Clay Stelzer is an inspiring entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of 15Sixty, a company with a mission to help people become better versions of themselves. In this week's episode of the Interesting B2B Marketers podcast, Clay shares his own entrepreneurial journey as well as valuable tips for other aspiring business owners.

‍

In this episode, you will learn:

• How executive teams can benefit from feedback, personal growth, and team coaching. 

• How to handle difficult conversations with people who have a reputation for not listening or cutting people off. 

• What it's like working with a large software company and building a team coaching practice. 

• How to create an atmosphere of creative friction where ideas are discussed openly and with respect. 

‍

If you enjoyed this podcast episode, be sure to subscribe to the show and leave a review.

‍

Connect with Steve and Clay on LinkedIn.

‍Steve Goldhaber:  Hey everybody. Welcome back to Studio 26. Today I'm joined by Clay Stelzer. Welcome to the show, Clay. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Thanks, Steve. Glad to be here. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: And for those of you who don't know Clay, he focuses on executive and team coaching. He's also the founder and CEO of a beautifully named company. I'm gonna let you reveal the name Clay, because I think not only the name is cool, but the naming idea and the science behind it. So I'm gonna have you open up with that. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah, thanks Steve. So the name of my company is 15sixty “15” in numbers and then 60 spelled out. When I started my company, I wanted something that would be kind of sexy, not just your average kind of coaching name, but I wanted it to be really representative and meaningful in a way that I wanted it to attach to what we talk about and what we believe and how we serve others. And when I was thinking of a name, I learned a fact that adults, on average, take 15 breaths a minute so in my mind that means each of us has 15 great opportunities every 60 seconds to stop and wake. Everything we do with the company is we help people begin to recognize their unconscious patterns. We all have these patterns that most of us are unaware of, and if we're not paying attention, we can end up making decisions that lead us to outcomes that we don't want both in our life and in our business. And that's really what we focus on within 15sixty. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Nice. All right. And the reason why I've got you on this show today, this is a departure from our normal format because we normally just talk to B2B marketers, but you're in a cool position where you are coaching these folks and you're helping them get better. So many times we think, “How do I get better as a marketer?” , it's not top of mind for B2B marketers to be like, “I need someone to help me. I need a coach.” They usually come like, “I need more technical knowledge, or, I need to understand a new part of the craft.” So that's why I thought it would be cool to talk to you because you're in the minds of a lot of people every day and helping them have these moments.

‍

So maybe let's start there as just kind of like, walk us through as you have these conversations with these marketers. What are some things that are on their mind and I assume that it's not a lot of marketing, right? It's probably a lot like team dynamics and communication issues, office politics, things like that.

‍

Clay Stelzer:  I do work with a lot of marketers and the conversations that we have, you're right, are a little bit different than the typical marketing discussion. I hold them to be expert at what they do as marketers. Yes, I used to be in marketing. We used to do a lot of work together in marketing. I feel like I have a fairly decent understanding of what leads to effective marketing. But interesting enough, what got me into this coaching business that I'm in is when I was a marketing executive, I kept getting in my own way. I kept keeping myself from doing the brilliant work that I was actually able to do, meaning I thought I was a marketing and executive. I thought that's what my full-time job was. But when I got really clear and I woke up to some of my own stuff, I realized that my full-time job was actually pleasing everyone around me. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  Is that good or bad that that was your job at the time? 

‍

Clay Stelzer:  Well, it can be good. A lot of people spend their time just pleasing everyone around them. I'll speak for myself. I did that for years and years and years, and I climbed the ladder. I was successful, I pleased my clients, I pleased my bosses, et cetera, et cetera. And then I went home and I found myself exhausted, anxious, and just depleted. . It's just not a fun way to live. I had everything I wanted on paper. Yet I got home and I'm like, “My God, where did I go wrong?” And so I hired a coach and I learned a little bit about my own patterns and how I was letting that get in the way of me actually focusing on being. And that's what I see with all kinds of marketing executives. My issue certainly is my issue, but human beings are designed, biologically, we have survival strategies built into our brains to please others to blame others when things don't go right, or to check out or withhold your thoughts and feelings when we feel threatened in some way. And those are the very things that, again, I talk with lots and lots of marketers and those are the very things that get in the way of them really flourishing. It's not that they're not brilliant. Technicians or  marketers.

