Building the Right Personal Brand [The Leadership Playbook in the New Normal Workshop MODULE 1]

Thank you, everybody, for being with us. This is going to be very workshop, very comfortable. Settle in, get yourself really comfortable, because we'll be together for a couple of hours, and this is very open. We'll have Q and A at the end. But as we go through everything, feel free to ask questions, raise your hand. This is not structured so that you have to wait for questions. This is entirely designed around helping you become a more successful professional as you navigate your way into the new normal. Marilyn and I were talking with Andy when we first got on about the fact that, yes, America's opening back up. And depending on what state you live in, it's a little slower, some places a little faster than others. But we're not going back to January of 2020. We never are. People are already discovering things. You know, I know people who have huge office complexes who are saying, why are we spending $130,000 a month on rent? All of our people have learned how to work remotely. Zoom costs $14 a month. So we're going to see, I think, a hybrid of what life used to be married to what life is right now. And that's going to carry us into the future, into the new normal. And all the skills that we help you develop over the next three sessions are going to be able to be applied right now, but they're also going to carry you very much into the new normal. And here's one of the great ironies. Everything we show you, everything we share with you, didn't, other than Zoom itself, come into our lives in 2020. These are all principles that have been around a long, long time. I want to take you back to mid-1980s. I was 24 years old.

Oh, my.

This was the first day that I was on television. TV station WSVN in Miami. And I was on television because everybody else was out covering the super bowl out on the west coast. And there's literally nobody left in the station to do sports but me. I just gotten promoted from an intern to a part time employee. I mean, we're talking bottom of the barrel. So I get out of the set all dressed up. I look at the co anchor, he introduces me, and I turn to the camera, ready to start my sportscast. I have the teleprompter all prepared, and there's no teleprompter. I turn to a blank camera and I don't know what happened in the next three minutes because my mind went blank as well. I just. To this moment, I have no idea what happened with those next three minutes. I just Remember finishing the sportscast, turning back to the co anchor, handing it to him, and then he threw it to the commercial break and he was a seasoned veteran. And we were done. After the show, he looked at me, said, so the camera went blank and you went blank? Yeah. He said, that's because you don't know who you are. You don't know what your brand is. If you were solid on your brand, you don't need teleprompter because you would just refer to your brand and you would just project your brand. And I looked at him almost as blank as I did the teleprompter that day because I couldn't understand what he meant. And over a period of time, I understood exactly what he meant. I didn't know who I was the very first time I went on the air. So when things went south, I had no foundation to rely on. And because I didn't know who I was, I had no way to help the audience know who I was. And whether you're a 24 year old neophyte broadcaster or if you're a 60 year old professional, it doesn't matter. It's the same core principle of have to know who you are, you have to know your brand so that everything can effectively and efficiently build off that brand. And the brand will evolve. I mean, it's evolved for me over the years, it will evolve over for you. But if you don't know that brand, the second something goes wrong, it all gets very uncomfortable. So let me tell you a little about about Andy and his brand. The reason I love this photo of Andy is because this brings his two worlds together. Andy's a former pro baseball player, played in the Milwaukee brewers organization, and he's an extremely successful coach and mentor and insurance professional. And he has used all the principles that helped him go from what he calls being the most average guy in the world, average height, average skills, average hometown, average lifestyle, to a very, very high level of professional excellence. He rose higher than most people with his skill set did in pro baseball. He's risen higher than most people with his skill set do in insurance. He's risen higher than most people do in coaching and being a productivity expert. And it's all based around principles. It's how Andy and I got started our conversation a couple of years ago. Working together around the principles that we know regardless of the circumstances. These are the principles that make success happen. And Whether it was 1984, 2020 or 2030, the old normal or the new normal, these principles will take you down the Pathway. And they will eliminate a lot of the distractions that create wind drag, that pull you off course, and that slow you down. Eddie?

