Hello again and welcome to another episode

of Connect and Convert, your sales accelerator podcast,

where small business owners.

Insider secrets on how to grow their business.

I'm Dennis Collins and I'm joined by the

lovely and talented, Ms.

Leah say hello to everybody.

Hey, how are you doing Dennis?

Hi, everybody.

Good to be back.

Good to have you as always.

I love getting together with you like this.

We always get into some interesting discussions.

So I'm going to go in the Dennis way back machine here.

But before I do that, Leah, I want to ask you a question.

You've been in the business world for some time.

I'm, I am sure that you have attended many of

those meetings from hell.

Now, what do I mean by that?

You got 10 people sitting around the conference table

and two or three of them don't talk at all, two or

three of them talk too much.

And one or two of them talk too loud and are the loudest

voices in the room and you've got to make a decision.

Have you been in that meeting?

Oh, that just gives me the shivers.

Yes.

Very different than you and I sitting here and

having a great discussion.

Those meetings.

You know what?

I always think of, you know, when you're trying to focus

in on an idea, especially a creative idea, and you get

a whole bunch of different styles of people and yeah, oh

yeah, that's, it doesn't matter how many donuts are there.

It doesn't help.

You know, I love the diversity of the opinions,

but you know what I didn't like about those meetings is that

sometimes the people with the loudest voices are the ones.

That got their idea adopted.

That doesn't mean it was the best idea.

That means it was the loudest idea.

Been there.

Leah Bumphrey: That's exactly right.

And the loudest idea and everyone else just

wants to be done with it.

Yeah.

And okay.

They're talking very assertively and confidently.

Let's just let them have their way.

They must know what they're talking about.

And all of a sudden you make a decision that's supposed

to be a group decision.

And it's really the decision of one or two people.

And, you know, back again, now in the way back machine,

way back in the radio days, we had some tough decisions to

make your, you know, the radio business, you got to make sure

you have the right format.

Are you are you addressing what the listeners want to hear?

Okay.

How about your customers?

Are you serving them in the best way possible?

How about the marketing for your radio station?

Are you doing the best marketing job?

Thanks for.

Heavy decisions.

You know, and it's interesting because

most businesses have more than one customer, but in

radio in particular, it's interesting because you have

the listener who is a customer.

And then you have the advertiser who's also a customer trying

to satisfy those two things.

You have the sales department and you have the

programming department and there should the two meet.

That, that becomes a lot of fun because I have often

wanted to be a programmer.

And you know what, Dennis, they've never wanted to

know what music I like.

Or what opinions I want on a talk station, or which sports.

No!

Really?

I can't believe it.

But there's programming.

That's not

right.

Thank you.

We're going to write a letter later.

Write a letter.

I'll stand up for you later.

Here's the deal.

You just enumerated one of the biggest issues I had as a

general manager of refereeing between programming, okay,

standing in the middle and trying to get A decision made.

Okay.

Just before we were about to embark on some really

important strategic decisions, something happened,

something really happened.

I had a lot of questions about our decision making process

because we will that team.

We loved each other.

We worked well together, but unfortunately we had.

Those kind of nonproductive meetings.

So I said to myself, self, how am I going to fix this?

I don't know.

I guess I don't know how to do this.

I was a young buck, kind of a new manager, but you know

what, Leah, I believe that when the student is ready,

the teacher will appear

and you know, it's absolutely true.

We were ready and here's what out of the blue

enter a guy named Jack Lanham.

This is one impressive guy, Leah.

You would love this guy.

He had a photographic memory.

One day at a staff meeting, I invited him to a staff lunch.

I had probably 35 people there.

People at this lunch, he lined us all up and he said,

give me a random number from one to a hundred.

I think is what he said.

Each person had to give him a number.

He went back and recited every one of those 35 numbers

and they weren't one to 35.

And then he started in the middle and went to the left.

He started in the middle and went to the right and

he knew every single number.

He did that numerous times.

Anyway, he was also a Kung Fu master.

He taught us how to break boards.

That was fun.

My staff loved that.

He's an author, a prolific author.

He's a motivational speaker, a business guru.

His dedication, Leah, was people first.

That's the whole slogan.

That's the whole mantra of his life and of his practice.

He was a master at showing people how to become

more productive, more efficient, more effective.

So the teacher arrived.

He, it would take four, five, six episodes of

our podcast to tell you.

Even a small bit of what he taught us.

But I want to share one today.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to make better,

higher quality decisions.

He introduced us to a guy named Edward Debono ever

heard of Edward Debono, Dr.

Edward Debono.

I don't think

Today

we're going to talk about him.

The father of lateral thinking.

He, Jack Lanham, taught us how to think.

