A Sit Down with Ed Wallace

Author Ed Wallace, in this week's Outside Insights Podcast, shares a personal, family story that illustrates it's not always formal training and education that shifts career-changing moments to meaningful work. Worthy intentions with a conscience create profound thought leadership strategies that facilitate workplace processes. Ed Wallace's book, "The Relationship Engine," and the steps detailed in it, spotlight connections -- how to make them, grow them, nurture them, and maintain them through nuances. If you're trying to find the magic to prosper in 2022 and forward, listen to learn about connections between purpose and performance.

By taking the time to learn intricacies and nuances about clients, a provider masters how to anticipate clients' needs. Insightful problem-solving measures demonstrate YOUR level of concern for THEIR needs. Watch your results and profits grow when you care about clients and it's obvious to them that you do!

Until next time,
Chris

Transcript

Chris Burkhard: 0:12

Welcome to the next episode of the Outside Insights podcast. I'm the host, Chris Burkhard. Outside Insights is a community created to help people close their personal and professional gaps and help folks have the life that they want. There's a blog a podcast, and generally the content helps you get thinking about yourself. I find you have to do work on yourself to get the life that you want. I'm here with longtime friend, Ed Wallace. He's managing director of AchieveNext Human Capital. He's a consultant and very talented speaker, associations, Fortune one thousand, scaling companies. You're an accomplished author and I am a groupie of your books, including Fairs to Friends, Creating Relational Capital, Building Relationships That Last and your number one best seller, The Relationship Engine. Ed, it's really cool to get a chance to hang out with you.

Ed Wallace: 1:07

Hey, Chris, it's great to be with you and join your audience on your podcast. Thanks so much.

Chris Burkhard: 1:12

So, I think I started to do this Ed as a relational, as a podcast opportunity, just a great opportunity to bust out of all the pandemic stuff. But I found so many people who meet successful people that read books about successful people, and there's never anything about the path to get there. And I don't know if you feel successful but tell talk a little bit about your path to get to write, to speak to have this thought leadership. How'd you get there?

Ed Wallace: 1:52

How much time do you have Chris?

Chris Burkhard: 1:54

Well, I know we have a hard stop so you're gonna have to give me the cliff notes, I imagine.

Ed Wallace: 2:00

Well, it's interesting, because we all look back and certain things you know pivot in our journeys caused our path to divert in a certain direction. You may recall that I'm a CPA and I always like to joke that I've been in recovery for about thrity five years now. Because it really wasn't the path for me and I quickly figured that out and I diverted into sales. And early on in my sales career I ran into a taxi driver named Max and Max became a mentor to me. He showed up at my house, I was traveling back and forth to the Midwest doing sales for a local company here in Philadelphia. And he showed up at my house in a London taxi. And after many many years of riding with him you know, I learned so many things. I learned how do you make every interaction matter? How do you engage depending on the person that's in your taxi cab and I file all that stuff away. And I won some sales awards and I wound up becoming the VP of Business Development for a local software company here. I was on a great executive career track, everything I ever needed. And then on August 26 2005, I got a call in my office and it was my wife.

