Levity, Trolling, and Balance

Levity, Trolling, and Balance Do you have the correct balance in your life? Can you work and have fun all at the same time? - [website] ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.agiledad.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.agiledad.com/ - [instagram] ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/agile_coach/ - [facebook] ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/RealAgileDad/ - [Linkedin] ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehenson/

• 0:15Speaker 00

  I was recently hosting a class for a private group. And one of the things that we noticed was, how should I put this? The class became really fun. We had some people were poking fun at me. I was poking some fun at people. We really had an enjoyable experience. Everybody was having a good time together. And one of the students brought up, they said, a lot of times when you're in a professional structure, whether it's with instructors, or just with trainers, or with coaches, or just in a professional environment with leadership, it's hard to have a little bit of levity. It's hard to have an enjoyable time. And that one of the things that stood out to them about the training was the balance of humor and work that we actually got accomplished. Now, I have a name for this.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  So the name that I call it, I call it edutainment, because it's education that's entertaining. But a lot of people struggled with levity, and not people in the class, but just people in general. And I think that sometimes people associate value with strict professionalism without any like room for a little bit of fun, a little bit of humor, a little bit of jab. And what I've found is, one of the things that separates Agile Dad training from every other training, when we do these training sessions, is the fact that we use levity. Now, I do want to point out, because this is interesting. So I wrote down on a note, record a podcast about levity, trolling, and balance.

• 1:41Speaker 00

  And when I said trolling, this got really interesting. So let me share a story with you, because like I said, I want this to be the Agile Not So Agile episode of the podcast. So here we go. So I received an email from someone, and the email was asking about me speaking, me potentially speaking at a small business expo. And I was really excited about it. Now, I have to admit, in the back of my mind, I was already trying to decide what the discount and speaking rate was going to be, because I knew with it being a small business expo, that they were going to ask for a discount. So I was trying to figure that out. And the young guy who contacted me, you know, he seemed, how should I put it? Straight to the point, but not about what he wanted. What I mean by that is he said, hey, you know, we really believe you could have a huge impact on small business. We'd love to

• 2:24Speaker 00

  coordinate with you and figure something out. And I was like, outstanding. You know, it just felt very good. So, as I wrote back to him, I said, here's some information. Here's my speaker sheet. You know, here's everything you need. Gave him some links so you could look me up online, you know, see my speaker reel. Everything was good, or at least I thought everything was good. Until the person replied back and said, all right, I'm gonna have you set up a meeting, a phone meeting with Eric to discuss the, to discuss what size spot you want for the expo hall. And I'm like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? What size spot? You know, it just, it felt really weird. And then what I realized was they didn't want me to speak. They wanted me to pay to have like, an exposition area. And, you know, I told him, I said, oh,

• 3:07Speaker 00

  you know, I said, I'm so sorry. You know, I said, I thought this was for a speaking engagement. And like, well, yeah, we could talk about that, too. And I said, excellent. So I proceeded to tell him more information about me speaking. And I asked them information about previous speakers they've had, what their, what their pay rate looked like, how they did things. And the email started coming through. And the first email was, here's the Calendly, here's the link, not even here's the Calendly, here's a link to the meeting that we have scheduled for you tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. I'm like, first of all, scheduling a meeting for me the next day is near impossible. That's, that's just not gonna happen. I just thought I'd throw that out there. And it's not because I don't want it to, it's just I schedule a little further out than the next day. Second thing that startled me was he threw me over to somebody new named Eric, and I don't even know this guy's title, who he is, what he does, why he wanted to speak with me, etc.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  And the last thing was, there was no agenda for the meeting whatsoever. It was just a meeting. And I immediately caught on that this felt very sales pitchy and just not in line with what I normally do. So I, and it being reverent still, wrote back and said, hey, I said, I think there must be some kind of mistake. You know, I declined the meeting. Said, there must be some kind of mistake. You know, we need to talk to each other. I said, I would love to learn more about your expo, what you do, what your expectations are, you know, what you do with speakers, how that works, what speakers you had in the past, give me some references, you know, I was, I was trying hard to remain as professional as possible. And the reply that I got was,

