Episode 283 with David Shriner-Cahn: Effective Communication and Building the Right Network

My guest today is David Shriner-Cahn, President of TEND Strategic Partners, and Host of the Smashing the Plateau Podcast. From corporate to solo consultant, David shares his journey, explores the importance of networking, discusses the challenges of negotiating, and the critical role of communication in business. We also explore how to balance emotions and logic, the value of community, and why it's crucial to constantly push ourselves beyond our comfort zones for growth.

GUEST RESOURCES

David Shriner-Cahn’s weekly advice program has been named by Forbes as a Podcast To Power Up Your Ultra-Lean Business. David has also been recognized as an Entrepreneur That Will Change The Way You Communicate by Inc. Magazine.  David is the podcast host and community builder behind Smashing the Plateau, an online platform offering resources, accountability, and camaraderie to high-performing professionals who are making the leap from the corporate career track to entrepreneurial business ownership.  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidshrinercahn

https://smashingtheplateau.com

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Transcript

Episode 283 with David Shriner-Cahn: Effective Communication and Building the Right Network

Transcribed by Descript

Erin Marcus: All right. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. And as I get ready to introduce my guest to you today, Mr. David Shriner Khan, here's the problem. When I asked him before we got started what he wanted to talk about today to kick us off, He hit one of my soapbox topics, so wait, this will, there's a good chance this is going to be really good, there's also a good chance this is going to be really long, anyway.

Erin Marcus: This is one of my favorite things to talk about. Before we dive into all that, though, David, tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Sure. First of all, Aaron, thank you so much for having me on your show. I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss some of the topics that are near and dear to my heart.

David Shriner-Cahn: And it sounds like we may have some things in common to talk about that are near and dear to both of our hearts. So my story is I was an employee for the first 28 years of my career in Yeah, I was a high achiever. I was in positions that required a lot of effort, a lot of time. And they are, they were pretty demanding.

David Shriner-Cahn: I was in management and leadership roles most of that time. And in 2006, I left my job and became a solo consultant. And I, my. The space that I was in before I made the transition was a nonprofit sector. I became a nonprofit management consultant. So the work was pretty seamless. I was just doing the same kind of work for multiple organizations rather than one at a time.

David Shriner-Cahn: But there was a lot I didn't know about running a business. In spite of the fact that my, my area of focus was finance and operations. So like the admin side and the operation side, finance side of running my business was very easy. Marketing and sales was something I had never done. 

Erin Marcus: Little important. Hadn't 

David Shriner-Cahn: done content creation hadn't done a lot of public speaking so those were all new things to learn. And, that was 18 years ago, so I've been an entrepreneur now for a long time as well. And one of the things that I've learned as part of this transition is how important it is to be in contact with the right people.

David Shriner-Cahn: Oh, 

Erin Marcus: gosh, yeah. That was When people ask me when I left corporate, what was like my biggest surprise? The networking and the people that I met and the relationship, that was the bonus. I never anticipated like my one big, one of my fears when I left corporate was I'm a very collaborative person. My brain doesn't even start working until somebody else starts.

Erin Marcus: Asking questions. It's just, right? It's just the way it works. If you say something, that helps me think better. And I was really worried because my cat didn't talk to me much, and I'm like, if I'm sitting here by myself, there will be no ideas. But the relationships It's so different than corporate.

Erin Marcus: It's so much collect more collaborative. It's so much more supportive. It's so much. How can I help you? Who do you need? What do you need? Like I said, it was the bonus. I never knew I was, going to get when I left corporate as well, so I love it. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, they can be a real scarcity mindset in corporate.

David Shriner-Cahn: I 

Erin Marcus: think I try to lead with empathy. I did I did what is that those cards with the values cards and empathy is one of my top top values. So I, it's in, I don't think it's done out of malice. I think it's an inherent, it's inherent situation, right? You have a hundred people on a team, 10 get promoted, five, get promoted to get promoted.

