Jake Mannino: Breaking The Guinness World Record For Coaching

Perception is a choice with humans. We choose to see what we want to see. Anything that influences me to make that choice is a bias. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now today is a very cool conversation with Jake Menino who is a global sales director over at Microsoft. He leads and inspires a seasoned sales team that delivers over a billion dollars in annual revenue. He's also an ICF certified executive coach, EQ emotional intelligence assessor, and a lifelong social scientist focused on the psychology of motivation, high performance cultures, team dynamics, and the neuroscience of behavior change.

He also in 2025 helped lead Microsoft's MCATS internal executive coaching initiative that scaled coaching to nearly 5,000 employees and earned him and them a Guinness Book of World Record for the largest number of people coached within a company in a single year, which is absolutely crazy. So I had a list of questions for Jake that I was going to dive into based on my research, but right off the bat, we started getting into it and I realized he was somebody who could answer some questions that I've been trying to justify for a while. So one of them is the difference between motivation and inspiration. I know we're talking semantics here to a certain degree, but I've always looked at motivation as an internal thing and inspiration as an external thing.

And I've always tried to figure out how to motivate people, including my daughter, quite frankly, to do something, right? And what is that to get down to that level that gets them to want to do it themselves? So we unpacked that a bit. And then the other one, which I've been struggling with, which is can managers really be coaches? And Jake's opinion is not really. And how we should separate that role. Coaches should coach. They should be objective. They shouldn't be tied to individuals. They should be across the organization because it gives them an objective view. And therefore, it's accepted a lot better from the employees. And coming from somebody who's coached as many people as he has, I think there's something to it.

So we talked about a lot of other stuff and authenticity and active listening and just how we can survive in this world of AI where IQ is over and EQ is everything. And he's got some great frameworks that he pulls together and shares with us and a lot of insight here. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Jake Menino, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Yeah, great, John. Great. Thank you. Great to be here. It's a pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me. We were starting this thing off. I was talking about the chaos, right? You said, how are you doing? I'm like, oh, you know, living in chaos. And you got a really cool approach to controlling some of that chaos that we're going to get into here.

But before we do all that, I always love to do the origin story here, people. I mean, you got into neuroscience and you actually majored in a double major here. But let's back out from LinkedIn and talk about growing up, just, you know, parents influence, you know, sales, kind of way to catch the bug, all that fun stuff, what makes you you. And then we'll dive into the kind of career stuff moving forward. Yeah, awesome. Wow. Well, thank you, you know, again, for being here. Growing up was north of Detroit here in Michigan. The summers were incredible. The winters were cold. Not so much. Like anybody else growing up at the time, it was, I spent my time outdoors, you know, just like anybody else and rode my BMX bike everywhere.

And I had an early fever for obsession for just going fast. And, you know, I figured, well, if I can get, you know, more parts for my bike, I can build bigger jumps and I can have more fun. And... Ricky Bobby, you know, if you're not first, you're last type of thing. Have we go fast? Yeah, you're right. And second place is always the first one to lose, right? And so it was just that inspiration of growing up, being outdoors and starting very early. In Michigan, we had 10 cent bottle returns. And so I would go find cans and bottles and take them back and save up money. And then, you know, just anything I could do to make money cutting grass or, you know, selling treats at school, like all kinds of stuff didn't matter.

Just to save money so I could buy parts for my BMX bike, right? So I could be outdoors. And that grew later into working in some stores. My dad had owned some retail stores in the Detroit area and we actually owned three of the 14 we franchised. So at a young age, learning how to run a, you know, cash register, how to stock shelves, how to market, advertise, how to deal with theft, how there's a lot of great experiences that we had just opening the store and closing it and depositing cash and counting and running the books and profit and loss. And for me, it was always the excitement of running a business. And there's nothing like running a business where you show up, the store opens at 9 a.m.

and you're there 8.30 and there's a line out the door for people to come in. And I'm proud to say it was a beauty supply business. And at that time, the perm business in the late 80s were really explosive. Rocking, man, rocking. And we were the only shop in town before Sally Beauty Supply came in. And when they did, you know, we got very competitive and we got competitive on pricing, but we really focused on the customer and delivering real value to the customer, building human relationships with the customer. And that's what set us apart. And we had delivery services to salons that we delivered product to. We met people, we shook hands, we put on events and we just focused on the customer. And eventually we ended up, you know, with the demise of retail and the, you know, brick and mortar apocalypse due to obviously Walmart and others that came in, but also Amazon and online.

