Episode 409: Integrity and Human Connection in Business

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

00:00:53:01 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m your host, Brynne Tillman, and I’m excited to introduce you to my special guest today, Dr. David Gruder. We actually met in person at the C-suite Thought Leadership Council last week, and I’m so impressed with everything he’s doing that I had to have him on the show. Dr. Gruder is a standing ovation keynote speaker. He is a societal well-being futurist and the founder of Integrating Revolution, where he is passionately working to restore integrity. I love that in business and society, as a fractional chief people officer and a key figure behind the nimble company and the book, the Nimble Company Dr. Gruder focuses on equipping leaders and organizations with the innovative mindset and strategies needed to thrive in the ever changing world.

00:01:53:06 – (Brynne Tillman): His deep expertise in business, life cycles, psychology, and commitment to healthy corporate cultures makes him a thought leader and maximizing positive impact and profits without sacrificing integrity. My gosh, this is my I love it so I’m so excited. To explore his insights on leadership, integrity, and the transformative practice that organizations can adopt through the Nimble Company. Dr. David, welcome to the show. I’m excited to have you here. 

00:02:26:06 – (Dr. David Gruder): Oh, thanks, Brynne. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation. 

00:02:31:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Me too. And the next time I see you, I’m going to have you sign my copy of the book. I am so excited. I glanced through it, but this is my next. The next one on the pile for me to get through and read. And I have to say, there are a few things that just popped out that were absolutely amazing. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But before we jump into your genius, we ask all of our guests to answer one question, which is what does making sales social mean to you? 

00:03:03:06 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, it’s a perfect starting question, of course.

And what making sales social means to me is that the selling process isn’t really about selling. It’s about connection. It’s about relationships. It’s about being social and the right kind of, of, engagements really emerge from those human connections. 

00:03:40:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. That’s me and I really agree, it really comes down to the human side of things that sadly, seems to be slipping a little in today’s world. But I’m glad that you know that a whole integrity piece comes along with humanity for sure. So I love that. I want to dive into your Ted talk a little bit. You did a talk called Hijacking of the American Dream, where you talked about the father of modern public relations who literally wrote the book on manipulative selling. Tell me a little bit about that and why you chose that as your topic. Right. 

00:04:17:06 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, I chose it as my topic because what he installed is still used widely to this day, over 100 years after he came on the scene. His name was Edward Bernays, and he was an advisor to virtually every American president, both Democrat and Republican, and a darling of the business community from Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in the 19 teens, all the way to when Bernays died, during Bill Clinton’s first term in office. And his impact, his power really came from applying what his uncle understood about the unconscious mind to something that he called social engineering. Who was Edward Bernays? His uncle, Sigmund Freud? 

00:05:16:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, wow. That’s cool. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for their Thanksgiving. That’s really cool. What inspired you to make that your Ted talk? 

00:05:33:06 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, what inspired me is because I. I really see over the past number of decades that society, really humanity around the world and specifically in the United States, since you and I are residents of the United States, has been hijacked. And that’s why the Ted folks called me, my Ted talk. The hijacking, the hijacking is really about the American dream having gotten hijacked. And that fully took form in the 1950s, and we’re still under the spell of what that has led to. 

00:06:24:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Well, you know, I would highly recommend anyone listening today if you want more of this and you will make sure you go check out the Ted talk. You know, most of our listeners are really deep into the sales world, whether they are professional sellers or their CEOs, coaches, consultants responsible for business development or sales leaders. And, you know, this is an area that you really excel in and it’s a big piece of your business. So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions in that arena for a moment. The first one is, what are some sales traps that have been holding back entrepreneurs and sales teams? Well,

00:07:11:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): The big one, in my experience, is the one that I had fallen into without realizing it. And that is the notion that selling, by definition, is manipulative. It’s what Edward Bernays called manufactured consent, which is manipulating people into supporting product services, causes or candidates while thinking they’re doing it out of their own free will.

And so the big one really is getting over this notion that that is what sales is, what sales has to be. And that’s simply not true. There’s another approach to selling that has nothing to do with manipulation or manufactured consent. Again, to use Edward Bernays, this term. 

00:08:07:06 – (Brynne Tillman): So go one deeper in that chair, what that looks like. How do you sell with integrity? How do you sell? So that the other person doesn’t feel like you’re manipulating them. 

00:08:19:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): Right. Okay. Well, I’ll piggyback on Bernays this term in order to answer your question. So there’s this one approach, which was the Madison Avenue approach. Back in the day and it continues, being used to this day. That’s the manufactured consent approach. Well, there’s another term that’s the cousin or basically the opposite of manufactured consent. It’s called informed consent. And everyone who’s in the professional services world, physicians, psychologists, accountants, attorneys, we’re all required to do informed consent with our clients and inform consent basically means educating people so that they’re they’re informed consumers,

00:09:10:14 – (Dr. David Gruder): educating people about what the causes of their struggles are that they might not be aware of, even though they’re aware of their struggles and what they might want to look for in the way of a solution, rather than going straight to me, by me, by me. Because when we educate, when we inform people in the conversation, what organically emerges after they’ve learned more about what we’re recommending they look for in a solution is they turn to us and ask the equivalent of this question. Oh, that makes sense. Do you do that?

00:09:55:13 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. So we actually often will call that earning the right to get the business.

00:10:02:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): Yes. 

00:10:03:13 – (Brynne Tillman): But and 

00:10:04:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): that’s how we earn the right. We earn the right through relationships, rapport and education, not through pushing. 

00:10:12:13 – (Brynne Tillman): You are speaking my language, my friend. I love that. So I’m going to move to something that I find really fascinating about you and what you do. Because you’ve given keynotes on the phases in evolution of consumer demand since the 50s. Not that you’ve been giving it since the 50s. 

00:10:36:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): No, I was born in the 50s. 

00:10:37:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. But the evolution since the 50s. So what are those phases and what are the changes you’ve seen over time? 

00:10:46:24 – (Dr. David Gruder): Right. Well, what was installed in the 50s. It was really installed before then. But the thing called the American Dream was named and installed in the 1950s, and it was about products and services. It was a materialism approach to consumer demand. Keep up with the Joneses. You know, the more toys we have, the more the latest consumer, the more things we have, the more we’re the winner, right? And that mindset gave way to a next evolution in consumer demand in the early 2000s that got called in the marketing and advertising field, the experience economy, from the materialism economy to the experience economy

00:11:37:13 – (Dr. David Gruder): and the experience economy, which was really, kind of personified by the early years of Apple, Apple computing, where Apple was all about having an aesthetically pleasing experience with a computer. So they understood that we were emerging into an experience oriented economy and that, that shifted things where people were buying great experiences through the products and services they were purchasing. And then in the second half of the 20 teens, consumer demand evolved again into what became called in the marketing and advertising journals, the transformation economy, where people were not just wanting good experiences anymore, they were wanting transformative experiences through the products and services they were purchasing.

00:12:39:21 – (Dr. David Gruder): And then Covid, and the Covid lockdown caused a, an earlier evolution in the next phase of consumer demand than probably would have ever emerged quite as quickly because of all the soul searching and searching for meaning that people were doing in larger numbers during the lockdown, and that next evolution in consumer demand has emerged. But there isn’t a standard name for this next evolution yet.

00:13:15:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): I’ve named it the Transcendent Economy, transcendent consumer demand, where people are purchasing things that give them an elevated sense of meaning and purpose in how they transform through great experiences with the products and services that they’re buying. So that’s the evolution of consumer demand in a nutshell. 

00:13:41:13 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that, I, you know, and, and I can resonate with each shift. Yeah. I’m an oh, yeah, transformation. I remember that, like, I knew, and just kind of a fun trivia today as we are recording, which is March 10th, is five years out of our five year anniversary from the shutdown. 

