Joanne Lockwood: Foreign.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
Joanne Lockwood: for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
Joanne Lockwood: your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and societal transformation.
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Joanne Lockwood: not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone.
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Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: Today is episode 186 with the
Joanne Lockwood: title From Textbook to Triumph and I have the
Joanne Lockwood: absolute honour and privilege to welcome Scott Grates. Scott is
Joanne Lockwood: a visionary entrepreneur and best selling author who harnesses
Joanne Lockwood: relationship marketing to accelerate business growth
Joanne Lockwood: whilst empowering students for real world
Joanne Lockwood: success. When I asked Scott to describe his superpower, he said
Joanne Lockwood: that it is transforming relationships into reciprocal
Joanne Lockwood: success. Hello, Scott, welcome to the show. Thank
Scott Grates: you, Joanne. I'm so excited to, to be here and have this
Scott Grates: conversation wherever it goes. Yeah, no, it's
Joanne Lockwood: phenomenal. I'm honoured. And you're joining us from
Joanne Lockwood: over the other side of the Atlantic from me, so somewhere. Yeah, North America.
Scott Grates: So I am in central New York and we were chatting a
Scott Grates: little bit before we hit record here, you know, New York, everyone immediately
Scott Grates: thanks. New York City, Times Square, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building.
Scott Grates: That's about three hours south of where I am. I'm actually a little
Scott Grates: bit closer to Canada, Montreal, Canada, than I am New York City,
Scott Grates: but right smack dab in the middle of the state, about an hour west of
Scott Grates: the state capital of Albany. Wow,
Joanne Lockwood: I've never been that far north. I've been to New York
Joanne Lockwood: City. New York, New York, yeah, the double barreled name. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I worked over there in the 90s, I think it was
Joanne Lockwood: mid-90s I was there and yeah, I guess it's changed a bit. But yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: remember it being near Thanksgiving and then you had all the steam
Joanne Lockwood: rising up from the under road, pipe work and stuff.
Scott Grates: You know, people, a lot of people love the city. I'm a more
Scott Grates: of a country lover myself. You know, we're in the
Scott Grates: mountains and surrounded by beautiful lakes and in the fall
Scott Grates: it's just gorgeous when the foliage changes and all the different colours
Scott Grates: and you know the air just smells crisp and clean.
Scott Grates: Very different than the city. But we do like to sneak down there
Scott Grates: once in a while and catch a show or a ball game. The food is
Scott Grates: amazing and, but just a little, a little too busy. The
Scott Grates: older I get the, the, the more space I enjoy. Yeah, no, I
Joanne Lockwood: relate to that. I can relate to that. I, when I was working over there
Joanne Lockwood: I, I spent two or three weeks in New York City,
Joanne Lockwood: did a bit in Miami and then I, I flew across to the west coast
Joanne Lockwood: and did a bit around la, San Diego,
Joanne Lockwood: Beverly Hills area. And there's a real distinction between the New York City
Joanne Lockwood: or very on top of yourself. Everything's fast paced. You get out of
Joanne Lockwood: LA and everything's far apart. Place of life is
Joanne Lockwood: different and it's incredible. I guess you get the difference between where you
Joanne Lockwood: are upstate in that as you say in the mountains and the
Joanne Lockwood: scenery. It is interesting because America
Scott Grates: is you know, probably a dozen good sized cities and then
Scott Grates: all the rest is just small towns like I live in and there's so many
Scott Grates: similarities but then they are very different geographically
Scott Grates: where when you look at Boston, New York, Philly, the Northeast in
Scott Grates: particular, there's just this grinded out, fast paced
Scott Grates: go, go, go mentality and then you get down into
Scott Grates: where you're talking about Miami and then out west into you know, la, San Diego
Scott Grates: and it's just more of a laid back chill. You
Scott Grates: know, one is live to work, one is work to live. I prefer the latter
Scott Grates: but we've got three teenagers and I'm not wishing years away
Scott Grates: but when the youngest is, is out of the house we will. They call it
Scott Grates: Snowbir. We fly south for the winter. Winters don't
Scott Grates: do it for me. So we'll be down in Florida from, from probably Christmas
Scott Grates: until May and then come back to New York and enjoy the summers and fall
Scott Grates: foliage here and then you know, take off again. My memory of Florida is always
Joanne Lockwood: the humidity and the, the thunderstorms and the flash rain that
Joanne Lockwood: pulls down. You get that? Yeah, every, every area you got to get, you know,
Scott Grates: the good with the bad. But they, you know, people don't realise Florida experiences winter
Scott Grates: as well. We were down there this January and it was in the high 40s,
Scott Grates: you know, so pretty cool by Florida. The winter
Scott Grates: months aren't as bad. The humidity certainly is very real.
Joanne Lockwood: Memorial Day I had a guest on here I think back in January this year
Joanne Lockwood: and she was from Atlanta and she was saying it's the coldest Atlanta she's known
Joanne Lockwood: in Many, many years. So you've had a real mix of weather this year
Joanne Lockwood: it was, it was. A really, really cold winter, I
Scott Grates: guess, you know, north to south here in America, but the year before that was
Scott Grates: very mild, so who knows? I don't know. I don't get into climate change
Scott Grates: and, you know, just because I'm not that I don't believe in it
Scott Grates: or, you know, I just, I'm not smart enough to understand how all that works.
Scott Grates: So I'm trusting people who can figure this stuff out.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, there's the old expression, stay in your own lane.
Joanne Lockwood: But, you know, I appreciate sometimes you want to step out and not. And not
Joanne Lockwood: be blinkered, but sometimes you think, hang on a minute, yeah, I haven't got an
Joanne Lockwood: answer for everything, even though I want to. But yeah, sometimes it's best to listen.
Scott Grates: That comes with age, Joanne. You know, for years I wanted to have an
Scott Grates: answer for everything and I felt lesser if I didn't. And now I'm
Scott Grates: comfortable with the. I don't know. That's a, It's a great question, it's a great
Scott Grates: point. I don't know and I do. I find myself the older I get, the
Scott Grates: more comfortable I am knowing what I know and staying in my lane, like you
Scott Grates: said. So when I introduced you, I described you as
Joanne Lockwood: a visionary entrepreneur, which is a big, weighty title to sort of
Joanne Lockwood: be labelled with, isn't it? Sort of. And a bestselling author, which is also another
Joanne Lockwood: thing to live up to. So you talk about relationship building and you
Joanne Lockwood: work with organisations, you work with people to try and
Joanne Lockwood: empower them to have better success in the world through relationship marketing. Tell me a
Joanne Lockwood: bit more about how you got into that and what that means. Yeah, great
Scott Grates: question. Out of necessity is the quick
Scott Grates: answer. When I started my first
Scott Grates: business and it was an insurance agency, I had no business
Scott Grates: experience. We had two babies and diapers. We were
Scott Grates: coming off the 2008 financial meltdown where I had lost my job with
Scott Grates: HSBC, London based company. They got rid of six and a half
Scott Grates: thousand jobs on a Monday morning. I was one of them. And, you know,
Scott Grates: again, with age comes the understanding that when a window closes, a door
Scott Grates: opens and you often don't see it or understand it
Scott Grates: at the time, but everything is happening for us. That's where, you know, faith, and
Scott Grates: it doesn't have to be religious faith, just the faith that things will work out,
Scott Grates: belief in the unseen and, you know, so when I opened the,
Scott Grates: the first agency, I couldn't advertise and
Scott Grates: market in traditional ways. Which are very expensive.
