Video Overview
#11 episode of Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time, with Rhonda L. Bowen.
Born in the US, but living in Germany, Rhonda had her own business since ’88.
She enjoys working with professionals that are quite the opposite of her – business owners, people in engineering, science and technology.
She has worked with people from more than 70 countries.
And her topic is communication across cultures.
Rhonda helps her clients improve their communication, negotiation, team building and personal development.
Visit her website here!
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Interview Transcript
[00:00:07.490] – Dancho – Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode and welcome to the Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers – One Lesson at a Time. As much as I want to follow the formal structure, I really cannot, because the whole goal of this episodes are really to get some insights and some golden nuggets from all the experts that were actually inviting on the show. And for today, I’m so happy and so excited actually to present you Ms. Rhonda Bowen, and she’s coming from Germany, Rhonda?
[00:00:37.170] – Rhonda – I live in Germany, yes, but I come from America originally.
[00:00:41.010] – Dancho – Ah, nice. I was going to start with “Guten Tag, wie gehts”. So Rhonda, welcome to the show, we are so pleased to have you here.
[00:00:49.970] – Rhonda – Such an honor to be with you today Dancho.
[00:00:52.250] – Dancho – So for everybody out there, we have some really exciting topic for today. Of course, I’m not going to tell otherwise Rhonda, what’s gonna talk about. So Rhonda, before we dive in to the main topic for today, I would really appreciate if you could just in short, give us a short description on who you are and your origin story and what you do so we can have the background.
[00:01:14.420] – Rhonda – Wonderful. Well, if I do my origin story, that could take a long time, so I’ll keep that part short. I’m Rhonda Bowen, I was born in the US, and have lived in Germany permanently since the end of ’83, and I’ve had my own business years since 1988. I work with what I call best professionals, people in business, engineering, science and technology. Those are the people I love to work with because they’re exactly the opposite of me. And I help them do the things that are not easy for them. I’ve worked with people from more than 70 countries, and so my topic is talking about communication across cultures. And you may say, well, what does that mean? Is that cross-cultural communication? Is that intercultural communication? There are lots of buzzwords that people don’t know about. I don’t use any of those. And there’s a very special reason for that. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
[00:02:16.330] – Dancho – I’m interested, Rhonda, when you say you work with the BEST, business, engineering, science and technology, you put a teaser there exactly opposite than me. So what do you actually mean by that? You’re serving clients that are not… Actually, you know, something that they don’t know?
[00:02:32.350] – Rhonda – And they know lots of things that I don’t know. That’s a very important aspect of what we do. My title, if you ask me, what is my job, I would tell you I’m a global strategic communication guide.
[00:02:45.700] – Dancho – Wow. Sounds complicated.
[00:02:47.390] – Rhonda – That sounds like a lot of words. The most important word is the “guide” part. Like a tour guide. You may know if you are going to a place you’ve never been before and you need a tour guide, you have lots of options. And I always say if I were your tour guide to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, for example, you could just book a tour and get on a bus with 50 other people. They drop you off, you have 15 minutes and then you go away. If you would want to go with me to the Eiffel Tower, I would first ask you all kinds of questions. I’d say, do you want to see it during the daytime or at night when it’s lit up? It looks pretty. Do you want to be right under it or on it? Or do you want to go to Mamata and stand on the mountain and look at it across and see the whole thing? Do you want to go in the summer when it’s warm? Or do you want to go in the winter when they put ice on it? You can go ice skating on the Eiffel Tower. What do you want to get out of the Eiffel Tower? And I would make sure that as your guide, I get you those kinds of experiences that you need with the Eiffel Tower. And that’s what I do with communication as well.
[00:03:55.850] – Dancho – So you actually give them options, like preferences. What do you want? So based on that preference, I can tailor the whole Eiffel Tower experience. And I’m curious if they have no clue what they want, they’re like, lost tourists like me in Paris, and I’m like, where’s the Eiffel Tower? There! Okay, what should we do?
