Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: The podcast for those who find themselves immersed in adversity and choose to write their story instead of having others write it for them. I'm Drew Duraney and I'm your host. Today's guest is Michael Roderick. Michael Roderick is the CEO of Small Pond Enterprises which helps thoughtful givers become thought leaders by making their brands referable, their messaging memorable and their ideas unforgettable. He is also the host of the podcast Access to Anyone which shows how you can get to know anyone you want in business and in life using time tested relationship building principles.
Michael's unique methodology comes from his own experience of going from being a high school English teacher to a Broadway producer in under two years. Michael uses Broadway informed branding techniques to help his clients find their if or innovative framework and create offers where they get paid for their brains. Enjoy the show.
Michael. So good to see you my friend.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yes, you as well. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: It's my pleasure. You're a dynamic individual and audience is going to love this. I always like to, I like starting by thanking the person or group or whatever who introduced us because there's always a reason why, why we meet somebody.
And I, I'm loving the fact that I attend your, your networking event called GEM Generous Entrepreneurs and Media with Jason Van Orden who I've had on this show. And so I want to thank you for having your networking group and for Jason and you doing this together. It's an awesome group. So that's how we met. So thank you to you and thank you to Jason and the whole GEM organization.
Why are you here today?
You're here because you've got a lot to offer about what you've done in your life to change yourself from who you were to who you are now. To give people some inspiration and some hope.
I'm a firm believer. We're young and people have the best intention. They tell us life is linear. If you do A plus B plus C D is going to happen and life's going to be great. And, and we want to believe it. We want it to happen for us. So we try it. And for the most part, life is linear. Until it's not. Yeah, ultimately something's going to happen and we have a decision to make now with that. I believe there's three types of men and we can be all three of these men the same day depending on our level of self awareness. And man number one is that man who has so many blind spots he doesn't see what's right in front of him. He Just lives his life the way he was told to live it, not knowing if it's his beliefs or somebody else's. And he goes about life, and nothing changes. And on his deathbed, he has a ton of regrets.
Man number two has a little more of a heightened awareness. He notices the stuff in front of him, yet he doesn't see this stuff as opportunities, as a barrier. These are barriers. This is life happening to me. I'm a victim. Everybody else is to blame. I have no choices. These are the cards I'm dealt. I'm just gonna live this life and make the best of it.
And he ends up on his deathbed with same types of regrets as man number one, and maybe even more so because he says, man, I noticed this. I didn't do anything about it. That's even worse of a regret. Right. Well, then there's man number three. Who you are, Michael. Who I am. And it's the men I have on this show are the men who see the same stuff as man number two. Yet we see it, for whatever reason, at a certain part of our life through a different lens, and we see the same stuff, and we say, that's not a barrier. You know what? That's an opportunity to improve my life. That's life happening for me. I noticed that. Let me do something differently to become the Michael Roderick I want to be.
So with that Michael, you being man number three for the audience and for me, maybe even for yourself, reach back as far as you need to to find that defining moment where you were man number three and something changed. You did something to become the Michael Roderick you are now.
And what you're doing personally and professionally as this new Michael Roderick, where you're helping people.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I think that.
I think that all entrepreneurs have some moment after they go off on their own where you make a really. You make a really big mistake, and you.
You really just end up in a whole. And it's, you know, and in some cases, it's a very, very sort of intense sort of destitute kind of thing. Sometimes it's emotional, Sometimes it's monetary. Like, there's lots of different areas sort of where. Where it comes. But I think the one that happened to me, and the one that I think is an interesting one because it's kind of a cautionary tale, is that I had learned a lot, and I had gotten very good at the element of relationship building, where, you know, you. You get to the point where you're very good at sort of meeting people, connecting with people, getting to know people, maybe making introductions between people and sort of supporting them.
But the thing that I was doing that caused probably one of the bigger dips in my life is what I would like to what I often refer to as the giver's F.
So every time we give, every time we help somebody else or support somebody else, there is a chemical reaction that happens in our body. Some say it's oxytocin, some say it's dopamine. But regardless of whatever the chemical is, there is a rush we receive as a result of doing for others.
Now, the challenge around that is just like an addiction.