We ended up folding the stores and sold them off eventually to Sally. Now that business is completely online. And, but at that time, growing up through that experience, I was able to learn, understand and get a passion for sales and just exciting of taking care of customers and putting the customer first and valuing the human relationship. So that's the, that's how I kind of grew up. Just learn how to hustle and have fun. So then why neuroscience? Why double major? Well, because right, isn't that, you double majored in social science. It's actually in social science. Yeah, social science. But what I did later is I became very academic and very interested in building teams and understanding human behavior and understanding what drives motivation and what drives teamwork and why do we want to get along?

Like what makes us want to increase our status or our affiliation or to have things or to do things or to have experiences? What makes that experience so important for us? Why are we motivated? And that just tied into understanding human behavior on a different level. When I started to get more into neuroscience, it was around the angel cocktails. What is in a very positive way? How do we improve our dopamine? How do we improve our serotonin? How do we increase our endorphins and our oxytocin? And we know that humans are able to improve their performance, their productivity, their mood, their well-being, just their health by increasing any of those elements. You go, if you have a dog or a cat and you can pet your dog or cat, your oxytocin goes up, your cortisol comes down.

If you can go outside in nature and go for a walk or be in a forest, we know that that improves your endorphins. And that's where we're able to really discover our true superpowers and improve our performance. So that tied with human behavior became a passion of mine such that I could help people unlock that potential. And at the end of the day, just to help them become who they are or rediscover who they, you know, their purpose. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB Sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process.

It also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. Interesting. So I, you know, I'm curious your perspective. I wasn't thinking about this before we talked, but it just struck me that I've always had this line of or the distinction and I don't think I'm not educated enough to have this opinion, but I put it out there.

The difference between motivation and inspiration and what I usually tell people is like, you know, I like for instance, I can inspire you. I could get up there. I could get you to it, right? But if you don't have the internal motivation that you're not going to do it. So, so my thing is, but I've heard it the opposite. I've heard other people say, well, you can get motivated by somebody, but if you're not inspired, right? So I look at it as this inspiration is an external thing and motivation is an internal thing. Could you help me like with that clarity between those two so that I can make sure that I'm saying it the right way? Yeah. And there's definitely some relationship between the two.

And I think we get into semantics about how we break it down. And a lot of which could come back to the fight or flight response. If somebody's coming after you, are you inspired or motivated to run? Are you inspired to fight or flight? What really happens in that moment and more or less it's around protection, right? So we're motivated to protect ourselves and our family. We may be inspired to go out and to learn a martial art to protect ourselves so we can combat in that situation. That's just one example. Other examples would be around what really drives you to do something. And maybe that's just our DNA of who we are. There's a great example of I'm fascinated by exceptional guitarist, Eddie Van Halen being one of them.

And so they had asked him like he was like the best guitarist and you know, according to Rolling Stone magazine during that time and he was just so amazing at his craft and they had asked him like what, like who did you study? To learn this, like how did you become so good at this? He had just a very unique style of playing and he's like nobody. And they're like, you didn't study anybody? Like Jimi Hendrix, like any of the greats? He's like, no, I didn't because I was so like obsessed with my guitar and I locked myself in the room for like three years so I could practice my guitar, play my guitar, write music, build guitars, dream about guitars. He's like, I didn't have time to go out and to learn or study anybody else.

I was so internalized so that motivation, that drive was so pure that nobody on the outside inspired him. He inspired himself. So the real gift is how do you inspire yourself and unlock your own motivation to achieve such a high level of discipline and desire that will outpace anybody else. And so how do you, let's talk about how to motivate people, right? And I use this like, you know, I'll use two examples here and, you know, and again, these are more personal but like, you know, my daughter, for instance, she's, you know, 14 years old. She says she loves volleyball. She likes to go to practices but she isn't like afterwards, like she's not practicing on our own. She's not obsessive like that.

She, you know, so, and I'm like, ah, sweetheart, if you, you know, you want to be varsity, you got to practice when people aren't telling you to practice and those type of things. So, so there's that example of like, how do you tap in or get somebody motivated there? But then there's also like the, the real negative side of it, like alcoholism and those type of things where, you know, you see these people and you want to help but there's that concept of you, you can't help somebody who doesn't want to be helped, right? So like you can't, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make them drink scenarios. So could, could we, could you help me balance, those two scenarios, like tapping into somebody's intrinsic motivation that maybe they don't even know they have because they're so young and then somebody who you are just looking at desperately saying, oh my God, I want to help but like no matter what I do, I can't force them to do this unless they want to.

So how do you get, how do you unlock that? Yeah. These are, these are tough questions. I know, man. Bring it. Okay. Yeah. I think in the sense of your daughter with anybody else who has kids out there or loved ones, we want to encourage them to do their best and we have hopes and dreams for them and we want to provide the right platform for them to succeed. It means we want to give them the opportunity. A lot of kids, there's a lot of people in the world who don't have the opportunity at all and as a parent, it's important to encourage your kids to do something whether it's a sport, it's an academic program or some type of hobby, be involved in some way and it also enforces a human connection which we're finding studies have shown that the next generation of people are having different skills because the human connection is different than it was maybe when we grew up and that's due to a lot of things and we don't know what the effect of that will be in time but people generally want two things.