[00:04:13.330] – Rhonda – Well, the whole point is, even if you’ve never been to Paris or to the Eiffel Tower, you’ve probably seen a picture or in a movie or something. And you know what’s fascinating about it. And you know what you don’t know and you know what you’re interested in. So if I say to you, for example, if we go in the winter, you can ice skate. I personally wouldn’t go there then, because I can’t ice skate. So it wouldn’t help me very much to go and rent ice skates and try to ice skate. If you said you wanted to paint this, then you can’t stand underneath it because then you can’t see it. So you need to know what you want out of the experience, even if you don’t know what the experience is yet. And that’s what I try to help you find out. That’s why I’m a guide.
[00:04:54.810] – Dancho – Nice. Now it has a perfect sense. And the other thing that you mentioned in addition to the BEST, was actually communication across culture. So when it comes to cross-culture, is it like geographical, how Indian people talk versus how German, more stricter conversation they do, compared to, I don’t know, I’m really stereotyping on this one…
[00:05:18.734] – Rhonda – That’s fine.
[00:05:18.770] – Dancho – …but in which direction is across culture communication?
[00:05:23.170] – Rhonda – Yeah. Well, that’s why I say it’s across cultures, because the biggest problem for us is not to know, for example, understanding head shaking in India, which if you’re going to go to India or work with people in India, that’s very important. But of course, many of us never go to other countries. This classic thing about you need two hands to hand somebody a business card in Japan. Well, Japanese people learn that if you talk to people from the west, you do it with one hand. Well, how do you do it then? There are lots of things like that where everybody is now learning about things. But what you really need to know is what is appropriate for the situation. And how do you figure that out? And so cultures is not only if you and I went to Japan, I’ve been in Japan, it’s a wonderful place. I’ve had business cards both ways. But what does it mean when we need to talk to somebody who doesn’t talk or think or react the way we do when we communicate? And that’s the really important thing, because you’d be surprised how many people if there are salespeople in a company and there are technical people in a company, two engineers from two totally different countries may have a much better conversation than a salesperson and an engineer who grew up in the same town who speak the same language, work in the same company, and they don’t understand each other. So there are not only cultures like where’s your passport from or where do you live? Which, for me, is two different things. But the other thing is what happens if there are cultures inside your organization or inside your company? And a lot of people talk about silos. I grew up on a farm. Silo has a whole different meaning for me. So I don’t think about silos, you never get out. I think about cultures in companies as having glass walls. There’s this thing about getting up the glass ceiling. There’s a limit and you can’t get to the next level. That’s a very important thing for people. And that’s really important. But there are also glass walls between different departments. And if you can’t learn to talk to the people on your level first and get through the glass walls, it’s hard to climb to the next level and get to the glass ceiling. So cultures are sales versus, for example, in a software company delivery and implementation. And then you have support and then you have maintenance. They all do different things. There’s a limit and you can’t get to the next level. That’s a very important thing for people. And that’s really important. But there are also glass walls between different departments. And if you can’t learn to talk to the people on your level first and get through the glass walls, it’s hard to climb to the next level and get to the glass ceiling. So cultures are sales versus, for example, in a software company delivery and implementation. And then you have support and then you have maintenance. They all do different things. I thought you do that. No, you’re supposed to do that. And when all of that goes on, think about what’s happened to the poor clients, they have no idea what’s going on. So getting the glass walls organized first and getting through those is so much more important for the good external communication. But also, if you want to move up, you have to do well with the people on your level first. And I work a lot with people in middle management. They have to work with people above. They have to work with people below. It gets really complicated sometimes. And then all these crazy sales people. And I’m a tech guy who’s programming. We have different goals, we want different things. It’s very difficult if the expectations aren’t clear and the messaging to the outside isn’t aligned for all the different people that are talking to the same client.