You're constantly chasing that next high, that next hit, so you can actually get hooked on the giving. You can get hooked on sort of taking care of everybody else and not taking care of yourself.
So I had this big, big period where I was making. I was basically meeting all these people. I was making intros. I was helping so many different people build their business and support the projects and the things that they were doing.
But I was very rarely asking anyone for support in my own business.
And I'll never forget, I had. It was around the time of one of the many financial crises that we've had over the years, right?
And at the time, I was working in the theater, I was working on basically management of shows. So people would hire me for a certain chunk of change to go and help manage a show.
And I was on my way to sign a contract for a pretty large sum to work on a show with somebody who was very, very excited about working on this show and doing something with that show. But unbeknownst to me, they worked in one of those financial industries where the ceiling was kind of falling, right? There were all these issues. So I get to this meeting and they tell me, I can't sign the contract. I can't do this deal at all. And I had cleared my schedule because this was going to be a very, very big, big deal. And that amount of money that was supposed to come in was supposed to be the amount that I needed to pay rent and take care of everything for that, for. For. For that month.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: So I'll never forget coming back home and thinking, what am I going to do? Like, what's happening?
And I sat. I remember basically, like, laying down on my couch, and I had a moment where I said, I need to let people know that I'm hurting. Like, I need to let people know what the heck's going on. So I wrote an email to all of the people that I had connected with in that year or a large portion of them. And, and I called it self assessment. I titled the email self assessment. And I wrote about the fact that I had done all this work, I had helped all these people, and I did, I didn't help myself. And I basically wrote that I am failing, you know, as an entrepreneur and I would just want you all to know this. And I said, and I don't expect anything from, from you, but if you have some kind words, if you have some thoughts, if you have anything that you can share about where I am right now, I'd of course appreciate it.
And I close that email down and I lay back, I laid down on the couch and I think to myself, I'm done. Like, I've just kind of like I've torpedoed my life, my business, my opportunities, all these things.
And all of a sudden my phone just starts pinging response after response after response. And you know, one person's like, you know, let's grab coffee, let's talk about where you're at. Or I'm so sorry to hear that this is going on. You know, here's what I could do. And I get a call from somebody who I had made intros for years and years and years ago, and she had moved up in the industry and she was in the theater world. And she basically said, hey, I've got a client for you. I know this person. I know that they're willing to spend a decent amount of money.
All you need to do is quote how much you actually need. And I can guarantee you just based on who they are and what I know about them, they'll be able to pay. So when you get this call, just do it. And sure enough, I got a call to produce a project and I just quoted the exact same amount. And the person, no problem, they were working, you know, they were working in a pretty high finance level industry and they were like totally fine. And it was in that moment, after all that, that I had that realization of how important it is to make sure that people know what's going on in your life. Because when you give and you help and you support others, you also train a lot of the people in your network to believe that you have no needs and that you've already kind of done it and everything's totally fine. Because how could you be doing so much for everybody else if, you know you were really suffering?
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, that's. I love that. I love that. Because often we givers give to everybody.
We haven't learned how to accept Receiving.
Right. We may tend to keep giving to the takers who don't reciprocate in kind. And then we start working with that empty bucket.
And when we. Our bucket's empty, resentment can start filling that bucket, and you don't want to give anymore where then you lose all those chemicals you're talking about. It's very powerful, Michael. The whole. And what do you call it? Givers fix?
[00:12:31] Speaker A: The giver's fix. Yeah.
[00:12:33] Speaker B: Yep. And yeah, it's. It is detrimental because then you're looking for that next fix.
Geez, that is amazing. So after that happened, I mean, did you start to think about, I can't put all my eggs in one basket, though? I mean, you were like. You were hoping to get that. Like, how did you change the mindset to put yourself more in control? Because a lot of. A lot of we entrepreneurs struggle with that.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: That we don't feel we're in control. So we need that next client, that next this, so we can pay the rent. How do you get out of that mindset?
[00:13:13] Speaker A: So I honestly think that there's. There's four myths that cause different mindsets like this.