They want some type of status meaning in a social circle and they want affiliation. They want to be affiliated with others who have achieved what they want or a desire to have that level of achievement. So status and affiliation is important and for somebody like where we want to encourage somebody to go out and do something and even not really force them but push them, right? Nudge them along. At some point in time though, they become their own boss and they're going to make their own decisions and all we can do is sit back and provide support and understanding to help continue that. They may, your daughter may change course and say, I don't want to do volleyball anymore. I want to do lacrosse or I don't want to do any sports and a lot of it may be because, not because she doesn't like volleyball, she may not like the team.

She may not like people. She might not like the friend group and so how do we break that mold and that's a different, a whole different thing when we talk about teams, how people interact and communicate with each other and help each other and then those teams can fall apart. the shelf life of a high-performing team is generally only a few years because the only constant that we have is change and so how do we, how do we deal with the change? So that piece of it comes down to encouragement, support and the other piece around somebody who is, potentially has a disease or some type of deficiency, I think with those folks we need to, and I'm not a therapist, my wife is and she's really good and she could answer this way better than I could but for me, it's gratitude, kindness and love and that may sound like a little woo-woo but at the end of the day, that's the only thing we can do as humans because there's 8 billion plus or minus people on this planet and as much as we think we're separate and disconnected, we still share the same home.

as much as you think you live in a house next to somebody that lives in a separate house or you go to work in a car and you're separate from everybody else driving on the road and you go to your office and you're separate, it's not really true. If you take a helicopter view, you'll see that we're all part of the same planet and the same ecosystem. We all breathe the same air, we drink the same water, we live on the same planet, we dig the same earth. So having this level of connectivity and compassion and kindness and you'll find that answer. And so I've spent a lot of time, I just got back from Seattle. I go out there quite a bit because of Microsoft and I'm always, I feel a little sadness when I leave because of the, because of the lack of humanity when it comes to people that are not as fortunate and maybe it's me giving some water or some money or doing something that I can out of kindness and what they do with that is they're, that's, but I know that I'm trying to help out the best I can because I feel that we're all brothers and sisters.

So we should all try to lift everybody up. Somehow this person who's living on the street may be addicted to drugs or alcohol or prostitution. They are still a human being. They're still somebody's son or daughter and, or brother or sister and how they got there. I don't know their circumstance, but through some form of compassion and kindness and love, helping them in any way that I can is, is about the best I could do. Yeah. I think that's, it's interesting. You know, I've heard before where astronauts when they go up into space and they get, they get a chance to look back at the earth and they realize, you know, again, how small we are ultimately in this universe. They come back with a completely different perspective on humanity and it kind of aligns with what you talk about.

It's like, it's not me versus them and it's my house and your house. It's like, we are all living on this big ground little ball that's flying through the atmosphere at a billion miles an hour. So we should probably give each other a little bit more grace these days than we do. Yeah, I think that's true. And in the last 70 years, I think we've tripled our population. So, you know, as much as we think we're in charge, there's a different, not getting into elements of religion or spirituality, but there's something else that's bigger than us here. And if we can elevate our consciousness to accept that and to understand, then we'll make the place just a lot better for the future generations as well.

Yeah, I mean, my wife's an environmental scientist and focus on climate control and sustainability and, you know, she's switched the, you know, save the planet. She's like, the planet's going to be fine. Like, it's going to keep rolling and it'll do its thing. Humanity is the problem. We need to save humanity. We need to save humans here because the planet is going to be okay. No matter what we do to it, it'll purge itself eventually and take care of it. So, yeah, that's a theme. I think more, I wish more people would grab a hold of. But let's talk about, so obviously, and I'm sure you've talked about this a million times, but I got to ask it, the whole Guinness Book of World Records, man, like 5,000 people coached at Microsoft.

Hey, did you know you're, like, first of all, let's, you know, back into this. Did you, were you going for the record or did you just build something that all of a sudden scaled to a point that you were like, whoa, and if so, how did you scale this? Yeah, so I was fortunate enough to work for this wonderful company that invested in our people and our culture and as a model coach care, growth mindset, culture in the company to where we started about three years ago, a coaching program inside the organization. And as we know, coaching is not giving advice, it's not mentoring, it's not telling people what to do, it's not giving therapy. Coaching is a different skill and I encourage a lot of people to go out and to study the International Coaching Federation and the core, four domains and eight core competencies around what it is to be a coach.

