Transcript
WEBVTT
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Wouldn't it be nice to have several
thought leaders in your industry know and Love
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Your brand? Start a podcast,
invite your industries thought leaders to be guests
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on your show and start reaping the
benefits of having a network full of industry
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influencers? Learn more at sweet fish
Mediacom. You're listening to be tob growth,
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a daily podcast for B TOB leaders. We've interviewed names you've probably heard
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before, like Gary vanner truck and
Simon Senek, but you've probably never heard
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from the majority of our guests.
That's because the bulk of our interviews aren't
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with professional speakers and authors. Most
of our guests are in the trenches leading
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sales and marketing teams. They're implementing
strategy, they're experimenting with tactics, they're
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building the fastest growing BTB companies in
the world. My name is James Carberry.
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I'm the founder of sweet fish media, a podcast agency for BB brands,
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and I'm also one of the cohosts
of this show. When we're not
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interviewing sales and marketing leaders, you'll
hear stories from behind the scenes of our
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own business. Will share the ups
and downs of our journey as we attempt
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to take over the world. Just
getting well? Maybe let's get into the
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show. Hey, everybody, before
we get rolling, we wanted to tell
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you about another podcast you should probably
check out, the sales experience podcast hosted
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by our friend Jason Cutter. On
the sales experience podcast, Jason shares tips
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and lessons to help you create a
seals experience that will turn more prospects into
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customers. Whether you're a new to
sales, a veteran or lead to sales
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team, if your goal is to
impact the lives of your customers, then
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this podcast is likely for you.
Our favorite episode is number ninety seven.
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Professionals don't ask for the sale.
Now let's get into the show. Welcome
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back to be to be growth.
I'm Logan lyles with sweet fish media.
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Today I'm joined by Ben Baker.
He is the president of your brand marketing
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and author of powerful personal brands.
been welcome to the show. How's it
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going today? Man Logan, it
is great being on the show today.
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Thanks for inviting me. Yeah,
absolutely. You and I connected on Linkedin
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a few weeks back and I could
just tell that we are of the same
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mind in a lot of things,
especially after just chatting with you a little
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bit offline before we jump into today's
topic about building a personal brand and doing
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it very systematically. I think some
people have kind of this fuzzy notion about
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it, but we're going to give
them some practical how to use which obviously
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have a great deal to say on. Before we jump into that, give
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us a little bit of your background
and tell us a little bit about what
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you and your team are up to, and and the book as well.
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Been Yeah, I've been in communications
for about twenty five years. I've been
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in the sales for well over thirty. You know, I came to the
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realization about two thousand and twenty five
years ago that Kelly, an effective storey,
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or being able to communicate value,
being able to get people to know,
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like and trust me, was the
only way to be able to make
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friends and influence people, to you
know, to take take a phrase right
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out of a book, and what
I've realized this is that, you know,
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we all need to have people understand
who we are, what we do
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and why we do it, you
know, and by doing that, by
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getting people to understand that, also
non trust us, because once we can
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build a rapport once we can buil
that level of trust. Once we can
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get that, you know, that
symbiotic relationship. It's amazing the things that
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go on. So over the last
twenty five years I've done direct mail,
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I've done promotional marketing, I've done
trade show consulting, I've done branding and
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and brand strategy for customers, and
what I've always realized is the challenges is
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we spent so much time focus outside
of a company, where the problem is
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most of our employees don't understand what
our brands all about, they don't understand
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our value, they don't understand why
they should care about the company they work
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for, what, how they matter
to that company, what their individual efforts
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met, you know, do to
be able to get the company moving from
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A to B, to c to
D toe. And that's where we've spent
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the last five or ten years.
We've spent it on engagement, retention and
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Growth. We build leadership teams,
we build sales teams, we build operations
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management teams to be able to get
people to understand and you'll why they should
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do what they do. And that's
that's a key thing, because when people
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are engaged, they tend to work
harder, they tend to be better advocates
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for the brand. They provide better
customer experience and customers, on the other
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hand, become our loyal and you
know what prices go up, you know,
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because you're not all of a sudden
the commodity. Your brandworth loving.
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Yep, absolutely. I mean just
so many things there that are synonymous with
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the things we're talking about. James
and I, fresh off of our annual
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sweetfish leadership team retreat, spoke on
our behind the curtain series here recently about
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how we crafted our mission and vision
statement and how we renamed them, how
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we put some thought into that,
and part of it was you know what
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you just said. They're been a
lot of teams don't really understand the the
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brand, the vision and the direction
of the brand that they work for.
