Will You Be My Friend

David expects to get in trouble discussing Blair's topic about the role of friendship in business—between sales people and prospects, account people and clients, and principals and employees.

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The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Transcript

David C. Blair: Blair, will you be mine? No, don't answer that yet. Julie and I went to see that great, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood. I was a little reluctant, but I love the movie. It was great. The one with Tom Hanks in it. I was thinking about this episode where you suggested this topic about relationships and what they have to do with employees, with clientsk, and all that stuff.

Blair Enns: I just want to interject and point out-

David: Hey, I'm not done with the introduction.

Blair: -the irony of you and I doing something on relationship. The two low affiliation people. Yes. We're going to talk to people about relationships, how you don't need them. Go on.

David: Okay. Made me think of that movie. It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, ""Will you be mine?" I was thinking it talked in there about being friends, but there's nothing in there about being friends. This was a topic idea you had about the whole role of friendship in business in sales to prospects, with existing clients, between you and clients, between your account people and clients, between you as the principal and employees, maybe between you and any family member. What in the world makes us think we can talk about this and not get in deep trouble in some way?

Blair: We're going to get into trouble for sure, but you and I, we're doing a webinar for the Bureau of Digital recently. We're answering questions from the audience, and somehow we got to something about affiliation. I've measured both of our affiliation. Affiliation is, you need to connect to others and it's directly linked to your need to be liked by others, but affiliation in a business context, and you have the lowest affiliation score I've ever tested.

David: [laughs] You just love telling everybody that.

Blair: I do. You're in the fifth percentile, but the test doesn't appear to go any lower than that, because I've tested a few people who've come in in that low. I'm in the 18th percentile. We both have this bias that says in a business context, it's not really important for us to really befriend or we don't really have to like the people that we're doing business with. It doesn't mean that we're assholes. 

David: Yes, speak for yourself.

Blair: Well, it doesn't actually mean that. That's just coincidental at times. You and I have this point of view on relationships. At the beginning of this, I just want to point out that we have this bias, and not everybody shares this bias. I wanted to talk about the blurry lines between professional relationships and personal relationships with all those different parties that you mentioned. That's what I was thinking.

David: Yes. Well, it's a great topic too. I've had this come up many times with clients in the past. It seems like it was a bigger issue in the past than it is now. Not sure if that's true or if it is true, why that's the case. But I remember getting feedback from my clients who were asking me how I would handle situations where their client is texting them day and night or also sharing deeply personal things that in some cases seemed a little bit inappropriate, and how they dealt with that. In the middle of those conversations, I remember somehow it usually comes up, this is back before we cancelled our business lines, right?

It came up. You actually share your cell phone number with your client. Wow, that's interesting. Then, of course, now since people are using their cell phones for both purposes, it's very, very common, but how many firms have you worked with over the years and how many of those would have your cell phone number?

Blair: I don't know the answer to either of those questions. Hundreds, but not a thousand. Unless you count people in seminars. But directly, either in a consulting basis back when Win Without Pitching was a consulting company and more currently as a training company, hundreds.

David: Hundreds?

Blair: Yes. How many would have my cell phone number? Well, I used to have a desktop phone, whatever. A landline phone with a headset, and I was on that headset all day long. In that time, almost nobody had my cell phone number. Now, how many have it? I don't know, dozens have it. The phone doesn't ring or I don't get texts from people who I feel it's not appropriate to be calling me on that number or texting me on that number. I haven't run into a problem, but I'll just grant you this. That I have been cautious over the years, because I'm such a low affiliation person. I was giving out that number. Right now, it's just the state of play, right? It's just the way we do business. We all have each other's mobile numbers.

David: Before we dive into the different aspects of this, we needed some sort of a definition. I don't know if you have one or not, but what does it mean to be a friend with a client in this case? What's the boundary between being a friend or not being a friend? I use the example of somebody who has your cell phone number and maybe texts you outside of business hours about personal things. Would that be a pretty good definition of somebody who's crossed that line. Whether it's good or bad and it's more than a business relationship, it's a personal relationship as well or what else? How do you define that?

Blair: I hadn't really thought about the question. Thanks for sneaking up on me.

David: Yes, I'm trying to make you look stupid, as a friend.

Blair: [laughs] On the subject of friendship. I think that's a good one. If you're getting texts or calls from your clients on personal issues, then clearly you've crossed that line into friendship. As a low affiliation person, I just look at- when I enter into a business relationship with somebody, for me in the beginning, it's all business. Even if it's somebody I think, "This is a really interesting person. I really like this person." I don't actually want to be friends with my clients in the early days.