And it's a very long, rigorous process, hundreds of hours of coaching practice and mentor coaching and tons of learning and a pretty intense test as well to become a coach. But what it does is it promotes active listening, it promotes being present, active inquiry, insightful listening and being aware. And there's a lot of emotional intelligence around that as well. So we were fortunate enough to invest in bringing coaching internally into the company with the hopes of uplifting our people and we take what's called pulse surveys, thrive scores around what people are feeling. Do they feel like they have a good deal at Microsoft? Do they feel like they have ability to reach out? We have 220,000 people that work here.

And do they feel like they have the ability to have a career path? Do they trust their leadership? Can they invest in their development? These were important KPIs, right, with our employees. So we took those scores and we went out and we got 120 people certified as ICF coaches inside the organization. And me being in North America, we had cohorts in North America, we had in Europe and in Asia. And it was led by a gentleman in the UK that was a board member, also the ICF. And I got to give him props because he helped, he organized this whole thing and it was very impactful. So we broke up into groups of maximum six people into career coaching. And I took frameworks from the ICF and my year-long studying of how to become a coach and my certifications.

I brought frameworks in and then we run 90-minute sessions with up to six people in the company. And it's changed people's lives. It's made them stronger, more confident. It's improved their outlook. We call it taking control or becoming the CEO of your career. Because I think, especially in today's world where there's so much uncertainty, that it's a jungle gym out there when it comes to a career. And it's not like it used to be when our grandparents, right, where, you know, I got a career at Ford and I worked there for, you know, 50, 60 years and retired with a pension. It's just a different world. So empowering people and inspiring them to unlock their true purpose is really important. So we were able to improve those scores significantly, 10% at least, on their overall KPI of pulse surveys for that focus group.

So the program became so popular that we had thousands and thousands of people signing up for it and we had no capacity to serve all those people. So we had, we actually had a contract to an outside firm and they were instrumental as well because they came in and when then we split up to individual coaching and group coaching and we were able to have almost 5,000 people coached last year. I didn't know it was a Guinness World Record until somebody said, hey, this is good. And so yeah, that's what happened and we had an incredible experience with it and the impact, I will say, that we've had with people has just been extraordinary. It's really intrinsically gratifying to help people discover their true purpose and their true self and to unlock their potential and to help them improve whatever it is even if it's a little bit just to go from X to Y.

So that's the story. Love it, man. So help me understand, what's the, well, I'll ask it this way. Can managers be coaches? And the reason I ask this is because I've been in this, you and I graduated I think at the same time. I graduated in 98. I got into sales, I've been into sales my entire career here. I've seen companies struggle really just a lot trying to get their managers to be coaches and I've also seen companies just give up and say, you know what? It is what it is. Our managers are deal chasers. That's what they do. So we're just going to go hire a dedicated coach. So because there's coaching, there's leadership and there's management. So could you unpack that a little bit and is it a fool's errand to try to get managers to coach at least in any meaningful way right now because it just seems like it is.

Yeah. Dude, I thank you for that question. So this is right. You know, I didn't know this we're going to go in this direction but so here's the thing. Managers, there's a difference between a manager and a leader, right? So a leader is somebody who has a purpose, has a philosophy, right? And they're going to say I'm going in this direction and this is what I believe and they have values. They have very rich values. Think about all the leaders this world has ever known. They have values and not everybody's going to agree with those values and that's okay. We're going to forgive the people that don't but for those that do, I'm going to go in this direction and others are just going to gravitate.

You know, I'm not even asking you to follow me. You're just going to follow, right? And then we're on a mission or whatever that is. That's true leadership. It's voluntary. It's voluntary. Managers, on the other hand, very important. We need managers and managers keep the things, you know, moving. They keep the time cards punched in. They keep the schedule. They keep people accountable. They're very tactical in that function, that day-to-day function. So, we can debate on what a leader and a manager is but in the case of a manager that has a team of direct reports, I would argue it's nearly impossible to truly coach in that environment because you have biases. You already have something. You have something here that is going to help influence or bias a decision.

So, true coaching cannot be performed when you have a direct report just as it cannot be performed to a friend or an acquaintance or a family member because you already have a bias. you already have something there, a limiting belief or perhaps an agenda that you want to impose. So, the best coaching is to have somebody completely removed that has no dog in the fight, right? That has no, like, and I don't know all the background. A lot of people will hire me to coach them and they'll send me their disc report and their Clifton Strength stuff and their, all the different assessments and I don't read them. And they're like, you didn't read it? I'm like, no, because as soon as I read it, it's like a horoscope, you know, then all of a sudden you're in Aries and you have these qualities and that's how I see you.

