Unlocking Emotional Intelligence: The Key to Marketing Success

And welcome to a.

Well, right now it's going to be a new podcast.

It's going to be called Digital Coffee Marketing Brews as part of my overall thing of Digital cafe.

And I got two other type of podcast as well that you can check out.

But this actual new podcast is gonna be marketing and pr.

And my first guest is Phil with me.

And he is all about expertise in emotional intelligence, which what we're gonna be talking about this week or this month actually is emotional intelligence because I think it's really important for PR marketers to understand just kind of that side of it and understand like how to make yourself a better marketer in general.

So welcome to the show, Phil.

Oh, thanks, Brett.

It's, it's great to be on your show.

And thank you for being your, your inaugural guest.

You're welcome.

But the first question I ask all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Coffee.

Is there any like, specific things do you like, do you like dark, light, medium roast?

No, not medium.

Medium roast.

I, I'm, I start drinking coffee at about 3 o'clock in the morning.

Oh, wow, you're, you're a very early riser.

I am go to bed at 8:00 at night.

Actually, I start drinking about 4:00 in the morning.

So I get up at about 3 o'clock in the morning.

Nice.

And I gave a brief explanation about your expertise, but can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

Sure.

I help individuals and organizations succeed by developing their emotional intelligence.

And I've been doing that for the last 22 years all over the world.

I've helped organizations generate over a billion and a half dollars in revenue.

And that's what I do.

Nice.

And then what are some of the common misconceptions about emotional intelligence?

I know we hear it everywhere.

Like LinkedIn has it everywhere about, you should build your emotional intelligence.

This is how you do it.

This is how you do it.

And everybody's like, how do you do this?

Again, the most common misconception is that you can develop emotional intelligence by having a conversation or reading a book or watching a video.

Those are experiential process.

I'm sorry, those are intellectual processes.

The development of emotional intelligence is an experiential process and it's extremely difficult, but the rewards are incredible.

There was a 40 year study done at UC Berkeley comparing IQ with EQ and they concluded that emotional intelligence was 400% more valuable in determining success than intellectual intelligence.

And I actually think it's much Higher than that, but yeah.

So the development of our emotional intelligence represents the future of individual and organizational development.

All right, and how can PR marketers actually improve that?

Because I feel like as a pr, as person that actually got a degree in pr, like emotional intelligence really wasn't taught when I was in college.

It kind of was just, how do you write a great press release?

How do you manage a crisis?

And.

But there was no actual, like, intelligence in, like, I guess you could say the theoretical side of pr.

But there was no, like, including social media when I was there.

At the time, there was nothing about social media and there was nothing about emotional intelligence.

Yeah, the great question.

Thanks for asking it.

Our educational system has failed us and our employment system has failed us.

This is all prelude to answering your question.

We're facing a tsunami of accelerating change with a 500 million year old brain that doesn't like change.

The development of our emotional intelligence has become essential for our career, personal and corporate success.

So let me give you an example of a company that we all know that's currently valued at $2.2 trillion and they're doing about $600 billion a year in revenue.

And the primary hiring focus is emotional intelligence.

Did I get your interest?

Yes, you did.

My company is Apple.

That's why when you walk into an Apple Store that enters you feel as an example of a more emotionally intelligent environment.

They're not trying to sell you anything.

They're trying to understand your pain and if possible, offer a solution to your pain.

Whether you buy anything or not is secondary to their desire to want to serve you.

They want you to have a great experience and maybe you'll tell your friends and they'll tell their friends.

And if you think about it, that energy you feel in that environment is a very different energy from the energy coming out of the stores surrounding that environment.

So that's an example of a, of an emotionally intelligent environment.

Gotcha.

And then there have been, I guess, some controversy.

There actually been some recent controversies, more in the PR side of it.

I mean, Bud Light decided to, regardless of the political ideologies you stand for, add a transgender person to their influencer thing.

And it seems like there was a gap because there's a bunch of people, and including a lot of women that aren't really like really liking this type of new way of thinking, if you want to call it that way.

And it seems like the PR marketing people missed the gap between what is acceptable in society and what is, I guess, new age or unacceptable for some people.

So I Mean, was there a lack in emotional intelligence when they were doing this type of campaign?