And the first myth that you're going to deal with is the myth of competition.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: There's going to be the belief that you're competing with other people, but the truth of the matter is there is no competition. There's only specialization. People gravitate towards us because of who we are as people, and that will either attract or repel. So even if somebody does the exact same thing, offers the exact same service.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: They are not going to attract the same people. It's just not like our personalities sort of pull us in these different. These. These different directions.
The second myth is the myth of discovery.
And this is what we're taught often in school, and especially if you come from a creative background. And that is that somebody finds you, that somebody chooses you, and that's how you get to whatever that next level is. So you prove yourself that you're good enough. And then somebody comes along and says, here, here you go. Thank you for being good enough. You are going to go out into the world now and have everything that you want. And the fact of the matter is that nobody discovers us. We are the architects of our own discovery. We are the ones who have to reach out and let folks know. I often will tell lots of entrepreneurs that it doesn't matter if you're in the trenches if nobody knows you're down there.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: That's true. True. Good point.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: So you've got to communicate that and sort of let folks, let folks know about that. And then the third myth and the one that I fell into in the story was the myth of the deus ex machina. And just like in the world of the theater, where the deus ex machina idea was that a God would come down from the heavens and just solve everything, we have that belief that one thing.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Is going to fix everything.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Like, we're all looking for that angel investor. Right?
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Right. Exactly. Exactly. So in my case, in that scenario, I, I, I was believing in this myth of the deus ex machina, that this one project was going to take care of everything, and I had nothing to worry about, and I shouldn't be concerned, etc. And the fact of the matter is there is never one thing.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: That's all that, that solves the problem. It's always many things. There's always lots of different angles and lots of different ways that you have to, you have to look at something. And your success is going to be based on multiple factors, not just one. It's based on one for a lot of people, or people will use one. Because that's a much easier story from a media standpoint.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: True.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Right, right. It's easier to say, I met this person and then I was famous than it is to say I met these people and each of these things happened, and eventually it all kind of came together.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: To establish fame.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Like, it didn't happen within 24 hours.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: 24 years.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. But nobody's going to read a headline about 24 years. They want to read the headline about 24 hours. Right. Because media is built on the idea of high contrast. If I create a high contrast statement and I don't tell you how I achieved whatever that high contrast statement is, then you're gonna click, you're gonna read, you're gonna want to listen. Right.
[00:16:55] Speaker B: So high contrast is like, not within context.
Something deeper. It's more.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Boom. Get the attention, and then they dive in.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Exactly. You just, you, you say two things that are very much their opposite. You smack them together, and then your audience is like, well, how does that work? And what is that? And it sort of creates that, that thing. And then the final myth is the myth of stasis.
And the myth of stasis is that we believe often that if we just work harder at whatever we're in, if we just stay in this position and we just grind it out, out, it will eventually work. Because all of our heroes and most of the content that we read comes from people saying, well, you just have to work hard to make the whole thing happen. But the thing is, if you're working hard in the wrong direction, Absolutely right. It doesn't actually help at all.
So it's always about thinking about, okay, what is the area where I should be putting in that effort and that time? And if something is not working, you wouldn't just sit behind. If there's a. If there's multiple lanes on the. On the highway, you wouldn't just sit behind a car the whole time. You would use another lane and you would pass. And I think that all too often we get into this place where we believe, okay, well, this is the way it was supposed to be, and this is the way I'm supposed to do it, and this is how it's supposed to work. So I just need to work harder. That's all it is. I just need to meet more people. I just need to do more, etc. And so, so often it's actually that you don't. It's actually that you need to move to a different. Different channel. You need to try something. You need to try something else and get out of that rut.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Work smarter rather than harder kind of thing.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: So with this revelation, what shifted you and what are you doing now?
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so I. I pretty much left the. At the time, I was mainly just doing theatrical work.
And what ended up happening was similar to sort of this idea of sort of, like, thinking differently about everything. One of the things that just kept coming up over and over again was people were asking me how I was getting into all the doors I was getting into. Into. Right. They were like. They were very, very curious about that. So I got my master's from NYU in educational theater. I had learned about the power of simulations and how if people act out things, they often will do what they're doing in real life. So I started teaching a lot of that. I started originally, I was teaching networking and sort of helping folks on that side. But over time, I realized that the thing that got me into all the rooms that I got into was the fact that people would talk about me when I wasn't in the room in a good way.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Oh, interesting.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So I basically kind of step decided to, rather than study networking, I started to study referability. I started to look at why is it that we talk about people, their ideas, why is it that we share something or don't share something?