[00:09:26.330] – Dancho – Actually, when we were thinking cross-culture, yeah, in my head was the Japan culture and Indian and stuff. But you’re opening a completely different level when it comes to cross-culture communication. So two layers, let’s first cross department communication. That is actually two different cultures, because sales are more aggressive, more talkative, more extrovert, more pushy, more determined because they need to get the prospect the client and get as many clients and quotes. Well, on the other hand, is a different culture within the same, not just company, but in the same geography is the IT department where they do want to work more. Okay, I’m still stereotyping. Okay, this conversation with communication is all based on stereotypes. I apologize in advance, but more geeky guy, more introvert, more talking to the computer, less chatty. And now you actually have a cross company cross cultural communication within two departments. And from experience before BizzBee, ten years ago, I was a business development owner of a software development company where I actually had to talk to the client and then translated somehow to the tech team, which was science fiction. And now when you said, I realized how different is the glass wall that you said between the two cultures. And I’m really curious, how does that work? I mean, how can you remove the glass wall?
[00:11:00.970] – Rhonda – Well, for me, if you have people who are all willing to work on this together. And I’m fortunate, I’m working for a large company at the moment. We did this a couple of years ago. We had these five departments. And the lady who was managing in the middle department, she had the worst job because she had two departments before, two departments after her, and she came to me and I was coaching her individually. And she said, Rhonda, this is crazy. We have to do something about this. People are coming to me from the client’s organization and saying, but your colleague in sales said, you’re going to do this. Well, it had nothing to do with sales, it had to do with the implementation of the program. I’m responsible for the implementation, not the sales guy. And so there was all this confusion. And of course, the client suffered incredibly but a lot of the people in the company also suffered because, as I said, this lady in the middle was trying to go to all the different areas and figure out how to make sure that the implementation worked well for her, for the other departments, but mostly, of course, for the client. So we got all five of these departments, and we all sat down at one big table, and we went through a procedure that I set up for. Where are we now? What’s working well? What’s not working well? That’s the most important part. And she had made a chart, from her point of view. This is what my department does, this is what I think department A and B do and department D and E do. And if I see the whole chain, it looks like this. And we actually walked through the whole thing, and everybody said for his own group – yeah, that’s right, we do that, but we don’t do that. And we corrected it, and we made an absolute process. What happens to the client, who does what with whom? And we actually work this all out and came up with an agreement. How do we do the handovers? How do we make sure that all of the information is stored in internal systems like a CRM procedure? How do we make sure that I don’t say anything about the next department? Because it’s not my job. We all want to be nice. The client calls me and says, oh, but what about this? It’s hard sometimes to say that’s not my responsibility. Please talk to my colleagues.
[00:13:27.462] – Dancho – Directly to the right person.
[00:13:27.930] – Rhonda – But if you don’t, then you’re making mistakes because you’re saying things that are maybe not true. The client is not getting the information directly from the source. And when there’s a problem later, you’re in a triangle, and that’s the real killer. Because then who’s right? And how do we handle this and all of that kind of stuff? So we actually came up with an agreement and everybody signed it. And then we had follow up meetings later to see if anything had to be adjusted or if things had changed within the system and just make sure that everybody was still on track. That’s a good option for a program that works extremely well.
[00:14:04.060] – Dancho – Rhonda, this is some kind of a client journey from through the whole company process. So from the sales department, they had a proposal, they closed. Then it goes to legal for a contract from an invoice. Then it goes to the execution, then it goes to different department.
[00:14:20.970] – Rhonda – Exactly.
[00:14:21.370] – Dancho – And you’re mapping out the whole journey. So it would be really clear at what stage who is responsible for what.
[00:14:29.810] – Rhonda – And the biggest enlightenment is that people get out of this. Some of these people have been working together for ten years. And until we sat down and looked at this chart that the lady had set up, and then someone said to her, you really think that’s what we do. And why? Because nobody had ever sat down and actually looked through all of these things together with everybody in the room. That’s the most important thing. You can’t break down walls, if you only have people from two, you can break down that wall, but you can’t break down all of them. And unfortunately, the client has to interact with all five, not just with two. So you have to make sure it’s also very clear for the client.
