Latest / Expertise Made Real / Luck, Coincidence, or Talent? How to Tell What You’re Actually Good At With Jeff Matlow

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Luck, Coincidence, or Talent? How to Tell What You’re Actually Good At With Jeff Matlow · Expertise Made Real

• 0:00
  How many times does someone have to get something right before you can call it expertise?
• 0:06
  Today I'm back with Jeff Matlow, leadership whisperer and chief pattern spotter at the best leadership company.
• 0:14
  Last time, we talked about hiding in the corner.
• 0:16
  This time, Jeff shares what he looks for first when he's trying to spot expertise inside someone who doesn't see it in themselves.
• 0:24
  Using a role he borrowed from his days in the music business, we we also talk about what parenting and teaching can show us about leadership.
• 0:33
  It's time for this rocket to take off.
• 0:36
  Welcome to Expertise Made Real.
• 0:38
  I'm your host, Kristen N.
• 0:39
  Spencer, and you're listening to the launch series for this podcast where experts from different fields describe for us the exact moment where they tangibly noticed the expertise they had already been acting on for years because it took something
• 0:54
  or someone outside themselves to reveal how their experience could become expertise.
• 1:00
  Plus, each guest will give you tools and tips on how you can adjust your own expertise to reflect important lessons they've learned throughout the years.
• 1:09
  The value in each and every episode of this launch series runs deep, and I can't wait for you to dive in.
• 1:16
  So let's get started.
• 1:19
  Hello.
• 1:19
  Welcome back.
• 1:20
  We have Jeff again.
• 1:21
  I'm so excited.
• 1:23
  Jeff, you told me that you wanted to talk about the fact that everybody has an expertise.
• 1:30
  So are you ready for the question that came up?
• 1:32
  I am so ready for the question.
• 1:34
  Oh, wait, I gotta go.
• 1:35
  Bye.
• 1:38
  Okay, so what do you always look for first when you're trying to spot the expertise hiding inside someone who doesn't see it in themselves?
• 1:48
  And I think this will go back to our last episode a little bit where we talked about hiding in the corner.
• 1:54
  Right, Right.
• 1:56
  What do I look for?
• 1:57
  That's a good question.
• 1:59
  Everything I do in my work is framed on failures, and I have a shitload of failures.
• 2:09
  Am I allowed to swear on this?
• 2:12
  I don't know if I would consider that a swear word.
• 2:16
  Okay,.
• 2:16
  So I think we're good.
• 2:18
  And I have a lot of failures, and so that's kind of the basis where I can look at things.
• 2:25
  All right, did they do things like I did, or are they doing it better than I did?
• 2:30
  Are they doing it the way I've learned how to do, or are they doing it the way I screwed up?
• 2:34
  And when I see basic things like that, I start understanding.
• 2:41
  I start looking for the pattern of what they do really well, of where their expertise is.
• 2:46
  For instance, I was a terrible communicator in my companies because it was all in my head, and everybody's supposed to have esp.
• 2:55
  I mean, that's what I assumed.
• 2:57
  All my employees were supposed to know what I was thinking.
• 3:00
  And that didn't work out so well for me.
• 3:04
  And I learned to communicate better.
• 3:06
  And so when I talk to, I have this one client who I ask him what he does in his one on ones.
• 3:13
  And usually you get.
• 3:16
  We go through the tasks and it's.
• 3:18
  I don't really like it and it's boring.
• 3:19
  And he comes back with, well, we talk about where they're going in their career for the first 15 minutes and then we talk about any challenges they're having in their role and all these things.
• 3:33
  And that tells me, all right, there's somebody who's probably really good at connecting with other people, bringing out the best in them and inspiring others.
• 3:47
  And so I'll start looking at, okay, is that a pattern somewhere?
• 3:50
  And.
• 3:51
  And if I see it at least three times, then it becomes a pattern.
• 3:58
  You know what, this comes back from my music business days.
• 4:01
  So I started off in the music industry, and the way I judge bands is if they had one great song, it was luck.
• 4:12
  Two great songs as coincidence and three great songs as talent.
• 4:16
  And so I bring that idea here, like, if they do things, if an employee or if somebody does something great, once they got lucky, do it twice.
• 4:25
  It's coincidence.