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Let's transition a little bit to personal
brands, because we're going to be talking
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about you know how to do that
effectively. What were some of the things
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that you saw missing out there in
this conversation that led you to write the
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book powerful personal brands? Well,
the impetus to ride the brand book was
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was quite interesting. I do a
lot of work with the universities, I
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do a lot of work with their
sales and marketing schools, I guess,
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the business schools, and we run
the third year and fourth year students through
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networking drills, interview skills, personal
branding skills, at all that kind of
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stuff, and what we realize is
that these kids are really smart and they
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are their kids are young enough to
be my kids. I just hearned fifty.
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They're really smart, they're passionate,
they're you know, they want to
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do well, but they have no
idea how to articulate their own value to
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others. They just don't. You
know, it's is whether it's life experience,
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whether the fact the schools just don't
teach these sort of things. You
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know, they don't have the experience
do it, they're not surrounded by people
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that teach them how to do it. Whatever, they don't know how to
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articulate their own value and why other
people should care about them. And I
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went looking for a book to help
people because I'm still they're going you have
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a whole generation of people, you
know, the genesis and the money,
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those that are sitting there going,
okay, how do I help them articulate
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their value of staying better? Couldn't
find it, so I wrote it and
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what this book is really designed to
do is help you understand who you are,
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what you do, why you do
it and why other people should care.
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It's about understanding, codify communicating your
value to others. So it's out.
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It's a workbook. It really truly
is. It's about two hundred pages.
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It's full of stories from my life. It's, you know, lessons
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that I've learned and at the end
of most chapters I pose the question and
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I leave two or three pages of
blank lines and I'll sit there and say,
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so, what do you think about
this? So it's things like what
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are you passionate about and why are
you passionate about it? Who are the
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three people that influenced you growing up
and what were the lessons you learned from
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them? It's things like that.
It's getting people to understand what makes them
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who they are, because we are
all a come culmination of the experiences that
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we've had to that date, the
people that we've engaged with, in the
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lessons that we've learned. But not
a lot of people actually take the time
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to figure that out. And if
they do figure it out and they're more
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comfortable with their own sense of self, they're able to communicate and be more
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effective in communicating with others, whether
it's leaders or salespeople or whoever. You
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know, we all are. Once
we understand ourselves better, we're far better
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able to show our value that other
people and have them no like and trust
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us. Yeah, absolutely so.
Been I know that there were at least
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four different aspects of building a personal
brand that you wanted to touch on today
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to give people some tactical things that
they can do to make this more concrete
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and a little bit less fuzzy,
and you touched on the first one.
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They're understanding yourself, and the way
that I hear you say it kind of
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reminds me of a story that I
tell sometimes. Early on in my career,
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I was a college graduate in two
thousand and eight. Great time to
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hit the job market, right and
when I started to companies. So why
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not? And and and doubly,
they're graduate with a journalism degree when the
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journalism industry was going through so much
contraction and convergence and and disruption. To
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throw three big buzz words out there, but really all three were absolutely true,
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and I remember applying for my first
sales job and selling my way into
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it, saying, Hey, I
was trained as a journalist. I'm used
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to go going up to strangers,
starting a conversation. Sometimes people don't want
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to talk to journalist, just like
they don't want to talk to salespeople.
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Maybe I could do this and that
was just a connection that I made and,
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to your point, trying to communicate
the value of my experience and how
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that could translate to somewhere else.
Is is that the sort of thing that
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you're talking about, then, yeah, I mean, and that's it.
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That's a really key point. is
to sit there and say, what are
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my skills? What are the things
that I do well with? For you,
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it's it's not being afraid to go
out there and talk to other people,
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and a whole variety of other people, because a lot of people want
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to sit behind their computer all day
long and, you know, and type
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in the social media and they think
that they're communicating. You know, and
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you know it's the high how are
you used the pithy stuff, the the
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very you know, as I say, it's very surface conversation, but you
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know, the people that could actually
get in front of somebody else, pick
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up a phone, stand in front
of somebody else, actually have a conversation
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relate to the other person and be
curious about the other person. The better
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off they are because you'll whether it's
sales, whether it's leadership, whether it's
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anything out there, the more you
can be curious about other people and sit
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there and say get up every morning
and say, okay, how can I
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make somebody else's lives better? Hey, everybody, logan with sweet fish year.
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You probably already know that we think
you should start a podcast if you
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haven't already. But what if you
have and you're asking these kinds of questions?
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How much has our podcast impacted the
new this year? How is our
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sales team actually leveraging the PODCAST content? If you can't answer these questions,
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That's sea steed dot US growth.
