Episode 114:

Hello everyone and welcome to The Upstream Leader Podcast. My name’s Jeremy Clopton. Excited to be with you here today for a conversation about motivation, and I don’t know how many meetings I’ve been in the last couple years where somebody has asked, well, how do we motivate people to do this, how do we motivate people to do that? So I figured maybe we should just talk to someone that is a bit of an expert on motivation, so for the conversation here today, I have with me Matt Granados. He is the CEO and founder of Life Pulse, and also the author of Motivate the Unmotivated. Matt, great to have you on the show.

Jeremy, always a pleasure to be on and happy to talk about how we can make things more efficient, especially with the listeners, how their whole job is to get things in order. And yet the people are a lot of times the hardest part.

Yeah. I’ve heard lots of individuals say over the years, accounting would be a whole lot easier if it was actually just about the numbers. But there’s a lot of people we work with in this profession. So before we jump into motivation, I’m going to start the episode the same way I start every episode: Tell us a little bit about how you became the leader that you are today.

Man, trial and error. Learn by fire. Ready, fire, aim, fire, aim, fire, aim. And what I mean by that was, you can read all the books in the world. Knowledge is not what makes you a leader. It’s an actual focus on understanding. It’s not just about what I get, it’s about what I can give. And that entire progression, I’m still figuring it out. So if you’re like, how did you become a leader? I think the second I start saying I’ve “become” a leader, I’ve lost my path. It’s a constant act of becoming. I’m always becoming more aware, better, more refined, more patient, more wise. That’s in all areas of life. When we work with the people that we work with, which is kind of the high performers wanting to get what we call optimal performance, it is a lot about the fact of continually becoming, is the goal. It’s not ever hitting that peak and then saying, look how good I am. So how did I become that leader that I’m continually becoming?

I realized really quickly, I thought I loved building businesses. And it turns out I actually love building people. I like helping people grow. That’s different than building a business. Can I be strategic? Sure. But that was never my strength whenever I was in business. It was always, how do I get individuals to do things that even they probably didn’t think they could do, hit their max potential and not just be a “high-po” individual? We look at all the potential they have, but actually experience the potential. And when I was able to get people to experience their maximum potential, they don’t want to go back down. It’s something that most people in today’s world haven’t actually experienced, fulfillment, and they wonder why they’re never fulfilled. They don’t know what it even feels like. So as I realized I have a gift to be able to work with people, what I also realized was it wasn’t as much a gift as a system, and when we put that system and shared it with others, I realized it wasn’t a gift. It was just following these truths on a regular basis, listening versus trying to tell people what to do, and then working on how to actually motivate the individual turned out to be a lot easier when done properly.

Very interesting. So let’s talk a little bit about that system because, as I said in the opener, I get asked all the time, how do we motivate other people? I don’t know that I’m convinced yet—I may be 35, 45 minutes from now, I may be convinced—but I don’t know that I’m convinced you can motivate other people as much as you have to align what they’re doing with what motivates them.

Correct.

It sounds like you’re attacking that or addressing that in a slightly different way. So talk to me a little bit about the system that leads to motivation, because it’s easy to talk about, well, I’ve said it probably too many times: we’ve got to be, you know, autonomy, mastery, purpose, the three big intrinsic motivators from Daniel Pink’s Drive and all the different things that are out there. That’s all great. But like you said, knowledge doesn’t make you motivated. It just means you have more knowledge. What’s required to actually motivate people?

Asking the right questions and helping them discover it themselves. Exactly to your point, I cannot create motivation within someone, but I can help them discover it. That’s the issue. We have gone away from experience and value, and just relied on knowledge, but knowledge, especially in today’s world where it’s so readily available, especially in the AI world, means nothing if you can’t apply it properly. And in order to apply it properly, you kind of have to be told how to do it. It’s not just understood anymore because the way schooling is, it’s all about regurgitation. Your entire life, the world is all about what do you know and can you pass the test? Applying the knowledge actually is not a skill set that’s taught anymore. That’s a big thing.

So the first thing is recognizing where’s the downfall. Now, how do we do this? There are three questions I ask, and if I ask these three questions to people, and I do it for about a cycle of four, usually it’s four weeks, if you do it once a week, it’s: What are you focused on? What are you working towards? What are you grateful for? Order does not matter. What are you focused on? What are you working towards? What are you grateful for? Now what I’m listening for is not your answer that week. I’m looking for trends. So great example: I had a warehouse manager in one of our businesses who loved his daughters. He was a dad who happened to be at a warehouse to work, but his wife was the breadwinner. He did not care about how much money he would make, about how much autonomy he had in the business. What he cared about was how he could be more of a dad. And what I realized was if I were to ask him to stay late because there was a late delivery, and I had Jamal, who was another employee of ours who wanted overtime, the withdrawal on that emotional ask of Dave, he would have said yes because he was a good leader, but it wouldn’t have been worth the ask.

So the problem as to why we can’t motivate others, or help others maximize their motivation, or help manage others’ motivation, is because we don’t know who we’re talking to. And everything we do is all about asking the right questions. So those are the three questions. The formula for proper motivation is how well you know yourself, how well you know them—so it’s a sum of that—times whatever system you’re using, equals the results you’re going to get. So if you don’t know you and you don’t know them, that’s going to get you a negative number. For all my numbers people here, regardless of what system you bring in, anything times a negative equals negative. So the key, the systems are never the problem. There’s tons of great systems. There’s our system, there’s your systems, there’s there, there’s a ton. It’s the fact that how do you get the you and the them to be understood? And that’s by asking the right questions.

So when we talk about motivation, we say there’s two parties to motivation. There’s a motivator and a motivatee, not always two people. So the same way we motivate ourselves is the same way we have to motivate others. The same way we motivate others is the same way we motivate ourselves. We have to know who we are,k now the motivator, who is this person? And then you have to know who they are. And that’s why those three questions are so important. Self-awareness is key in order to motivate others: honesty, genuine care for others, having a genuine faith in what you’re saying, that you actually believe, being authentic. These are all things that we’ve lost in society, because it’s all based on what’s the opinion of me, not what’s the reality of who I am. So we could dive into all those. But the reason why we aren’t able to motivate others is because we don’t even know how to motivate ourselves. We don’t know who we are, our identities are tied up in our work versus our work as an essence of our identity. These are all constant issues that we’re running into with leaders, and I use leaders loosely— people who are in leadership positions is a better way to say it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re leading. So that’s the start of the formula. We can pick that apart however you want. But it works unanimously everywhere, from your employees to your spouse, to your kids. These systems even work with pets. It is animal nature that we are leaning on to get people to take action the way they should.

Is it fair to say then, if it’s how well you know you, how well you know them, and I’m going to focus on that because, to your point, at that point the system, there’s lots of options out there.

Correct.

We’ve got to bring humanity and relationships and meaningful connection and actually time getting to know people back into business. Is that fair?

Surprise! When the robots come, that’s all we have left, right?

Yeah.

So when the robots come even more, I might need to say. But with all that being said, there’s two ways to motivate people: There’s fear-based motivation and there’s love-based motivation. Fear-based motivation is based on force. Love-based motivation is based on understanding. So I always ask the question, which takes longer? And the instant thought is, well, love-based motivation, to get to understand someone, that takes a long time. Fear-based motivation is based on force; I can get someone to act right now. But what you’re not realizing is the only reason they’re acting is because you’re pushing the force on them. The second you remove the force, they’re done. So the question is, you either invest upfront or you invest forever. Anyone listening with a 26-year-old kid living at home, you understand what I’m saying. Anyone who’s sitting there wondering why they can’t get that employee that’s had the same problem from the beginning of them hiring, why they can’t give them a change five, ten years later if you still have them, that’s the reality of it. So fear-based versus love-based.

If you look at the best motivators, we call them motivational all-stars, leaders of movements throughout history, they all lean on understanding, not force. You’ve got Martin Luther King Jr., you’ve got Gandhi, you’ve got Jesus Christ, you’ve got Mother Teresa, you’ve got Princess Diana. These people who, when they left, their impact got larger. You’ve got people like Stalin, Mussolini, right? These nasty people, when they left, their impact left. So sure, if you have to get everyone out of a burning building, you can yell fire, but the better option is for them to understand the severity of what’s going on, and there’s a higher likelihood they’ll all get out safe.

So I’m going to, we’ve got a conference this summer, the theme is “legacy.” And I really wasn’t thinking about motivation in terms of legacy, but what you just shared, all of those individuals that led through a love-based motivation rather than fear-based, they all left legacies behind. And as you said, they inherently got even stronger when they left because that love-based motivation has a longer tail to it than fear-based. So we know it’s more effective, we understand it, but now I’ve got to understand people. I’m going to start with the “us” instead of the “them” to start with: What is necessary for someone to understand themselves better in order to motivate others? So how do we deal with the, how do we deal with me first before I deal with them? Because in your formula, if I understand somebody else phenomenally but I don’t know anything about myself, we’re still not going to get what we need. So help me with the self-awareness side first.

Okay. So this is, we call this our glue session. And this is going to take definitely longer than the time we have on this call, but I’m going to break it down to you real quick. It’s an identity crisis. We have our identity tied to the wrong thing, and when we have our identity tied to the wrong thing, you can never get the legacy you’re called to have, at all. If my identity is in being a CPA, and I have this happen, we have a lot of retirees that we work with in our highest level coaching, $10,000 a month they’re paying us to walk them through retirement. It’s crazy. And with that, what we found is interesting, I’ll ask them all, why are you still working with us? We don’t give them a discount. And they said, because the scariest thing to do with the freedom to do nothing is to do nothing with it. And walking through that exact concept of going, hey, your identity was tied up in being a doctor, in being an entrepreneur, in having a CPA and all these other initials at the end of your name. So when we pulled that away from you, you went from being Dr. John to just John, Dr. Becky to just Becky, right? Whatever it might be. Because their identity is in the wrong place.

So when we work everyone through this, everyone has the same purpose. Humans have one purpose. We’re all built for one reason, but yet we’re told to find our individual purpose. That’s inaccurate. It’s a false concept that sounds good, but the word’s wrong. The definition of purpose is the reason for which something exists. That is the definition of purpose. So humans have a purpose, but individual humans do not have unique purposes. I’ll explain in a second. There is a word for what we’re trying to say, it’s just not purpose. Purpose is something that we all should understand. In order to live out your purpose, you must understand your identity, your calling, and your assignment. Your identity is who you are. Your calling is how you are to live out who you are. That’s what people confuse with purpose is your calling. We all have unique callings, right? Jeremy has a unique calling. Matt has a unique calling. Your assignment is what you are to be doing today, to live out your calling, to be the person of who you are to be. Does that make sense how that breaks out?

Yeah.

But the concern is, when your identity is tied up in your assignment, you’re going to feel absolute regret when that goes away. You’re going to lose everything, when they, when you, that’s why people sell their business and they’re miserable. That’s why their kids move out and they’re miserable. They’re putting their identity in their assignment. No, my assignment right now is a business owner, is a community member, is a dad, is a husband. My identity is not tied up in any of them. My identity is what fuels the work. It is not the work that creates the identity. And that’s the biggest mistake as to why people can’t motivate others, and that’s why legacies are not clear. What does your dad want? I don’t really know. My kids know very clearly what I want because I take the time to focus on self-awareness.

Back to the you, self-awareness, Harvard Business did an amazing study that they said 95% of the people that are asked say they’re self-aware, but the reality of it is only about 10 to 14% are. Which means there’s 85% of the population that’s messing this whole thing up. And I kind of joke when we do our keynote of enhance performance, eliminate excuses, where we walk through this on how do we do this at scale, I joke and I’m like, if you heard that stat, you’re like, man, I feel bad for those 85%, you’re part of the problem, right?

