Mark Sylvester: John Davies has a method, an approach he systematically developed over a career spanning three decades. He's proven it to be invaluable for dozens of industries and thousands of projects facing public acceptance. Up until now, the method has only been available to his select client list. John is unpacking his insight and wealth of knowledge to overcome opposition and earn public support for the first time right here. Throughout these episodes, we'll take a deep dive step by step with John into his strategies to overcome opposition and create support. Nothing is free in this world, but good ideas are priceless. This show could be just the thing you've been looking for. I'm Mark Sylvester. Now, let's get started and talk with John. Welcome back to the show, John. Glad to have you back for this next step in the process. Last week, we were talking about contrast, and it was kind of one and two were so close. Now we go to it's another two-word thing: embrace and engage.

John Davies: Right. The embrace is to embrace the benefits of the project. This is the time to get your arms around all that's going on. The engage is to try to do this in a way that engages the community, their dreams and their desires for the future. We're on the side of all the good things now that we love. What is that's going to go on that we don't have to contrast that's really good? I talked before that some projects in Southern California are figuring out how to be carbon neutral now. Projects are either putting solar on the roof or making it optional set up, ready to put it on if that's what you want to have when you buy it. These are things you can embrace. The other thing, you're embracing who's going to be living there? There's no place for young professionals to get started, so we in our development, we have a place for young professionals to start. We have a place where empty nesters can come and if they want to travel around the country and visit their family, they can live in a little less of a maintenance home, a newer home, smaller, less maintenance.

John Davies: These are things you can embrace and play with. The idea that there's a diversity and that you can also ... We're going to have a pretty amazing open space. The entrance to our community is going to be an orchard. We're going to have community gardens. One of the things we used to do in projects is every project that had a lot of land, we built a golf course and built the homes around the golf course. Not that many people are jumping and playing golf. There's top golf now or you play golf in a little more interesting way. Play a few holes, play a few games for the millennials. But we don't do that with golf. So a lot of projects we're working on now, we're doing community gardens. We're doing an ag section. We're doing something related. That becomes something to embrace. And what are the homes going to look like? What are we doing inside the homes?

Mark Sylvester: When you just explained that, it was kind of like from the consumer's point of view. Give me an example of engaging a benefit that the planning commission because now we're talking, remember we had those two audiences.

John Davies: That's more in the contrast, but yeah, so here's the deal. We are providing major fixes to all the traffic flow. Instead of jumping to a project where it's zoned to be a business park in the middle of a neighborhood surrounded on three sides by housing and one side by a business park, we don't need another business park. We're going to do homes, and by the way, we just see the need. We see the lines back up at the elementary schools. So we've gone to the school district and said could you use another elementary school? They're like yeah, but we just don't have the land. What if we tear up this project, this land and turned it into housing with a park along the creek and we give you some acres for an elementary school, and we're going to build homes here. Then near the elementary school, we're going to build some age-restricted housing. And all of a sudden, you've just turned it around. Less traffic. A benefit of the school. A benefit of a creek park that everyone can walk through that now is a mess. You can't build on it anyway, so you're having your landscaping continue there and make it pretty special. So you're embracing all the good things that are happening and you're contrasting still with the other choice.

Mark Sylvester: You've got me thinking about this overcome opposition as a design problem. We're trying to find solutions. And you're in there, and I know we're going to get into talking to the people and talking to the community, but I thought that was a really good example with the school. You go and you found out that oh, hold it. There are these other problems that are happening in the community that we can mitigate, which is really a design problem.

John Davies: At the end of the day on these, so our client came to us with the idea. We're going to put a school there, and we just need to tell everyone about it. We're going to get approved. I'm like I think it's really helpful, but what really is the problem with the schools today? The schools overall are not overenrolled, but the two closest ones are overenrolled, and they're poorly designed to handle morning dropoff traffic, the elementary schools. So we need the school, but we also need to fix the traffic problem. So we get a double. And they're like oh. So we get to do this a little different and a little better. And then the other, by putting the school here is we can't put a school there in a business park. So you can't send me back to do what the previous zoning was and just do the school and the business park. And sitting in a community meeting, we had one of the opponents in the room saying just do the school and the business park.

Mark Sylvester: And don't do the housing?

John Davies: And don't do the housing. My client is sort of flabbergasted because a very polite, very gentle man. I love those type of guys in front of the room. He just sort of looks at her, and three people in the room go, that's crazy. Who would want to put an elementary school in the middle of a business park, and who would want to drop their kids? The logic works.

John Davies: And then the idea of the creek. You looking along. So what are you going to do there with that creek along there? I walked down the trail with you guys. That's awful, and it's such a beautiful spot. We're going to have to fix it up because we're going to have to do drainage, and we've got to clean out all those horrible weeds, and we've got to put a little bit, bed a trail through there. I said that's probably almost as good to most people than the school. All of a sudden, we're going to have this neat little creek-edge park.

John Davies: So all those things that people are going to do allow us to build it up. You can embrace it. You turn it into the plan. And it gets to be simple.

Mark Sylvester: Why do companies that you work with forget to talk about benefits?

John Davies: It's just not how their mind works. These are the rules. This is the game. I've got to submit. I've got to overcome this issue. I've got to do it. They do in some ways. This one, they thought about the school and said everyone complains about the school, so we should just do it. I'm like why do they complain about the schools? So I started asking why they complain. And then we'll talk in the second part of the series is how we do our research.

Mark Sylvester: Right. Because the why is a big part of this.

