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I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a Co Host network, which is a network of high quality local co hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co host@airbnb.com host.

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This is help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor in chief of.

A (1:11)

Entrepreneur Magazine, and I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.

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And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.

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And it starts now.

B (1:28)

When you talk with someone, you should have four goals. Number one, earn their trust. Number two, show that you're listening. Number three, show that you understand them. And number four, remember what they said. Now, here's the fun part. You can advance all of that with one simple strategy. It's a formula that I learned as a reporter and now use throughout my life. It deepens personal conversations and advances professional ones. And here is the formula. It's really simple. Their thoughts plus one. Today I'm going to explain what that means and why it works. But first, let's talk about their thoughts. You know, I said the formula is their thoughts plus one. Let's take the first part of that. Their thoughts. Consider what happens at a restaurant. Trust me. Just stay with me here. Consider what happens at a restaurant. A server takes your order and then repeats it back to you. Right. You know, you're like, I'll have the lo mein, and I'll have the chicken with broccoli. And the waiter says, okay, we've got a lo mein. We've got a chicken and broccoli. Why? Why are they doing that? Two reasons. Number one, they're confirming the order. That's very clear. Number two, though, they are performing for your benefit, because when they get the order right, you trust them more. Now, apply this logic to regular conversations. When someone hears their ideas or thoughts repeated back to them, they feel heard and appreciated. They think, yeah, this person really gets it. So when somebody tells you something complex or interesting, why not give them that? You can reply with a version of, let's say. You could say, that's so interesting. Let me repeat it back to you to make sure I understand. Or you could say, wow, so what you're saying is. Or you could say, let me make sure that I get that. So in other words. And then whatever it is, you restate their ideas or insights back to them. I know that this sounds simple, but it is magical. People feel heard and validated. Even better, this also helps us engage with the things that they said, thereby making their ideas clearer and easier for us to remember. Because, you know, we've taken the things that they've told us, and we've kind of held it and turned it around and done something with it in our brains, which helps with retention. Here's an example. For example, people often book consulting time with me. I might have 30 minutes to understand someone's business and then share helpful insights. And I better deliver on that. They're paying good money. And when we start these calls, they will begin by telling me, just a lot of information. It's just like an info dump. And then I'll say, okay, let me repeat that back to you to make sure that I got it. And then that's what I do. But I do it in my own words, using my own reference points. And they love this, because once they see that I understand their business so well that I can put it in my own words, they are more likely to trust whatever I say next. But this is just the start. When you repeat people's thoughts, you build trust. But when you add your own insights on top of that, you build connection. That is why it's time for the second part of the formula. All of that was just about their thoughts. But remember, the formula is their thoughts plus one. So now we add the one. What do I mean by plus one? I mean this. You repeat their thoughts and then you add a fresh insight. Maybe it's a surprising observation or a delightful comparison. Maybe it's just a question that they'd never heard before. Take a little risk, Be a little bold. Typically, I like to do this in one of two ways. So here they are. Approach number one and two. Approach number one. In other words, what you really did is. That's. That's what I say. That's my transition into repeating back to them. In other words, what you really did is. In this approach, I restate what somebody did or accomplished, even if they might not have seen it that way. For example, a few months ago, I had lunch with the CEO of a famous brand. She told me her backstory, which, you know, I'm sure she's told many times before. Starting at the company when it was small, taking it over from a male founder, and facing immense employee distrust. Over time, she transformed the brand and hired hundreds of new people who saw her as the leader. Okay, I heard that, and I said, so. In other words, what you really did is you took over a small company where nobody trusted you as the leader, and instead of trying to fit in there, you just created a completely different, much larger company where everybody did trust you as the leader. That's what I said to her. And when I did, her eyes widened. Yes. She exclaimed. I've never thought about it like that, but yes, that's exactly what I did. She was so excited. And from there, her guard was down, and we became friends. Okay, now it's approach number one. Here's approach number two. And that is to say, that reminds me of a few weeks ago, for example, I interviewed my friend John Taffer. He is the host of a TV show called Bar Rescue, where he tries to save failing bars and restaurants. And he does this in kind of classic TV fashion, which is to say, he gets in there, he starts screaming at people until they make drastic change. He makes threats. He's throwing things. I mean, he is a wrecking ball. Recently, John told me the surprising history of all that screaming. I didn't realize it. So in real life, John is not a screamer at all. But then he started filming the show, and because each episode is filmed in only four days, he has a very limited amount of time to fix a failing bar, which means that he really needs to, like, get through to the owner, and he needs to push them to make changes that they have been resistant to making. So when he first started filming this show many years ago, he tried everything that he could think of to motivate them and nothing really worked until he tried screaming. Just screaming and being, you know, sort of violently angry about the situation. That worked. Even though, as John told me, and this is his words, he said it was horrifying and scary to do that. Just. It wasn't natural. It's not natural to yell at somebody, especially with cameras on. And when I heard this, I said to him, you know, that reminds me of there's my line. And then I told him about something I recently learned from John Mackey, the co founder and CEO of Whole Foods. Mackey attributed his success to this habit. Throughout his career, Mackey would always ask, what does the company need me to do now? And then John Mackey would do whatever that was, even if it was uncomfortable. That's what he told me. That was like the critical thing that he did as a leader. So I recounted that to John Taffer. And then I drew this connection between what I had heard and learned from John Mackey of Whole Foods to what I had just heard and learned from John Taffer of television. And here's what I said. I'll just play the whole exchange. You functionally asked yourself, this is an observation, but I ask you to kind of confirm or deny it, you know, but from what I'm hearing, it seemed like what you did was you asked yourself, what does this situation need me to be? And the answer to that is what you became. And that turned out to work. What do you think about that? I think that quite might be, in 13 years of interviews, one of the.