And humans, perception is a choice with humans. Perception is a choice. We choose to see what we want to see. As much as we try to break down our limiting beliefs and our biases and our misconceptions of what things are, it's a choice. And anything that influences me to make that choice is a bias. So, true coaching in the world of a leader or a manager, we will say with that team cannot come in around the active inquire, active listening and coaching that person. What we do know, though, is that with managers, and there's been a great white paper and study on this, there are three things we can do for the managers to help them improve their team's performance. And the data shows it's 19% improvement.

I'd love to say it's 20%, but it's 19. That's not a number, yeah. Right. And so, we know that the studies have showed if a manager that runs a team, if anybody's listening, write this down, there are three characteristics that if they are present and they are strong, you can improve your team's performance. We're talking if it's sales, maybe it's pipeline, maybe you're not in sales, maybe it's whatever your KPIs are. These are the three things that you should have. Number one, rapport. Those that have deep rapport with their direct reports, and I'm not talking about the rapport that we have when we're in the office or in the break room or at a customer meeting, we're talking about rapport that has to occur outside of the workspace, outside of that element to where we're having a human experience that's going to, and think about all the people that you may have worked with or for, that if you've had experiences with them sharing a hobby together, sharing a wonderful meal, having a vacation, or doing something outside of the workplace, the depth of that rapport is much greater than it would have ever been in the nine-to-five setting.

So the deeper the rapport is with your employees, the higher the performance. So can I pause there for a second? Yes. Because there's the, and I'm not an HR guy in any way, shape, or form, but what you hear these days is, well, I don't want to work after hours. I don't want to go to events. And everybody leaves at four o'clock. And we're living in a virtual world. So it's like, how do you create that without effectively forcing people to come to after-hour events and happy hours that a ton of reps like you're just employees just don't want to do because they've got families and those types of things. So how do you make that connection outside of work when it's really taboo these days to try to even ask for that?

Yeah, yeah, totally. And I'm going to argue that the pendulum's going to swing in the complete other direction. We're going to go back from, because there's such a demand and desire, the human connection will be the only thing that is going to be so important. So we're going to, we're in this AC period. We were in BC. BC's before COVID, AC's after COVID. I position it the same way, man. I think BC needs to change to before COVID. That's right. You know, and in DC, we don't even know what that is. Well, it's a mess right now anyway, so we should just leave it alone. Fine. But from a human fabric of society's structures, the humans and meeting in person will be more, my prediction, desired, because it'll be, there's going to be so much debate around authenticity because of this virtual world.

So to develop the rapport is not necessarily doing the team events as I suggest, like that's great, but you're still in a team setting. I'll give an example. I was, I had an opening on my team to hire somebody. And my new rule is I have to go out and meet the person. I have to break bread, shake hands, look in the eyes, all this before I hire. So I flew out and met with the individual, just he and I went to dinner and we got to know each other on a very deep level. And this trust and this rapport was built almost instantly. And it has been an incredible experience. So that one-on-one thing doesn't necessarily mean you have to go out to an event after work, but we could find a time for me and you to meet.

If I flew to Boston, we could probably go have coffee and develop a rapport. Or maybe you don't like coffee and you like something else. Whatever you like, you know, maybe like to go hit golf balls or go to Topgolf and hit a bucket of balls. Fine. Or maybe my newest thing has been, I live up in Ortonville, Michigan. I have five acres up here and I'm next to state land. So my new thing is instead of team meetings, I'll have somebody drive up here and we'll do a three-mile hike around the lake. And that's rapport. And that's an hour meeting. And we accomplish more in that hour of walking and Steve Jobs did that quite a bit too. He solved a lot of his problems just walking around with Bill Campbell who was his coach and in solving problems.

So walking and talking and being present with somebody is developing a rapport. So it can be different. Maybe you like to go fishing. We go fishing, right? Well, it's funny you bring it up, right? Because I used to rail on old school sales reps who like, you know, steak dinners and golf and I'm like, you losers. I'm like, that's not value anymore. Bring value to the table. Stop just relying on your relationships, right? But to your point, the pendulum has now swung and my opinion has now swung directly back to that. I'm like, I think the only thing we're going to have is steak dinners and golf at this point for crying out loud. I mean, look, I don't, I'm just saying whatever it is. And that brings me to my second point, which is adaptability.

So number one is rapport. So whatever that is, develop a rapport with somebody on a human level. If all you and I talk about what is the pipeline, closing deals and having meetings, that's not rapport because at the end of the day, humans, our thoughts are not always about that. Our thoughts are on other things that have value and importance and it has to align to our values. So understanding what our values are and aligning and building rapport, we have seen a massive increase in performance from a team. The second one is adaptability. And this is where, and we'll see this in sales. I can use this as a sales example. Adaptability is where I adapt to you, right? I come to you. I meet you where you are.