Yeah, I mean, you know, as Jerry said, I'm the definition of average. If you go look up average height for a male in this country, it's five foot nine. I am five foot nine. And so, as Jerry said, when it came to baseball, I didn't have. I wasn't overpowering when it came to my size, how hard I threw. But if somebody were to ask me what allowed me to play at the professional level, it was very simple. It was all the work that I put in off the field that allowed me to have success on the field. Now, here's what's interesting, guys. When I got to pro baseball, I actually got away from the stuff that had made me so good in high school and college. And it's probably why my professional baseball career lasted as short as it did. And unfortunately, I took this into my early business career through a lot of failure, a lot of trial and error. But when I realized I just need to get back to those daily habits and rituals to be highly productive every single day and every single week and work on those things that matter most, I'm happy to say here I am today, successful as a coach, as Jerry said, an insurance professional. So in this workshop, I'm excited because I'm going to focus a lot on that productivity, those habits, those rituals that you can not only bring to your own days, but you can help bring to your teams to be highly efficient and highly productive every single day.

So in our next three sessions today, we're going to cover brand. Next week, we're going to cover productivity. And then in the third session, we're going to cover communications. All part of the new normal, all built on principles that we know will work regardless of what the new normal looks like. Because here's the great insight. Nobody, I mean nobody, not Dr. Fauci, not, you know, your boss, not your neighbor knows exactly what the new normal is going to look like. We don't know if there'll be a vaccine. We don't know if coronavirus goes away. We don't know what mitigates it. We don't know if it will be mitigated. We just have to continue finding ways to succeed, and those principles are going to be what makes us succeed.

Jerry, if I could just share a quick story, because it's a funny story, and I think it's appropriate in the moment. So, growing up, I grew up in Wisconsin, and a childhood friend of mine had a brother who was married to Tommy Thompson's daughter. You guys remember Tommy Thompson, secretary of health and Human Services. He was once the governor of Wisconsin. And Denny Igler, his father, was a doctor. So Denny Igler was asked by Tommy to be Denny's or to be Tommy Thompson's expert physician. While Tommy Thompson traveled around the country post, post 911 and addressed a lot of the scares and concerns mainly around things like anthrax, because at the time, if you guys recall, there was that fear of could we have an anthrax attack and all that stuff, right? And the story, as I was told as they were sitting at a conference and a question from a reporter gets asked to Tommy Thompson, what is the plan if we have an anthrax attack? And Tommy says, well, going to refer that question to my medical expert, Denny Iglar. And Denny leans over to the microphone and simply says, I don't know. Never had to deal with it. And so the moral of that story is, as Jerry said, nobody has an answer right now. And what we do know is these principles we're going to teach in this workshop. They were necessary long before the lockdown hit, and they're going to be necessary long after. What's happened, though, is this pandemic, and the lockdown has exposed a lot of these weaknesses. So that's why we wanted to put this workshop together, is to help you guys put those right, put the right principles in place that's going to help you long succeed after Covid is gone.

So that's a little bit about where we're coming from and what brought us to this point. What we want to do is learn a little bit about you and what brought you to this and where you are right now. So, Rick, how about you start, take 30 seconds and tell us a little bit about you.

Sure. Well, I'm the director of marketing for Chicago Faucets, and it's a group. It's a mix of product managers and traditional marketing people. Been there three years. My background is my undergraduate's actually mechanical engineering. I've been a new product guy pretty much my entire career. And I've been working to mature and transform how marketing is done at the company, which causes a bit of conflict from time to time trying to break the status quo. And even the guy who hired me to do that doesn't always like it when I try.

So it's kind of a journey for me. This is my first time having such a large team. I've got nine people on my team or eight people on my team, and I've got, you know, the largest expense budget in the company and a lot of responsibility. And.

I'm.

Kind of on the voyage of discovery of really what is my personal brand today, and, you know, what I do today. But then, you know, I don't see myself being in this role forever. It's kind of where do I go next?

Perfect.

Michael, how about you?

Well.

Been financial services professional for 29.

Years.

Specifically working and helping people with retirement planning. I'm now at a stage where I'm doing more distribution planning for my clients across the country.

About 25 years ago, I started an education division and that's really what's led me to having clients all over the nation. I help people with using strategies to pay for private parochial school and all forms of higher ed.

My CPA partner and I have come up with over 2000 strategies to help folks in that area. Well, as life is changing, the 2018 Tax Reform act gave us a great example of how we could use those strategies for retirement and helping small businesses. So I think what created my move here was literally trying to come up with my brand to help those small business owners do a lot of work with farmers and ranchers as well.

Awesome.

Sharon, what about you?

