In today's interconnected world, the power of influence cannot be underestimated. It's the invisible force that shapes our interactions with others and holds the potential to transform our personal and professional lives. In this blog post, we'll dive deep into the art of influence and discover how being intentional about it can be the missing piece to scaling your impact exponentially.

The Universal Aspect of Influence:

Influence is not confined by boundaries or cultures; it's embedded in our DNA. From our earliest childhood memories, we can recall moments when influence had a profound effect on us. Faisal Ensaun, the host of our podcast, shares his memories of watching his siblings play in the snow and how his father's response to his curious questions about religion left a lasting impact. These early experiences demonstrate that influence is a universal aspect of human life.

Positive and Negative Imprints:

As Faisal points out, influence can be both positive and negative. Just as we have been positively influenced, there are times when we have faced negative influences, such as bullying or abuse. What matters most is how we use these imprints to shape our lives. Sometimes, even negative experiences can fuel our growth. Understanding the impact of these imprints is crucial to mastering influence.

The Power of Intentionality:

Intentionality is the key to harnessing the power of influence. Whether in personal or professional relationships, being intentional about how we interact with others can lead to transformative outcomes. Faisal shares stories from his life, highlighting moments when individuals who were intentional in their responses made a significant difference. These instances serve as powerful reminders that our actions can profoundly impact others.

Importance of Nurturing Relationships:

Influence is closely tied to relationships. In both personal and business contexts, relationships are the foundation of success. Whether it's with family, friends, colleagues, or business partners, every interaction leaves an imprint. Faisal emphasizes the need to nurture and maintain these relationships intentionally. He suggests regularly evaluating the quality and impact of your connections.

The Business Perspective:

In the business world, relationships are at the core of success. Faisal points out that everything in business revolves around relationships, including those with customers, collaborators, team members, and partners. Building and maintaining these relationships requires intentionality and a deep understanding of the people you're dealing with. Faisal shares how effective marketing and sales rely on building positive relationships and connecting with customers on a personal level.

Becoming a Master of Influence:

To become a master of influence, you must ask yourself critical questions about your relationships. Identify the most important relationships in your life, assess the impact they have on you, and determine the impact you have on them. Are you intentional in your interactions? Do you communicate effectively? Are you aware of how others perceive your words and actions?

Conclusion:

Influence is a potent force that can shape our lives and the lives of those around us. By being intentional about our relationships and actions, we can harness the transformative power of influence. Whether in personal or professional spheres, mastering influence is the missing piece that can elevate the quality of our lives and help us scale our impact exponentially. Start today by reflecting on your relationships and taking intentional steps to build positive connections.

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Leverage Impact Intentionally to Scale Impact Exponentially

Faisal Ensaun: [00:00:00] We're talking about influence and the tagline is the missing piece and we're going to talk about What is influence? Why is it important? Where do you need to develop influence to move your life and business forward? And how do you develop influence?

Um, I would say this is Embedded into our DNA. There's no way to separate this. This is not dependent on cultures. This is not dependent on any part of the world that you come from. It is one of those universal aspects of the human life, which is influence. So I want you to think about this. If you were to track your life, I want you to go back.

To your past. Think about the time the earliest memories that you have of your childhood. One of the earliest memories that I have of my childhood. I remember I was back in Afghanistan. It was actually snowing. I remember I was I'm literally remembering

as [00:01:00] I'm sharing this. I was sitting there in our yard.

It was a little bit different than here. The front yard was a lot like the backyard there. And there was snow. My siblings were playing in front of me. In fact, they were making snowballs and they were rolling it down. There was a little bit of a hill. And my dad was cleaning the rooftop. I must have been three years old or maybe two and a half something.

But I remember it like it's one of the clearest memories that I have. And I remember watching just my siblings, um, uh, my two sisters and brother, they were playing. I remember their faces. I remember they were laughing and I was getting excited. I was watching. I was curious watching. Why my dad was throwing snow off the roof, but it's one of the earliest memories.

