Downward spiral | Bob London

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:07)

I'm looking at these posts now. Bob, I don't know how I missed these. You posted your bike.

[Bob] (0:07 - 0:10)

Oh yeah, I posted my bike for sale.

[Dillon] (0:10 - 0:12)

Like it was Facebook Marketplace.

[Bob] (0:14 - 0:20)

I posted a picture of a snake and said, can anyone identify this snake, which is a classic next door meme.

[Dillon] (0:23 - 0:54)

This is too good. What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new ideas. What do I say here? Customer success ideas.

Every single day. I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:55 - 0:56)

How you doing?

[Dillon] (0:57 - 1:03)

Bad, bad. The other one was so good. And we've got Rob with us. Rob, can you say hi?

[Rob] (1:03 - 1:05)

Coming from the top rope.

[Dillon] (1:06 - 1:12)

And we have Bob, a more mature version of Rob. Bob, can you say hi?

[Bob] (1:12 - 1:13)

Thank you for having me. Hello.

[Dillon] (1:14 - 1:23)

Thank you for gracing us with your presence.

Hello, and I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Bob, thank you so much for coming back.

Please introduce yourself.

[Bob] (1:24 - 1:45)

Always fun. Bob London. I'm a discovery and listening expert.

I've done 2,900 discovery conversations and now have the privilege of teaching and coaching my methodology to now what amounts to a global audience. It's really cool. Best work I've ever done.

Best, most professionally satisfying work I've ever done.

[Dillon] (1:45 - 1:45)

Awesome.

[Bob] (1:46 - 1:46)

I love it.

[Dillon] (1:47 - 2:04)

You can hear the passion. You can hear the passion. Well, Bob, you know what we do here.

We ask every single guest one simple question. It's usually what's on your mind when it comes to customer success. But in your case, I just want to know what's on your mind in general.

[Bob] (2:05 - 3:01)

So I live about three hours from an airport, a real airport, and I'm traveling a little bit for work. So when I get in the car, I'd go on LinkedIn and I'd say, hey, ask me anything for next three hours. Just give me a call.

Actually, Rob did it once. It was awesome. People just call.

It's amazing. Ukraine, here, there, everywhere. I was interested to see a direct message from someone in the community that we all serve saying, I have some concerns about you doing that.

There was research that shows that distracted driving, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the old me would have said, are you joking right now? Nextdoor.com, whatever you are. But I just said, oh, I appreciate your concern. Believe it or not, Dillon, this guy's actually older than I am. I know I'm an older guy.

[Dillon] (3:01 - 3:02)

Well, then that tracks. That tracks.

[Bob] (3:03 - 5:04)

And I said, oh, thanks. I said, maybe we're talking about two different things. Maybe not.

But this is just a lighthearted, catching up conversation. Oh, as long as it's not heavy conversation. And he said, you want me to send you the research?

I said, no. And it's someone who's connected with me, who I've seen online. So LinkedIn, that's my way of saying that is probably of the five dumbest things that have happened to me on LinkedIn or that I've seen on LinkedIn in the last six months, that's probably only number five.

There's all kinds of madness around people celebrating their kids' Little League accomplishments and graduations from kindergarten. There's all kinds of, I don't know how these people hire personal photographers or something. They have glamour selfie shots of them.

And I like these people. I'm not sure I like LinkedIn as much as I used to. I've made a lot of money on LinkedIn just to be crass for a moment, but I do it a different way.

I do it by sharing little bits of my approach and my methodology. So maybe it's the grumpy get off my lawn guy side of my persona, but I've started to post the equivalent of Vogue magazine covers with highly stylized pictures of myself in a crazy outfit that I would never wear with headlines like how to satisfy every customer every time. And when it comes to slide decks, does size really matter?

And it turns out that's what's engaging people. I refuse to post pictures of my family, but someone said like, look, platforms evolve. And I thought, you know what?

That's right. They do evolve. And I can't, no, it doesn't do me any good to complain, but I can make fun of it.

So that's what I've been doing lately. And people seem to be enjoying it. But setting aside the spammy unsolicited requests and the stupid AI SDR-esque inquiries, it's just become something where people, I don't think people have much to say that's interesting and helpful.

So they post what they can.

[Dillon] (5:05 - 5:18)

I'm looking at these posts now. Bob, I don't know how I missed these. You posted your bike.

Oh, yeah, I posted my bike for sale. It was Facebook marketplace.

[Bob] (5:18 - 5:25)

I posted a picture of a snake and said, can anyone identify this snake, which is a classic next door meme.

[Dillon] (5:29 - 5:30)

This is too good.

[Dillon] (5:31 - 5:43)

Yep. You on Vogue magazine, you on GQ. This is incredible.

Oh my God, Bob, I love it. I love it. So if you are not connected with Bob, what is your LinkedIn?

Just Bob London.

[Bob] (5:44 - 6:42)

I think I'm the first one and only one that shows up. But I think, can I just say to the audience and to the three of you amigos, I do think there's a part of me historically, because I'm pretty open about all this, that would have handled it in an unconstructive way in the past. I would have really been critical and not constructive or not taking the humorous approach.

But I realized that people are just doing what they do and it doesn't help me or it hurts me in people's eyes. I think it just forms the wrong impression. So whatever you get triggered by, try to catch your breath, handle it with grace.

