In the Press

Susan Bratton, former ad:tech chair and CEO of Personal Life Media, digs deeper into the methodology behind the 3outcomes.com sales training system as well as the ins and out of being a professional podcaster on Dishy Mix.

Written Transcript:

Founder, 3outcomes.com Talks Hapkido, Visualization and Living Green

Susan Bratton: Welcome to Dishy Mix. This is your host, Susan Bratton. And on today’s show we have someone who has been doing amazing things in the digital marketing industry for the last 10 years. Meredith Medland. You’re going to get to meet Meredith and hear all about her. On today’s show we’re going to cover subjects that range from transformational work to intuition to eco-fashion and the red carpet, to podcasting. You’re going to find out what Three Outcomes is all about. We’re going to talk about green living, precision languaging, and hapkido.

Meredith Medland: What makes Living Green different than other eco shows out there is when I’m speaking with my guests -- it’s a very intimate conversation. My focus is on their beliefs, their attitudes, their practices, and I ask them very deep questions that often take them by surprise. Julia said, in order to work with me, what I’d like you to do is carry around your garbage on your person for one week, and let me know how it felt for you. Celebrities are just people like you and me and they have to make plans, and have outcomes, and do all sorts of things and I really have experienced, they love talking about it, and they also will stop longer on the red carpet if they’re asking something that’s unique. Sure, the process of Three Outcomes is literally identifying and writing down three outcomes in a very specific style and voicing.

Susan Bratton: So let’s kick it off. Bad pun, welcoming Meredith Medland. Hi Meredith.

Meredith Medland: Hi Susan. Thanks a lot for having me on your show.

Susan Bratton: It’s my pleasure. It’s your birthday show, as I hear. It’s your birthday, right?

Meredith Medland: Indeed it is. Thank you very much.

Susan Bratton: So do you tell your age or not tell your age?

Meredith Medland: I do. I’m 35 and proud of it.

Susan Bratton: You look beautiful, dear. It’s nice to have you in the studio for a recording. So many of the times we do them over the phone and, although I still really enjoy it, it’s nice to have your body and your soul here with me today. So thank you for that. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Meredith at many industry events and through her work, she started out over 10 years ago selling the very first Internet advertising for the Chicago Tribune. She’s been an analyst with Jupiter, or the Jupiter organization. What do they call it? Jupiter Media Metrics?

Meredith Medland: No, Jupiter Media. Jupiter Media. They’ve gone through so many iterations.

Susan Bratton: So you were an analyst at Jupiter Media. You did e-commerce online marketing for the Sharper Image, and then during the dot.bomb, you essentially got the equivalent of your master’s degree in transformational work, which now informs a lot of the work you do today. Meredith splits her time between her two passions. One, podcasting. As you’ll see, because she bursts from the womb with a microphone in her hand, she does podcasting and she also runs an accountability consultancy called 3 Outcomes. We’re going to talk about that a lot today and we’re really going to talk about it with perspective of you, the listener, because if you’re listening today, Meredith and I are going to explain this to you so that it is actually something that we hope will possibly give you some tools to transform your life in some really easy ways. So, Meredith, you’ve been doing marketing consulting for Ad Tech, for E Metrix, for Earth TV, for Tempest Telecom. You’ve been doing a lot of work out there but you’re really focused these days on 3 Outcomes and your podcast, Living Green. What do you want to talk about first?

Meredith Medland: Oh, let’s get out Living Green.

Susan Bratton: All right. So you’re doing a podcast on the Personal Life Media network. What made you decide to be in the podcasting field and how did you pick your subject matter? What’s Living Green about?

Meredith Medland: Living Green is all about illuminating the psychology of ecology. What makes Living Green different than other eco shows out there is when I’m speaking with my guests, it’s a very intimate conversation. My focus is on their beliefs, their attitudes, their practices, and I ask them very deep questions, and often take them by surprise, asking them about their legacy. I also ask them what their 3 outcomes are. That’s incorporated into the interviews and really focusing on how their behaviors affect the things they do.

Susan Bratton: So what, first of all, why did you decide to do a podcast at all? Why didn’t you blog or, well, you do blog. So what was it that made podcasting appealing to you?

Meredith Medland: Well, I’ve always loved a microphone.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: I’ve always loved speaking and engaging with people and what I started to realize is having a recorded conversation that other people could kind of tune in and listen to, almost as if they were at a café and eavesdropping on what I was saying, there was value in that.

Susan Bratton: So you like podcasting because you like the interviewing style. So, Meredith, you mentioned when you were talking about your podcast, that it had something to do with psychology. Are you interviewing people about their psychological beliefs, or what’s the angle? Describe it more.

