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Episode #254
Robert Chen

How To Sell Your Expertise, Win Deals, & Become A Rainmaker

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Summary

Tap into more significant opportunities and watch yourself grow professionally. Join your host Michael Zipursky as he talks with Robert Chen about selling your expertise, winning deals, and becoming a rainmaker. Rainmaking skills contribute a lot in an organization because it drives huge revenue for a company through communication strategies in bringing on new clients. In this episode, Robert shares in-depth insights into the importance of deepening client relationships and dives deep into his book, Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers, which is a clear roadmap to building a book of business and cultivate a growth mindset. He also explains his approach to overcoming challenges from a business perspective and the most effective strategies for generating qualified leads. Tune in to understand the concept of continuing skillset evolution for expansion and increasing abilities.

I am excited to have Robert Chen joining us. Robert, welcome.

Thank you so much, Michael. It’s great to be on.

Robert, you are a partner at Exec-Comm where you lead a team of consultants to support your client’s business development efforts. You’ve worked with Fortune 100 or 1000 clients and many top professional services firms. You also teach and lecture at the Wharton School where you focus on Managerial Communication, Persuasion, Storytelling, and more. It’s great to have you on and excited to have you share some of your story and lessons learned with us here, Robert.

Thank you so much.

Before we get into how you got to where you are or some of the strategies, tactics, approaches, and mindsets that you are using in your business now, take me back to before being a partner at Exec-Comm. What were you doing?

My first job out of college was as an equity trader. I studied Chemistry and Economics in college. I did most of my time at least professionally when I was at college doing material science research. I thought, “I need to see light outside of a lab.” I decided to go where many of my classmates were going, into financial services. I started doing equities trading for a prop trading firm.

From there, I decided, “Equity trading is great for learning pattern recognition decision-making but I want to do something that was more plugged into who I am. I stumbled upon a book on how you find your passion in life. It all landed towards some type of teaching, counseling, and coaching role. I got a role at a health insurance company, doing corporate training and coaching. I then joined my firm as a consultant and then moved on from there to become a partner.

Do you remember what that book was that helped you to find your “passion?”

There are two books. The first book I read was The Pathfinder and that was the very first book of its kind that I’ve read that helped you think about who you are and what you bring to the table and find a job that fits you. The book I often recommend to others is What Color Is Your Parachute? because it gets you to the same place and I take a faster read.

When people are hesitating to take risks to achieve business development, they're not seeing the value of the activities they're putting in. Click To Tweet

You decide to make a change and shift the type of work that you were doing into your current firm. It seems like you started at a more junior position and continue to work your way up, is that correct?

That’s right.

You just published a book called Selling Your Expertise: The Mindset, Strategies, and Tactics of Successful Rainmakers. I’m sure that some of our readers here will be very familiar with the term rainmakers. Especially if you live in Vancouver where I am, you’re very familiar with the term rain, but in a business context, define for us what is the role, purpose, or function of a rainmaker.

The rainmaker, as defined in the book, is someone who can generate revenue in an above-average way sustainable over time. When you think of all of your readers as consultants can appreciate that the biggest value point from a consultant standpoint and beyond your technical expertise and what you’re bringing to the table is the ability to find people to hire you and use your expertise. The way we’re looking at rainmakers are people who can do that consistently and sustainably over time. We find that it’s something that is not so easy for a lot of folks, yet a lot of people want to aspire to do that.

You talk a lot about mindset and I’m a very big believer. Many will have read The Elite Consulting Mind which we published many years ago. I’m wondering from your perspective and what you’ve seen over the years. What have you identified as the key distinctions or differences in terms of the mindset of somebody who is a successful rainmaker and maybe someone who is struggling?

There are so many sales books out there or books on business development. When we thought about why write this book, it stemmed from the work we do coaching many of our clients. When we think about the knowledge professional in general, a lot of times when it comes to the mindset of being able to step into business, what’s hard is the shift from doing the technical work to now taking on what a lot of people often see as a deviation from that to selling the work.

Often, one of the biggest mindset hurdles for people to overcome is to not see selling as a deviation but to see it as an evolution, as a function of your consulting practice, your expertise is in a way that allows you to further refine that expertise and to be able to tap into bigger opportunities for yourself beyond executing on work other people may have sold for you.

