Applying Valuable Lessons from Mentors and Leaders

Alana Muller 0:09
Welcome to Enterprise.ing, a podcast from Enterprise Bank & Trust that's empowering business leaders one conversation at a time. We'll hear from different business leaders about how they found success in cultivating their professional networks and keeping them healthy and strong. I'm your host Alana Muller, an entrepreneurial executive leader whose primary focus is to connect, inspire and empower community. We at Enterprise Bank & Trust thank you for tuning in to another episode.

Alana Muller 0:41
Hello, listeners, welcome to Enterprise.ing podcast. Molly Fletcher is a trailblazer in every sense of the word. Hailed as the female Jerry Maguire, she made a name for herself as one of the first female sports agents and represented hundreds of sports’ biggest stars. Recognized as a world's top 50 keynote speaker, Molly shares the unconventional techniques she used to thrive in her former career as a top sports agent, and now as a successful entrepreneur and thought leader. She is the author of five books, a sixth on its way, including her latest, "The Energy Clock" and host of the popular "Game Changers" with Molly Fletcher, where she interviews experts and celebrities in every field on her podcast. Molly's TED Talk, "Secrets of a Champion Mindset" has racked up more than 1 million views and she recently launched her first on-demand course, "Up Your Game." Molly's passion is to give people the tools to unlock their drive, up their game and achieve peak performance. Help me welcome Molly Fletcher back to Enterprise.ing podcast. Hey, Molly.

Molly Fletcher 1:40
Hey girl, what's up?

Alana Muller 1:42
Not too much. So great to have you back again this week. Molly, we had a great conversation a couple of weeks ago focused on the topic of doing business with intention. This time, I'd like to take the notion of intentionality a step further and talk about intentional relationship building. You talked a lot about the most important relationships in our lives, and that really, all we do is all about relationships. So, I want to push on that more. And as you know, my personal area of focus is the cultivation of meaningful relationships, it's a core tenant of the work you do as well. So, let's spend some time on that now. In a workshop that you delivered, you encourage participants to consider the most important relationships in their lives and to help those individuals fill the gaps in their lives. So essentially, your message was about adding value to other people. Talk about how that has manifested itself for you, and the ways in which you deliver on that value and the work that you do.

Molly Fletcher 2:39
For sure. I mean, I think it's about anticipating the gaps in people's lives. I think it's about acting like you have the business before you have the business. And for me, it's coming from a place of give, give, give, add value, until potentially somebody on the other side says, "Hmm, the people that I work with don't do any of this, and they actually work for me. Molly doesn’t even work for me, and they're doing all these things. Hmm, maybe I oughta switch."

Molly Fletcher 3:11
So, people have a lot of choices: where they spend their time, where they spend their focus, where they spend their energy, who they spend their money with. Businesses have a lot of choices, people have a lot of choices. There are very few people in the world, in my opinion, that are better than their problems, right? In other words, it's important that, I think, we show up in a way that is truly contributing in a meaningful way, because people have a lot of choices and they'll go somewhere else.

Molly Fletcher 3:39
And much of my career was as a sports agent, where there's more agents than athletes to even represent. So, if you aren't consistently pouring into the relationship, with intention, with intentionality, with preparation, with anticipation, you'll lose the business, you just will. And for the athletes that I worked with, if they didn't perform for a period of time, they'd lose their job. So, I guess at some level, I come from this, maybe wacky world, where if that wasn't the way you did what you did, as an athlete, or as an agent, you lost the client or you lost your job.

Molly Fletcher 4:22
So, when I think about it from a more general business perspective, I think it's a huge differentiator for us, as leaders, as salespeople, even with our colleagues, when we can get inside truly, really take the time to wonder and understand what's going on in their world. We can ask the right kinds of questions. We can listen with intention, not to do anything, but potentially to help them. And Zig Ziglar was a man I admired a lot and I love one of his quotes, I mean, he said, "If you help enough people get what they want in their life, you'll get what you want in your life." And I think that...

Alana Muller 5:08
Love that, so true.

Molly Fletcher 5:10
So true. And it's a tricky thing, right? Because you really got to do it from a place of wanting to do it. My dad used to always say, "There's givers in the world and there's takers in the world, Molly." And I know I interviewed the gentleman who started TED, the TED Talks...

Alana Muller 5:26
Yeah.

Molly Fletcher 5:28
…Chris Anderson. And he talked about that on my podcast. One of the most fundamental questions we can ask ourselves: Are we a giver? Are we a taker?

Alana Muller 5:35
Yeah.

Molly Fletcher 5:36
And when you think about that, in the world that we live in today, if everybody bottled up a little bit more giving, maybe it would make the world a better place.

Alana Muller 5:45
So right. You know, one of my favorite thought leaders, Adam Grant, his book, "Give and Take," is all about that, right?

Molly Fletcher 5:51
Yeah.

Alana Muller 5:52
We have givers, we have matchers, we have takers...

Molly Fletcher 5:54
Yeah.

