Amanda Slavin: Episode 372

Transcript

[0:00:17] NVN: At this point, it’s not exactly news that there’s a ton of noise and disruption out there in the world, we have more opportunities to reach larger audiences than ever before, but, of course, so does anyone else. So, how do we really stand out? How do we connect? How do we engage in ways that are truly meaningful and that go beyond metrics and analytics and likes? In other words, how do companies make engagement and connection human in a digital world? InThe Seventh Level, author Amanda Slavin breaks all of these questions down in ways that you can actually put into practice. In your business and in your life with customers and employees alike. As Amanda explains, you might even apply some of these ideas to bettering your relationship with your spouse - and Amanda knows what she’s talking about. Not only is she the founder and CEO of the award-winning brand consulting firm, CatalystCreativ, but she has also worked with companies like Coca-Cola, Google, and HubSpot, helping them bring good into the world and connecting with others through that. She’s spoken at South by Southwest and TED, and been featured in the likes of the Wall Street Journal, Time and Fast Company. Today, Amanda talks to us about the Seventh Level and about what connection and engagement really mean today, and how we can begin to look at and put them into practice in new ways. Amanda, let’s start by giving listeners an idea of your background.

[0:01:44] Amanda Slavin: Sure. I don’t know how far you want to go – like when I was three? I talked a little bit about that actually in the book, about, literally, when I was three. I have – I think it is relevant for the sake of this conversation – but I’ve always been really passionate about kind of bringing people together and building community, and so I’ve been doing that since I was three, and I bought all my stuffed animals around and sang party for friends every single day on a green hippo piano. And so that’s my background. And then I’d do the same thing in my first grade classroom, where I facilitated snack exchange. And I think I talk about what snacks I even exchanged in the book. I think it was like Doritos for Dunkaroos. I really wanted everyone to feel included and to feel like they were an active participant in whatever I was building and creating, whether it was like, a stuffed animal or a person, and then that led me to being a teacher. So, I have a Master's in curriculum and instruction, and while I was teaching, I wrote my thesis all around engagement, because I was very passionate about what it looked like for people to be deeply connected to what they were learning and the active participants within that learning environment. And then I went into hospitality and nightlife, after, and I always say that it’s not that different because getting the attention of six-year-olds is the same thing as getting the attention of drunk bankers, and trying to sell math to six-year-olds is – what I would say when I would, kind of, go for interviews from education to hospitality is, you know, if I could sell math to a six-year-old, I’m pretty sure I could sell anything to anyone. So, it wasn’t that much of a jump, but I ended up in hospitality and then, after hospitality, I ended up meeting my business partner, who was the CEO of Zappos, as I was kind of producing a bunch of different experiences, and it led me to meeting him, and my intention was to design a company where I can really do both, you know; use my understanding of engagement, my understanding of education, of connecting with people, but also my love for bringing people together, whether that was through experiences, or through marketing, or through branding. My company formed with this intention CatalystCreativ, to kind of catalyze passive consumers into active participants in their own life and in the choices they make through my understanding of engagement. That’s my weird hybrid past, but it all kind of make sense looking back!

[0:03:55] NVN: It does. I’m always fascinated when I talk to people like you, where there’s that common thread that weaves throughout all these disparate experiences. I think you kind of just answered this looking back but I am curious if you were always aware that engaging, connecting with others, was important to you, or was just kind of how you were and you didn’t consciously realize that for a while?

[0:04:16] Amanda Slavin: I definitely always knew because it was something that I also – was a distraction for me – until I realized how to be able to utilize it in a way that was productive. So, when I was in high school, I was on the phone literally seven hours a day, there was no social media, thank goodness, because I don’t know what I would have done, but I had, like, a phone with the cord, like, that’s how old I am. I mean, I would sit and I would just call friends and then when they would hang up, I would call other friends and I would truly be on the phone for seven hours a day, to the point where I had –I mean, when I was a little kid, I talked so much and talked so fast without breathing that I had to go to speech lessons to learn how to breathe. So, I have always, kind of, known this at the forefront. This is who I am, but, I think up until really recently – I think maybe meeting Tony was a catalyst for me to understand that I could leverage this gift. I always say, like, we don’t necessarily know that our gifts are our gifts because they come so naturally to us. So, I think when I realized that I could actually leverage my gift for my actual life’s purpose and my business and, you know, the way that I operate as an adult as supposed to just having it be this thing that was a part of me. That was the realization. So, while it was always something that I knew was, like, kind of my driving force, I never really knew how to use it until probably the past seven years.

