Teresa de Grosbois (@TeresaDee) is an influence expert sought by entrepreneurs and large corporations wanting to better understand how local word of mouth can suddenly turn epidemic, and she’s the author of Mass Influence: The Habits of the Highly Influential.
“For me, influence is the possibility of a different world — a better world.” -Teresa de Grosbois
The Cheat Sheet:
- Why is developing a knack for mass influence more important than just offering improvement to your own life?
- Learn the simple habits you can build to become someone who can easily create meaningful change and support others in doing the same.
- Discover how influencers think and the habits they follow, including the unspoken rule book by which they play.
- What are the top mistakes to avoid when dealing with influential people?
- Discover what you need to know to get past the gatekeepers in meeting influencers.
- And so much more…
[aoc-subscribe]
Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. But there are two schools of thought on what creates happiness. The first is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The second is seeking self realization or personal fulfillment.
In episode 493 of The Art of Charm, Teresa de Grosbois, author of Mass Influence: The Habits of the Highly Influential, shows that to truly thrive in life, influence is a critical skill to master.
More About This Show
We all have some degree of influence on the people in our lives. But do we possess the power of mass influence? What’s the difference?
“Influence is the ability to get other people to follow your lead in a one-on-one basis,” says Teresa de Grosbois, author of Mass Influence: The Habits of the Highly Influential by Teresa de Grosbois. “As soon as we’re talking about a one-to-many basis, then we’re talking about mass influence.”
Teresa became an expert in mass influence by accident. After she emerged as a three-time bestselling children’s author in eight months, people sought her out in droves to find out how she did it — they wanted her advice and mentoring. Seeing that she could share her understanding of the way mass influence works became a calling that aligned more closely with a children’s book author than you might initially think.
“As someone who would leave behind a better world to our children, for me, influence is the possibility of a different world — a better world. A more transformed world,” says Teresa. “So I love working with other emerging thought leaders, helping them understand how you create mass movements [and] a shift in the thinking of the planet, because that’s the world I want my grandkids to grow up in.”
Teresa goes on to explain how influence happens when people know, like, and trust us — and mass influence occurs when a lot of people know, like and trust us. But what holds us back from understanding the nature of this influence (or denying we’re capable of wielding it) is usually ourselves.
But it’s not just a selfish endeavor to learn the power of one’s influence and live a thriving, satisfying life. It’s critical for the sake of balance in a world where others are also testing their powers of mass influence — others who are only interested in exerting these powers for self-aggrandizing purposes.
Teresa lays it out for us: “The real scary thing about this is research does show the only people who tend to not have a lot of self-doubt or self-limiting beliefs that would stop them from becoming influential tend to be sociopaths. So when good, everyday heroes and leaders don’t step in to learning their own influence, what’s at stake is we risk living in a world run by the very leaders that we fear.”
Because we all have that nagging voice of doubt in the back of our heads telling us we can’t pursue our dreams or make a real difference in the world, we sabotage the potential of our own influence. But no matter what it is we want out of life, we have to stifle this self-doubt and develop influence if we want to realize it.
“Consider that if you don’t have a lot of ambition in life, that’s probably a self-limiting belief you created when you were a child,” says Teresa.
So if you find yourself in a cycle of low-ambition, self-limiting inaction at the beck and call of that nagging voice of doubt in the back of your head, how do you break out of it and start discovering your ability to influence the people and the world around you? Teresa says it begins with these simple key habits:
Authenticity
While there are many definitions about what this means, Teresa goes with: “authenticity is your inside voice saying the same thing as your outside voice.” If you’re working at a job you hate, or working with people you don’t admire, or you’re trying to sell a product you don’t believe in, these are all recipes for disasters. Your true thoughts won’t align with your actions, and that disconnect will show — and people who you might otherwise influence will get a read on you as being inauthentic.
Give to Get
Influential people are constantly endorsing and praising each other in an authentic way — to the point where it’s routine. “If you want to get influence, you’ve got to give influence,” Teresa says. “There’s hundreds of things you can do. You can shout people out on your social media. Send people to their workshops, or if they’re speaking public, you can offer to nominate someone influential for an award. Really, the sky’s the limit. Even as simple as connecting someone influential to another connection that might really be able to help them, and really ‘bigging’ them up to that person can be one of the nicest things you can do to give influence to another person.”
But to reiterate: your endorsements should always be authentic, first and foremost — or else you’re just butt-kissing and your credibility and influence will take a hit (and rightfully so).
Listen to this episode of The Art of Charm to learn more about these habits, how influencers think, top mistakes to avoid when dealing with influential people, what you need to know to get past an influencer’s gatekeepers, how to build a rolodex of top influencers in your industry who are eager to help you, and definitely download the free Kindle version of Mass Influence: The Habits of the Highly Influential and take Teresa’s 30-day-influence challenge here!
THANKS, TERESA DE GROSBOIS!
Resources from this episode:
- Mass Influence: The Habits of the Highly Influential by Teresa de Grosbois (Download the Kindle version for free and take Teresa’s 30-day-influence challenge!)
- The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann
You’ll also like:
On your phone? Click here to write us a well-deserved iTunes review and help us outrank the riffraff!
