Two Basic Rules for Being Online without Losing Your Mind

Two Basic Rules for Being Online without Losing Your Mind

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365925/fan_mail/new] "Trust doesn't look like attention." In fact, the things that steal our attention, grab it out of the agorithmic haze are some of the most trust-breaking things we face. Just because something is good at dragging us into its orbit, doesn't mean its building trust. In fact, often quite the opposite. A lot of people are trying to spend less time online. And brand leaders have questions of what to even do with extractive social platforms (like this one) and whether to keep playing in these sands. Well Nick has decried these platforms more than most, and yet—he's here. What's up with that? In this brief episode, Nick explains why he broke his own rules, and what it cost him to figure out a better way.  He offers two simple guidelines for founders, fractionals, coaches, and executives who need to be online but refuse to be owned by it Nick walks through what the feed actually does to your brain (and your prospect's brain) and your business clarity, why LinkedIn is more aggressive than you think, why his most viral moment (2 million views) was also his most useless one. Finally he offers the framework of a Trust-Made library of content: what it looks like, and why it works in ways the algorithm chasing and numbers boosting never will. **Chapters:** - 00:01 “I’m Breaking My Rules” - 02:38 Two Rules for Social Media - 06:15 Choosing Your Space - 08:43 Why Nick Regrets the Word “Trust” - 09:53 Building Your Library Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com [https://www.culturecraft.com] Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com [https://www.trustmadegrowth.com]  Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

A Real Life Moment of Resistance & a Heartfelt Debate w/ Janice Porter about Relationships Now

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365925/fan_mail/new] "The obsession with up and to the right is definitionally gonna make you less effective because it forces you to act in ways because it forces you to act in ways that are contrary to the natural flow of how things change." Most leaders are fighting their resistance. Nick Richtsmeier thinks that's the wrong move. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick opens with one of the most honest soliloquies he's recorded about resistance as a function of growth, what it means when your organization keeps producing the same problems, and what he's personally been up against finishing his book The Damn Rules (get advanced access at DamnRulesBook.com). The thesis: resistance doesn't need to be fought. It needs permission to soften. And the way you do that is by pausing long enough to ask — what is this resistance trying to protect me from? Is that still a real risk? Or am I carrying something that doesn't belong here? Then Nick practices what he just preached — live, on camera, in real time — in a conversation with Janice Porter, relationship marketing specialist and LinkedIn strategist. Because Janice does things Nick resists: cold outreach, DMs to strangers, systematic LinkedIn prospecting. And instead of filtering her out, he lets the conversation happen. And it challenges him. We can't wait to hear how you observe this moment. Email us at podcast@culturecraft.com. What they find across their disagreement is that they care about exactly the same thing. Human connection. Trust. Showing up for people in a world that has quietly trained us to hide behind walls we don't even know we've built. Janice's approach: be interested, not interesting. Hang out in the mailbox, not the feed. Nick's reframe: we've been so focused on protecting ourselves from the wrong risk that we've missed the real one — isolation. If you're building something and feel like you keep hitting the same wall, or if the very idea of reaching out to someone new fills you with low-grade dread — this one is for you. Find Janice at the Relationship Rules podcast and at janicerporter.com Make sure you're in the early access group for Nick's book, The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy at DamnRulesBook.com. **Chapters:** 00:00 Introduction 01:40 Why Resistance? 11:49 Nick’s Restance — Damn Rules Book 13:47 Identifying + Releasing Resistance 22:34 Janice's Journey into LinkedIn 26:46 Janice’s LinkedIn Strategy 32:30 The Narcissist’s Dilemma in Networking 47:24 What’s Giving Janice Hope 50:16 Nick’s Final Thoughts More at damnsgiven.com | TrustMadeGrowth.com | CultureCraft.com Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com [https://www.culturecraft.com] Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com [https://www.trustmadegrowth.com]  Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

Businesses are Systems & Systems Will Resist Change, Until You Give Them a Really Good Reason Not To

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365925/fan_mail/new] "Every system is working exactly as designed. Even when those designs weren't intentional. Especially when those designs weren't intentional." You've moved departments around. You've changed leaders. You've fixed the website. You've brought in new talent. You've reorganized budgets. And the same problems keep coming back. Until you can see the system as it is, none of your solutions are going to stick. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick Richtsmeier walks through one of the most important frameworks in the Trust-Made Growth playbook: how to actually see the system you're in, understand why it's self-reinforcing, and begin to change it, without burning everything down in the process. Lots of people are in victim mode about "how the system works now," and while that makes for great social media quips, it only supports the system as is. The first thing you've got to do is accept the requirements for change. For the business, problem, opportunity, resistance that is right in front of you. Nick starts where every real change effort has to start: with the energy of frustration. That white-knuckle feeling of why does this keep happening is not a problem to solve away. It's information. It's the beginning of seeing. And the first thing you have to accept — the thing most leaders resist — is that every system is working exactly as designed. Even the frustrating ones. Even the ones that feel broken. Especially those. Nick walks through a real client story of owners whose decisions weren't sticking, traces it back to a resistance they didn't know they were carrying from a previous chapter of their careers, and shows how turning fight energy into curiosity energy opens the door to actually seeing what's going on. He connects it directly to the sales ghosting problem from the previous episode showing how a fractional leader's sales system was perfectly designed to produce people who liked her, couldn't explain her, and disappeared. This is systems thinking made practical, made human, and made actionable for founders, department heads, coaches, consultants, and anyone trying to change something that doesn't want to change. **Links:** - Preorder the book: http://DamnRulesBook.com - Engage Deeper: https://DamnsGiven.com - Become or Hire a TMG Strategist: https://TrustMadeGrowth.com - Hire Us: https://CultureCraft.com **Chapters:** 00:12 Who this is for 06:15 Everything is a system 11:55 How NOT to change systems 13:11 How this shows up in sales 15:30 Nick’s advice Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com [https://www.culturecraft.com] Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com [https://www.trustmadegrowth.com]  Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

Why They Like You But Won't Hire You: Selling in a Trust-Made Way

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365925/fan_mail/new] "People liking you is not the same as people trusting you. It is simply not the same." This episode is about why nice people get ghosted. Why saying "yeah, I can do that" on a sales call is a death trap. And why you're burning trust all the while they are telling you how much they like you... ...and what to do about it. You had a great call. Everybody liked each other. They said let's talk again soon. And then — nothing. This is the affinity trap. And if you're in consulting, coaching, fractional work, or any kind of service business, you've lived it more times than you want to count. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick Richtsmeier breaks down exactly what's happening between the great call and the ghost and why the very thing that makes people like you is often the thing that keeps them from hiring you. Being seen as nice, helpful, and flexible feels good in the moment. But it produces affinity, not trust. And those are not the same thing. He walks through the two-phase structure of a real trust-made sales conversation: the exploratory phase where your only job is to ask questions, validate experience, and get to root cause  and the offering phase, which is a completely different conversation that most people never actually have. The mistake is collapsing them together. Saying yes too early. Becoming everything to everyone. And walking away from a call where nobody rejected you... which means nobody actually considered you either. The fix requires one uncomfortable thing: bearing the risk of rejection. Proposing something specific. Giving people something real to respond to. Because the only way they can reject a vague helpful person is to ghost them. And they ghost you because they like you. This is one of the most practical and immediately applicable episodes Nick has recorded. If you sell services of any kind, this one is for you. Chapters 0:00 The affinity trap 2:30 Why saying yes kills the deal 6:00 The two-phase sales conversation 10:00 How to propose without collapsing 14:00 Bearing the risk of rejection Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com [https://www.culturecraft.com] Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com [https://www.trustmadegrowth.com]  Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.

Sick Towns, Extraction & the Future of Place: If we change the community, we can change the culture with Jeff Siegler

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2365925/fan_mail/new] What does your neighborhood have to do with your business or your capacity to lead? More than you think. Jeff Siegler spent years running Ohio's Main Street program — traveling community to community, dispensing conventional wisdom about economic development, watching none of it work. Until it dawned on him: they had misidentified the problem. And when you misidentify the problem, every solution makes things worse. In this episode of Damns Given, Nick sits down with Jeff, author of Your City Is Sick and founder of Revitalize or Die, to talk about what we've actually built over the last 50 years, why it's making us sick, and what the science of place tells us about human behavior, trust, and the kind of economy we're living in. This conversation goes places you won't expect. They cover: * why growth is not the same as improvement why confusing the two has hollowed out communities across America * why Dollar General and strip malls don't just look bad, they produce bad behavior * why the biggest predictor of your health isn't your genetics, it's where you go home * why every out-of-town business is, by definition, extracting from your community and what the solution to neighborhood health should be Nick closes with his own reflection: trust is physical. It happens in the body. It happens in the spaces where we actually live and breathe and see each other. And any organization trying to build trust while ignoring its physical presence in the world is fighting against every human instinct it has. This one will change how you think about where you work, where you shop, and where you live. Jeff Siegler: revitalizeordie.com | Your City Is Sick available now More at damnsgiven.com | TrustMadeGrowth.com | CultureCraft.com Key quotes:  "We keep building the sets of zombie movies, and then think it's weird that people are responding like zombies." "Growth is equivalent to improvement — that is such a fallacy. It's like saying putting on weight is getting healthier."  "We adapt to our surroundings. When you realize it's more of a science than an art, that there are proportions and ratios... places that we think are beautiful, places we want to aspire to, it's not a mystical thing. It's liberating." "Trust is incredibly physical and personal. It happens in the body. It happens in our physical spaces. It happens where we live, where we breathe, where we see each other. If we're trying to overwhelm the body's system for trust with a ton of digital overrun — it's going to exhaust you, your organization, and everyone involved." "If we could just change the culture here, we could clean up the community. You've got it backwards. Clean up the community and the culture changes." Trust-Made Growth® Leaders who want to understand how to reformat their growth strategies to address trust decay should explore more at CultureCraft.com [https://www.culturecraft.com] Independent Professionals can join the free community exploring how to return trust to our commerce and our communities at trustmadegrowth.com [https://www.trustmadegrowth.com]  Have a business topic you want us to decide if it's working or broken? Have a question about the episode? You can email us at podcast@culturecraft.com.