Chris Burkhard: 3:28

Now Ed be specific with me, you know, be

Ed Wallace: It was at 11: 3:31

50am and she told me that our son specific. Grant, who at the time was eight years old, fell off a skateboard and that he was upset and he was at our friend's house and she was further away. Can I get there over lunch? Make sure he's okay, I said sure. So I started heading out but I'm moving pretty fast. Halfway to our friend's home she rings my cell phone and she was an ER nurse so it took a lot to unnerve her, and she said you need to go to the community college in our town. They're going to medevac Grant to Children's Hospital. He hit his head and he's not responding. So I get there pretty quickly and as I pull in, I see the helicopter and I see the ambulance. And I see this little kid with blond hair. You know Chris, the football players when they take them off the field with the blocks on their foreheads and he's got the blocks on his forehead on the gurney. And the only thing I can think of is, oh my gosh is he paralyzed? What's his state and they had his sneakers off and when I got to him, I tickled his feet because his feet were ticklish and his legs vibrated. So I was thinking okay, I'm having a rational moment and a very irrational situation. Laurie gets there ,they metevac Grant to Children's Hospital here in Philadelphia and in four minutes they're there. Brett our older son and I, it's going to be forty five minutes and Friday traffic to get to the hospital. This is the thing that really pivoted my entire life. Okay, my entire career I should say. We're getting down off the escalator in the Children's Hospital, this giant atrium, not knowing where to go and a woman approaches us with a lanyard on. She introduced herself and she said, would you be the Wallaces by any chance? And I said, yes, I'm Ed this is Brett. She said, I came to find you to let you know Grant is stable and I want to take you to where we take our helicopter kids. And helicopter kids just relaxed me. I don't know why he's still in danger. And turned out Grant had a really bad concussion. I know you know this story, but I want your audience to hear it. And I started thinking about the worthy intentions of the hospital, that they actually sent someone to find this family and turmoil, assure them, make their journey through navigating the hospital easier. And as Grant was recuperating, it struck me, I want to go to sales training, I want to go write books. If this can happen to an eight year old, what can happen to a forty five year old. And it was that moment when I started working through my exit from the job that I had, which was a dream job. I was supported by the CEO and I picked the platform of business relationships because you know, it's the only thing I was good. And it was the only thing I actually could write about. And like you said, all these books and customers later, I'm on a podcast with with Chris Burkhard. So that's how I got here and that was the pivotal moment that has me to where we are today. How's that for a

Chris Burkhard: 6:50

Well, first of all, it is a very powerful short story? opening in your book, The Relationship Engine. I've been listening to it and it really grabs you right in and of course, you can't for me as a father can't help but feel empathy, empathy in the moment. And I guess a couple of things that I've wanted to sort of always ask you. A lot you quantify something that people make a lot of assumptions about Do you feel that your background in accounting is how you put kind of a, not black and white because that's not giving it justice but you've put a model to something that is often times considered intangible? Or dare I say that just the really good people are the blessed people with good genetics are good at? Do you feel like that training gave you that? And I have a follow up question depending on where you go?

Ed Wallace: 7:52

Well, you know, it's interesting because you know, when you're starting to work with businesses and larger companies, they love stories, right? They love stories and you can go do a story at a sales kickoff. But if you're going to actually create a training business, you got to have metrics, you got to have process, you've got to have all the things that you and I are both aware of we've been through all those programs. So I started thinking about a couple of things. First thing I started thinking about was, okay, we have a process for everything in life. Why not a process for relationships? And I tested it with several people who were like well, that sounds manipulative. I said, well let's go through the process and there's five steps which I know you're aware of. First step in the process, establishing common ground. You and I meet, we've got to find something in common to want to meet again. So we all do that, there's no manipulation there.

Chris Burkhard: 8:51

Maybe we stay there most of the time with people, right? It's just where we are.

Ed Wallace: 8:56

We have people on our networks Chris, that will always be acquaintances and that's fine. But now we're going to do something together in business, we've got to find ways to trust each other and work together. So the second step in that we call the relationship ladder, is displaying integrity and trust. And you can be a trustworthy person but if you're not doing it with someone else, then how do you really know you're a trustworthy person? It's really just a feeling versus a reality. So the second rung is building trust, as we call it displaying integrity and trust. And now you'd become more of a peer with that person to business people, to people try to work on things, even in your personal relationships is the same stop. Then the third rung is when we're together, time is used effectively. We call it using time purposefully. and that's when things are really rolling along and your meetings are effective, and you're answering each other's sentences and all that kind of stuff. The fourth and fifth rungs are about helping each other offering and asking for help. So I can't tell you how many times I've been in a Keynote or doing training, I will say, when you meet someone, you're going to build a business relationship, you find something in common. Yes. Do you build trust? Yes. Do you use time effectively? Yes, you help each other? Yes, so where's the manipulation in that? The only thing is I just wrote it down. So I wrote it down and everything we do metric wise, stream wise, is built on that ladder and that process.