David: In the early days of the relationship, you don't want to, but you're open to that later?

Blair: I'm absolutely open to it. I've had this realization recently that we're recording this at a time of self-isolation. The world's still quarantined. The world is still here for the most part. You're listening in the future. I hope there's more than 10 of you. I realized, "Okay, I'm stuck at home. I have friends here in the village I live in. We're interacting with them on Zoom. We have our weekly little Zoom cocktail party. I see some people outside at a distance, but I realized that a lot of my friends are work-related. I've been doing what I do for 18 years. One of the reasons I realized that is we, just like you do, our clients are entrepreneurs.

There's just something about the bonding of entrepreneurs that I believe is quite meaningful. I have, over the years, developed many close-- Some of the closest friendships in my life, like this one with you, are through work. If you would've told me that 15 years ago, that the bulk of your personal relationships will have been developed through work, I would've told you you're crazy. In my mind, I had a very definite idea of this line between friendships with non-work people and business relationships with work people. But that has absolutely blurred for me. Again, just back to this first point of when I enter into a business relationship with somebody, I don't want to be friends initially, but I'm open to it down the road.

David: Yes, I would say that's true for me as well. I'm not sitting here wishing I had more friends. But I can't resist the urge sometimes, because I find that so many people out there that I happen to run into in a business setting, are really interesting people. I just find that I have so many things that we can talk about. It's just hard to push it away. Let's talk about clients and friends first, and then we're going to talk about employees. We're going to talk about whether employees should be friends, family members, all that stuff. But let's talk about clients and friends. What are some of the pros and cons? Some of these might be a little obvious, but it's still worth enumerating them.

Blair: The pros are that we work a lot. I wouldn't include everybody in this category. Just because I feel that I work a lot, doesn't mean that everybody works a lot. If you work a lot, then, of course, it's only natural that you're going to befriend other people who also work a lot or who are in similar lines of work or who you interact with during the work. Another pro is, I think people bond over various things. Entrepreneurs tend to bond with other entrepreneurs. There are other examples of this, I just can't think of what they might be.

As a business owner, you're doing something that you love, and you're interacting with somebody else who's either in an ownership position or is in an employee position who's doing some that they love. You automatically have something in common. If it's a perfectly natural thing, why not let that lines get a little bit blurry? That's on the pro side. I can't think of anything else I would add to that. What would you add to that?

David: It's hard to describe, but that camaraderie definitely exists. You and I are entrepreneurs and all of our clients or most of our clients are entrepreneurs. But our client's clients are not necessarily entrepreneurs. Some of them are and some of them aren't. I've found that there's a similar camaraderie around motorcycle riders, around flying.

Blair: Yes, shared interests.

David: Yes. Also, when you're doing something that could be dangerous, you feel like you're in it together, around crafts. Probably where I've made the biggest number of friends was owning a BMW motorcycle riders discussion board that was worldwide. We had 13,000 members on there. It just enriched my life incredibly, but on the client-side, I'd say the pros are-- There are lots of little ones to me. One of them is that I get really valuable feedback, good and bad, from somebody who has my best interest at heart and not trying to hurt me or anything or pull the rug right out from under me. That's a valuable thing. You can get forewarning about certain things. They really do improve your business by speaking to your reality in a way that you can't, because you're just too close to it. That's an obvious one to me as well.

Blair: I would say the flip side of that is, I've often said that your low affiliation score is part of what makes you a good consultant, because you will tell your client that their baby is ugly. You don't have this need for them to like you. Therefore, you will have the difficult direct conversation. I think the same thing happens in these relationships with your clients. Where some will tell you what they feel like is constructive feedback, because they like you, and some will withhold direct critical feedback, because they like you. I think that thing goes both ways.

I'll also point out in the category of both the pro and a con of being friends with your clients, would be in difficult economic times, like we are experiencing right now. It may be a good thing that you're friends with your clients, because they really do have your best interests at heart. They are hopefully being a good friend, they are giving you bad information early. They're going to bat for you when they can, and maybe they're putting you a little bit further down the list of services that they would cut. I could see that working in your favor as a friend, but I could also see it working against you, as we move into the cons here. Because sometimes when you have a personal relationship with somebody, whether it's an employee or a client, it makes it harder to do the right thing.

David: What do you mean, it makes it harder?

