create meaningful relationships with your customers.

She also shares a powerful story about the human cost of putting profit before people that’s definitely worth listening to.

Alaura is a contributing writer to CopyHackers, one of the my favorite Copywriting resources online, and is the story editor and content manager for the PRX podcast, “Inflection Point.”

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

How putting numbers before people leads to poor choices and a lack of trust from your customers
Why storytelling is essential to sales
Why you should frame your relationship with your customer as a shared story, with the customer as the hero of that story
How you can get actionable information out of qualitative feedback
And why it’s so important for companies to be transparent and vulnerable.

So if you want to discover how to communicate your story in a way that can help you grow your business, then this is definitely the right episode for you.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:01:40] How Alaura got into copywriting
[00:02:13] Alaura’s previous work in B2B sales
[00:04:35] Why storytelling is intrinsic to sales
[00:06:16] Why Alaura decided to pitch an article to Joanna Wiebe at Copyhackers and how the process worked
[00:08:48] The moment that Alaura realized how dehumanizing business can be, and why that prompted her to look for a more human way of doing business
[00:11:11] How putting numbers before people can result in making choices that cause guilt and break trust between companies and their customers
[00:19:36] How Alaura applied a more human-first approach to her copywriting business
[00:21:32] Why you should frame your relationship with your customer as a shared story, with the customer as the hero of the story ● [00:25:38] How Alaura walks companies through the process of discovering their story
[00:27:09] How Alaura sorts through data to find out what’s relevant and what isn’t
[00:31:20] The types of questions that Alaura asks in customer surveys
[00:32:13] How Alaura creates customer profiles
[00:33:56] How you can get quantifiable information out of qualitative feedback
[00:37:20] What to do with a customer persona once it’s established
[00:40:26] Why it benefits companies to be transparent and vulnerable
[00:45:11] The results that Alaura has seen from companies that take a story-based approach to appealing to their customers
[00:48:25] How Alaura would help people understand why a people-first approach is the most sustainable form of business
[00:50:47] One resource that Alaura recommends

Rescuing a sinking ship: How customer feedback saved CXL Institute May 15, 2018

Show notes

What do you do when you take a massive gamble on an initiative you think is a sure bet, and then it almost tanks your company?

In today’s episode, Peep, the founder of CXL, one of the most popular conversion optimization blogs on the internet, shares:

How the launch of the CXL Institute training program completely bombed, left the company with only 30 days worth of cash, and got Peep to the point where he was almost ready to pull the plug and let his whole team go.

BUT, he also shares how thanks to his people-first approach, Peep and his team were able to turn things around and start generating a profit.

We talk about the exact steps Peep and his team took to understand the needs of their customers as the ship was going down, including:

The exact questions they asked when their customers started AND left the course, and how that led them to give away a key part of their course for free
How they broke down the limited data they had to better understand who was staying in the course, who was leaving, and why
As well as the fundamental change they made to the course’s format that encouraged a positive change in their customers’ behavior and led to an increase in attendance

So if you’re interested in hearing how one of the top minds in CRO managed to rescue a sinking ship, you’ll definitely want to listen to this episode.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:02:36] How the CXL Institute got started
[00:05:04] The size of the email list CXL had at the time of the launch of CXL Institute
[00:05:58] What Peep decided to do when it looked like CXL Institute was about to run out of money
[00:7:35] The things that Peep learned from the qualitative feedback they got from people who were using or canceling their service
[00:11:00] How CXL Institute conducted interviews and surveys
[00:12:53] The types of questions CXL asked in surveys
[00:14:17] How the surveys helped CXL decide what to stop doing and what to keep doing
[00:14:54] The process that CXL used for analyzing the data from interviews and surveys
[00:15:39] How changing the cancellation process helped CXL get necessary feedback
[00:17:02] The top reasons why people were canceling their CXL Institute service
[00:18:29] How CXL used churn analysis to help them understand their cancellation data
[00:24:58] Resources that Peep recommends

Escaping the ‘perfect’ trap: How to get your idea out there, fast May 08, 2018

Show notes

Are you able to ship fast and get your ideas out there? Or do you get stuck in the ‘perfectionism’ trap?

In today’s episode, Sarah is going to share how she launched a brand-new User Experience course and watched it take off, before she even prepared a single lesson.

It’s a great story of how to validate a concept before even putting pen to paper by listening to your potential customers, and how to enlist your early users into creating an even more successful final product.

You’ll get to hear from Sarah about:

How losing a $5,000 a month client forced her to throw her perfectionism and impostor syndrome out the window and just launch with a concept that was ‘good enough’
How she knew she was onto to something big just by sending out a single Google form
How she sold out an 85-seat workshop with just 2 hours worth of work (and had to shut down registration early)
The one survey question she asks that always results in the most valuable responses
The need for authenticity and vulnerability in communications with customers
How obsessing over the people you want to help is a must if you really want to understand them

She also talks about the power of giving to give instead of giving to get, and the value that comes from nurturing relationships directly with your early customers.
I had a great time talking with Sarah, and I hope you learn from her as much as I did.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

[00:02:18] Sarah’s newsletter, The UX Notebook
[00:02:35] Why Sarah started The UX Notebook
[00:03:39] Sarah’s hobby as a marathoner
[00:05:08] The definition of UX
[00:07:29] How Sarah’s first UX course, the UX Portfolio Program, got started
[00:09:32] What it’s like to lose a $5000 per month client
[00:14:00] How Sarah started testing her portfolio program idea
[00:17:28] How to get started finding an audience for your product when you don’t have a big email list
[00:18:53] The differences between Sarah’s portfolio program and other projects she’d tried in the past
[00:21:35] Advice for people dealing with imposter syndrome
[00:24:39] The importance of getting feedback from early adopters of your project
[00:26:54] How Sarah set the price for her beta program
[00:31:27] The type of feedback Sarah ended up getting from her beta users
[00:34:30] How Sarah’s portfolio program helped users
[00:35:41] What types of survey questions to ask after a purchase
[00:38:41] Sarah’s reasons for adopting a people-first approach
[00:42:24] Resources that Sarah recommends

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