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Here's my envy of your career path right now. What's gotta be cool about what you do is that you are talking to these folks and there's gotta be moments where they just literally have that, like light bulb, epiphany where they just go, “oh my God, I've never thought about it that way.” And it kind of shakes their worldview. So that's gonna be exciting for you to like help them get there. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: I love it. I mean, the reason I do what I do and helping others kinda wake up is because, well, one, I needed that in my own life. And two, I continue to need that in my life. It's really fun to help others see themselves in a way that they haven't, so that they can drop what isn't serving them and spend more of their energy creating what they're wanting in their lives. It's like the best job in the world. Yeah. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  When you're helping someone, an executive, let's come up with a fictional character. Let's refer to this person as Bob, and let's say Bob's at a tech company. What's your typical engagement? Start with, are they like, “Hey, I've got 15 problems, or is it No, here's one thing I can't figure out.” Like how do you typically start off?

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah. I love asking people what they want, like, if you could change something right now, if you had a magic wand, what would you change? What do you want? And it seems like such a simple question and such an obvious question, but a lot of people have a hard time answering it. I mean, if there's something that's really on their mind and they're very aware, I have a problem that I need to overcome. Then we talk about that. But most executives, we all have issues of things that may be not what you might want them to be, but having people begin to open the periphery and envision if you could create a life for at work, in your career, at home, what would that be? That's my first question, and that always leads to all kinds of really interesting discussion and more questions. And the second, the follow up question to “what do you want” is, “what do you believe is in the way of you having that right now?” I want them to start getting clear and start thinking about what am I doing that's leading me exactly where I've gotten? And part of this process is helping them stop blaming the world and everyone around them for being where they are to begin taking responsibility for creating what they want. This is the idea of shifting out of this victim mentality and mindset that we all can get in. Shifting into this idea of being a creator, whereas, lots of people in the world, unless everyone else shows up a certain way, the company shows up a certain way. My clients, shows up so certain way, my copywriters, my team, et cetera, do things that I'm hoping them to do in a way that I want them to do it. I can't be happy or successful. It's way more fun to live a life when you're empowered. Make choices where you can create what you get. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. It's interesting, you brought up the part about being a victim. Let's so this is a good example. Something happens to you and you're really upset and you have every good reason to be upset. I'm gonna drop a Tony Robbins line here cuz I think I remember hearing this in a video. He seems to be all over social media sometimes, but he kind of says, “you know what, you're gonna have every day bad stuff happen to you and make me this one promise spend five minutes feeling sorry for yourself and angry.” And he said, “it's a normal emotion, get through it, but five minutes is all you should take” He's like, “because if you don't, you're gonna spend hours or days being angry about it.” And I think it's such an interesting lesson when I heard it because it just helped me kind of realize I am in my own way like I don't have to be angry for an hour. If something bad happens, I can just say, all right, I went through it. I'm done. I'm not gonna allow this thing, the privilege of angering me. And that's such a hard thing to turn off. I always try to go back to that advice. I thought it was good advice.

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah, that's really interesting. There's a couple things within that that I think are fun to talk about. So I love the idea that feelings aren't arguable or negotiable if you're angry, there's anger here and human beings, most of us, at least in our country, learn from a very young age to suck it up and to keep it in.