Erin Marcus: One gets promoted because that's just all there is available. And when you have that, all there is available. But you're all supposed to be on the same team, but it truly is a pie. There's not enough to go around for everybody as opposed to small business world where there's more than enough for everybody.

David Shriner-Cahn: Yes. Yeah, very much awesome. 

Erin Marcus: So I got to get into this because you had told me, you had in your email to your list, the people that you keep in contact with, you had some really big engagement on this one particular topic, which is also one of my favorite topics. And I love the juxtaposition that you did.

Erin Marcus: Love gay marketing. You figured it out, right? You got the marketing side down, the content creation, but turning difficult conversations into positive outcomes. And communi I, I did a whole program called Making Hard Conversations Easy. Like I said, right up my alley. It's totally my Soapbox. One of my Soapbox topics.

Erin Marcus: So tell me a little bit more about what you were trying to share with your audience when you sent that out. And why it's so necessary. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Cause it's a topic that I hear coming up over and over again. I hear it come up with the members in our community. These are challenges that they are having with their clients.

David Shriner-Cahn: Sometimes it's challenges they're having with colleagues on a project. And it comes up a lot when it comes to any kind of negotiation. So you're you're in a sales process or you're in a contract renewal process. I think this is something that happens a lot with consultants that have multi multi time period projects.

David Shriner-Cahn: So it could be a multi year project. So they have great relationships with their clients. When it comes to, um, figuring out what does the client need, what do they want, what's their budget how much are they willing to spend, who's going to be the key person that's going to be making the decisions, who's going to be my key person in in doing the work.

David Shriner-Cahn: What is, and it gets down to, okay, what's the scope of work? What's the cost? All of these things can be very delicate. And for the consultant in particular, it's very sensitive because when it comes down to the, especially if you're dealing with a a consultant that is negotiating with a corporate entity where it's a budget decision.

David Shriner-Cahn: They're very different than if you're negotiating with a small business where it's the owner's pocket that you're talking about. That's a kind of different kind of decision. But anyway, for the consultant, it is the end result. The end. Financial result of this discussion is going to, is a big deal, right?

David Shriner-Cahn: It impact, it impacts their lifestyle, right? So it's very personal. And how do you separate the. nuts and bolts and the facts from the emotion for the consultant. And how do you actually do a good job just in communicating what you need to communicate, right? That's just one example. 

Erin Marcus: But I think that's the, I think the key thing you said there is how do you separate?

Erin Marcus: And that, I think that's where a lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs get themselves into trouble. Cause you said something that I see it all the time. 100 percent of the time I did it myself for a very long time is I look at the businesses money as my money. And as soon as you do that, you, even as a solopreneur, you create a very charged relationship.

Erin Marcus: Where they're so that you have, like you said, so much writing on things and right and instead what I've learned to do is the business and Aaron me, I'm just one more asset that the business has.

Erin Marcus: I'm just an asset that the business has. The business has their money and I have my money. Correct. And how do you separate, how do you separate it to allow yourself to not get so caught up? 

David Shriner-Cahn: Very hard to do. And assuming that you're relatively successful in separating the business's money from your money in your mind, and Right.

David Shriner-Cahn: Separating the emotion from the logic there, there are still some issues you need to deal with in terms of how you communicate this information back and forth. with the client. 

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the other thing that gets people stuck or trapped with the emotion of it is and you mentioned it, even when we were talking about networking, if people have a scarcity mindset, right?

Erin Marcus: So if you have a situation where you feel Whether it's true or not, but the feelings are real, that how this one particular conversation goes has a direct impact on your lifestyle or ability to eat and pay the bills for the next X amount of months. You're going to have such an attachment. It's hard not to have that scarcity mindset and the fear when you're in the middle of that.