All right, let's get back to
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the show. Yeah, I'll go
the way you made that transition. There
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been because you know, of the
kind of the four things that you wanted
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to share. We talk about understanding
yourself, right, so that you can
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see what are your unique skills or
experience that could translate to a new experience
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or just add value in the same
way and and communicating that. But then
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the next step is, you know, there's kind of this, I think,
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Miss Perception about building a personal brand
that you have to be this extroverted,
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arrogant person to do it well.
And you know, I've said number
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of times in this podcast I'm an
introvert who, two years into sales,
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thought that maybe this isn't for me
and I found my way. But the
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difference is from kind of that arrogant
view of personal brand is that it's not
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about just communicating about yourself, about
pitching yourself and your services in your products.
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It's about connecting that to adding value
and then creating content that connects those
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thoughts. Right. Yeah, I
mean here's the thing. Most people,
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when they've never met you, when
they've never you know, they've never been
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around you, they don't know anything
you're the last person in the world they
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want to hear about, and especially
if you're trying to pitch them. You
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know it's a hard pitch. It's
that you know. Here's my part,
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here's my service, it's features,
benefit speachers, benefits closed. Features,
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benefit speeches, benefits close. You
know. It just it's this wall that
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goes up amongst people. People don't
want to be sold anymore. People want
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to build relationships, people want trust, people want to know, to understand
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that there's something in between you and
that you could help them solve a problem
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that they have. If you are
not looking at them first and understanding them
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first, they're never going to want
to buy what you have to say.
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And whether that's in a meeting at
the office, whether it's leading a team,
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whether it's in sales, it doesn't
matter, because if you make it
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all about you all the time or
your company all the time, people are
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just going to say, Oh God, here comes another salesperson. Oh God,
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yeah, okay, you know,
we already have a vendor that does
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it. It doesn't matter that you
might be able to solve every problem that
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they have, but if you all
all you're doing is pitching instead of listening
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and trying to understand, they're not
going to care. Yeah, absolutely.
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It goes back to that that old
truth that we all know. People don't
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care how much you know until they
know how much you care, and part
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of building your brand should be showing
that care, showing it in practical ways,
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offering to make connections, those sorts
of things, adding value with your
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content. So some of the things
to recap so far been that you recommend
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to folks, because I know that
you you consult with folks and you do
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some training on personal brand for CEOS, for leaders, for sales people.
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Specifically understand yourself so that you can
connect those dots in the value that you
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bring. Don't make it all about
yourself, though, which seems a little
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bit counterintuitive, but not in the
way that you've kind of mapped it out
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for us. The other thing that
I know you recommend a lot is that
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to think about this idea that you
have one brand, both your company and
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your personal brand, across all channels, online and offline. So if you
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are trying to exude this type of
personality on Linkedin, but then people get
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together with you at this at an
event or a conference or something like that,
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and there's this huge disconnect, then
it's all going to be for not
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right. Yeah, I called being
off the having ofthenticity in yourself or being
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authentically you. You know, you
have to be authentically you. I'll never
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be Gary vader chuck, I'll never
be for Richard Brandson, I'm never going
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to be build gates. I'm going
to be me. What I made do
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is I may take parts of their
personality, I may take things that they
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do and I may incorporate them into
my own psyche. If they make sense,
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if they resonate with WHO I am, what I do and why I
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do it, then it makes sense
to bring those parts of the personality.
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But you have to make it your
own. Yeah, you is here an
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example that you can maybe share with
us. been on where you've kind of
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seen someone building a brand and a
I could kind of assimilate made either that
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mentality or that approach into the way
that I do things, but still,
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you know, still being yourself.
Yeah, I mean I look at I
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mean think Bill Gates for an example, especially the older Bill Gates. The
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older Bill Gates is very quiet and
contemplated but very forceful. He truly it
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absolutely is. The know that is
his personality. You know, he's made
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as billions and now he's wants to
give it away and his raisin dtre is
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to make the world a better place
and I love that about him. I
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truly love that about him. You
know, I don't have the billions of
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dollars to give away, but I
do love his philanthropic mentality and I do
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love the fact that his attitude is
how can I help other people, how
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can I make other people's lives better? So what I do is I incorporate
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that into my personality, you know, and make that part of me.