Chris Burkhard: 10:30

So I might be mixing up books and then stories and your path. And for that, please give me that forgiveness. In absorbing your current book The Relationship Engine what struck me and again, maybe it's the obvious that you've just simply put down was I seem to watch a lot of the projects at Placers with project managers fail, not because of process and project management, but because of internal relationships. I know that's a big part of your thinking. Could you share a bit about what you've learned through the book and through your trainings in that area?

Ed Wallace: 11:12

Well, first, I want to comment on the fact that at Placers you've built an amazing business, and you've built it on relationships and everybody I run into is affiliated with you. Chris is a great guy, they smile. They want to build, they want to have a relationship with you. So you're one of the folks who does it naturally, doesn't need the process. I failed to mention this earlier. The other thing that I'm most proud of is we've helped businesses understand that relationship development is a skill, a competency, you can be an introvert, you can be this on Myers Briggs, your discs, whatever, you're however you're labeled. If you think about relationship development can become a skill. And sometimes we need a process. Sometimes we need stories, sometimes we need tools. So the connection between what you're reading in The Relationship Engine and The Relationship Ladder is The Relationship Engine is the manifestation of the other three books. And it's focused on what we call relational leadership. And the person in maintenance can be a relational leader, the person out in the field doing geological rock studies can be a relational leader. It's not just the sales cow. I say cow people today, because it's not just those, it's everybody. And our internal relationships are the weakest so the only tweak we really made between the customer facing version, which is The Relationship Ladder and the leadership version, which is again, the culmination of all the things we've done over the years is we changed the headings of where you are in a relationship. So from a leadership perspective. The middle tier is the peer, the third tier is advocate and the first peer is your colleague, we're colleagues, we have something in common already, we work at the same company, we want to move out of the colleague dimension if we need to, because we're working on a bigger project, again, peer and then finally, instead of advisor, you're an advocate, you need advocates, the other person need that you advocate for each other. So that filled in some of that little gray area for you.

Chris Burkhard: 13:30

Oh, I think it does. And, you know, you know, a book is impactful, I found myself referring to the concept of relational capital. Now, I know, it's probably not completely unique to you, but I certainly give you a lot of credit for it. And I, at the very least I've observed others and thought to myself you know, they don't have a lot of relational capital, that's why they're struggling. So you know I get it completely in that regard. How are most people absorbing your material today? Are they they buying your book? Are they going through a classroom experience with you, perhaps a company that brings you in? Talk a bit about how people can get exposure to your material and you know, where they can access it.

Ed Wallace: 14:22

So, you know, we just finished or are finishing a pandemic so everything we've done the last two plus years pretty much has been through a virtual we call them virtual training modules. So you know, a simple description of something we do is we do what we call a ninety day accelerator program. We'll take a cohort of people through ninety days. Now they're not with us for ninety days. They're spending an hour every two weeks with us and they would get a combination of some measurement on how strong their relationships are; digestible. One of the things I've learned Chris over the years is, if you're not doing a full day workshop, you got to do virtual in a digestible way. So forty five fifty minute virtual training modules with actual assignments that we asked folks to apply and come back and report on in between modules, some measurement at the end to see how they have advanced things. You know, at AchieveNext.com you can go to business relationship training and find all the different ways we deliver. Now in the last nine months I've been traveling around the country again. So things have changed. A week and a half ago, I did four programs in five days throughout the southeast. The previous week, I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, of course, Florida and Texas are always open. So we're back to in person and what we're finding is we're doing maybe a sales kickoff in person. And then we're extending the program virtually. So now we've kind of balanced both things. And one of the things that is really top of mind right now, even though pandemic is kind of ending customers and people within corporations want to keep working virtually. So we've got to keep both muscles. We have to keep in person or proximate muscles and the relational capital concepts have all been tweaked or aligned with how to build a relationship over a zoom screen. So that's what we've been doing and I do keynote talks, but you know that.

Chris Burkhard: 16:36

I think it fits the world today, right? Everything's hybrid. It's how it seems like most people are consuming information today. So why would it not change? I bet it feels good to be back on the road a little bit. But if you spent a lot of life on the road like I have, it also was sort of a pleasant thing to also get a break behind the screen. Do you think and I mean, I get a sense that your material is even more relevant with us having technology as a conduit to connect. .Do you have a perspective on that?