Meredith Medland: Sure. Well, Plenty Magazine references an interview with me where they say there are journalists, therapist journalists. And there’s a specific style of questioning that I learned in somatic practice. Somatic is the study of the mind, the body, or the spirit that’s often used with message therapists who integrate kind of the therapy dialogue in their practice. It’s really delving into the heart or the soul or the depth, making a deep connection around what really matters for my guest, and actually what’s deriving what they’re doing. Why are they doing what they’re doing? And generally, that maps back to some very interesting belief systems.
Susan Bratton: So what you’re saying is you’re interviewing people who are kind of walking the walk, the green walk, and you’re finding out what they do, and not just what they do, but why they do it?

Meredith Medland: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: Their belief system?

Meredith Medland: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: So if they compost, or they drive a hybrid car or they’ve bought bamboo flooring or whatever the thing is that they do. They wear recycled clothing, there’s something that’s driving them to do that, some belief structure that’s driving them. What are, give me examples of that that you’ve uncovered.

Meredith Medland: Exactly. Well, in episode 1, I interview Rowan Gabriel. She’s the founder of organicleather.com, as well as the president of Urth TV.

Susan Bratton: And give the URL of Urth TV, because that’s an exciting new company launch.

Meredith Medland: Sure. It’s urth.tv. And what’s important about Rowan is that she does what she does because it’s what she grew up doing. She actually was raised on a commune in England in organic farming and sustainability and learning eco-fashion plus what she calls sacred commerce, which is sort of spiritual capitalism, were all part of how she grew up. So she’s just naturally teaching what she already knew, and it’s just part of her.

Susan Bratton: So for the rest of us who didn’t grow up naturally learning how to be sustainably oriented and who struggle with all that stuff on a daily – we have a lot of guilt around it. Is there anybody that you’ve interviewed who didn’t grow up that way who have changed their way of being to be more green and have you uncovered an interesting belief about that?

Meredith Medland: Yeah, well actually, Sarah Haynes, who is with the Spitfire Agency, spitfireagency.com which she represented Woody Harrelson in his first tour and went around the world with him in a bus as well as Julia Butterfly. She’s currently working with Virgin on their new eco tours. She greens the tours and the festivals. When she started working with Julia Butterfly Hill in 2003, Julia made one request of her before they would even engage in a consulting agreement. Julia said in order to work with me, what I’d like you to do is carry around your garbage on your person for one week and let me know how if felt for you.

Susan Bratton: Wow. How much garbage did she have to carry around and how did she carry it around?

Meredith Medland: What she did was she used a hiking backpack, the kind that you would hike a mountain with, so a large backpack. It was filled all the way to the top. She carried it around for a week. And it completely changed her whole experience of ecology because she was amazed at the level of one, garbage that she produced, and two, the enormity of all the ways she could reduce her garbage with just her attention on that. And then, secondly, she decided to take the challenge on again, and the next time she did it, she carried a very small backpack.

Susan Bratton: I can’t even fathom. I would need maybe like a pull cart for the amount of garbage I generate between work and home. It might not be so bad at home, but work, wow! I mean, just thinking about the fact that I just had an iced tea out of a glass bottle. Just to do that, it would be a huge pain in the butt, and that’s just one little thing.

Meredith Medland: Yes, she actually mentions that in the interview that getting her drinks off a tap was one of the things she realized, oh I can get a beer or I can get a soda right off the tap. Now, another interesting thing is in episode 3, Dan Rubin, who could be executive director of Green Boston Tourism, spoke. Now, we he first heard about global warming, and realized that Nobel Peace Prize winners were saying hey, global warming is a real thing, he switched his attitudes and belief structures as well as his business focus onto that. Amazing, amazing reverence, and just decided, hey, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m doing this. Another example. Tierra Del Forte. She’s a very very famous guest of mine in the eco-fashion industry. Her jeans are worth by Helen Miron, Tyra Banks, and very up and coming designers. Delforte.com is her URL. She used to work in the fashion industry in New York City and was looking for her passion, something that interested her. She loved creating tight fitting, sexy jeans, and learned about the number of workers who die in cotton factories and immediately changed to producing sustainable jeans. So a lot of it is about getting news and information at some point in their careers or on their path, and then just switching it. It’s usually a trauma that is the catalyst for change, of course, and it sounds like, except for Rowan, kind of born and bred organic, is what a lot of these people did..

Susan Bratton: So do you find in your show that, your tagline is, I like your tagline, effortless ecology for everyday people. It sounds like you’re really interviewing people who are going way above and beyond everyday people. Can I relate to these experts once you interview them?

