Unsecret Your Sauce

How to capture the magic that's
in play in your best relationships

Every great entrepreneur and high-impact professional has had that magical experience of being in the zone and nailing it with your best relationships. The impact in play is so thick it’s sliceable. It’s as if you’re leading the meeting, and simultaneously observing it as a fly on the wall. All the while you’re thinking, “holy smokes, we’re nailing it right now.” The encounter is dowsed in your secret sauce. 

At Second Summer, we call this The Exchange Experience. It’s those precious moments when you know you’re doing your absolute best work in your most cherished relationships. Typically it centers on helping people move to or move through something. You’re helping a client move to clarity, a sense of peace or a great strategic decision. Or, perhaps you’re helping a team member move through a challenge or a point of professional growth.

It's tough to read the label from inside the jar

For most people, their secret sauce feels intangible. However, for every individual, there’s actually a chronology to it: a before, a during and an after. Think of it as your Intrinsic Value Cycle. It’s a recurring pattern that’s in play with everyone and everything you seek to touch or influence. If you aren’t aware there’s an Intrinsic Value Cycle in play, how can you replicate it?

"And the people who were seen to be dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The art and science of predictable outcomes

Entrepreneurs and high-impact professionals are wired for impact. Likewise, we know that we do our best work in our best relationships – what Second Summer calls Shared Purpose relationships. However, many of us chalk those relationships up to chance with thoughts like, “we just clicked” or “we have great professional chemistry”.

As entrepreneurs, we’re the greatest control freaks in the world. Yet, we relinquish control over how to replicate this essential dynamic.

The Shared Purpose Cycle is a methodology for increasing your awareness of your Intrinsic Value Cycle (see exercise). When your awareness expands, your ability to predictably attract Shared Purpose relationships kicks into high gear. You become a precise and powerful magnet for people with the potential to be in Shared Purpose.

You also become an effective filter, seeing early warning signs for people who are nice enough, but will never fall head over heels in love with your secret sauce.

Back to The Exchange Experience™

As noted, every entrepreneur and high-impact professional has had The Exchange Experience and most would like to have more of it However, you can’t get to The Exchange Experience by simply trying, because it’s an outcome not a methodology. In The Shared Purpose Cycle, we guide you to begin with the Capture Your Conviction stage. This is a point of intentional pause that helps peel away the layers of the onion. Over time, it reveals what truly makes you different from everyone else who claims to do what you do.

Once you’ve Captured Your Conviction, you can catalyze that conviction into the marketplace of your relationships – what we call Stepping Into Your Story. When you walk out into the world understanding the underlying chronology of your secret sauce, you begin to predictably attract Shared Purpose relationships. This trips off The Exchange Experience. It’s the experience of nailing it that’s a natural outcome of Shared Purpose relationships.

Celebrate Shared Purpose: a to-go kit for unsecreting your sauce

The enclosed exercise, Celebrate Shared Purpose, is a tool that helps increase your awareness of the before, the during and the after that’s in play when you’re in the zone of impact in your Shared Purpose relationships. When you realize you’ve just had The Exchange Experience, grab this exercise. Complete it and debrief it with your team. Over time, you’ll begin to see patterns emerge. The Capture Your Conviction questions help unpack your before. The Step Into Your Story questions delve into your during, and The Exchange Experience questions increase clarity around your after. 

Shared Purpose ® relationships

The gratitude flows in both directions

The give/receive dynamic flows so naturally, you forget who hired who

Importantly, this is a great exercise to use regularly with your non-rainmaking team members. Often times, the busyness of life leads us to debrief client meetings by delegating action steps. The entrepreneurs get to experience the joy of the face-to-face meeting, but the team members often don’t The Celebrate Shared Purpose exercise encourages you to debrief the joy, not just the tasks. It allows team members who aren’t in client meetings to hear the impact of their contributions. Likewise, it increases firm-wide awareness for how to attract Shared Purpose relationships.

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