Coaching is a lot like that as well. And I'm listening for your metaphors. I'm listening to the language and the words that you use. And I'm listening, I'm watching you and I'm observing and I'm coming to you. And when you're able to adapt to somebody else, it shows empathy, it shows compassion, kindness, and the desire, right, to really connect with somebody. That's what adaptability is. And when we find that people will adapt to others, we feel a stronger bond of trust and a stronger bond of understanding and that we're being heard and we feel a better relationship. Right? So a lot of this comes back to trust. Of course, these three elements I'll walk through comes back to a foundation of trust which cannot be manufactured as a tactic, right?

Trust has to be built through consistent actions, interactions, and that's a whole nother hour topic, right? In fact, we'll talk all about trust. But so adaptability, we find that managers that are able to adapt to your style and provide some guidance, I'm not going to say coaching, I'm going to say mentoring, consulting, guidance, has a better, understanding, a better adaptability of the characteristics of your behavior, of who you are, of truly wanting to understand and adapt to who you are. The customers are the same way. If we're able to adapt to a, when we're able to start using the customer's language and adapt to their style and their patterns, their systems, and how they do business, we're better sellers.

do you teach like Chris Voss mirroring stuff where you mirror language and, you know, repeat people's words or body language? Is that a tactic to help? Because there's a fine line between influence and manipulation, and I always worry a little bit of teaching reps the art of mirroring and those type of things because they can, A, be way too obvious with it, and when it's obvious, it actually ruins trust in every way, shape, or form. Yeah, that stuff sucks. That's no good. That dude was like a CIA guy or something, wasn't he? Yeah, he was an FBI negotiator. You can't trust those guys, first of all, so whatever. No, I'm not knocking him. I think I've watched a lot of his stuff. I think he's great.

Yeah. No, because what we lack here, and we can debate what authenticity is, but authenticity is heart to heart. What would your heart say? Not your mind, your heart, and that's how we connect with people, and if I'm just mirroring what you're saying and repeating what you're doing, and it's not authentic, we know we can tell when people are BSing us, right? We know this. We do a 7-Eleven thing with humans. I call it the 7-Eleven. It's not the party store that we go to late at night for beef jerky and whatever. It's like, or Slurpee, that's really what we'd go there for. 7-Eleven is seven seconds, I'll have 11 impressions about you, and 82% of the people will either determine if they like you or they don't based on two things.

Are you competent and are you friendly? Because we don't like unfriendly people and we don't like people that aren't confident. So if you're confident and friendly right out of the gate 82% of the time, I'm going to like you in that first seven seconds. Straight up. But if I'm sitting here repeating everything you say, that's not cool. But if I'm listening and I'm present and you can feel that I'm present and I'm in the moment with you, and I might take your language and your words and put my spin on it or bring it back into a conversation to where we're doing a dance, that's a different thing, man. So there's the line, right? Active listening and a way to show active listening is for me to summarize back to, like, let me make sure I heard this right.

And then, so what's that, I guess, is the line authenticity? Because what I'm trying to get at here is, break it down this way, you know, I always hated scripts. Like, I always talked about scripts being bullshit, right? But I've come to an appreciation for scripts because when somebody doesn't know what they don't know, they need a guideline, they need something to go by, but then you've got to turn it into structure so they can play with it themselves. And it's the same thing with learning how, unless you are nature-nurture here, unless you are a really good active listener, unless you are really empathetic with people, you have to learn these things. And so to learn them, you, in my opinion, you kind of have to use techniques to kind of get there a little bit.

And yeah, you're going to fumble them around a little bit. I'm going to say, Jake, I like you, Jake. How's it going, Jake? Because, you know, because Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake, because, you know, how to influence and influence people and Dale Carnegie. So the Jake is the best thing in somebody's mind, Jake, Jake, Jake. But, and then eventually I'm going to, you know, come up against somebody like me who's going to be like, dude, if you use my name one more fucking time, I'm going to throw you out of this goddamn room here. Shut up. Right. And then you realize, oh, I can't say Jake 75 times during a conversation. So where's your perspective on like, how do you get, how do you get somebody who might not be empathetic, might not be an active listener, might not have those innate skills.

Yeah. It wants to be genuine, but doesn't even know how to, quite frankly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if they have the desire and if they want to, we talked about it, if they're motivated, right. Or inspired, whatever it is to be a seller. And again, I'll bring it back to sales leadership and it's executive presence. It's reading a room. And if you really want to be good at it, it is a muscle. It's something you have to learn. Scripts are great. Fine. Whatever. You know, I just kept, got back from our MCAPs start in, up in Seattle, it's our Microsoft kickoff. And Brad Smith, who is an amazing speaker, spoke for an hour with no teleprompter, no script. And he got a standing ovation. And he's sure he rehearsed it.