Robert, I know a lot of people understand that. I’m good at delivery and doing the work. I’m an expert in that area. I may be not that comfortable going out and doing “business development, sales, and marketing.” They know they need to do it, but still, they feel hesitation in taking the steps towards doing that critical work because if you don’t have clients, you don’t have a business. What would you offer as guidance for somebody who might be hesitating a little bit right now to lean into their business development efforts consistently? What are 1 or 2 suggestions you would say, “Here’s what you should at least start doing to get the momentum going in your business?”

When anyone hesitates, I often get them to focus on that itself being feedback for them in terms of how they’re seeing the risk/reward of business development. Often when people are hesitating, they’re not seeing the value of the activities they’re putting in. One of the things I cover in the book is the idea that business development sometimes makes it difficult for people to wrap their heads around that there is a bigger luck component when you compare it to someone who’s doing their technical work.

CSP 254 | Rainmaker

 

Whatever expertise you’re in, whether it’s accounting, investment banking, or law, often the technical work you put in X amount of hours, you’re going to get fairly definitively output that you’re looking for. When it comes to business development, you could put in X hours, but at any given point in time, there are so many variables that impact the outcome.

The understanding of that is something that can help someone feel more at ease in terms of putting in the time for business development, even when they’re not seeing the results. It’s easy to keep business development going if every person you reach out to wants to do work with you. It’s when you feel like, “I’m doing all of these things and it’s amounting to nothing that people begin to reassess whether that’s a good use of their time.” Understanding that the luck skill component to business development can help people be more at ease.

Let’s make this kind practical and tangible for everyone who’s joining us. Business development itself is broad and wide. There’s so much that can go into it. For a solo consultant or a boutique consulting firm owner who recognizes, “I get that, Robert. I need to step up my business development efforts,” what are a few tactics or recommendations that you would have for them to get started? What can they do right now to begin generating more conversations and more calls, but ultimately more conversations with ideal clients? What are you seeing working best in the industry?

Once you have a desire to want to sell, which a subset of people naturally will want to. They’ll give it a good try to have a clear plan. When people are especially getting into the selling aspect, they’re typically also still doing a lot of the delivery. The first step is to know for any contact. This is probably the most important thing, where you stand with them, and based on that, use a clear strategy.

In the book, I break up three common scenarios you’ll often find yourself in. One is a scenario where people you know could potentially buy your services, but they haven’t come to you for a need. The second scenario is that they have a clear need that they’ve articulated to you. The third scenario is that you’re already working with them and you’re looking to expand. All three of these channels can allow you to find a business or generate more revenue.

Often, where new consultants are only starting their business in this first scenario where people barely know who you are, but you know that they may be able to engage you. Part of that is knowing that in this scenario, it’s not about pitching your services because they haven’t come to you with the need. It’s hard to pitch something in terms of a solution that there isn’t a demand for. Part of your strategy in this first bucket is looking to build relationships and understanding what goes into building relationships.

How do you make contact in a way that they’ll want to engage with you again? Let’s say if you call someone and they pick up, what do you say to make them want to talk to you again or potentially meet with you? I talk about this idea based on research around escalating commitments. In order for you to build a relationship, you want the other person to feel like whatever interaction they had with you was positive enough for them to escalate a commitment to you, which is maybe to meet you in person and then request a proposal or to trust you enough to share what they need. There’s when traditionally, people know a sales process starts.

One thing that a lot of people struggle with these days is that there’s so much noise in the marketplace. The typical decision-maker is bombarded with all kinds of emails, phone calls, and text messages. They’re trying to stay focused on getting their work done, not to mention filling in all these inquiries of people that are vying for their attention. Is there anything that you’ve found that works well for somebody in professional services to get in front of that true ideal client and have that message resonate and that person then wants to engage in a conversation?

What you’ve highlighted is further exacerbated by the pandemic. Everyone’s so busy and you’re not face-to-face anymore. You don’t have that opportunity to be face-to-face to build new relationships. People just lean on old or a relationship that they know. A big part of being able to connect with someone who’s busy is figuring out how you are leveraging your existing relationships.

Once you have a desire to sell, you want to have a clear plan. Click To Tweet

If you are on your own, you have to think of your professional network and who could potentially introduce you to or provide a warm connection to you for other people you want to meet. If you don’t have that, not everyone’s going to have a robust professional network as well. What are you doing to build your reputation in a way that people begin to recognize the value you can add?