[0:05:39] NVN: So, no more green hippo pianos in the mix to bring people together?

[0:05:42] Amanda Slavin: I think that it’s funny because when we used to do events, when we first started Catalyst, the intention was, you know, Tony was – had moved Zappos to downtown Vegas, and he had put 350 million dollars of his own money that he had gone from the Amazon acquisition of Zappos to rebuilding downtown, and we would design these experiences. Really, that was kind of how CatalystCreativ started. We would design these experiences called Catalyst Weekend Creative Week, where we would bring people from all over the world to come to downtown Vegas and come give inspiring talks and workshops, and a part of those experiences that were the zaniest, weirdest things. Downtown Vegas is like a very weird, interesting city but – from really Tony’s kind of vision, there’s a praying mantis that spits out fire, and there’s like this geodesic dome and we would have the opening session in a room in Tony’ apartment with, like, this plant wall and we would all have these desks that were moveable. It was really very similar to my experiences with my green hippo piano. It was just, kind of, on a bigger scale with different animals from Burning Man that Tony got and planted in the middle of the city. So, I feel like it was this, again, this through-line came to life and that was, like, a big thing when I was doing these experiences twice and every month for two and a half years, it felt very natural for me and, you know, that was because it was really kind of what I’ve always been doing. It was just now in a more professional manner.

[0:07:01] NVN: Yeah. Oh my god. That is truly amazing. I’ve never heard those answers from anyone before.

[0:07:07] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, it’s weird.

[0:07:08] NVN: Big point for originality there.

[0:07:10] Amanda Slavin: For sure.

[0:07:12] NVN: So, let’s talk, if you break down what you do in CatalystCreativ on a day-to-day basis, what kind of services do you offer clients? What does that look like?

[0:07:24] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, so CatalystCreativ has been around for seven years and we have always used my understanding of engagement as our secret sauce in being able to then determine what creative services we should be actually doing for clients. When I wrote my thesis on engagement during my master’s year, I ended up realizing that I could use that understanding of engagement in hospitality and marketing. I helped build a multimillion-dollar restaurant brand in New York and all over the country, and then I realized that I can kind of use that for good and more intentional way if you will. And so with CatalystCreativ, I realized that by understanding how to meaningfully connect with customers - whether that was internal customers, employees or external customers - you could really think differently about the way that you’re communicating to those individuals and inspire them to just really, kind of, change their behavior around something. It wasn’t just like, “purchase this product”. It was, “think different about why you're purchasing this product and what it could mean for you and for the world”. And so, what CatalystCreativ does from a service perspective – we do experiential, we’ve done large multi-thousand person events, we’ve done small intimate dinners and launch parties, we’ve done a Beauty Bus trailer that we drove all over the country and to Canada. So, we’ve done lots of different experience and then we also do branding design so full identity work, you know, websites, style guides, logos and then we also do marketing. Strategic marketing, digital marketing, overall, “what does it look like to market your company to the world?” But again, it’s always been that Seventh Level engagement framework what I wrote my thesis on, has been that secret sauce, guiding that process, to be able to then develop the “creative” for all of those services. That’s been an important distinction rather than just, kind of, being this agency that’s like, “we do these traditional services”. We think about those services in a different way.

[0:09:10] NVN: Let’s break down what Seventh Level is for listeners.

[0:09:15] Amanda Slavin: The Seventh Level is this engagement framework and the way that I think of engagement is not necessarily like, likes, followers, productivity. I think of it as a meaningful connection between human beings. I think of it as the bedrock of connection. As we have been inundated with messages and with marketing and with social media and just, really, with –bombarded by constant distractions and constant things that are trying to take our attention, it’s harder and harder to engage with each other and I think even with ourselves at – sometimes. It’s important that particularly as companies – you know, I started with business because, to me, we’re spending so much of our time at our jobs, and our jobs are no longer just jobs, they’re following us home, you know, we’re constantly thinking about work and life combined. I wanted to start within the business setting, but, thinking about the business setting, I wanted to be able to create a roadmap in a step-by-step process to connect with your internal customers, which are your employees - it’s what we call them, and then your external customers, which are your audience, in this step by step way. And so the Seventh Level is actually defined as literate thinking, and it’s when your personal values and beliefs align with the message. So, it’s what we’re always striving for as companies and as brands and as human beings, is to personally connect with a message, a person, a concept. To derive meaning from that. We don’t really know where to begin because, you know, we kind of think that like, a cute tag line or a mission statement on our website or a great branding campaign is going to achieve that but that’s not what it’s about, it’s much more deep than that. And so the Seventh Level, the framework itself, is this formula that allows for really every single person to be able to think about, “how can I take this passive consumer and whatever that may look like and really activate them into this active participant, this brand loyalist, this brand advocate, this extremely passionate, you know, employee to help me build my business so it’s not just all on my shoulders”. So, yeah; step by step framework, roadmap, formula to help people meaningfully connect with other people in their life that they want to be able to connect with.

[0:11:17] NVN: I’d love it if you could paint a picture for me about what this looks like in practice. Whether it’s a company you’ve worked with or a company that you feel like is aspirational either way.

[0:11:27] Amanda Slavin: Yup, I can certainly go through each and every single level but you know, I think to start with the Seventh Level is probably the easiest. The way the framework works is that you start with your own Seventh Level ‘statement’, because, before you can connect with someone else, you have to think about what your personal values and beliefs are. I always kind of talk about the companies that have the strongest Seventh Level statements, which I think a lot of marketers use as examples, but when you think of Apple, the Seventh Level statement would be this idea of, “think different”, and when you think of Nike, it would be, “Just Do It”. And, you know, even when you think of – I use Harley Davidson as an example often because, when you Google Image, “Harley Davidson”, you see millions of people with tattoos of Harley Davidson on their bodies. It’s this branded stamp of a logo, like people are branding themselves with a brand. And it’s because of their Seventh Level statement; what they stand for and not just what they sell, which is essentially, freedom, non-conformity, et cetera. As you start to think of – again, every single individual and every single company has that Seventh Level statement: their personal values and beliefs, their guiding force, that kind of North Star, that helps them connect with others. But then, once they know that, it’s really somewhat difficult for a – particularly, for people that don’t necessarily know marketing, or don’t know the first step in that connection process. So, the actual framework from One through Seven have these seven distinct levels of engagement. Each level, you can identify an action per level of what it looks like for a customer at that level. And then, the whole entire point of the framework is to think about, “Okay, how do I bring them to the next level?” I can quickly go through the levels of – it will take me about three minutes if that would be helpful.

[0:13:00] NVN: Actually, let’s go through each of the seven levels because I feel like that will allow people to figure out where they are on that spectrum. So, yes.