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You know, I can't do things
at the level that he can. I
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can't write the checks that he can. I don't, you know, I
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don't get invited to Davos, I
don't get, you'll, all those wonderful
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perks that comes with Being Bill Gates. But what I can do is I
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can be the best Ben I can
be at my level, you know,
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and I can write the checks that
I can write at my level and be
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able to give back to, you
know, my community, to my neighborhood,
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to, you know, to care
causes that I care about, to
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be able to make other people's lives
better and that's that's what I try to
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build into my personality, you know, but I'm not trying to be Bill
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Gates. Yeah, yeah, I
think that's a great example. That really
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brings at home, Ben so we've
talked about understanding yourself, communicating that value,
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making it more about giving and the
other person as you build relationships through
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everything that you're trying to do around
building your personal brand, being authentic and
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being consistent across all channels and online
and offline. The fourth thing I know
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that you talk about is helping people, especially, you know, young salespeople,
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are young executives that are just starting
to think about building their personal brand,
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is that they need to have this
mental shift that your brand is not
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your perception of yourself, it is
what others perceive you to be. Right,
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yeah, and that's important. As
you know, Jeff Bezos from Amazon
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has a great quote. He says
your brand is how people perceive you when
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you're not in the room. You
know, I don't I'm paraphrasing here.
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I don't remember the exact quote,
but you know, it's how people perceive
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you when you're not in the room. You can influence your brand. You
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know, how you present yourself how
you talk, how how you know,
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the things that you do, how
you do it. You know, how
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you shake a hand, how you
look somebody in the eye, the promises
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that you make and you keep it
are all influencing your brand. There's no
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question about it. But if somebody
doesn't like you for whatever reason, that's
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their perception of you and that's pretty
you're their perception your brand. It may
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be wrong, but that's their perception
and you have to allow people to have
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their perceptions. And the question is, why? What have I done?
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What you'll what are some things that
I can do and sometimes you can't fix
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it. There are billions of people
out there, billions of people out there
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that will never get to know Ben
Baker. So you know that could care
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less about Ben Baker. Don't even
know who I am, don't even know
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that I ever will exist and I
will die without even be a blip on
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their radar. But that's okay.
I can't influence everybody, I can't help
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everybody. I need to understand who
are the people that I can help,
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who are the people that I can
influence? Who are the people that I
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can make their lives better? And
those are the people that I talk to
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in those are the people that I
communicate with and you know and you know
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be around. So it's a matter
of being comfortable of understanding that we all
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have our own tribe, to use
the seth going term. You know,
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we all have the people that are
with there are a thousand people. You
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know that. You know if we
all have a thousand people are life or
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a hundred people in our lives,
those people will turn around out and tell
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your story to other people and the
story will spread. So we need to
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be able to embrace that and not
be worried that not every single person loves
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us, because, guess what,
they won't. And that's okay. Yep,
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absolutely. I mean a Simon SENNEC
talks about it. When you lead
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with why, you are going to
repel some people, but you are going
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to attract those who believe what you
believe that much more readily. And you
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know, it reminds me of what
Dave Karen's recently just shared in a previous
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episode on the show about building your
network as a sales professional, finding that
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tribe and instead of just trying to
go far and wide, finding that tribe
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that makes sense and going deep there
in building those relationships, and I think
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the the similar point here is,
as you're building your personal brand, recognize
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that tribe, recognize what they need, recognize what content that they're searching for,
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figure out the problems that they are
trying to solve. It's part of
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the reason we have this podcast and
we we host so many be tob sales
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and marketing leaders so that we can
hear from them in the trenches and have
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these conversations so that we can serve
them better. Again, going back to
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the point I made at the very
top of this episode, been I think
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we're so likeminded and and telling a
lot of the same things. there.
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I'm glad that our paths have crossed
recently and I really appreciate you being on
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the show today. If anybody else
listening to this would like to stay connected
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with you, Ben Baker has not
been a blip on their radar yet,
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but now is and they want to
stay connected find the book or any other
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sources on this topic of personal branding
that they might want to consume. What's
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the best way for them to take
action on that? Yeah, everything is
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available on my website, which is
your brand marketingcom there's links to my Amazon
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page, there. They're my speaking
page, my my workshops, my online
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workshops, everything, everything is available
through your brand Marketingcom and if you just
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want to have a conversation, reach
out to me. Six O four,
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five, one two seven, one
seven four. Most people won't, but
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you know what, if there's ways
that I can help you and your teams
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get better, if there's ways that
I can help you, as a senior
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executive, understand the value of your
personal brand and how that brand helps you
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be more influential both inside the company
outside the company and a better leader,
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love to have the conversation. I
love it, Ben I appreciate the transparency,
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the openness, the willing to connect
there. I just love it so
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much. Well then, thank you
so much for a great conversation and being
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on the show today. Thanks for
having me. We totally get it.
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We publish a ton of content on
this podcast and it can be a lot
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00:22:07.349 --> 00:22:11.109
to keep up with. That's why
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