Blair: It's hard to have a direct business conversation with somebody when it's really important to you that person like. Again, back to this idea of like, "I can measure your affiliation score." When I see a high affiliation score, one of the things that tells me is, "You're going to have a high cost of sale." This is a generalization, but it's largely true. I've seen it repeated over hundreds of people. I see your affiliation score is your cost of sale indicator. The reason for that is, if you have a low affiliation score like you do, it's easier for you to get to the point of the business conversation. As an example, would be talking about money. It's easier for you to get to the direct, harder discussions to have, because you're not muddying things with this need to be liked by this person.

People with high affiliation scores tend to want to do business face to face. They're having a little bit harder time. We're doing business remotely right now, as of this recording. They want to get on a plane or in a car and travel across the city to have this face to face meeting. It's really important to them to establish personal rapport to connect with this person, and directly linked to that is the need to be liked by this person. Because of that, it's very hard for them to say, "You know what? We're not going to do the next step as you suggested."

Which is, we're not going to respond to, let's say, respond to your RFP. The appropriate next step would be you get the other decision-makers together and we'll have a meeting together and decide if it makes sense if there's a fit here suitable enough to take the next step. Now that's just an example of an occasion where it might be appropriate for the salesperson or the account person or the owner of the firm to push back on what the client suggests as the next step, and offer an alternative next step. Now if you have a high affiliation need, if you need this person to like you, it's going to be harder for you to have that direct businesslike conversation. You're more likely to acquiesce to the client's suggestion of what happens next. That next step that comes from the client is more likely to be costly to you.

David: Looking back on this, and we're trying to help our listeners, but I can't help, but think about my own personal experience. You don't really know if you're friends with a client until after that business relationship is over, and then you see what happens afterward. I find that I really enjoy those relationships, particularly where we've been in a battle together. I don't mean against each other. I mean, we've had a common enemy and we've been side by side.

Blair: Saving the firm.

David: Yes. Often, in fact most of the time, there is no later business relationship. I'm actually really fine with that. Back in the pre-Covid days, I taught seminars. Hoping that happens again someday. One of those was on account management and project management. There's a section in there about how to treat clients, and it's full of all specific, personal things. One of the comments in there that usually brings out a chuckle in the group is, "Be only human enough to demonstrate that you're human."

The idea is that people want to have business relationships with specific people. I can see that when you find that it's a common behavior to look at a website to get the picture of the person that you're going to be speaking with or that you're on the phone with right now. There's just something about the humanity of that. At a minimum, wouldn't the recommendation be that you need to be a human? They need to know where you are-- The very minimum, right.

Blair: I love having these conversations with you. Go on.

David: Yes, you just love seeing me dig these deeper and deeper holes. But what's the bottom line recommendation for this area? The first one about clients, and then we'll move on and talk about the same issue with employees of yours and clients?

Blair: I think that advice of being just barely human enough so that they know that you're human, I think that's really good advice for you and for people like you with low affiliation. I have low affiliation needs too, but not quite as low as you, I would reframe that and say, "You want to be tuned into how important it is for you to have a deep personal connection with the people you do business with." Try to get a sense of your own affiliation needs, and then try to be tuned in if you can to the client's affiliation needs. Then either raise or lower your activity to try to meet the client in the middle.

Most of us go through life, we're not even thinking about this. But because you and I have had this conversation many times, and I've measured so many people in this front. It's something that we in Win Without Pitching talk about a lot. High affiliation people and low affiliation people tend to clash. If you're not tuned into the fact that we have different affiliation needs, you might think, "That person's an idiot" or "That person's being cold" or "Oh, my God. That person is so needy."

None of that is really true. It's just their own personal motivation is a little bit different than yours. You clash in that setting. If you know that you're at the low end of the spectrum like you and I are, I'll paraphrase you, you have to raise your humanity from time to time. You have to remember to smile, to chit chat about the weather, to ask about somebody's like, "How was your weekend?" Even though you and I, when it's especially early on in a relationship, we don't care how the person's weekend was. We feel this incredible, and others like us, feel this incredible pressure to add value.

The idea- the personal relationship is just going to get in the way in the beginning. But we have to acknowledge that some other people, they hire an outside expert, they hire an agency. Whoever they hire, part of what they're looking for is a personal connection. People like us would have to raise our humanity. People at the other end of the spectrum, who recognize that they might have high affiliation needs, they need to just understand that not everybody is like them. If this person appears to be cold and wants to get right to business, it's not you.