And so what happens is when we do that, it just stirs away at us and it builds and it eats us alive and it repeats. We can get into patterns with some of this, some of this stuff. And when you think about babies like a newborn baby or a young, you know, a year or less if they're upset or angry, what do they do? They cry, they scream, whatever they get, whatever their need is, and then they stop. Then they're done. Same thing with dogs or animals. I take my dog for walks and if he gets spooked, the hair in the back of his neck lifts and the very next thing he does is he will shake it out. Yeah. He will allow the anger to move through him. So when I work with clients and anger is here, “it's like, okay, anger's here.” So what do you wanna do with it? And to your point, holding it in probably is not gonna lead you to outcomes that you're wanting, and so I invite people to move it out just like a dog shaking. If that means get a pillow and scream into the pillow, if that means get a tennis racket and pound your mattress for five minutes, like you're saying, that's the natural process that our body is wanting to do that. Usually when, so I don't know what Tony Ramen specifically was talking about, but it's really easy to repeat. I mean, I guess to maintain the anger and to just stew, and stew and stew if you're not doing anything with it, if you're not allowing it to move through you.

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. It's interesting. What do you think, as you work with a lot of different folks, what are some of the themes that you're seeing? I mean, I imagine everyone's got a really specific thing, but when you step back after doing this for years, what do you see are the themes that I'm seeing people might benefit from understanding. 

‍

Clay Stelzer:  There's a few. Whenever we are upset or making bad decisions, or blaming someone or being defensive or checking out or quiet, quitting, there's lots of terms for how people are showing up at work. I like to help people understand what's underneath it, what's driving that behavior and that reaction. And the themes are not necessarily a theme, with my clients, but it's just sort of, people that study this stuff. Scientists will say that whenever we have a sense that one of three things is threatened in some way, we begin reacting. We begin behaving in ways that lead to outcomes we don't want. First is our security. So if someone says something does so,  and we are believing I'm not gonna be able to take care of my family, not gonna be able to pay the mortgage, food on the table, water, shelter, et cetera, or job security. Am I gonna get the raise that I'm wanting? Am I gonna get the promotion that I'm wanting? As soon as we sense that it may be threatened in some way, we do what's called in the model that I use. We go below the line and we get stuck in this reactive place. So that's the first thing I see across everyone. When we feel our security is threatened, we react. Second thing, approval. Whenever we sense that people don't think we're smart enough, attractive enough, funny enough, our clients don't think we're the best on the team, or our boss doesn't think we're all that good, whatever it is, we like to be liked a zillion years ago, if we were kicked out of our colony or tribe or whatever, that was a death sentence for human being because humans can't hunt and gather and do everything they need to do. So as soon as we sense disconnection or a threat of being disconnected by people feeling negative or feeling things about us that aren't necessarily positive. We get skittish and start reacting. And the third thing is control. As soon as we sense, we don't have a say as to what's happening to us or the people around us. We go below the line and start reacting to the ways that lead us to outcomes we don't want. So I see that regularly with all of my clients, all the marketing executives. Like if I'm coaching them and they're talking about a challenge that they're facing. First thing I'll do is I'll have them honor their reaction. So if there's anger here, great. Let's just be with that anger for a minute. There's fear here. Great. Let's be with the fear and what's the belief underneath it all? Security control and approval. What are you believing you don't have or you're believing is threatened and I'm telling you, gonna line up 10 marketing executives and talk about any of the challenges they're facing, whether it's managing their staff or handling clients or pick a topic, the threat that's leading them to the outcomes that they're not liking is gonna be security control approval or all three of those. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. It's interesting. There's so many, looking back at my career before I started 26 Characters and it was more traditional corporate, you know, fortune 500 companies. The number of times that I was in a meeting with five, 10 people, all those things that you just discussed were so real and they drove a lot of the unspoken truth in the meeting. Meaning it's rare that anyone would actually discuss these things out loud, out of fear of being kind of like, “oh, this person isn't good enough, or they're not strong enough as a leader yet.”