Scott Grates: And, and so I found a niche in, in relationship
Scott Grates: building, relationship marketing, really getting grassroots and diving
Scott Grates: into five different areas which, which we can talk about obviously,
Scott Grates: but you know, small businesses being the first one. And,
Scott Grates: and really this whole fable of the goose and the golden egg,
Scott Grates: you know, became very clear to me and that if the golden egg is, is
Scott Grates: a prospect, a potential customer, I can spend tonnes
Scott Grates: of money that I didn't have or you know, run up debt and,
Scott Grates: and try to get all the golden eggs I can in traditional
Scott Grates: competitive ways like everyone else was doing. Or I can
Scott Grates: go deep with the geese who lay the golden eggs each
Scott Grates: day. And when they do, if I have the relationship with the geese, then they're
Scott Grates: going to send the golden eggs my way. And, and what I found is
Scott Grates: that the, the geese are doing the hard work. They're, they're building the
Scott Grates: relationships, they're building the trust with their customers. And so I said, who are
Scott Grates: the people that are already doing business with the people I want to do business
Scott Grates: with that already have those relationships and I can just pour
Scott Grates: value into them without asking for anything in return
Scott Grates: and then nurture those relationships over time so that when they have an
Scott Grates: insurance need or their customer has an insurance need, they go, hey, you should go
Scott Grates: talk to Scott. And it's a long term approach and
Scott Grates: this is why people get frustrated with it, right? But, but ultimately
Scott Grates: I was able to start with, with fellow small business owners here in my community.
Scott Grates: Then I got into the schools, I got active with service
Scott Grates: organisations, I started focusing on my, my customers, right, my
Scott Grates: call, my star customers to try to clone those people, right, that I want
Scott Grates: to do business with and then just very active on social media,
Scott Grates: aware of my personal brand. And I never wanted to be
Scott Grates: known as an insurance agent. I don't know if anyone does.
Scott Grates: You know, I wanted to be known as, as a husband, as a father, as
Scott Grates: a community leader, a thought leader, someone who has the servant heart
Scott Grates: that pours back into the place that we call home and we love.
Scott Grates: And oh, by the way, if you need help with insurance, I can do that
Scott Grates: too. And so really that's, that's the longer version of
Scott Grates: out of necessity. But you know, I just didn't have
Scott Grates: money. And you talk about being a visionary,
Scott Grates: which I'm sure someone wrote that for me, but, but
Scott Grates: the truth is I'm a, I'm a contrarian. You know, I, I, I have a
Scott Grates: knack of looking at things and saying, hey, if everyone's
Scott Grates: thinking this is the way to go, I want to Peek the other
Scott Grates: way, you know, and see what's happening over there or can we make something happen
Scott Grates: in a different direction so that I stand out because again, I'm in a very
Scott Grates: competitive, commoditized. Well, I guess every industry is competitive and commoditized
Scott Grates: now, right? With, with AI and everything emerging, we've really levelled the
Scott Grates: playing field in a lot of ways. So I'm always looking for, for new approaches
Scott Grates: and this relationship piece, what I really love about it a, I
Scott Grates: just love people and I enjoy building relationships with the right people. And
Scott Grates: not all people are good people. So let's be clear about that. And not I
Scott Grates: don't want, I don't want to work with all people, but when I do find
Scott Grates: those people. But the other piece of that is in this digitally
Scott Grates: dominated world, what was once old is new again.
Scott Grates: And the power of eyeball to eyeball and really loving on people and caring
Scott Grates: about them like that, AI can't replace that. And you know, however
Scott Grates: advanced we get digitally, we still want to be
Scott Grates: seen and heard and loved and know that we
Scott Grates: matter. And so really that's my focus and what I teach
Scott Grates: my teams is to just love on people. The right people
Scott Grates: expect nothing in return. And what happens is when you do that, suddenly people
Scott Grates: want to reciprocate. They want to work with you and do business with
Scott Grates: you and refer others to you. And that's been our model for going on 20
Scott Grates: years now. Picking out some of the nuggets in there, the golden egg and the
Joanne Lockwood: goose. You're not focusing on the egg, you're focusing on the geese. I love that
Joanne Lockwood: idea. And I'm a great believer in relationship marketing. I'm a great believer in building
Joanne Lockwood: relationships. Pay it forward. My model is more altruistic than
Joanne Lockwood: paying it forward. I don't expect to ever see the return. You just
Joanne Lockwood: give like, like you don't expect to see a great method. That way you become
Joanne Lockwood: very authentic and people can believe and trust in you that you're not doing
Joanne Lockwood: it for a reward, you're doing it because you're a great person.
Joanne Lockwood: I think that that approach really resonates for me. But you were also saying, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, this is 2008 financial crisis. I was trying to customer mind back to what
Joanne Lockwood: I was doing. So I had my own IT company back then. And so we
Joanne Lockwood: were selling services and we were dealing with businesses
Joanne Lockwood: suddenly closing up shop or constricting. They weren't hiring
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. Had a knock on through every sector of business
Joanne Lockwood: back in, back in 2008. I remember it well. But I started my first
Joanne Lockwood: IT company back in 1998 and
Joanne Lockwood: that's pre iPhone, it was pre broadband, it was dial up at the
Joanne Lockwood: time and you were writing letters to people, sending out
Joanne Lockwood: brochures and printing stuff, weren't you? And stick it in the main, it'll be
Joanne Lockwood: a franking machine. If it's frank it, post it here. After we
Joanne Lockwood: get letters in the morning we'd open them or bin them.
Joanne Lockwood: Way of marketing. And it's gone through a big cycle I think
Joanne Lockwood: back in those days I was involved in organisations I think, I don't know if
Joanne Lockwood: you have it in the States called BNI Business Networking International. So
Joanne Lockwood: you are really taught me about the giver's game model and this getting in there
Joanne Lockwood: and in the weeds and getting to know people's relationships. I think you're just saying
Joanne Lockwood: to me is really resonating. But today in the digital world and you mentioned
Joanne Lockwood: AI, it's sometimes hard to do that again, isn't it? Yeah,
Scott Grates: you bring up so many good points there. The first one I want to talk
Scott Grates: about is people's BS metres are higher than ever
Scott Grates: nowadays. So if you're not doing it for the right reasons and
Scott Grates: with sincerity and being genuine, authentic people will pick up on that. So don't even
Scott Grates: bother doing it. That's the first piece. And then you know, the other
Scott Grates: thing is the bni. Yeah, we do have BNI here and so I
Scott Grates: often equate this to what I've done. My model and the
Scott Grates: communities I serve as. I've built my, my own BNI for
Scott Grates: lack of a better term without the BNI stuff, you know, and BNI is very.
Scott Grates: I scratch your back, you scratch mine, I give with the expectation that
Scott Grates: you're going to come with so many leads, you know, we don't do that. We
Scott Grates: just find like minded people who, who have this go
Scott Grates: giver mentality, servant heart and, and
Scott Grates: we, we're there for each other, you know, and we support one another
Scott Grates: and there's none of the red tape, you know, kind of rules and
Scott Grates: you know, whatnot. So, so yeah, I say all the time if you're
Scott Grates: not in BNI because it is an exclusive club, right, they only take one person
Scott Grates: from each industry and so if you're not in the club, make your own.
Scott Grates: And again that, that speaks to the contrarian in me where it's like, hey,
Scott Grates: you know, if everyone's doing this, well let me just go start my own
Scott Grates: thing and find people I, I want to do business with. So
Scott Grates: yeah, the, the AI, I'm Embracing it. So, full disclosure,
Scott Grates: I use AI every day and, and I think it's,
Scott Grates: it's a fantastic tool. And it's funny how you were talking about
Scott Grates: 2008 and I was picturing as you were talking like, almost like a black and
Scott Grates: white scene with, with these old printing presses and I'm thinking
Scott Grates: It was only 17 years ago. Right. But it feels like an eternity.
Scott Grates: And yeah, I was, I was with you. Right. We were still typing out
Scott Grates: things with certain pro is wild. But yeah, the AI, I'm
Scott Grates: embracing it. But, but as a tool, you know,
Scott Grates: and I, and I. It will replace certain things, it will replace
Scott Grates: certain people. But here's what I believe is that, you know,
Scott Grates: I'm not scared it's going to replace me. So long as I
Scott Grates: know how to utilise that tool to, to do
Scott Grates: what I need to do with my businesses and, and keep growing with it. The
Scott Grates: people who will be replaced are the ones who just refuse to adapt
Scott Grates: and, you know, they, they want to die on that hill of I'm going to
Scott Grates: do it this way and we're not going to, you know, and, and so, you
Scott Grates: know, I'm going. You have to go with it or get run over by it,
Scott Grates: because it's not stopping. Yeah. I mean, we've seen Blockbuster and video
Joanne Lockwood: hire companies being taken out by streaming, being by
Joanne Lockwood: Netflix. Traditional broadcast TV has been taken
Joanne Lockwood: out, print media has been taken out by online
Joanne Lockwood: stuff. It's just an evolution. It's just happening quicker than it's ever happened before
Joanne Lockwood: in human history. If you look at the way Sam Altman
Joanne Lockwood: is, releasing ChatGPT models every six months
Joanne Lockwood: is a quantum leap forward. What was true one minute is now
Joanne Lockwood: a potential in the next minute is now reality. And if I was a
Joanne Lockwood: graphic designer, if I'm a coder, the latest canva update, you can, you can now
Joanne Lockwood: generate entire websites, entire entire games just
Joanne Lockwood: by ideating into a chat box. It's crazy.
Scott Grates: It really is. And I, I think for most of the listeners,
Scott Grates: as wild as you think things are going to be in the next couple
Scott Grates: years in this space, I don't think you're even scratching the
Scott Grates: surface with your wildest thoughts. I think it's going to go way beyond that. I
Scott Grates: don't know. We can, we can riff for hours on this, but, but yeah,
Scott Grates: it's, I guess what happens. Yeah,
Scott Grates: don't fear it. You know, we initially fear
Scott Grates: change, but, you know, I do believe
Scott Grates: in the human spirit and I do believe in the human
Scott Grates: heart and, you know, again, it's a Tool. But
Scott Grates: ultimately we need each other. And I do believe that in the
Scott Grates: future, when robots are running restaurants, people will
Scott Grates: pay more to go to a restaurant and have a human wait
Scott Grates: staff. You know, I think that the humans will actually be at a premium
Scott Grates: because we'll want to get away from the machines. But
Scott Grates: again, that's rabbit hole stuff. But yeah, humans aren't going
Scott Grates: away. I get that. I mean, if I'm
Joanne Lockwood: fencing, eating a McDonald's meal, for example, I've got the app
Joanne Lockwood: on my phone. If I'm thinking I'll drop in on the way back and we
Joanne Lockwood: can stop in there, I can order it on my phone before we set off
Joanne Lockwood: for the first place, and I turn up, I put the little code in that
Joanne Lockwood: I'm sat in front of and then they'll deliver it to my window, straight in
Joanne Lockwood: my car and all I gotta do is eat it. And that, that helps. If
Joanne Lockwood: I walk into, into the, into the restaurant, there's a big terminal. I can push
Joanne Lockwood: the buttons and tap the screen and then pay for it and I can just
Joanne Lockwood: wait for them to give it to me or I can go sit in my
Joanne Lockwood: car. That kind of works for me that, that's the ultimate
Joanne Lockwood: transactional fast food. Often,
Joanne Lockwood: often I'll walk into McDonald's and go, I don't want to do all that. I
Joanne Lockwood: just want to talk to you. I just want to explain what I want. I
Joanne Lockwood: want you to give me a Big Mac, I want to give you large fries
Joanne Lockwood: and I want a really nice vanilla shake. And I want to have that
Joanne Lockwood: conversation. Sometimes it depends on where I am in my
Joanne Lockwood: mind. If I don't want to talk to anybody, I've got a transactional way. If
Joanne Lockwood: I want to have human contact, I can. And sometimes I'll sit in my car
Joanne Lockwood: on my own, sometimes I want to sit in a restaurant and it's. I think
Joanne Lockwood: we can consume in different ways now, can't we? I think, and choose it ourselves.
Scott Grates: Yeah, I agree with that 100%. And, and that's, you know,
Scott Grates: really why I'm all in on, on the relationship piece, right
Scott Grates: to, to business. And I don't know. And everyone's different, every business is
Scott Grates: different, but I just enjoy the human side
Scott Grates: of what we do. And I'm in risk management and, and we talk
Scott Grates: about protecting assets and building assets and wealth and you know, I.
Scott Grates: These are very emotional, you know, conversations
Scott Grates: and behavioural, you know, habits are so important. And
Scott Grates: yeah, you can type into to chat and ask it for financial
Scott Grates: advice and you can give it all of Your numbers and tell it your hopes
Scott Grates: and dreams and goals and it will build probably a plan that's better
Scott Grates: than what I could do for my clients. But
Scott Grates: you know, when they're confused or scared or there
Scott Grates: was a market movement or they had an accident or they were diagnosed with an
Scott Grates: illness, or they lost someone they loved, you know, these, these real life moments
Scott Grates: happen, like we're still going to need each other and, and so,
Scott Grates: you know, I, I, that's why I just keep going back to it.
Scott Grates: It's a tool and it will help and it's made me, and I'm sure you
Scott Grates: as well, Joanne, 10x more efficient already, right?
Scott Grates: I mean, you took my bio and you know, plugged it in and chat
Scott Grates: tells you, you know, this great stuff about me, which you didn't have to research
Scott Grates: and think about on your own, but I do the same thing, you know, and
Scott Grates: I've written training manuals and courses
Scott Grates: that, you know, it took me like an hour, which would normally be weeks
Scott Grates: of work. So it's making us more efficient. But I think too
Scott Grates: much of anything is problematic, you know, and so it has to be part of
Scott Grates: the puzzle. I don't think we can be all. In right there, the word you
Joanne Lockwood: mentioned in there, and I latched onto it and you used the word risk
Joanne Lockwood: and I can't remember the exact quote, but something like trust is hard
Joanne Lockwood: fought but lost in an instant and you can never regain it or
Joanne Lockwood: something is kind of the. And I guess when you're talking about here in your
Joanne Lockwood: financial investments, your advising clients, a lot of
Joanne Lockwood: that comes from risk and trust. Do I trust Chat GPT with my
Joanne Lockwood: home, my family, my car, my whole life?
Joanne Lockwood: No. Do I trust you? Maybe not now, but I can
Joanne Lockwood: ask you questions and we can build up a relationship. I can meet other people
Joanne Lockwood: who trust you. ChatGPT. I could meet other people who don't trust it
Joanne Lockwood: at all. Or, you know, the trust with ChatGPT is cautious
Joanne Lockwood: trust, isn't it? It's an assistant. I don't empower it. So
Joanne Lockwood: you're talking about relationship building and trust is the key in there, isn't it?
Scott Grates: Yeah. And I'll give you a word that you used earlier, which is empathy.
Scott Grates: And this is so huge, right, because you know, AI can give
Scott Grates: us facts and stats and a plan and words, but I don't
Scott Grates: know how often it's going to say, I hear you, Joanne. I know
Scott Grates: the struggle you're going through. I feel the same way. I've been there. Right. I'm
Scott Grates: here to listen sometimes we don't even give advice, we just give an
Scott Grates: ear and we're there for people emotionally when they need us
Scott Grates: and we can guide them. You know, just that empathy
Scott Grates: piece is so important. And again, as the
Scott Grates: world goes towards mass emails and
Scott Grates: social and SEO and, you know, I, I just still believe
Scott Grates: that if you have a couple hundred really strong
Scott Grates: relationships with the right people now, every business is different, but in my business,
Scott Grates: a couple hundred solid relationships. So not just me, but my, my whole team,
Scott Grates: we can do everything we need to accomplish for our customers
Scott Grates: by just knowing a couple hundred of the right people and, you know, diving
Scott Grates: deep into those relationships. So, yeah, empathy is a
Scott Grates: word we focus on a lot. There's a phrase which I believe I coined, not
Joanne Lockwood: anybody else in, but please tell me if you've heard it.
Joanne Lockwood: Otherwise there's the old adage, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
Joanne Lockwood: And my spin on that is no longer what you know or who you
Joanne Lockwood: know. It's all about who knows you. So, and
Joanne Lockwood: what I often say to people is, with the best and the best of intentions,
Joanne Lockwood: I don't care who you are as long as you know who I am. And
Joanne Lockwood: so that's about building this kind of first century personal brand,
Joanne Lockwood: about creating that Persona that
Joanne Lockwood: tells the story about your values, your, your hopes and fears and
Joanne Lockwood: dreams that people can then buy into you. And I remember being always
Joanne Lockwood: told at networking meeting, don't give your business card out, collect other people,
Joanne Lockwood: that way you can email them, that way you've got control of the conversation.
Joanne Lockwood: But I learned over many years that I would never call them, I would never
Joanne Lockwood: phone them up, I would never do all this. So actually I want you to
Joanne Lockwood: know who I am so that, that's more important to me. I leave a room
Joanne Lockwood: with 50 people knowing me and then they will go, oh yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: remember Joanne, I remember Joanne. But I can never contact the thousands of people I
Joanne Lockwood: come in Contact with on LinkedIn Everywhere else now the relationship
Joanne Lockwood: there changed a bit. That's a great take, you know, so my book is called
Scott Grates: Referrals Done Right and the old school
Scott Grates: networking is in my opinion the wrong way to do it.
Scott Grates: And that's what you're talking about with these forced social interactions and networking and the
Scott Grates: grabbing the cards and following up and making the calls. And I love your take
Scott Grates: on it, which is, you know, I want you to know me. And I tell
Scott Grates: people all the time that you aren't who you think you are in the business
Scott Grates: world. You are who your Google reviews say you are, because that's what other people
Scott Grates: are saying about you. And my, my kids, I, I just try to impress
Scott Grates: upon them so much. All kids that I talk to spent a lot of time
Scott Grates: with, with working with high school students is this brand awareness
Scott Grates: and, and what an amazing time for them to be alive
Scott Grates: and be able to build your personal brand. Because, you know, I mean, I'm staring
Scott Grates: down 50, but even in, during my years when, when you
Scott Grates: go back like you, you had to know certain people to get into certain
Scott Grates: universities or get certain jobs or get into certain rooms, get certain meetings.
Scott Grates: You know, you had to have a certain amount of money or social status or,
Scott Grates: you know, there was these family connections and social ties that were so important
Scott Grates: today. I'm not saying that's not important, but for the kids, the
Scott Grates: playing fields level now, you know, and it doesn't matter. You can be
Scott Grates: in your bedroom and creating amazing content and a personal brand and
Scott Grates: become a millionaire. You know, you have access to, to the Internet
Scott Grates: and know you have access to information. You know,
Scott Grates: holding a cell phone, a 16 year old today has access to more
Scott Grates: information than President Barack Obama did when he first took
Scott Grates: office. You know, 20 years, not even 20 years ago. And
Scott Grates: you know, Ted Talks and YouTube and you know, just people
Scott Grates: that some of the, the greatest thought leaders in the world, all their information's out
Scott Grates: there for free, you know, but kids like to still
Scott Grates: scroll TikTok and watch Cat videos and stuff and I'm like, all right,
Scott Grates: well that's all right once in a while. But you know, spend 20, 30 minutes
Scott Grates: a day, you know, digging into something that's of interest to you that, that you
Scott Grates: can leverage and, and use in the future. But yeah,
Scott Grates: I, I don't even remember what your initial question was there, but.
Joanne Lockwood: It'S about the power of personal brand and. Oh, the personal brand. Yeah,
Scott Grates: so, so yeah. And you know, and then there's a, a cautionary tale in there
Scott Grates: too, is that everything you do put out there can haunt
Scott Grates: you forever. You know, so, so choose wisely. You know, how you want
Scott Grates: people to see you, how you want to be known, because it can be very
Scott Grates: powerful in either direction. I don't know if this is your, your
Joanne Lockwood: lane, but I'm going to ask this question anyway. One thing I've
Joanne Lockwood: noticed about my own evolution, if you like on social
Joanne Lockwood: media and I post stuff on LinkedIn, whatever it may be, is in the early
Joanne Lockwood: days you kind of, you're a bit of a stalker. You have a look around,
Joanne Lockwood: you don't even want to leave a Footprint in the snow. You don't want anyone
Joanne Lockwood: to know you've been there. You won't, you won't like, you won't touch. You just
Joanne Lockwood: here and have a look at someone's content and you get brave and think, oh,
Joanne Lockwood: I like that, or I react to it, or I think, oh, that was insightful.
Joanne Lockwood: I'll use a LinkedIn insightful. Then eventually you start bringing a little comment, then you
Joanne Lockwood: may reshare it and time progress as you get, become more confident in who you
Joanne Lockwood: are, then you start writing your own content.
Joanne Lockwood: I think for I've taken this content and I think this on it and then
Joanne Lockwood: eventually I would say we use the word visionary entrepreneur.
Joanne Lockwood: You break into that sort of thought leader bracket where you're now
Joanne Lockwood: originating. And then the magic happens when people start
Joanne Lockwood: sharing your content that you've originated and they're liking and sharing,
Joanne Lockwood: suddenly that snowball starts tumbling. Yeah, admittedly this is a space
Scott Grates: I was pretty weak in LinkedIn specifically, um, and
Scott Grates: I hired a LinkedIn coach because I realised how weak I was. So
Scott Grates: I sought, sought out a professional. And one thing that my big takeaway from
Scott Grates: LinkedIn is when you can create content
Scott Grates: to support other people who already have the audience. Again, this kind
Scott Grates: of goes back to the goose and the golden egg. Right. Um, so, so if
Scott Grates: you have a hundred thousand followers and I'm one of them
Scott Grates: and I can create something insightful to support or
Scott Grates: add to your thought, now a hundred thousand people can
Scott Grates: potentially see my comment because I'm piggybacking off of your
Scott Grates: audience. And so I think a lot of times we think we have to create
Scott Grates: our own post. But you know, I might have 700 people that follow
Scott Grates: me. I would spend, you know, for the audience, I would spend more time
Scott Grates: trying to contribute to bigger thought leaders posts to be
Scott Grates: seen on LinkedIn and then just make sure that whatever the
Scott Grates: first few words of your, your title or who you are, make sure they're,
Scott Grates: they're powerful and will resonate. Let people know exactly who you are and what you
Scott Grates: do. So that if they read your, your comment, they see the first few
Scott Grates: words of your, your title, they go, ooh, maybe I should follow this person and
Scott Grates: they'll click on you and, and do the same.
Joanne Lockwood: Great. And yeah, that's a great way of levelling up, isn't it? Or
Joanne Lockwood: stepping up is to. Bit like one of those weeds that has a little seed,
Joanne Lockwood: sticky seeds that get stuck onto your socks. You know, you're trying to stick onto
Joanne Lockwood: somebody else and hopefully they're going to take you out and fertilise you somewhere else
Joanne Lockwood: in the world. Yeah, well, you know, think about it when we talk about getting
Scott Grates: into rooms, right, and the who, not how and who, you know, and
Scott Grates: it'd be very difficult for me to. And I'll just use like, Tim Ferriss, right?