By the way, I'm not on Facebook anymore or Instagram at all, but I think I used to kind of be the, oh, look, my family and I are checking into Cirque du Soleil. We're checking in. Like, what the hell?

Who cares? You know? Not me.

I'm not on there either. My kid just ran for 218 yards and set a school record in football, which is true.

[Dillon] (6:42 - 6:45)

Wow. Bob, you can't come on here and do that.

[Bob] (6:46 - 6:49)

My kids told me to stop. They're more enlightened than I was.

[Dillon] (6:53 - 7:23)

Yeah. Well, so this is interesting. I've seen this from a couple of people.

I wonder if this is just the classic, there's a million ways to skin a cat, right? Of like, there are certain people I just won't do business with because they carry themselves in a certain way. And I'm like, man, that's not really my vibe.

I can't imagine I'm going to do this thing that takes some level of effort and a good amount of interpersonal interfacing. I don't think I'm going to enjoy it with that type of person.

[Bob] (7:24 - 8:00)

Right. Maybe. I think someone said something interesting.

They just went and posted this. I was shocked. And there are two people in the story, both in the customer success world.

One of them said, there's a person that I love in person and I hate their LinkedIn persona. Is that okay? And then they went on to talk about that.

And I thought that was an interesting way to put it. I think it was a little strong. Hate is a strong word.

But yeah, I think, yeah, I'm not, I'm trying to take a live and let live approach. And I think satire is my way of expressing that and maybe get some views while I'm at it. I don't know.

[Dillon] (8:01 - 8:17)

I'm going to leave it here. I think that example though is perfect because I don't think they meant hate, but I think because it's social media, they thought that's the word they had to use because it's further on one end of the spectrum in a way that gets more views. JP, jump in here.

-: 10:22

Well, so for one, I think that there is a certain social media induced madness that people participate in. And that is going to happen on every social media platform. And so there's some deeper root causes with things there.

And I think that people who at least maybe do not have as much social media madness, certain things may just appear to be a bit, this is pretty strange. Yes, things do evolve. There's a whole generation, again, that is growing up with social media.

And so as these people become professionals and begin to post more on LinkedIn, looking at these tides and being like, what exactly is going on? Now just say on the other side that as far as my approach to what I try to do on LinkedIn is to really remember what I'm there for. I will agree with you, but I actually limit how much I'm really on there.

I think unless you show up in the top of my feed, the first one or two posts, I'm probably not going to see it unless somebody tags me or something like that. And so a lot of the things I know, hey, on LinkedIn, I'm going to promote our wonderful podcast with our great guest, Bob London, or I'm going to talk about a speed mixer, some kind of event I have coming up. Or maybe I post something because I'm like, I think this would put a smile on people's faces, but I think I'm fairly conscious about what I'm putting out there and why I'm doing it.

Hopefully people just have a certain, or can come to a certain level of consciousness and reasoning behind what they do other than what we would say in customer success, you shouldn't do is, hey, just checking in. But Rob, I know has some ideas about psychology and mental health, maybe. I don't know. Bobby Z.

[Rob] (: 10:24

Look, I said it from the start, from the top rope, Bob, that was resonating at a deep level, shaking the whole community and how it's being formed across various disciplines, not just customer success, but other domains as well. Also your son with the 218 yards, looking for a gig, the New York Jets are hiring. I'll keep it real quick.

I say it all the time to the guys here and to other friends as well. A lot of times I'm just here for the comedy. My big criteria whenever I'm on LinkedIn is, am I learning?

And am I laughing? If neither of those things are happening, then maybe I should do the other L, which is leaving.

[Bob] (: 11:05

Why are you doing that? Well, it's an investment of time. I agree that it shouldn't be mindless scrolling like it is on other platforms.

[Rob] (: 11:13

But I love satire. And actually it's funny too, because I've been doing a lot of satirical posts about my loyalty to Planet Fitness. And I realized that some people out there are probably going to be not knowing it's satire.

So it's kind of like this, I don't know if you guys have seen the show, Nathan for you, JP and I were just talking about this just before, but it's kind of like it toes the line between is this guy serious or is he not? Even I don't know.

[Bob] (: 11:38

That's the highest form of satire sometimes.

[Rob] (: 11:41

Yeah, that's right. That's right. But I'm enjoying myself.

And that's the most important.

[Dillon] (: 11:44

Yeah, that is important. Life is a comedy. So don't take it too seriously, because you can't get out of it alive.

Right?

[Bob] (: 11:52

I think that after decades of really not understanding the meaning of authenticity, or maybe pretending in some ways professionally, my methodology is called radically authentic discovery. I'm not the authenticity police. I'm not trying to call out people who aren't authentic.

But I do think that's why this stuff, it says more about me, I guess, than it does LinkedIn or anything else that it's triggering me for lack of a better word. I find it to be less useful, more annoying and all that, but that's on me. That's my choice to get annoyed or not.

[Dillon] (: 12:27

I love that that's where you ended it. You have all the control. And so do those other folks.

And everybody gets to make choices that they believe benefit them. Bob, that is our time. But it is a pleasure as always.

Come back next week. Do you just want to book every slot in our calendar and chat with us?

[Bob] (: 12:47

I have a lot to say, but you guys ask good questions.

[Dillon] (: 12:50

So there you go. Until next time, Bob, we do have to say goodbye. All right.

[VO] (: 13:00

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