That could be writing or speaking. That could be doing things pro bono or volunteering, but the idea is how do you get people to recognize what value you can bring? Also, how do you begin to build a relationship in a way that they will share with you some of the things that they’re struggling with? Present a potential opportunity to match your expertise to what they’re looking to do.

At your company at Exec-Comm, what’s working best for you in terms of generating qualified leads and opportunities?

One of the things is that we’ve been lucky. It’s in some ways awesome to say, but also crazy that we’ve been in business for the last several years. We have some clients that have been with us for over 30 of those years and continue to engage us. A lot of how we’ve been able to build our business and especially coming into the pandemic and out of it is by leaning on our reputation in the business with our clients but also continuing to offer new services and offerings.

One of the beautiful things about consulting is that in order for us to get hired, we have to keep doing what we’re doing well. The continuing evolution of our skillset has allowed us to keep our business, but then as our buyers and folks who engage us to move to different companies, that has allowed us to naturally expand. In times when things are a bit tougher, we do have a strong outreach component as well. It’s this wonderful mix of having a reputation but also reaching out when we feel like we have more capacity than business.

Could you break it down for yourself, Robert? What does that look like? Begin at a high level. When you say that you have additional or extra capacity, you do have the ability to reach out to prospective clients. Is that an email? Is that LinkedIn? Is it direct mail? Walk me through it so that everybody has a sense of what is part of the best practices that you employ to start getting more of those conversations going.

There are a couple of ways we would do this. Pre-pandemic, a lot of people were direct outreach or by phone. Sometimes by email, we find phones often, depending on the generation and on the industry. It could be easier and harder, but that was one way. LinkedIn is also a great way to connect with folks whom we may already be connected with. There are certainly a lot of folks on LinkedIn.

Something else that works well is to be able to bring together a forum of people who will typically engage us for our services but offer them a value-added component. It’s similar to what you do here with this show. It’s a place for them to get to know each other and learn to network. We’re in that mix with them and as part of that, being able to build our relationship as a value-add to what they’re looking to do in their own careers.

Is that almost, in a sense, like a virtual mastermind or virtual forum where you would invite 5 or 10 more or less executives, potentially the decision makers or ideal clients to an online webinar or a meeting where you might discuss a topic? You would facilitate that, but it’s a way to bring your ideal clients together to explore a relevant idea, theme, or something along those lines.

CSP 254 | Rainmaker

 

It’s something that we feel the topic is relevant for them and they have this opportunity to expand their network pretty quickly in an intimate setting.

Is there anything that you tried, Robert, in the last year or so from a marketing perspective that you hoped might work but didn’t? It fell flat on its face or you didn’t get the traction you were hoping for.

In the pandemic, direct outreach was something that stopped working because everyone was so busy managing their lives. It became the realization that often when people are busy, they go with the tried and true. There was something that was more of an in-context situation instead of going out cold, “Let’s look at who our clients are.” Other places where we’re seeing less return might be the pure cold social media marketing that’s out there. It’s good for potential brand building, but on the outreach side, often we find it’s better to connect with folks in a higher quality way than to do a more mass social media blast or even a mass mailing blast.

Before we go on, I want to come back to one thing that you mentioned because it’s an extremely powerful opportunity that many people don’t pay attention to, which is to sell more to your existing client base and offer additional services. Often, when people think about ways to grow revenue or to generate additional business, they think about new client acquisition and that’s significantly harder. It takes a lot more work to build relationships and establish trust with new people as opposed to those whom you’ve already worked with and delivered the results to.

How do you all approach that? When you have your existing client base, let’s say you’ve created a new offering. What are some of the best practices that you all use when you want to share a new offering or a new way that you could add value to an existing client that is different than what you’ve initially been engaged to do? Are there any best practices or approaches that you find to work well?

In the book, one of the things I talk about when it comes to expanding existing relationships is this embed, expand, and establish model. The first thing you want to make sure you do is to embed yourself with strong delivery. There’s a recognition that your expertise is not only strong, but you are someone that they want to invite back. You are not just someone who, “We had a good enough experience that it was worth what we paid you, but let’s see what else is out there.”

