We caught up with the brilliant and insightful ALECIA Huck a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

ALECIA, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I know a lot of people might hate this answer.

My first job was as a door-to-door salesman. I sold educational books with the SW Advantage program while I was in college. My first summer I was the most gung-ho person in the group. I did whatever they told me. Cold showers? Yes! Read Og Mandino at breakfast? Yes! Do 30 demonstrations every single day? YES YES YES! Whatever it takes!

My boss told us that if we ran between doors it would help us keep a sense of urgency, get more demonstrations, and make more sales. So I ran. And ran. And ran. And ran.

I did well at first. I got better each week and while I wasn’t the best salesperson, I was working hard and getting better.

And then I hit a snag. I couldn’t seem to get out of it. I kept trying to run a little more. Get in another demonstration or two at the end of the day. Nothing seemed to be working. Finally my boss had me come and follow behind him while he sold, a common way to help someone get “back on track.”

During our day he was positive and upbeat. He did great demo’s and made sales. He also WALKED between houses. It took hours for me to work up the courage to ask him why he told us to run but he walked.

“Huck (my last name,)” he said, “You should NEVER run between houses.”

Um, WHAT?!?!?!?

He went on to explain that most people should, that most people would definitely be helped by that. But the point of running between houses was to help people stay in a “Relaxed Sense of Urgency.” And I was already urgency all the time. He said if people like him, and me, run between houses we tend to get anxious and uptight. Walk quickly, he told me. But don’t run.

It blew my mind. And that’s when I realized that success isn’t as simple as the world wants it to be. The answers are more complicated.

You see we live in a guru culture where hundreds of people are more than happy to show you THE WAY for the cost of a book, speech, or seminar. And so many of us, me included, want success to be just one book away. (I have hundreds of books on my shelves to prove it.)

But success doesn’t work that way. Success is complicated, and most of all, personal.

We all need a little help, some technical expertise, or just some new ideas sometimes.

But if you’re honest about it, most people know what works for them and what they need to do. It’s not the knowing that is hard, it’s the doing.

You’ll learn more spending a month really studying yourself than you will reading all the books in the business and personal development sections of the bookstore combined.

In my company, we have a value that comes from all this. It’s something I fiercely believe and teach everyone we work with. We call it #WinAsYou.

For me, there is something heartbreaking about giving too much authority to even a well-meaning guru or a really great book. You cannot win by trying to be something you’re not. You might have to get better, expand who you are, but you’ll never win if you’ve got to completely change.

And even if you could, why would you want to?

What does it take to be successful? It takes YOU. That’s the best and worst part.

ALECIA, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

In business the hardest, weirdest, fastest, most interesting companies are the ones who are growing fast with a founder/CEO at the helm. These organizations are the wild, wild, west of the professional world. Founders are more Hahn Solo than General Leia. They move fast, move on fast, have a thousand ideas all at once, and love the madness of it all. They’re hard not to love but also hard to follow.

And when they get to certain growth points, what worked stops working. It’s confusing. So they hire more people and have longer meetings. Everyone is working harder but things are still getting missed and they can never, ever get caught up. And they never have time to work on the big picture stuff no matter how important it is.

It’s a dangerous and hard time to be a leader.

And that’s where I come in.

I am a management coach and consultant. I specialize in helping the leadership teams in fast growing companies.

I help them protect their culture, develop their people, and build the systems, processes, tools, and skills they need.

I help them make sure they don’t miss out on their chance to build something great.

It’s a ton of fun, a decent amount of crazy, and wildly cool to see a team go from confused and frustrated to confident and EXCITED again.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making videos for LinkedIn. I HATED the idea of videos. I HATED the idea of being camera ready. I HATED how pretentious it all seemed.

But my good friend and marketing expert, Valerie was relentless.

So I sucked it up.

And the thing no one tells you about LinkedIn in particular, is that 80-90% of the people on there do not post ANYTHING. They also don’t comment, don’t like, and don’t share. So it usually feels like you’re shouting into a void.

But I’ve gotten almost half a million dollars in revenue from clients who found me on LinkedIn. They see some random post, go down the rabbit hole and end up on a call.

And everywhere I go, people tell me they’ve read all my stuff and love this video or story.

They’re engaged even when, especially when you don’t see them.

I don’t consider myself great at LinkedIn as a social media platform. My page is not optimized. I don’t have a zillion followers. I’m sure there are hundreds of things I could be doing better.

But I have great engagement and it turns into revenue.

A couple things that I think matter:

1) Do it in a way that works for you. I found a way to make videos work for me. (An office with insanely good natural light helped a ton.) I keep experimenting to find what really resonates. One recent Friday I thought it would be funny to share a few things I had said during the week. It’s turned into a favorite posting that is easy and fun for me to do and really resonates with people. If it’s too hard or too cheesy, you won’t do it. The algorithms are changing all the time anyway. So if the bots hate video but you love it, do video. Keep experimenting until you find your things. Try to have fun.

2) Social media is basically a big cocktail party that happens online. If you treat it that way, you’ll be more successful because you’re probably not a complete moron about how to interact with other humans. Be nice. Make introductions. Don’t just talk about you all the time.

3) Make sure your posts are consistent with your brand. I am a somewhat cranky person. But MAVERICK, my company, serves founders and leaders. And my people tend to be very optimistic. So I never bother to get in fights or post criticisms. Because it’s not the brand. Of course I figured this out by posting criticisms and picking fights. (Insert resigned laughter HERE.) Know what the voice of your brand is and stick to that. It’s a small thing that isn’t small. All the things you post are invitations to the party your business is throwing. Make sure the invitations match the vibe of the party. It goes a long way toward building confidence and making the right sales.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Clients come from three places for us: Referrals, LinkedIn, and speaking engagements. And while we are all always trying to get more referrals, I would give people a friendly reminder that not all businesses are the same when it comes to referrals. Most people who need me, don’t know that they need ME until long after they do. I’m a hard referral. The kind of thing, like an Air Fryer or a Japanese Toilet, that you don’t know you need until you experience it.

For a long time I compared myself to Necessity Businesses. Those are businesses like lawyers or plumbers and when you need one you NEED one. So the way they get referrals is very different. It’s need based.

For me, the need is there but invisible, not connected to the service. So I don’t do a lot of top of mind stuff. We don’t do a newsletter. (I hate them.) But we create opportunities for people to be connected to me, to know me, so that when they do need me, they’ve already got access. This includes all the content we publish on LinkedIn, a really great article about the phase of growth we serve, and CEO Intensives. These are one-day events where leaders can do the kind of thinking they don’t normally do, say the things they don’t normally say. They always include a handful of other really great leaders dealing with the same things, great booze and food, and of course I bring my expertise as well. Together these things give people a lot of different ways and reasons to make the introduction. Which has worked pretty well so far.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.maverickandcompany.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleciahuckmaverick