The Humans Strike Back

What does meditation and mindfulness have to do with success?

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

So why meditation?

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

And the list goes on and on.

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

What does meditation and mindfulness have to do with success?

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

So why meditation?

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

And the list goes on and on.

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this episode, David and I discuss:

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

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

You’ll get to hear from Sarah about:

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

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

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

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

You’ll get to hear from Sarah about:

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

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

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

Do we have a moral obligation to improve the lives of our users and customers? Or is the goal simply to get them addicted to our products and services?

In this episode, Nir Eyal, author of the best-selling book, "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products," shares how there IS a way to get people to use your products in a way that benefits their lives, instead of disrupting them.

After founding two tech companies that were both acquired, Nir spent years running experiment after experiment to learn exactly how successful companies were creating products that people couldn’t put down, and his research led him to the conclusion that companies focused on improving the quality of life of their users have the best shot at success.

Today, he shares with us:

• The difference between hooking people and addicting them, and why addiction is NOT the goal of great product design
• Why it’s definitely in a company’s long-term interest to create products that improve the quality of life of their users
• The exact steps you can use to understand the needs and pain points of your users
• How product hunt.com used Nir’s model to generate massive amounts of engagement

You’ll also hear Nir’s take on why making money and helping people are NOT mutually exclusive.

Enjoy!

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:03:06] The goal of Nir’s book, and the difference between habit and addiction
• [00:06:57] Whether companies have moral and ethical obligations to build products that are beneficial to their users
• [00:08:37] The science of addiction
• [00:12:48] How to design products that are habit-forming and improve people’s lives
• [00:14:28] The techniques that help companies discover consumer pain points ● [00:15:38] Insights from Nir’s personal experience about finding internal triggers
• [00:17:44] How Ryan Hoover recognized the opportunity in Product Hunt
• [00:20:26] How to encourage engagement
• [00:21:45] The next steps after building a hook
• [00:26:33} Questions you should ask yourself when designing a product
• [00:28:17] How Nir learned the steps that he recommends
• [00:30:49] Companies that Nir has invested in
• [00:31:35] How you can discover your customers’ internal triggers
• [00:35:23] The importance of understanding customer psychology
• [00:37:41] How companies can use data to understand customers
• [00:38:51] How cohort analysis can explain customer usage of a product
• [00:40:22] How to measure cohorts
• [00:41:57] How companies can tell if their products are having a beneficial impact on their users
• [00:44:04] Why Nir believes that a people-first approach is the most sustainable way to succeed
• [00:46:02] Resources that Nir recommends 
  

What’s one of the most effective ways we can make a difference?

According to Poornima Vijayashanker, the founder of Femgineer.com, it’s our own ability to speak up and share our experiences – whether it’s at work or a conference of 400+ people.

As the founding engineer at Mint.com, Poornima helped build, launch, and scale the product until it was acquired by Intuit for $170 million.

After the acquisition, Poornima began speaking and sharing her experiences within the tech industry. Once people started coming up to her and sharing what an impact her talks had, Poornima realized what a powerful platform public speaking was – giving her a chance to make a difference by sharing her story while opening up professional opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Since then, she’s spoken somewhere between 500-1000 times to audiences of over 400 people at conferences and companies around the country, including at TEDx and Salesforce. 

In today’s episode, you’ll learn:

• What pushed her to start speaking and get out of her comfort zone
• Why she thinks EVERYONE needs to learn to speak up for themselves, especially at work
• How people with zero public speaking experience can take their first steps
• How she overcomes her own stage-fright, and how she’s helped other people overcome their own imposter syndrome and fear of public speaking
• She also goes into the proactive steps she took to be able to get in front of 400+ people at Salesforce

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Poornima. She’s super smart, has a ton of insights, and was even generous enough to offer THSB listeners a free copy of her book, Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• [00:02:36] How Poornima got started with public speaking
• [00:13:06] The fear of public speaking, and what people can do to get past it
  
• [00:16:31] Why people should speak, even if they aren’t sure they have anything new or unique to say
• [00:19:10] Poornima’s experience with stage fright
• [00:22:28] Steps for people who want to get started with public speaking
• [00:28:25] How you can use personal experiences to find topics to speak on
• [00:36:32] Why Poornima is involved in encouraging women and minorities to speak out
  
• [00:39:47] How Poornima got invited to speak at Salesforce
• [00:44:10] One vital step that people who want to get into public speaking can take
  
• [00:45:28] Why a people-first approach is important
• [00:48:49] The biggest impact that public speaking has had on Poornima
• [00:53:02] The importance of having a mentor or partner