And what is that related to? That's related to other people. And it had an effect on me. I felt joy. I felt connection. I felt curiosity in that moment. Uh, another memory I can take you back to. In my life as one of the first, um, uh, [00:02:00] times where I actually felt like I got, um, a really cool a couple of incidents.

One was, uh, with my dad where I used to ask, I was very curious. I think I might've been around six years old. Um, maybe a little bit younger, older. I used to ask a lot of questions around religion, around all sorts of things. And I was, I grew up in a Muslim Um, family and it was conservative. Um, and, um, I had a lot of questions.

Whenever I would ask questions from everybody else, they would get scared. But I remember asking the same questions from my dad around hell, heaven, these kind of things and the prophet and all that stuff. And the first time I saw a look on, on somebody's face that was not scared by my question, um, he actually looked more confused and, and kind of not knowing the answers than, uh, pretending like he knew.

And in that moment, he actually gave me permission to ask more questions. What he told me was, and I [00:03:00] remember his face, but what he said was really important. He told me, those are really good questions. Maybe you should find out the answer to those. He didn't pretend to know. He just told me and he was he was his major was religious studies at the time.

He was a teacher, but what that that moment had a profound impact on me because pretty much everybody else was scared of my questions and they would tell me don't ask questions like that. But when my dad told me that it kind of gave me an opening to be curious to continue my curiosity, not shove it down.

Another moment I'll share with you, and there's so many moments where, um, one of my teachers, um, it was an interesting, it was in college, um, my psychology professor, he has an interesting way of approaching it, is like, um, the first day of our class, he told us that if you don't show up to my test, if you don't do an assignment, if you don't do anything major that I get [00:04:00] you to do, Don't call me and tell me that my dog ate the homework or something along those lines.

Just send me an email saying that I'd like to take the test later or uh, I'd like to Can you please rearrange this? I've already created backups for tests for these kind of assignments So just come show up later and I looked at him and I could not believe it. I'm like You can do that as a teacher, but he actually followed through.

I actually

missed one of his tests and I didn't feel like I needed to lie to him or anything like that. I sent him an email. He's like, no worries, just show up on this day, do this alternate test and you'll be good. I did that test and I got 90 percent on that test. The reason why I wanted to defer it because I was so overwhelmed with all the exams and I was like, I need to find a way to do this.

And he had an alternate one and then it made me realize how come nobody else was doing that? And it helped me understand, ah, he was being creative, he was finding another way of doing that. So many stories I can come [00:05:00] up with, but I want you to think about your own stories. The people who have influenced you, and these are positive influences I'm talking about.

There were negative influences in my life. There were times where I was bullied, there were times when I was abused, there were Whatever that happened, it happened with other people. There is either a positive imprint in your life, or there is a negative imprint in your life. Now, the, how you use that is the most important piece.

Sometimes even the negative imprint, a lot of my trauma has become a fuel for me to grow. That has come from people around me. But, um, the key here is that everything that we are is actually, most things are a product of, not everything, most things are a product of the influence that we've had in our life.

Now, I want you to reverse that as well. Think about The people that you've had an impact with, whether it was a sibling, whether it was a colleague, a friend, [00:06:00] whether it's your spouse, whether it's your children, you have left an imprint on other people, positive or negative. And and this is on the personal end.

This is generally on the personal professional life. Every person you interact with, whether you like it or not, you're going to impact them one way or another. Now, my question is, how do you ideally want to impact people? And that's that impact of yours is influence. What kind of effect do you want to have on people?

So now let's move this in the business world. If you've been in business, any given time, you know, that everything in business is actually about relationships. It's about relationships with your customers. It's relationships with your, uh, with your collaborators. With organizations that relationships with your team members relationship with your partners without those relationships, nothing move moves forward.[00:07:00]

Think about your relationship in your home with your life partner with your spouse. Think about relationships in your life. Every day, day to day, every time you interact with people, you have an impact on somebody. Now it can be an automatic impact. You kind of pass by them, you ignore them, or you don't even notice them, or you barely notice them, or it can be an intentional one.

