Building Credibility and Integrity with Mitchell Levy

Do you have big aspirations for your career, but you're stuck trying to figure out how to stand out, differentiate yourself, build those trusting relationships, and even proving your credibility and readiness for the next opportunity? It takes more than just pumping out a lot of work and working long hours trying to impress the higher-ups. Our guest, Mitchell Levy of Credibility Nation, will help us all get focused on our long-term growth, self-reflection, and taking actionable steps that empower success in today's dynamic business landscape. He'll share the importance of building genuine connections through networking and transparent communication, which also fosters credibility. He'll talk about prioritization, trust, authenticity, and ethical practices for business, and then knowing and living your CPOP as he calls it, customer point of possibilities. Lastly, how to establish credibility with social proof, authority, and a powerhouse reputation. We are amping up your credibility that will transform you into a powerhouse leader. Let's dive in.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive coach and author, brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. With more than 25 years in corporate trenches, Bernadette's own journey from being dismissed as a tyrant boss to becoming a sought-after leadership coach and speaker illustrates the very essence of transformation that she now inspires in others with her tips, strategies, and stories. So if you're ready to shed the bitches of fear and insecurity, ditch the imposter syndrome, and step into the role of the powerhouse leader you were born to be, this podcast is for you. Let's do this.

Mitchell, how are you? Welcome.

Oh, I, I, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

I'm looking forward to this conversation cuz I think it's important that we really gain an understanding of how we as professionals especially, but even in our work or personal life, really need to be considerate of the credibility that we build, the reputation that we're building, and any type of, um, business ethic that we feel strongly about in the workplace. But before we do that, could you share with us, speaking about credibility, could you share with our listeners and viewers a little bit about Mitchell, the person, the man, the wonder?

Sure.

Um, I've been in Silicon Valley for 37 years. Um, I've been happily married for 30 5 of those. I've got a son who is 26. Uh, I, uh, let's see, for fun, what I call meditation is I play Pokémon GO and walk around for an hour and, and really enjoy doing that. Now, sometimes I am just in, in my, in the Pokémon GO world, and other times I am, I'm talking to clients and partners and they're in my ear.

Yeah. Well, speaking of credibility and your business is Credibility Nation, where did this focus come from, uh, for you and for your business all around credibility?

So if we're gonna go back to my super youth, I think I started focusing on integrity when I was, when I was 8. And then we'll fast forward to, you know, today. My parents divorced at that time. My dad was this helicopter dad who'd drive in for the weekend every other weekend and take us to the movies. And my question was, is what is the purpose of a father and what should they be doing? And mom did a great job raising 3 kids. And although we were in the poverty or below poverty for 3 kids on a teacher's salary. We never knew it. It was amazing.

Right.

There were many times in my life where I started questioning the integrity, but, but what really happened, I've often morphed into something new. So when I left corporate in '97, I morphed into an entrepreneur, e-commerce consultant during the dot-com days, very easy to make money. And then all of a sudden, the dot bomb happened, you know. So I started in '97 in my consulting business. In 2001, when the dot bomb came, all of a sudden my business dropped. So I had to do something else. I happened to be on the board of a public firm and I started doing a bunch of other things. Somewhere around 2005, I started thinking to myself, huh, I've always wanted to be a book publisher. I know that democratization of book publishing is gonna happen, but let's go and do that. So I, so I've created 4 book publishing companies. We've published 750 books.

Nice.

And it was, I knew the democratization of book publishing was gonna happen. And I thought to myself, it was around 2019, I go, well, I gotta find something new. You know, it was a great 6-figure business for all of those years. And I'm like, I gotta find something new. So I said, what does it that I've helped so many authors get themselves out there and become thought leaders? What is it that they really want? And I thought, oh, they want credibility. Okay, got it. So then I looked in the dictionary for the definition of credibility. I go, that's not right. Or it might have been right at a certain point in time, but let me go and test it. The next day I woke up and I thought, Napoleon Hill interviewed 500 millionaires and created Think and Grow Rich. Mitchell Levy's going to interview 500 thought leaders on credibility. And I ended up writing the book Credibility Nation and doing a TEDx in 2021. It was called We Are Losing Our Humanity, and I'm tired of watching it happen. And that's, it was at that stage that I realized, um, what credibility really was and then what comes before credibility, which is kind of cool as well.

Okay.

Well, all right. You got us intrigued and you hooked us in. So, uh, 'cause I was gonna go right to what is credibility then, but if there's something before that, what happens before that?