Ed Wallace: 17:12

I just got off with a really good customer and we're planning a program for their R&D team. Now these are R&D. These are nurses these are not salespeople. These are nurses who need to go into clinics and curry favor with the lab leadership there to do their studies. So we're going to be doing a cascading program, five virtual modules with leadership and then concurrent to that five and five with the US based team. And then with the global team and everyone is virtual. So fifteen virtual training modules starting, I guess the end of May. So, I think that while it's easier on me physically, I still love getting out there. And you know, our sons are raised, my wife has a nice little part time career at a health system here. So she enjoys doing that and when I'm not out in the road, she says are you making any money this week?

Chris Burkhard: 18:26

But she's putting the right kind of pressure on you, right? You know, I've got one of those. Kind of an off the script one Ed, it seems to me as your powers of observation are where you see these patterns, you see these models, you see these, you know your story of the hospital, local hospital and what they practiced with you. Is that where you get much of your inspiration for your thought leadership is through powers of observation? And is that how you would say it where it comes from for you from that vantage point?

Ed Wallace: 19:10

I think so now that you're pointing it out. I love to see how people succeed and what they're doing to succeed. And when I started riding around with Max the taxi cab driver, I got this idea that I still have my corporate career, but I'd write a book someday. If you saw this one closet in my home office, it's got one of those, you know copy paper boxes, and it's full of yellow paper with the notes I took over the years from riding with the cab driver. Met an interesting person on an airplane. I wouldn't call it journaling because it was just ideas it wasn't sentences or anything. But I just started accumulating and then when I went to finally start to write the first book, I had way too much content. And I think it does come back to what you just said. I guess I'm inclined to observe and appreciate what I'm hearing behavior, a little quip here. Like we just talked about a quick video series we're going to do for AchieveNext. You mentioned the AchieveNext right, so everybody knows that's where I work. Anyway, and we're going to call it what are we going to call it I love the name and I can't remember what we're gonna call it, I wrote it down.

Chris Burkhard: 20:39

Well, maybe it should be a secret Ed, you know. Or I'll just keep building suspense while you find it, right.

Ed Wallace: 20:49

It's something about a minute and we're going to do little sixty second videos. A minute to win it. Videos on business relationships and sales effectiveness every week we're going to build a whole campaign around it because number one, people open videos on LinkedIn, we've got pretty decent traction with a lot of people on LinkedIn. And we think we can provide a lot of value over a period of time. So a minute to win it, I can't believe it was right here. And I appreciate your patience with that.

Chris Burkhard: 21:26

I was going to ask about if there was some self study because the world wants to consume by video like that and certainly I know that's introduction to your material. So I'm going to yank you around a little bit. Fares to Friends happens to be and I have a copy of it. I realized that it's a book today that at this point was your first book. I'm not sure it's even available today, but I happen to have grown up in a leadership environment that chose to make its culture and its commitment to service. It's purpose and it's sort of a Burkard tradition. If my father were here, he would tell you that he applied kind of the fares to friends approach to staffing, to restaurants to trash companies. We call it Nth degree. In fact, the audience won't be able to see it but I I give a coin on the purpose as our values on one side and Nth degree. I just think because it sets you apart, your well beyond relationships. Would you just talk a little bit about Max and just about just the concept of the service that he created and how he differentiated? And we'll get right back to The Relationship Engine. But to me, it's such a differentiator. And if you ask me, you should be doing keynotes about that. Because that's a differentiator that we can all do, you know. So you can tell that there's something, that I know it's way back but I really enjoy that aspect of your first book.