They're not cold human beings. They still have warm relationships in their life. It's just not important at that moment to have the chit chat stuff. They want to have direct business-like conversations. If we're at either end of the spectrum, we just need to acknowledge that and be ready to move towards the middle in specific conversations.

David: Let's transfer this to a really obvious next part B here, and that's the same discussion around employees and their relationship with clients as well. I have for years loved the notion that we need to understand each client differently in their own right. I urge my clients to actually talk about this specifically and say, "All right. What's the best way to communicate with you? What do you prefer? Is it a brief email? Is it a text message? Is it a phone call?" Whatever it is, "I'd like to shape how we communicate based on what your preference is. Then the other great advantage that larger firms have is that they can pair employees with certain clients to make this a little bit more natural, so people don't have to step outside of themselves. But what are the complications of this issue with employees, the pros and cons? Are there some different ones than the ones we've been discussing already?

Blair: I only see one con and I really love that suggestion of yours that- to say to your clients especially in the beginning. How do you want to communicate? Do you want text messages from me? Do you want the daily report? Do you want to have weekly conversations? How often do you want to hear from me? Because again, all strategy is autobiographical, and we make the assumption that the way we want to be communicated with is the way everybody wants to be communicated with. That's not true.

I think the only con that I see in your employees befriending your clients, and we've touched on this in a previous episode, is when they hoard the advocacy. You have the advocacy when your clients advocate for you, speak highly of you, and refer business to you. You want the advocacy to be from organization to organization. Sometimes the advocacy is really just from individual to individual. Let's talk an account manager as an example, and we've all seen these situations.

The client has one individual on the client side who sees your account manager as indispensable. The rest of the organization is dispensable. Those two often become friends, do things in personal time together, their families might hang out together. That's not a bad thing. The bad thing is that when your employee does not recognize or as you might say evil, for selfish reasons. It's hoarding that relationship and not allowing that advocacy to spread from him or her to the rest of the organization. Did that make sense?

David: Yes. When you can really see this pop to the surface, where- in other words, where you know that this might be an issue, is when vacation hits. That employees taking a vacation and they are still trying to hoard, as you say, that relationship. They're not really on vacation, that's one of the reasons why forced vacations are so good, because it points out where the single points of failure are.

You should not be wondering what will happen to the client relationship when the employee moves on for whatever reason. That should not be a normal part of your concern. The best account managers-- That's really what we're talking about more than anything. Like you say, they help build the relationship between two companies mediated by two people. But those people can be swapped out and the relationship is still strong between those two companies.

Now, I could see how they would still remain friends, and that would be a great way to follow that relationship. If the client contact quits and goes somewhere else, often that is the new business plan for a lot of firms. But it doesn't have to be based on a relationship, it could be based on having done great work for them, right?

Blair: Yes. I could also see in the situation where say, you have an account manager who's hoarding the goodwill in the relationship. Sometimes the principal has some culpability in that, and by that I mean the way you're paying this person. If that person is on a highly leveraged compensation plan, where- highly incentivized with a low base, then you are setting up the conditions and you're contributing to this.

Where it's in their own best interest. They're just protecting themselves. But if you're paying people, your account people, the way I believe and I think you believe account people should be paid, which is just full salary. Then that should be less of an issue.

David: I don't look back on the old days as so much better. There are a couple of things maybe, but I feel like we've made so much progress as an industry, and I love where we are in most regards. One of the things I love the most about the changes to our industry are that the sales process is not relationship-driven like it used to be. Where you had to hire somebody, and we'll talk more about this in a little bit.

It's so interesting how the idea of inbound and putting insight out there. That obviously comes from a person, but isn't wrapped all-around a 100% a relationship, it's really welcome. Anything else that you want to say on the whole client and employee thing or we're good there?

Blair: Nope. We're good let's move on.

David: Hiring friends or should we say, firing friends. Could we summarize this by saying don't hire anybody you're not willing to fire?

Blair: Yes. I live in a small village and I've heard people who are friends. I've at times decided I don't want to hire friends. There are some people we consider hiring, but chose not to, because they are friends. I've had a lot of friends go, in every case, it's all worked out well the relationship was still there, but it's tricky. I don't have a hard and fast rule around this, I'm talking from my own personal experience. You having advised over 1,000 firms, you've seen a lot of scenarios go wrong here. Do you have a hard and fast rule about don't hire friends?

David: I don't. I don't have a hard and fast rule. Here is an interesting anecdote. Part of the survey that I sent to every one of the employees of the firms that I work with, it's got 24 or 25 questions, something like that. One of the questions near the end says, "If you knew of a friend who was a great fit for an opening at the firm, do you think of this firm highly enough that you would recommend that your friend apply?"