Yeah, you’re one of the 85!

Exactly. We all need to realize we’re not as aware as we should be. In fact, we need to examine ourselves regularly, check ourselves to make sure, was that accurate? The good thing is truth doesn’t lie. So once you understand what your calling is, we call it a calling statement, and we walk people through exactly how to build it out themselves. There’s a certain formula to it, of a kind of an XY that every human has. And when you get that calling statement, now you can actually live out your purpose and actually fulfill that purpose based on the identity, calling, and assignment. And then we call it your Purpose Vehicle. So being a CPA, I’m coming all the way around, is the Purpose Vehicle. It’s like a rental vehicle. It’s the tool you’re using to do what you’re supposed to do. The second you understand that, and you can show others how to understand that, then you can jump into the “they.” But until you’ve got the you locked in and you have the margin for you, meaning you have your time organized in a way that you have time to pour into the other people, you’re not rushed to train your team, but you actually get a chance to train your team, until you can control you and manage you effectively, don’t even try to manage or control others. It won’t work.

Okay. So we’ve got identity, calling, and assignment, which all ties back to that Purpose Vehicle. So now we understand ourselves a little bit more. Hopefully we’re doing the work to disconnect our identity from the wrong things, tying it back to the right things. Once we’ve done that, we’re feeling better. We understand our calling, what we’re trying to do, how we’re going to do it, we feel really grounded in that. Now, what do I need to do? Do I just go to others and say, hey, how was the weekend? Let’s just get to know one another a little bit more. How do I get someone that maybe doesn’t, maybe they’re pretty shy and private, they don’t really want to talk about themselves. How do I start to understand what’s really driving them and understanding them better?

Yeah, so this is all what we call PVTT: “Personal Value Tied to Task.” So from a very surface level area, hey Jeremy, real quick, what are you doing today? Like, what are you working on? Okay. Do you understand why? Does this make any sense to you? Does this just seem mundane or does this seem valuable? I don’t know, man, that’s CRM we use, I think it’s just kind of like just going through the motions. Interesting. Let me help you understand a Personal Value Tied to Task. Do you get why this CRM is helpful for you? Do you get why this new, let’s just use some, you know, CPA stuff, we’re going to transition over to this new file sharing software, which is going to change everything we’re doing, it’s going to drive everybody nuts in the firm and the clients nuts, and they liked it over here, but now it’s over here, but now it’s encrypted and we can do all these things. Do you understand why we’re doing that? I guess. Okay. If the answer is “I guess” and it’s not an excited yes, the way the owner or the leader might see it, then there’s a high likelihood you haven’t actually explained the value of what’s happening. Not in the way you want to explain it, but in the way they need to hear it.

Communication, which is what jumps into the they part, we talk about bridging the gap from, you know, what I call munication to communication. Munication is how most people do it, I talk, I assume you’re listening. I talk, I assume you get it. I talk. If you don’t get it, I put the blame on you. That’s munication. That’s how most marriages work, and that’s why they fall apart. That’s how most businesses work, and that’s how they fall apart. And that’s how most people lead, and that’s why they aren’t good leaders. If you’re speaking to someone, it is your responsibility that they understand what you’re trying to say. And when I take that, it’s my responsibility that you understand it, I want to make sure, alright, Jeremy, walk me through, make sure you understand the message we’re putting out to all the clients. Let me hear how you’re going to tell them. Oh, I’m going to probably say, no. I want you to talk to me like you’re a client. It’s kind of weird when I’m talking to you. I know it’s weird when you’re talking to me, but we’re going to work through this, because I want to make sure you understand the value that’s being offered.

So once value is understood, motivation will come next. That’s all motivation is, it’s a motivation proposition, a value prop like you’re selling. And the reason why I call the book Motivate the Unmotivated: A Proven System, How to Motivate Others, is because motivation is not a character trait, it’s a state of mind. And if it’s a state of mind, I can change that. Saying you can’t motivate someone, if we recognize it as a state of mind, not a character trait, would be like saying I can’t sell something to someone. I can’t get someone to buy something. Well, no, technically yeah, you can’t, but you can create the environment which increases a higher likelihood of a yes, and then you can actually be there to offer the transaction when it’s ready.