When, when they were like, oh, we're going to be like this forward thinking company and was like, people were like, well, you're not really being forward thinking.

It feels like you're pushing something on me.

Let me, let me give you some, let me come at this in a roundabout way that's hopefully going to answer your question.

Whenever we take an action that moves us outside of our comfort zone, there's a part of our little lizard brain that doesn't want us to do that, called the amygdala.

And it automatically triggers the secretion of a hormone into our bloodstream called cortisol.

And that causes our prefrontal cortex, the executive center of our brain, to shut off.

And we go to what psychologists refer to as an amygdala hijack.

Some people lash out, some people run away, some people freeze like a deer in the headlights.

And it often causes us to say and do things we later regret.

When that happens in conflict situations, people die.

And when it happens in business or personal situations, relationships die.

You burn trust.

So as an analogy, if you think of your amygdala as a very frightened four year old child, the development of our emotional intelligence acts like a big brother or a big sister to quiet that amygdala response down and better enable us to feel the fear and anxiety that changing innovation always triggers in us.

So because we've never been emotional, intelligence was never something that was developed, unfortunately, through our education or employment systems.

And because we're facing a tsunami of accelerating change with that 500 million year old brain that doesn't like change, most of us are on the verge of what's called the amygdala hijack, a low grade amygdala hijack all the time.

And it causes us to become more resistive, judgmental and attached to outcome.

So there are many things that trigger us to raise our walls and go into one of these hijacks.

And it can be anything.

So the reality is that if how you feel is based on the actions of somebody else who's running your life, you or them.

No.

Well, I mean, it's a comp for me.

It's a complicated answer because you do have two sides of the same coin.

You also have the middle.

But if, but if how you feel about, if how you feel about yourself is based on how somebody else feels about you.

If you like me, I like me.

If you don't like me, I don't like me.

Who's Running your life, you or them.

Technically, they are running your life.

Right.

So what I've described is all of social media.

We bend over backwards trying to get people to like us so that we can feel better about ourselves.

And that is the root cause of all drama, chaos and conflict.

So when people are giving away their energy, they'll find something to raise their walls about and complain about.

If it's transgender or it can be anything.

The point is that when you're raising your walls, when you're giving away your energy, you'll find something to complain about.

I hope that kind of answers your question a little bit.

It's interesting.

I mean, for me, when I see it, I see three different, like groups of people and the problem I see.

And I've.

I previously did a podcast with a PR agency called PR360 and most PR people were in one specific side of the political ideology and never understood the other two sides, which is the middle and maybe the right.

Regardless of what you think of either side of them, they're all your customers.

And what I've found is that most of the time the PR people don't understand the middle or the right very well and think that majority of their customers are more in the left leaning, which for me, I experience it being that your customers are everything.

They're everywhere.

You have no idea where they stand on things.

But I feel like that we're not trying to skirt that line and be like, look it, I'm trying to get as many customers as you want.

I want to be out of these cultural arguments and I just want to sell products.

That's all I want to do.

I don't want to get into these like, fights where I have to choose one side because either side I choose is wrong, because you're going to make somebody mad.

When we're unconsciously raising our walls, it blinds us to the reality of the present moment.

And all we see is the story we're telling ourselves.

We're not able to see the other person's perspective and we're looking for evidence to support the story we're telling ourselves.

So that relates to a lack of consciousness.

It relates to a lack of emotional intelligence.

See, we're actually only conscious about 3 to 5% of the time.

The rest of the time we're relying on our habits to drive our, to determine our behavior and our results.

And that's okay.

But when we're unconsciously giving away our energy, like in the example I mentioned, it causes us to lose connection with ourself and Other people and we think our reality is the reality.

We don't see the reality of the present moment.

We only see the story we're telling ourselves.

Like being aware but not exhausting yourselves with being hyper aware.

Because I feel like being hyper aware, you're just never going to get anything done because you're always like, like freaking out about what side, where's what.

So how do we become aware enough to understand but not like tiring or burning ourselves out with emotional intelligence?

Because I feel like emotional intelligence is the not hearing but listening part of it, or listening with body language, listening with research or whatever.

So how do you do enough but not like kill yourself almost.

Here's a real easy way to lower our walls and be more present in the moment.

Simply focus on your breathing.

Simply focus on inhaling through your nose and breathing out slowly through your mouth.