Alana Muller 5:54
...we have fakers. Right? So this notion that sadly, most of us match, you know, you do for me, I'll do for you. I agree with you, the more we give, give, give, give, give. So much of that comes right back, comes right back. I know last time we talked, you talked a little bit about the important relationships in your life. What are those most important relationships for you?

Molly Fletcher 6:15
Well, I would say I mean, personally, my husband, my daughters, my brothers, my parents, my girlfriends from college, friends in Atlanta, friends at our church, all of that. Of course, professionally, I would say it's my team, for sure, who wake up every day and pour into the 60 plus keynotes a year that I give, who book the guests on my podcast, "Game Changers," who help with all the, you know… I have five books, I have a sixth one coming out this year. I have a wonderful team around me that really helps me with my content. It's the people that are on this bus with me, we're all chasing the same thing. And there's an enormous amount of alignment, there's an enormous amount of connection and trust, and longevity. So that's the blessing. I mean, that makes you feel like, are there things that I can do better as a leader? No question about it. But you know, I have a lot of longevity on my team. The woman that started with me when I first started 12 years ago is still the main wingwoman and we have others, so...

Alana Muller 7:19
That says something, right? That says something about the relationship, the kind of leader you are, what kind of leader she is, right?

Molly Fletcher 7:26
And the clients that we serve. I mean, we train organizations on high performance, primarily on soft skills. And you know, we have incredible coaches that help deliver that, I deliver that from time to time. So all of those people in your sphere, right? That help you move the car forward, are really incredibly important people to me. And then so many of my clients when I was an agent. I'm not an agent anymore, but I stay deeply connected to several of them, which is really cool.

Alana Muller 7:53
So Molly, as you and I both know, we don't build relationships for our health and happiness only, right? So, sometimes there is a transaction to be had. And yet the most meaningful and fruitful relationships are more relational than transactional, as we've been discussing. What's your advice for helping leaders to focus on relationships while still recognizing that sometimes we need to seal the deal?

Molly Fletcher 8:15
Absolutely. And then there's absolutely a cadence to it, right? That you need to feel connected to and authentic with. Some of them, my advice is, you want to build the relationship and you want to give and I think you want to consistently keep relational versus transactional at the front of your mindset. But business is transactions at the end of the day, so we have to also sort of be real about that and recognize that.

Molly Fletcher 8:38
But what I often encourage people to do when I'm speaking is to say, okay, maybe your screensaver on your computer is “relational, not transactional.” Maybe it's on your phone, maybe it's a sticky note on your desk. But if you keep that front and center, it changes the way you show up fundamentally, right? It changes the way you navigate the conversation, it changes the kind of questions you ask, it changes your tone, it changes your timing, it changes all that. And I think what it does is allows you to respect yourself, your time and the value that you bring to the relationship enough to not allow yourself to be taken advantage of by overdelivering to a play.

Molly Fletcher 9:19
And I've made that mistake, right? Where I've recruited players who are in business and you're like, "Dude, these guys have no intention of doing anything." And we have to be honest about those things. We have to hit eject, or we pull back on the cadence of connection, if you will. But to me, it's just fundamentally a lens by which we look through that drives the way we show up that allows for deeper connection. But with enough respect for ourselves and for what we do and how we do it. It also helps ensure that we don't find ourselves being misled at some level relative to the relationship, which is important.

Alana Muller 10:02
Absolutely. Well, there's that old adage that people like doing business with people they know, like and trust. And so you should be that person. Right?

Molly Fletcher 10:09
100%. Yep. I mean, I think when you're inside of any conversation, particularly early on in a relationship, they're thinking, "Do I even like you? Do I even want to go to lunch with you, get a beer with you? Do I like you?"

Alana Muller 10:21
Yeah.

Molly Fletcher 10:22
And they need to be able to say yes to that. And then I think throughout the conversation, they're going, "You know, can I trust them? Like, are they full of BS? Are they..." And then I think that some of them are starting to pull back and ask themselves, "Can they help me? Like, can they do anything for me? Because I've got a lot going on. I'm busy. So I don't really have time. I don't want more friends. So can they help me?" And you want to find a way for them to say yes to those things.

Alana Muller 10:49
Molly, thinking back to your days as a sports agent, and then looking forward to the work you do now, in what ways have you seen people best overcome defeats and challenges and get back up to succeed?

Molly Fletcher 11:00
Wow, I mean, I saw a lot of challenges and frustration and injuries and trades that they didn't want and firings that they didn't want, and all those things. It's all about mindset, in my opinion, it's all about purpose. It's about going back to getting really clear on why you're doing what you're doing, why you're even chasing it, why you want to recover in the first place. Why do you want to get back up and go and get after it again? I think you've got to kind of know that at the core, for sure. And then I think you've got to say, "What's the self-talk that I need to have right now to take me where I want to go? What's the story I need to tell myself to go there?"

