Latest / Reframe First / Michael Hvisdos, Founder at BETR & CEO of inQuizo | Why Curiosity Drives Performance in the AI Era
Transcript
- Oleksij Rak: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. I'm Alexey, the host of the podcast. Let me welcome our today's guest, Michael Vizdos. Michael is founder and CEO at Inquiso. Michael also founder at Better Ink. ⁓ Michael, it's great having you here. Yeah, discussion. ⁓ what your bets about the upcoming future, like next six, 12 months from now? Where do you think all of that is going? Especially given the pressure of this ever-changing world, the pressure of AI, the pressure ⁓ of ⁓ being about their job security is burning out and stuff. Michael Hvisdos: Hi Alexei, it's great to be here, thanks for having me. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, thanks a lot for joining. So what I read, like in Quizzle is contemporary business solution agency, which helps like both like Fortune 500 companies and ⁓ startups worldwide ⁓ compete in today's ever changed business environment. That's actually what we are about to discuss today, like the changing world. So it is changing. Like Michael, maybe could we start with you telling us more about like what you do in Bosk? I don't think it's going. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, it's a hard question. I think this, for all the people listening this, would say don't ⁓ lose of the value that you bring. Because despite the tools, ⁓ you are super valuable in how you help interpret the output that these tools are giving you. Oleksij Rak: businesses and what the purpose of these companies is and we will start from there. you Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, absolutely. Start with Inquiso. We founded Inquiso basically as an organization that would look deeper into what makes high performers high performers. key thing to keep in mind is you've got to be able to be interpretation point. So if you're just defaulting to here's what we do and how we do it, or here's what we sell and how we sell it, you're always going to get left behind. Like you've got to create the insight barrier, the layer that's between these two things. And if you can bring insights and interpret the data and the outputs in a way that makes sense and brings meaning to organizations you're engaging, then you're always going to have high value. And as we started to do research around high performers, one of the innate behaviors that we saw that was very different than other performers was their level of curiosity. And the interesting thing about curiosity is for years, people thought it was an innate behavior, but it's actually a learned behavior. And we've been able to prove that too. But that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is this, when we sort of came to discover curiosity as being this, Oleksij Rak: you Michael Hvisdos: regardless of the economic conditions we're in. So you have to do that. Now to do that, you also have to embrace the tools around you. So if you're not doing AI today, you better start using AI. AI is going to be synonymous with Google for us. It's a better way to get more... Oleksij Rak: So. Michael Hvisdos: secret ingredient, if you will, we started to look at how important was curiosity performance? And we were able to, through our research, find a direct link curiosity and performance. And what's fascinating about it is this, if you help nurture and improve someone's curiosity level, the performance follows it. So it is vital to ⁓ performance today. That opened up a whole lot of other questions of how... ⁓ Oleksij Rak: you Michael Hvisdos: research done faster, but more perspective that's beyond what your own thinking is, right? Because it's crowdsourcing information for you. So you have to do that. For companies, I would say this, you've got to really start to focus on the behaviors of your people actually a shift back towards effectiveness. We have over-processed, over-tooled things for a long time. much or how important is curiosity in other areas. And through that research, we're not only to see the link between curiosity and performance, but we also find the link between curiosity and a person's ability to innovate and curiosity and their engagement at work too. So curiosity is this foundational piece that's behind it. We still continue to do research and help companies understand curiosity. But that led us into business too, which is Better Inc. And that's really helping companies Oleksij Rak: . Mm-hmm. . Michael Hvisdos: And even if you look at the amount of time I have to engage somebody today, it's a lot less than it was because of everything that you're asking me to do. So if you don't start to focus on effectiveness over efficiency, you're going to lose the game because not only one, are you being judged when you're in front of your clients today, the number two, you were back getting the same number of at bats with them. Oleksij Rak: Next, I'm to be talking about the system and the behaviors that I need to help me. Michael Hvisdos: build the operating systems and the behaviors that they need to help people compete in this ever-changing business world that they have. So these businesses are interconnected. They go hand in hand with each other curiosity is so foundational to all of Oleksij Rak: Mm-mm. Michael Hvisdos: So you have to bring value in every interaction you have, which requires you to think different, prepare different, engage different. if you want to earn the next meeting, if don't bring the value, you will never get it. So you've got to really start to focus on effectiveness today, not just the efficiency piece. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Yeah, that's a good point because curiosity nowadays is really, really important, especially in the age of AI, when the business landscape is changing so rapidly that without to adapt and without that and continuous learning, you cannot keep up with the world. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Like these are two great points that you raised today. Like for me personally, the first one is like effectiveness over efficiency. And that's what I feel myself and that's like what we are struggling to change the whole organization towards. that's from what I understand that that's what you do. How do you boost the curiosity itself? How do you improve it? Michael Hvisdos: Well, it's a learned muscle, right? And what we is there's basically two types of curiosity. There's diversive and epistemic curiosity. Diversive curiosity is sort of instant gratification curiosity. And unfortunately with the tools we have... Oleksij Rak: the second one is about the buyer behavior that's changed. So yeah, all of us understand that we need to adapt, we need to learn, we need to step in some other shoes, other company's shoes, ⁓ whatever, and them value. First understand them, then bring value, but you kind of summarize it together. Yeah, awesome. That's a great discussion. ⁓ Before ⁓ wrap up, Mm-hmm. Michael Hvisdos: And just as an example, Google, a lot of people that have grown up with technology, especially some of our younger generations, are so used to immediacy. So they have a question, they need an answer, they search for that answer, they get the answer and they move. But that's not the curiosity that we're talking about. What we're talking about ⁓ is ⁓ layers are behind it. Like, how did that answer come to be? ⁓ What the trend that got it there? Oleksij Rak: Do you anything else to add on top of that? Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, I'll just add like a quote that sort of stuck with me over the years. comes from an author, name's Liz Wiseman, and she wrote... couple of great books, one of those is Ricky Smarts, but she says this, in a growth organization or growth company, right, we are under qualified every day. And the reason that has stuck with me, Alexi, is this, right, the world keeps moving and changing and evolving, right, and the pace is faster and faster. But even as we go from a startup to our infancy stage or our infancy to a small business and small business to a medium-sized business, different. What makes that so important? And when you start to ask the deeper questions behind just the answer that you were given, you start to train your brain to look at things a different way. That is the learned muscle part of it. That's what we call epistemic curiosity. And when we start to train ourselves to do that, we read things different, we see things different, we dig into things different, whether it's in our client interactions that we have, whether it's internal conversations that we have, and that's the muscle we're talking about nurturing. So this is a learned behavior, but it's also a behavior that is nurtured by creating in the environment that allows it to be nurtured. And unfortunately, in a lot of organizations, Oleksij Rak: Yep. You Yeah. Michael Hvisdos: And if we don't adapt and we don't change, we become irrelevant pretty quick. So if we just embrace that and lean into it with a high level of curiosity, think everybody is going to be much more successful. we see is the opposite, right? We see structure and process and compliance and people so focused on time that they actually shut down the ability for people to be curious. And the more you sequester that or shut it down, the tendency is for the individual to shut themself down. And now you're not nurturing that curiosity more. And that's the danger that most organizations have. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, for sure. Especially in today's world, when every year it changes like it's like 10 years before. yeah, yeah. Thanks a lot for this discussion. It was a great one. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah. Oleksij Rak: luck for you in what you're building in both companies. Michael Hvisdos: Great, thank you so much, Lexi, for having me and look forward to staying in touch with you and to seeing how things evolve and we'll talk again in the future. Oleksij Rak: So you need to go through some kind of organizational change to be able to empower people and to make people ⁓ Yeah, yeah, looking forward to that. Thanks again. Have a great day. Michael Hvisdos: Alright, you're welcome. You too, bye bye. It is. It's allowing the time for it to be there and to be nurtured, right? And I guess Google's a good example of this. For years, they've been talking about hiring for two things, resilience and curiosity. And they create environments that allow people to ⁓ and... innovate and do different things and when they hire people they actually test for curiosity levels too through the interactions and presentations that they do. So this isn't new to business. A lot of people just don't pay attention to it and we're trying to help open our eyes to that to look at it different way. Oleksij Rak: you mentioned that companies are about ⁓ fast and focusing on time and stuff, ⁓ still working with startups. Startups are always about run, run, run. ⁓ How do you work with curiosity in startups? Because ⁓ it's about... Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Oleksij Rak: are fighting with time because they never have time to do anything other than the ⁓ focus of their business. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, so these aren't mutually exclusive. Speed, we know, is important in business, especially in startups, right? So what we're saying is don't let go of speed and slow yourself down just to be more curious, but use curiosity as a way to not only stay fast, Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Michael Hvisdos: but to stay effective as well. So a lot of times when we get into speed and you start to get into businesses as they mature, we start to put in process, which is necessary, tools to help manage those processes. But when you even start to look at a lot of those tools, they're very efficiency based. And what we're trying to do is squeeze more and more and more out of people that way. Oleksij Rak: you Michael Hvisdos: But that doesn't give us the end result we're looking for. And then we step back and say, well, why isn't that? Like, I've got the tools. I understand what people are doing. And I know the conversations we're having. We're recording these now through Gong and all these other kinds of things. And that's because the tools stack, if you will, inside a lot of companies is efficiency-focused. It's not effectiveness-focused. So we've over rotated in business to efficiency, squeezed more out of people. And if you just look at our staffing levels are smaller and all of those kinds of things today, right? But we're not equipping the individual to be affected nor are we clearing space for them to do that too. So speed and effectiveness need to go together. They can't be exclusive of each other. And that's so important in business today. Oleksij Rak: And like if you work with some companies, like how long does it usually take to transform the culture of the company to... I'm like for myself, for my company, ⁓ how does it take to transform from performance orientation I understand what you're saying about curiosity because that's also my Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, no, it's great question. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: with the age of AI, visibility, with the tools that you're getting that's empowering Like ⁓ turns on and at some point you start feeling like, wow, I am performing way better, way faster than it was before. ⁓ that's some personal cultural change, know, but how long does it take for company to ⁓ through these stages? Michael Hvisdos: Yeah. Very complex question, right? Because a lot of it has to do with the environment and the operating systems that you put in place to nurture it. Oleksij Rak: Thanks. Michael Hvisdos: ⁓ it's behavioral, right? And so behaviors aren't changed through a training program. They're changed through awareness building, through application, through repetition, and by creating the ecosystem and operating systems that allow it to go. So when companies do that well, right, and you're talking about behavior shift, Oleksij Rak: that. Okay. Michael Hvisdos: you're looking at about a 12 to 18 month window to get your feet underneath you and start running fast. So that's when it typically happens. Oleksij Rak: you Michael Hvisdos: The downside to this is this, if you keep pulling people back into the old way, then you have a lot of starts and stops and the behaviors really never take place. But if you look at an adult professional, there's a study done about five years ago from the University of London and they'll tell you this, to change one behavior in an adult professional, it takes 66 days on average. Now that's the average, the spread is 18 days to 254. Why is that? Because we know some people are more stubborn than others, right? They're used to the old way. They dig in, right? It's sort of like that horse that just won't go. It doesn't matter how hard you pull it, it's digging in, right? So it does take time, effort, and repetition, but it takes the right environment and ecosystem and operating system to make it go, too. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, 12 to 18 months windows, that's a lot. yeah, I understand that. And what kind of industries are usually like your clients? ⁓ Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, that's a great question. We do actually work across all types of different industries that are out there. So we're industry agnostic, right? This is a more of way people choose to not only develop their people and to help them be successful and more effective. And that doesn't matter if it's how they engage their clients or how they work internally as an organization. So we've been agnostic to that and we've done work across financial services and all kinds of healthcare and pharma and med tech and all those types of devices. We do a ton of work in the technology space all kinds of different providers from software to hardware to security to cloud, all of those. So we've been fortunate enough where ⁓ this is something that needs to be an eight tip every business to be successful versus this is only a play for say like technology and that's it. Oleksij Rak: But mostly I understand this technology finance world, pharma. So it's not creative industries. Michael Hvisdos: Well, no, the creative too, business services we work with. We work with, I've worked with folks that are in the area for like TV and programming and they things that way. So we've been all over the place different organizations that are there. And what's fascinating is there are certain organizations where you can actually see this whole curiosity mentality. Google's one of them, but take a really creative organization like Pixar. They've been employing this kind of mentality since their inception. And that's really what put them on the map, right? They're super creative that way because we know that I'm going to innovate, I can't innovate if I'm not creative, but I can't be creative if I'm not curious. So there's a pathway or formula that leads to innovation and it starts with curiosity being foundational to that. Oleksij Rak: Okay, yeah, yeah, that's good. And ⁓ regards like, what of repetitive patterns that you see like when you're engaging with every new client, you're coming over and it's again, the same pattern, the same one. So like, what are like repetitive challenges? ⁓ like patterns that you notice there. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, the biggest one we already talked about a little bit is this over rotation towards efficiency versus effectiveness, right? So pushing people to do more faster. And when we're put under that kind of pressure, we default to. what's easy, right? Because speed, to get speed, we go to things that are fast and simple for us. So take something as simple as I want to engage a new client, and I really want to talk to them about how I can bring value to their business. If I don't do ⁓ certain amount of prep work to come into that call, and if I don't exercise that curiosity, What I default to with them is a product-based conversation. what I do, here's how we do it, ⁓ cetera, et cetera. That's not what today's buyer wants to hear. ⁓ why is that? Because ⁓ have access to the same tools that we have access to. So most buyers come into a conversation or decision makers come into a conversation well read in. And the research would tell us that when they're willing to spend time with us, between 50 and 80 % of their decisions already made. So they've already researched us. So if I don't take the time to research them, if I don't come in with a point of view, some insight to shape their thinking, and talk about the things that are so important to them, like their business and their outcomes and the challenges they're faced with, right, and the risks that they have, they automatically start to tune out because they know that the only reason I'm there is for me. So it's a self-serving that I'm leaving them the impression with versus you're here to help me. Right? So just that little start is something that needs to be totally different in business today. Because whether it's the Gen Z folks or whether it's the folks before them, we call that group Millennials. I hate using that term because people don't like to be labeled when they're in that group. But they are well read in. They're technology natives and they're doing their own homework and their research and they're super smart and more educated than most people in the workforce have ever been. If I come into that conversation and they are education levels up here on what they're trying to do, then they don't have time for me. So unfortunately, what we see because of that is people tune out of conversations very quickly. So they're judging us, if you will. And what they're listening for is this. Who are you here to talk about, number one? If you're here talk about you, game over. Number two, do you get me? And what they're listening for is like, did you do your homework? Do you understand the world I live in? Right? And refreshing to them because what they don't want to do is waste their valuable time educating you. And then the third thing that they really want to know is this, what can you teach me that I don't know or that I can't read? Okay. So when you go through that progression, they automatically lean in a different way. Oleksij Rak: Okay. Michael Hvisdos: But that's what they're expecting from us today. So it's not that they won't spend time with us so they don't value us. What they do value is the perspective you bring the things you see other people do ⁓ how you can help them achieve their outcomes. Now all that ties back to a different way that you need to think and do things, curiosity if you will, to prep in for a conversation today. Because without that, you just don't get to the same place. And because people are so under pressure to perform today, if you, if they tune out in your conversation, getting them to reengage is really, really difficult because of that. So we're being judged, right? Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense because you're asking for their attention and for their time, you know, and that's why they want to know like if they will get value from the amount of of time, the amount of time that they have spent. So quite likely that's reason they judge. How long does it take ⁓ to for such an engagement? ⁓ Michael Hvisdos: Sure. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, like Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, that's a great question. ⁓ It can vary. ⁓ What we do see is this, the more you prepare differently, right, and you focus on the business of the clients that you're going to engage, the more natural you'll start to do this and the faster you'll start to do it. Okay. So that's me a different way, ⁓ as I go through my preparation. So ⁓ pick up speed. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Michael Hvisdos: effectiveness, the more you do this and exercise that muscle. It have to be a long period of time today. If you a ⁓ good 20 to 40 minutes really digging into an organization, you'll start to understand them better. And here's the fun part, Alexi. With AI, it's much easier. Oleksij Rak: you Yep. Michael Hvisdos: And if I start to prompt my AI tool with different way of thinking, as I dig into these organizations and try to understand them, then that pattern of thinking resides in my AI tool for use over and over and over and over again. So I can go back to that tool and say, we did this for the last three companies. I'm going to engage company number four. I want you to apply the same level of research, dig into the same areas with that prompt and give me the similar outputs that are there. Here it comes, right? So tools are important for us to help make this easier. But the gap that we see is people aren't spending the time even though the tools exist. Or if they're doing it, they're still doing it from a point of view of their product versus what are the business challenges this client's actually facing today? And how can I help them with those things? And now I've created more value. And that's really the difference here. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, I absolutely hear you because that's actually what we are doing like me and my team doing with regards to this podcast like every new like ⁓ Company we're interviewing can you every new podcast we're interviewing so we are doing some research for sure So we're trying to understand the business they are working in like the potential channel challenges this kind of business has and so on so it does take time to like to put into that research But if you've done it once or twice, you know becomes like easier, you you can streamline it, especially within the same industry, if you had a similar kind of guest already, like of a similar kind of business model. So yeah, that's why I understand. And what kind of tools are you using like to, you mentioned like you got some AI tools and what kind of tools, processes do you have? it's not ⁓ know-how. ⁓ Michael Hvisdos: Yeah. Yeah, I- Yeah, no, I mean, there's obviously the internal know-how, but, you know, I use some cross references, like, so I do a lot with chat, Gemini, and right? So I'm looking at things from a couple of different angles just to ⁓ sure I'm seeing similar things. And the thing that I'm starting to see ⁓ that outputs are ⁓ closer and closer and closer as AI learns. mean, there's nuances to certain platforms where some are more research-based, some are more creative-based, right? Some will do design work where others won't do that. So I think there's those things that can help you ⁓ build if you need to build content. But ⁓ I even working with a client here recently and we digging into their customers and creating some talk tracks to engage their customers different. And in that room, we had five people that were using five different AI tools. So once we created the thinking pattern, the flow pattern, if you will, of this, so they were being more curious in a different way, at the end of that, what we did is a really interesting experiment. We said, now take this thought pattern, plug it into your different AI tools, and let's see what the output looks like. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Michael Hvisdos: And what was super fascinating is they were probably 98 % the same. it's really, again, how you, and we know this from AI, how you prompt it ⁓ you better quality. So those prompts, the thinking pattern that you're giving it to work with, which is your curiosity to get those outputs is super critical. So even with AI, it's not that we don't see AI as a threat to the individual. I think there's workflow things that AI will definitely help improve. But still requires us to prompt it in a way to get a more meaningful output to go have a conversation around. So ⁓ needs us to create that interface. The second thing it does is this, even when we get outputs from AI, ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yep. Michael Hvisdos: the people that we engage in conversations with, they still want to know like, okay, what are you seeing in your other client locations or customers that's similar to this? So what they don't get through AI is they don't get perspective. So when I'm working with an organization, one of the things we talk about is this, we see hundreds and thousands of applications even related to what we do, right? That is like the golden ticket for any company. Because at the end of the day, when I'm talking to a new prospect, what they want to hear is, how am doing compared to the other people you deal with? the interpretation piece of it is still vital. And AI won't give you that. It'll get you prepped in and give you all that and even give you things to think about and talk about. But you still have to interpret it in a way that brings value to somebody and show them how it compares to other things you're saying. Oleksij Rak: . Michael Hvisdos: It isn't going to eliminate the human interface. I think it actually makes it more important. And it also makes it more important in my opinion because of the amount of misinformation that's out there too. And unfortunately, we're seeing the misinformation piece come into business, right? So it's being weaponized, if you will, even to discredit organizations and people and things like that. So without us, is that human interface? Oleksij Rak: No. Michael Hvisdos: always the risk of ⁓ getting what it tells me and having the wrong answer. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah, absolutely physicals like you mentioned that you were in group and like everybody is using ⁓ was using some different AI tools. It sounds like there is no like some like it's like AI Adoption adoption is like more individual right now than like ⁓ strategic in each company like from your experience like working with like ⁓ companies ⁓ from from like most recent ones like How far is the business adoption of AI? Not the individual, like everybody's using the HTTP, TGP, whatever nowadays, right? But how do businesses adapt? How do they streamline their business, like operational business processes? Is it there already? Do they have strategy in place? usually there is no strategy. Let's just blindly start using some tools. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, it's... Oleksij Rak: and then tools break and then they don't really understand the return on investment into these tools. are businesses that you're working with. Michael Hvisdos: Yeah. They're all over the board. There are businesses, especially smaller organizations and medium-sized businesses that are still very individual ⁓ application-focused. There's even some larger companies that are the same way. But I think ⁓ organizations, and there's two parts of this, Oleksij Rak: You Yeah. Michael Hvisdos: understand AI and become more sophisticated with it. They're doing two things. One is they're trying to prevent fragmentation throughout their organization. So they're, they're steering people towards a single AI kind of platform or tool. because they don't want that fragmentation. And really what they're trying to protect against too is you spending x for it, me spending something different, somebody else doing the third, right? So they're trying to control costs. And this is no different than when cell phones came out a long time ago, if you remember that, right? We all grabbed one and the cost per minute was super high and companies went, ⁓ my God, we can't spend this. And they started to narrow it down and started to give us those tools then, right? that's part of the second part, which I think is ⁓ more ⁓ important is when company ⁓ understands importance of AI and AI adoption, and they go to a uniform tool, they're also allowing that tool to have access to the firewall inside their company. And so with that tool having access to that, it starts to... ⁓ understand the collateral and how it communicates externally and all those kinds of things and it pulls that into the outputs that it gives you. So it allows you to tailor the outputs more specifically to your organization. still requires you though to interpret it in a way and prompt it in a way that brings value to the client that you're going to engage or the prospect you're going to engage. Oleksij Rak: So. Michael Hvisdos: So I see people on both sides of that spectrum, but the better ones are moving more towards having AI not only help people externally, but internally the same way. Oleksij Rak: touched a about like, ⁓ we've touched a about AI, we've touched a bit about Gen Z, like what other trends do you see on the market that are touching like your business and clients businesses? Like what are my... Michael Hvisdos: Yeah, think a big one is buyer behavior. know, buyers are so different today. And we've been talking about this through Better for a long time, but I really still think that a lot of companies don't appreciate how different they are. There was a study, a really interesting study that was done about five, four or five years ago now. I think it was from Gartner. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Michael Hvisdos: And they basically came out and said, if you look at this from the sales side, they came out and said 72 % of B2B buyers never want to meet with a salesperson ever again. Now that's an alarming thing, right? So right away, my curiosity kicked in. I'm like, why? Like, what's driving this? So I won't get into all the details, but the big thing that was driving the number at the time is that at this point, at that point in time, 48 % of B2B buyers fell into that age group of 29 to 39. So that's our millennial group, right? So what we're seeing is this change over in the workforce. And the way those people operate, technology natives, super well-read in, all this kind of stuff we've talked about already, shapes the way they buy things. Now that group is, that population's up to about 68 % of B2B buyers. So it's big, and it's also different. Gen Z has a lot of similarities, but they're also slightly different than that too. So what we don't see, Oleksij Rak: you . Michael Hvisdos: are companies adapting to the buyers that they're dealing with. So buyers are different. The amount of information they have at their fingertips is significantly different. Their decisions are shaped through every single click of the mouse they have when they're doing their own research. So that's different. It requires us to be disruptive, to open their eyes to look at things different ways. So that's different. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm Michael Hvisdos: Complexity in size organizations, how decisions are made is different. There's more people involved in decisions, not less. And the average is somewhere between 11 and 14 today. So there's a lot of people that you have to get unified to make a decision, right? So if you look at complexity and buyer change and all those kinds of things, unfortunately, where a lot of people end up today in their conversations is in no decision. And they're there because they're not helping people not only see things different, but once they get them to see things different, they're not helping them navigate the complexities inside their own organizations to get change to happen. And when that happens, default to, don't time. So part what I've got to understand is how this buyer is moving and adjusting, and I have to adjust to that. I've got to understand all this complexity. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Michael Hvisdos: And what I've got to do is help them through the change process and try to make it simple and easier and all those kinds of things. If I don't do that, they very quickly will just stop and be like, don't have time for it. Because the easiest thing for us all to do is to do exactly what we're doing today. And that's why change is so hard in these companies. So it is very different. We are in a very different buying environment. And there are going to be people even that listen to this recording and people I talk to are like, yeah, but you know, I still got these buyers that are in their 50s and 60s, right? What I can tell you is this, they've had to adapt too. Some of them are using the same tools. So it isn't just that they're old school or they think the old way. They are evolving because if they want to be relevant, they have to evolve. Which means we all have to evolve too. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Yeah, these percentages are kind of alarming, I would say. And since the ⁓ landscape has changed, how do you think they should be approached from perspective? What do you think otherwise that they expect, and how should they be approached? How do sell? ⁓ How should sell it? ⁓ Michael Hvisdos: Yeah. Yeah, no, it goes back to the things we talked about earlier. One is I've got to focus on the companies I'm engaging in, their business, their outcomes, their risks, their challenges. So if I come in talk about product, they immediately see me as a product person or a catalog person. But if I can demonstrate to them that I I understand what you're dealing with. Now I start to align myself to them. The second piece is, is I can't be superficial with that. I've got to be able to not only show them that I understand what they're dealing with, but I did my homework, right? And I give them the details around that too. So they want to know that you put effort in and that you did your own research, your own homework, because they don't want to educate you. Where they want you to educate yourself. Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Michael Hvisdos: The third thing is, is you gotta give them perspective. You gotta give them insight. You gotta open their thinking and show them like, even when people have the best intention, they go down this path and here's why. unfortunately, when they go down this path, this is what they miss and here's the consequence. So what I'm doing with that is I'm bringing in a perspective that they cannot see through their own research and AI. the disruptive moment. When people go down this path, here's they miss and here's why. So that's me taking my knowledge now with all of that research that I've done and creating value in the conversation that I'm having. is increasing your curiosity. Is happening here? I wonder we're about to make that same mistake. So curiosity comes on sides but when I open up their thinking then it's not like ⁓ no we're already dealing with that. It's like ⁓ did I miss that? And that's a very different conversation than they have with them. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, they are, I told, do help with all that research. Yeah, to help you do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. my usual question, like I always ask, like if you could fix something with a snap of your fingers, like what would it be? Cause like ⁓ business has something. ⁓ Michael Hvisdos: Done. Yeah, I would say there's probably two things. One is that create an environment inside the organization that nurtures curiosity and really understand how important it is. That's number one. Number two is this. You can't change behaviors in an organization through training. You change them by how you engage and coach around that training, but you've got to do that in a way that's not focused on inspection and compliance and that you're focused on behavior and actions and movement. I've got to engage a different way to do that, but I've got to create the operating systems that will also allow those behaviors to shift. Every organization we see today, unfortunately, has every best intention to try to equip their people different. So I'll spend money, I'll provide training, I'll do whatever I need to do to help you, but what I'm not doing is nurturing the behaviors that go with that. And by default, people either revert or they plateau. Oleksij Rak: . Mm-hmm. Michael Hvisdos: And those are two very dangerous places to be because the investment that was just made in those individuals basically goes away.