• 4:27
  Do it three times.
• 4:28
  That's an expertise.
• 4:30
  Oh, I love that.
• 4:31
  Oh, my gosh.
• 4:32
  And it's so quantifiable.
• 4:34
  Yes.
• 4:35
  That makes the SOP part of my heart leap with joy.
• 4:38
  Oh, I love the SOP parts of hearts when they leap.
• 4:42
  Yes.
• 4:45
  I mean, do you want to talk like, I know about your music background, but the audience doesn't.
• 4:50
  Do you want to talk a little bit about it?
• 4:53
  Sure, sure.
• 4:54
  So, you know, when I grew up, I played all the instruments and I was a DJ and I managed and produced and all that stuff.
• 5:01
  And then around junior year of college, I realized I actually had no talent whatsoever and I wasn't going to be a rock star.
• 5:09
  But where my expertise was was on the business side.
• 5:13
  And so when it comes to business, I loved music, but I was focused on business.
• 5:20
  And so I came out to Los Angeles from the east coast and got a job at A and M Records.
• 5:27
  First I worked at EMI and A and M and some others.
• 5:30
  And I was doing A and R, which was talent search.
• 5:33
  So finding bands and making the records with them and.
• 5:37
  And all that.
• 5:38
  And got to work with some interesting people, great people, talented people.
• 5:44
  Yes.
• 5:45
  Creatives, let's say.
• 5:46
  Right?
• 5:47
  Creative.
• 5:47
  Creatives.
• 5:47
  Creative people.
• 5:48
  Right.
• 5:51
  And then I started my own record company, and that did well for a few years until it got acquired by Interscope Universal.
• 6:00
  And then I moved.
• 6:03
  No big deal.
• 6:04
  And then I moved on to a different industry.
• 6:07
  I had to get my face out of town.
• 6:12
  I mean, as someone who's from Los Angeles, I always am like, oh, yes, Los Angeles is in this story.
• 6:17
  But I know it's like hit or miss, and you either love it or you hate it.
• 6:22
  Right.
• 6:23
  I love the weather.
• 6:24
  I would move away in a second.
• 6:27
  In fact, constant conversation with my wife, who.
• 6:30
  She grew up in Brooklyn.
• 6:32
  My whole family.
• 6:33
  I grew up in Connecticut.
• 6:34
  All New England.
• 6:35
  My whole family's still in New England.
• 6:37
  Her whole family is two miles from us.
• 6:40
  And so we're probably not leaving.
• 6:45
  However, we went up to Bend, Oregon, my wife and I, about a month ago.
• 6:49
  Oh.
• 6:49
  I have a really good friend who lives there, actually.
• 6:52
  It seems everybody has a connection to Bend.
• 6:54
  Yeah, I know.
• 6:55
  And it's such a small place.
• 6:57
  It's weird, right?
• 6:58
  Right.
• 6:59
  I love it.
• 6:59
  We fell in love with it.
• 7:01
  I actually started looking at real estate up there.
• 7:03
  And our daughter still has four years before, five years before she's.
• 7:08
  Before we kick her out of the house and change the locks.
• 7:11
  So probably in five years, I hope we're in the high desert.
• 7:18
  Okay.
• 7:19
  All right.
• 7:19
  Well, I mean, either place, any place is gonna be great.
• 7:23
  Cause you'll make it home.
• 7:24
  I know that.
• 7:25
  Yeah.
• 7:27
  Yes.
• 7:28
  But, you know, Los Angeles has some cool things, including now my daughter lives there, so.
• 7:33
  There you go.
• 7:35
  So we can go visit her so we don't have to live there.
• 7:37
  What is she doing out here?
• 7:39
  So she's actually going to Cal State Long beach, which is where my husband and I went and met and then got married.
• 7:45
  Yes.
• 7:46
  So she's continuing the legacy.
• 7:48
  That's great.
• 7:50
  And, yeah, Southern California has a thing.
• 7:55
  You come here and it's hard to leave.
• 7:58
  It is hard to leave.
• 7:59
  It's like a trap.
• 8:00
  Yes.
• 8:00
  We'll see if she comes back.
• 8:01
  She's talking about moving back to Pennsylvania, but who knows?