So, by the way, so let me first answer your first question, then we'll talk about what comes before. You used the phrase in the pre-interview and then also in my intro, and you said know, like, and trust. But what happened is I found in practice that's not the right order. That was the order when the phrase was created prior to the internet. Because, you know, you go into a town, and the town has 2 blacksmiths and you go to somebody who you trust, maybe the barcelon, hey, of the 2 blacksmiths, which one should I use for my horse? That's, that's the know, right? That's the know and the like and the trust. And nowadays we have access to all information we need and we say, hey, what's the blacksmith? What's the local blacksmith? You're going to get tons of things coming up to you. And let's say you get 10 choices. The first thing you're going to do is, do I trust that this person can do the job? So the phrase is trust, know, and like. So credibility is the quality in which you're trusted, known, and liked. And then there, I've identified 10 values associated with that. Now, what comes before credibility is what are you trusted, known, and liked for.

Well, before you move off of that though, one minute, before you move off of that, because I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that, uh, because how— unless there's a degree of know, how does one even gain trust in someone if they don't in some degree know them?

So it's, it's, um, let me redefine know for you. It's not that they that I know of you, it's that I know you. So let's use the example of, of you searching for a service, or I'm interested in looking at, at your service, right? I'm looking at you. Someone's, someone, I might type into Google and all of a sudden this podcast pops up or your website pops up. Now, if, if I'm actually looking at you and I've done a Google search or I've searched on any one of the AIs, I might have said, hey, give me the top 10. And so I'm going to give the top 10 the first 3 to 5 seconds to actually establish, hey, is this somebody I can trust? Is this a trustworthy site or is it crap? If it's crap, I'm going to move on. If it's trustworthy, I'm then going to say, let me get to know them a little bit better. So I'm going to probably spend 50 to 60 seconds taking a look at the site. And when I look at the site, for instance, somebody asked, I got a podcast, somebody asked to be on my podcast this morning. I looked at their site and I'm like, wow, interesting. Okay, I will have a preview. And then I went to the bottom of the site and I watched their video. And normally, you know, I only watch a video for 30 seconds, but it was so intriguing. I spent the entire 2 and a half minutes watching the video of all the testimonials all strung together well. And she did such an amazing job. It was an easy yes. I mean, I said yes before I interviewed her because I got to know her through her customers. Right. And then guess what? I got to like her through her customers because she did, you know, when the clips that she was having, when one of her customers would say something, she'd smile at unique points in time. I got to like that. And so I really got to, it's so, no, it's not that I know of, but I actually know you, what's important to you, what's valuable to you.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

I can, I can get my head around that. I can get my head around that. Um, all right. So we're clear on that. And then you were going to share what comes next, you said, is. Credibility. And so in your world, what you've discovered, uh, what is credibility?

You know, it's— the question becomes, are you credible in or about what? And so you, you actually, uh, said it in, in the question, it's clarity. And what I, what I've done now over thousand times is I have a formula to be able to talk to any company or any human and allow them to articulate in less than 10 words where they are executing on their purpose. Because here's the cool part. If you are every day playing in your playground, the playground, right? You're having fun and you're playing in your playground. And when you're answering questions and you're communicating and you're writing posts and you're solving clients' problems and you're playing from your playground, you have a consistent way in which you're showing up. That level of consistency is what brings in, you know, the alignment of your internal and external integrity. It's what allows you to show up, you we use the word ethics here, ethically in the same way regardless of the situation. 'Cause you have a, you have a playground, you have a compass in which you can help yourself make decisions. Clarity is the thing that will allow you to have a compass for your decisions and your behavior. And if you then take that compass and you do a good job marketing and you show that, that compass on your website, on your social, how you, how you engage with people, You've also created a magnet for people to be attracted to you. So clarity comes first.

Right. Oh, very nice. And is clarity, uh, the end-all be-all when it comes to credibility, when it comes to someone building their reputation that would attract others?

It's a very good question. It's not the end-all be-all. It is the It is the way in which you can narrow down and focus on what's important to your audience. It's a way you could narrow down, focus on what's important to you, right? And what happens is you, this is, we've learned so many marketing cookie-cutter approaches that are just crap, right? And so the, we've been told that the, bigger the audience we go after, the more, the bigger the fishnet, the more fish we'll catch.

Right.

The opposite is true. The more narrow you could focus, for instance, let me, let me share mine and I'll, and now I'm in the middle of transforming.

Nice.

What I do is I, I call what I create that, that, that clarity statement, I call it your CPOP, your customer point of possibilities.

Nice.