Scott Grates: So it'd be very difficult for me to get a meeting with Tim Ferriss or
Scott Grates: share a conversation with him. But right now, you and I can go on to
Scott Grates: Tim Ferriss, LinkedIn, find something that's intriguing to us and come up with something
Scott Grates: insightful we can add to the conversation. And boom. And I'm in the same
Scott Grates: room, virtual, albeit as Tim Ferriss and his audience,
Scott Grates: you know, and so, yeah, that could be like a dandelion
Scott Grates: weed sticking on. A sock, but, yeah, no, it is. Yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: agree. Now, I say I'm a great fan of that sort of
Joanne Lockwood: thing as well, but what I've started doing lately is identifying people's content
Joanne Lockwood: that resonates either positive or negative with me and then doing
Joanne Lockwood: my own opinion piece whilst quoting it. So it's still
Joanne Lockwood: standalone content, but quoting. I was reading this on someone's post the other
Joanne Lockwood: day, so it gives me another spin and take on their content. I tag them
Joanne Lockwood: in on it and then they can choose to engage or not, but at least
Joanne Lockwood: their followers are seeing mine as well. I've tried doing that a lot lately, which
Joanne Lockwood: allows me to have a. Rather than just copy and paste what they've put,
Joanne Lockwood: I want to really make sure that I'm adding, adding my view on it and
Joanne Lockwood: as to why I agree or why I disagree or what they've missed. It's a
Joanne Lockwood: good, good way of spinning on, isn't it? Million
Scott Grates: Dollar Question. Do you use AI to help you with those
Scott Grates: often? Yeah, I've got, I've got a, I, I, I've written my own
Joanne Lockwood: custom context. I've, I've, I've, I've worked on my
Joanne Lockwood: tone of voice, my, my Persona, who I am, my brand values. I,
Joanne Lockwood: I paste loads of stuff I've written into it and I, I'll, I'll
Joanne Lockwood: take something and I'll say that this is my view on this and I often,
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes dictate into chat GPT or just type it in. So this is
Joanne Lockwood: what I'm thinking. This is where I want to go. I want you to go
Joanne Lockwood: deep on this. I wanted to really critically analyse it. I want you to find
Joanne Lockwood: everything that is, you know, positive and negative. I want you to. There's a
Joanne Lockwood: couple of philosophical techniques. One is called The Moss and the Bailey, where you find
Joanne Lockwood: a really easy statement and then you have something that you, you link to
Joanne Lockwood: it as being indefensible. So, so I asked it to test it out using all
Joanne Lockwood: these theory models, applied bias on it and all these things. So sometimes you get
Joanne Lockwood: a really good opinion. I look at it and go, yeah, don't you get that?
Joanne Lockwood: So I take everything it's given me and feed it back into the machine again
Joanne Lockwood: and say, look, you've just given me all this. Give me something out of that.
Joanne Lockwood: So sometimes I just massage it and keep kneading it and kneading it and kneading
Joanne Lockwood: it with my own thoughts. And then sometimes something pops out and you go, that's
Joanne Lockwood: it. I'll have the saying I used earlier
Joanne Lockwood: about it's not what you know, it's who you know, actually, it's who knows you.
Joanne Lockwood: I'll feed that in as a, as a hook into something,
Joanne Lockwood: you know, one of my sayings, hopefully I coined and then
Joanne Lockwood: use that as the hook for my perspective on a topic. So
Joanne Lockwood: I'm still coming up with a metaphor or the analogy and then
Joanne Lockwood: using it to steer the content, which is often means you do get unique
Joanne Lockwood: content out of AI, give it the right prime. And I read it and think,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, I would have written that. Yeah, I would have written that. I look through
Joanne Lockwood: it and go, yeah, that sounds like me. I show it to somebody else. Oh,
Joanne Lockwood: that's, that's, that's insightful. That's, that's powerful. It's like, well,
Joanne Lockwood: it is, yeah, it's. But I'm not, I'm not cheating because I'm not, I'm not
Joanne Lockwood: handing over the keys to the AI engine I'm using
Joanne Lockwood: as a. Because I, I used to hire a, I used to have a
Joanne Lockwood: comms expert, a media person who
Joanne Lockwood: every week we have a meeting, we'd have a one to one and she'd interview
Joanne Lockwood: me on various topics and she would go away and write me an article which
Joanne Lockwood: I'd then edit a bit and then tweak and then she'd finish it off and
Joanne Lockwood: she'd send it off to all these magazines and publishers. That's all I'm doing. Instead
Joanne Lockwood: of paying her a thousand bucks a month, I'm using AI to do
Joanne Lockwood: the same process. I couldn't agree with you more. You know, this last
Scott Grates: book I had a team of writers, you know, so, so they all had different
Scott Grates: roles, but there were four, four of them that we met weekly
Scott Grates: and they'd give some assignments and they'd you know, ghostwrite some stuff and
Scott Grates: we'd go back and forth. And then, you know, there was a team of editors,
Scott Grates: you know, and there was just all these people that helped bring
Scott Grates: this to market. And to Your point, for $20 a
Scott Grates: month, I can now replace them. And I've created what I
Scott Grates: call my Scott bot. Right. So, same thing. I've uploaded all my blogs and work
Scott Grates: and books and, you know, I was preparing for a career day at a
Scott Grates: local school recently and I wanted a theme and I
Scott Grates: wanted some personal quotes and anecdotes, just like you do.
Scott Grates: I just started talking to my own bot and it was giving me quotes from
Scott Grates: my own work that I had forgotten about. And in a matter of minutes, I
Scott Grates: had this perfectly outlined 20 minute
Scott Grates: presentation to go in and share with the kids. So I
Scott Grates: don't, you know, there's this talk, is it cheating that? It's not cheating. Right.
Scott Grates: It's doing the same thing that we've always done, just with a machine.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. One of the things I do is I do a
Joanne Lockwood: lot of advice and guidance on transgender rights and things like that. And, you know,
Joanne Lockwood: you've got stuff going on in the States, we've got stuff going on here in
Joanne Lockwood: the uk and a lot of people want answers to some of these law changes,
Joanne Lockwood: legislation changes. And I'm able to take all of the legislative
Joanne Lockwood: guidance that's come out as PDFs from the courts, whatever it is,
Joanne Lockwood: dump it into the model and say, look, this is what the
Joanne Lockwood: law was, this is what the guidance is. This is the latest Supreme Court ruling.
Joanne Lockwood: This is that, that and that and that and that. I want you to give
Joanne Lockwood: me some clarity, give me a guidance note on that. It spits
Joanne Lockwood: it out and I feed it back in again, say, look, I want you to
Joanne Lockwood: test this out. People are going to criticise me for this advice. I want you
Joanne Lockwood: to really make sure this is robust and evident everything you're saying and
Joanne Lockwood: tell me this is safe. Then it goes through and goes, yeah, this is
Joanne Lockwood: because it gives me a full analysis and says at the bottom it says,
Joanne Lockwood: if you want to be doubly sure, just tweak this or put this little disclaimer
Joanne Lockwood: in here. And then when I post it on LinkedIn, I got these people piling
Joanne Lockwood: on, saying, you can't say that, you can't say that. I take their comments,
Joanne Lockwood: feed it back into my model and say, they've said this nasty thing
Joanne Lockwood: about me. What do you do? They said, no, they're wrong, they're wrong, they're wrong,
Joanne Lockwood: they're wrong. Or actually they've got a small point here. Tweak it and put this,
Joanne Lockwood: and then adjust it. So I'm allowing other people to
Joanne Lockwood: critique my work back in the morning, which. Is
Scott Grates: kudos to you, you know, for being vulnerable and
Scott Grates: experimental, you know, with, with the work and, and taking feedback.
Scott Grates: Because I'm sure you do a lot of ignorance, you know, so that's a bit.
Scott Grates: How do you. Yeah, how do you, how do you, you know, extrapolate
Scott Grates: the, the positive stuff, you know, the feedback or potentially
Scott Grates: positive from just the pure ignorance and hate. But yeah, that's, that's
Scott Grates: amazing work. The technique works whatever field you're in.
Joanne Lockwood: Hang on a minute. It's called peer review by scientists. That's what they
Joanne Lockwood: do. They write a paper, they peer review it, and they all have it, they
Joanne Lockwood: all try and pull it apart and then they build a better model as a
Joanne Lockwood: result of the peer review. So that's all you're doing, just using AI
Joanne Lockwood: to be your hive mind.