Meredith Medland: So here’s what’s happening for me as well as for other people who are just listeners that comment to me or email me and tell me what’s happening is that when, for example, Sarah Haynes. When I was interviewing her and I heard the thing about your carrying your garbage around, I’ve never heard that before. I’ve decided I’m going to take that on in about 3 weeks and do it, just because it would be like a great thing for me to do,

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: Since that interview, each time that I’ve interacted with something that I could throw away in a Whole Foods marketplace, or a container I’m drinking something in, the level of awareness and consciousness I have about my decision to make that into garbage is there.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: Regardless of whether or not I do something about the choice, so I believe that, yes, you’ll benefit because your consciousness and understanding of, of my gosh, that’s how people live! I didn’t even know that was even possible

Susan Bratton: Right.

Meredith Medland: Gets really illuminated, and each interview – Sam Joachim from ecofabulous.com just gives tips and tricks. She talks about bleach and the impact that she realized bleach has, and why it’s so imperative that we remove that from our homes. So it’s also a really grounded show. Very interesting about their lives. I like to pull out kind of juicy details, just to make it fun and stimulating.

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Meredith Medland: And my promise is that when you listen to it you’ll leave with the experience of being more conscious and your awareness will increase around how you can better serve the planet.

Susan Bratton: Nice, and entertained at the same time because you’re such a good journalist. I want to ask you, you were the lead reporter at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. You were also the lead reporter at the Eco Fashion, the very first eco fashion show, the first and only so far, in Hollywood. You’ve done a lot of what are called red carpet interviewing. What are you asking people? What kind of things are you asking these stars about green living?

Meredith Medland: Well, in order to answer the question I need to give you a little bit of a setup.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: When you come onto a red carpet, there are flashes bursting everywhere. It’s literally like it is on E Entertainment. Even in a small, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, huge huge events, celebrities like Al Gore, Will Smith, Forrest Whitaker. In the Eco Fashion show, same thing. Celebrities line up. So there’s lot of flashes, there’s lots of reporters, lots of microphones. And the way that the actors or the celebrities come down the red carpet is they generally have a PR person with them who tells you, as the reporter, what their name is, what their current project is, and gives you some sort of assignment. Like when I interviewed Al Gore, they said you have two questions. That’s all. And it’s delivered with a very deliberate tone, and you can kind of get kicked out of the press box if you’re not doing what the PR people tell you to do.

Susan Bratton: Wow.

Meredith Medland: It’s really bad etiquette. So the intensity of the situation is to get the sound bite or get the photograph cause there’s also the photographers and the video cameras so it’s a bit chaotic.

Susan Bratton: Wow.
Meredith Medland: So what I’ve chosen to do differently in my red carpet interviews is to just relax and think about if I could sit down with them for coffee, and I could go to the Internet and find anything I wanted to about them that anyone would have asked. They get interviewed all the time. What wouldn’t I be able to find? And generally, those conversations are what’s your relationship to God? How do you feel about spirituality? How do you create your own reality in regards to living green? What are 3 of the things that you’ve done in the last 3 months in your home? I was talking to Jack Johnson and he talked about how he just installed solar panels and he got really lit up and excited about it cause it’s literally like telling your girl friend about something new you did in your home. Celebrities are just people like you and me and they have to make plans and have outcomes and do all sorts of things, and I really have experienced they love talking about it and they also will stop longer on the red carpet if they’re asked something that’s unique. Most of them have programmed answers. When I spoke to Davis Guggenheim, for example, about Inconvenient Truth, I asked him a question about the film and I got a total programmed answer and I, right away was like, oh, this is not a great question to answer cause every other reporter in the line will report with the same information.

Susan Bratton: Um hmm. And so, isn’t spirituality, isn’t God off limits. I mean, are you breaking any rules by asking that?

Meredith Medland: I imagine I’m breaking a lot of rules. I haven’t been kicked off the floor yet.
But you know, if you go into U Tube and you search on Meredith Medland or you search on Santa Barbara International Film Festival, you’ll see those and there is a lot of footage in there. I was speaking with, what’s her name from Dream Girls, Jennifer from Dream Girls, and I had to ask her about what her relationship to God is and she said, she was stopped for a moment, kind of like, Holy Cow!!

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: Somebody is asking me that! She said I believe I’m a channel for spirit and that’s what I’m here to do, and I feel so blessed that I was able to have this role.

Susan Bratton: Wow!! Very interesting.

Meredith Medland: And the pause that happens, the experience that happens with the other reporters gives me that sacred space, almost like a bubble,

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: Where I get more of the celebrity’s attention.

Susan Bratton: Um hmm.

Meredith Medland: And it’s really hold the attention that makes the good interview.