And we'll step back and why is this important? If you are a credible human, you are one of the 10 values of credibility is you're a servant leader. You are of service to an audience. So the CPOP is who are you serving? And 1, 2, or 3 words. And you heard people go, well, I serve this audience and this audience and this audience. And by the time they've done that, you have no idea who they're So think about the— my trick for most people is where does 80% of your revenue come from? And that's the audience you serve. So in the corporate space is who do you serve, right? And then what happens is you make decisions. Where do I do my social media? Where do I do my outreach? What, what publications should we be in? What conferences should we speak at? That's when you start speaking. If you know the audience you play in, and it, by the way, it could be, depending on the company, there are different ways to describe it. But for each division or each department or each functional area, there's a very focused audience that then rolls up into a much larger corporate CPOP. And then what happens is the decisions you make is, well, Like you said, if, if I talk here, is it going to influence somebody? Because the best, the best marketing is marketing somebody who's going to refer you word of mouth. Because today, you know, we don't know about deepfakes, we don't know about all this stuff online. So if, if I said to you, hey, I have a service I need to do, and you told me, well, you and I have built a relationship together, I'm going to trust that recommendation. They're going to get past the trust immediately. I'm going to get to know and like them. And, and they, and the, the whoever you recommend is much, there's a much better chance I'll use them because you recommend them for me too.

So you were going on to say that if they were a kind of a revenue generating individual.

So, so what state, what, when in terms of narrowing down the audience, what you wanna think about is where does 80% of your revenue come from today? So who do you serve? And the next element is what is, what is from their perspective, not your perspective, what is the major pain point they want to overcome? Or what is the biggest pleasure point they want to reach? 80% of the time, the CPAP is a pain point driven CPAP. But if the audience you're serving, and you'll hear mine, mine is Inc. 5,000 CEOs. If the audience you're serving has an ego, You typically want to give a pleasure point. So my CPAP is a little on the longer side. It's Inc. 5,000 CEOs Leading the Future with Executive Gravitas. We could talk a lot about executive gravitas, and I'll come back to that. But what I want to talk about is one of my friends I shared it with said something interesting, and it kind of made me laugh. Not I didn't laugh at him, but he said, so, Joe, why are you limiting your audience to 5,000 people? I like, I, that's such a great question. I love you. First of all, if a small fraction of the 5,000 said yes today, but I don't have the infrastructure in place.

Right.

Right. So if 50 or 100 said yes today, that's not, that'll work tomorrow.

But today, right?

Second thing is if you could become known for being the whisperer to an audience that has respect, now what happens is, well, you could, the cool part, if you, if you've narrowed who you are so narrow, if somebody's, for instance, not an Inc. 5000 CEO and they hear that and they trust that, and as they get to know and like me, they're like, Yeah, Mitchell, I might want to hire you, but I'm not an Inc. 5000 CEO yet. Would you work with me? Like, that's okay. That's great. Now I get a choice. You know?

Yes. You're not saying no to those outside that, that scope. You're just making sure that you're very narrow, specific, and clear.

Talk about clarity.

Um, to, to then attract other opportunities.

Absolutely. So like one of the things I did on the corporate space, I wrote an article in CEO Magazine on how do you, how do you tops-down draw based on the simplicity of a CPOP? How do you roll it down inside of a company? And it turns out it makes, it makes things a whole lot simpler. I mean, we've been taught all these complicated mission, vision, values. You, you, you, for most companies, 10,000 employees, and up, you know, at least 90% have no idea what their mission and vision and values are. And employee engagement is yucky. And so if you were able to simplify things and have them understand what the corporate playground is and have each of the areas understand how they're playing in that playground, now you can actually give autonomy to to, to your employee base and say, hey, listen, this is your playground. Well, you know how to play in the playground, you know, and, and it, there's some simple rules of playing in the playground, right?

Right. And it takes out a lot of the, the stress and the feeling unknowing and the questions. I mean, I mean, you know, I speak to tons of, you know, employees who say, I have no idea what we stand for.

Sorry, I shouldn't laugh. That's not really funny, but yes, that's true. That's what happens today.

Yeah, but if they had their CPOP, Customer Point of Possibilities, uh, that would help provide that clarity and, and that, that kind of, I don't wanna say it's a, uh, container, but it's almost like a perimeter of how they can operate.

You know, I've played with so many words. Container's a great one. Um, I, I've ended up with playground. Cause those are nice analogies and little, but, but it is kind of a container, but it's kind of, you know, there's nothing saying if you're playing in a container, you can't consciously make a decision to walk outside the container. Right. It's just a playground.