And it was, you know, a very effective pivot because networking is very, very Hard to sell as a service. Right. As a. Like to teach somebody how to network.
There are people who've done it, and there are people who have sort of a certain. Reach a certain level with it. But the fact of the matter is, it's so amorphous in terms of how it becomes successful. It's really hard to sell. Whereas if you can help somebody craft an idea or craft. Craft an offer that other people just talk about all the time and they get more business as a result of that, that's a much sort of straighter line.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: So when I saw that, I said, okay, this is a better. This is a better offering. And over time, what I ended up realizing was where this offering fit best was in the world of thought leadership and specifically subject matter experts, because subject matter experts basically are. They spend all their time in the subject matter. They spend so much time learning and sort of understanding, but they don't take that Broadway perspective of how do I take this idea and really craft it so that it works for a mass audience so that people are like people outside of my industry are understanding it. So when I shifted that and I started focusing in that space, it was A, a lot easier to sell, and B, just much more interesting for me because there's so many different experts out there with so many different industries and dynamics, and it's always a new problem to solve. My two favorite things to do are solving problems and connecting people. So if I. If I'm doing that, I'm happy. So when I found, like, this is where. This is what ties to, like, my major, like, my main talent. When I thought about it, I was like, this is something that I love to do. This is something that's really exciting. So it became a much easier business, a much easier way to sort of work in the world, as opposed to when I was in the theater world and I was doing sort of the, like, managing shows, I was really just responsible for sort of, like, making sure all the trains ran on time and, like, managing. And that's just not really at the heart of my strengths. My strengths are in innovation. So I basically had to say, okay, how do I play to those strengths? And that sort of innovative mode of thinking.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I like the fact that too, you have something that spans all different industries. It. The. The referability piece. I mean, just the fact that you talked about that defining moment where a colleague referred you to somebody who could. The. Your referability was so easy for her to refer you to somebody wasn't. You know, it's like, also that difference between the introduction versus a referral, you know, people, a lot of people don't know, don't know what a referral is.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: You know, it's like I got somebody I want to refer you to and it's like an introduction to somebody.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: No connection whatsoever. Except you're both nice guys.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: You know, and, and so, you know, it's, it's very intriguing that we often expect people to know our story and we don't tell it.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Oh, yep, Right. Yep.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: And that if we believe that something's just going to happen for us, it just happens. It's not going to. We need to do something which shows that we have control and we make choices, we make decisions even if we don't think we did.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yep. 100%.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: 100%.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So I love what you're doing with the, with the referability piece and I know that the audience has certainly captured the essence of Michael Roderick. They're going to want to get in touch with you, my friend. So folks, yes, you can go to LinkedIn. You'll find Michael on LinkedIn. I do recommend this.
He has a website, he has a tool on his website. It's called my Referability rater. So my referabilityrater.com he's got a tool that's really a test that you would take to see how referable you are, which is a huge thing to know because if you score low, then you got some stuff to work on. If you score high and you're not where you want to be, you're not using that strength to the way you need to. So I definitely suggest you go take that today. Did I miss anything with that tool?
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Nope. That's fantastic. Great description.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: So do that, guys do that.
All right, so I got two questions for you, Michael, while you wrap up here.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: I'm going to give you the opportunity to use your imagination.
You're sitting down with young 7 to 10 year old Michael Roderick and you want to give him advice about life.
What are you going to tell him?
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I think the thing I'll tell, the thing I would tell him is all of the things about the impressions of you that other people have are not going to matter.
You think that it's very, very important for certain people to like you right now. You think it's very, very important for you to have, you know, a certain amount of notoriety.
And the fact of the matter is it will not, it will not mean anything.
So just keep that in mind. I know I can't Stop you from, from wanting this acceptance and from looking to, you know, these, these people in your life. But if you can at the very least consider that it will not be the end of the world if it doesn't work out, then, then I've done my job from the future.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: I love it. That's great advice. All right, so let's, let's switch hats. And now you're sitting down with young Michael Roderick, the young businessman. Entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. You boy. Do you want to give him some business advice? What are you going to tell him?