Erin Marcus: I've learned to focus first on the abundance mindset, this or something better before I even get into those conversations. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. And one thing that you can do to avoid. The scarcity mindset creeping in is to always have alternatives, right? So one of the questions, one of the questions I like to ask is, okay, so what's the worst thing that can happen?

David Shriner-Cahn: Live 

Erin Marcus: in a van under the river, right down by the river. 

David Shriner-Cahn: So if you're going to live in a van next to the river how are you going to actually make that happen? And right. And How are you going to put food on the table? Where are you going to get the van? 

Erin Marcus: Where are you going to get a table?

Erin Marcus: Right, 

David Shriner-Cahn: whatever. But if you start to, play that out. If you imagine the worst thing and then you actually work through it. Okay, so if the worst thing comes to fruition, what am I going to do? 

Erin Marcus: And because our brains are so black and white, like your brain has one job, it's to keep you alive.

Erin Marcus: Everything's very black and white. It's either like, all right, this is fine, or all my God, we're all going to die. And the truth is most situations aren't quite as black and white. Even if you don't get the contract, even if you don't get the client, even if you're late on a bill, even if the money's tight this month and not next month, the odds of you, oh my God, we're all going to die, like you'll get a job before that happens.

Erin Marcus: And it's. I like the idea play it out, because if you really do take it to the extreme that your feelings are telling you, then you can tap into the cognitive fact of, eh, it's a little extreme here. I might be exact. My, my feelings might be lying to me a little bit. It's not quite this bad. The way I heard it described We spend too much, too many times we get caught treating a temporary situation as a permanent cir a temporary circumstance as a permanent situation.

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. I love that. 

Erin Marcus: I thought that was very helpful. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. And as an entrepreneur, chances are you have more than one revenue source. You should have more than one revenue source, hopefully you do. And, okay, so if a revenue source. doesn't come through even if it's a big one, okay, what can you do with the other clients that maybe they have more work?

Erin Marcus: Maybe they have more work and it's also the hardest conversation that you'll ever have are the honest conversations you have to have with yourself. Absolutely. And if you brutal. And if you have one, two clients, The truth of the matter is you're not a business owner, you're a freelancer.

Erin Marcus: This is not an inherent problem, as long as you know that. It's like you've got all your eggs in one basket. A business owner has a pipeline where there's marketing activities that turn into leads, that turn into sales conversations, that turn into clients. That for a business never stops happening ever.

Erin Marcus: To your point, so that you always have options. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Correct. 

Erin Marcus: Otherwise, you're just self employed, which is not a bad thing. I have no problem with that as long as you know going, the honest conversation with yourself. As long as you know going in that's your situation and account for it. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Correct.

David Shriner-Cahn: Correct. Yeah. The other thing that I see happen with these difficult conversations, whether we're talking about negotiating a deal or any other difficult conversation nowadays there are so many ways to communicate, right? And more and more of them don't involve a live dialogue. 

Erin Marcus: Please, I just had this, oh my God here's the thing.

Erin Marcus: You and I are of a certain age and we're used to talking to other human beings. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Correct. 

Erin Marcus: And it is making me absolutely crazy right now. I had a big problem yesterday. I had a medium problem today. Both problems could have been solved with a five minute Maximum interpersonal conversation and instead I had to have yesterday's situation via email because that's, we can get me going on why but so a five minute problem took seven hours to solve.

Erin Marcus: So that's seven hours of waiting and turmoil. And then today I had to do text message with a chat bot to fix Oh my God, I'm like, please, for the love of God, just let me talk to a human being. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. So that I would say that's probably one of the biggest sources of Problems resulting from challenging conversations is having some kind of text based communication that has no emotion in it, where you can't read the body language or you, even if it's a phone call, you can't see the other person.

David Shriner-Cahn: You can at least, you can hear sort of intonation. You can get a pretty good sense of what's going on and you can start to solve it. So that, that's probably the biggest thing. My biggest bugaboo is, Stop texting, stop emailing. If you have more than two sets of communications back and forth on something that seems like it has some emotional baggage to it, pick up the phone and call.