I like playground. It makes me feel like a kid again.

Well, well, by the way, just, I'll leave this thought. Wouldn't it be great if work really was play?

Yeah. I love what I do, so I do consider it kind of playful 95% of the time. But yes, it's so, it's, it's very, very, very true. And you mentioned employee engagement, and I think I'm imagining just how that number, that metric would tick up tremendously if their CPOP was trickled down and leaned on on a regular basis, it would increase employee engagement, employee effectiveness, and what— and every manager out there would want that. So yeah, absolutely love that.

I absolutely love that.

Now, tying this back to not only credibility, but integrity, where do you find the biggest breaks, maybe we'll call them, or challenges that leaders are having when it comes to not only knowing and being clear about what they stand for, but living it.

Yeah.

Wow. Deep breath. Um, just fundamentally one of the biggest problems or one of the biggest marketing cookie-cutter things. You've heard the expression, fake it till you make it. Absolutely stupid. We are under the impression that our leaders need to act and be a certain way, and they, it's more of the old school command and control format. It's the say, do as I say, not as I do. And what's important is to walk the walk of the talk you're talking. And so in the 10 values of credibility, there are two— there's, there's one value that's repeated twice. It's the only one that's repeated twice. And actually, honestly, at first I didn't know why. The value of integrity is that value that's repeated twice. So let's now put it under categories. If, if credibility is the quality in which you're trusted, known, and liked, under trust, is the external integrity that the leader exudes.

Okay.

Under being known, as you get to know the leader better, whether you're an outside customer or vendor or employee, as you get to know the leader better, it's their internal integrity. Now, here's what's interesting. Emotions are one of those things that we feel. With other humans, right? And there are many emotions that— the emotion of love is powerful. Authenticity, which is also a value of credibility, authenticity is the most powerful emotion that affects other people. And so if a leader is espousing their external integrity and there's a misalignment with their external, internal integrity, so they're not being authentic, We feel that.

Yeah.

Whether you're intuitive or not, you feel that. And that disconnect is like, you know, there's something wrong, but you don't know what it is. That's a problem. And that's where it stems back. That's where it, we could go into more scientific research on, on feeling emotions and all that. But that's really where the problem comes from.

What can someone do to tap into who they authentically are, so that's what they express and who they express as opposed to, and I know this really well, I know this whole fake it till you make it really well, uh, but not even the make it part, just the fake it part. But what can someone do to tap into that authentic part of them, which is all of them, so they're expressing that?

So We'll give one other thought and then we'll tie it all together. In my research, I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility. What I found was 90% of people I talked to did not know their purpose and 98% did not have clarity. 98%. So, Imagine you are born, you live, you die, and you never know your purpose. And it's, I'm going to say I got it. It's like as a book publisher, people want to write the great American novel. What I've often said to the authors I work with is, hey, let's make that book number 2. Let's write book number 1 first, the one that's important to you. And they're like, okay. And then they go, hey, I got book number 1. I don't know if I ever need to write the great American novel. So, So let's give you another hint. Instead of finding that purpose in life, and if you do, that's great. You already know it, that's great. Let's find where you are going to execute on your purpose today. And by the way, if you could articulate that in less than 10 words, that's now your CPOP. And if you could play in the playground of your CPOP now, you know what's right and wrong. You could go out and ask other people, hey, this is what I do, what do you think? How should somebody like this act? Should, is there a disconnect between what I did here and these words? And then truly listen and allow people to share with you how you're doing in relation to one of the, my favorite coaching methodologies is Marshall Goldsmith's Stakeholder-Centered Coaching. I'm a certified Stakeholder-Centered Coach and We can guarantee that we could change the perception of behavior that we're making, that, that somebody's making in the minds of their stakeholders in a 12-month period.

Right.

So give us a year. If someone's a micromanager, we could make it so that your people don't see you as a micromanager. Therefore, you won't be a micromanager. Right? And, and so if you play effectively in your playground, then you've got a compass that will allow you to make decisions and demonstrate behavior that's in line with your playground, which if you are executing on your purpose in your playground, it all ties together. It's very, very simple. It's just absolutely not easy.

Powerful.