Blair: What a great question.

David: The idea is would you try to protect your friend from taking a job that you would've been embarrassed about? The problem was that people misunderstood that question in every case, because I didn't write it well. They couldn't get over this fact that, "I don't really want to be working with my best friend. Tis might be a great job for them, but no. It's more important to me that I be a great friend with this person, and I think it would be weird to work with them.

That really surprised me that 80% of the people, when they said, "No, I wouldn't do it." Then when they explained the other why and they just free-formed that out, that that was the reason, and I thought that was really interesting. I don't have a hard and fast rule there. I would say that in most cases that I have done it and most cases for other people have done it, it's not been a great result. I'm reluctant about, but I don't have a hard and fast rule.

Blair: Yes. I think if both parties are responsible adults and both of you legitimately go into this with eyes open and recognizing that the relationship is more important, then the job then I think it's okay. Even the situation where I hired my friend and had to let them go. Still a great person, didn't think any less of them. Just in the wrong role, and we both acknowledged that. It was a difficult moment, but we've remained friends.

I think that's the way to do it, but I also recognize that that takes two responsible adults. If somebody's looking for work and is desperate, and under normal conditions probably wouldn't want to work with you, they might be inclined to say all of the right things. I think that's a little bit difficult to discern, but again, it depends on how you are with it. I think it's you as the employer, as the entrepreneur.

If you're really comfortable letting a friend go and doing it with empathy, and from your point of view the relation is still good. Then I don't see any reason why you wouldn't hire friends. Just recognizing it does come with some baggage.

David: When I think across the spectrum of the firms that I'm aware of, and you think about those firms that have a partnership. I have not been able to figure out any pattern there. There are-- I would say maybe two-thirds. I haven't measured it scientifically, but about two-thirds of those in those cases, the partners are really good friends. In other cases, they are not good friends at all. It doesn't seem like there's any big, crucial difference between those. You can make it work either way.

I had this interesting meeting one time. This is back when I had dinner with clients. I was in Chicago, we started with dinner, a man and a woman. I knew they weren't married, but I was getting these weird signals. Almost a signal like, there was an affair going on or something. I tried to hold it in, and I just couldn't against my best efforts. I just said, "Hey, folks. I know you're not married, but I'm getting these signals that something's going on here. Did I misread or-- ", I just blurted it out.

This is before I learned that you're supposed to say what you're thinking like that's something you say all the time. That's a dangerous thing to tell somebody like me. Anyway, they looked at each other and laughed and said, "We know exactly what you're talking about. We used to be married, but we got divorced, but we've felt like we really had a great business partnership. We got both remarried and there's nothing going on now."

I just thought it was interesting that they were really good friends even though they're not married and they made it work. It's interesting how human experience on such broad- different places on this spectrum are so interesting. Partners are really great friends or they just don't spend any time together. I don't see any difference in terms of how well they run the firm together.

Blair: Yes. We recorded the whole episode on this. Then at the end of the episode we agreed that we could never air it.

[laughter]

Blair: On being in business with your spouse. One of the pros of being- and this is the topic we're segueing into here. One of the pros- I work with my spouse, Julie- you're wife is involved in your business to a certain extent, in parts of it anyway, is like-- Well, we both work a lot. We can't say, "I never see you." I actually quite like working with my spouse. Even though before we pressed record, I forget what we were talking about, but I said, "You should've heard the conversation that we had this morning."

[chuckles]

David: More of an argument. That happens, but my point of view on this is it works for me. I've seen it not work, I don't have any universal guidance on it. Other than when it works, it can be fantastic. What about you?

Blair: Yes. For it to work for us, we have to be in charge of completely different things. I have to be very cautious about giving any advice in the areas where she's-- She runs the personality profile on the publishing side of what we do and the seminar side, and I run the rest of it. She gingerly gives me advice on things. I gingerly give her advice. That's how it works really well.

David: We've talked a little bit about relationships and friendships in a new business setting. I do want to come back and I want to hear specifically what your perspective on this is. We were both on a podcast this week for somebody else, and you brought up the point that in some segments of this industry, friendships are important. I think your example was in the entertainment space. I've seen four or five or six of those, but outside of that, do you hire a new business person for their friendships or not?

Blair: Yes, for the Rolodex of the personal relationships.

David: Right.