Susan Bratton: So I’ve often assumed that celebrities are, you know, fairly shallow. I mean, they spit out lines that other people tell them to say. Are you finding that when you hit those core personal issues that there’s a lot of depth there?

Meredith Medland: I’m finding depth. I’m also finding confusion and the most interesting thing is, oh what’s his name. The guy from Fargo?

Susan Bratton: Oh gosh. William Macy.

Meredith Medland: William Macy.

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Meredith Medland: So I interviewed William Macy and I asked him something about ecology. This is also on sbiff.org or on U Tube. And he stopped and froze. And I watched his whole face change and, for the first time, I experienced who I believed must be William H. Macy. And then he started talking to me about his political beliefs. Completely unfiltered, totally engaged, and just talked about how difficult it is for him to actually just get his kids to turn the lights out in the house and how if that’s what Americans would do, that what would make a difference. And, same thing. A couple of the other stars that were in Dream Girls literally, their energy field or their faith, it’s miraculous, what happens because they must spend so much of their lives programmed with what they’re saying that really, their beauty gets unveiled. And then what happens is I connect with them in their eyes. We actually have the experience of being almost like friends.

Susan Bratton: Um hmmm.

Meredith Medland: And they get really like, whoa, how did that just happen? And a little, almost disoriented.

Susan Bratton: Do you think that there’s gonna be a resurgence in spirituality since there was such a lack of religious upbringing for so many people now who are in their thirties, forties, and fifties?

Meredith Medland: Yes, that’s what I believe is unique about living green. That’s actually the story of the hidden thing here is ecology here, or outer ecology, Suzanne Strolling, actually, is a great example of that. She talks about this inner, I think it’s in episode 6. She’s a world music diva and ritualist. Many people who believe in spirituality see the sun as God, or as their higher power, or they have a connection that is a unique third thing, is what I like to call it. Sort of that unspeakable mysterious magical experience. So, to answer your question, I firmly believe and will bank my life on the fact that the next trend after green is bringing spirituality to the mainstream.

Susan Bratton: I completely agree with you. I think you’re on it and I think that’s what’s happening. You mentioned magic, and we’re going to take a break now and when we come back I want to talk about another way you’re creating magic, through this program you’re doing called 3 Outcomes. So let’s stay tuned. If everyone will keep listening, I think this is our gift to you, this next segment. So stay with us, and we’ll be right back after we thank our hosts and sponsors.

Susan Bratton: Welcome back. This is Susan Bratton, your host, and I’m were Meredith Medland. Meredith runs an accountability consultancy which sounds like a really good thing for the industry of digital marketing because we’re so accountability oriented. It’s called 3 Outcomes. It’s 3outcomes.com, the number 3outcomes.com and Meredith, I want to talk about that. We left on the break talking about magic. Describe what this process is for me.

Meredith Medland: Sure. The process of the 3 outcomes is literally identifying and writing down 3 outcomes in a very specific style and voicing. So that voicing, would you like me to go through what that looks like?

Susan Bratton: Yes. Tell. Go ahead.

Meredith Medland: So number one is that the outcomes are always stated in positive terms.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: You’re focusing on what you’d like to have occur rather than what you don’t want to occur.

Susan Bratton: All right.

Meredith Medland: Number two, you state every outcome as if it has already occurred.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: You’re literally creating your future in advance. Also, each outcome is testable and confirmable. There needs to be evidence that you can actually personally make the outcome occur. That means that you can’t rely on another person to have your outcome happen. You are fully responsible for it. Again, you write down all your outcomes, you carry them with you in your binder, you post one on your office or on your wall, you post another with the team and all their outcomes, and then maybe someplace personally. And lastly, where the magic comes in, it is in the communication of the outcomes. And where I’ve seen that magic occur most is in a conference environment when I’ve come and enrolled the whole conference via a presentation which both gets everyone to write their outcomes down and gives them permission to share them with each other.

Susan Bratton: So mostly in your consultancy you’re working with companies within their organizations, around team outcomes, and team goals. You’re working at sales offsite and other offsites for preparations, and you’re working in conferences. I know you did the eMetrics summit most recently. Describe how you apply essentially what this is, a lot of goal setting and visualization and group visualization?
Meredith Medland: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: How are you applying that in a conference setting?

Meredith Medland: So here’s how it works.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: I work with the conference planner in advance and they make an agreement, and the agreement looks like they’re going to create their 3 outcomes. So first, that’s literally how it happens is usually a day of me just coming in consulting and learning about what they want to create.

Susan Bratton: So using eMetrics summit as an example, almost everybody in our industry knows Jim Sterne.

Meredith Medland: Oh yes. He’s spoken at all the conferences. He’s written God knows how many books.