And it brings you back to authenticity. It, it, it allows you to really reveal your authentic self. I have to say, I had gone through that in the 2010 time period, and I was going through my own transformation, the shedding, and all of a sudden I realized I was totally disconnected from like the business I was putting out there, the brand, the services, the customer I was going after. It just never felt right. And the moment I found Bola Fire, everything I do today, It, everything became so much easier and clearer and so much more powerful. So I totally get what you're saying. I absolutely love what you're doing with the CPOP. Now, that said, you also have a fabulous community called the Clarity Superheroes Community, and you are a very generous individual in that you really provide people with some you know, education and training, and you have a, the community, which also provides complimentary courses. Can you share how someone could take advantage of those courses, but more so also just overall, um, the CPAP that they can really lean on?

Absolutely. So if you went to, um, I use a URL, so it's aha.pub. It's a, it's a short, it's like a Bitly. So aha.pub/superheroes. It'll bring you to a community relatively new. My goal there is to take some of the best practices that I see that have to do with clarity and credibility and being able to be on purpose and put them in the courses, which are less than an hour. So one of the complementary courses there is, I call it the Input-Output Diagram. I learned it in college. I've used it my entire life to have clarity on every decision. So 17 minutes there for you. There are, I just completed 2 others. There's one which borrows from Marshall Goldsmith. It's credibility needs to be earned twice. This is crazy. You know, you need to, we often think we, we heard the expression, my good work should speak for itself. And once again, that's BS.

That's—

you need to have good work and prove that you're good at what you're doing. Right. And then you need to tell the audience that needs to hear it that you are good at what you do. And so that's, I think that's a 10-minute course that I put out there. So, so the, feel free to go there. It's aha.pub/superheroes. And then for me personally, um, and on there I do have some paid courses. So if you want to get your CPAP, we do a monthly session.. And it's a 90-minute group session. I guarantee everyone gets their CPAP. And what I'll say is feel free to just go to my website. It's just MitchellLevy.com. Yeah. And at MitchellLevy.com, you can get access to my calendar. You could see the things that we're doing. And, and as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I'm in the middle of completely remorphing how I show up. So here's an expression I need you to think about. Sell people what, or sell companies what they want, deliver them what they need. So ultimately, when I work with clients, they're getting clarity and credibility. The moment, what I'm selling, executive gravitas.

Yeah. Nice.

I love that. Now that's a capper. That's a capper. Just put the cap on that. No, I absolutely love that. And I do want to express to everyone, go to MitchellLevy.com, look over his website. Take advantage of the complimentary courses he mentioned at aha.pub/superheroes. And also follow him on LinkedIn. You can just go to Mitchell Levy on LinkedIn and be sure to follow him as well. I absolutely love this whole idea of the SEPA. It, it does provide the clarity and it does provide just the energy I've gotten from just having this conversation about it. So I appreciate it very much.

Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. And, and this was a really playful conversation, which I truly enjoyed. So I, you know, thanks for giving me the space and, uh, and, and moving us in the right direction.

You're very welcome. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Mitchell.

I knew this was going to be good, but what a powerhouse Mitchell Levy of Credibility Nation is. He covered some really impactful, valuable, and transformative tips and insights and examples of how you can really be standing out, making that difference, and being the powerhouse leader you want to be. So here's a few of the talking points that I walked away with. The importance of credibility and clarity. What exactly is credibility? And how does clarity really drive enthusiasm and energy and confidence, not only for yourself, but for your team? He then walked through how the old adage of know, like, and trust— he's flipped it around to be really around trust, Know, and then like. And he ties that and links that with his proprietary CPoP, the Customer's Point of Possibilities, and how to leverage that to provide that clarity and that energy and that excitement and that clear direction as to where you're going and where your team needs to go. And lastly, and I love this, he talked about a playground. Making work fun. And once you have that clarity, once you have that well-defined and communicated CPOP, that you could really be playing in a playground because of the clarity on the direction and the— even the support and the commitment or buy-in from all the team members. Mitchell was really able to provide us very actionable next steps and tips, including going to MitchellLevy.com, looking over the complimentary courses he has, as well as exactly what he does for his customers when it comes to helping them individually and as teams to really get the confidence, the clarity, and the credibility that is needed in order to really drive change and improve employee satisfaction as well as grow the business. So I was thrilled to have had this conversation, the opportunity to discuss this with him, and I hope you have too. If you, a team member, or your team has some questions or challenges over and above what we talked about today in regards to credibility and clarity, then be sure to reach out and let's have a conversation. You can go to coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall and let's get you on the right path to becoming that powerhouse leader. And of course, follow this show at ballofirecoaching.com/podcast so you don't miss a single episode. I am thrilled you were here with us this week, and I'll look forward to seeing you again for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch.

Bye.

Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you love to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Wanna dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.