Launch Leadership Workshop Module 1 - 2:00 PM EST [July 21, 2020]

Greg hunt. We're just missing greg.

Okay, so.

Hello, Katie.

Hello, Katie. Hey, Katie.

And Jerry, I know that Greg also mentioned there was one date he wasn't able to make, so this might be it.

Oh, okay. We'll give a minute.

So I say we're ready to rock.

Yes. That is going to be a requirement. Everybody, cameras on.

Busted. Trevor.

It's gonna be one of those calls, huh?

Oh, yeah.

I'll make sure I can't see Barb yet in my screen. Barb, you too. Busting you out. Camera on.

Excellent.

Yeah, we'll just presume this is the one that.

There.

Barb.

Gang's all here. Let's roll.

Welcome to launch.

Everybody in the mood to do something phenomenal today and get this thing off to a great start as well as take your career to the next level? Who's in for that?

That's what I like to see. That's the spirit. Because that's what this is all about. This is about bringing your excellence to the front of your team, the front of your organization, the front of your marketplace, as well as the front of the room and the front of the zoom. The visual I like to always give people is the lighthouse. Leaders are lighthouses. And lighthouses have power because you know where to find them. If a lighthouse moved around in the middle of a storm, it would have no value. Or. But what gives a lighthouse its greatest value is the fact that no matter how strong the storm is, the lighthouse does not move. And it gives everybody the direction to move in during times of uncertainty. I think these qualify as times of uncertainty. So let's dive in so we can accelerate your leadership, celebrate it as well, and elevate your success. That is entirely what this whole program is about. And that's what we're going to do. Now. I want to start by taking you back to the early 1980s and a much, much younger version of me. I was just getting my broadcasting career started. I worked at a TV station in Miami and the Miami Dolphins were playing in the super bowl. And the super bowl was out on the west coast. They were playing the 49ers at Stanford Stadium. And because it was obviously such a big deal, everybody in the sports department went out to the Super Bowl. Everybody but me. I was an intern who had just gotten hired as a part time producer and reporter and kind of an odd job guy. Well, all of a sudden, I'm literally the last guy at the station, which means I have to anchor the show that is going up against the Super Bowl. So the good news Is nobody's really watching. The bad news is I've got to anchor the show, and I've got to do everything by myself. So I spend the entire day writing the show, editing the show, getting it together. I go out on the set, talk about stage fright. I'm shaking like a leaf. The anchor introduces me, hands it to me, and I turn from talking to the anchor to the camera, and the teleprompter is blank. There's nothing in it. Everything I had written. The entire show is gone. I don't know what happened. And for three minutes, I have no idea what happened. Those three minutes of my life are like the Nixon tapes. They're blank. They're just gone. I couldn't tell you what happened. It must not have been so bad because I didn't get fired. But at the end of the three minutes, I turned back to the anchor and I handed it to him. He took it and he threw it to the commercial break. And in the commercial break, I just opened, I'm like.

An actor who's playing somebody sweating nervously on Saturday Night Live. I just. I look like Will Ferrell. I was just. Just drenched in sweat. I'm barely breathing. And the anchor looks at me, and he said, that's what happens when the unexpected presents itself. He said, you don't have your voice yet. You don't know who you are yet. Your journey is to find your voice and know who you are, because once you know who you are, you'll be able to handle the unexpected. But until you know who you are when the unexpected shows up, now, you don't know who you are. You don't know what to do in the unexpected. There's too many variables. Once you know who you are. The Lighthouse principle. Every time the unexpected shows up, you'll know how to navigate it, because you'll have a sense of what to do based on who you are. I carried that lesson throughout the course of my leadership. It took me a while to find my voice. And what I want to help you do in this program is to find your voice much faster than I did and learn how to use that voice in everything from establishing your brand as a leader to building your productivity throughout the course of the day, the week, the month of the year, and then finally to communicating your vision, your brand to your staff in such a way that after a while, you won't need that many words, because your presence and your brand will be so strong. Like me, Andy has a background in sports. And like me, he has merged his background in sports with his love and his success as a businessman. And I'll let Andy share that with you.