00:14:05:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): Wow. How about that for synchronicity? 

00:14:09:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So I thought I’d just share that. Although Yeah. So that’s it. I just thought that that was interesting. Anyway, 

00:14:14:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): it’s also our cat’s 10th birthday. 

00:14:16:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, so I know what you were doing on your first day of shutdown. 

00:14:20:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, no, we hadn’t met our cats yet. They were. We adopted them, you know, a number of months after that when they were available for adoption. But it’s a brother and sister that we have. And today was their 10th birthday. 

00:14:35:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, happy birthday, cats. I love it, love it, love it. So, you know, in this idea of, you know, that selling must evolve or it has evolved, right? Where does it go? Like, what do you see in the next year or three years? Like, where is the evolution of sales headed?

00:14:57:00 – (Dr. David Gruder): Right. Well, I think it’s going in two different directions right now that in the coming years are going to get integrated. Right now they’re not integrated yet. At least not to the extent that I want them to be. And I think they will become. We’ve got the artificial intelligence approach to selling where people are utilizing AI to create sales journeys and scripts and webinars and pages, lead pages, things like that.

00:15:32:15 – (Dr. David Gruder): And then the personal informed consent kind of approach that I was describing earlier. And so you’ve got the human approach that’s becoming more sophisticated in a positive sense, becoming more refined. And you’ve got the artificial intelligence approach, which I believe is going to happen after we get over this initial hump of AI intoxication, artificial intelligence intoxication, which is something that happens whenever any new revolutionary technology emerges.

00:16:11:01 – (Dr. David Gruder): There’s initially a period of intoxication with it, and then that gives way to a more, mature relationship with that new technology. 

00:16:23:13 – (Brynne Tillman): So in the coming years, bombing in the beginning. 

00:16:25:01 – (Dr. David Gruder): Yeah, some in the coming years, what I see is a wedding of the best of artificial intelligence with the best of really human interaction and informed consent.

00:16:38:28 – (Brynne Tillman): But I love that. And part of, you know, my philosophy and what we talk about with AI, the shift that people can take now so that they can get out of the the the love bombing, slightly toxic relationship and get healthy is instead of asking AI to write it for you, ask AI to interview you and be your ghost writer, and you’ll absolutely grab more of your own voice in that. So I just wanted to throw that out. 

00:17:14:01 – (Dr. David Gruder): Spot on, I agree. 

00:17:16:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So we’ve found it’s so we’ve moved to the marriage of human and AI a little bit faster. Hopefully. So now I want to just quickly take a bird’s eye view. You are a futurist. Like, that is like your core, reputation. You know, integrity and futurism are the words I think of when I think of you. So talk a little bit about what you’ve been discussing as part of your larger vision. And where do you see the future of humanity? Like, let’s get out of the sales mode for a moment. Let’s just talk about people. Like what? Where do you see the future of humans? And in a nutshell, 

00:18:06:01 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, first of all, to start answering your question, I would actually call myself more of an applied futurist rather than a theoretical futurist, although I like the theory kind of stuff. But where the, you know, the rubber meets the road, the the boots hit the ground is on the application of this and at the biggest, most macro level, what I see is three potential futures for humanity that are vying with each other over which is going to dominate and,

00:18:38:21 – (Dr. David Gruder): the first of those futures is impossible, even though there are plenty of people that are trying to pursue it. I call it regressionism, where people are wanting to go backward to a romanticized, selectively remembered version of the past, that’s the solution to the problems we have today. The grain of truth is that they’re aware that there are certain perennial truths and wisdoms, ethics and moralities that deserve to be brought forward into the future.