• 8:04
  Okay, so this is actually perfect because when you were describing how you are getting someone to see the expertise in themselves, and you were like, well, did they do better than I did or not?
• 8:16
  I actually thought about parenting, because in parenting, we're not really allowed to do that.
• 8:22
  We can't be like, oh, please don't make the same mistakes that I made.
• 8:26
  Because our kids are like, what are you even talking about?
• 8:29
  So do you feel like parenting helped you do what you do today?
• 8:35
  Better than you would have otherwise.
• 8:37
  So as you were saying, we can't say that as parents.
• 8:40
  The only thing going through my mind was, oh, shit, I screwed that up, too.
• 8:46
  I think it depends on the delivery, right?
• 8:49
  But if you're like, don't do what I did, like, literally, if you say that, that never goes over well.
• 8:54
  Yeah, it doesn't.
• 8:55
  It doesn't.
• 8:56
  But I still say it, which is probably not right.
• 9:00
  However, let's change that subject, because that's not making look so good.
• 9:04
  The.
• 9:04
  I think the best examples of leadership are parents and teachers.
• 9:10
  In fact, I bring that up with my clients all the time.
• 9:13
  One of my first.
• 9:14
  In the first calls I have with them, I find out, do they have a spouse and do they have kids?
• 9:20
  Because the spouse will answer the question for real.
• 9:25
  So I sometimes will say, what are you?
• 9:28
  What are your weaknesses?
• 9:29
  Or some version of that.
• 9:31
  And then it's better for me to say, okay, what is your spouse like?
• 9:34
  If I asked your husband, your wife, your partner, what would they say?
• 9:39
  What is their answer?
• 9:39
  And they'll say, I don't know.
• 9:40
  Okay, go ask them and text me the answer.
• 9:44
  Oh, I love that.
• 9:45
  Information gathering,.
• 9:47
  Right?
• 9:48
  And so you kind of find out the truth or where.
• 9:50
  Where it all meets.
• 9:52
  But I often say, if they have kids, I always go back to raising kids and parenting and.
• 10:00
  All right, your two kids are fighting over the Lego piece.
• 10:03
  What do you do?
• 10:04
  Because that's exactly what your VP Marketing and your VP Sales are doing right now.
• 10:12
  And.
• 10:12
  They both think they're right.
• 10:13
  And they both think they're right.
• 10:14
  And they might be right.
• 10:16
  They both might be right.
• 10:17
  I always say there's the quote of three.
• 10:20
  There are three sides to every story.
• 10:21
  Your side, my side, and the truth.
• 10:23
  And none of them are wrong.
• 10:25
  So let's just solve it and move on.
• 10:29
  Absolutely.
• 10:33
  And then teachers.
• 10:35
  Actually, one of my favorite accounts on LinkedIn is the teacher.
• 10:39
  I forget it's called teacher something.
• 10:42
  But every.
• 10:44
  I can give it to you later.
• 10:46
  Every post is about leadership.
• 10:49
  That's awesome.
• 10:52
  I'm not biased at all because that's.
• 10:53
  You know, my daughter is actually studying to be a teacher right now.
• 10:56
  That's what she's doing in college.
• 10:58
  My daughter wants to be a teacher, too.
• 11:00
  And I'm just like, these kids, like, they want to get paid nothing and make the world a better place.
• 11:05
  Like, that's so admirable.
• 11:07
  I'm loving it.
• 11:08
  I agree.
• 11:09
  I agree.
• 11:09
  I love that, too.
• 11:10
  I do hope my mother was a teacher until she became a therapist, but I do hope that our country will start respecting teachers a little bit more in terms of, you know, supporting them and allowing them to live
• 11:24
  in places they teach sometimes.
• 11:28
  Yes, I know.
• 11:29
  That would be nice.
• 11:29
  And also, I'm teaching my kids all side hustles.
• 11:32
  That's like,.
• 11:33
  Yes.
• 11:35
  Okay, this is what we're doing.
• 11:37
  Yeah.
• 11:37
  So talk about expertise.
• 11:40
  So my daughter is.
• 11:43
  She's been captain of the debate team for two years.
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  You're only on the debate team for three years.
• 11:49
  And she has one year left.
• 11:50
  So she'll be captain for three years.