Ed Wallace: 23:07

Well, you know, it's way back in the first book but guess what? Every keynote heeds a requirement. Well, I met Max, my father had just passed away and miraculously this cab driver shows up one day in a London taxi cab in my driveway in Wayne, PA. And so right off the bat, he created a distinctive perspective on what was going to happen. And everything from the way the cab was organized the way he conducted himself. The way he asked questions, the way he remembered names, everything was relational and he was in a commodity if you really think about it. You know, a taxi cab ride the Philadelphia airport is a commodity and this guy was getting whatever the fare was plus incredible tips. So busy that to get in his cab the second time, I had to wait three weeks until he put me into his rotation. And then I was a writer for many years. And one of the things that we've taken forward with Max besides all the stories, we've actually created modules around taxi cabs. And we get our participants in our training, we give them a tool with a London cab, the middle of the page, and it's titled, What is your taxi ride like? And then we have them describe in the engine what their strengths are when it comes to relationships. We have them describing the trunk or the boot of a London taxi. What are they struggling with? And through the training, they literally name their taxi cab experience. They put their takeaways that they're going to work on and they talk about their worthy intentions and locating relational GPS, all these other concepts on one page. So then when they leave our training, they have that one memorialized page as their commitment. And we talk about how do you build a competitor proof, I love that term, taxi experience and competitor proof is every text, every email, every meeting, every zoom, every thought you have is putting the other person and the relationship first. And that's how you competitor prove yourself because products are products, services are services you know. You can talk about a large consulting firm like maybe Accenture let's say, and you know, Accenture, McKinsey right, you throw a blanket over them. It's the person at McKinsey it's the person at Accenture that you're really buying. No matter how big the brand is, you still got to connect with that partner, that supervisor, whoever that person is. And Max was incredible at that and I'm glad you asked me to share a little bit more about that.

Chris Burkhard: 26:12

Well audience, I did not know that it can be used in a contemporary way within things. But for years, I guess I borrowed from it because I took a one page and said, now stand in the front of my office. What would it take to make this the best quote taxi ride, right? What would it take? How clean should it be? Where should the water be to greet someone? What can we do to an Nth degree to create an experience with the individual who comes in? What's it feel like when the door is locked versus unlocked? So all that subtlety. So I certainly am very, very pleased and just enjoy that book and I have lent that to a few folks on the team and thought if I ever wrote a book about service, the ultimate compliment, it would have some feelings around that.

Ed Wallace: 27:00

Well, Max rides again, don't worry he he travels with me everywhere. People require the story, they are like, you're going to tell us about the cab driver. I'm like, sure. The thing that you said subtlety. I think the thing about relationships and what we help with is nuance. We help with the nuance. There's plenty of things on on presentation skills if you're a leader and communication skills of your leader, there's plenty of things on prospecting if you're in sales. But when you're with that person, and they say to you why should I hire you? Or why should I work with you? Can you provide a value statement? Can you say you know, like our value statement for working with the sales leaders will help you increase sales through a strategic focus on relationships. You want to have a statement that is in their language, increased sales, and you want to do it in a way that just gives a little bit about what you do. Not we're the first we're the largest, we're this we're that, we have eight hundred partners and they hear that from everybody.

Chris Burkhard: 28:09

Nobody cares about that stuff, right?

Ed Wallace: 28:11

They hear that from everybody, Yep.

Chris Burkhard: 28:13

But Ed, I think the intentionality and a process does not cheapen the experience.

Ed Wallace: 28:23

One in twenty people actually think about relationships with intention from the studies we've seen. So think about that one in twenty. And what's the intention, Chris? Intention is I've got a goal. And let's pretend it's I've got to get this deliverable, I want to go internal right, leadership. I want to get this project completed. I've been given a team of cross functional people and I don't know any of them. And we've got to deliver in three months a recommendation of some kind or a study, whatever it is, right.

Chris Burkhard: 29:01

So Ed, isn't it typical they have too? That team probably, so that project person, they have to deliver it in three months, they don't even know those people yet. The project leader needs to get this done in ninety days and they need expertise within the business to accomplish it, but it's not the same level of motivation for them.

Ed Wallace: 29:25

No, because they functionally are rewarded and they're not rewarded for their matrix work in most cases. There could be a corporate bonus but hey, you know who determines how you get that, right? So there's this element of okay, I have my job and my leader who does my bonus and my review. I've got Ed Wallace over here whos got this wacky team that I've got to spend some time on. Where am I going to default when I only have so much time? I'm going where the money is. So and now project leader has to find a way to build one to one relationships with the people on those teams. And he has to find a way for them to build one to one relationships with each other. And he also has to do an inventory of the relationships that they have outside of that team that can help them get this project completed. It's all in The Relationship Engine, I just wanted to mention that.