[0:13:08] Amanda Slavin: We split up the levels, the seven levels, into three distinct buckets, and we used HubSpot, which is this inbound marketing tools flywheel, their marketing flywheel, as a way to be able to separate these into buckets. So, I will talk about the buckets and how the levels fall into these buckets. The first three levels of the seven distinct levels of engagement is around attracting a customer and earning that customer’s trust. When you think about a customer, you know, there’s this “level one”, which is disengagement, and most people think that disengagement is the opposite of engagement but it’s actually the first level of engagement. And disengagement is defined as avoiding or idle from a task at hand. We all know kind of these customers that – I talk about an action being that someone sees an Instagram ad and might scroll past it. Or maybe you're running late to a meeting and someone asks you for a donation on the street and you walk right by them, and, even though you feel horrible, there’s a lot of different actions associated with each of the levels and the whole point of the framework as well is to define the level but then determine your own actions. In the book, we actually have case studies. We do a whole case study of what it looks like for employees with the levels and then we do a whole case study around a fake company and how the levels relate to that company but again, that’s the first level of engagement. And then, there’s questions and goals per level. Once you identify the action, you say, “okay, someone scrolled past my Instagram ad, what are questions that could guide me to determine how I can increase engagement with this customer?” So, the whole point is, again, “How can I get better at connecting with my customer?” So then, questions could be, I don’t need to go through this for each level but questions could be you know, “Who is my customer? Have I built personas for that customer? Does my customer use Instagram?” And with employees, again another action is going to be, “My employee doesn’t actually open my emails or respond to my emails.” Questions could be, “Do they even use emails?” Have you asked them their best form of communication? Have you set the goals around communication with that employee? It’s again, questions and then goals. So then, goals would be: determine my actual personas of my customers, test out messaging on three different platforms to see what works best. Again, the whole thing is as we think about connection with our customers, we so often simplify where we say, “Oh, we want to engage them, we want to connect with them, we want to sell them something.” But this takes this nuanced approach to the importance of being able to recognize the step by step process to connecting with your customers in this deep way. That’s level one. I’m not going to go in-depth with all of the other levels but I will just say, for the first three levels, level one is disengagement, level two is unsystematic engagement, which is when employees or customers are confused by the messaging. There’s tons of actions associated with that within the book and sample case studies as well. And then level three is frustrate engagement: when you want to engage with something but that you're actually distracted. So, one, two and three is all around earning trust and attracting your customer. Making sure that you know who you’re talking to, what you're actually saying to them and limiting the distractions and creating a customer journey for them to meaningfully connect with you. Once you’ve got them into that place, you then can start to interact with them in a deeper way. And that’s level four and five and that’s the engage bucket, this idea of interacting. Four is structured dependent engagement, it’s instruction based engagement. That’s when you ask for something and someone does it. Like, like below, comment below. In this case, it’s really being able to build off of that relationship. Once you know who you’re talking to, how you’re talking to them, you’re limiting distractions, you could start to build off of that relationship. And then level five, similar to four, is building and that stepping stone towards those higher levels but five is self-regulated interest. When you’re piquing someone’s interest or getting them excited this is a lot about influencers, sweepstakes, it’s kind of, “What’s in it for the customer? What’s in it for the employee?” Then, once you’ve interacted and engaged – so again, people are like, “Oh my god, this is so many steps.” But it’s really not because you’re already doing all of this to build a relationship with someone and sometimes, someone will come in at two, and sometimes someone will come in at five, and sometimes it someone will come in at one. Sometimes, you know, again, they’ll fall lower but the point of it is, you’re already doing all of this but there’s no real way for you to see it all how it fits together. This is this discombobulated way of connecting with everyone in our lives without really kind of – this is more like a flashlight, showing you the way to go, and the top two levels which are around delighting your customer, are the most important. Six is critical engagement, when you’re inspiring someone to set goals in their life, to make a difference in their life in some way. Whether that is kind of purchasing your product because it’s going to make a difference in their life or it’s thinking about themselves within your company differently to set goals. All with the intention to bring that employee, bring that customer to the seventh level, literate thinking, when personal values and beliefs align when they become a brand advocate for you. The way to look at it is really to think about from your company, you know, “where are the people that I’m connecting with, what are the actions associated with those individuals, where do they fall within to this roadmap, and then how do I continue to increase engagement?” And once they’re at that seventh level, “How do I keep them there?” Because those are the most important customers, to me, are your most engaged customers. The way I define it, which is 23% of your profitability is, it’s actually helping you grow your business as supposed to constantly thinking about churning new customers. Once you get them through this process, you can continually walk them up so that they stay engaged and there’s not a bigger drop-off.

[0:18:08] NVN: Perfect. With this, let’s talk about some things that companies are doing now that aren’t allowing them to live up to the full potential of their brand. What I’m especially interested in is this idea of so much noise which I think we’re all very familiar with both personally and professionally and how looking at branding through this Seventh Level, lifts you up out of that noise so that people are actually able to connect with you.