Right. Yeah. Okay.

So that’s where it would start with PVTT, Personal Value Tied to Task. The next hard part, which you’ll probably ask in a second, is how do you motivate someone when they don’t even know what they want? So we’re doing this, we’re having this conversation. The biggest thing is people always go, what do you want?

And they’ll say the same thing: I want more money. Okay, we tried that before, it didn’t work. In fact, studies show it never works unless it’s 10% of the annual take-home post-tax. Meaning if you’re paying someone a hundred grand a year, if you’re not stroking them a $10,000 check post-tax, that money you’re giving as a bonus, and again, these are just what studies are showing, are only as good as the next paycheck. So money is not a good motivator. But figuring out what would you do with the money? Man, I would take more vacations. Interesting. So if you’re a very hands-off manager and you don’t do anything, they do everything, and you have a support person, it’s going to be very hard to motivate them. But you don’t need to give them quantity of your time, you need to give them quality time, meaning, hey, what do you need help with? Man, I’m really dying.

They want to feel supported.

They want to be supported. They want to make sure they’re not on an island. And they will outperform you if they know you’re in it with them. Now the last two, connectivity, these are people who want something bigger than just themselves. They’re the ones who want the team bonding, they’re the ones who do volunteer work. They usually have some nonprofit that they’re super passionate about that they would love to support. They want to be part of something bigger. They realize life is bigger than them and their whole worldview is based on that. They want to know how the business is going to impact long term. They love legacy, they love it. That’s their concept. So when you’re working with a connectivity person, you want to speak in terms of big picture, speak in terms of what this could do for the greater good.

And then acknowledgement, which is the majority of the type-A’s, they’re either acknowledgement or support, those are the two where they fall. For the go-getters, you walk into the fact that they want to know they’re doing a good job. Four catalysts, figure out what they are and then create what we call motivational packages. When we worked with some large companies, huge Fortune 100 companies, we would literally take those four individuals, they would then pick what their package is, and if they get the goals that they set, they get the reward or the package at the end. And from a CPA perspective, it’s a simple ROI calculation.

I was working with a doctor’s office, they were opening up a South Carolina office. I said, hey, what do you want to see? His name is Brandon, the person I was working with. He said, I want to see a hundred new clients, as quickly as possible. I said, what would you pay if we were able to do that in 90 days? He said, man, 90 days, I’d probably give him 20 grand, because that’s how urgent it is, in the formula of opening practices; getting those first hundred is killer. So I’m talking to Brandon and he said, man, my wife is just killing me because I’m just always working, I’m not doing this, I’m not doing that. I said, what would you want? He said, man, I just want a vacation. His motivation catalyst was freedom. But yet he was working like a dog and never getting a chance to go away. So I called my client and I said, hey, before you offer anything, I said, why don’t we do this, why don’t we offer him two first-class tickets anywhere in the country to go on a vacation, and you’ll fly into his practice and keep the practice going for a week? He said, I would do that all day.

So I reached out to Brandon. He calls me the next day. I said, how did it go? He goes, I went home, told my wife, and she sent me back to work. In 45 days, he brings in a hundred brand-new patients, gets the practice up and going. I talked to my client and he’s like, what, I was going to give him 20 grand, like where’s he going to go? He took two first-class tickets from South Carolina to Miami, Florida. It ended up costing my client $2,000, and he added an extra two grand to cover the hotel and extra spending cash. So he was so grateful. Months later I finally have a conversation with Brandon. To your point, I said, Brandon, I’ve got to tell you something, that offer, I didn’t tell you the other side of the offer, which was like 20 or 30 grand. And I thought he was going to be bothered. I said, which one would you have taken? And he said, I would have said I wanted the 20 or 30,000, and I would have never gotten the goal.