[00:15:16.910] – Dancho – Yeah, and I’m curious, I’m thinking that actually that’s the role of any CEO in the company to align departments to maximize the client’s results. When I’m listening to you, Rhonda, because as a CEO now, I’m reflecting on myself at the moment is that, yes, we have a marketing department. We have the sales department, and we have two agency executions and the administration that they own as teams, they need to work together because the client cannot suffer. Marketing can over promise or sales can over promise that some weird results, and then the execution will suffer. Although it’s not their fault, because the client came either with bad framework, with bad expectations from marketing or was not really properly qualified that he’s the right guy to work with. And it is quite hard, actually, several different departments with their own culture, as you said, because each of them had a way of communicating and working, and the alignment actually is the hardest. So the client will get the best results.
[00:16:20.750] – Rhonda – And if you work for a company the size of this one, with over 100,000 people in the world, the CEO is on the other side of the Atlantic. So I mean, that’s a very hard thing. And if the CEO was trying to do this for everybody, he would have nothing else to do. The other important thing is bringing in someone from the outside. I don’t care who says what to the client. I don’t have any investment in this, except that I want the client to have a good experience, and I want to help all those people involved, make sure the client gets a good experience. But who says what to whom? I don’t know about. It’s like being a referee. I’m a facilitator, I’m making sure that it’s easy for people to talk. And that’s like a referee in a sports game, you blow the whistle or show the card or whatever when it doesn’t work. But I don’t care who wins the game at the end. That’s the wonderful thing. I have no investment. Or, as a lot of people say, I have no skin in the game if you like that phrase. So I only have the skin in the game that says, I want the game to come out and be positive for everybody at the end. Just like a referee says, I don’t want anybody breaking the rules. So that’s why a guide, take people along and take them by the hand and show them what it is. I don’t just send it to them and say, here, figure it out. I sit at the table with them and actually work through it with them, because when they have a question, like for the Eiffel Tower, then I can ask them the questions. And that’s why I said I like working with technical or scientific people, because I don’t understand any of this. They have to work really hard to explain all of this to me. But if they get it explained to me, then it’s also the way they need to explain to the client or just to the person in the other department that doesn’t understand.
[00:18:13.430] – Dancho – Well, I think that’s really unique because the unbiased view of the organization is something that the CEO will never be able to do. Like, see the big picture because you’re in day to day operations. And perhaps maybe that’s why people hire consultants. That’s why we hire consultants, even is that we need a third party view unbiased, we will tell you, look, this is really good. This is really bad. And I’m telling you because you’re paying me to tell you the truth and not be like, well, you know what from different angles. And Rhonda, that’s quite interesting that you’re saying that cross department, there is a huge difference in culture. But you also mentioned another level that even if it’s cross department, it could be cross hierarchy. Like, if you’re a middle management, you have one culture, then if you are a top tier, you have a different culture, and if you are low. So even within the same department, you have three layer of ceilings and each of them has a cross cultural communication at the end of the day, right?
[00:19:13.100] – Rhonda – Well, for me, the culture is more between the different departments within a certain department, I think the biggest difference between people at various levels is their attention to what it is that they’re responsible for. So people who are on the ground level and are doing the day to day work have a totally different view of what goes on, have different priorities, express that in different ways in the communication sense, then the people in the middle who are trying to keep everybody below them happy, but also reporting above to check what’s going on. The poor guys in the middle, which is why I love working with them, because they also need more help just because they have more to deal with.
[00:19:59.740] – Dancho – Pressure from both sides.
[00:20:01.150] – Rhonda – Yeah, and the people at the top have maybe forgotten what it’s like to be at the bottom if they ever were. Some companies, there are those people, some not. But the people at the top are looking at the bigger picture, have to talk to the board, all these things, they can’t have the same focus. So the communication is different, not because they don’t want to talk to each other, but what they’re looking at and what’s important to them is also very different. And then we’re talking more about managing expectations. What do I get when I go and talk to the CEO? That’s something very different than what I get when I talk to my team leader, not because they don’t want to talk to me or they know anything different. It’s what they’re focused on that is so different. And you have to know how to adjust the communication for that as well.