Molly Fletcher 11:39
And athletes use film to recover, right? They would go to the film of great hits, or great shots or great moments to kind of go, "Yeah, I'm good enough. I can do this." I think business people, we need, be it our core values, be it our purpose statement… I have a thing on my computer, I call it my “smile file.” I just drop great nuggets in there and read them. The kind of emails your guests are going to email me after the show, you know? No, I'm kidding.

Alana Muller 12:07
I love it, of course they are.

Molly Fletcher 12:09
But to me, you have to go to a place to allow yourself to reset quickly. And I think you've also got to be intentional about changing your physical state, right? Whenever my daughters were in college, or now if they're a little frustrated, or they're a little down, or they, you know… I'm always encouraging them to change their environment. Move, go workout, go walk, go get coffee with a friend, but you've got to change where you are and how you're showing up physically.

Alana Muller 12:36
I love that concept of change your environment. Change your environment. Just take a break, get yourself in a different headspace. And it really just changes everything, doesn't it? So Molly, the last time we talked, you told me that if you could have coffee with one person, anybody living, not living, fictional or nonfictional, you told me that your person would be Oprah Winfrey. So, let's say that I'm going to serve up a second cup of coffee. Who is another person that she would love to meet and why?

Molly Fletcher 13:05
Yeah, you know, I think I'd have to say Zig Ziglar. Just because of my journey and my story. I had the pleasure to meet him when I was a senior in college trying to sort of figure it out, all out, find my way. And he was always just somebody, I just love what he did. I loved how he did it. I couldn't even begin… we’d need more than one cup of coffee. Let me just put it to you that way. There'd be a lot of stuff...

Alana Muller 13:27
Love it.

Molly Fletcher 13:27
...that I need... I'd have to say, Zig.

Alana Muller 13:31
Well, and so, briefly, I'd love for you to tell the story of how you were able to get a meeting with him, because I thought it was like the most beautifully audacious thing I've ever heard. So, talk a little bit about that.

Molly Fletcher 13:41
When I was a kid, my dad's office was in our basement, and I would go down and I would read books by Zig Ziglar. So, I became familiar with Mr. Ziglar and I became familiar with his work and the power of words and the impact that can have on people's lives. And so when I started to approach graduating from college, I thought, I really would love to know how he got there. Like, what he did and how he did it and I'd love to meet him. And I did, I blew him up. I mean, emails, postcards… actually, there was no email… postcards, letters, phone calls, phone calls, postcards, letters, everything. And then saved up my money, he agreed to give me 20 minutes.

Molly Fletcher 14:17
I flew to Dallas and spent 20 minutes with him in his office and he was just so gracious, so kind, and it was a wonderful thing, because at some level, he said in a very kind, humble way. He looked at me and he said, "Molly, I appreciate that you want to do this, and I love it.” He said “But first, you need to go out into the world and do something, do anything, but go do something." And it's amazing how things work and my other big passion was sports. I was a student athlete at Michigan State, I was a tomboy growing up with two older brothers and so sports was my jam, too, big time. And so, that was sort of where I ran. I ran hard into that lane and loved every minute of it.

Molly Fletcher 14:58
And then I think somehow that sort of Zig bug bellied on up and I thought, "Man, I'm gonna write a book to help people." And I really wasn't thinking about Mr. Ziglar at the time. I just had a bunch of stuff that I thought could help people and I wrote it. And then that was when the speaking kind of unfolded. So, I wish I could say that I navigated it with a level of intention, but the truth is, it was actually really pretty organic and authentic and sort of how it unraveled and evolved.

Alana Muller 15:24
Well, I suspect that Mr. Ziglar would be very proud of you and would love to meet you again. So, I think that the fact that he had such a positive impact on you is really a cool thing. And maybe if he comes back to us someday, you'll get to have that cup of coffee. Love it.

Molly Fletcher 15:40
So often people will ask me, "Did you have a chance to thank Mr. Ziglar? Did you talk to him?" And I jumped into the speaking space full time in 2012, and that was the year he died. And so, fortunately, I'm connected with his son, Tom. And for that I'm really super grateful. But my only big regret is I never really got to thank him, to maybe even share a stage with him or be beside him. All of that would have been a real blessing.

Alana Muller 16:03
I love your story, I think it's great. And I've really loved having you on these two episodes of Enterprise.ing podcast. Thank you so much for joining. Molly Fletcher, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the Molly Fletcher Company?

Molly Fletcher 16:16
My podcast “Game Changers with Molly Fletcher” is an awesome place to start. We've had a blast with incredible guests, so I would say start there. And MollyFletcher.com, of course, is my website.

Alana Muller 16:26
Perfect. Molly Fletcher, thank you so much for being on Enterprise.ing podcast.

Molly Fletcher 16:31
Thank you.

Alana Muller 16:34
Thanks for joining us this week on Enterprise.ing. Be sure to visit our website, enterprisebank.com/podcast, to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. If you found value in today's program, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or telling a friend about us. Enterprise.ing: powering business leaders, one conversation at a time.

Alana Muller 16:58
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