What’s the best way to diffuse a bomb? We’re going to be talking about angry learners, angry students, angry consumers, angry customers, angry users. What’s the best way to diffuse a bomb? Is it the red or the green wire? We’re going to find out and I’ve got a story for you. I remember I hired a lady one time. She was amazing. She came in, and usually I’m known. Believe it or not, you may not believe this, but it’s a true story. I have been known by some of my staff as ridiculously intimidating, right? I’m the sweetest guy around. However, apparently I can be intimidating in an interview. So this lady comes in, and sometimes these interviews, like I said, can go on forever. I’m not even kidding you when I say I’m sick. I have made people cry in an interview. Okay, so I’ve just like, you know, you might as well, if you know, you know, you’ve got to get the information out somehow.
So this lady walks into the interview and I say, “So, tell me about yourself.” She says, “Well, I used to work at Walmart,” or actually, she still works at Walmart, and I say, “Oh cool. That must be interesting. You must see some crazy stuff.” She says, “Well, I’ve seen some crazy stuff.” I say, “What do you do?” She says, “I’m the head of customer service.” And I literally leaned in and said, “You’re hired.” That was it. The interview lasted no more than one and a half minutes.
And I’m telling you, once that person was worth it to me, my heart went through the roof because I immediately saw what she was able to do. What her passion was was to diffuse bombs. You cannot teach. You cannot have anybody do anything unless you’re diffusing those bombs when they come in. And I promise you, far more often than you think, you will have people. Now, now let’s get into what this bomb I’m talking about actually is, because it’s important. You understand the bomb that I’m talking about is people that are coming in and they have negative conceptions, negative perceptions, negative beliefs. They don’t want to be there. It’s Saturday. You’re doing staff training. They want to be home with their family. It’s a nice day outside. They’re being forced to, by their parents, their, uh, 1,000,001 reasons why that person does not want to be there.
Or maybe they’ve heard about you. And they just don’t like you, or maybe they know you. And they just don’t like you. But this is where you have to ask yourself, what are you trying to achieve? Are you going to let your ego block it? Because I can assure you that you can complete a four-hour, six-hour, or eight-hour training course. You can make it feel like a life sentence, like Shahan Shahan prison, or you can make it feel like it flies by. And everybody walks out with a smile on their face because they feel like they’ve accomplished something. And they’ve learned something they didn’t know before. And that is in your power. So the first thing that we want to do when we’re diffusing bombs, and I want you to know, let’s say it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about a one on one, or we’re talking about a one on 30, or we’re talking about a one on 10,000.
It’s best to assume that people, unless they paid money to come and see you, would rather be somewhere else. If you go into it with the knowledge that the person that’s sitting across from you would rather be somewhere else, now you have some power because the first thing you want to do when you diffuse a ball is break the mold. You’ve got to break the mold. This is not what they expected. You’re not some funny dude standing behind a pedestal or a podium going, “Excuse me, I’m gonna convey information and you are gonna have bloody well, listen.”
That isn’t going to do it. In today’s day and age, people have cell phones. They’re going to be gone, checking emails, texting their wife, and scrolling through Instagram. You need to break them. You start with some dance music. You say this isn’t what you expected. You create a connection with them. Something to the effect of, you know what, I know you don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here either. So we can either have a time together and we can hate every second of this, or we can create hope, create optimism, create a different possibility in the future. Or we can have some fun. We can take the next four hours together and have a different perspective on each other about life and the future. When we walk out of here, we’ve got a little bit of content we’ve got to get through.
Maybe it’s first aid training. Maybe it’s a new computer operating system that’s coming in. Maybe it’s a staff meeting, a budget cut, who knows, but the fact of the matter is this is your job to shift it because I can promise you, after years of teaching people any information, if they’re angry when they come in, they will not be receptive until you break the walls down. And the best way to do that is to totally shift the mold. What they walked in to is not what they’re going to get. That’s the best way to start. Now, the next thing you’re going to be asking yourself is, “Well, how do I do this? Am I cutting the red wire or the green wire? It’s always the green wire that never cuts the red wire. The red wire is that people are already angry. You’re going to cut the green wire and that’s going to be humor.”
And you can start it out. Something. So it could be as simple as, hey, this horse, he walks into a bar and he comes right up to the bar and the bartender leans in and goes, “Hey, why the long face?” You don’t have to be hilarious. You just have to say, “God, Lord, let’s smile a little bit. Let’s enjoy each other’s company. Let’s, if you’ve got more time, tell a rope joke. You can tell jokes that are PC-friendly. That is fun. That just broke the trend and got people learning. So we start by breaking the mold, B, bringing some humor into the situation, and C, and this is, there are multiple ways that we’re going to go through this, but in this episode, what we really want to do is just the easiest, quickest, fastest way to get people to lean forward and put their phones down. You need to take your information and you need to show them how it’s relevant to their interests.
For Pete’s sake, Jamie and Bob, step four, and ask some questions. Find out who your audience is. You’d know what their general interests are. Well, do you know what to do for a little work before you teach that four-hour class on bottle safety? Come on, people. You have to be a little more, have a little more desire, and a little more interest in your customers.
If you don’t know what your interests of your own consumers are, you haven’t done your homework and that’s on you. Get some information, diffuse bombs, wherever they come up, because you’re sure as heck not gonna have ’em present when they’re sitting in the same room.