Yeah, he wanted the vacation.

The vacation is what the motivation was. The money is the worldly desire. But it wasn’t tied to who he is, and that’s the key to PVTT, Personal Value Tied to Task. So his wife came in and helped, and they went all over the community and got new clients and they were networking together as a couple, and that is how they were able to do it. So you’re spot on with it. And when it comes to motivating others, we have to get creative. We’re dealing with the most crazy variable ever in our business: humans. And as AI comes in, the human variable is going to be more important. It’s the exact opposite in the fact that it’s like, oh well, it’s going to take human places? No, it’s going to allow an individual that you properly manage to do 10x their work. You’ll have one person who could do the job of ten, you still need the human element. Authenticity, care, opinion, thought, that is what’s going to be valued moving forward. The personnel is going to be the most valuable asset of any business, because everyone’s going to have the same tech. Everyone’s going to have similar ability to do things. And that’s what we need to recognize as we continue to grow in motivation of others.

Absolutely. Matt, that is awesome. I would expect, what you just described in motivating others, the Personal Value Tied to Task and those four catalysts, that works intrinsically for an individual as well. That’s not just them, that’s also us. I would imagine that if someone is struggling with self-motivation, self-accountability, it’s a similar situation. You could almost, if freedom was your big motivator, it’s, hey, if I get this done, then I’m going to give myself the permission to go do this thing over here, rather than “I’ll hit my metrics and feel good.” You could use that to almost help motivate yourself in those times of challenge as well. Is that fair?

Yeah. Not only that, but it actually, if you can’t do it to yourself, you cannot do it to others.

Oh yeah, sure.

I kind of say it’s like two parallel paths. You can’t lead someone further than you’ve been led. If you are, it’s counterfeit. It’s a lie. It’s inauthentic. You’re guessing at best. So lead yourself there. How do you do that? That starts with our direct coaching, but it starts with creating margin, managing your week effectively. When you actually have margin, you’ll experience fulfillment, and you will experience a chance to breathe and doing the things you enjoy doing more than just everything you need to do. So yeah, it works hand in hand. And that’s why the system can work at scale, because what works for one person works for all people. That’s why we say it works for kids, pets, any living creature, it’s the same concept. We all have an inner desire. The question is, can you trigger it and turn it on and off the way you need to? And that’s what our system does for individuals, teams, and corporations alike.

I love it. Matt, where can folks find you, find your system, learn more about what you’re doing, and read more about motivation if they’d like to do so?

Yeah, you can find us on any social media platform, LinkedIn. We’re really big on Substack. You can also go to LifePulseinc.com/PodGift, we’ll put an entire page that has just the resources on this, especially for the CPAs that might be helpful for them, and any way we can assist, you can reach out. You can email us at support@lifepulseinc.com. We have an entire team that can help figure out how to do this and what we do, this concept of truth-based transformation, the reason it works is because it’s anchored in truth, and when people experience truth, they can’t look away. Once you see it, they have a choice, do you actually correct yourself or do you avoid it? And I have found few people have the ability to not walk down the path. But truth leads to tension, tension leads to transformation. If you can’t make it through the tension, you’re going to be sitting there in torment for a long time. What we do is help teams and companies get through that tension.

That’s great. And like you said, it is a choice. There’s so much in leadership, I would argue almost everything in leadership, it comes down to making choices. And in so many of those situations, it’s because there’s tension present that a lot of folks unfortunately don’t make the more challenging choice. Sometimes we take the path of least resistance, which isn’t always the most effective leadership path. But we do have to make choices, and there’s so much in what you shared, so much value in this conversation. I really appreciate it, and thank you for the generosity of creating a page for our listeners. We will have that in the show notes. Thanks for spending the time today. I know you’ve had a lot going on here lately, and I appreciate you carving out the time to talk today. Thanks, Matt.

Glad to be here, Jeremy. Thanks for all the good work you guys are doing.

I appreciate it. We’ll talk soon.