Joanne Lockwood: You work with in high school, do you work with students or is it mainly
Joanne Lockwood: business school? I work with all students. I love kids, right? So I wanted to
Scott Grates: be a teacher, but I also wanted money. So there was a real odds how
Scott Grates: passionate am I about teaching? And so I found a way to, to do
Scott Grates: both, right? Where as a, an entrepreneur, I make a
Scott Grates: good living, but I'm also uniquely qualified to go into
Scott Grates: the classroom and help teach children
Scott Grates: things they can't find in the textbook. You know, and that's the whole think outside
Scott Grates: the textbook approach. I say often that schools are good at
Scott Grates: teaching kids what to think, but as you know, Joanne, in
Scott Grates: the real world, we need to know how to think. You know, critical thinking, discernment,
Scott Grates: teaching, self awareness and understanding that these
Scott Grates: negative thoughts, the self doubt, the inner critic,
Scott Grates: the imposter syndrome, even though they don't understand, that's what it's called. But all these
Scott Grates: thoughts and feelings, it's standard equipment in their brains. But
Scott Grates: they're thinking, they're not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, confident enough,
Scott Grates: worthy of certain things because they're having these feelings. But they don't
Scott Grates: understand that everyone else in the room is having the same feelings. Whether they, they
Scott Grates: admit it or not, they are. And so the kid's ability, you know,
Scott Grates: and again, going back to digital, I call it apps, aps,
Scott Grates: their ability to acknowledge it, that, hey, I
Scott Grates: hear this voice, I understand that it's not just me. This is standard stuff.
Scott Grates: Prove it wrong. Look for a moment in their past where
Scott Grates: they have done certain things and then the
Scott Grates: S is silence it. And I teach kids this three second
Scott Grates: pause. I don't, you know, it's not unique to me, but that's the whole,
Scott Grates: I got this right, so acknowledge it, prove it wrong,
Scott Grates: silence it. And so, you know, really they say you're,
Scott Grates: you're best qualified to help the person you once
Scott Grates: were. And when I look back and did some deep work into
Scott Grates: my childhood, I realised I had real confidence
Scott Grates: issues. I had some father issues. Not that he was
Scott Grates: a bad dad at all, but he was overbearing, demanding
Scott Grates: and I could never live up to his expectations. And it
Scott Grates: filled me with self doubt that I was never good enough. And
Scott Grates: so I look at adults in the corporate world that I work with
Scott Grates: now and we do trainings for them around sales
Scott Grates: specifically, but they're still dealing with the things that they haven't
Scott Grates: worked out from their childhood. A lot of them, and really adults
Scott Grates: become deteriorated teenagers as we go. In many ways, not
Scott Grates: all I'm painting with a wide brush here, but you know, my, my focus with
Scott Grates: the kids is, is really no matter what you want to do,
Scott Grates: you know, and first of all, let's not talk about what you want to do,
Scott Grates: let's talk about who you want to be, right? Because that's far more important than
Scott Grates: anything you're going to do. Just understand that you're always going to have critics,
Scott Grates: you're always going to have self doubt, you're going to think you don't belong,
Scott Grates: you're not worthy. And all of that's bs, right?
Scott Grates: Because you are worthy and deserving of everything you're willing to work for and
Scott Grates: everything that's important to you. And really just diving into that
Scott Grates: critical thinking, that discernment, that just
Scott Grates: continuous improvement. And really
Scott Grates: the confidence comes from not the textbook or
Scott Grates: things you, you. I can't teach you how to be confident. Tony Robbins
Scott Grates: can't teach you how to be confident. Right? Confidence is earned, not
Scott Grates: learned. And so you've got to be willing to take a shot, fall on your
Scott Grates: face, get back up and take another shot. And, and failure is just
Scott Grates: feedback. And I think, you know, we in schools, we, we think failure and we
Scott Grates: think oh my gosh, that's. But, but you know, Joanne, every, every successful
Scott Grates: person you've ever talked to on the show is, is their past
Scott Grates: is loaded with failures, right? And that's how we build strength and
Scott Grates: adversity and courage and confidence. And so those types of messages is
Scott Grates: really what I want to get out to the next generation, to empower them
Scott Grates: to, to do whatever it is that they want to do as long
Scott Grates: as they're being the person true to themselves that they want to be looking. Now
Joanne Lockwood: I was thinking, wow, that's, that's, that's so, so true. The. I think someone asked
Joanne Lockwood: me a little while ago, how am I able to stay so calm, so
Joanne Lockwood: resilient? We used to call it bounce back ability, I think in the 90s. How
Joanne Lockwood: do I handle that? I said, well, I've messed up a lot in my life
Joanne Lockwood: and you don't get 60 years old without messing a lot up. I think
Joanne Lockwood: what it is, you just learn over time that it's just
Joanne Lockwood: brush it off, you're going to get up, the earth's going to rotate, the sun's
Joanne Lockwood: going to come up and everything's going to be okay tomorrow. And you learn after
Joanne Lockwood: a while that you've messed up so many times, you've learned so many lessons
Joanne Lockwood: that you're more confident to approach today in a different light. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's, maybe that's the problem. What we, we trying to fast track our
Joanne Lockwood: younger generation to have that resilience without having been through
Joanne Lockwood: the learning curve, if you like. We have to let them fail a bit and
Joanne Lockwood: we're not creating environments where they can. Yeah, you got to earn your
Scott Grates: scars, you know. And you have. I have. But, but
Scott Grates: that's not a quick and easy. There's, you know, metaphor. But
Scott Grates: there's no elevator to the top. You gotta take the stairs, right?
Scott Grates: And wherever you want to go, it's one step at a
Scott Grates: time. And sometimes you don't want to take that next step or
Scott Grates: it's scary or hard or you know, just, you're fearful, but you just
Scott Grates: gotta keep climbing. And you know, again, it's kind of a
Scott Grates: cliche, corny metaphor, but it's true with the fast track. And I fear
Scott Grates: for our kids. I call them the microwave society now because they want everything in
Scott Grates: an instant. But all good things take time. And if I could leave this
Scott Grates: generation, my kids generation with, with, you know, some parting words,
Scott Grates: it's don't be in such a rush. You know, all good things take time.
Scott Grates: Embrace failure, right? Learn from it, take some chances.
Joanne Lockwood: You. Know, and it's okay not, not to know
Scott Grates: everything right now.
Scott Grates: So, so yeah, I do fear that we're,
Scott Grates: we're pushing them faster and again the technology plays into this.
Scott Grates: You know, then they should be pushed. You
Scott Grates: know, I, as hard as it is as a parent of three, I
Scott Grates: want my kids to experience pain and suffering and
Scott Grates: failure. And I know that sounds cold and it's so hard for us to just
Scott Grates: take a step back and let them mess something up. But if they don't, how
Scott Grates: do they ever learn? You know, and, and I think as parents,
Scott Grates: you know, we. We talk about this trophy generation where every kid gets a
Scott Grates: trophy and that's not the way it should be. And it's like, well, who's buying
Scott Grates: the trophies? Because the kids aren't, right? We're the ones doing this to them.
Scott Grates: So if it's. If it's, you know, that important to you, then stop buying the
Scott Grates: trophies, but, you know, and let them feel a little bit of pain. But I
Scott Grates: don't know, it's ultimately, I.
Scott Grates: I guess empower is the word that comes back. Empower them to, to make
Scott Grates: decisions, trust them, and, and then care for
Scott Grates: them when they. They mess something up and, and help them, you know, work
Scott Grates: through that, because that's, that's the process of growth, development, and confidence.
Joanne Lockwood: Article somewhere, I can't remember where I saw it or who to quote and attribute
Joanne Lockwood: it to, was that if you're looking to
Joanne Lockwood: breed entrepreneurs or people with entrepreneurial spirit,
Joanne Lockwood: you do not hire grade 8 students. Grade A students
Joanne Lockwood: sail through life expecting to win everything. Whereas what you're looking at really
Joanne Lockwood: is the grit and fighters at the bottom who
Joanne Lockwood: are getting Cs, Ds, and Es, who are being stayed in
Joanne Lockwood: after school or being told off for doing stuff, because those are the ones that
Joanne Lockwood: are learning grit and determination, and they're also figuring out how to win in a
Joanne Lockwood: world that doesn't let them win. Whereas if people who are used to winning, used
Joanne Lockwood: to getting A's, they don't know how to handle a B. They don't know what
Joanne Lockwood: to do with it. I say all the time, you know, winning's easy, and that
Scott Grates: sounds maybe cold or pompous, but you find out what you're made
Scott Grates: of in defeat. Anyone can win. And I'll go, don't get me wrong,
Scott Grates: there's wrong ways to win too. But you get the point.
Scott Grates: And I don't want to knock the kids that are doing great in school.