• 4:34Speaker 00

  Oh, we thought you wanted to set up an exhibit. And I'm like, no, I had no, no interest in saying I've been exhibit at all. Sorry. I said, now let's talk about speaking. And they said, well, they said, we'd love to have you speaker. I said, great. And they said, see the attached file. So I went to the attached file and I'm thinking it has like, you know, information about the engagement, which it did, and the people, and the people attend and what types and profiles. And I'll tell you what, that, that PDF was pretty flashy. It was pretty cool. And it gave me all kinds of good information. But then it hit a road bump. I got to the page about speakers and it had prices. And I'm like, man, these prices are incredible. They pay speakers really well. And then I read underneath, it says, based on the amount that you pay, that determines the size of the stage you get. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

• 5:19Speaker 00

  So they were holding a conference for small business, where they asked people to pay to attend. Then they asked the people who were attending and exhibiting to pay to exhibit or sponsor or show. Then they asked the speakers to pay to present. I'm like, but then they said they had thousands of paying customers who were ready to spend their money on you. And I'm like, how are they ready to spend money? And you have to have paid for everything in the entire conference. And they had paid workshops and paid other things. And once again, none of it was paid going out to the people. It was all pay coming in. And I had never seen anything like that before. So I started to get a little more snarky with my replies. And someone in the class thought it was humorous because I was sharing with them play by play as it went because I'm a fan of transparency.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  And they were like, I'm a little bit shocked because I never expected you to be so snarky or so funny about the way that you wrote back. And I mean, I was writing replies back, you know, oh, you know, here's, here's my pay sheet, you know, I said, I'd love to speak at your conference and, you know, amplify what you do and make it better for everybody who attends, you know, and they're like, oh, you must be mistaken. You have to pay to speak. And we just went round for round back and forth. But this wasn't the first time this had happened. I've had several occasions where I have had the opportunity to engage with people, whether it's on LinkedIn or whether it's through the contact us on a website or, or my favorite, my absolute favorite, I probably get ten of these a day. We found errors on your website with your SEO that we would like to discuss.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  I'm like, let's have my whole team contact you that's responsible for SEO. And you could explain to them these errors that you found. And then they're like, do you want me to send a screenshot? I'm like, in the amount of time it took you to type, do you want me to send a screenshot? You could have already sent the screenshot with the errors. So it's just all these cold hookups for information or to try to sell something. So the question became, how can we get past this behavior or this language of, let's be ice cold to each other and try to just generate business? And start with a more warm approach where we're trying to help each other? And we're trying to make connections and we're trying to build relationships. And what I quickly discovered is that there's some people out there who just aren't even interested in building relationships.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Their whole mission in life is just to, just to sell things and just to increase their potential. And all they're doing is just cold outreach all day long. And I said to myself, man, I sure am happy that my company doesn't generate business that way. So I guess the moral of the story today is this. It's okay to be funny sometimes. It's okay to be uplifting all the time. It's okay to look out for your fellow man and it's, it's certainly okay to serve other people. I have no problem with any of that. But there is also a time where I feel like it's okay to troll a little bit and it's okay to have a sense of humor and it's okay to dig in. Because sometimes I think people need to realize that wasting your time isn't the best

• 8:16Speaker 00

  use of their time. And we need to align and figure out how we can work better together. Uh, so that we, we aren't wasting each other's time. And you can get the information that you need to know that you, that you're barking up the wrong tree and you can move on. But also that I can have a little bit of fun with the people who are persistent and that it's no harm, no foul. That's going to do it for this episode. I know it was kind of a longer one, but I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a topic you want us to discuss, learn more at agiledad.com. I'd love to hear from you. And as always, we encourage you to stay healthy, stay well, and stay agile, my friends. Have a great weekend. Until next time. Bye now.