So the reason why we call it a missing piece, but as soon as people become intentional about this piece, their life completely transforms. Here's what ends up happening. We know that one of the areas where people get the most amount of joy, connection, love, uh, fulfillment is their relationships in their life.

Um, some of the best times that you, if you go back to your life will be with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with your team, uh, with the people that you enjoy being around. Some of the best memories you'll have will be with those people. Sometimes it's memories of us alone, but a lot of times it's [00:08:00] not because we're a social species.

It's a very important point that we overlook a lot of times. Some of the worst things in your life will be from people as well. When you've gotten hurt, when you've gotten, uh, you've felt, uh, rejected, when you felt disconnected, when you felt like you were not accepted, when you felt like you were bullied, or whatever it might be.

Has been from other people around you. And this is key. It's not just for you. You need to understand this as a leader that the people that your family and friends surround themselves with they make a big impact on their life, whether they like it or not. And this is why some of the best thinkers will say, show me the five people or a few people around, you know, I'll tell you who you are.

What they're trying to point to is that the people around you has an impact on you, whether you like it or not. It's both ways. Now you need to find the right people around you that will support you to grow in the direction that you want, and you need to [00:09:00] understand how you can support those around you with the right people.

You could be one of those people for them. So that's the significance of influence in your life. And so what is it? Why is it now? Where do you need to find this influence? So that I want you to think about your day to day life. And this becomes really important because When we're going through our day to day life, a lot of things become automatic.

For example, we have our family and kids. It's a lot of it is routine or we have our life partner or we go see our colleagues and partners and friends or whoever. It becomes sort of a routine and we've heard these things over and over. We take it for granted and that taking it for granted, what that does to you is that.

You stop to realize that those, those relationships actually mean something. Now in the back of your mind, of course, you know that they mean something. A lot of what you're doing is for those relationships. For example, a lot of my motivation comes from providing for my family. A huge part of it. But [00:10:00] there are days where I'll go through and I'm doing lots of stuff.

My family's just there. They're a lot like air. They're there. When do we realize that they're not? That, that's important. Last night, my daughter, she was just flipping and doing some things. Uh, she's four years old. She's always jumping around. And she flips and she cuts her tongue a little bit. Uh, she bites her own tongue.

And you see a lot of blood there. And, like, you can see everybody freaking out. And I'm looking at her and I'm making sure that she's good, like in those little moments, like it's not that big of a deal. You realize how important you're, the people around you are when they get hurt, when they get sick, when they feel sad.

So we forget. So before we get to those moments, how can we be intentional around them? And what is the impact of it? The impact of it is that as you get more intentional, you understand what are the ways that you can, you want to influence them. What are the ways that you want to support them and influence to can mean a lot of things, but it's the effect of [00:11:00] how you interacting with other people.

In this case, I mean positive. How do you want to influence them? I'm sure everybody here wants to influence them positively. So what kind of impact do you want to have? What do you want to role model for them? This is something to ask yourself. Do you want to role model integrity for them? Do you want to role model independence for them?

Do you want to role model for them? work ethic for them. You want to role model your ability to do certain things for them. And what do you normal, how do you approach your relationships? Do you communicate? And this is where communication comes in and other things. Do you set intentions to communicate properly with those around you?

So what does that mean? That means that Just because we're saying certain words does not mean it registers the same way in some another person's mind. So are you intentional in how you communicate with those around you? Do you care to find out how they're receiving it? A lot of people in relationships, whether they're partners or life partners or business partners or colleagues, [00:12:00] they take it for granted that our, our mind, just because you're saying some words, doesn't mean that the other person will understand you exactly that way.

So do you care enough to find out how they're understanding you and what kind of effect does it have on them? And this is where care and connection comes in. And when the other person feels like they are cared for and they're connected and they're being understood, heard, seen, They start to connect with you, whether, whether that's a customer, that's a colleague, that's a team member.