[0:18:43] Amanda Slavin: Yup. This is a big thing that I talk a lot about because I think what ends up happening with companies is they think they have to change to be trendy or to be relevant and the whole point is for you to start with your own Seventh Level statement and use that in which the lens in which you connect with others. You're not changing who you are in this process, you’re using who you are to be able to ensure that when you know the right person and you’re using that Seventh Level to connect with them and the messages that you’re creating for them, you’re using that Seventh Level to connect with them and so on and so on. I think when it comes to noise, a lot of companies first and foremost change their identity to reflect, again, who they think they need to connect with and that’s already something that is going to limit them from connecting because people see right through it but I also think we’re settling for the noise. Level four as I mentioned is structured dependent engagement and that’s instruction based engagement. That’s instruction based engagement as II was saying before, comment below, like this post et cetera. So often, from a marketing perspective, we have considered that success when it comes to engagement. We’ve let the tools tell us what engagement looks like, and these are any social media tool you can look up, you know, “How do you define engagement?” This is the way they’re defining it but in reality, that’s still three steps away from the top. We are settling for these, really ‘vanity metrics’, that we’ve been told to work without context of how they fit into our larger engagement goals. That’s one thing is that, again, we’re kind of settling for the noise and we’re saying, “That’s enough.” And then, when it comes to employees, level four is really micromanaging. Again, “Do this, do that.” But, employees are looking for so much more from their businesses and employees are now customers because they can communicate and share on behalf of the organization. You know, they have their own audiences so why are we settling for these lower levels? I think the two lessons to really learn from being able to strive towards the seventh level is one, you know, start with your own seventh level statement and stay aligned with that statement throughout this entire process, don’t change who you are to fit what you think other people want from you, stay true to who you are and communicate that to the people that will understand and connect with that message. And then the second is, don’t settle for the noise as being success. Recognize that in order to be able to cut through that clutter, you need to be able to determine your own engagement goals and then leverage that level four, to be a part of a bigger plan as opposed to just, again, hiring companies to get you likes, to get you followers, to get you comments. Anytime someone says, “I want Instagram followers”, I will say, “Why?” You know? Or, “I want to talk to millennials.” Why? You know it is not necessarily just what is on trend. It is what is best for you and the identity of your own organization. So those would be my two points to make when it comes to cutting through the clutter.

[0:21:25] NVN: So what I keep thinking as you’re talking is that it sounds to me like this is getting back to an idea of humanity where, yes, digital tools may help you. They may offer a medium for reaching out to people, but it doesn’t stop there. It is about using that as a mode to reach out and really capture another human because they are like-minded.

[0:21:49] Amanda Slavin: That is exactly right. That is what we say, we say that we have forgotten that likes and comments and followers and data, which is not the enemy – data is amazing and really helps inform one, two and three as a part of the process. It helps you determine who your customer is and what messages are resonating with them and how are you limiting distractions for them and you are using that data and insights from your overall marketing. Whether that is serving your customers or looking at your website analytics, you are using – or even again with employees being able to have feedback loops like, it is important to use data as a way to inform those next steps as part of the process but, we have forgotten that those are all really human beings. Like, a like is not just a like. It is a person that decided to like that post so what are you going to do with that? So I think that to me is something that – You know, as I was writing the book I really started to see that it was very – we talked about When Harry met Sally, well, all the time my company does, Catalyst does within the lens of Seventh Level. So I broke out When Harry met Sally in the book, and actually broke out their whole relationship from being disengaged in the beginning of the movie to all the way to the end of the movie reaching the seventh level with each other, and the point of that was to show that this can be really used in any aspect of your life, like as you start to – And that is what we do. We take things from business and we do apply them to the rest of our life. We do bring our work home with us without even really meaning to, or at least if we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, we are spending so much time with the people that we are working with. So, when you start to think about these levels, you start thinking differently. I just worked with a woman who I did a full-day workshop with her around the Seventh Level. And after she said she started to call her husband out for being frustrated-engaged, which is wanting to engage but distracted. I mean, I do the same thing you know. When he’s on his cellphone, it distracts me and then it keeps me from really being able to connect with him, and by using this terminology and these words, it takes the personal, emotional defensiveness out of it. It takes the personal attack out of it. It is not like, “You are doing this wrong!” It is just, “We’re at a level three right now, and I want us to get a little bit higher so can you get off your phone?” And when they get off their phone, you have brought them to level four because it is instruction based. So, I think that by reading this book, even though you can use it in your business, which I would hope would be the intention, I think that it will actually help across the board with every aspect of your human relationships because you will start to think about it.

[0:24:12] NVN: So one thing that you have brought up pretty much with each level but that we haven’t really dug into yet is that this is internal as well as it is external. So I think from a business perspective we can all see the value in reaching the seventh level. Let’s talk about the value of reaching the seventh level internally though. How have you and companies shift and transform by hitting that seventh level internally?