That's what's driving all this stuff. Like when I have seen people or I've tried to open up about emotional things, like, “I think we're all just afraid. If we get this one wrong, we know there are consequences. So how do we get through that?” And I think when you don't acknowledge those things, it's so much harder to get to those truths to actually make progress on something. And you don't really know where people stand. You don't know what's going on in other people's minds.

‍

Clay Stelzer: Well, most of the time, if you're below the line and there's something that's triggering you, if you're at a group, if you're at a boardroom table with 10 others, we won't share how we're really feeling because,well, “what would that mean about my approval? What would they mean about my security?” It's even more threatening to reveal what's actually going on with you. I rarely hold an expectation that someone just can all of a sudden start revealing what their experience is with the people around them. Instead, what I would recommend they do is have a conversation with those 10 people around how do we wanna be together as a team? What's gonna help us thrive as a team  and if you can get a group of people like that committed to handling some of our dysfunction or some of the dysfunction, when it shows up in a more effective way and you're all committed to that, you all can begin to trust one another to be able to share what's showing up for them and drop the personas that we all have when we show up at work with, put a big smile on our face. We don't say the things that are hard to say. So usually I like to start there with a team and talk about what game do you wanna play? How do you want it to be, how do you want it to feel to be on a team?

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, and it's also interesting because when I've worked with some exceptional leaders I look back at the ones who were really good. They were that good because they could tap into the things that you've just discussed, right? They would kind of say, look, we can talk about this topic, but here's what I think is going on, and here's what I think I'm seeing and sensing. When they were able to do that, it was almost like they were just speaking and leading in a way that it was like, yes, like you understand what's really happening here, you're acknowledging it. And I contrast that approach with more traditional leader styles where it was really just around authority. It was like, “Hey, this is my role. I wanna push this through.” And that's it. Like get it done. But I've always admired folks who can get to those different layers that you're talking about, because you truly wanna follow those people. You will follow them into any situation because they've related to you as a human, not just someone who is in charge of X function at the company. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: I had the same experience as you. My favorite managers throughout my career are the ones that created space for us to be human beings. To bring in what's really going on with us. One of my favorite questions to ask someone or a group of people is I have them fill in the blank. If you were to really know me now, you would know. Then you have someone just talk for a couple minutes and you have everyone just listen without asking questions, offering feedback, just witnessing that person, however, sharing whatever it is that's really true for them in the moment. You’re incredibly powerful. I'm a coach, I'm a business, and we offer these services for clients. Some of this stuff seems so obvious. I can actually go below the line a little bit sometimes thinking like, “oh my gosh, I'm just asking some pretty basic questions here.”

But people don't ask those questions and they don't hold space for people to feel comfortable answering those questions. But I gotta tell you, you get a group of people in a room for an hour and you open space to navigate some of those things and just to allow people to be seen. It can be transformational for a team with such little effort. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  It's fascinating to kind of dissect why that is built into so many companies these days and for a while I thought like, well, “it was the military-led inspirational leadership style or the manufacturing era”, which was all about output and throughput in quality and hierarchy. It's fascinating to see us evolve. I still think there are moments of that legacy leadership approach that it's almost like a comfort zone for a lot of people where it's kind of like, well, “if I don't really know how to lead this group of people, I can default to that” and then that's the command and control approach, or the authoritarian approach. It's fascinating to see how that stuff is pre-wired in many ways into leaders, but I definitely think for the last couple years there has been that awakening of you're not just leading people, you're leading humans. These are people who are very unique and delicate people, and you have to understand where they're coming from. 

‍

Clay Stelzer:  Your marketing brilliance just showed up. You're not just leading people, you're leading humans. Is that what you said? I love that. I mean, like, that's the reframe. You should write that down. Write some content. Maybe I'll buy it from you. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: All right. I'll get the patent attorney on the phone. See what we can do there. I'm gonna go back to something you said before that we're all pre-wired, going back thousands of years and I jokingly will tell my wife, Carolyn, if I've done something to have her roll her eyes at me or get mad, I'll jokingly say, “Hey, I'm just running the caveman 2.0 software.It's the new version, but  it's still caveman software” and  I'm kind of fascinated with those things that we are just pre-wired for. And how do you, I guess the first step is understanding what those pre-wired are, and then once you do know it, So how it'd be good to get your opinion, like how do you help people get to those moments of like caveman realization?