That's the biggest gift, the greatest gift he could

have given to us, right?

So learning about De Bono was absolutely mind altering.

De Bono teaches you to think in ways you never thought

of thinking before, okay?

You look at things differently.

You use different tools.

In your toolbox that are always there, but we never

use them to see a situation in a different light.

Why?

Because that's what helps us make better decisions.

I think the most impactful lesson that Jack taught

us from De Bono was the Six Thinking Hats.

Have you ever heard of that, Lea?

The Six Thinking Hats?

No.

We're not getting into Harry Potter here.

I know that for sure.

And this isn't a five versus five thing.

But you have me intrigued.

You have me intrigued, Dennis.

Okay.

You always do.

The reason I like this is because it's easy.

It's fun.

And it helps.

You can even make personal decisions, not just

business decisions better with using the six hats.

So it's basically six different colored hats.

Let's talk about the white hat.

Okay.

When you're in a group meeting, say there

are 10 people in the group.

The leader of the group says, okay, put on your

white hat at that moment.

No one can talk about anything but facts, objective,

measurable, available facts, data, statistics,

evidence, We would ask the question under the white hat.

What do we know or maybe what information do we need?

Does that make sense the white hat?

Okay.

Yes, it does.

So everybody has to follow that

Yes for that period of time whether it's

five minutes ten minutes a half hour, whatever time you

need you put on the white hat There's no emotions.

There's no negatives.

It's all facts Objective, not opinions, facts.

But then here's the one that really hit me because, you know,

a lot of so called business gurus say you can't use emotion

when you're making decisions and I'm going to counter that and

say, if you don't use emotion, you don't make good decisions.

So incomes, the red hat, this is where, when everybody

puts on, yeah, the red hat.

Intuition.

What's Leah, what's your gut feeling about that?

What do you, how do you feel about that?

You don't have to justify.

You know, I'm going to have that, you know,

that I'm going to have that.

I might not have a lot to say with the white, but

man, give me that my chance to put my red hat on.

And you just.

You just enumerated the beauty of this process because not

everybody is great at every hat, but there's always somebody

in the room who's good at one of the hats in particular.

The, we can, under the red hat, we consider how others

might react to the situation.

So that's a hat that I liked DeBona because sometimes

we don't use that, the feeling, in decision making.

Okay, there's got to be, dun, the black hat.

The black hat.

Yes.

The caution and critical judgment hat.

This is where we identify the risks.

Okay, gee, what if we do this?

What are the unintended consequences?

Play.

There are some people in those meetings I mentioned

earlier that play devil's advocate for the whole meeting.

But in, in six hat thinking you can only play devil's advocate

when the black hat is on.

Okay, we look for flaws in the plan.

We look what could go wrong.

Okay.

Worst case scenarios.

So we put the black hat on and say, what is the worst

thing that can happen?

A lot.

Okay.

So that doesn't sound evil or anything.

Cause often when we hear black hat, we start thinking,

Oh, this is, there's the comes the bad guy.

But what you're saying is it's not and just the

way you're presenting it.

It's just a, let's look at this carefully.

It's another look, another view.

of a potential idea.

Okay.

And now you probably like this hat to a yellow hat.

The yellow hat is the optimistic at the positive thinking hat.

This focuses on the benefits, the value.

It looks for opportunities.

It looks to for constructive solutions.

It encourages a positive, optimistic outlook.

So when the yellow hat is on, no black hat, no

red hat, no white hat.

It's all about, gee, we can do this and we can do this.

And when we do this, it will, that's a good hat.

Yellow sunshine and lollipops,

sunshine and lollipops for a couple of minutes.

Okay.

And now we go,

I promise.

Come on.

I think we ought to have a portion of this podcast

where we start saying,

Hey, we're going to have a musical

episode one of these days.

Okay.

Sorry.

Anyway, we'll talk about that.

Next hat.

We got two more hats.

The green hat.

This is where the idea that's under consideration.

We say, okay, what other splinter ideas can

we have off this hat?

Okay.

New ideas, alternates.

This is where you say, Hey, we could do this

and we could do that.

Or we could do this and we could do that.

This is where the green hat signifies growth,

signifies new ideas.

Creativity seeks out innovative Unconventional approaches.

So you have permission under the green hat to

just let your mind go wild.

You would like that at, wouldn't you?

When that happens on you, You would be a big

contributor to that.

You would be a,

I think I'm a kind of a general hat person.

. This is I'm loving this.

I'm visualizing some of these meetings that I've

been involved in and Wow.

With this kind of matrix, you would really

accomplish something.

Anyway, sorry.

Let's keep going.

One more hat.

One more hat.

One more hat.

The blue hat is really the organizational hat.

That's the hat you wear.