[0:24:39] Amanda Slavin: So I think that this is the most important customer that we have is our internal customer, which are our employees, and if our employees aren’t behind what we’re up to, then we can’t really expect anyone externally to connect with us, because they are our first touch point and the way that we are talking to the world. And so, when it comes to the seventh level, internally, I use the Fortune 100 as an example, and I talk about Salesforce in the book as well as Wegmans and the quotes that come out of why people work at those companies for the Fortune 100. And they say things like Salesforce is an environment of learning or Wegmans is this family environment that is constantly bringing people together, and, you know, they are not saying that there is great health care and benefits, which are a part of foundation of a job, which is actually level five: what is in it for them. But it is not why they are staying there, why are they getting the best places to work. So, in order to reach those higher levels with their employees and turn your company into something that stands for more than just a service and I think again it is – I don’t want to go too far in either direction, like four, “Do what I ask you.” And five, “What’s in it for me?”, are a part of a work environment. Like, you need to have a product and do what you’re – and also one, two and three, like, if you don’t know for one, if you are disengaged, or if you don’t know what your actual job is on systematic engage, or if you are distracted all the time and can’t get your work done, probably not going to be an environment that is even allowing for six and seven. Where you can set goals, you are inspired to make a difference in your life, or where your personal values and beliefs align with the company. So, I think that is the other thing about this framework where you have a lot of people on one side where they are like – I gave a talk and I said, “What do you want from work?” and people are like, “learning”, and, “growth”, and, “connection”, and, “love”, and I was like, “Oh my god, this is so much that we are expecting from our workplace.” It is like who is getting this? And no one raised their hand. So there is one side of the equation where it is like, “We need to stand for something”, or, “We need to believe in something”, and, “We need to be something”, but they might actually forget that there is all of these levels underneath because they don’t know that the levels exist. They just have heard that or read a marketing book and they’re like, “We need to start there”, but then it’s like, “No that is extremely imperative.” First, you do start with what you stand for but then, you walk through this framework to have people understand how that fits into the infrastructure of an actual company. I mean, how you move, work forward, and then, how you get things done, and then how you communicate those values internally and how you use those values to measure against what success looks like, and how you let people come to the table and share their insights and their goals, and I could go on and on about this. Because I read a little bit about it in the book but I didn’t want to write too much about it. It is a whole separate topic but my company has done something called self-organization for the past six years. So rather than a bureaucracy or a hierarchy, it’s self-organized. I would say it is almost like bees or ants where they are all doing their own roles but they know there is for a higher purpose. So that is one way that I have seen more freedom and flexibility for the individuals than the organization, to make changes for themselves and for the company. But, I think, literally, if you were to just identify your own seventh level statement, think about how that is a part of every single step of the process and strive for higher levels with your individual team. I think also as CEO’s and as leaders it would be a lot less lonely because so often it falls on the CEO to make all of the decisions and to determine the best next steps but then there is so many people in the organization that are impacted by that and can’t actually give their feedback, can’t get their insights, can’t give what they feel is going to better the company. So by striving for these higher levels we create environments and, really, feedback loops for people to be able feel, and also actually share what they feel would better the organization. It is not so limited to just the executive at the top making the decisions.

[0:28:26] NVN: That makes a lot of sense. So it is interesting that you brought that up because my next question for you was going to be, as a founder or CEO at CatalystCreativ, do you find once you reach that seventh level, there is a momentum behind it that makes it easy to continue along that trajectory, or are you constantly recalibrating and moving between different buckets?