‍

Clay Stelzer:  Yeah. Well, so it seems like you have a little bit of awareness when you're just showing up with your primal instincts driving your behavior. Yeah, I show up at a call with a client and I say, “what's happening? What are we talking about today?” And they'll bring up a challenge. There's a number of things we can talk about right now. So first thing I'll do is I'll ask them, so are you in a reactive state? Caveman state, or are you open and curious and at ease with the world around this challenge and the answer's always, I'm below the line, I'm reacting. I'm really like fired up about this thing, believing I'm right, wanting to blame everyone else, et cetera, et cetera. Then I'll take it a step further. Again, back to the Tony Robbins thing. I want them to complain about the issue as big as they can. So you know, and there's this thing called the drama triangle. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail on it, but here's the quick overview. When we are below the line in a reactive state, human beings reliably show up playing three different roles. The first thing we do is we play the victim. And when we are playing the victim and we just show up with this posture, like, you know, oh my gosh, it rained on my birthday. I wanted to go, you know, have a picnic with the kids, or the client didn't choose us. It's just like this, huh? Like we can't be again. We can't be okay unless everyone shows up a certain way. So I have them hamed up. Can you just be a victim? Or how are you being a victim? 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: I like that. Yeah. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: We wanna make it big so we can begin to see ourselves in this caveman, unconscious pattern. We all have this. Next thing is we show up as the villain and the villain blames people. “It's because of you. It's because of you. It's because of you. You're an idiot. The client's an idiot.” , we're pointing a finger. If I feel like this, there has to be a reason for it. I'm gonna find it and point a finger at whoever or whatever it is, including myself. We can beat ourselves up. “Clay, can't believe you said that.” We start whipping ourselves. And then the last thing we do is we show up as the hero. And when we show up as the hero, most marketing executives do this all the time because we're in a reactive state, instead of delegating, oftentimes we'll say, you, I don't know what, don't worry about it. I'll do it. I'll get done in half the time with half the headache, the quality will be better. Or we just get so upset about everything. Someone throw me a beer at five o'clock, I need to numb. Netflix, Ben and Jerry's, whatever your thing is, we all have our things. Now, listen, none of these things are bad, it's our natural survival in instinctual strategies. But all of those things lead to dysfunction and drama on our teams and in our organizations. And so I help people begin to see, “oh my gosh. I see my pattern here. I'm just seeing myself as a victim, just seeing how everything sucks.” And then I'm blaming that person and then I'm swooping in and taking care of myself just by napping playing video games. And then when that buzz wears off, I'm right back to where I started with the same issue. So I help them see what they're doing and the price they're paying for doing what they're doing because there's always a price when we're blaming being a victim and being a hero. And then I see if they'd be willing to accept themselves for just being a human being that is a descendant of cavemen. Of course, you're doing that stuff now. The cool thing about that is once you can find some way to accept yourself or having created what you've created unconsciously, now you have an option, now you're a choice. And the question is, “what are you willing to do differently?”  