[00:20:49.490] – Dancho – True, I find it very different. And as I’m listening to, I’m realizing that the cross cultural communication, it could affect the business, not just dealing with sales or external clients, but within the company with different people, you need to have different type of communication. And I also have one more question in regards to, this is a bit tougher one. Across department I understand, cross layer I understand. I know there are different segments within the businesses, like some people, like parting other groups, informal groups is the right wording here. And within the big companies, there are like it or not, whether you control different informal groups that they group and they have their own communication, and they need to communicate with the other groups, how is actually this affected as well?
[00:21:43.860] – Rhonda – Well, the important thing with any kind of a group is there’s a reason why a group of people are together. And if you’re talking about the communication, you often see this. And that’s why I said, talking to best professionals for me is important because groups also professions have their own jargon. They have their own language for things. They have ways to talk about things that other people don’t. So if I’m in an informal group and we all like riding motorcycles, I spoke to a client today who’s off for a motorcycle trip for the weekend. And when I spoke to his boss later, she said, oh, Rhonda, I don’t know anything about riding motorcycles. Well, they’re wonderful colleagues. They’ve known each other for years. But she said, I really don’t know so much about this guy when he goes riding motorcycles, and I told her some things, she said, oh, that’s really interesting. See, he’s talking to me about motorcycles, but he’s not talking to her. It’s not a group, but it’s a similar thing. So all of those informal things that are often going on in a group or because people have found things that they share which are not part of the job. And therefore, when you’re in that group, there’s that insider knowledge there’s that jargon. There’s that things we’ve done before together that nobody else knows about. You have all of those things. And there’s no problem inside a group ever, because that’s why it’s a group. The minute that group has to talk to another group, whatever that is, there are two really important things. There’s a sender and a receiver for communication. The problem is what the sender sends is not necessarily what the receiver gets. I always say, grew up in America, a football is the message. The quarterback has the football in his hand, he can hand it to somebody. He can throw it, somebody can kick it. There are all kinds of ways to get the message to the next person. The question is, which one do you use and which one is appropriate? I don’t know if you’re familiar with the film “Philadelphia” from the 80s with Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. They’re both lawyers, and Tom Hanks comes and talks to Denzel Washington and wants help. And Denzel Washington doesn’t want to help him. But the first thing he said to him is, I don’t understand this. Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old.
[00:24:14.510] – Dancho – I’ve heard the saying, I don’t remember the movie.
[00:24:17.340] – Rhonda – All right. But if you and I are not in the same group and you’re talking about marketing agency things, that I don’t understand anything about at all. And that’s nice that I don’t because that’s the way we learn from other people. Obviously, if you start talking in jargon, I might as well turn around and go home because I’m not going to get it. And that’s the thing about talking to a five year old. You would never explain something complicated in a strange way to a five year old. You bring it to a level that that little boy or girl understands. Don’t think about that, we’re all big boys and girls. We think, oh, we’re all adults, it’s all the same. Well, it’s not. And when I talk to scientists who are biologists and chemists and they have PhDs in whatever it is, and they start talking, I said, sorry, I have no idea.
[00:25:11.260] – Dancho – Speak English.
[00:25:15.100] – Rhonda – I always say I coach my opposites, and that’s exactly why. I give them that insight, that perspective of how do you speak to somebody if they have no idea what you’re talking about? And I bring in the how do you get it across. And they bring the real wonderful expert information. And when you put it together, you get the synergy that you need. But if you only have one side or the other, it doesn’t work. And that’s why I coach people who are exactly the opposite. I bring something to the conversation, they bring something else to the conversation. But for the third person, like a client, it’s a better conversation.
[00:25:52.850] – Dancho – Got it. They need to figure out how to explain it to you as a non-part of the group person, non-technical, non-jargon. And if they figure that out, then they can communicate much better with the other teams, with other departments or other cross cultures within the company.