[0:28:50] Amanda Slavin: Yeah, I wish that it was just like, “Okay, now we’re here, so, we’re good.” But I think that is not the way human beings work, especially with, from, an internal customer and an external customer, and how many choices people have, and how often those choices are being presented to them. So I think we have to work harder for garnering people’s attention and keeping that attention. So, once people are at the seventh level, the work is easier because you are not again, constantly churning new level ones all the way to the seventh level, and then doing so over and over again. So once that you are at the seventh level, it is easier to keep them there, but it is really important to think about how you are keeping them there. So, it is not just like, “Okay.” It is – you know, I say sometimes when you get married you – I think about myself, like, you stop trying. I'm like, you know, wearing sweatpants around the house, not wearing makeup and you just take the person for granted. You’re like, “Oh well you are married to me” but that is not really – I really had to change my perspective around that too because it’s like, “No, I want to appreciate this person, and respect the time we have together, and not take the fact that we are together a lot for granted, you know, at level three, that we are always together but not together.” No, I would like to have higher levels of engagement with this person. So once people are at the 7th level it is really important to build programs to set them up for success and to stay connected with you. So, whether that is a loyalty program and it is not just like a loyalty program where you are giving them discounts or you are giving them financial incentives, which could fall under level five, “What is in it for them.” It is emotional incentives. It is showing them that they’re really a hero, that they are a part of your story, that they are seen, that they are heard, that you care about them. And that is the same thing again for your employees, like, when an employee shows that they are at the seventh level, what are you doing to show them that you care? Whether that is featuring them or acknowledging them or publicly communicating about them on your social media and be like, “I couldn’t have done this without this person.” You know, for us at Catalyst, we try – I even use “we” sometimes when I am on stages or even when I am talking about “I”. It is sometimes very odd. So I have to go back to “I” because we always say “we” because we try really hard to ensure that we are acknowledging every single person that is a part of the equation and how they’ve helped us get to where we are going to go. And so by doing that, even that change – and you know I really try hard not to say, ever, “my employees”, because I don’t believe that that is the way I even think about these individuals. They are my colleagues and they are my partners, and they are helping to build the business. So any type of, “my”, like, I don’t own them. If anything I would work for the rest of the company, not the other way around. So I think it is just a matter of recognizing that the person who has reached the seventh level with you is worthy, really worthy of your time and of your effort and of your energy and not taking them for granted or – Yes, they will absolutely fall to lower levels and it is easier to get them up back but you do have to put the time into that. You can’t just let them do whatever and be like, “Thank so much, you love us but whatever.”

[0:32:05] NVN: Great, and my last question for you. I don’t know how easy this is to answer because there are seven levels here, but I am wondering if there are any particular stumbling blocks that you find are quite common for most companies, when it comes to obtaining the seventh level, but easy to overcome or to notice and begin to address that listeners can start to think about.

[0:32:33] Amanda Slavin: Absolutely. So I always say level three, frustrated engagement, is the biggest pitfall for everyone because distractions are everywhere, and it is difficult to limit distractions everywhere and anywhere because people are distracted all the time. So, I say with level three, the most important thing to do is to not create more distractions. So, what I mean by that from a marketing perspective is, as you are thinking about marketing to your customers, they are going to be online. And if you are doing any type of paid ad to them, if they are not the – again, one and two, if they’re not the right person, and you are not communicating in the right way, it is going to be difficult for them to want to continue to connect with them. So being able to really identify and assess how are you limiting distractions, how are you targeting them so specifically, and having that message resonate with them based on what you stand for, what you believe in, is imperative. But also, then, once you get that attention, once you get them on your website, once you get them in your store, not creating more distractions for them. So, making sure your website is optimized and that, you know, once they shop with something in their cart, it is easy for them to actually check out, that there is not a pop-up that is going to distract them from what you actually want them to do. So, it is creating that proper user journey, that customer journey for them to convert to these higher levels. So, that is from a marketing perspective. From an employee perspective, I think that Slack, I love Slack. We use it. We are a fully remote team, and there is ten of us all over the country, and it is great for certain tasks. It is a task-oriented platform that allows for you to message each other and get things done, but when you then have to dive deep on individual work, it is extremely important that we respect each other boundaries and teach people how to set those boundaries. So that has been really important to me because, especially in a remote work environment, I think in any environment, you just don’t know what someone else is dealing with, what they are experiencing and so, if you are a leader, or in a position of power, you can just keep asking for more and more and more, and the person might keep saying yes and yes, because they don’t know how to respond. So, I would teach your team and yourself how to create proper boundaries and communicate those boundaries. And then for us, we all share our calendars, and different team members put blocks on the calendars and they will shut up their Slack notifications, and they will tell the team, “I am not available from this time to this time for Slack, because I actually have to get work done.” But, if not, it is just like, you’re messaging all day long, you’re emailing all day long. So, I think limiting distractions would be my biggest, because even when someone is at the seventh level, you can create a distraction. I always say that if you bought a ticket to your favorite news festival like six years in a row and then you get an email that says, “Buy a ticket” you’re like, “What? I have been buying this. I am obsessed with you. I share you on social media. Like, how can you not know me?” So, I think it is again, making sure that you’re limiting distractions to the best of your ability knowing that sometimes things might get missed, but then you can really catch them. And if you are being more intentional with those distractions, at least you are creating that proper user journey for someone to, once they have connected with you, to again increase that engagement with you and get them closer to the seventh level.