When you focus on your breathing, you're no longer thinking.

It shuts off that yap yap voice in the back of your head that's going 24 7.

So simply focusing on your breathing is a very simple way to lower your walls and become more present.

So you become a, you become a better listener.

Yeah, I mean that's like meditation a lot of times, even through like religion, regardless if you believe religion or not, a lot of times it is the meditation of listening to your breathing.

Breathe in and out, standing still, kneeling, like.

Yeah, yeah.

We have a.

Every mammal on the planet has a desire to be in the present moment.

We have a primal urge.

It's called being in the flow with the present moment.

And actually we spend over $4 trillion a year annually trying to shut that voice off so that we can be more present in the moment.

Some of the ways we do it are destructive and actually cause us to become less conscious.

Other ways are more constructive and we can become more conscious.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.

Michael Jordan playing basketball.

I guarantee you Michael Jordan couldn't tell you when he was going to pass, dribble or shoot.

It's because he was in the present moment, Michael Jordan playing baseball.

He actually had to think about playing baseball.

And the outcome, the performance dropped off dramatically.

So being in the present moment, learning to become less resistive, judgmental and attached.

Outcome enables us to not only reconnect with who we are, but it enables us to see other people for who they are.

And that leads to better results.

See, we have these specialized brain cells and this is really important to marketing, called mirror neurons.

And because we've evolved over hundreds of millions of years from tribes or herds, we've had to develop the ability to sense whether somebody's trying to help us or eat us.

So when you lower your walls, people get a sense that they can lower their walls and be more of who they truly are around you than they can be around their victim buddies.

So if somebody trusts you, they'll find a way to do business with you regardless of whether you have the best technology or the best pricing.

If they don't trust you, they'll find a way not to do business with you even if you have the best pricing or the best technology.

So developing your emotional intelligence will literally enable you to out carry your competition.

See, all purchasing decisions, all purchasing decisions are made in the limbic part of our brain.

All purchasing decisions are emotional decisions.

And after we've decided what we're going to do emotionally, then we look for features and benefits intellectually to justify the decision that we've already made emotionally.

That's why when Apple introduces a new product, they don't talk about features and benefits.

They talk about why they created the product or service because they're trying to, they're trying to connect with us emotionally because that's what that they know.

That's where purchasing decisions are made.

And we're all, we're all pretty pre positioned for this.

Like we, we can't get away from this emotional buying decision.

Yeah, all, all purchasing decisions are, are emotional decisions.

We, we don't, we don't make purchasing decisions intellectually.

We make them emotionally.

And then after we've already made the decision, then we look for features and benefits intellectually to justify the decision we've already made emotionally.

And so I mean, I would say especially in the United States where everything's so politically divided, how do we get that emotional intelligence back where we at least we don't have to agree with the other side, but at least understand the other side to better build that trust.

Because if everything is revolves around trust, which I agree, I mean PR is all about keeping the trust or gaining trust.

I mean mostly it's maintaining the trust, but getting the trust and then maintaining the trust.

So how do we keep that going when it seems like both sides want to own each other or sometimes harm each other?

You're describing the scope of the challenge before us and the solution is what I'm about to tell you I've been proving all over the world.

For the last 22 years, I've worked with people running multibillion dollar companies with thousands of employees at Harvard MBAs and PhDs and I've been a faculty advisor to doctoral students at Northwestern in organizational development and emotional intelligence.

The central thesis of my coaching practice involves energy physics.

So the answer to your question is we have to learn to stop giving away our energy.

And we do it in a myriad of ways, unconsciously.

And how we communicate, listen, take responsibility, make decisions, all sorts of ways.

But when we give away our energy, it creates an energy deficit in us.

And so at the same time we're unconsciously giving away our energy.

We have to be replacing the energy we're giving away by trying to steal energy from other people.

And that dynamic is going on inside of everybody, everywhere, all the time.

And because we're facing a tsunami of accelerating change, some scientists estimate in this century we could experience the equivalent of 20,000 years worth of change.

Never happened before.

Change is increasing at an exponential rate.

So we have to be developing our emotional intelligence.

We have to be doing the emotional labor that that requires.

That's not a solution to the challenges we're facing.

It is the only solution to the challenges we're facing.