Better turn my mute off. Thank you, Jerry. Yeah. My career, my story is really simple, guys. Through this and working my butt off off the field, I gave myself the chance as a very undersized pitcher to make it to professional baseball. Spent a few years pitching in the Milwaukee brewers organization. But where the story kind of goes sideways is when I got to pro baseball.

I lost everything up here that made me successful in high school and college. And as a professional athlete, time management is probably one of the biggest things you have to master because you have actually a lot of free time if you really wanted it to. But at the same time, you've got to make sure you're working on the right things all the time. And it comes down to things like, we're going to talk about standing out, branding, know who you are, mastering productivity, mastering time, blocking, all that stuff. And so that's where my expertise comes into this workshop, is more on the productivity and time management. Because whether you're a professional athlete or you're running a team, you right now, if you sat on the webinar, you heard this, you're probably playing three roles, producer, manager, and leader. And if you're not, if you're managing, you're not producing. If you're in a leadership meeting, you're not producing nor managing. And so it's, how can you balance your days so that you, as a producer, manager, and leader, can be highly productive at operating on all three? Where I got my feet wet in this and what it means to master time, product, time management and productivity is. When Amy and I decided to move out to Colorado, I spent the majority of my career in Wisconsin in the health insurance industry. I got hired by a health insurance agency out here who was hiring me to be their only producer. They expected me to manage the benefits team, but then they wanted me to be sitting in the leadership meetings every week talking about the big decisions for the agency. And so I had to quickly pivot and learn how to master time management and learn how to be as productive as I could be in all three, especially production, because I was being tasked with driving the revenue for the company. And so that's what I'm excited to teach you guys in this workshop. So module two, a ton of time will be spent on making sure you are at your best, so you can bring your best to your team. And it comes down to mastering the habits, mastering the daily rituals, and being the best version of yourself. Because to Me, that's what I feel is going to be required of the leader of the future.

So like you all, we have come from a place of struggle and background. We've had failures that led to success, we've had success that led to other struggles and it's a constant cycle. So what we want to do as we get started is we want to meet each of you and get a sense of your number one struggle as a leader right now and the number one thing you would most like to get out of this program. So Katie, let's start with you. Introduce yourself to the team and start with your number one struggle and your number one objective.

Okay. Well, good afternoon, I'm Katie Brant. My number one struggle would be speaking on prompted with very little notice. No, I'm just kidding.

Number one struggle probably would be around branding, having a clear sense of my brand and.

Being consistent in my messaging with that feeling like I'm maybe trying to be or do too many things with my brand right now. And what was the second thing? I already forgot.

And what's your number one objective? What's the number one thing you hope to get out of launch?

Well, I like all three of the content areas. I could definitely improve on productivity. That seems more tactical. Probably starting with the branding clarity around my brand.

Awesome. Steve, say hello and tell us your number one struggle and your number one objective.

Oh, Jerry, I'm thinking you're calling me Steve, but my name's actually Sean. So my first struggle is my brand obviously didn't make it through the enrollment process. Unless there's another.

Talking to Steve or Shane.

I'm sorry, I thought Steve, I was going to Steve Soysman. But that's okay, no worries.

Nope, you've got the floor. Take it.

Okay.

My name's actually Sean, but thank you. My number one struggle is I tend to be a bit of a control freak.

I like to get things accomplished. I like to do things in a very matter of factly manner. First in, first out, handle things once. That comes off as very gruff and very aggressive to some people. So my struggle with that is, you know, I do feel like I am a team player and I do take other people's thoughts and issues into consideration. But I think, you know, my, perhaps my presentation is a little. Could use some, some finesse, I guess.

And I guess so my number one objective would be time management as well. I do, as I say, could tend to be a bit of a control freak. So rather than necessarily delegating where I might be able to do something, I know I can accomplish it in a much quicker fashion. I go ahead and do it myself, which then obviously takes away from my ability to focus on other things.

So.

Excellent. Thank you. All right, Steve, so go ahead. Your turn now.

Okay. Can you guys hear me?

Sure. Yes.

Okay, perfect. So I guess my number one struggle is, you know, balancing the everyday responsibilities of owning a restaurant and trying. I always say, there's just not enough time in the day to get everything done that I want to get done, because there's so much that goes into it.

And I guess another big thing for me that I would need help with is some time management.

You know, focusing on what's important and sticking to it and not getting sidetracked and, you know, moving on to another project without finishing the first one.

And to your point, Steve, you are right. There is not enough time in any day or every day to get done all of the things you want to get done, but there is enough time to get the most important things done. And I can promise you, by the time you're done with the launch program, you will know exactly what the important things are. You'll know how to determine those things, and then you'll have a system to start executing on those in a way that reduces the feeling of overwhelm. All of us will die with items in our to do box. Our inbox is always going to be full. Our to do list will always be full. Success is not checking off that last to do list. It's doing the right things at the right time to get the right results. And that's very much what we're gonna go through here today. So next up is Trevor. Trevor with us?

Yep.

Hey, guys. Yeah.

So I'm a leader of office for a large general contractor. Commercial general contractor. I think my biggest struggle is probably in line with Shawn a little bit. I don't come across as scruffy or gruffy, but I have a really hard time letting go of responsibility and delegating. I can delegate very easily, but have a hard time truly letting people run with things without trying to micromanage them. So that's definitely a struggle.

I think I'm a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to some things, and that probably plays out with me trying to stay on people's reins and micromanage. And oddly enough, or funny enough, my objective for this course would be definitely to get better at time management, which I can see how the two go hand in hand. If I can learn to let go a little bit, I might have more time on my hands.

And by getting a sense of your brand and who you really are, you'll also get a sense of what you're comfortable with letting go. And ironically, the more you focus on that one aspect that we're going to cover today, the easier it will become for other people to perform the task that you delegate to them to your level of satisfaction, because they'll understand. Like a ship looking at a lighthouse in a storm, they'll know where you are. If you're not all over the map, it's a lot easier for them to zero in on that target. Excellent. Last one, I think, is Barb. Barb.

Good afternoon. Yeah. So I am the executive director of a small nonprofit organization. Well, what was small a year ago? So what I'm finding is that I went from wearing multiple hats as leading a small nonprofit to now. The last year has been significant growth. And the organizational chart and structure changes on a week by week basis. So everybody's roles, responsibilities are morphing. I've definitely struggled with trying to take some of the stuff that does no longer. It doesn't, doesn't need to be mine anymore and handing it off. So letting some of that control go, having faith in the people that are coming into position.

But now I'm finding this huge. You know, I think I'm feeling very secure in what my position is today and how it's shifted. I also have a very new.

Senior management team and management team that doesn't have a lot of experience. So I'm really hoping to grab some tools that I can go back and help coach others up so that we have consistency across the board.

Fantastic. We'll definitely give you those tools. What a great time. Barb, because it is such an opportunity, you don't have a super seasoned team around you. You don't have a bunch of people who are relying on the crutch of, well, that's the way we've always done it. It is a time of change, and that gives you the chance to truly be a leader and show people the direction. So if you heard the themes that just came through from everybody, it is the genuine leadership challenge. You have all been phenomenal producers in the course of your career so far, which is why you tend to be, like you said, a control freak or micromanager, because you know how to produce, you know how to get the job done. But from this point forward, if you keep thinking about those three levels, those three roles in an organization, producer, manager, leader, every minute you're spending producing is a minute your organization, your division Your responsibility has no leader. And when there is no leader, people get lost. So we're going to help you kind of refine that and get a sense of how others perceive you and how you are able to really, really create the perception that you want to lead people where you want to take them. So perception is an amazing thing. Perception is not the same thing as reality. Perception. Think of perception as the doorway and reality is the room. Pick any room in your house. If you don't lead people through that correct doorway, they don't wind up in that room, the room. The reality is your expertise, is your technical knowledge. It's your ability to do the things that you do what got you to this point. But I believe it was.

Trevor talking about how have a hard time delegating. That generates a perception of lack of trust. If people think they don't, that you don't trust in them, they won't trust in you. And so their productivity is not going to be nearly as high. Perception is something we form almost instantaneously in literally a matter of seconds. Reality takes a much longer time to come to a full understanding of your job as a leader is to be consistent with your brand, as Katie spoke to, in such a way that people come through the right door and they get into the right room every single time. So that perception lines up with reality and enhances reality. Now I'm going to play a little video for you. What I want you to do is if you have a piece of paper, it looks like you have some notes on the left side of the paper, write down positives. On the right side, write down any negative perceptions you have of the people or the brands you see in this video. It's a short video. You will know some of these people. Some of these are political figures. I don't care about your political views. We're not here to talk about politics.

Some will create instant reactions.

You will see why these people are in this video when we're done and you understand the full depth of this exercise. But all I want you to do is while I play the video, I just want you to write down any perceptions you have. This is not a test. There's no right and wrong answer. There are just your answers. Everybody ready to roll?

Thank you very much.

Thanks so much. Welcome to the Oscars.

For those of you watching around the.

World, it has been a tough couple of days for us here. It has been raining.

We're fine.

Thank you for your prayers.

But I received.

Several request.

To continue on with that. And so I've decided to share a little bit about myself.

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 out.

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

Being that's ever lived.

I think I get. 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.

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.

What if I'm far from home? Oh, brother. I will hear you come.

If the sky comes home.

Really 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.

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.

You should also always tell people things when they're already in a good mood. Don't tell them when you're already arguing about it and then saying, we're moving in. This is what I always say. Parents, I do think it's something if.

The mother doesn't like him.

But this is. It should give you pause. I would say. I would say it should give you pause. But also I would say parents don't understand what I learned years ago from this expert on the Oprah show that there is a time to manage and there's a time when you become a consultant.

A time to manage and a time to lead. All right, let's take a look at. That was a three minute video. No one cut. No one clip went more than 20 seconds. Even the commercials, I cut down to 20 seconds. Steve, give me at first look, did you have more negatives or positives?

Oh, go ahead and you can go ahead and unmute.

I guess I would say negatives.

Give me a couple of the negative you had.

Well, I mean with Trump and everything and Obama.

You know, I might.

Some of my audio cut out, so I missed some of the clips. And then the guy that was talking about Albert Einstein and just sounding like a crazy person.

Perfect. Yep. Sounded crazy. Over the top. Exactly. Barbara, how about you give me a couple of the negatives you had?

Same Trump.

I feel like the Koch commercial could have gone. There were positive and negatives to it. The graph, the woman presenting and that, that really way too much happening in that graph.

Way too much.

The woman speaking around the teachers association or when there was zero engagement.

Yep. Boring plastic screen.

Yeah.

Yep, exactly. Katie, give me a couple of positives you took away.

You're muted, Katie.

Okay. Ellen was comfortable, funny, kept a straight face, simple. Obama was confident. Although I had something else to say. But confident.

Kindness I saw in some of the kids exchange. Oprah. Calm, confident.

Excellent. Sean, how about you give me a point, Give me some positives and negatives that you took away.

Well, I like the way that Obama started his presentation by thanking everyone. I thought it was a positive outreach. I like the kid standing up to the bully at his, I'm assuming his little brother's back, etc. And I did like the way that Oprah handled her discussion.

Out of touch. I thought some of the comments arrogant, I would say. Some of the presenters I thought were arrogant. The woman, as mentioned earlier, who spoke in a monotone voice, thought that was negative. Too much information and the guy was completely enraged. All negatives.

Yep, exactly. He's a classic example I like to use because he's so over the top. All right, so what I want you to think about is all of the perceptions that were formulated there. And you all have more perceptions than you're willing to share right now. Because we're a new group. We're just getting to know each other. If we had all known each other for three or four years, you would have spewed out three times as many perceptions. Because we live in a world where we say politically correct things, but we still think politically incorrect thoughts. It's that simple. So when you form those perceptions, you didn't form those perceptions first and foremost in your head. You formed them in your gut. They struck you at a gut level. And that's what perceptions do, because we listen with more than our ears. We look for more than just our eyes. Everybody you saw in that three minute clip is actually a very successful person. But how many of them do you think set out to say today, I want my brand. I want the perception other people have of me to be a boring old liar who's stiff.

Not an ideal brand. Right. Any more than looking lost, confused, and coming across as over the top. Not exactly an ideal brand. But that's what happened for those people who weren't thinking about their target perception. Target perception is the power of brand. And we form perceptions on brands that quickly, whether it is the brand of a computer, a soft drink, or a leader. And here's how we formed those perceptions. I developed a little model.

Called the perception pyramid, and it will show you exactly how you came to all of those perceptions, whether they were political perceptions. And it was interesting, if you notice how we all kind of soft shoot around our perceptions, around the former and the current president. I always use the former and the sitting president because they're usually polar opposites in terms of perceptions that they generate. Again, not right or wrong. I just want you to feel the impact of how fast this is. When you have a message you want to send as a leader, you have a point you want to get across. Typically, what we do is we put it into words and we send those words out. But how many of you in the last six months have asked somebody or a group of people to do a certain thing at a certain way at a certain time, only to have that time arrive? What you wanted done was done incorrectly, incompletely, or not at all. Show of hands, how'd that happen?

When that happens, we tend to think, I'm working with idiots around here. And since I'm working with idiots, if I want to get something done around here, I have to do it myself. And there you are back in the producer's role, and you're forfeiting your time and space in the leadership role. And the reason most of those word messages get lost is we live in a sea of words. We're overwhelmed by words. We don't have time to read all the words. Put too many words on a screen and our brains will literally fatigue and start shutting down. Because your brain is telling you, John, you don't have time to sift through all these things. And that's because when we receive a message, whether that is an email, a video, a presentation, a meeting, a client, pitch, whatever the case, when we're on the receiving end, this works at home, where you're talking to your significant other, we come at it literally from a different angle. We don't start with words. We start with relationship and reputation. Now, you cannot technique relationship and reputation. It's foundational because it builds over a period of time. This is as real as reality gets. This is the room.

But if you don't bring people to the right room, it can overwhelm them.

Relationship and reputation are so strong. It's why I use the two presidents. Whatever your political views are, you'd be hard pressed to remember what either one of them said, other than Obama out, because that was a funny little joke. And for both presidents, you have seen them so much over the last several years. They have a reputation. In your eyes, whether it's good or bad is irrelevant. They have a reputation. You've seen them so many times you feel like you have a relationship with them. So they don't have to say a lot of words to get their point across. It's almost automatic. Matter of fact, if it doesn't align with their words and their point, it becomes their words and their point. So, for example, if you do not like Donald Trump, doesn't matter what he says. The power of perception is this. Once we form a perception, if we give that person any more of our time or that corporate entity any more of our time, what time we give them, we do it to prove ourselves right. That's why you have to align the perception, the doorway, with the room, because if it's misaligned, you're sending a different message than they're getting every single time. Let's say you get two emails later on this evening. They're both requesting a $25 donation. Same words, same font, same color. One is from the Mother Teresa Foundation. The other is the Harvey Weinstein Foundation. In the event you're so inclined to give today, who are you giving the money to?

You know, by reputation, Mother Teresa's organization is going to do better work with the money. Now, here's the thing. Have any of you ever met the late Mother Teresa or Harvey Weinstein?

And yet you have a perception of both of them. They both represent a brand to you. As leaders, the farther we go in leadership, the more we communicate with people who will never physically meet us, who we will never talk directly one on one with, but who we will definitely have influence over, positive or negative, and who will form a brand perception of us. And the higher you go as a leader, the more of those people will see you and interact with you and form a perception of you as quickly as you did Mother Teresa and Harvey Weinstein. Next level we communicate is appearance. Now, appearance does not mean we have to look like a million dollars all the time. It just means we have to look on brand. Because if we don't look on brand, you'll see this with each level of the pyramid. It either supports the perception or it becomes the perception. Let's say you're going in for a coronavirus test because you were exposed to somebody who tested positive. So you have to go get your test. When you walk into the medical facility, there are two people who are willing to give you the test. This guy.

Or this guy. In the event you get to choose, Steve Soysman, which one are you choosing to go get your coronavirus test from?

Definitely the doctor or the guy who.

Looks the role, Right? Right. And here's the thing. You made that choice based on nothing more than appearance. You don't know anything about these guys. For all you know, the guy on the left side of your screen is the foremost leading PhD researcher and knows more about coronavirus than anybody in the world. And the guy on the right is just a general practitioner who just gives the test because you know that's part of his job. You have no idea. But because there's no relationship and no reputation, you default to appearance when people are first getting to know you. That's why your appearance is so important. Because if you don't look the part, they won't presume you are the part.

Next level we communicate is body language. And this is where we get lost a lot as leaders. The more we get in our heads, the less we're aware of what's going on with our bodies. People. Whether you're looking at the late Mother Teresa, Harvey Weinstein, the CEO of Coca Cola, the President, the Pope, any leader who has influence, who you've never met, you're looking at appearance and body language right out of the gate and you are extrapolating their message. And the problem is the message you're thinking is not always the message. They're thinking, whose message do you prefer? This guy or this woman?

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

Or this woman?

Now those are pretty self evident answers, but I want to take you back through them.

White, male, black, female, he's older than she is. Body language and appearance trump a lot of what we typically think of as the built in biases in our society. This is powerful stuff. Remember I talked about perception and brand starts with a relationship or reputation.

This guy's name is Johnny Goldsmith. He was my producer on Raven's radio game day broadcast for 12 years. He's the most trustworthy guy I know. I would trust him with anything. Johnny G. Is as rock solid a human being as I've ever been around. But I know him, he has a reputation. In my eyes, we have a relationship because you do not know him and you do not have a relationship with him. You made your choice entirely off of body language and appearance. And you chose clip art over the most trustworthy guy I know. And that's what happens if our perception, our brand, gets misaligned with our reality. People never experience our reality. They just experience their perception and they run with that perception. Once that perception is formed, it's very, very hard to change it. The next level we communicate at is tone. Tone is merely how you say what you say. Everything from do you have an accent? Do you have a foreign accent? Do you speak slowly? Are you monotone? Are you super excited? That one politician who always scores over the top, deranged, crazy.

Proof that you don't always have to talk louder and that sometimes sounding more exciting isn't the way to go. It's not about talk louder, talk softer, talk faster, talk slower. It's about what's your brand and does your tone support that brand? Here's a simple grammatical five word sentence. You think it says this straight denial, I didn't steal her money. Notice what I can do to the meaning of this sentence just by changing the tone to I didn't steal her money. Now I'm implying I stole somebody's money. I didn't steal her money.

I stole Steven's money.

I didn't steal her money.

At the end of our time together, she'll find out that I stole her car. If I can change the meaning of a five word sentence that quickly, what do you think happens in a 15 minute meeting on Zoom? In a 5 minute phone call with a prospect, in a 10 second interaction with an employee. If your tone does not support your point or your words, they never hear your words and they never get your point. So I asked you if in the last six months you had asked an individual or group of people to do a certain thing in a certain way at a certain time, only to have the time arrive and that thing was done incorrectly, incompletely or not at all. I want you to go back and think about that. And as you look at the perception pyramid, I want you to take ownership of where that message may have gotten lost. More than likely it wasn't your words and you were probably pretty clear on your point, at least you thought you were. If you're like most leaders, that's where the message gets lost. Appearance, body language and tone.

And the thing with body language and tone is they connect. If you get too in your head and you're not, you're not paying attention to your tone of voice, your tone will flatten out. Here's the dead giveaway. My wife was the one who flagged me on this many, many years ago, I'd be at the office, we'd be on the phone and I'd be on the laptop. I'd be doing some work, Raven season, I'm prepping the next game or something. And she would always say, okay, you sound like you're very busy and don't want to talk. I'll talk to you later on. Because she could hear my tone of voice, that I wasn't connecting. And if I'm not connecting with my audience, whether it's an audience of 1 or 10,000, doesn't matter. If I'm not connecting with my audience at a tone level, they'll disconnect from me every single time. If you want to change your tone, you change your body language. If you want to move more with your tone, you have to move your body more. Try this simple experiment to see how body language affects tone. Put the biggest smile you possibly can on your face. Go ahead, just force it. Just ear to ear. Grin, wild grin. Now sound pissed off.

Can't do it. That's the power body language has over influencing your tone. So as a leader, the first person you have to lead is yourself. You have to always lead yourself to be as on brand as possible. And when you do, an amazing thing happens. You build relationship, reputation more quickly. And when relationship and reputation are strong, you don't need a lot of words. People start to get your point very rapidly. When relationship and reputation are weak, we need lawyers.

Think about it. In Las Vegas, you can get married in 37 words in a chapel. Ever seen a divorce decree with 37 words? Not a shot. People you've done business with for years and years and years, you may do business with on a handshake deal. But a brand new vendor, a brand new customer, somebody you have no relationship or reputation with, they're going to want a contract.

That's the nature of it. That's the power of perception. Over time, relationship or reputation will build itself according to who you really are. And if you can align right from the gate that brand with who you are, you will save yourself so much time, so much frustration, and you will give yourself the answer to every question that usually comes up. What do I do next? What's most important? What do I wear? What should my tone be? How do I convey that? All of that is answered by your brand? In the video I showed you, I used two very different brands, Apple and Coke. They sell different products, they have different feels to them, but they're consistent with them. Over the course of time, they consistently Deliver that same brand in a lot of different ways, and that's what we want you to do. So it's time to start getting busy here and dive in with the question, what's your brand? A lot of you express frustration over your brand very natural. Most people confuse their brand with their logo. The logo follows, the colors follow. Once you know your brand, everything else will come through and it will come clear. And now that you understand how quickly people form their perception, how quickly you formed your perception of others, you just flip the table and know that's how quickly people form their perception of you.

I think it was Steve. Nope. It was Sean who said, sometimes you can come off as gruff. John. Is that part of what you want your desired brand to be?

Generally, no.

Right now, there might be times when it serves you to be gruff and get things done. You know, that's fine. Football coaches on third down and nine with 18 seconds left in the game when they're trailing by four points, are not usually in a congenial mood. I get that. But when you think about your general overall brand, Gruff, it's probably not in there any more than that politician wanted to seem like he was crazy and over the top.

But when we're not paying attention to what we're doing or when we don't have a target, it's easy to get off and stay off brand.

So, brand. It comes down to a concept that I call the core four. The four words or phrases that consistently describe you as a brand based on your target perception in your marketplace. The people who follow you, the businesses you work with, your peers, your competitors, the way everybody sees you consistently. And I want you to think for a second about some of the great brands in the world. If you're a golfer, you have certain brands you like to go to. If you're a cyclist, there are certain bikes that speak to you. If you're a car enthusiast, there's certain cars that speak to you. Laptops. You're either a Mac person or you're a PC person. That's the power of brand. I'm a complete Mac person. I couldn't build a motherboard if you paid me $10 million. If I went back in a time machine 100 years, I couldn't invent anything in terms of computer products. But I always side with Mac because I love the brand. The brand always delivers. It's consistent. Everything I touch from them has pretty much the same user interface, and it's easy to use, and it's slick, and I like it.

You as a leader have that same power. And right now, you as a leader, have a Core four, the four words or phrases people use to describe you. So if it comes down to how consistently are they describing you, and are those the words and phrases you want people to choose.

You have a Core four. Now, a Core four might be very vague and very inconsistent right now. At the end of today, you're gonna have the tool to start making this extremely on point, extremely consistent. And that core forward will guide you as sure as a compass will. And we get there through a game called the Game Frame. The Game Frame is a tool, and we're gonna email you this tool later on tonight that you will use at all phases of what we're doing in this program. And I'll predict you will use this tool many times in different ways throughout the course of your career. It's a prioritization tool. It will prioritize any list of items, and it will help you have total clarity for what it is you're trying to get done.

It looks a little bit like the NCAA tournament brackets, the March Madness pairings, and it plays out a little bit like that. But you'll see there's a twist as we get into this tool that you don't see coming at first. On the left hand column is the Brainstorm column. That's where you're going to put all the raw rough data. And then we're going to play it out two by two. So for this game, I'm going to put together a list of cities where I would like to have our next in person meeting as an organization, our next retreat as an organization after Coronavirus.

Here's a whole different list of cities. They have lots of different factors, lots of different variables. And the way I'm going to play it out is this. I ask what's called the clarifying question. If I could only choose one of these two options. You break it down into a competition of twos. If I can only choose one of these two options, which one would I choose? So in the Brainstorm column, I take San Diego or Boston. I'll go San Diego. Cleveland or San Fran. That's an easy one. Denver or New York? I'm going Denver. And notice at the bottom there's an odd number. Miami has nothing to compete with. It gets a buy. Doesn't mean it's going to win, but it just gets a buy. Same thing in round two. San Diego or San Francisco? That's a tough one sometimes. These are going to be really tough. I love both of these cities. San Fran has better restaurants. I think that's where I'd like to go. Denver or Miami? Again, tough one. Very different cities. I'm going sunshine.

Same thing. Third column. San Fran or Miami. If I could only pick one of these, which would I choose? I'm going San Fran. So San Francisco becomes my first pick. That becomes my top priority. Now, here's the part to the game you didn't see coming. Pay attention, because this is how you use the tool. Whatever wins that round. In this case, San Francisco comes off the game frame all the way back to the Brainstorm column on the left. What it beat in that first column, in this case, Cleveland now advances to the second round. And you play out the second column just like the first column. San Diego or Cleveland? San Diego or Miami? I choose San Diego. That's number two. It comes off the board. San Diego, San Diego, San Diego. What it beat in the first round, Boston advances to the second round. You play that out. Boston or Cleveland? Third round, Boston or Miami? I'm going Sunshine. And now you see Miami comes off the board.

And because Miami had nothing to compete against in the first round, Denver now gets a buy in the second round. To the third round, it plays against Boston. If I could only choose one, I'll take Denver. And there's your four.

And by using that simple prioritization tool, we take a random list, a brainstorm list, and we give it complete clarity in terms of our priorities.

As a leader, you're always going to have more to do than you have time to do.

Stephen brought this up earlier. But by always knowing your priorities, you can always be working on your top priority. Whether that's the next town where you want to have a convention, the next town where you want to open up a restaurant, the next town where you want to expand your business into the next.

Service or product you want to add to your existing group of services and products. Whatever the case might be, this tool will always take you in a proper order of priorities. One, through whatever. You can play this out to infinity and always have everything prioritized. I've used this tool for a thousand different ways. Thousands of different people have used this tool. It always delivers the itemized list in your priorities.

So the way we use this to help you discover the four cornerstones of your brand, the four words or phrases of your brand, is to start thinking about the target perceptions you want to have others have of you as a leader. The people who report to you, the people you work with, the people who you work under, the marketplace, the customers, the competitors. I want you to think about all of these and those.

We will use to form a brainstorm list. We're going to pause here and we're going to workshop this out, just like I came up with. A brainstorm list that you see on your screen. I want you to take a journal, a piece of paper, whatever you have that you're working with on the far left hand column. I want you to start stacking all of those words or phrases. You can use sentences, you can use phrases. You can use words. Do not overthink this. What I want you to take away from our time together this afternoon is how the process works. I'm going to send you.