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Yep.
And tell him you're. You always have two markets that you're going to sell to.
The first is the aspirational market, and the second is the excellence market. And the aspirational market is going to see you as the hero. They're going to imagine that you can solve all of their problems and fix all of their things, and it's going to feel really, really good because they're going to say all sorts of very, very exciting things to you and make you feel like the hero. But because they believe you're the hero and not themselves, they're not going to believe in themselves a lot and they're not going to spend very much money.
And all the marketing that you're going to learn is going to be towards that aspirational audience. You have to be very, very careful about how much of it that you. That you use.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: The excellence audience, on the other hand, is going to always spend a lot more money and they're not going to see you as the hero, which is going to make you feel a little weird because you like being the hero, but they're going to see you as the guide. They're going to see you as the person who knows things that they don't know, and they're going to want you to help them find those things. And I can promise you, if you get really, really specific and you spend a lot of time digging into what their problem is and you solve the really, really specific and interesting problems, they're going to spend a lot of money on you and you're going to have a lot of opportunity and you're not going to need a lot of them to make a decent business.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: I love that. It's almost like swallowing your ego. Yes, I love that. Love that. Michael, thank you for a few things. Thank you for coming on.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Thank you for coming into my life and being my friend and kind colleague. And of course, thank you for having your networking group gem Generous entrepreneurs in media.
And thank you to Jason you know, before we close out, I. I did want to highlight Jem, and I. Yeah, forgot to do so. And won't edit it out. I missed that. So I'd like you to tell us a little about gem. What it is, what its purpose is, how it's run, and when it is.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it started. So, Jim, started back in 2020, when pretty much everybody was home, right. And everybody was hosting some kind of zoom type of gathering. And one of the things that I had noticed, having had a podcast and having met all these really great guests and podcasters, was that very, very rarely were any of these people getting together like podcasting was at the time, very, very siloed, where it was always like, you just, like, you interview a guest, that guest goes away.
So I reached out to Jason and I was basically like, I think it'd be really interesting if we invited our past guests and our friends who were also podcasters, and we just invited them to get to know each other and maybe see if they could, you know, if they could do shows with each other and things like that. And we.
We got the first group together, and I did something a little different than a lot of the other groups that I had seen.
Rather than sort of presenting something or talking about something, I just made the first half just about everybody getting to know each other. So I just gave them some, like, interesting questions to ask each other and get to know each other. And we would send people into breakout rooms and. And sort of have that, you know, side of things. And then eventually we. We layered in the choose your own adv. In the second half of the session, we just give people the opportunity to go and sort of learn whatever you want to learn. Sometimes I'm in a room teaching something. Sometimes Jason's in a room teaching something. Sometimes there's a guest expert. So teaching something, people could just kind of go whatever they want.
And, yeah, we've. We've now done it.
It's been four years at this point, and we usually get a pretty good crowd. I believe it's the third. Third Thursday. I'd have to double check. Yeah. But I believe it's the third Thursday of every month. But once people are on the list, like, once they're.
Once they're on the gem list, you basically get an email letting you know when the next one. When the next one is, and to register. And we usually have a great crowd of folks. We have a lot of people come back multiple times. And, you know, I just think it's a. It's a really fun opportunity for people who are both guests and hosts of podcasts to get a chance to meet each other.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. Absolutely love it. I'm glad. Thank you to my brain for remembering that late than never again. Thanks for coming on Michael. You provide such a great value to people out there and keep doing what you're doing. Keep being who you are my friend.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Thank you. I appreciate it.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Take care of yourselves everybody.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and give us a review to help others find it.
I'd like you to answer this question. Are you living the life you want to live or are you living the life others want you to live? I'd like you to think about that for a second because I strongly suggest you live the life you want to live. If you want to learn more about about what I stand for and my services and how I'm able to help many men get out of their own way, please go to my website at www.prophetcompassion.com.
feel free to also email me at drewrophetcompassion.com I'd love to have a conversation with you. Take care of yourself and choose to write your own story instead of letting others write it for.