John Davies: Right. And the deal is we've got to go through this part first. So we start coming up with building a value-based case or a moral case. Then we've got to test it. We've got to see if it makes sense.

Mark Sylvester: Tell me about embracing.

John Davies: I'm not sure. You're not asking me to embrace you right now because that would be awkward as we're doing the show. You're saying what do I mean by embrace?

Mark Sylvester: Yeah.

John Davies: The idea is you put your arms around it. You hold it. You hold it tight. It's something you love.

Mark Sylvester: There you go. There you go.

John Davies: That's why I was teasing you, but the deal is to embrace and to embrace something is to really hold it and like it and wrap your arms around it and make it into something. And then the community starts looking and says wow, your project is going to be 61 percent open space.

Mark Sylvester: Is that a real number?

John Davies: Yeah. The project we're working on now. 61 percent open space. By the way, when we do land that's on the edge of where the development is, it's another 10 percent open space. So 71 percent. And then when we do the parks, it comes out to be another 5 percent open space. So testing in a survey, we put in 61 open space and 76 percent open space. Are you more likely or less likely? So we did a split sample. We got a better response with the 61 percent open space.

Mark Sylvester: I'm going to guess now that 76 wasn't believable.

John Davies: It's not believable. How could you possibly do this and have that little space be for the development? So you've got to test and study, and you can't go too far. We've had clients, they just want to make these outrageous claims, add all these things up and show all this stuff. It's like dude, 61 percent is great.

Mark Sylvester: Sounds great to me.

John Davies: In this case, the one I'm talking about, the 61 percent, my client is the opposite of most. She's like 61 percent is what it is. I go, but we could ... she goes, John, it's 61 percent. So when we tested, I go, okay, you win this one. Check the box.

Mark Sylvester: So you said earlier that you want to go in and look at something that someone wouldn't normally think of as a benefit and then you, by shining a light on it, there actually is a hidden benefit in there. Let's talk about it.

John Davies: Like projects now in areas where there's been fires. How do we proactively ... This is not an acknowledgement. We're building in a fire area. There are fires. So we don't have to acknowledge, but we can embrace that we are going to sprinkler the homes. We're going to build all the exteriors will be built out of fire retardant type products so that the fires aren't going to spread. We're going to double the setback around the homes from anything so we can make sure fires don't spread. So we can tell the story. So oh, okay. That's something to embrace that isn't something warm and cuddly and carbon neutral, purple line, less water use. It's more of an inoculation about something. So people's back of mind is always about there could be a fire. We're going to deal with it in that manner.

Mark Sylvester: Give me an example. I like that 61 versus 76 percent. Where do we draw the line on great engagement? We said we'd acknowledge we don't want to do a lot of it, and with contrast, we want to do the right amount. But with embrace and engage, again, how much percentage of time are we spending on that?

John Davies: That's an interesting way of saying that. I mean is it time? It's mind space. It's pages in a book, slides in a presentation. It's time. As much as you need and as little as possible. So when you think about it, and I try to take things like this and get them into categories. My mind always says that I can remember three things, and then I can remember three things under the three things. Can we maybe do three things and one or two things for each and get under that? And make it simple. Don't list everything. By the way, you can say in addition, a little sense. But you want to get things that people go oh okay, I'll buy that. That's good. You want to get things that people ... oh, okay, I buy that. That's good. When you go too far, you water down the big things that matter when you put a whole bunch of little, stupid things in there.

Mark Sylvester: The teachable moment just jumped right out there, which is as much as you need, as little as possible and get it to three. Listener, you'll hear this throughout this entire series that John, you're always bringing us back to three. There may be five really great points, but pick the top three.

John Davies: Or get them into three.

Mark Sylvester: Figure out how to make three.

John Davies: Yeah. How do you get them into three? How do you get them into three, and there's three under each. If I'm to ask you now, as we close this one, is try to get them related into three categories. If I'm to stand to you right now, and I whisper in your ear to go to the grocery store and get for me — no notes, you've got to put your pencil down, no notes — get for me ... Could you get me a dozen eggs? Could you get me some Advil, two lemons, a packet of dry soup to put into our sauce. And then could you also get me some chicken?

Mark Sylvester: You lost me after lemon. I was good until lemon.

John Davies: Right. Not only so many but they're so different.

Mark Sylvester: Right.

John Davies: So could you go to the store and could you get some some things I need for my trip tomorrow? Some things I need that I don't have in my travel kit. Could you get me some Advil and some Zantac? And then in the produce department, could you make sure you pick up some butter lettuce and some fresh carrots? And then could you get some chicken and some fish?

Mark Sylvester: So because you chunked it, it made it easier to remember.

John Davies: Exactly. Exactly.

Mark Sylvester: Got it.

John Davies: And it also doesn't seem as overwhelming. And you don't need to write it down.

Mark Sylvester: So our listener today, what they ought to do is list the three most important things about the project where the benefits are not financial because we're going to talk about these are big deal benefits and maybe some hidden things that you've found during discovery. John, thank you so much. Next week, we're going to talk about that final phase of the four, which is bridge. That's another ... that's going to button up the whole thing. John, thank you so much.

John Davies: Thank you.

Mark Sylvester: Thank you for listening. It's now your opportunity and responsibility to use the method today. You've completed one segment toward understanding the Davies method. We look forward to you subscribing. Join us as we uncover and explain the nuances of John's distinctive approach. For more episodes, visit thedaviesmethod.com. I'm Mark Sylvester recording at the Pullstring Press Studios in Santa Barbara, California.