• 11:51
  Because she's 13 years old now.
• 11:54
  She had 13 years of debate practice.
• 11:57
  And so she wants.
• 12:00
  She's a smart kid.
• 12:01
  She's all into the skincare now and wants everything.
• 12:06
  And so I said, you can have anything you want.
• 12:11
  Sephora, Ulta, whatever you want, you can have it.
• 12:15
  You just have to pay for it.
• 12:17
  And she's like, well, how do I get the money?
• 12:20
  And so I said, that's not my problem.
• 12:23
  And so she goes out, she starts.
• 12:28
  She decides to learn how to make candles.
• 12:30
  So she starts making candles.
• 12:31
  Oh,.
• 12:32
  And that's hard.
• 12:33
  Right.
• 12:34
  She got in trouble at school because she.
• 12:35
  Then it was working so well.
• 12:39
  She was getting everybody to bring in their old candles and charging them for that.
• 12:44
  And then she got one of her classmates to do the work.
• 12:48
  So she was paying her classmate to do the work.
• 12:50
  And she was not allowed to run a business in the school.
• 12:54
  Why not?
• 12:55
  Yeah, that's what I said.
• 12:58
  And then she went to all the parents of the kindergartners and said she's available to be the mother's helper, babysitter, and just make them like 20 bucks an hour.
• 13:09
  I love.
• 13:10
  So you.
• 13:10
  I mean, like, it makes sense because you're an entrepreneur, but you raise a little entrepreneur.
• 13:15
  Right?
• 13:15
  But it's.
• 13:16
  But it's also like helping her find her expertise, you know, I'm not just going to give her money.
• 13:21
  You want something, learn what you can do to get there.
• 13:25
  And, you know, we bring that back to leadership, too.
• 13:28
  Of.
• 13:28
  That's kind of what I do with leaders.
• 13:32
  Of.
• 13:32
  You're calling me because you have a problem.
• 13:34
  I'm not going to fix your problem.
• 13:36
  I'm going to help you fix it.
• 13:38
  And I'm going to.
• 13:38
  So.
• 13:38
  You can keep fixing them.
• 13:40
  Right.
• 13:41
  It's a future thing.
• 13:43
  Right.
• 13:44
  So they can keep fixing themselves.
• 13:45
  My job is to get myself out of a job as quickly as possible,.
• 13:49
  Which I am the same because I teach my clients how to write and then I'll just edit their books.
• 13:55
  But, man, it's hard in the service industry when your job is to get yourself out of a job,.
• 14:00
  Right?
• 14:01
  Right now, they keep hiring me back.
• 14:03
  That's the problem, I guess.
• 14:05
  But, hey, if I change my number, it'll be okay.
• 14:11
  All right, well, Jeff, thank you so much for this episode.
• 14:14
  Let's say that someone's listening, and I know they are, and they're like, I want to talk to Jeff.
• 14:18
  I want him to help me figure out where I can do better, where my expertise is.
• 14:26
  How do they get ahold of you?
• 14:28
  Go to my website, thebestleadershipcompany.com and you can reach out to me there.
• 14:34
  You can see what I do.
• 14:35
  You can reach out to me on LinkedIn as well.
• 14:38
  And listen, it's the Internet search.
• 14:40
  Wherever you are, you'll find me.
• 14:43
  And I love meeting new people.
• 14:44
  So please feel free to reach out, answer all emails, and always happy to talk.
• 14:50
  Well, thank you so much.
• 14:52
  Thank you.
• 14:53
  And now, if you liked the episode, I'm going to make an ask because I wouldn't be a sales expert if I didn't.
• 15:00
  Would you please leave a rating and review and hit subscribe?
• 15:04
  In exchange, I'm going to give you my find your wonder work system.
• 15:09
  It's five prompts, five minutes, and names.
• 15:12
  The thing that you're already excellent at but don't know to call a skill.
• 15:16
  This is basically a what do you do on autopilot?
• 15:19
  Except I've created it as a tool.
• 15:22
  So leave your review and then go.
• 15:23
  Go claim your reward at bit ly expertisemr.
• 15:31
  That's bitly expertisemr.
• 15:36
  And I hope to hear you or my guest, I guess, in the next episode.
• 15:41
  Thanks.