[0:35:54] NVN: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean that is the big thing today, is distraction, just across the board it seems like.

[0:36:01] Amanda Slavin: Yes, absolutely. I think the other thing to think about with this is, like, I always say, if there is three very quick lessons to remember is one, engagement is not binary. It is not just disengagement or engagement. Disengagement is level one so it is not the situation where you are hopeless, and it is also not so black and white. It is more nuanced, and then really, again, my next lesson would be strive for the seventh level. Even if you are not going to get to the seventh level with everyone, when you strive towards the seventh level, you are going to get higher than you would if you didn’t know it existed. You are going to be settling for these lower levels without even realizing there is more. I always say, it is like, you think you’re at the summit but you’re really at the base camp. So, there is so much more that we can get out of ourselves, out of people and I think if we strive towards greatness then we’ll land somewhere a little bit closer.

[0:36:58] NVN: I mean I feel like that is just great advice in general in life.

[0:37:03] Amanda Slavin: I think it is like, again, this is very – there is a lot of emotional – I guess this is an emotional driver in a lot of ways. And I was a teacher, so I very much care about the emotions behind why we do things and the psychology behind why we do things. But when you actually put these numbers to it, it makes it less personal as I said before, where it is like, anyone can wrap their head around it. So as opposed to, like, me saying, “You need to strive for connection with someone”, like, people would be like, “What does connection mean?” I’m like, you need to engage with your customers. They’re like, “What does engagement mean?” I’m like, “Well, this is what I mean by engagement, and this is what you need to strive for and this is how you can get there, and here is your itinerary for your trip. This is how you know that you are actually going in the right direction. Here is your map.” Like, I used to travel without Google Maps and it was a mess. So now, here is your map to get to where you want to go and it is easier to wrap your head around.

[0:38:00] NVN: Yeah, perfect. You and I are from the same generation. We are all the same cultural references, the Google Maps, the corded phones, Harry met Sally. I get it all.

[0:38:11] Amanda Slavin: Yes, I love that. I ask people if they’ve watched When Harry met Sally when I give talks and when no one raises their hand I am like, “Okay, I am in an audience of people that don’t know or have a clue of me.” It is very disturbing.

[0:38:25] NVN: Totally. I am right there with you. I am glad you are bringing it into the world for people who may have missed out.

[0:38:30] Amanda Slavin: Yes, it is their thirtieth year anniversary apparently, which I didn’t know. So, there you go.

[0:38:35] NVN: That is what I refer to as scary math right there.

[0:38:38] Amanda Slavin: A hundred percent. Thirty years, terrifying.

[0:38:41] NVN: Totally. All right, Amanda. Is there anything we haven’t gotten to that you want to be sure you share with listeners?

[0:38:49] Amanda Slavin: I think the main thing to share with listeners is that the book is very applicable, and it is meant for you to apply to your organization and that the case studies throughout the book and in the back are really useful and insightful, because you could wrap your head around how it all fits together, but that, as you are reading the book to think about, what is a problem you are looking to solve, and maybe starting small. So like, maybe you are launching a new product, or maybe you are deploying a new infrastructure within your business, or maybe you are wanting to do a cool marketing campaign and you need to market something to your audience. Maybe you are starting a company. Start with an actual problem, and then go through the processes with that, because you can really apply this. The whole point of this as well is to create one definition of engagement so that our HR teams, and our creative teams, and our event teams, and our marketing teams – everyone can talk in the same way. But I think starting with an actual problem, and then going through the process is extremely beneficial, and then using those case studies to help to apply it. But my biggest hope is that people can apply this to their own companies. Again, as the teacher in me, that I would teach someone something that they could think differently about the way that they are doing business currently.

[0:40:05] NVN: Great. Amanda thank you so much.

[0:40:08] Amanda Slavin: Thank you.

[0:40:09] NVN: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find The Seventh Level on Amazon. A transcript of this episode as well as all of our previous episodes is available at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.