Chris Burkhard: 30:20

As you should. There's the proposition that we all need to be relational leaders. And they need to read your book. But some general advice relative to our time here, we've got to 10 more minutes or so. Where do you get somebody started so that they should really read your darn book, but where do you get them started? on their journey to become a relational leader?

Ed Wallace: 30:50

Well, the first thing I would do Chris, is I would ask that person or advise that person to look at the people around them who are successful. My guess is nine out of ten are really great with relationships. So let folks get their own proof point as to why people are successful. Then once they get that proof point, okay. Now, how are you going to organize yourself to build the relationships that you're going to need? And relational leadership, which is another flavor of leadership, we've got all kinds of leadership models today. So we pinned our hopes and dreams that our customers hopes and dreams on this whole idea of relational leadership. And it's really about number one, the relationship always comes first regardless of the deadline, regardless of the mistake, regardless of the admonishment, the relationship always comes first, Max always put the relationship first. And then as you think about some of the other tools we provide, like locating relational GPS, identifying the goals, passions, and struggles of the other person, well, everybody's got goals, passions and struggles in business, or they should. So if we can locate that, there's a great chance we can advance the relationship, we know that if we have a great relationship, that nuance is going to provide us or propel us into accomplishing what we're trying to do. So, I would think about okay, I've got to put relationships first and I want to connect to relationships attached to my goals. That's the one in twenty, that's intentionality; am I identifying, measuring and advancing? Not everybody, because we don't have time for everybody but the ones that are most connected to things I'm trying to help other people with.

Chris Burkhard: 32:49

I may be miss applying a concept, but is that your performance with purpose?

Ed Wallace: 32:55

Well, that's the fifth principle. And you're really not miss applying it. But since we haven't talked about the five principles of relational leadership, and I know that's where you want me to go. There we go. So after the skateboard incident, after the new business started, I got approached by another publisher HarperCollins. They said, all your concepts apply to leadership, let's get you out of the sails genre movie in the leadership. Long story short, we did the book, the relationship engine, you mentioned how successful it was. And it's found it's based on five principles, the first principle, no surprise, displaying worthy intent. And if we had a circle, and we had a diamond in the middle of the circle, with four slices around the circle, where the intent touches every one of them, because unless you're unless you're seeing behavior that comes back to you from other people, that demonstrates your good intentions, they don't get your good intentions. So simple things like meetings, get extended competencies, or shared. People pick up the phone when you call their cell phone. You mentioned I observed behavior. So we've documented all those behaviors in our assessment tools, but the first one is displaying worthy intent. And then we go around worthy intent, I'm going to get to your principle here. The second one is located is caring about people's goals, passions and struggles. The third one is making every interaction matter like Max. The fourth one is valuing people before processes. And the fifth one is connecting performance to a purpose. And this principle is along the lines of some thinking that was done years and years ago about the year we were born. The dash in between the year we're no longer here. And it's all about how are you spending that dash? What is your dash going to look like down the road someday when you're eighty five years old, and you're getting ready for that dash to have a number on the end of it. So I'm 1959 dash right now. My dash is still moving, I hope it's gonna move for a long time. And and we ask people questions in this session about you know, what are you really here for? What's most important to you? And it's really a self reflection on themselves. And then we translate into okay, so how do you make this deliverable? This project, buried in the guts of a company? How do you connect that to a purpose? And it's really interesting, the way people all of a sudden start taking, I'm a project leader, and I work for a health care company that helps people with their medical problems, a medical products company, I'm actually helping people in this project and it can be done, it can be done. You can actually draw a line to what your company's mission is and that principle. So that's the performance to a purpose and that is the culminating principle of the five.