with that awareness. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  How often can you see that transformation when you work with different marketers? I imagine some have big moments and then they'll come back and say,  “Hey, here's an update. It's been two weeks since we last connected”  or you've got other people who just like not doing it. Like what is it like to work with those different types of clients? 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Well, there's this idea that in coaching you wanna meet people where they are. If someone is unwilling to see themselves or unwilling to be coached, it's probably not a good idea for them to be coached. It’s not helping them, not helping me and not fun for me. So I probably wouldn't have them as a client. Before anyone hires me, we have some sessions we call 'em chemistry sessions to ensure that that person is cool with how I'm gonna show up as a coach, and I'm cool with how they're gonna show up as a client. And if I see that they're willing to play ball and willing to take a look at themselves. Good looking at them in the spirit of growth and transformation, then we're gonna have some fun together. So if I'm sitting and sometimes we have bad days and sometimes we're just unwilling to see ourselves or acknowledge it, then so I'll just say, okay, so we're just gonna end here. You just let you sit. Sit with all of what this experience is for you. If you're willing, maybe you could learn something about yourself from this experience. I'm not gonna push you into anything that you're not willing to do. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's interesting. So there’s two thoughts I have. The first was the chemistry session. I really love that. I'm such a believer in, there is no such thing as a bad client, only a bad prospect. I think anyone who's in the B2B space is in the service provider industry. That's you've gotta flesh that out. We get so excited about, “oh my God, this is a great client to have. The money is good.” That we just become drunk on that and we don't actually understand if they're gonna be a good client. And then the other thing, we talked about people not being self-aware or open. I remember years ago I was in a leadership group talking about managers and it was funny, there were probably 20 people in the room and the facilitator opened up with something along the lines of 53% of all employees self-report  that they have bad managers, right? And then he looked around the room and it was like, raise your hand if you're one of those 53%, bad managers. And of course, no one raised their hand. But it was a fascinating point he was making which is that if you don't have the self-awareness, it's very rare for someone to be like, “yes, I'm a bad manager. Here's why I suck. I don't care that I suck.” I always thought that was a really effective opening technique to really understand your own performance as a leader, you don't know. It's rare. There's 360 reviews and someone can give you feedback, but it's very rare  how you just don't really know. I've looked back on my career. I've certainly grown. I look back at a previous version of myself when I was managing people and I can go, that wasn't good. Like, maybe there were some things that were good, but then the other things were not right. It's just like this constant path to awakening and you don't know where you are. You don't know where you're done on that path. What I think I'm good at today, may I suck that, suck it at 10 years from now, right. Like it's that unknown of personal development that's always fascinated me. 