[00:26:09.800] – Rhonda – Or outside of the company. I have a scientific group where they came to me and said, Rhonda, we have to go and do a public open forum, and people from the public can come and talk to us. Chemical company. People on the outside don’t understand chemical company. They have questions that they have no idea what kind of questions are coming. There is no way to prepare for this. And so we sat down and went through this and I said, what do you think they could ask? They wrote it on a piece of paper, and then I asked the questions in a totally different way. That’s what you need to be able to do, you need to get the other perspective. And if you’re not sure, you need to ask them what they mean. So you really get the right question, because if you talk up here, you’re going to lose them and they’re going to leave the room.
[00:27:00.220] – Dancho – It will be too technical.
[00:27:01.750] – Rhonda – Yeah.
[00:27:02.790] – Dancho – I see, Rhonda, I’m looking at the time. I do have one more question for you, and we actually ask everybody here that our guests. So what’s the one single thing that you’ve learned and you want to share and you want to be remembered for? So imagine it’s like even after 100 years, people will be like, I remember Rhonda by that one thing that it is. And I do make it too ambitious like that in order to put the emphasize like, if you have to choose only one, because I’m sure that with your experience, you have so many lessons to share. But what would be that one thing that you want to share it here?
[00:27:43.390] – Rhonda – After all those wonderful years of experience, as you so rightly said, what I’ve come up with is my own way to make sure that when I’m in a session, whether it’s with an individual as the two of us are today, Dancho or whether I’m in a whole group. I talk about whisperation sessions. And whisperation is just a combination of two words everybody knows – wisdom and inspiration. So when you come into the conversation, you either bring wisdom like all of your experience and the knowledge you have, or you have questions about wisdom. There are things you don’t know, like ice skating on the Eiffel Tower that you bring and you bring in questions. And then we sit and we discuss whatever the topic is. And that’s why I said, facilitation is so important to me. I don’t care what we’re talking about. It’s my job to make sure that people share their wisdom and get wisdom from other people, whoever is there. And then the next important thing is not just to get it in your head and understand it. But what does that make you able to do when you leave this group or the room and you go out and do your own thing? What’s the inspiration? What’s the motivation you get and how do you transfer this? I’m a very practical person. How do I take this now and use it in my own life to make my own communication across cultures better than it was before? So it’s not being the expert. It’s not teaching, it’s not saying, do this, this and this because I don’t know, and communication is a very individual thing. It’s like breathing. We all do it, but we all do it differently, and we all need different things. So bringing the wisdom and getting the wisdom from others. But then having the inspiration to look beyond and say, what does this mean for me, for my life, for my company, for my clients, whoever it is, how can I use that newfound wisdom to be inspired to go out and make my communication better? And that’s the one thing, whisperation is the one thing I’d love to be remembered for.
[00:29:51.440] – Dancho – Nice. I wrote it down as well.
[00:29:54.210] – Rhonda – Okay, good.
[00:29:55.990] – Dancho – Well, Rhonda, we are reaching the end of this interview. I’m sure that many of our listeners now would start looking at the cross-culture communication from a completely different angle. And I’m sure that they will have far, many additional questions that we cannot cover all everything here. So how people can actually find you, how they can reach out to you, whether they have some questions, whether they want to get on a call, or whether they even are interested in using your services, where people can find you Rhonda?
[00:30:24.750] – Rhonda – I think the best way is to just start by contacting me on LinkedIn. My name is Rhonda. L. my middle initial, Rhonda l. Bowen, there are lots of Rhonda Bowens in the world, so it’s Rhonda L. Bowen on LinkedIn. And once they message me, then I can give them a link for a call, or I can send them information if they have something specific they already want to know about. But I think that’s the easiest way. First, just one point of contact, and then we go from there, because as I said, it’s not finished in a little box or in a package. It has to be what the person really needs.