So are you intentional in that area? If you're intentional, guess what happens? The quality of your life goes up. If you're intentional in your personal life. If you're not intentional, it tends to go down. What ends up happening? Miscommunication happens. A lack of understanding happens. If there's a lot of miscommunication happens over a long period of time, this is where relationships start to break apart.

This is where husband and wife will look at each other and say, [00:13:00] I don't even know you anymore. That's where siblings and family members will do the same thing. If there's a lot of connection and love and care and understanding happening, the quality of life goes up and feel people feel connected. Same thing on the business side.

When you look at the business side, uh, one of the things, for example, in marketing and sales is what is marketing. Marketing is helping people associate something With an entity, in this case with a brand, you're building a relationship, you're helping people build a relationship with your brand, that brand could be you, that could be a company, whatever that might be.

How do you build a relationship? You connect with them with messages, you connect with them with stories, you connect with people with the value that you share with them. And then the second piece of running a company that an important piece of it is sales. How do you build relationship? For example, investors need to build relationship with investors.[00:14:00]

How do you do that? By support, by understanding them, by, by supporting them, by nurturing them, by sending them value, by helping them understand what you are about, by, by helping them understand your life values, by supporting them and try and maybe even challenging, helping them find solutions on their investing path.

When you take them through that journey. You're influencing them in a positive direction, but if you weren't intentional about it, if you weren't doing this consistently, you don't have a relationship with your investors, hence you don't have a business. Same thing when you're building a relationship with brokers, why would they send you deals?

Well, because you have a relationship, you've been consistent with closing those deals. You've been consistent in your follow through. You've been consistent and, and being, having integrity. You've been consistent in all sorts of areas. Why would people want to partner with you in deals? [00:15:00] Well, they understand you.

They understand your credibility. They trust you. They connect with you. How do they know that? Well, you've gotten to know each other. They've seen your track record. You've proved to them that you, you can be trusted. That requires a lot of effort and here's one of the biggest things I want you to understand when it comes to relationships Relationships tend to take a lot of energy.

What does that mean? That means that Every relationship that you have in your life Whether those are business relationships or personal they require a lot of nurturing. They require a lot of touch points Um, what even if it's somebody close to you, like your parents or your siblings, if you want to be close with them, you're connecting with them, you're messaging them, calling them, you're sharing things with them.

Um, if it's your life partner, you're taking the time to spend time with them, not just passing by it. And this is where people get disconnected. For example, when, uh, couples have kids, especially the [00:16:00] second kid after the first kid, they go through sort of a period where they come together. But then. Once the focus becomes the kid, it becomes difficult for the parents, and then they get detached from each other in the sense that the focus becomes the kids accept each other.

After the second kid in relationships, it becomes even harder because now there are two human beings to pay attention to. And before you know it, they completely forgot about each other. And after a few years, they're like, who are you? I'm a very different person because they never took the time to intentionally did that and we're not taught a lot of times I had to learn that the hard way myself.

So I want you to think about a couple of things and we're going to cover this more and more as we go through the week, especially in our group coaching session on Thursday is that. The questions you need to be asking yourself, who are the important people around you, whether that's your life partner, your siblings, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your business partners.

You will find a [00:17:00] handful of people that are really important to you from a personal point of view. And then there will be business relationships. With business, a lot of times, because you're dealing with large numbers of people, you either have a system in place or you have team members in place or a mix of those two to keep building that relationship and nurturing them and building that influence and positive impact with them.

And so the whole point of this topic is so you build intentionality, you're keeping track of all your relationships and you're tracking it a lot like you would be tracking projects. And in fact, that's exactly how I look at my relationship is that they're more like, okay, I'm how often do I connect with this person?

If it's a friend, do I have touch points with them? If it's a family member, if it's a, if it's a partner, for example, I have date days with my wife every Sunday. If that kind of goes off every month. Like, if, if, if I don't have those date days once a week that we have, [00:18:00] if we miss a couple of them, I know that there's a difference in our interaction.