Erin Marcus: Bitch! At the same time, I 100 percent agree with you, and at the same time, that is unfortunately becoming a lost skill, because if you don't learn to do that when you're younger, when the outcomes are pretty irrelevant, then you're not able to do it when you're older and the outcomes are much more significant.

Erin Marcus: Emotional intelligence, right? We've lost. And I get it, there's like a lot of companies out there, they're better at AI, they're better at AI than the next guy. I use AI for efficiencies and things like that. You can't teach a robot emotional intelligence. It can't teach half the human beings I know emotional intelligence.

Erin Marcus: So how are you going to teach it, right? And it causes more problems than it solves. And now I just, it's so funny because as we're doing this, I saw my text pop up from the cable company asking me to tell them how was my experience. Really? You clearly don't care because based on the screaming, please just let, me screaming at a robot, not a person.

Erin Marcus: We don't scream at people. Just for the love of God, let me talk to a person. How was your experience? I'm sure she's a lovely text messenger, but, so what do you see? I know you run communities for people to come together. What else do you see as a common challenge that people are having?

Erin Marcus: Now, and I really like this interper, they call it soft skills, which is a really unfair label. Because, You're never going to get to use your hard skills if you can't master your soft skills. What else do you see comes up for people? I want to call it we're getting in our own way, right? How else are we getting in our own way as we try to navigate this whole entrepreneurship thing?

David Shriner-Cahn: Getting caught in the weeds, getting getting caught in busy work that's not necessarily important and not having perspective. We can all make more money, but we can't make more of his time. So how you use your time is really critical. And the one thing I love about interacting with other people in community, when there's a structure of mutual support and accountability is it helps you be really clear on what your goals are.

David Shriner-Cahn: Big picture. What's your vision? What do you want to achieve? Things that are that are audacious. and not measurable. If you, how do you want to leave the world a better place? Like starting there and then, okay, so how do I break this down into measurable business objectives that I can work on?

David Shriner-Cahn: I like doing things one quarter at a time. I think it's meaty enough that you can achieve a lot, but, and it's not so far out into the future that it seems daunting. And how, so how do you break those goals down into measurable objectives. And in particular, what you can do when you're in a community with trusting people is you can have thinking partners.

David Shriner-Cahn: So you can share what your objectives are, get some feedback on whether they seem reasonable to achieve in 90 days or not, maybe make some adjustments and then start working.

David Shriner-Cahn: What are the actions that you're taking that are going to make a difference and help you meet your objectives. And again, particularly when you do this in a community with trusted colleagues, then there's the give and take. They, the more you share, the more they spur you on to achieve what you said you want to achieve.

David Shriner-Cahn: Cause plans are great. 

Erin Marcus: The action, 

David Shriner-Cahn: right? Plans are great, but implementation is priceless. 

Erin Marcus: There's so many people who love the tinkering of the plans, right? 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, you can spend all your time tinkering the plan. What you really need to do is spend your time implementing. And the thing about implementation that you really need to understand is everything that you do in life and business is iterative.

Erin Marcus: Oh, yeah. 

David Shriner-Cahn: As, as a baby. Marketing 

Erin Marcus: is testing. We're all just testing. Right? 

David Shriner-Cahn: Marketing is just testing what doesn't work. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Eliminating that process of elimination, you'll find more and more stuff that does work. It's that's how babies learn to walk. They get up and they fall down, they get up and they fall.

David Shriner-Cahn: Eventually they figure out how to balance and then they figure out how to balance without holding on. And business is the same way. You figure out, okay I've never actually. I've never closed a sale before, but I actually have to talk to somebody who might buy from me in order to close a sale.

David Shriner-Cahn: So what's that going to feel like? And the first time you do it, it's going to feel pretty daunting and you're probably going to flub a lot, but you got to actually get up and try it and see what style works for you. Who you resonate most with, who's going to be your ideal client. It's a 

Erin Marcus: balancing act, right?

Erin Marcus: The mindset piece is a balancing act because if you go in, I understand most things don't work, but I also do them with the full expectation of them working. It's this really weird floaty place in the middle, I'm like, where I call it a real, I'm a realistic optimist. I expect it to work, That way I make sure I go through the whole process because if you don't think, if you think, if you really tell yourself most things don't work, which by the way most things don't work, and it's an iterative process to find out what does work, you let yourself off the hook from doing all the work.

Erin Marcus: Do all the work, do everything you can to make it work, and then decide if it worked or not. And tweak, right? We don't throw the other thing people do like I see humans. One of the ways our brains mess us up is we're very all or nothing in our thinking. So if something didn't do everything we thought it would do for our business, we throw the baby out with the bathwater and reinvent the wheel.

Erin Marcus: When you probably just needed a tweak and then try again, right? It's the rollercoaster. It's what we signed up for. It's the it's the price we pay. The other thing, you mentioned time. I think one of the things that messes up is why we, why so many people stay busy instead of effective. And I've even gone through this myself recently.

Erin Marcus: I've really shifted my whole business model recently to give me more freedom of time. You had mentioned, what do I want more? What's the impact you want to make? And one of the things that I'm working on is much more freedom in my schedule. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of location, the whole nine yards.

Erin Marcus: But that means what means I'm doing a whole lot less of what I've learned work. I'm doing a whole lot less where I'm only doing what I've learned works. And it's taking everything I have to do it. convince myself it doesn't mean something's wrong, that I'm not working eight hours a week.

Erin Marcus: My brain wants to tell me, you're not doing enough. But that's not true, right? You're, you, the habit, the limiting belief, the scarcity mindset that keeps us in the busy work is, I have to be busy 24 hours a day. And that's Having to retrain my brain that I'm getting what I want. I need to just, hold on to it, not give up on it.

David Shriner-Cahn: Especially if some of that busy work is busy work that you've done for a very long time. If you've done something for, five years, ten years or more. Oh yeah. Dropping that can be really hard and if you, if we do some self reflection and take some inventory, there are many things that we spend our time on without thinking about it that really don't add much to the bottom line.

David Shriner-Cahn: So maybe, and maybe don't add a whole lot to our 

Erin Marcus: anything truthfully, I was going to say 

David Shriner-Cahn: to, to, to the happiness of our lifestyle. 

Erin Marcus: Yeah, I read I read it a lot, the Quantum Leap Strategy, and it's this whole, I, one of the chapters, it's a great book if you haven't read it, it's like each chapter is two pages, so you can as I was starting out my big shift recently, I was reading it almost every day.

Erin Marcus: Over and over again, because it's the reminder of what am I trying to do here? Because you have to be in order to leap forward in order to get to where you want to go, whatever that leap means to you, you have to be willing to give up things you've done forever, even if It's your best stuff. Even if it's what you're really good at.

Erin Marcus: When you talk about being in the weeds, a lot of people are, have found something they're really good at, but it isn't going to do anything for their growth, but they're really good at it.

Erin Marcus: So they stick with it. It's all an exercise in courage. 

David Shriner-Cahn: For sure. 

Erin Marcus: So what's the brave, what's the bravest thing you've done? What are you most proud of in this? Now that you've been an entrepreneur for some time now, what are you most proud of? 

David Shriner-Cahn: Oh, just getting started. Like the first step of anything is the hardest.

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, so any first step that I've taken in, in this case, we're talking about, the going solo. Yeah, so that, that was pretty daunting. And so many people that I knew really well said, David, what are you doing? You're crazy. How are you going to pay for health insurance? 

Erin Marcus: That's the big one, isn't it?

Erin Marcus: I know so many people who won't leave their jobs because of health insurance. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Actually, nowadays, it's easier to buy health insurance than it was almost 20 years ago. 