Susan Bratton: So you did this for Jim Sterne. Was it Jim that had 3 outcomes and that’s what you established first?

Meredith Medland: Yes. Literally what happened is he asked me for my help. He asked me if I’d be willing to talk to him about it and kind of come up with something that would make eMetrics really nice and savvy and fun. And I actually declined the opportunity to come up with something for them, and suggested that he pay me a day rate as a consultant because I actually, in my back pocket, knew 3 outcomes was probably the answer. But I wanted to make sure that I could investigate the possibilities. So I got the outcomes that he wanted and distilled it down to 3, got his agreement that that’s actually what he wanted, and then came back with some suggestions.

Susan Bratton: So these are like the results of the success measurements of the eMetrics as a conference?

Meredith Medland: Exactly.

Susan Bratton: So like satisfaction of the attendees is the attendees went home with 3 actionable things they could do? That kind of stuff?

Meredith Medland: Exactly. And a lot of his focus was increasing the connection and networking that happened at his conference as well as having a measurable way to know that the things were working and that the conference was becoming successful.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: And he also had been, he used part of his tchotchke budget to hire me and wanted to make some sort of creative impact.

Susan Bratton: Okay.
Meredith Medland: So let’s fast forward ahead, seeing how this system works.

Susan Bratton: Yes. I just loved that he used his tchotchke budget for you. He should have used the whole thing and given it all to you but I think everybody’s kind of sick of tchotchke and they love to have a little more achievable beliefs and goals, so the gift of giving you to his attendees as something instead of some piece of crap with a logo on it.

Meredith Medland: Oh my God, thank you Jim Sterne.

Susan Bratton: That’s what we all want is more value in our lives, not more junk.

Meredith Medland: Exactly. I like to say sometimes the answer is the question.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: What are your 3 outcomes? So emails went out as well as on eMetrics website. You go to a 3 outcomes area. So attendees are given information on how to define outcomes in advance using a smart formula that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. It’s a common formula in outcomes setting. Most people are familiar with it. So they are encouraged to write their outcomes in advance of the event. So when he got up for the morning keynote, he asked who wrote their outcomes and people raised their hands. Some of them did and some of them didn’t, and planted the seeds so that throughout the whole conference, there was permission for the attendees to say to each other, hey, what are your 3 outcomes? What are your 3 outcomes? It was kind of fun. Then he did an amazing job. He put my website up and put this picture of me coming out of the cosmos after the number 42, referencing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was really funny.

Susan Bratton: He’s known for his cute slides.

Meredith Medland: Yeah, it was great. I loved it. And then later in the day I got up and did an hour presentation and walked the attendees through the actual creation of their outcomes. Now, the key of this whole process was the first nine minutes of that presentation which, five minutes of which were quiet silence. So really, it’s taking the time to write outcomes down and then spending the next 50 minutes first relanguaging them in the way that I referenced earlier, about having them be in a positive voice.

Susan Bratton: Yes.

Meredith Medland: Which is a little harder to do if you’re not used to speaking that way. It’s really about precision languaging. The second is to have your outcome be shared within your table. There were six to eight people at each table. So, you’re sort of saying hi, I’m Meredith Medland and these are my outcomes. Basically, these are my needs. This is what I need to be successful in life. Can you help me, you know, is the background thing happening.

Susan Bratton: So give me an example. Maybe four or five different things that people said that they wanted as their outcomes?

Meredith Medland: Sure. Jim Humphreys got up and he said that he wanted to meet and engage with 3 attendees who were interested in committing to be members of the WAA for 12 months and that he would follow up with them via email and get a commitment from them for at least one of them to join the board. It’s super specific. He languaged it a little more clearly than that. Another outcome was as a vendor. I will collect 40 business cards, follow up on 20 leads, and close five individual clients at a price point of blank before July 15, 2007. In fact, WebTrends' CEO, who was the keynote for the eMetrics summit, his whole team came with their 3 outcomes in a binder in advance of the show, totally prepared. He had his outcomes and then they were kind of playing with me in the hallways and being like fun and flirty. And they said what are your outcomes? So I said my outcomes is the 87 attendees leave with their outcomes written down and I have a bunch of worksheets printed out there on the tables. He said, all right, we’ll make it happen, and he started doing outcome elicitation at their booth for me. That’s an example of magic.

Susan Bratton: Wow. Nice. So what do you think drove them to be so organized about their outcomes? What’s it take for them to do that?

Meredith Medland: Well, WebTrends is based on analytics and measurement.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: And so the key here is, this is an analogy right now that you can use to understand what I’m talking about is, if you think about data collection there is so much data, okay, and the analogy is: there is so much shit we could be putting our attention on.

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: So how are you going to choose what you are going to put your attention on? And if you define those variables in advance, your attention will naturally dance into those things and create those things and not what Web Analytics and webstaticians actually do. They get the formula from the marketer and say what do you want a report on. What are you trying to prove?

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Meredith Medland: What would you want to know? And then they go and type in the data and do it. It’s the same formula. It’s just done through linguistics.

Susan Bratton: And so how would you say the eMetrics summit ultimately benefited from this one hour? It was almost like you had your own session, right? There was a day of speakers and you had one of the sessions? One of the sessions was how eMetrics help it’s attendees get the most out of this session. This is a long question, sorry. You told me that people were able to walk around and say what they wanted in a more free way. What were some of the other things that you saw people getting out of actually going through this process?

Meredith Medland: I saw that they were actually taking the time to commit to something. Once someone asks us to commit in writing with the specific date attached, a lot of things come up. In fact, one of the attendees told Jim that this was actually a really painful process, and I’m very grateful that you made us do it, because what was different, he actually allotted an hour of time. There were no competitive sessions during my presentation, which was really gracious on his part. The other benefit is it allows for team collaboration so when there are five people from a specific company, they can work together and really decide what they are going to get out of being an attendee. The other benefit to eMetrics is that, because I’m also a reporter and do a lot of video broadcasting, I was able to walk around and ask people what their outcomes were and get it on video as well as ask them how far into achieving the outcomes they were on day two and 3. So Jim now has, basically, market research data and testimonials all taken from me getting him the 3 outcomes system. So he can actually prove the value of eMetrics summit based on prior attendee experience.

Susan Bratton: So you’re interested in helping conferences offsite, corporations with this process and it strikes me that instead of being something that’s good for individuals, it’s really good in a collaborative environment where there’s a lot of people required to complete a bigger goal, where everyone needs to understand what their piece of it is. I always know that if you’re managing hundreds of people, it’s very difficult for you as a manager to communicate what you need from that individual to create the ultimate goal. It sounds like this is a good way to flip that on its head and get the people to tell you what they can deliver in a very quantifiable way to hit the ultimate goal,

Meredith Medland: Exactly. An example that is really fresh; I did a training session with Urth TV on Wednesday.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Meredith Medland: All right, so I have permission to say these outcomes. They aren’t private. I generally wouldn’t share people’s outcomes.

Susan Bratton: Sure.

Meredith Medland: In an interview. So their goal is to have 30,000 registered users, receive $300,000 in short term funding, have it secured, and have clear and concise messaging by July 31st. So those were the goals that the CEO and other key members of the team established with my assistance prior to the “workshop” or facilitation. Then what happens is I spent time with 12 people and the benefit, or why I’m necessary as part of this system is I am listening and watching for what, on the first outcome, which person is ready to really volunteer and make a date and say like, I can do that. And generally, the first outcome is the easiest because then they get the feeling of like, I did it in the future! The second is they actually choose to create their experience, so they just are more excited about the formula. Then outcome 2 and 3 come from a team collaboration well, oh, maybe you should do that in the marketing, oh maybe you should do that in PR. But what about the technology? Again, that feeling of magic arises in the room where there’s clearly things to be done and a natural question of prioritization comes into the room and the group has to define and uphold each member’s responsibility to committing to the goal, in achieving the goal. So what’s unique is it’s great team building. It’s amazing accountability, particularly for companies who sort of work 24/7. Every goal is measurable, so you either achieved it or didn’t achieve it down to even administrative assistant. I’m going to upload seven videos each day that I’ve aggregated in my copy at the bottom to, you know, we’re going to have six prepaid sponsors for the international film and podcasting festival by this date with these criteria. You either did it or you didn’t.

Susan Bratton: Right.

Meredith Medland: So the team can cheer and be joyous and can be excited. You can also create a visual timeline in the office. The goals and outcomes are posted up for everybody. There’s all this energy that really comes to fruition by going through this whole experience. And I have to say that my job, and the reason why I get paid the amount of money that I do, is that it takes something for me to sit there and basically the painful experience of the room, where people are writing down their third outcome. It’s very difficult because when they do, every time I’ve had this experience, they achieve the first 3. If they follow through on what they said they would do, it happens.

Susan Bratton: So it must be exhausting for you to go through that. However, if I were the manager I would love for someone to facilitate that for me and it would be really nice. If you couldn’t afford, if I couldn’t afford to hire you, do you make any of your worksheets or any of that kind of stuff available? How could I at least look at the process and try to approximate it on my own if I couldn’t afford you?

Meredith Medland: Sure. Well, a couple things. One is that you can afford me. You can afford and create anything that you really want to have and I believe that whatever you are spending money on, that the value that you would get from me participating would give you whatever you wanted. I really believe that even more than just a sales pitch. That’s just an example of what I might say during a session is really, you can have whatever you want. That’s the whole point in this. If we haven’t already figured that out, just remember, you know, you’re creating your own reality. Hello, do whatever you’d like. So the second is I’m happy to share the PDF’s of the, I have a worksheet, the 3 outcomes worksheet from the eMetrics summit, as well as the background on how you develop a smart outcome, if you’d like to use that for your listeners. And you could also go to the eMetrics summit and find some of that. And then the third is real simple, and I’ll just reflect that to you right now. As a listener, so, bottom line. Take 3 months from today’s date. Think about 3 things that you’d like to create, one in your personal life, one in your professional life, and then maybe something that is probably a business that you’re starting that might be under the world of passion for you or it’s sort of something in the background that you’re working on. Now, think about what you would ultimately like in each of those categories. Not how you’d like to get there, but if you were going to do whatever the actions were, what’s the results? What’s the actual result that you are looking for? Okay, now once you have that result, think about who would you need to be to create that experience. What situations would you have to have in your life to have that experience? What resources or assistance do you need? What hurdles are there from having you maybe not get that? And then you’ll slowly start to develop an actual sentence that has a timeframe on it. You’ve already chosen the 3 months with a reasonable creation and actually create I am going to make this happen. And the key, the absolute key, is it requires enrolling all the people around you in what you’re doing, which means you’re voicing those outcomes every day. It could even be like, yes, was listening to Susan Bratton show on Dishy Mix and Meredith Medland is doing this 3 outcomes thing, and oh my gosh, check it out. Here’s what I made up. However you need to introduce it to your friends. Tell them what your 3 outcomes are, and make sure it’s visually posted up in 3 different places, and lead with those. And the key is, and this is where I actually use the system and love the system for myself, is I carry around my clients’ outcomes and my personal outcomes both from the past and the present in a binder so that when I need to make a decision about when there’s two different clients or people or friends or anyone calling for my energy, then I actually can pull open my binder and I know that hapkido, which is my martial arts practice, is a number one priority for me, and if something gets in the way of me getting my black belt, and you know, would have me dumb down a belt, that I won’t say yes to it because my number one outcome is achieving that.

Susan Bratton: So this is my last question because we’re almost out of time. And thank you for giving us the formula for the 3 outcomes. People can come to your website and we have also talked about attaching it to the podcast, attaching a PDF to the podcast. Can we still do that?

Meredith Medland: Sure.

Susan Bratton: All right. So attached to this podcast is a PDF. You have to get it through I-Tunes. It doesn’t attach through RSS or through streaming, but if you have an I-Tunes account, all you have to do is look at this episode of Dishy Mix and right under it is, almost like another episode, but it has what looks like a little booklet, and that’s actually a PDF attachment to this show and when you double click on it, it’ll launch the PDF and you can print it out and you have the content. So we’ll do that for 3 outcomes for Meredith. And hapkido. I just want to leave with my last question which is you talked about getting your black belt in hapkido. But what is hapkido? Not what does it do for you but just explain it for people who aren’t knowledgeable about the martial arts.

Meredith Medland: Sure. The actual definition of hapkido is the flowing integration of key energy. So key is analogous to chi or spirit or, you know, whatever you want to call it. Flowing integration is a circular based flowing. Hapkido is based on circular movement which is interesting because that is how the 3 outcomes system is sort of created as well. And hapkido integrates self defense techniques, kicks, punches, and takedowns and throws. So what’s different about that than other martial arts practices is that it is actually, if a punch would come out, it’s actually meeting that punch right when it comes out but then sending that punch in the same direction that it was intended to go while slowly moving out of the way in a circular fashion.

Susan Bratton: So is it like the crouching tiger hidden dragon style of fighting?

Meredith Medland: It’s an absolutely beautiful art form. It doesn’t look quite as dancey as that does and it is definitely it’s a form that I notice when I’m watching television or watching The Matrix. I actually see moves that I know, oh that’s takedown number 4, which is a very bizarre experience to be having.

Susan Bratton: So I keep hearing about The Matrix. It’s an old movie and everyone’s talking about it lately. There’s all this kind of analogy stuff that people have found in The Matrix. Is the Matrix series kind of a trippy movie series?

Meredith Medland: Well, you mean trippy, what does trippy mean. You could take LSD and find out, but instead of doing that, the creators of The Matrix figured it out for us. They actually based a lot of their principles in that whole movie on the education that Landmark Education uses. The Landmark Education is the company that exists now from what was originally called EST, which was created by Werner Earhart. And so, the main principle of The Matrix is around creating your reality and possibility and connectedness, so there’s all these themes woven from there. Trippy, yes, but it’s a reflection, I think, of spirituality in the mainstream. It was really the first kind of vehicle that allowed people to talk about creating their own reality.