So that's why more and more companies are hiring, developing and promoting largely based on emotional intelligence.

We have no choice.

And so I mean, is, is it, I mean it seems like you talk about a lot of like almost like old ancient thinking, like meditation and everything.

So should we go back to maybe the old thinkers and be like figuring out like how they developed?

Maybe they didn't know emotional intelligence, but maybe looking at some types of, like Aristotle or those types of philosophers or even stoicism or even the Bible, because the Bible does have some things about how to treat people, the be attitudes, I mean even like building your house on the rock, not the beach, kind of like your energy type of a thing.

Should we go back to those and be like maybe there's something there for emotional intelligence to understand?

Yeah, they've all been saying the same thing.

The only time that's real, the only time that will ever be real is the present moment.

There will never be a future moment.

There are no longer past moments.

All there is.

The only time we can take an action, the only time we can generate a result is in this present moment.

But our egos don't want us to be in the present moment.

Our egos want us to be focused on some type of potentially better future moment or some past moment, but it never wants us to be in the present moment because that's when it has the least amount of fear based control over us.

But the reality is that the more we can learn to stop giving away our energy, the more we will lower our walls, the more that will bring us into the present moment.

And that's where we're going to get our greatest results.

So that's the solution.

That's the problem.

And the solution, the problem is that we're being driven by our ego based fears constantly.

We're being bombarded with fear messaging constantly.

And that's keeping us trapped in our comfort zones.

And that's a problem.

So the development of our emotional intelligence occurs as we start to challenge ourselves to move outside of our comfort zone in the pursuit of better results and move through the anxiety that that triggers in us.

That's what I call emotional labor.

And that is the only way you can develop emotional intelligence.

So you have to have, you have to have, the starting point is you have to have an emotional connection to something you want to achieve that's going to be greater than the fear that's going to get generated in you when you step outside of your comfort zone in pursuit of that desired result.

If you don't have that emotional connection, if you don't have that vision of a desired result that's stronger than your fear, you may want better results than you're currently getting, but you will not be willing to do the emotional labor that getting better results requires.

And quite frankly, most people aren't.

That's why the current level of employee engagement worldwide, according to Gallup, is around 13%.

Low levels of employee engagement are costing the US economy over $1 trillion a year.

And it's also why over 80% of all M and A and organizational development initiatives fail.

That's a big problem.

Most people aren't willing to change themselves.

So what they do instead is they try and change everybody else.

Often trying to use some type of position based power to control and manipulate others.

And that's what we've been doing for a very, very long time.

And we're actually, because of the accelerating rate of global change, we're at a tipping point.

We can no longer survive with our current level of consciousness, with our current level of emotional intelligence.

The accelerating rate of global change we're going to experience is going to drive most people further into their comfort zones and they're going to become more resistant, more judgmental and more attached to outcome.

But for some people, it will motivate them to move outside of their comfort zone zones in pursuit of better results.

And those are the folks that are going to lead us in a better direction.

I mean, when you're Talking about the future, present type of paradigm, I'm almost reminded of Ecclesiastes where it says nothing is new under the sun.

Which for a lot, for most part, or even the whole thing, it's actually pretty true because we think we found something new.

And then you look at history and it's like you didn't really find anything new.

You just found.

You just reintroduced it to consciousness again.

People, individuals throughout history have been trying to clue us in to that.

The real challenge we have now, though, is we have to develop emotional intelligence on a global level.

And we've shown almost no ability or willingness to do that.

So we're in.

We're in trouble.

Making.

Generating revenue is easy, career advancement is easy, but there's a whole other bigger thing going on here that we need to address.

Probably within the next 10 to 15 years, we're going to experience increasing levels of drama, chaos and conflict until we do.

And so, I mean, getting back to businesses and everything, it seems like businesses for a lot of time, and this may be just because they can control the outside forces or they want to control the outside forces.

They look at customers as a monolith thinking the same thing.

So how do, how do you breathe life into emotional intelligence and be like, across the board, nobody thinks the same.

If you have three people in the room, there could be like 10 different opinions just from the three people.

So how do you get back to that?

Like, not everybody's the same, but how can we get them to trust our product, to buy our product?

I think you asked me a couple of questions there.

You get people to trust you by lowering your walls.