Hi. I am the CEO of a nonprofit mental health center, Behavioral healthcare. I have roughly 400 employees and serve about 12,000 people a year in Pennsylvania. And my background is I'm a licensed clinical social worker, but I also have an mba. So I'm the convergence of the business side of it and clinical. And during COVID we transferred from a all face to face.

Healthcare provider to one where the majority of our services are now being provided remotely. And we were able to do that within 48 hours. So I was able to get all of my staff transferred home and online with clients very quickly, with the exception of we also provide services in hospital emergency rooms. So right now I'm also managing having three different hospitals that we are providing services live in and managing that during a COVID epidemic where, you know, my staff are having to be suited up and PPE and exposure and all of that at the same time. So I have everything from people right now who are at home and we're paying them to be at home doing nothing to people who are in the front lines in the emergency room, working and trying to keep all of my various departments happy and not resentful if they're the ones going into an emergency room and somebody else is on their sofa.

I actually met Jerry during an executive leadership thing through National Council a few years ago that I was participating in with one of those groups. I think that you were doing a presentation there.

Which town were we in?

Oh, geez.

Where were we? Seattle or Texas or Nashville, D.C. maybe Nashville. Yeah. It's hard to remember because we had several meetings across the country.

Right.

And I found that very valuable, the meeting that we had there. And at that point, I was the COO of the organization. So I've been the CEO for a little bit over a year. Branding is certainly important in that I've been at the organization for 23 years, so it's not like they don't know me internally. But, you know, it's a different role in a different.

Position that I have now. And with COVID I've had to communicate a lot more with staff and in different ways. So, you know, had our first virtual town hall a couple weeks ago that was really well attended and it went well, but I'm clearly interested in doing more of that.

Yeah, excellent. Excellent.

And Marilyn.

Hi. I have been a realtor for a little over 17 years. Prior to that, I worked with Verizon Communications Telecommunications. And I have changed my position at my being a realtor is kind of interesting because you're kind of independent, but sometimes you're not. And then about three years ago, I took on a new position to train and mentor every new agent that came into our company, which is growing. So I mentored the first year about 15. Then it went to about 30. And then last year it was over 50 agents I mentored. And that's one on one mentoring, not classes. And then I also taught classes. Well, at the beginning of this year, my broker said, you know, you used to be a really good agent. I think it's time for you to go back. And I said to him, well, yeah, it sounds like a good idea. I would definitely make more money. And we went back and forth. And my problem that I'm having now is now making that transition from being an educator back over to being a salesperson. So I do need to get my brand lined up. I need to get back into doing the things that I need to do daily so that I don't forget to do other things. It's very difficult. Very different than being working for a company. You know, it's a whole different world. So, Jerry, I met you at a session that my broker did in Turf Valley in Maryland, here. And I've been. I felt very comfortable because you're with bal. Knowing BAL pretty well, that I decided that, you know, I felt that There was a comfortable relationship even in the beginning. You didn't know me, but I knew you. And it felt comfortable to continue. So that's why I'm here.

Awesome.

And that is what Marilyn just touched on is a crucial part of brand. It's that feeling of comfort as we think about brand. Some people have this almost prickly feeling towards personal brand.

Everybody has a brand. It's just like, are you like I was when I was a 24 year old broadcaster and had no idea what the brand was and you're all over the map or are you more refined? And one of the ways that I like to kind of drill people into thinking about brand is what kind of car do you drive?

Marilyn, what do you drive?

Buick Envision.

Okay, Rick, what do you drive?

Volkswagen cc.

Great. Rick, what's the difference between a Volkswagen CC and if a Tesla Parks next to that, they both have four wheels, steering wheel, roof trunk.

What's the difference between those two, aside from $40,000?

Well, they, they do. They, they do convey a certain level. You know, the Tesla kind of screams new and it's got a cachet about it. Whereas, you know, Volkswagen cc, it's okay. It's kind of pedestrian.

I mean, if you park the VW next to a Yugo, you kind of get a similar feel.

And notice Rick did not discuss the engine of either one of those vehicles. He didn't talk about the manufacturing plants where they were made. He didn't talk about the intellectual property behind them. He didn't talk about any of that. He talked about stuff that hit you right here, from your stomach to your heart, your gut. That's where brand speaks. And it either creates that immediate sense of comfort that Marilyn talked about or discomfort. Sometimes it can create a sense of envy, sometimes a sense of aspiration. And you want to try to line that brand up with your target market in such a way that when they need the services you're providing, you are the first option that they think of immediately. That's the power of a brand. It's not an exercise in to just say, oh, I have a brand. Look at me, I'm wonderful. It's not at all. It's about linking the needs of your marketplace and your customer base to you because they have other choices, Right? There are other nonprofits, there are other Realtors out there. There are other marketing agencies. There are other options. Why do people select you? And brand is what brings them in. We'll talk at great length about how we establish that, but brand is what brings them into that first phase of decision making that they want to be with you. That's the power of it. So Andy's going to take you through a real quick exercise here just to get a sense of the pain you're experiencing as you try to refine your brand.

ANDY yeah, absolutely. So if you want to skip ahead, do we have the next slide? JERRY.

So with the power of perception, you want to, as Jerry said, when you think about your current brand today, I want you to take a minute and I want you to think about where you might feel like you have weaknesses right now.

Let's start with what do you think your brand is?

Because what we're going to walk into and step into next is what you think your audience perceives your brand as. And so with the power of perception, it's about how you want to be perceived today. And so when we think about your brand, what I want you to do is take a minute right now and if I were just to ask you the question, pain points of why you are on this workshop right now, pain points around what your brand is or where it's lacking right now.

Sharon, you go first this time.

I think that when you said, what is your brand? And you know, do people look to you immediately for something? For me, I know that I'm looked at immediately when it comes to solutions for things or expertise in certain areas clinically, like, you know, expertise in suicide and prevention, which in my field, working, you know, running crisis centers, that's very important. And so I get calls from reporters, I get calls from county officials, you know, a lot of places on clinical areas of clinical expertise and service provision, especially around crisis and disaster planning, that kind of thing. The pain point is, you know, I've been a CEO of the company for one year. So, you know, I get the new kid on the block look from people. I've had, I've had some issues this year. I'm going through one right now where, you know, there's a, there's a vendor we use for something who just tries to bully me. And, you know, I think it's, he knows that I'm new in this role. He has no idea that I've been, you know, in this field for almost 30 years and at this agency for 20. And so, you know, really tries to do some outrageous things and, you know, doesn't really work with me. But I find it, I think it's because I'm new.

Excellent.

And by the way, Sharon, not only are you the new kid on the block, Congratulations. Welcome aboard. Being a CEO you can deal with COVID Yeah.

Yeah. Great. Yeah. Well, I've also had a. I've had my first year a failed attempt at outsource billing, which started prior to my coming in flood in one of my sites. Another one caught on fire briefly and then Covid. So it was a great start.

2020 is a challenging year for everybody. You're right.

All right, Marilyn, how about you? What's your biggest pain point around your brand?

I think right now is that expectations are greater than what I'm delivering right now.

And what I mean by that is being the know it all, the mentor, the know it all for the past few years. Why can't, why isn't, why aren't your sales and why aren't your deliverables where they should be? Why aren't they where they were before? What's holding you back? And it's, it's that kind of a transition. That's my biggest pain point right now.

Awesome.

Rick, how about you?

I think it's really, you know, my pain point is the ability to effectively lead my team and get more and better results out of them.

Excellent.

And I know you and I have had an in depth conversation about that, so.

And Rick.

Michael, actually.

I'm sorry, Michael.

That's right.

My pain point is that probably for most of.

My business, I've been dealing with education issues and working with numerous advisors around the country. I'm really in a transition where I'm going back to my roots and dealing with.

Retirement programs and helping clients in that area. So.

I have an advantage in that I can use my educational background, educational resources to help my clients. But.

I guess we did such a great job on the education front that it's taken a lot longer for me to make that transition than I anticipated.

Right. So you had a brand.

You'Re working in the direction of a new brand, but you have, you have the wind drag of the weight of that old brand, Correct? Yep. Okay, good. All right, so here's what I want to do. I wait everybody to. I hope everybody has paper, pen, computer, something to write on. What I want you to do is on the left side of your screen or the paper, write the word positive. On the right side negative.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you a short video. In this video, there are some people you will know, some are political figures. We are not here to discuss politics. I honor everybody's political views. I use political figures because you'll see how quickly they generate perceptions and you'll see the power of this in a minute. But I just want to put that caveat out there. As you watch these videos, don't overthink it. If you have a positive or a negative perception of whomever you see, don't worry about the reason why. Just write it down in the appropriate column. There's no right or wrong. There's just your perceptions. Everybody. Good.

Here we go.

I appreciate the fact that these students have called you here today in the spirit of discussion, and I appreciate what you said earlier about the spirit of discussion.

Now, I think the students who have come here tonight.

Discussion deserve to know what is your.

Real approach to creating discussion? Because as you said, you want to.

Talk about areas which are not being discussed. And I hope one day to perhaps work with you in a film.

But until then, get back where you belong. When you come out on stage, we click swords three times, I stab you.

And you fall down and die.

Not Shutterstock. That was actually Neuralink. So that's actual video from the company. So if you want to get a sense for what it's like to work at Neuralink, that video is indicative of the atmosphere of Neuralink. I want to close my final White House Correspondent's Dinner by just saying thank you. I'm very proud of what you've done. It has been an honor and a privilege to work side by side with you to strengthen our democracy.

And with that, I just have two more words to say.

Obama up.

And it also felt really uncomfortable to follow that up with. And it doesn't always make me happy. But mostly it was difficult to unpack a legacy of gender and racial oppression when I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries.

Albert Einstein issued one of my most.

Favorite quotes in the history of the spoken word. And it is as follows.

In the middle of opportunity.

Excuse me.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. I'm going to repeat that so I have clarity tonight. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

And I cannot think of a better place to make this a national model for teacher and leadership preparation and continuing education.

I wanted to work with a visionary leader.

She looks at me, jumps out the trunk, rolls her eyes, and takes off as if I never saw her.

Now, let me tell you why I had an attitude. I had an attitude because we live together.

Like, I'm going to see you tonight.

We have to address this at some point in time.

Pleased how this particular graph came out, because we've got lots of information that I can fit into one. So we've got switching time here. This is Size switching time and cost. Keep in mind, these are all on a log scale and energy densities. I intended to be a child psychologist.

Where I could listen to children all.

Day and help them out.

And when I was in college, I.

Got a job at a TV station, and I was hooked from day one. I walked in that newsroom.

Who cares? You don't think I get enough promotion? I get more promotion than any human.

Being that's ever lived in.

I think, again, I think I would have that. I think I can say that fairly safely. I think I get more promotion than.

Any human being that's ever lived.

Okay, that was three minutes of video.

Michael, give me some of the negatives you captured.

Thanks for starting with me first.

Well, I guess emotion.

Go with the last one first. I thought he looked very nervous, uncomfortable. He kept moving back and forth, not in a comfortable way.

Right.

Rosalynn Carter, her eyes kept looking down like. Almost like she was looking at a card or trying to get comfort for where she was at. And.

Then the lady that was at the podium who seemed to be not prepared and nervous and kind of stuttered a bit. So those. Oh, and the gentleman who was yelling, even though I could tell he was getting emotional.

I wasn't quite sure where he was going when he first started out with screaming at the audience.

Exactly, exactly. All right.

I would call that, Jerry, a complete misfire. When you're trying to quote Albert Einstein.

Yeah, you want to get that one right. Marilyn, who had the most significant perception impact on you, positive or negative?

I think the most positive. You mean in general?

Yep.

The most positive I had were actually the positive. People who I felt were positive were all very comfortable, had a little bit of humor, very relaxed. That was my feeling of the ones that. That's the positive feeling. And that they knew their. They knew their subject matter. They were in control.

Excellent, knowledgeable.

Rick, what stood out for you?

Well, I think what Marilyn was just saying, you know, the positive. The ones that were relaxing control.

You.

Know, the ones on the negative side were the ones that seemed more robotic and unprepared and.

Seemed like they wanted to be just about anywhere else.

Yep.

Disconnected.

Yeah, that's perfect. Disconnected.

Right. And, Sharon, what's. What's. What really stuck it out of you? Like, was there anybody in there that just really just resonated, positive or negative, at a visceral level?