When you want to change hats, say, okay, let's put

on the blue hat we've been through, say the white, what

do you want to go to next?

So that's the process hat.

It defines the agenda, sets the goals, the

objectives, summarizes, makes the final decision.

So when we put the blue hat on, we say, okay,

what have we heard today?

We've heard from five different viewpoints.

What do you all think is winning the day?

That's when we put the blue hat on.

Does that make sense?

Because we got to make a decision.

And that's the decision.

Absolutely.

And everyone has had a chance to talk because you

identified a few things that are obviously me.

I would be, you know, I'd want to be Pollyanna.

I'd want to be emotional.

I'd like to get into stuff.

You would bring to the table all the logic.

You know, a whole bunch of information, a whole bunch

of background, but it doesn't mean that you also can't bring

some of the yellow or reds.

So by forcing the issue, it's a comfort zone thing too,

for everyone to participate.

You said that well, it's a comfort zone thing

and you know what it does?

It does allow everyone to participate.

And that's one of the rules that I, when I

used it in my business, that's one of the rules.

Everybody has to contribute.

You don't have to contribute equally on every hat, but

you got to contribute.

If everybody doesn't contribute, then we go back to screaming

and hollering and yelling and all these things that

should not be used in a decision making meeting.

I, you know, I still use this.

I teach this.

There are a couple clients recently that I've taught

it to back in the day.

We would share this with our clients.

Our radio station clients is kind of a value added to say,

Hey, you guys want some help in making better decisions.

Here's some ideas.

That's the six thinking hats.

You know, speaking of thinking, by the way, I was

I was thinking about the wizard academy the other day.

I was thinking about a recent class you and I attended.

I know they had a repeat of that class.

And I'm thinking about all the upcoming wonderful classes.

That are available at wizard of ads.

org Leah and I will absolutely represent that it is a life

changing trip to Austin, Texas.

So next time you're thinking about expanding your brain

and six thinking hats is all about that is expanding

your mind wizardacademy.

org.

Would be a good place to start.

That is a good segue into one of our

questions that we had from our our excited listeners.

And because we are often talking about the classes at

wizard Academy, the question was, what would you recommend

for a business owner?

What?

What?

Because

it's an investment of time, money.

Yeah, it's true

for me.

When I go down there, I gotta take a couple of

travel days to get there and it's still worth it.

So what would you recommend?

I know it's in my head, but Dennis, I'm looking at you.

That's it's hard to pick just one.

But you know, there's a class called portals.

Are you familiar with that class portals?

That one I have not taken.

Oh, listen Roy William, the founder of wizard

academy used to be the teacher there, but Dave Young, who's

the vice chancellor of wizard academy is now honchoing that.

And I took it with Roy numerous times and I took it

with Dave and you know, it's interesting to see portals.

Through Dave's eyes, he has a little different spin than Roy.

And of course everybody would, but I highly

recommend going to portals.

Portals is a metaphor for openings, beginnings, new

beginnings, and Dave Young, vice chancellor, Dave Young

does an incredible job.

I highly recommend, I think they only offer it once a year.

What's yours, Leah?

It's the big one.

It's magical world.

I've gone down there for it.

I've actually taken that one.

Three times and every time, depending on who

is teaching, wow, you get something out of it.

That's different.

It can be from a creative end.

It can be from a business perspective, but I, that's

three days well invested and it totally immerses you.

In and you know, everything that a wizard academy is about,

you know, I agree with you.

I, Roy was the the lead instructor on that for years.

And I believe Dan, the chancellor, Daniel

Whittington has taken that class over as well.

Have not seen Daniel's version.

I do want to see that because again, it's the

same basic material.

It's just a little different spin.

And that's, what's exciting about wizard academy.

You get a lot of different viewpoints.

That's what's so much fun about you and I talking

because we were talking about the same stuff and we've seen

it from different perspectives.

And so we put a different spin that brings us to the challenge.

I think that everyone listening should go.

To wizardacademy.

org, just daydream a little bit.

Daydream about the class that you would take.

It's ten minutes, spent, to have a little vacation

and wander through the the pictures and just get a feel

for what we're talking about.

That's my challenge for people today.

Totally agree.

And Maybe put a

Leah Bumphrey: different color hat on.

Dennis Collins: Take a few minutes.

In the next meeting you have, either with your

family or with your business associates, go through the

hats only one at a time.

Let each hat be heard.

Let each person be heard.

Listen for the ahas, the new perspectives, the new ideas.

The new information that will inform your decision.

I highly recommend it.

Liam, we're out of time.

We're out of time for today.

Thank you as always for being here with us and

our viewers and listeners.

I invite you to stay tuned each week for a new edition

of Connect and Convert.