Chris Burkhard: 36:06

I appreciate the visual, you know, I've consumed the material but that certainly helped bring it to life for for me and for the audience in that regard. And I tell you, when you talked about worthy intent as the first principle, what I usually see is when people struggle, they're not picking up the phone, you know. They're not sticking around when the meeting goes long. You know, I hear it from that side whether it's a salesperson or an employee who is just learning this stuff. You know, they pick it up for you and so it's just interesting because you're observing things that are critical to for people to have the success they want and to get stuff done, but they miss it all. So I think it's incredibly valuable with what you're sharing. Some simple ideas around that. So how do we organize ourselves? We only have a hundred sixty eight hours in a work week. There's seven times twenty in a week, we only have a hundred sixty eight hours in a life week and we spent maybe a third or maybe half of that time working. How do we organize ourselves so that we can embrace the nuance of what we're talking about? Well, don't do zoom meetings back to back like I am right now, when we get finished, don't do that. If you have a half hour zoom meeting, let's say from one to one thirty, don't take another zoom meeting until two. So you can debrief after the half hour any commitments you made. And you can take ten or fifteen minutes to prepare for the next one. And again, it sounds complicated, it really isn't. Organize your day that before and after you always have some time because by the end of that day, if you don't get to what you talked about at eight thirty oh my gosh, what did we talk about it a eight thirty? Start your own meetings at ten or fifteen after an hour, don't give the other person a break because they're not doing this. So if you have a team meeting of some kind nine ten to nine fifty or nine ten to nine forty and then everybody starts automatically getting this buffer because of the way you're scheduling your time. Just a couple of ideas. I'm an old Dale Carnegie graduate so our daily huddle starts at eight thirty four. You know, it's the most talked about thing. So in hearing about you and your day and everything. Let me just obviously, as a fan I'm picking and choosing from all these different experiences. What would you like to talk about? What would you like to teach today? What would you like to summarize? What would you like to share with the audience?

Ed Wallace: 38:59

So now you're asking me about connecting performance to a purpose?

Chris Burkhard: 39:04

Well actually you know, the great thing about a connection and the relationship, you're giving me this time and the audience the time and you've obviously got a busy day and in demand. So I'm shifting it up and just letting it be. What do you want to teach today? What's top of mind? What do you want to connect because there's just so much content?

Ed Wallace: 39:24

Yes, I think from a takeaway standpoint and we did talk about a lot of different things, the idea of making every interaction matter. I think that is the third principle. And like worthy intent is greens fees, you better have it, okay? Yeah, you have to have worthy intention.

Chris Burkhard: 39:51

Table stakes.

Ed Wallace: 39:51

Table stakes, exactly whatever you want to call it, you better have that and GPS is a way to learn about people. But if you think about it, how do you make that interaction and how do you make even a challenging interaction matter? That I think is the key. There's two ways to look at worthy intent. How do you go into every interaction with good intentions towards the other person, regardless of the situation? And how do you go in believing regardless of the situation, that they have good intentions towards you as well? And I think if you can level set your mind like, Hey, I'm going into this even though we've got a personnel issue or we've got a customer problem. I'm going into with good intentions and I believe they have them as well. I think it's a lot easier to find common ground and reach reconciles. So, you know, that would be my main thing is how do we make every time or with somebody special, and it's exhausting but it becomes kind of natural then after a while.

Chris Burkhard: 41:00

But you know, Dale, Carnegie had a principle if you give people a high standard to live up to the live up to it. So I completely identify with it. Because I tell you what, when you go into it thinking the opposite way Ed, that also often happens true, right? It's all about how you show up. One of the ways I was taught you know to have that impact with each person is my dad used to say now it's a digital three by five, but back in the day you used to have a three by five index card for everyone. And he'd decide, could he put a plus in the top right hand column with everybody he touched? I teach that in leadership today and people giggle because what's a three by five index card? Although I see them used when people talk still, that it's such a powerful thing. Because how many times do we go through days on autopilot versus planned and intentional? So I really liked that and I think that's really terrific advice. Anything else that we've missed today that you'd like to summarize as we wind down here?