00:19:13:13 – (Dr. David Gruder): So I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but their solution, the regression solution is impossible. We don’t go backwards. And besides, it’s a delusional version of the past anyway because it’s selectively remembered. So that’s version number one. Version number two is that throughout humanity, there have always been individuals who have thought that they’re smarter than higher love and wisdom. Whatever somebody’s term for that is,

00:19:42:08 – (Dr. David Gruder): that they’re ego based and they think they’re so smart that they’re entitled to determine the future of humanity for humanity. And back in the day, that was localized, you know, you had the power brokers of a particular geographical area. Well, in the age of the internet, it’s global. And so now these same people with that kind of mindset are trying to rule the future of all of humanity, and they’re basically self-serving, egotists and the result of that future is what I call homo machine.

00:20:19:17 – (Dr. David Gruder): Human machine is Latin for human machine. And that’s where we are, basically 21st century servants to power brokers and people who are addicted to, dysfunctional version of happiness, their happiness at the cost of us. And then the third version is a version of the future in which we elevate into a new species beyond Homo sapiens, into human spirits. Homo spiritus, where we are conduits of higher love and wisdom in the physical universe. 

00:20:58:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Wow. Gosh, you have my brain spinning. And I want to go deeper and deeper in this. But we don’t have the time here. But we’re going to take this offline because I’m inspired to really go down this rabbit hole a little bit because I think it’s awesome. So as we are coming close to our time, is there a question that I didn’t ask that I should have?

00:21:22:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, I mean, given the amount of time that we devote to these conversations, I can’t think of one. The one, the one thing that I would have loved to have talked about is how I shifted my perspective about sales. Having grown up in the New York area and being in the 50s and 60s and being immersed in the Madison Avenue version of selling, 

00:21:48:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, hey, that’s perfect. Let’s end it with that.

00:21:49:11 – (Dr. David Gruder): Okay. Well, the brief version is that back in the early 90s, I was consulting to a college in Ohio, and the college president contacted me and said that he was putting together an international conference of college presidents. And would I give a keynote address for it? And I said, sure. What do you want me to say? He says, I want you to speak on ethical selling. And I said to him, John,

00:22:17:05 – (Dr. David Gruder): I’m not a sales guy, I’m a sales expert. And he said, get over yourself. You act. You absolutely are. The organizational development analysis that you provided to our college was brilliant. And one of the things, one of the sets of recommendations you made was a set of recommendations that caused us to fire our Madison Avenue marketing firm. You know what you’re talking about. Get over yourself. And I said, okay, you see something about me that I don’t see? I’ll take a leap of faith. And in preparing for that keynote, I ended up completely healing my dysfunctional relationship with selling.

00:23:00:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. Get over yourself, I love that. and you did, 

00:23:05:05 – (Dr. David Gruder): I did, I did, and I’m so grateful to him to this day. He’s long gone from the earthly plane, but I continue to be deeply grateful to him. 

00:23:15:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, and so are all the people that get to work with you because what he helped you achieve is now essentially what you help others achieve. I think that’s amazing. Well, I have very much enjoyed this conversation with you. And I’m sure our listeners have too. So the next question is, how can they get in touch with you and how can they buy this great book, The Nimble Company. 

00:23:41:05 – (Dr. David Gruder): Well, you can buy the Nimble Company and the companion book, The Nimble C-suite. On Amazon for example, I find it’s available in both In print version, digital version and audio version. and you can learn more about what I’m doing in the, in the way of, of the future of selling, including what we’ve talked about today and, and a lot more detail through this link.

00:24:11:15 – (Dr. David Gruder): It’s dr. gruder.com that’s Dr. G r udr.com/future of selling. 

00:24:21:09 – (Brynne Tillman): There you go I love it. Well what an absolute pleasure to get to spend a little more time with you. To kind of dive deep into the not well, it was to the start of diving deep into your brilliant mind. And I’m glad we got to share this with our community. So thank you so much. And for all our listeners. Oh, my pleasure, really my pleasure. And to all our listeners, when you are out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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