That’s number one and once you’ve embedded yourself, a lot of how we find ourselves creating new offerings stems from the needs we hear from the clients directly. They’ll often come to us and say, “Do you have content around storytelling with data and the ability to use data to tell a narrative? Do you have coaching for partner candidates as they’re getting ready for their panels?”

From there, we look at our experience-based there and begin to create custom solutions that often when we see a lot of traction for them, we may standardize across our firm to be leveraged. Often, we’ll usually use our relationships and understanding of the client to drive our new service offerings so that 1) We know it resonates and 2) It’s one that again directly serves a need. I suppose to something we may build from what we think is a need that’s out there.

As the firm has grown and it’s added more people over time, have there been any changes to the offerings or the services that you provide to your clients? If so, how has that changed now compared to before?

One of the beautiful things about consulting is for us to get hired, we have to keep doing what we're doing well. Click To Tweet

A big component of what we used to do was to be in person with people. Certainly, since the pandemic has changed drastically, right now most of our business is virtual. Often, the general principles and that’s in some ways when we thought about, “How do we distill what we think is available to our clients and sell your expertise?” The principles stay the same in terms of needing to build relationships. If you’re helping a client with their business development, how are you building those relationships?

The medium, in terms of the way you do it, may look different, or your ability to understand what need they might have, you may be able to do it through social listening or other methods, but knowing that once there’s a need, how do I get them to be open to speaking to me about that need? How do I close that deal? Those principles remain the same. From our offering standpoint, a lot of it is figuring out, “What is the outcome?” Our clients are looking like all of the readers here and you as well, Michael.

We hone in on, “What do they want to happen? Is my expertise the thing that allows them to get there?” Coming back to one of your earlier questions around the hesitation to sell, one of the things for all of us to keep in mind is that we spent a lot of effort and time building our expertise. Often, this expertise is designed or built up to serve other people’s needs. When we think about selling, it’s about serving others so that they can reach where they want to go.

When people see selling a serving, as opposed to self-serving, they become less hesitant as well to bother someone because if they’re not hiring you, they’re hiring someone else. If you have put in a ton of work, then in some ways, it could be an injustice to both your client and certainly to you if you don’t put your best foot forward for them to consider you to solve their problems.

One of the things connected to that is that when you shift your mindset from being more transactional and selling. It’s something the sales lady does to someone and instead of something to do for someone or with someone. It’s a lot more of that serving-first mindset. That almost equals or means that you need to have a longer-term mindset. You move from transactional short-term to longer-term value focused.

What advice do you offer for or would you suggest for somebody who is saying, “I understand that I need to ramp up, deliver a lot more value, not hold back, and understand that I’m trying to build relationships here and those take time. If somebody wants to generate results faster, they need to get revenue in sooner. They don’t maybe have the cash cushion that a larger or a more established firm might have. What comes to mind for you? What advice might you give to somebody in that position?

When it comes to consulting, especially if you want to be a rainmaker, there is a commitment you want to make to the world. What is hard to do is to dabble in consulting and try to get outside unless you have something extremely unique about you that can get people’s attention and the word spread. That’s a possibility, but for most people, you can become a rainmaker, but you have to give yourself at least a 2 to 3-year ramp where you’re saying, “I am going to do this.”

What ends up happening in consulting is that once you get a foothold and you deliver good work, everything becomes a little bit easier. You’re going to have more people willing to vouch for you. You’re going to have more opportunities so then your ability to grow your business becomes faster because you have more people recognizing what you’re able to do. Whereas right now, if you are starting cold, no one knows what you’re able to do. There are so many people who seem able to do the thing you’re able to do. If you can commit to that horizon, that will change the way you operate.

Often, if you give yourself such a short time, then you’re pushing for something that may not be there. Again, no one is going to react to that well because they feel like if you’re pushing so hard, this is going to be a short-term relationship as well, especially depending on your level of expertise and the type of trust you need. I don’t know if you could shortcut the ability to build trust.

CSP 254 | Rainmaker

 

Robert, how many people are in the firm right now or at your company?

We have about 50 to 55 people.