[00:30:59.170] – Dancho – To be a tailored experience. Well, what I’m going to do, Rhonda, is I’m actually going to put your LinkedIn under the video, so whoever is interested, they can find you on LinkedIn. And before we finish the interview, Rhonda, what I usually do is that as a student, I also take notes as you talk.
[00:31:21.190] – Rhonda – Excellent. That’s what I do when I facilitate as well.
[00:31:27.320] – Dancho – So I actually have few golden nuggets from you, actually, three to four different golden nuggets that I took. And I really wanted to summarize just in short, all the things that I learned from this conversation, and I hope that if others picked it up or not. But first thing that I really liked was that you’re positioning yourself not as a consultant, not as a coach, but as a guide. So actually, you’re asking people what they want to get out of the experience. So you would then know how to tailor the experience for them. So unless you know what you want to get out of the experience, how are you going to experience it the right way? So that was really interesting. The second part was that you’ve touched the cross cultural conversation and communication. But in my head first, it was that okay, it’s cross culture between geographies or between religion or between more high-level overview. But you actually brought it into a cultural cross department communication, which it gives a completely different perspective. If you’re aware of this, you should talk differently with your marketing department, with your IT department, with your sales department, because you should start considering that they are a different culture than you, and you need to adjust to be understood. And that was really good. But also they all need to be aligned in order the client to get the most value. Otherwise, you have, like, three sub companies within a big company. The other part was the fourth thing that I got out of here was that it’s not even cross department, even it’s across the same department, but on a different layer. But this is not different culture, but it’s more different views and different expectations at different layers. So again, you need a different way of communicating, whether it’s top down, bottom down, or if you’re in the middle, squeeze between the two sides. And the last thing I wrote here was whisperation, the last thing you said, which is between the wisdom and inspiration, which I like that some people bring the wisdom, but the other people bring the questions. And in this case, I was the questioning guy because I had so many thoughts that I wanted to ask to clarify and having you on the other side with the wisdom, it was really useful for me. And I hope that everybody that we’re listening would be able to take something out of this call. Those were my notes so far. I really want to thank you for coming to the show and for everybody else, I mean, I will leave Rhonda’s LinkedIn, feel free to reach out. First think about how you communicate in your business, whether it’s a consulting company, whether it’s an agency, whether it’s a software or tech company, because as Rhonda really put it nicely, I’m just trying to find it here because I wrote that as well is that when you work with BEST, whether it’s a business, engineering, science or technology, it’s really good to be completely on the other side, because then you don’t need to speak their language. But actually they need to put an effort to translate like a little boy or girl rather than doing a high level conversation.
[00:34:31.870] – Rhonda – Perfect. It’s an honor to spend this time with you today and hopefully give some inspiration also to the folks here who love to watch your podcast. And the important thing I think is we don’t get whispiration from just one source. And of course, when you speak to people, you know, you and I’ve had the chance to speak before, Dancho, it’s absolutely wonderful. But there are times you speak to new people, and I’d love to just mention that you’re going to be talking about in your new book about doing things with people you don’t know before. There’s another whole aspect of that. And I hope people get a chance to read your new book, “Sweet Leads”, because I think there’s something really nice about what we talked about. Today was a lot about people you already know and you work with, but you’re talking in your book, among other things about people you don’t know yet. And there are a lot of things to think about that so they can learn things from you and from me. Another whole conversation we could have at another time.
[00:35:27.490] – Dancho – Rhonda, we apply some of the advice that you mentioned because when we are reaching out to CEO, it’s a busy guy, it’s a business management. When we are talking to plant managers at the manufacturing sites, we have completely different outreach, when we are talking with tech people… So it’s really important to know who are you talking to in order to reduce the level of jargonism and technical words and everything. So a five-year-old boy or girl can actually understand you. So that’s really insightful, and it gives me a few more ideas that I want to try now in the outreach in order to say, well, what if we try the hierarchy part? But I will let you know how that goes as well. And Rhonda, thank you again for being part of the show, and for the rest to you out there, have a great day, guys.
[00:36:14.210] – Rhonda – Thank you. Bye, bye.