Two, the probably the positive. It's a tie between the Gayle King and Obama just in the calm, clear message at the right rate of speech. You know, Obama, some humor at the end. And, you know, just kind of very classy for both of them. On the other side, the lady with the slide doing a presentation, I have no idea what she was doing. Like, I mean, it's a bad slide. She was fumbling her papers. She looked disheveled. It was just like, I just, you know, we've all been in those trainings where it's like, can I get out of here fast enough? Because this is awful. You know.

Jerry, I was gonna say, Sharon, you bring up a really good point. The fact she actually said, I tried to put as much as I can into one slide.

You never do that.

I'm really picky about presentations. And some of it is, you don't want a book up there. And then, and I think she referenced something like, I tried to do more but couldn't or something.

Don't tell us that part.

So when you look at the positives and the negatives, this is pretty much what you have. The negatives. Nervous, uncomfortable, shifty, unprepared, unhing, unsure, crazy, robotic, unprepared, disconnected and disheveled.

The positives comfortable, humorous, knowledgeable, sense of control, calm, clear, classy. Notice the difference in how you feel just hearing those words. And you came up with all of those feelings in a three minute video. No one clip went more than 20 seconds.

You form, like everybody else, your perception very, very quickly. Now, this is, this is the key point. Perception is not reality. Perception is the door. Reality is the room it leads into. The problem or opportunity with perception is if you bring people, as a realtor, you'll know this. If you bring people in through the wrong door, they go into the wrong room. And once we form a perception, if we spend any more time on that person's brand, what time we spend, we'll spend trying to prove ourselves right.

Yeah, there lies the danger. So if you look at the people who generated those negative perceptions, it's not a lack of talent, skill, education or background. The woman who's driving you nuts with a PowerPoint and the laser is a PhD, right? The one guy's a successful politician.

Pick the politician you like, whether the current president or the former president, you had a deep, visceral feeling about it.

And for the most part, you don't even remember what they said a minute or two later, but you do remember the perception. And so when we begin with brand, we begin with perception because that's the, that's the doorway. And if we bring people into the right doorway, they'll come into the right, the right room and the Right room is your actual expertise, it is your background, it's your experience. It's the fact that you've spent all those years in real estate, in the financial services, in nonprofits, in the clinical work, that you've spent all that time in real estate. That's the reality. But if they get the wrong. If they get a perception that you're unprepared, unhinged, unsure or robotic, they'll never get to that reality because the communication stops with the perception. So to develop an effective brand, what we want to do is get very clear on that target set of perceptions and then organize everything around that so that they can discover your actual excellence. Here's a quick little model that I put together that will show you exactly how you formed all of those perceptions, whether it was a former president, a current president, or Gayle King. By the way, Gayle King always scores exceptionally high in this. In this test. Do you think Gayle King actually knows more about a topic than a PhD? Probably not, but her brand is so much stronger than the PhDs. Well, we have a message we want to send. What do we do? We have a point we want to get across. We put it into words, and we send those words out, and then everybody gets their message. That's the simple model. The problem is, then all get our message because we live in a sea of words. Everybody's inbox looks like that. We don't have time to read all the words in our inbox, and so we can quickly sift through and diagnose what, spam, what's meaningless, what. You don't have time. Your brain has a very, very sharp clock built in, and it does not want to waste your time because you are the busiest person in the world, and you're busier now than you've ever been. When we receive a message, we literally come at it from a different angle. We don't start with words. When you form those perceptions, you didn't do most of it from the words people were saying.

We start with relationship and reputation. The reason I always use the current president and the former president is that regardless of your political views, you'll usually like one and dislike the other. And the second you see one or the other, positive or negative doesn't matter. You've seen that person so many times, they have a reputation in your eyes, and you've seen them so many times, you feel like you have a relationship.

Marilyn, I think you were the one who said you felt comfortable because you had seen me so many times on Channel 11, right? And even though we haven't met in person, there's still a relationship there because I've been in your home. And so there's a great deal of comfort in the power of relationship. And relationship will either enhance your reputation, your message, or it will overcome your message.

If you think about the president and the former president, again, pro or con.

It'S hard to remember what they said, but it's easy to remember the feeling they generated, that perception. Here's an example I like to give is remember when you're a kid, you're at a family picnic perhaps, and your grandparents were there. Mine were George and Helen. George and Helen would communicate like this. George, did you? Yeah, good.