So now I need to be intentional about that. But before that happens, I'm usually intentional. This is an important time for ourselves. Same thing with our kids. How are we being intentional with them? Are we actually spending time with them or we're just around them? Same thing with my business partners.

Are we clear on our path? Do we know each other? Do we trust each other? Do we connect with each other? So are you keeping track of all the important relationships? And when you go to the business side, are you nurturing your investors? If you're thinking about investors or customers, are you nurturing the people in your network?

For example, if you're on LinkedIn, are you actually meeting people? Or you just have a bunch of connections, but you haven't met them. So one of the things that I do Is I actually meet the people on my LinkedIn. I'll book a call with them. I'll find out what they need I won't be able to do that with all of them But I I pretty much have a certain amount of time Set up to get to know my network to see how I can support them And how and understand if they could support [00:19:00] me as well But i'm building a long term relationship with them and that's why i'm saying relationships take a lot of energy So be very intentional around What relationships you have around you?

What kind of impact that they have on you? What kind of impact do you have on them? And are you being intentional with them? Because if you're not more than likely, you're taking it for granted. More than likely, they're having some kind of impact, positive or negative. You're not aware of it. More likely you have some kind of impact on them, positive or negative.

You're not aware of that either. And it's just happening. And this is where people will say, I don't know where to find customers. I don't know how to be happy in my relationships. I don't know how to expand my business. Well, you're not paying attention. If people paid attention, this is why this is a missing piece.

They, all they need is one person to give them Access to an incredible network. It was actually one person who helped build my, my [00:20:00] business, helping connect with hundreds of people because I built a really good relationship with that person. It was another person who helped me amplify my business that I built a relationship with over the course of a few months and a few years, there was a couple of other people in my personal life to help me get connected to other people who, who got me connected to my wife, who has shaped the quality of my life.

There are always people around you who will connect you with the right people. Uh, once in a while, I'll get one of my clients will say that I don't know how to find people and I'll ask him a simple question. What was the last time you connected with the people in your life? One of my clients who, um, uh, who was having a hard time getting a deal.

And, uh, I'm like. Do you do you socialize with the people around you? It's like when was the last time you spent some time with them? He was always in business mode He's like, you know the last time I saw some My my wife's friends and my friends was a while ago. I'm like well [00:21:00] Why don't you take some time like this this month and actually spend time with him?

He did that for a couple of months. Guess what happens? One of his wife's friend's husband ended up being a big, um, uh, what do you call it? A builder. He didn't even know about it. He had no idea that he was a, they built a relationship, they built a deal, they created ground up systems out of that, but it was right around him.

The only reason he was not seeing it because he wasn't actually connecting with people. He wasn't nurturing. And this is the same thing. If you ever struggle with, for example, with your kids, find out how much quality time you're spending with them. Do you understand their challenges? Do you understand what their struggles are?

Do you actually spend time with them? Having fun with them rather than just lecturing them. If you ever just feel disconnected from your wife, do you understand what their needs are? Do you understand what her challenges are or his challenges are? If you ever feel like your partners [00:22:00] are kind of disconnected with you, do you actually spend time with them on strategic things as much as operational things?

Every week you're talking about the same things, but do you take time away to talk about the business, working on the business, the strategic long term stuff? Do you take the time to get to know them a little bit? If you don't then you're struggling in that relationship, so i'll leave it at that Um, and on thursday Like I said, we're going to go much deeper into this topic and I want you to get into the thinking this whole week is What's happening in my relationships?

What are the most important relationships? I I have what can impact? Are these relationships having on me positive or negative? Uh, what kind of impact am I having on these relationships? What can I do to improve? What can I do to be intentional? Because that can literally change the course of your, uh, your path.

It can change, raise the quality of your life, if you're intentional about your personal relationships. It can raise the quality of your business, that you're literally [00:23:00] your cash flow, literally your, your, and that's why people say your network is your net worth. Once your network expands, you're connecting with the right people, you're building long term relationships, your net worth starts to expand because they start to connect you with other people that you can serve and support, uh, collaborate with, build relationships with.

Um, I'll leave it at that.