We were lucky to catch up with Jordan Birnbaum recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jordan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
I was finishing up my Master’s, and my intention was to become a consultant and authority in the application of behavioral science in solving for problems in the workplace. I was in a bit of a funk; a friend called me on a Sunday morning and asked if I’d like to join him and his wife at a house party in Brooklyn. I probably felt like saying no, but thank goodness I didn’t. At the party I started talking with a guy who built workplace apps for a living. He explained that teams would ask him to build a product and commit to using it. He’d deliver exactly what they wanted, and then they would never use it. “Next time tell them other people are using it.” I told him about Cialdini’s social proof experiments, and my belief that the expectations you set for a product are far more impactful than the product. He said something like, “I’ve learned more in the last hour than I have in the last two years.” To which I responded, “Then hire me. I’m just starting my consulting practice.” And he did. My first client was ADP, and my first project was Compass. Eventually I became too important to the product to remain a consultant, and so ADP brought me on full-time as VP and Chief Behavioral Economist. Compass won Top Product at HR Tech in 2017, and the guy who hired me was at my wedding and remains among my closest friends.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My career has been an exercise in self-discovery through entrepreneurial adventures. I started out at D. E. Shaw & Co., working in London as a market-maker of Japanese equity warrants. (I didn’t know what they were, either.) I did OK, but discovered finance wasn’t for me. Fortunately they loved me, because when I told them I didn’t like finance and wanted to return to NY, they said, “OK, try Juno!” I began by cutting marketing distribution deals, and ended up as SVP and Chief Revenue Officer, beating the analysts estimates for six straight quarters following our IPO. At the time, we had one of the largest run rates in the industry, my first ever leadership job grew to a span of 75, and I got among the best upward review scores at the company. I discovered I was a great deal maker, but an even better leader. Building Juno (pre-IPO) was fun; growing Juno (post-IPO) wasn’t. So I left to start my own company: a hybrid media and live entertainment venue in Hollywood, CA called The Vanguard. The Vanguard had a capacity of 2,000, and employed more than 150 for a decade. Every significant electronic music act played The Vanguard, and every major studio filmed and held events there. (Even Rock of Ages world-premiered at Vanguard.) Selling the business after a decade, I realized that what I enjoyed most in both jobs was motivating the staff and developing organizational cultures. So I went back to school as an old man to get my MA in I/O Psychology, during which time I also read virtually every behavioral science book published before 2015. My intention was to use behavioral science to solve workplace problems, and my first opportunity to do that came with ADP. I designed and built Compass, the 2017 HR Tech Product of the Year. A leadership development tool, Compass used behavioral science to generate 10% avg. score improvements resulting from a 70% read rate on email coaching. During my time with ADP, I wrote some high impact articles and presented at some major conferences, which is where my brand as a subject-matter-expert began to take shape. After a brief stint as a COO at a behavioral-science-based market research company, I launched Jordan Birnbaum Consulting, and my former employer, ADP, became my anchor client. We offer social science for people, and social science for business. The people side includes leadership development, team motivation, behavioral science for sales and marketing, and organizational culture development. The business side includes product / feature design, sales and marketing collateral, email marketing, and Web site design. We provide leadership development for clients like ADP, sales optimization for clients like HGAN, and coaching for clients like Alvaria. We get incredible results because we make incredible guesses about how people will react to things. We also get incredible results because we infuse kindness and empathy into everything we do. If you understand where people are coming from, it is easier to reach them with kindness than any other approach. That is true for clients, customers, employees and colleagues. I’d like to think that the majority of people who have worked with me would say: “He makes people feel understood and genuinely good about themselves.” I write about it quite a bit on my blog for Psychology Today called “The Uncertainty Principal – A Fresh Take on Organizational Psychology.” Some recent topics include how to make kindness cool, why recognition is needed to make people safe (not proud), and why we must be careful when considering non-contextualized advice from people like me. If it seems in my writing as though I am trying to appeal to your heart through your funny bone, it’s because that is exactly what I am trying to do.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
Around the launch of The Vanguard, I coincidentally began collecting action figures. It started with The Simpsons, continues with The Muppets, and exploded from there. Fortunately I had a very large office to display them all, and a lot of people visited my office. Every year The Simpsons holds a premiere party for the cast and crew, where roughly 800 people gather to watch the show live together. They had intended to book my competitor, but someone let them know about the massive Simpsons collection in my office. So I got a call from the booker asking if she could check out the venue. Once she saw that it could handle her party she asked if she could see my office. (At this point I knew it was in the bag.) She gasped when she walked in, took a picture, and texted it. We made small talk for maybe two minutes when she got a text, smiled and said, “You got it. That was Matt.” (As in Simpsons and Life is Hell creator Matt Groening.) We hosted the event, it was an amazing evening, and of course, nearly everyone heard about my office and stopped by. This was relatively early in The Vanguard’s life, and this event paved the way for many more incredible special events, which always proved to be my favorite experiences. This is a fun Hollywood story, but there is also an important lesson in there. This happened because I enthusiastically advertised my genuine passions, and it created serendipity for me. The more of ourselves that we put out there, the more we create opportunities for people to connect with us. You don’t have to leave serendipity to luck.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
The breadth of knowledge on leadership borders on being too extensive to be practically useful. (It’s one of the most studied subjects ever.) Great leaders think strategically in order to create guiding principles, and execute intentionally in order to bring those principles to life. Strategically, I think focusing on employee needs is the best way to go. Understanding what each person needs accomplishes two things: it allows you to make the best decisions for them, and it builds trust with them. An employee whose needs are met is a happy and productive employee. My favorite leadership theory, Self-Determination Theory, says that people are at their best when they feel autonomous, are regularly able to display mastery and feel connected to colleagues and customers. Another leadership to which I subscribe is Servant Leadership, in which the leader works for the team, not the a=other way around. Thinking about these ideas will begin to influence decision-making in the moment. However there are tangible short-term behaviors that leaders can display immediately to boost morale and performance. 1 – People need to be recognized at least once per week, not to make them feel proud, but to make them feel safe. 2 – Unclear expectations are the death of productivity and morale. Make sure your team can articulate your expectations back to you. 3 – People are future oriented. Learn what people want and do whatever you can to demonstrably support that, weekly. 4 – Practice active listening. Nothing matters more to people than feeling heard and considered. 5 – Always be as kind as you can. That doesn’t mean conciliatory, naive, or enabling. You will never regret being kind from a place of empathy, generosity or benevolence.
Contact Info:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-birnbaum-/
- Twitter: @JordanBirnbaum