Scott Grates: That's awesome. But you're right. I mean, look at the entrepreneurs,
Scott Grates: specifically. Most of them are misfits and dropouts. And,
Scott Grates: you know, they. They had to kind of fight for everything and figure
Scott Grates: it out because nothing came easy to them. And when things come easy to
Scott Grates: you, unfortunately, my, My concerns for those students aren't,
Scott Grates: you know, up until 21, 22 years old, it's the entire life after that,
Scott Grates: when things stop, you know, no one, no one cares about your grades when you're
Scott Grates: 30, you know, and you're trying to raise a family and you have debt and
Scott Grates: you've got a career, you know, and you know, are you prepared for that?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Where's your coping strategy? Where's your, your adversity
Joanne Lockwood: defence? And you know, how do you fight back against that? Yeah. Do you think,
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, you mentioned the phrase imposter syndrome earlier
Joanne Lockwood: and I'd never become consciously aware of
Joanne Lockwood: that in me until about 10 years ago. For various reasons
Joanne Lockwood: in my life, I changed everything in my life and I suppose because I'd had
Joanne Lockwood: a very linear progression, I left school, I
Joanne Lockwood: did some electronics, I got out of electronics into computing and I was self
Joanne Lockwood: taught. So I was largely in control of my own destiny at a time where
Joanne Lockwood: nobody else in the 80s was really an expert in IT and
Joanne Lockwood: computing. So I was up there in the beginning of the curve where
Joanne Lockwood: I was never an imposter, I was always at the front of the curve. But
Joanne Lockwood: I think later in life I pivoted and changed from IT into
Joanne Lockwood: HR and recruitment and other things. That's where my imposter syndrome came because
Joanne Lockwood: I suddenly had to acquire a new skill where I found inadequate.
Joanne Lockwood: If you're saying that younger people, younger generations are now seeing this, more hyper
Joanne Lockwood: aware of it, is that very, that side effect of the
Joanne Lockwood: hyper connected world or the pressure to always win or judging each other
Joanne Lockwood: against each other all the time, what's created that pressure on them?
Scott Grates: Yeah. So full disclosure, I'm not an expert, you know,
Scott Grates: in this, this is just my opinion, but from what I see,
Scott Grates: and I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said comparison is the thief
Scott Grates: of joy. I think social media
Scott Grates: in many ways is the worst thing that could have happened to kids.
Scott Grates: You know, they, they see everyone's highlight reel the best few
Scott Grates: minutes of the day, they see things with filters, they see AI
Scott Grates: generated things. Right. They're see, they're seeing things taking them as truth
Scott Grates: and they're wondering why they're not that
Scott Grates: good or cool or smart or athletic or pretty or you
Scott Grates: know, whatever it might be. And so I, I think when I, when
Scott Grates: I talk imposter syndrome with that group, you know, it's,
Scott Grates: it's really, to me the, the root cause is, is the comparison
Scott Grates: trap where they're constantly comparing themselves to
Scott Grates: a standard that isn't real. And I don't know if we're
Scott Grates: having enough conversations with kids about this, but we're seeing it and I don't know
Scott Grates: the stats but you know, but cyberbullying's awful. The suicide
Scott Grates: rates are horrific. Why, you know, why, why are we
Scott Grates: allowing this as a society? It's crazy, you know, but money,
Scott Grates: I guess, is the answer. People in power not wanting to make those
Scott Grates: decisions, you know, I, I think it's, it's just we need to have more
Scott Grates: healthy conversations around what's real,
Scott Grates: what's not. You know, I don't know if you saw the Netflix special the Social
Scott Grates: Dilemma. It's worth watching if you haven't.
Scott Grates: But a couple quotes that stood out from that one is
Scott Grates: if, if you're not paying for a product, you are the product.
Scott Grates: And I was like, ooh, that one was a gut punch, right? Where, you
Scott Grates: know, you and I are smart enough now to realise that everything we
Scott Grates: do becomes part of our algorithm and everything is strategic and
Scott Grates: intentional when it comes to trying to sell us stuff or change our moods and
Scott Grates: emotions. Well, 11, 12 year olds don't understand that. And
Scott Grates: you know, another thing that came out of that episode was they said, you
Scott Grates: know, about half a dozen white guys in Northern California are controlling the
Scott Grates: moods of millions of teenagers across the planet. And it's sick, but
Scott Grates: it's true. So I don't know, you know, when you. So
Scott Grates: imposter syndrome, maybe it's not the right phrase, but I, I think
Scott Grates: there's a confidence crisis in kids. A because they, they
Scott Grates: don't communicate. We, we spent all this time talking about relationships and relations
Scott Grates: and they're not just not comfortable and no fault of their own, they just haven't
Scott Grates: been exposed to the eyeball to eyeball. How do I converse with
Scott Grates: someone? How do I interact with Joanne? What do I ask? How do I start
Scott Grates: that conversation? You know, I do, I interview as an employer and
Scott Grates: it's sad just the lack of interpersonal soft
Scott Grates: skills that, you know, this generation, they lack. So, you know,
Scott Grates: that's another thing that I do is I offer for the students that I get
Scott Grates: in front of the opportunity to help them build their resume, do
Scott Grates: job shadowing. I've got a couple of interns starting
Scott Grates: over the summer, mock interviews where we, we go through
Scott Grates: and help them prepare for interviews. Just those important
Scott Grates: relationship building soft skills. But yeah, it's, the
Scott Grates: phones are, are good and bad, right? And so I talk about AI being a
Scott Grates: tool and social media I'm on all the time and we talk about LinkedIn
Scott Grates: and we leverage it for, for certain business initiatives.
Scott Grates: But the younger generation is, you know, they're
Scott Grates: using it in different ways and I think there's just too much
Scott Grates: comparison and it's killing their confidence.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, that's something I was going to dive in with you and talk about is
Joanne Lockwood: the. How do you get the modern
Joanne Lockwood: generation to actually start meeting face to face? You
Joanne Lockwood: know, I appreciate I'm probably stereotyping here, but they do a lot of online
Joanne Lockwood: gaming, do a lot of online chat,
Joanne Lockwood: very rarely pick the phone up to talk anymore. They're messaging with text or
Joanne Lockwood: voice notes. So it's very asynchronous. That's a different skill to
Joanne Lockwood: having to actually engage in a conversation like we're doing
Joanne Lockwood: now, when you're a younger generation now and
Joanne Lockwood: you're probably not used to those sort of conversations, everything is
Joanne Lockwood: online or offline or asynchronous. And
Joanne Lockwood: tech space, how do you help people break out of that
Joanne Lockwood: into building what I would call a stronger relationship? Great question,
Scott Grates: and I don't know if I have a great answer, but the. You
Scott Grates: know, sometimes you just have to. You have to force people to do things they
Scott Grates: don't want to do, you know, and, you know, I'll be the first to admit
Scott Grates: I much prefer a text to a phone call. And so I have to force
Scott Grates: myself to do things that I don't want to do, which is sometimes pick up
Scott Grates: the phone and call someone or, you know, meet with someone. And so the other
Scott Grates: thing I say a lot is that I can tell you the stove is hot,
Scott Grates: but until you touch it and burn yourself for that split second, you're not going
Scott Grates: to believe me. And so, you know, really pushing
Scott Grates: kids out of their comfort zone. And this is what we do with. And again,
Scott Grates: this is. You talked about entrepreneurs not always being top
Scott Grates: performers of grades. Well, another key characteristic of entrepreneurs is a lot of them are
Scott Grates: former athletes, because athletes know how to work in a team.
Scott Grates: They know how to communicate, they know how to lose, deal with
Scott Grates: adversity. They're competitive, right? They want to win. And so, you know, how do we
Scott Grates: get kids working on teams and in groups, even if they're.
Scott Grates: If they're not into athletics? So I, I think at a
Scott Grates: younger age, it's important to, to get them working in groups and with
Scott Grates: each other. It's not comfortable, you know, but, you know, I think we just have
Scott Grates: to force people out of their comfort zone to realise that, hey, you
Scott Grates: know, I do like this person, or, you know, this is a relationship worth
Scott Grates: pursuing, which I don't know if you get that over Snapchat. No, you're
Joanne Lockwood: building one to many, many, many relationships like that. You're not.