Ed Wallace: 42:13

I think just to complement what you just said, and maybe build off that a bit and from your father. That's why we innovated relational GPS because almost anything on that index card other than demographic information that that person shared with you, or that you know, about that person is a goal of some kind, business or personal, a cause or a passion of some kind, and or struggle of some kind. So we tried to make it simple, that if you can locate the goals, passions and struggles, and how do we do that we do that through discovery questions. We do that by asking and being curious. And I have a real simple way to ask questions, Chris. The first question, let's say I'm talking with you, and I'm a potential vendor of yours and I'll say something to you. You don't have to answer this. I'll say something to you like, Well, Chris, tell me how the current business environments impacting your company. Knowing you and most business owners, you're going to talk for a while, there's a good chance you're going to expand on that you're passionate about what you do at Placers, you're successful. So you're going to talk about that. Now. I can just take that and leave and start talking about what we do. Or I can say, why is that happening, Chris? And guess what? You're going to tell me some more. And then then when you take a breath and say, can you tell me more? And you're going to tell me some more? And then I'm going to say is there anything else? And I think disciplining ourselves and those are my sentences, my questions. I think disciplining ourselves to ask three additional questions around anything we ask someone. Number one, it shows you we've got to be sincere and curious that that again, that's table stakes, we got to have good intentions towards it. But we're going to learn so much more. And that person is probably going to feel pretty comfortable with us that even though I have sales on my forehead, or even though I have a need on my forehead, I'm walking around the company. It's like well, that person is really interested in what I'm doing here. They're not just coming over I need your time. So I think if you can do the oh we call it ask ask ask before you tell and tell is like you when you start talking about yourself. So there's a another little Ed Wallace minute, Miracle minute.

Chris Burkhard: 44:49

See, but the great thing about that is so many people misjudge what sales is. They have a perception, a bias of what sales is and then they all have to get stuff done internally. And they don't think to be practiced. And you know, that's a technique. Well, no, but not if it's authentic.

Ed Wallace: 45:10

Right, that's right.

Chris Burkhard: 45:11

Not if it's yours, not if you do it a lot. So, I think that's a terrific gift to give everyone. If people want to know more where can they reach you? Of course, with Amazon, I get it they can buy your book. But if people want to hang out and hear more of your one minute wisdom and get to know you on this journey, where do they find you Ed?

Ed Wallace: 45:41

Well, I just suggest people link in with me, EdWallace007. That's easy to remember. I don't know how I got it, Chris.

Chris Burkhard: 45:50

You got a little lucky though right?

Ed Wallace: 45:53

Yes. I just punched it in one day years ago. I'm like, I can get EdWallace007. I'm taking it. So link in with me and we do publish a bunch of stuff. Well, I mentioned earlier, we post, we've got an incredible network whose stuff we share. So link in with me and then you can always go the achievenext.com or Achieve Next website. We do a lot of things that Achieve Next from alliance organizations for CFOs and CHRO's all the way through to business relationship and sales effectiveness training. So we're an organization of thought leaders. So there's executive coaching, there's career coaching, there's diversity equity and inclusion, there's culture, there's my stuff, there's leadership. So check us out, there's a bunch of my colleagues out there that are really good at what they do as well.

Chris Burkhard: 46:48

I highly recommend you check it out. I know some of the colleagues and I don't know a business small, medium or large that isn't looking for external thought leadership on those topics right now, because you can't have them all on your own. Ed, I'll leave you with one final question. What would you be doing if you weren't doing what you're doing now? What could you have been? What might have life been for you Ed?

Ed Wallace: 47:17

I would have been a college basketball coach.

Chris Burkhard: 47:21

It makes total sense.

Ed Wallace: 47:24

Literally, I had a position and the head coaches changed and I just didn't feel comfortable. I'm twenty three, twenty four years old. I had a graduate assistant position, I won't mention the school and the coach went to the pros and a new regime came in, I'm intimidated. I'm twenty three, twenty four and I just let it go. But like I always say everybody says well, what if I look at it this way, if I had done that, I wouldn't have the incredible spouse I have in Laurie. I'd probably have met someone else. I wouldn't have the two great sons I have. I wouldn't be here with you today. So, I always try to in my way, coach people when they say but I should have done this. You might not have a lot of the goodness that you have today if you had done that. So there are no regrets.

Chris Burkhard: 48:25

No regrets. So, I would have been a park ranger I believe and I also have no regrets in that regard. Ed, I know you are going to produce other content. Will you come back down the line and share some of your concepts as we get going?

Ed Wallace: 48:42

Let me know Chris, anytime.

Chris Burkhard: 48:45

Thanks