‍

Clay Stelzer:  Yeah. Right. I mean, oftentimes we just need someone to hold up a mirror for us. I think in part that's what coaches do not in part, I think most coaches do that. It doesn't help my clients if I'm not being incredibly candid with them about what I'm seeing. You mentioned there are 360 feedback tools. There's different feedback exercises and processes. If you're wanting feedback, if you're wanting to know how you're showing up as a leader, if I have a client telling me that, I would see how willing there would be to go out and get that feedback. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. That feedback is really hard to get, and the spirit of it's gotta be done in a safe way. When I wrote my book a couple years back, I described the dynamic of when the chef comes out in the restaurant and asks the patrons or the restaurant for feedback, like, “oh, how was the food tonight?” 95% of the people, “Oh yeah. It was good. Thanks” and the chef is never gonna know really what was going on. But the chef might think, “Well, everyone seems to like the food.” Right. So it's sometimes not just who's asking, but how it is collected.

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah, right. And how is it positioned? So in the spirit of helping people step up and become the creator and step out of this sort of victim consciousness, where it's like, “I can't get feedback, it's hard to get feedback.” You can begin to play with a couple things. So if you're just wanting feedback from an individual person, you could maybe set up the conversation in a way you can never control the other person, but you can set up why it is that you're wanting the feedback why it's important to you. I just imagine having a conversation with someone saying, “personal growth is really important to me, and the only way I can grow is if I'm getting candid feedback. And in fact, if you do nothing else for me this year, the most loving thing you could do for me is to tell me in your view whether you're right or wrong and I won't hold anything you say as being right, but what could I be doing to be more successful? As candid as you can be with me, I will appreciate you that much more because I have no other way of knowing what I need to do to be more successful.” That's kind of an intense, maybe way to present an idea, that kind of forwardness or placing that much intention on why it is that you're running feedback and how important it is. I think you can get different results. Most people are way uncomfortable offering critical feedback. They're below the line showing up as the hero. They're saving the other person from getting an ouch, like, Oh, if I was to tell that person really how I felt, like if I was at the restaurant and the chef came out and I did not like the meal, I'm gonna save the chef by lying to him, so he doesn't have to, he or she, or they doesn't have to feel the sting of whatever it is that I'm saying. But maybe, even more importantly, I'm gonna save myself. I'm gonna avoid a situation where he thinks I'm a jerk. And so what happens is we create drama, we create a relational disconnection when we are scared and then we show up as the hero. So anyway feedback is so important. I think for teams a lot of my work working with executive teams is again, having the discussion, you know, what kind of team do you wanna be? You wanna bullshit each other and just tell each other the positive things? Or do you all really wanna commit to personal development and growth? 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  Yep, all right. You've triggered a story about feedback in my brain I have to share, and this involves Jack Welsh. I will not refer to him as legendary Jack Welsh. He's just Jack, right? He had a person who was running a division and he had a reputation for not listening. He would cut people off. So he set up a phone call with her and just one or two minutes of just kind of banter and then he asked her a question and she started talking, I guess he had an old school phone, right? and he slammed the phone down, at the end of the phone call, and he had told Jack Welsh's told his assistant that this was gonna go on. So the person called his assistant back in and said, “I was just cut off. I don't know what happened. Can you put me through to Jack.”  Jack's assistant said he did that on purpose. He wants you to know what it's like when you cut people off and it was such a ruthless way to give feedback, but part of me was like, that's really powerful way is, She knew that feeling of like, what my brain isn't understanding what just happened. It's been an interesting story. I don't know if that was in his biography or somewhere else, but I always enjoy it instead of just saying something to someone trying to create a real scenario where they experience what you're trying to communicate. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah. I mean, that's fascinating. I haven't heard that story. I would love to hear from the woman to hear how that landed for her . Like, what was that like? It's funny, I just got off a call with a client who was upset with someone that was working for him and he did something that was kind of ruthless to prove a point. And I just was, you know, first question as well, are you happy with the outcome? Check in with your body. Do you feel at ease with what happened? Or is there something that's in the way that you regret maybe. You did what you did. He did what he did from a reactive state, showing up as the villain. Anyway, the next question I asked him was, did you do what you did? And I would ask this of Jack from a place of caring, like, was that strategy because you really cared about her or was that strategy you just wanted to show her that she's wrong? So there's this idea that we can do anything from above or below the line. So I'd be really curious and that's gonna communicate to the other party. So if Jack really was coming from a place of love and care, 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: Probably not. Knowing his leadership stories, 

‍

Clay Stelzer: I'm guessing he's not gonna get the result he's looking for. If those things are done with love and care and then communicated with the other, then there's an opportunity to create a really cool connection between the two. I love being provocative and like, Being creative with feedback. I think that's super cool. I would just ask whoever was coming up with new ideas like that from where are you giving that feedback? Are you trying to prove to her that she's wrong and you're right, this defensive state of mind, are you actually doing it because you believe it's the most caring thing to do and that format is really going to serve her?

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  All right. What have we not talked about, Clay, that you think is important for the audience to know as it relates to kind like self-improvement, how they can become a better marketer. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Well, your Honor, so what do marketers do? If I'm gonna start asking, I'm gonna turn the microphone around. I'm gonna start asking you questions. What's the number one thing that leads to successful marketing? 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: I'd say usually, your ability to hit a certain metric, whether that's a sales metric or a mindset shift where you can say, “All right, we did this thing and now we know people think differently about our company.”