Like a shoulder knot, a wink, a syllable. They went through the whole weeks to do list. Because one relationship is strong, we don't need a lot of words. And when a relationship is weak or non existent, we need lawyers. We've all done, we've all done business with people we've known for years on handshakes. But I'm guessing you don't sell houses to people that you've never met before on a handshake.

No contracts.

Here's the power of reputation. You get two emails later today. Same font, same color, same template. The only difference is one is from the Mother Teresa foundation and the other is from the the former movie mogul who got arrested. His name just flew out of my mind.

Harvey Weinstein.

There you go. You grabbed it. In the event you're so inclined to give, who are you going to give the 25 bucks to?

That's because you know by reputation Harvey Weinstein is going to do something probably bad with the money. Mother Teresa's foundation will likely do something good with the money. But here's the real question. Did you ever meet either one of these people when Mother Teresa was still alive?

As you grow in your organization at the CEO level now 95% of the people you will communicate with in the organization, in the marketplace as you go forward won't meet you in person.

They will meet you first and foremost by reputation. That's the power of your brand.

Relationship. Reputation build themselves. There is no technique, there's no shortcut. This is foundational. This is the essence of who you are and it will build over time. The next level we communicate at is appearance. Appearance is a very powerful thing. You walk into an emergency room and you are in a fair amount of discomfort. You're not sure if you have COVID 19 or not. And you're greeted first by two doctors. You're given the choice of which doctor you're going to have treat, you, doctor number one or doctor number two. Who are you picking?

You don't know anything about either one of them, but you immediately defaulted to doctor number two because he looks the part. You have no idea if doctor number one is the genius who spent the last three years in Switzerland learning everything in the world about COVID 19.

But in that short seven to ten second window where we form perceptions, if you don't look the part, our brain says you can't possibly be the part. And so we make that selection.

That's the power of appearance. And if you don't have a relationship or a reputation, we will default to appearance. Every female newscaster in America knows this. If she has a bad hair day, she could literally give out her Social Security number. And nobody will hear it because everybody's watching the TV going like this.

What's wrong with her hair?

It's the power of appearance. You either look the part or your look becomes your brand. The next level we communicate at is body language. Don't go on Amazon and buy a book about body language. You're already an expert at it. We all read it intuitively. The problem is, folding your arms doesn't always mean you're in a bad mood. It might just mean you're chilly. But when you take control of your brand, you have to become very conscious of how other people are reading your body language. Whose message do you prefer? This guy or this woman?

Who do you trust more in a financial transaction? This guy.

Or this woman? Woman. Let's go back through that. White male, African American, female. This breaks through all of what we think of as the common stereotypes. Male gender, female, race, age, body language. Is that powerful.

This guy was the producer on my Ravens Broadcast for 12 years. Names Johnny Goldsmith. I call him Johnny G. Most trustworthy guy in the world. But I have a relationship with him. You do not, because you don't have a relationship with him. You defaulted to body language and appearance, and you chose clip art over Johnny.

G.

And that's the power of it. Once you have context around it. I'm using, you know, extreme examples, but what I'm trying to get you to see is how quickly you, as highly educated, highly successful people, are defaulting to appearance and body language. And that's because that's what we all do, because we are all busy. Our brain doesn't have all day to sift through it. The next one is tone of voice. The tone of voice is just how you say the things you say, I did some research, found a simple grammatical sentence, a five word sentence that has the same meaning in the southeast as it does in the Northwest. Place like Pittsburgh, they have idioms like yin's. In the South, I say y'. All. Baltimore, we say hun. But this doesn't have any of that. It means pretty much this. You look at that and you think, I didn't steal her money. We can all agree what that means. If I change the tone of this sentence, notice how the meaning changes. I didn't steal her money.

I didn't steal her money.

I didn't steal her money.

She'll find out when she goes out later on. I stole her car.

If I can change the meaning of a simple five word sentence that. We thought we all agreed on the meaning of it that quickly. What do you think happens in a five minute zoom call? What do you think happens in a five sentence email or a five minute phone conversation? If you're not paying attention to your tone and people always say, what's the right tone? Well, the right tone is the tone that supports your brand.

That politician who was off the rails, who usually gets comments like crazy and unhinged, his tone was just.