I'm sure he had a coach. I'm sure he went through it. And a lot of the times, what I'll do in my coaching with people is we'll talk about this compelling message about who you are and what you are. And when you first show up to that meeting or you're sitting across from the CEO, you're in the boardroom or, you know, not the elevator pitch, but you're on an elevator or you're standing next to an executive at a cocktail party. What do you do? What do you say? Do you say anything? Do you not say anything? How do you introduce yourself? And if they don't know you, they can't like you. And if they don't like you, they can't trust you. So why don't we just figure out how to get to know somebody? And so we'll have people record and they send it in to me and they'll record themselves live about introducing themselves and how they do it.

And what do they say? And what's their story? And do they have anything of interest? So there's a level of authenticity of being real, of who you are. And I know Seth Godin will argue their authenticity and consistency are two different things. And I'll be consistently authentic or whatever. But I think it's just being real and being able to fumble and making mistakes because I didn't get here just waking up one day. I made a shit ton of mistakes before I got comfortable to have a conversation and to be confident about who I am. And I think that comes back into your internal voice of who you are. It's not about the external world. It's who you are. And if you're truly dialed into who you are, all the other stuff dissolves because it doesn't matter if you have a script or not.

You're just speaking from the heart. And if you want to learn scripts and memorize stuff and all that, that's cool. That's awesome. As long as you're able to build on it of who you are. Yeah. And I think that's what's so hard for people these days. I think the authenticity, it's always, you know, blows my mind that some of the best feedback I get personally and throughout my entire career is, oh man, you're so authentic. I love your conversation. I love what you said. It's not like when you get off stage, obviously when you're doing a keynote, you want people to say, oh man, I love what you're talking about. And man, I love your style, right? Like inevitably, it's a man, I love your, I love how authentic.

And I'm like, just because I dropped a few F-bombs up there, like the fact that authenticity is a superpower these days is actually concerning to me. I know. Because I always tell people, I'm like, I don't understand how you can't be because to me, it's so much harder to be inauthentic because that means I'm lying and I'm a shitty liar. I don't lie well. It's obvious on me. So it's just, and I have a terrible memory too. So if I'm not authentic, then I'm going to try to have to remember all these other stories about shit that I'm making up. Whereas if I'm authentic, it is what it is. But I think it's so hard today in this world of Instagram and perfection and the outcomes and everything like that that people are afraid to fail still more than ever.

even though they hear it all day long that the only way you learn is failing. So I like, how do we break through that barrier to people to get them to be authentic and get them to have the confidence in themselves to be that person? Because that's what's just, because once you, to your point, like once you tap into that and you see somebody just, ah, explode. And I don't know if, it's like, can you develop grit without going through some shit, right? Can you be authentic without not being authentic first and having failed at that? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's a little fake it till you make it type thing and all this other stuff. But people that have a real strong EQ, so I'll break EQ into five pieces and this is for the listeners.

Like if you want to really develop this, call it authenticity, call it about, you know, calling back your magic, your power, call back your, you know, gift of who you are, getting to your purpose and you got to break through these barriers to be comfortable with yourself and comfortable with your thoughts. And, you know, we have hundreds and hundreds and if not thousands of thoughts every day and many of which convert into emotion and being aware of those thoughts and emotions that you have every day getting closer to who you are will deliver a much more richer experience when you meet humans and people and animals and anybody else on the planet, right? Anything and just anything that you do.

So number one is self-perception and there are sub-layers of self-perception that I won't dig into but that's the main topic, self-perception. How do you perceive yourself? And the second one is self-expression because how do others perceive you? Well, that's great. Like take, you know, five, ten people and ask them about you and have them describe you. Not friends, families and stuff like that because they're going to be, you know, oh, so biased but like people that might actually give you unfiltered feedback. So self-perception, self-expression, right? And then interpersonal skills. What are your interpersonal skills in a group setting? What are your interpersonal skills in social settings with others?

How do you act? And we, there are so many examples. I just love watching people, you know, people watching is one of my favorite things to do. Background, right? I'm just sitting there watching people and just how they interact, the interpersonal skills, right? Body language is hysterical to watch. Body language is killer in a lot of its context and clusters too. There's, there's different pieces of it. And so interpersonal skills, just watching yourself and others, how you interact and their, their hand ways to get handled on this and to self-improve your EQ score. That is one score that you can improve. IQ, they'll debate whether that can be improved. But EQ, we know that there are techniques and, and, and exercises you can do to improve your EQ.