‍

Clay Stelzer: Yeah. And my sense is, the way to do that is by really understanding your audience. Like deeply understand them. I see this so regularly with marketers that they don't have nearly the curiosity about the people on their teams as they do about the people they're marketing to. And so I would say, how can you take all of the skills that you're applying to your marketing work to truly understand your audience and bring that curiosity to your team. And so I've seen it over and over and over again where you have around a table 10 extremely brilliant marketers, but there's no attention placed on the empathy and compassion that each of them are doing individually as they think about their target audience and so it's, and talking shop a little bit, so prior to this company 15sixty, I worked for a large software company and I built a team coaching practice where every one of their innovation. Teams stopped the work for a minute and discussed how we are being together as a team? And it's really no different than doing primary research to understand your audience that you're marketing to. Let's learn about each other and talk about what's gonna serve us. How do we wanna speak with one another? How do we wanna make hard decisions? If conflict shows up on a team, how do we wanna handle that? It's just learning about each other. So we can create something, create connection, which ultimately is what marketers are wanting to do. So  it's a little bit ironic and I just kind of, it's helpful to remind people of that.  I just think it's really important for people to know, team coaching and individual coaching that there's some little things that can be done that can make a massive impact on the culture of a team or organization. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber: How often do you think that people. You've got all kinds of teams that people are on, and I just kind of am curious about how many teams aren't really teams, meaning, you're working with people, but there is no chemistry, there's no discussion of the values of that team. I mean, I would say, A majority of the teams, unless there's like, you know, here's a team of five people that are gonna work with each other for the next six months or a year. I think that there's so many different teams that you're a part of that most teams don't get to that level of conversation, and they just do the job, but they don't gel and they don't have as much fun probably as they could. I mean, is that accurate or do you think people do get to that? 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Well, I think with some care and intention, people can create really beautiful connection and trust, and I don't think that's easy for a lot of people. It's for most folks, it can be really safe to just do it on your own. But if you study innovation and you learn about this thing, creative friction. Creative friction is what leads to new ideas. It's having a trusting relationship with another creative partner where you can disagree with one and you can batter on ideas from that can come really inspiring creativity. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  Yeah. It's, I'm glad you brought that up. Creative friction because I will not name the name of the agency, but they were just call 'em world renowned for creativity. I got to work with them every now and then. And on multiple times I had seen them two creative people duking it. Verbally, just like, that's not gonna work.  I've never seen this raw emotion before. And then I saw it happen again in a couple days. And then I asked about it and they said, no, this is actually, we encouraged this. This is a good thing. And yes, it's hard to witness but it's just a thing. And I've seen that also in, I wanna say part of like the Pixar creative process. It's that there are meetings to be like, this is when we just duke it out for the ideas and you do that. I think you've gotta be very careful because like everyone who's doing it knows that it's normal , and then it's just done. And then you kinda look at it and you say, all right, what happened in that process? But it's fascinating for me to witness that.

‍

Clay Stelzer: So if I was gonna do that with a team, again, I always think it's nice to set up the rules of the game that you're about to play. So we're just gonna, well, one, what do we need to be able to have an experience that is productive if we're gonna start openly kind of batting around the ball, I think that can be an important conversation.And then again, anything can be done from a place of reactivity and fear or a place of openness and creativity. And so I love the idea of creative friction. And can you just get curious about it all without needing to die on your sword, proving to the other person. You're right about it. You can be passionate about your idea, but would you be willing to lose and let go of it. So it's just the mentality, it's the mindset that people take to that. And if you know that everyone's playing the same game and you really all care about each other in the process, those fireworks, that's really good stuff happens. 

‍

Steve Goldhaber:  All right. Awesome. I like it. I like that. That's where we're gonna end is if you can get to the fireworks, that's where the good stuff happens. So Clay, I wanna thank you for joining us today. I've enjoyed talking with you, and how can people reach out to you if they're interested in working with? 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Well, the website is 15sixty.com, so the number one and then number five, and then 60 spelled out.com. My email address is clay15sixty.com. Either way, that would be a good starting point and it shouldn't be too hard to find me.

‍

Steve Goldhaber: All right, thanks again, Clay, and thanks everyone for joining us on the show today. Take care. 

‍

Clay Stelzer: Thanks Steve.

‍