I’m interested in what you’ve seen. One of the challenges that the consultants have is that as they’re starting to build their team, they notice that it has an impact on the profitability or the profit margin of the business. As you’re adding more people, all of a sudden now, your profit margin starts to shrink yet that’s in many cases. You need to invest in a team, infrastructure, and resources in order to grow. What have your experiences been around? How do you personally think about that as the company is making investments into growth, but that can also impact the profit margin of the business? Are there any thoughts or experiences connected to that?

Of the 55 employees, that’s going to be a mix of consultants who are revenue-generating to those who are our facilitators where we do training or coaching services. We have folks there and then our support team. Part of writing this book is that it’s also our internal guide as well for training our folks to bring in profitable revenue. I don’t know if the growth of people necessarily impacts margin as long as we have the right revenue that’s also coming in to sustain that growth. What we always think about is, “How do we get people closer to the client so that everyone is related to driving value for the client?” Value for the client is the proxy for what they’re willing to pay us to serve them.

Another question is about rainmakers. As you are running a smaller consulting business, initially, the founders are going to be the ones doing everything. Over time, you start to have that question, “Do you want to be focused more on delivery or on business development?” As the company gets larger, there are a few established and successful consulting firms where the owner or the founder is doing all of the work. At what stage do you think a rainmaker can be not the founder of the business and when they get to that place, is it good for that person to still be involved in the delivery or should they just be solely 100% focused on generating business and building those relationships?

It will depend on a number of factors. 1) Certainly, that individual and the type of life they want to have for themselves and the mix of work that they want. 2) Like any other organization, what is the hardest thing for that organization? Often it is going to be on the revenue generation side because if you have a lot of revenue generators, then the founder or whoever it was, the core revenue generator could potentially do something else and be okay. It’s just hard to bring in revenue.

This is going to be the inevitability when any one of your readers becomes hopefully a rainmaker. You’re going to run out of time. You’re going to run out of the time you have to reach out to clients and drum up business because you still have to deliver on the work or some of the work or at least manage the client service side of it.

That’s when you have to start building out a team. You can have a team take on different elements. You can have someone who’s gifted in client service take on a lot of the back to day-to-day client interactions. You might have someone who’s good at cold outreach visits. Someone may take on that element and then you focus on perhaps closing. A way to think about that equation is to continue to find resources to give you leverage and scale.

Certainly, there are some people who have built their platforms using technology. They’re one person with a lot of great ideas and they have whether it’s videos, online courses, scaling books, or their impact being able to drive revenue in a way that doesn’t take up their individual time. Those would be the ways to think about it. I don’t know if there’s an easy equation for saying, “You should shift to management when you’re at the stage.” I do think it’s related to the strengths of the individual themselves. They should do what they’re good at doing and potentially find support to help with other elements, including overall management because a lot of that is operational that you may not want to take on.

When we think about selling, it's really about serving and serving others so that they can reach where they want to go. Click To Tweet

I want to get your take on this, especially as you’re involved in your company of 50 team members. When you, as a firm, think about your goals and initiatives for the year or for the quarter, you encounter something that isn’t clear-cut. Let’s say you decided, “We want to grow our revenue by X percentage or we want to achieve this or we want to launch this new offering,” but you don’t know the answer to exactly how to do that.

You might have an idea, but all of us in business, at one point, recognize that we know where we want to go and we have an idea of how to get there but there’s something like a bridge that we need to cross or some challenge there. How do you personally and with your team go about overcoming those challenges to ensure that you keep reaching your quarterly and annual goals? Do you turn to a coach? Do you start reading? Do you do online research? Do you call people? How do you approach overcoming challenges from a business perspective?

We’re probably not alone. Sales forecasting is difficult. We try to look at the data that we have. Part of that data is the existing conversations. Some of us have long-term contracts that you can begin to project out the information, but it’s key to have the data to know, “What is it that we would do differently if we didn’t achieve what we were looking to achieve?” Is it that we got so hung up on delivery in Q4 that now we have no business in Q2 of next year because we didn’t spend that time?

We try to look at the behaviors that we would try to do differently when we didn’t achieve the thing that we thought we would achieve with the work that we would put in. That’s typically how we would look at it and how we fill that gap depends on what the gap is. Is it, “We need to staff up on more facilitators because we ended up teaching a lot more or we ended up doing a lot of the coaching? We need to potentially bring in designers because we found ourselves designing more complex programs.”