Erin Marcus: Yes. And The

Erin Marcus: plans through companies aren't the dream plans they used to be anyway. That's true. They used to be fantastic and now they're not helping you anymore than the expensive plans. None of it actually helps you anymore. So what does it matter? So let's go the opposite. What, I'm a big fan of shorten people's learning curves.

Erin Marcus: If you just don't do what I've done, you'll be further along. What are some of the mistakes you've made that we can lessen people's learning curves? Just don't do this. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Took me almost the first year before I joined a, my first community of entrepreneurs. Oh, wow. And that was actually a game changer, much faster than I expected once I joined.

David Shriner-Cahn: So yeah. Yeah, don't wait find your tribe and connect with them and don't worry if the first group that you connect to doesn't work so well, just try another one. And also keep in mind that groups and communities change over time, you change over time, so after a while something that might have been a good fit might turn out to be not such a great fit later on.

Erin Marcus: So true. 

David Shriner-Cahn: No hard feelings, just move on. 

Erin Marcus: It's so true. I love what you said about don't worry if it's not the right group of people. I think that's one of the mistakes I see a lot is people try something once and when it didn't work, they create a universal label for networking doesn't work. I tried a Facebook ad, I didn't get it.

Erin Marcus: Okay, Facebook ads don't work. No, that one didn't work. That networking group didn't work. I, like what you said is the thing to be most proud of is taking the first step. I watch people. turn around and create a new comfort zone, right? And then not be able to move beyond it. 

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. Yeah. So you need to constantly push yourself into the discomfort and recognize that discomfort is a sign of growth.

Erin Marcus: Yes. I'm learning that After the fall apart, right? And it's the, when things aren't working anymore, it's a great indicator of, okay, I need to hear there's something I'm missing. If I listen to, and I look and I think about why it's not working anymore. The next big leap starts to present itself. So tell me a little bit about Smashing the Plateau and the community that you have.

David Shriner-Cahn: Sure. So Smashing the Plateau started as just a podcast. in 2014. So it's now 10 years old. It's a long time for a podcast. And we've released episodes every week since the first episode. In many years, we've had two episodes a week. So it's a lot of episodes, a lot of conversations.

David Shriner-Cahn: They're primarily dialogues like your show. And it evolved into a place where Folks like me and like you that started off in corporate and then went solo can find answers to their most difficult questions. And most recently this is actually it's Yeah, about two and a half years ago, we started a community for in particular for, I call them corporate refugees, people, right?

David Shriner-Cahn: People that were corporate aren't anymore. Don't ever want to go back and want to make their new life better than the previous life. And I personally have found a lot of solace and resources in community, and I believe that community can be a game changer for corporate refugees.

David Shriner-Cahn: So that's really our primary focus. 

Erin Marcus: Love it. So if people want to continue this conversation with you and learn more about what you do, learn more about Smashing the Plateau what's the best way for them to reach you? 

David Shriner-Cahn: Go to smashingtheplateau. com. We have a contact form on the site. Just put your information in and we'll set up a time to speak.

David Shriner-Cahn: If you're interested in a cheat sheet of the the framework that I love to use. I mentioned a few of the steps in this in this conversation about, starting with the big picture and how do you how do you go from the big picture down to what you, what is it you most need to do every single day, every single week?

David Shriner-Cahn: And how do you connect with thinking partners to accelerate the process? We have a one page checklist that kind of outlines the process. And you can get that if you go to smashing the plateau. com slash checklist. 

Erin Marcus: Awesome. And we will make sure those links are in the show notes. So people that you're just one click away from everybody.

Erin Marcus: Thanks for coming in for a few minutes here. I always look talking about communication, talking about the ups and downs of entrepreneur. It's I don't know, never gets old. I think it's amazing what you need to hear it over and over again to keep moving forward. So thank you for coming and hanging out with me for a while.

David Shriner-Cahn: Thank you, Erin.