Joanne Lockwood: We're not actually building the meaning of full, short relationships, small relationships.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I think when I was growing up, you have what, six, five or
Joanne Lockwood: six meaningful relationships in your life at any one time,
Joanne Lockwood: excluding your parents or maybe your siblings. But yeah, and that's.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember the time management book. It was six things plus two things
Joanne Lockwood: that are family on top of it or something. That's as much as you can
Joanne Lockwood: hold in your head at once. But now we're trying to hold too much, trying
Joanne Lockwood: to keep too many things going, and we've become transactional, don't we? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: the other thing I've found with relationships I've built over the years is they can
Joanne Lockwood: be lopsided. One is where you're a giver, and one
Joanne Lockwood: is where you're a taker. It's trying to find ones where you are
Joanne Lockwood: symbiotic, where you give and take equally. If you don't phone for a day, they
Joanne Lockwood: phone you or you phone them. But some relationships, you're always doing the
Joanne Lockwood: phoning or the other person's always doing the phoning, and you think so
Joanne Lockwood: it's trying to find those relationships where you are both bought into it. It's the
Joanne Lockwood: hard bit, isn't it? 100. Yeah. And that's. That's probably why you only have a
Scott Grates: handful of those really good relationships. And that's in many
Scott Grates: ways all you need. You know, it less is more when it comes to
Scott Grates: everything with productivity, efficiency, happiness. I think it's.
Scott Grates: Greg McEwen wrote the book Essentialism, and that was. Made a
Scott Grates: profound impact on me where I just started looking at
Scott Grates: all this stuff. And that could be materialistic
Scott Grates: stuff that could be baggage from my past, stuff that could
Scott Grates: be relationships that aren't worth the time and effort stuff.
Scott Grates: And, you know, for a garden to grow, you got to pull the
Scott Grates: weeds. And, you know, it's okay to.
Scott Grates: To only have a handful of really deep, rich, meaningful relationships,
Scott Grates: but where we get into trouble is, is we've got as a
Scott Grates: society, a loneliness crisis going on, too.
Scott Grates: There's. I don't know the number, but I be confident
Scott Grates: in saying it's probably staggering, almost unbelievable, the number of people who don't even
Scott Grates: have five or six good relationships or any,
Scott Grates: you know, and this is, I think, why social influencers are
Scott Grates: getting popularity that they. They are because I'm
Scott Grates: able to. To go on YouTube and watch a
Scott Grates: Mr. Beast or whoever it might be, and. And I can relate to that person.
Scott Grates: They become my friend. But it's not a real relationship. And
Scott Grates: so, you know, I think it's again, I don't know the answer. But. But somewhere
Scott Grates: along the line, this has to be part of the conversation
Scott Grates: with. With kids to let them know the importance of just genuine,
Scott Grates: real relationships. I think I did a while ago.
Joanne Lockwood: I don't do any of anymore, but I used to do it. It was on
Joanne Lockwood: Facebook. It used to pop up and give you a list of whose birthday it
Joanne Lockwood: is today or tomorrow or yesterday or something like that. And I'd be going down
Joanne Lockwood: the list thinking, happy birthday or not.
Joanne Lockwood: I was, in my head, I was going, why didn't. Why don't I want to
Joanne Lockwood: wish you a happy birthday? Because I don't really know you. It doesn't seem appropriate.
Joanne Lockwood: You're just on my list because potentially you're a networking or someone who.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, so I was almost like going down the list, evaluating,
Joanne Lockwood: basically have that decision point, why don't I want to wish you happy birthday?
Joanne Lockwood: And I think what that gave me the should we still be friends
Joanne Lockwood: or shouldn't we? And then I also guess it's
Joanne Lockwood: maturity. You go down that you see people's posts and think, I don't want to
Joanne Lockwood: read this. I don't want to argue with you. I don't want to get into
Joanne Lockwood: a conversation with you. I just don't want to read it. So do I unfollow
Joanne Lockwood: you or do I remove you as a friend? And they're funny proposition thinking,
Joanne Lockwood: well, I don't want to fall out with you. I don't want to not be
Joanne Lockwood: a friend with you. I just don't want to listen to you. So we'll unfollow
Joanne Lockwood: you. I guess that's just maturity. And you don't need the BS in
Joanne Lockwood: your life anymore. But you're making those decisions. And I think if younger
Joanne Lockwood: people, everybody could get more used to that idea. You don't have to listen to
Joanne Lockwood: everybody. Don't knock yourself away in an echo chamber. You know, listen to what's going
Joanne Lockwood: on, but also filter out what brings you joy.
Scott Grates: Such a great take. And that's another thing I talk about a lot. I said
Scott Grates: if you. You might have a thousand friends on social media and
Scott Grates: 950 of them, if you ran into them at the store
Scott Grates: tonight, wouldn't even say hi to you. So are you really friends?
Scott Grates: You know, and, and you and I have had this right, where it's like we're
Scott Grates: connected on, on social and then we see each other in person. We don't even
Scott Grates: acknowledge each other's existence, like talking about a
Scott Grates: disconnect. But the opposite happens as well, doesn't it. I don't know if you found
Joanne Lockwood: this but you're so connected with people on social. When you do meet them in
Joanne Lockwood: real life, you like know everything about each other. It's like, oh, why you been
Joanne Lockwood: doing this? How's your mom? And you went on holiday last week. It's a fantastic.
Scott Grates: For sure. I mean you know there's in my space, you know, I do a
Scott Grates: lot of training, coaching, consulting and Covid. Right.
Scott Grates: Changed everything. And so just how you and I are talking right
Scott Grates: now over the computer. I had four plus
Scott Grates: years with people getting deep with them, getting to know them, seeing
Scott Grates: them. Right. Albeit over the. And then it's almost
Scott Grates: surreal when you finally meet in person. You
Scott Grates: know, it's almost like. I don't know how to explain it
Scott Grates: but. But yeah, we're like, we're. We're best friends. We've never met before. It's wild.
Scott Grates: But this is where world's going, I guess. Yeah. And
Joanne Lockwood: I do that now. I do a lot of events and speaking and turning
Joanne Lockwood: up at places and you've done so much liaison over zoom or teams in
Joanne Lockwood: advance and you actually get to the event the live and suddenly these people have
Joanne Lockwood: got legs. You walk, you can stand up. It's like, it's incredible.
Joanne Lockwood: Scott, this would be an absolutely fascinating conversation. We could talk, we could
Joanne Lockwood: carry on talking for hours, I'm sure. How can people get a hold of you?
Scott Grates: Yeah. So appreciate that and appreciate the space and the
Scott Grates: conversation. It's just my name is my website so it's
Scott Grates: scottgrates.com and that links to the
Scott Grates: books and TED talks and different ways
Scott Grates: to connect and engage with me. Yeah. Run a couple different podcasts. They're linked
Scott Grates: up on there as well and really just have become a
Scott Grates: champion hyper locally focused on
Scott Grates: my community again, narrowing the focus. I talk a lot about when
Scott Grates: you, you know, when you have diluted focus,
Scott Grates: you get diluted results and this is something that I was
Scott Grates: struggling with because I was trying to be all things, all people all the time.
Scott Grates: And. And so now my focus is. Is really in about a 30
Scott Grates: mile radius. There's enough people here
Scott Grates: and enough, you know, children here who, who I want to
Scott Grates: keep here and improve this place and, and
Scott Grates: you know, again, corny cliche but if we can leave it a little bit better
Scott Grates: than we found it and that's really what I'm on a mission to do
Scott Grates: is empower the next generation, educate them, help them be the
Scott Grates: best versions of themselves, whatever that looks like for them
Scott Grates: and just make the place that I've called home for almost 50 years. A
Scott Grates: little bit better when my work here is done. On that note, thank
Joanne Lockwood: you. Amazing. Thank you, Joanne.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my
Joanne Lockwood: deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your
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