That would be perhaps the way to fill the gap. If it’s a knowledge gap, being in an organization that is within learning and helps other people build skills. We naturally look to build our own skills. That’s embedded in that. That could be books or attending the workshop, whether it’s individually or as a team. Any time we don’t reach it or it doesn’t look like we’re tracking to get to where we want to go to look at, “Where did we go wrong in terms of our assumptions of what should have happened?” From there, we’ll find, hopefully, the next experiment to put in place to try to get there.

Even before things go off course a little bit, as part of your internal planning process, do you look at, “Here’s our goal,” and you get clear about quantifying what that goal and what success looks like? Do you, as a team or even personally yourself, spend time thinking about, “What are all the things that we need to do in order to reach that goal?”

That’s probably pretty clear that everyone does that, but also, what potentially could take us off track? Do you spend any time thinking about what are the potential threats or dangers? What are the things that could come up that we need to make sure that we plan for? Is that something that you don’t think too much about until you start noticing that you are going off track?

Something we certainly will think about is the macro environments. At least, the recession is a thing that’s happening on the horizon. Often, at least in our business specifically, that’s one of the biggest risks. This is what we saw when the pandemic first started. When people are focusing on survival, training and development are the least of their concerns but at the same time, a topic like business development may get more investment as firms are looking.

We will look at it from that lens in terms of what might be some headwinds or tailwinds as well that can help. From there, we also look at our internal resources to support the growth as well. Sometimes, there can be a mismatch because whether it’s people getting sick, people feeling burnt out, or attrition that may happen. We will look at that as well, but often, we find there are so many variables that come into place.

CSP 254 | Rainmaker

 

Thinking too much about it isn’t that productive as well. You want to have an eye on it and think about what you might do differently, but I would also caution against spending so much time, especially if you’re an individual trying to map out scenarios. That time is better spent reaching out and creating a lot of touch points and opportunities for yourself if we’re thinking about business development and drumming up.

Your point about the recession, upcoming recession, the potential for a recession, or however we want to look at it, is there anything that you all are doing internally as you’re thinking about that possibility becoming more and more likely? As you said before, it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen at some point. Is there anything that you’re doing to prepare for that so that if and when it does rear its ugly head, you are already taking advantage of it or position yourself for the best chances of success?

Since I’m a part of a company, a big part of it is looking at it operationally. Can we sustain a revenue hit at whatever percentage like 20%, 30%, or 40%? What does that mean from carrying forward the staff that we have? We look at it from managing our resources standpoint. In terms of serving our clients, it’s continuing to figure out, in that environment, what might be something that we have to respond to from a service standpoint.

It’s also recognizing that likely when it happens, it’s going to happen. We will need to wade through it with our clients, make sure we’re still with them, and support them in that way. It’s hard to say if we’ll change the way we operate in terms of what we do because that will continue to be driven by the needs but we want to prep for operationally what that means if revenue goes away and how we weather the storm by becoming stronger or finding other avenues.

One practical way in some ways is the book because often not everyone can engage us for the workshops or the one-on-one coaching. The book becomes, in some ways, a cost-effective way to gain many of the insights that we have on business development and building the skills that you may need. That could be a proxy or at least another avenue to bring revenue in for the firm.

I have a couple of questions before wrapping up. You have a team around you of 50 people. You’ve been writing the book. You’re busy on with everything that life has to offer or throw at you. What are 1 or 2 habits or things that you do on a daily basis that you feel supports your performance, your productivity, your focus, and your success?

This is the reason why I wrote the book as well. I try to focus on it. The mantra of our entire firm is to focus on others. When I think about, “Why are we doing this? How does this serve others?” That helps me to keep going on the long nights whether it’s serving the clients, writing the book, or talking about the book as, “This is going to be helpful when people hear this and when they get this messaging out there.”

The other thing is that I’m a strong believer in the connection between the mind and the body. Getting enough sleep and eating right are extremely important when it comes to managing our energy. There are so many things to get done and if you’re not taking care of that side by getting exercise, then it’s easy for it to impact everything else that you do. Those are some things I think about making sure I take care of my body and then how is what I’m doing serving others at this moment in time.

Is there anything that you do specifically in terms of health, taking care of your body, fitness, or daily practices that you find to be helpful?