Susan Bratton: I am taking a class next weekend, 3 days, from the Arete Center for Excellence. It’s a 3 day class and apparently the people who did Arete are all kind of ex Landmark people, so it’s interesting to watch the whole history and the lineage of these concepts. My understanding of Arete is that it’s actually kind of like a 360 degree review. It’s not just how you perceive things but how others perceive you moving through things. Is that your take on it too?

Meredith Medland: I’ve actually done the Arete experience, and what’s most interesting is those are EST babies. Not only did they do Landmark Education, their parents were people who were doing EST as parents and then enrolled their children in EST for teenagers and some of the first like big six day crazy, chaotic workshops, and then they moved on and created their own thing. It’s a phenomenal experience and yes, the thing that differentiates Arete from other transformational retreats is the concept of a witnessing. And being able to communicate in real time what’s occurring so that the person witnessing you gets an experience of themselves from your communication.

Susan Bratton: I know that Tony Robbins says that a lot in his massive groups. He’ll have 3000 people in a room and he’ll call on somebody and he’ll essentially talk to them and kind of penetrate them and then he’ll get comments from the audience about what they see that is wrong or right or blocked or whatever about this person. It’s a pretty common thing, isn’t it?

Meredith Medland: Totally common and I gotta say, that’s what I do in the 3 outcomes system. Literally during my presentation, hour presentation, which usually would be done as a keynote before a conference, no matter what the subject matter is. Then I have, once people have created their first outcome, I’ve got a little mike and I’m running around with the mike and I’m also looking, have David Ferrar was also a facilitator with me at the eMetrics summit. Literally, having them stand up, raise their outcome, and then I’m giving them some coaching on the fly as to how to create it more effectively, so it’s definitely deep. It’s a framework you can use for anything. Mind, body, spirit, whatever you’d like. But for me, I’ve chosen to keep my path of spirituality through ecology and also through business, and that’s what 3 outcomes is for me.
It would be really nice if, in the working environment, in the business environment there would be more freedom to do that mirroring, that 360 degree processing around things. Can you imagine if the CEO were actually to hear what everyone else thought about what the plan is? It would be so great.

Susan Bratton: I have never worked in an organization where that could happen, that was a large organization of any kind. Do you think that, over time, with people going through this transformational work and understanding the safety in the process of that and the value in the process of that, that someday, even in corporations, we’ll have the ability to get honest feedback from our peers and the people above and below us?

Meredith Medland: Definitely, and I think that’s going to start with ecology because we’re just starting to tell the truth about what’s happening in the environment around us and once we start telling the truth about the environment, then we start telling the truth about our families. And when we start telling the truth about our families, we start telling the truth about ourselves, and then when we’re telling the truth about ourselves, we’re telling the truth in the workplace. And so, hopefully, this is a way to be able to integrate intimacy into corporate America. So yes, I do believe that’s going to happen. And I think it’s going to be a process to get there. And for people who are truth tellers, I know that when I made a commitment to start telling the truth to people that what it actually gave me, no matter how risky it was or how scary it was, that the events that occurred from being direct and concise and compassionate in my communication in the workplace, and I have a lot of corporate experience. Even though we’re talking transformation, I have a lot of corporate experience. Those decisions ultimately gave me my life. That’s where my passion and my juice and my richness is. And, for me, that’s it. Telling the truth my whole life. Gotta.

Susan Bratton: Yeah. I love it. Well, my truth is that I’ve had a really good time with you. I’m absolutely sure we’ve run over because I didn’t even pay attention to the clock. It was really fun to listen to you. You’re very articulate, you’re very soulful and I like the application of the intuition that you have and the training that you have and bringing that to corporate America so that they can achieve the goals they need to achieve to be successful. So it’s a beautiful combination, and I wish you a lot of success and I hope that Dishy Mix listeners today might become your customers because that would make me happy.

Meredith Medland: Oh, that would make me happy too, and I just gotta say if you want to learn more about 3 Outcomes you can listen to the shows on personallifemedia.com. Go to Living Green. I use the formula a lot in my interviews, and if you want to know what makes me tick, check out my blog. It’s short and sweet and to the point and it’ll keep you on the edge of ecology.

Susan Bratton: Nice. Thank you Meredith. This is your host, Susan Bratton, and I will look forward to being part of your life next week. Have a great day.

For bio and show information visit www.meredithmedland.com.

 

For more information email info@3outcomes.com or call 805.636.8182.