Blair: I've never been a fan of this, but as I age, I softened. It's like my ideas are more loosely held, goes the saying. I can see the temptation to do it. I could see the times when perhaps there might be an exception. Again, that entertainment space, especially that West Coast entertainment space in the movie-making industry. That whole industry is built around relationships and meetings. It flies in the face of a lot of what I teach. I just have to acknowledge that. But I've never been a big fan of hiring somebody for the Rolodex. The norm is this, you hire a new business like a hired gun. New business person for the Rolodex and you put them on a highly leveraged comp plan, maybe even 100% commission. You've just hired a mercenary. You've just hired a gunslinger and at some point, those guns are going to be turned on you.

David: Yes. They're bringing a Rolodex. They're also taking the Rolodex when they leave.

Blair: Yes. You just need to be okay with that. Just go into that with your eyes wide open. I would suspect that under most circumstances, you would choose not to do that. But for whatever reason, desperation, there are certain things about your situation in this moment where you would be okay with it. I think it's a personal decision. Just know what the trade-offs are.

David: Right. There's an overlap there, because obviously the relationship is between the client and the salesperson more than between the client and your firm and they'll follow, as you say. How does this relate to something you've talked about a bunch on The Challenger Sale, and you've adapted quite a few of those principles to how you teach selling. How does that relate to this topic?

Blair: The fundamental premise of the book, The Challenger Sale, and the research that underpins it is that in a complex B2B sale, the type of salesperson most likely to be a top performer is a challenger and not a relationship builder. A relationship builder is actually the lowest performer. A relationship builder- I'll make some generalizations here- is somebody who sees the relationship as the path to getting the sale. They seek to ease tension in the sale. That's one of their hallmarks.

A challenger is somebody who sees if the relationship is important at all. I'm paraphrasing here and mixing in something that Neil Rackham added in the foreword. The challenger sees the relationship as the reward for delivering value, and their hallmark is increasing tension in the sale. They have this ability to create tension in the sale and they see it as beneficial to do so. It goes back to this-- This correlates to my affiliation scale.

High affiliation people do not want to create tension in the sale. They want everybody to be okay. They try to ease tension. Lower affiliation people are better performers in a complex B2B sale. Now, if you're a high affiliation-- I've seen lots of high affiliation people succeed. There are some more complexity and nuance around why that is the case. I would never ask anybody to be anybody other than their wonderful selves, especially over the long-term. But if you're a high affiliation person, in certain situations you just need to try to suppress that need to connect with others and be more businesslike, be more direct. See if you can't muster the fortitude to challenge what the client is saying to you and be okay with creating some tension in the sale.

Now, if you're doing that all day long every day, that would be ridiculous. You'd have to go find something else to do for a living. But given the pace at which we sell-- In the creative professions, high affiliation people can recognize that they have high affiliation needs, and they can suppress them in certain moments.

David: All right. One last question. I'm probably not going to make it to your funeral, I just need to tell you that.

Blair: Because you'll- have been dead for 30 years?

[laughter]

David: Touché. That was a good one. No, that wasn't what I was thinking, but that's a good point. Now, I'm not going to ask you how many people will be there. Let's just say, 200 people. What percentage of those people will have had some business overlap with you over the years?

Blair: Well, there's a logistical problem. I think my funeral will be attended largely by people who live in the village that I live in. If we removed that--

David: [laughs] Okay. I'll let you remove it. Put it anywhere you want.

Blair: Yes. That's a good question.

David: Two-thirds, I bet.

Blair: I was going to say half. How about you? I bet you would be higher than two-thirds just because you've had an impact on a larger number of entrepreneurs. The impact that you've had is significant. I'm not saying you do more significant work than I do. I would never say that, David. I've just seen the impact you've had on businesses. I think I will be at your funeral, the good lord willing. I think there will be a lot of agency principals there.

David: I find that even though I have this low affiliation score, which you have somehow inserted about 4,800 times in the last half hour.

Blair: You love it.

David: I find the relationships I have with my clients are very gratifying. They've made my life so much richer. I also like the fact that I don't get text messages from most of them too.

Blair: Yes. It's not that you don't have deep, meaningful relationships. Clearly, you do. It's just that you don't need them as a condition to do business with somebody or to work with somebody. That's not something that you need from your work colleagues or clients. That's all that means. You're safe. You're human enough to proceed-

David: [laughs] You're human enough.

Blair: -out into the world with the rest of your day. You've passed, David.

David: Thank you, Blair. This was a good topic.

Blair: Thanks, David.