And so the interpersonal skills, the other one is, is just decision-making. So we see this in people where they're forced with making decisions and we know poor leaders. Again, everything I do is focused on sales mastery and executive leadership, how to build performance and productivity and unlock potential. And we know that people when they're faced with decisions, they, frick man, they could blow up, they could not make a decision, they could stonewall, they could make the wrong decision, they could consult 15 people because they don't know what the hell to do. They, so how do you make decisions? And every day we have to make calculated decisions every second, every day of our life. And when we do it in front of others or we make decisions that can impact others or really have bottom line effect, maybe it's on our organization or, you know, P&L or revenue or a customer or just whatever decision it is, how do you handle it?

Right? I could get in an argument with a family member because they want chicken tonight and I want steak. Right? But I'm in a bad mood so I kind of tee off and then they're, you know, so it's a decision I make, you know, about how I do this. So decision making is also another piece of it. And the last piece is just stress management. And this is how we, so the five pieces, self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal skills, decision making and stress management. And, you know, how do we regulate and monitor our stress? Because that's how we can show up. And a lot of people, if they're awkward in front of others or they have fear of getting out on stage and giving a keynote or whatever that is, how do we deal with stress, right, in those environments?

And there's techniques we can break down to do that. And I would also highly recommend for people not just to study EQ, these markers, but also if they've ever done any type of theater and improv is a great thing, right? Like if you were to go to your local theater and just take some improv and learn the and yes theory, you know, and learn how to have conversations and learn how to listen because that's active listening. I have to listen to what you're saying and if I'm doing improv, I have to play off what you said and I've got to take a big chance. And for those that don't know, I'm, you know, I've seen less than 100 Grateful Dead concerts back in the day, the real Grateful Dead and, you know, like that level of improvisation that they would perform live was second to none, but they took a lot at risk.

They took a lot of chance and they'll tell you it didn't always work out right and so you have to have some confidence to take some chance. You also have to be competent enough in your craft to want to do that. Yeah. Awesome. I think we could, like you said, we got an hour of conversation just on trust alone. I think we could keep unpacking this, but just for the interest of keeping this within the hour, I think we should probably tie it up here. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, what you're doing these days, what you want people to know, where you want people to go and how they can learn more about, because I do think, you know, as a quick preface, I personally think IQ is over. I mean, AI is already smarter than us in every way, shape and form, quite frankly, and I really do think everything is EQ and going back to your point of the pendulum swinging, I think we are going to swing back and I'm worried that we have a whole generation of kids who just have not been even given the opportunity to develop their EQ and are going to be in a lot of trouble.

So how can people learn more about this and how to improve that EQ skill? Because to your point, I'm not the smartest kid out there, state school kid, drank my way through college here, but I'm constantly trying to improve my EQ and connect with people and those type of things. So how can others find out more about this? Yeah, you know, and again, I don't have a crystal ball so I can't predict it, but I do know that whatever's happening, it's happening for a reason and a purpose, right? And it's just like music. It's like if you were a kid and you listened to this music and your parents didn't like it, it was probably good music, right? And so that's how we knew it was good music because our parents didn't like it.

So whatever the kids are doing, you know, chances are we don't like it. We're worried. Something's off. Something's wrong. And if there's, you know, patterns and systems that play about how that happens and why it happens, I'm not really sure how it'll play out. But I do know that we started the conversation with chaos. You know, chaos in the storm, sales in the storm and chaos and it turned into human behavior and EQ and human connections. And I believe that humans are resilient. They're smart. We're the, you know, as far as, we're really smart, sophisticated social animals that, you know, have a way of doing things and imagination and just creativity. And there's so many other things that we're capable of.

So I would never downplay the capabilities of the next generation. What I will say is there's some level of adaptability that we will need to meet them where they are and then, and then help them along. So if people want to learn more, they can always go to my website. They can hit me up on LinkedIn. My day job, I'm a global sales director at Microsoft. That's my number one focus. That's my passion of running sales teams. But I'm so obsessed with helping others that I generally will reach out to others that reach out to me to help them along the way. So, and I do that just out of generosity to help everybody on the planet. And again, if we can help one person, we can help a hundred, we can help a hundred thousand, we can help millions if not billions.

And once we do that, then humanity becomes better. The planet becomes better. And, and I'll be like a kid. I was on my BMX bike. I'm just going to go faster, have more fun and jump, you know, bigger ramps. And that's, that's good enough for me. That's all I need. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate the conversation and hopefully more people pay attention to it and, and really start to focus on that, that human connection piece. Cause I, to your point, my, my opinion, I think it's all we're going to have left moving forward. And so if we don't know how to communicate with each other and listen to each other and engage with these people, we're just going to tear each other apart. And that's, that's not the answer.

So I appreciate the conversation, Jake. I really do. Thank you. Thank you, John. Absolutely. And everybody, hopefully you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did on this one. And like I say, at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or no matter how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. With your support and our incredible guests, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough.

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