Focus on others. Click To Tweet

I try to move every day, whether it is taking a quick jog, running, or doing some pushups. It’s something where I’m moving my body and raising my heart rate on a daily basis. I started doing time-restricted eating over the last few months. I’m only eating right between a ten-hour block. I found that it’s amazing the connection to getting better sleep. I found that eating within this allotted time helped me with my sleep. Getting good sleep would be the most critical thing.

We’re going to let people know where they can go to get your book, but in the last few months, what’s another book that you have either read or listened to? It can be fiction or nonfiction but has made an impact, you’ve enjoyed it, and you would recommend it to others.

I do a lot of reading. One book that comes to mind is Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I think he’s a fellow in the UK. I’m sorry if he’s not in the UK, but he wrote about that in life, you only have 4,000 weeks. What was pretty compelling for me is that one of the points he makes is that what you end up accomplishing in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter. Instead of focusing on being productive and efficient, you should focus on the life you want to live.

One simple thing that can change how I’ve worked even is that he’s saying a lot of times we’re trying to clear our to-do lists, but the better we are at achieving and clearing our to-do list creates longer to-do lists. It’s this never-ending cycle. Instead of focusing on clearing things away, focus on the one thing you want to do at that moment. It sounds simple, but that’s changed the way I approach work.

The one thing I’m doing is speaking to you, Michael, and to your audience, as opposed to thinking, “I’m clearing this off. I’m clearing that off,” because a lot of things we clear off our plates are probably not worth doing at all. You have email being the perfect one. In terms of the number of emails, I used to try to delete them as opposed to going to the core ones that I wanted to respond to. That’s stood with me. There are other good ideas in that book, but that was the thing that came to mind.

It’s funny that you mentioned that because I did one episode and that’s the exact same book that they also recommended. I’m going to have to check out this book. I was interested. I had Dr. Benjamin Ritter on. He recommended that book and here you are, recommending that same book. Robert, I want to make sure that people can learn more about you, especially about your book. Where’s the best place? Do they go to Amazon or is there a specific site that they should go to learn more about the book?

It is available on Amazon bookstores both hardcover and Kindle. They can go to Selling-Your-Expertise.com and then they can also visit our organization’s website, Exec-Comm.com. We’re excited to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list so it’s great to have that as part of our launch. Michael, I can’t thank you enough for having me on to speak to your audience.

It’s great to speak with you as well, Robert, and I’m excited to continue following your journey and learning more. Thanks again for coming on.

Likewise, Michael. Thank you.

 

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About Robert Chen

CSP 254 | RainmakerPeople often describe me as earnest. Earnest about helping my clients and employees win. Earnest about mastering my craft to best serve others. Earnest about making a difference.

As the author of the Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Selling Your Expertise (selling-your-expertise.com), I’m passionate about helping our clients best leverage their expertise to add value to others. This practical guide is designed to demystify business development and help technically-gifted professionals shift from doing the work to selling the work.

As a partner at Exec|Comm, I lead our team of dedicated consultants to support our clients’ large-scale and high-stakes people development efforts. Our clients depend on us to design and deliver experiential training across multiple offices for hundreds of newly promoted managers, coach C-suite executives before roadshows, board presentations, and conferences, and work with partner and MD candidates before they meet with the promotion panel.

Outcomes we help achieve:
– Driving revenue through effective business development and deepening client relationships
– Strengthening executive presence and raising emotional intelligence to deal with high-stakes situations
– Gaining followership and influence within your organization
– Communicating concisely and facilitating results-oriented meetings and discussions
– Simplifying complex data and telling a compelling story and narrative

Specialties:
Executive presence, business development, storytelling with data, Ted talks, cross-cultural communication, presentation skills, managerial communication skills, influencing without authority, coaching, consultative selling skills, persuasive writing, investor pitches, conflict resolution

My background:
In addition to my client work at Exec|Comm, I lead our firm’s business development, talent management, and finance functions. I also teach Management Communications and Advanced Persuasion & Storytelling at Wharton, where I completed my MBA.

Prior to joining Exec|Comm, I spent five years in equities trading – ranking in the top 5% of proprietary traders, and training and coaching new traders. In 2008, I moved to China to work at a global manufacturing company to further my business acumen, management skills, and international business experience. I returned to New York in 2010. Since then, I’ve been helping others reach their full potential through thoughtfully-designed practical training and executive coaching.

 

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