We tend to burn trust five to seven times faster than we can earn trust because of our biology.

We're more inclined to focus on what might be trying to hurt us as opposed to what might be trying to help us.

So what that means is that if your walls are up just 15% of the time, you're actually burning trust in the relationships you're trying to develop.

So it's really, it really makes no sense to not be developing your emotional intelligence because the cost is phenomenal.

So think of.

Yeah, every time you raise your walls and you're burning trust with, with somebody else, it takes you five to seven times as long to regain that trust.

It just makes no sense.

I see.

But people don't know what they don't know, and they should have been taught this from a very early age, and they weren't.

And now, because we're facing this tsunami of change, it's a Requirement.

It's essential that we've, that we close the gap on a critical part of our development that's missing for all of us.

So how do PR pros and marketers start?

Maybe they don't have great emotional intelligence.

How do they start that process of at least understanding the basics of emotional intelligence?

I mean, no one's going to be an expert in their first time like doing this.

So how do they start to that process?

Because it's a process.

Yeah, they, they have to develop.

They have to connect emotionally with something they're trying to achieve, that, that drives them, that will move them outside of their comfort zone in the pursuit of that desired result.

That's step one.

Without that, forget it, nothing's going to change.

So you have, it's.

Actually there's only two sources of motivation.

And I realize I'm kind of throwing a lot at you here, but I, and I apologize for that, but it's, it's kind of fundamental.

There's only two sources of motivation that will cause us to leave our comfort zone in the pursuit of better results.

One is pain.

The other one is passion.

And hardly anybody's connected with their passion.

So for the most part, those individuals that are willing to leave their comfort zone and move through the discomfort that takes are usually driven by an urgent desire for better results than they're currently getting.

And those are the folks I work with.

So the first thing they need to do is develop that emotional connection to something they want to achieve.

And if they want to continue the conversation, I'd be happy to, happy to continue the conversation with them.

But that's, that's where it's got to start.

That's where it starts for everybody.

Gotcha.

And then fun question for if, since we talked a lot about change, if you could, or how would you code an AI to do emotional intelligence?

Not possible.

Not possible.

No.

AI doesn't have emotions, it doesn't have ethics.

It's not human.

So emotional intelligence is something we develop as humans.

We need to develop as humans.

And that's really maybe our main advantage.

As humans.

We can't outthink AI, which is fine, but we can outlive it.

We can out feel it.

So AI is a tool, and it's a very good tool, but it could help to remove kind of the mundane tasks so that we can focus on becoming more conscious, how we can focus on becoming more human and how we can reconnect with ourself and each other.

And I think that's a huge potential benefit.

And I Totally agree.

I mean it's just everybody in their mother on social media is talking about AI.

So I thought it'd be fun to do that type of fun question.

But it is a very interesting question about what AI can do.

And let me run something by it.

Let me run something by it and kind of concluding a long time ago, Mark Twain once said, the only way mankind can learn is through experience.

I see no hope for mankind.

What he meant is that the only way we can learn not to put our hand on the stove is by putting our hand on the stove.

That assumes we're going to be around for a do over.

And a lot of the challenges we're facing and are going to be facing like CRISPR, Cas9, genetic technology, AI, climate change, other pandemics, we may not get a do over.

We have to get it right the first time.

And that level of wisdom, that level of emotional intelligence requires that we develop the ability to distance ourself from our ego based fears.

We have to learn to stop giving away our energy.

Whether we recognize it or not, we don't have a choice.

And the sooner we start down this path, the better the results we're going to obtain.

No better word said by anybody else about reconnecting with ourselves basically.

And each other.

And each other as well.

So where can people find you online?

They may want to know a little bit more about that.

So where can they find you online?

The best way to reach me is through my LinkedIn profile and I'll I can send you a link to my calendar if I haven't already done that.

And I'd be happy to continue the chat with anybody that would like to know more.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

Yeah, my final thought is always the same.

I really encourage people to bet on themselves by developing their emotional intelligence.

Well, thank you Phil, for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your thoughts and knowledge on emotional intelligence.

My pleasure.

And thank you for listening to Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

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Let's get up to that number one in the marketing category and join me next month as I talk to another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry.

All right guys, stay safe and understand emotional intelligence and how it can help you with your career as well.

See you next week or next month actually.

Later.