The Why Of Mastery: Why You Should Ask Better Questions With Ben Baker

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest. Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. So if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so this week we are going to be talking about the why of mastery, which is the most rare why. So if this is your why, you have an insatiable thirst for knowledge, but not at a superficial level. The thirst is all about exploring the depths and intricacies of a particular subject. You'll pursue this goal until you are viewed as an expert in your subject area. You find enjoyment in the sheer act of immersing yourself in something new. You are fearless when it comes to learning about new subjects or ideas, but often cautious when it comes to expressing your thoughts and feelings. You love to peel back the layers of the onion, always going deeper and looking for subtle differences on any given topic. Short answers to questions are a challenge for for you because you know you won't get to the depth needed for someone to truly understand the subject being discussed. And so today I've got a perfect guest for you on the why of Mastery. His name is Ben Baker. Ben has been helping companies and the people within them understand, codify and communicate their unique value to others for nearly a quarter of a century. He is the president of youf Brand Marketing, an employee engagement consultancy, author of Powerful Personal Brands, A Hands On Guide to Understanding Yours and Leading Beyond a Crisis, A Conversation about what's Next, and the host of Iheart and Spotify syndicated YourLivingBrand live show with more than 250 episodes behind him. Ben believes that if a company, if companies understand, live and build cultures around their purpose, employees will engage, stay and want to grow with the company. This takes great leadership, communication and awareness of the brand. Please welcome Ben Baker.

Wow, that introduction gets longer every time I hear somebody read it. I just want people to say, here's Ben Baker. Okay, Gary, thank you for having me on the show. I am excited about this.

This is going to be fun. Well, so, Ben, take us back in your life. Take us where you're, tell us, you know, the quick version of your life story. Where are you from? Where did you grow up? How did you get into developing your branding.

Process?

Yeah, I was born in Minneapolis and moved out of there in 1974. We decided that we wanted to thaw a little bit. My, my mom was originally from Winnipeg and her sister and her husband and the kids all moved out to Vancouver and my mom wanted to be near her sister. So she said, let's move out to Vancouver or out to the West Coast. And back then the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollar, so we ended up moving to Canada. If it had been there, the reverse, we probably would have ended up in Seattle. But back in 1974, we moved up to Vancouver. I went through elementary, high school, university, epic Canada. But, you know, through all that, I, you know, I did a lot of traveling. I went to the University of Victoria. I lived in LA for a bit, I lived in Seattle for a bit, lived in Toronto for a bit, lived in New York for a bit through university, lived overseas. But Vancouver's always been home. So I've always had a box of my stuff somewhere in somebody's basement. You know, can you just hang on to this stuff? You know, a few, few choice, bought, you know, books, some knicksnacks and stuff like that. But, you know, that kind of stuff ended up back in my house in probably about 96 when we got married. So I've been back in Vancouver since about 95. And what happened was when I came back to Vancouver in 95, I was brought back on a contract. I was still in the high tech industry. And I was brought back because one of the major companies in the distribution area had a problem with a client and they said, can you take over the account and be able to help us resurrect it? I said, sure, no problem. And it was $100 million account. And I spent probably about a year, year and a half flying across North America, meeting with people, changing things Challenging things, bringing things back to normal. And about a year and a half later, I had met my wife, we got married and we both realized this was a divorce waiting to happen. I was probably in the air 200 days a year. I was probably gone 250 days a year. And it just, circumstances change. So I went up to my boss and said, you have two choices. You can either double my salary to pay for the divorce or you can cut my travel days in half. He said, why don't we buy you out? I said, I'm listing. He says, stick around for 30 days, help us hire your replacement, fly them around for 30 to 45 days and then we'll pay you a six month override. I said, done. He says, do you need to check with your wife? I said, no. I said, trust me. They said, one more thing. I said, right, we'll pay for you to take the. What do you want to be when you grew up Training. Because they knew that every job that was comparable to the one that I had, that was going to allow me to make the same kind of money, I was going to be doing the same amount of traveling. So it didn't matter if I was working for intel or Epson printers or Hewlett Packard or whoever, everybody was going to want me up on a plane and they realized this was bad for me. So they were generous enough to sit me down with an industrial psychologist, run me through the Myers Briggs and all those type of tests and come up with some solutions. And it came up with two different things. One, you're really good at helping people tell their story. Number two, work with large corporations, don't work within large corporations.

And you know, they realize that what I'm really good at is finding the solution, fixing the problem and leaving. You know, that's what I do well, you know, is, is to help people first of all see what their problem is, understand the challenge, actually helping them fix it and then leaving them to be able to move on on their own. I don't want to be there. That's the person who's there for the next 10, 15, 20 years doing maintenance of it. I just, I'm the fixer. And so that's where really my new career began. And I ended up in, first of all in direct mail. I ended up working for a large direct mail firm and we ended up doing enormous amount, like half million, million piece runs. I killed a lot of trees. And what it really came to the realization was, is that a lot of my clients were in the grocery and the casino business. And they were very reactive. They were sitting like our competitor did this, we need to put something in the mail right now. And I'm like, well, wait a second, hold on, hang on. Why? Let's let them chase you instead of you chasing them. And that came down to understanding brand and strategy and vision and market and, and getting, putting together a year long plan for them that every time they drop something in the mail, somebody else had to react, not them reacting to somebody else. And it worked very well up till about, you know, just after 9, 11, and we were a Canadian company working with U.S. clients and you know, good, bad or indifferent, the U.S. companies decided, you know what, you know, we want to deal with American firms. And a lot of my US Business, because the Canadian dollar was getting stronger and there wasn't as much value and the factor of the American firms wanting to deal with Americans.

That business started to go away. And I started taking a look and saying, okay, where can we go from here? And that led into promotional marketing, it led into trade show development, it led into social media development, it led into, you know, overall branding. How do you, how do you brand a company? How do you, how do you understand first of all what their story is? Where did they come from? Where are they today? Where do they want to go? Who are their clients? Why do their clients care about them? What differentiates them in the marketplace? And being able to help my clients tell their story through various types of mediums.

2008, in the middle, just at the beginning of the crisis, I left the company I was working for and started out on my own. Perfect time to start a company. But my clients were large enough and substantial enough that they said, listen, we don't care who you work for, you take care of us. And they have supported me. That's what really got me through those first three years of chaos, was looking at my clients and going, look, okay, you guys don't have a million dollars to spend anymore. You have half a million dollars to spend anymore. How can we take that half million dollars and get the most out of it? And how do we enable you to tell your story as effectively on a smaller budget? Where everybody was, else was saying, you guys spend more, you got to spend more, you guys spend more. I'm going, no, wait a second. They only have so much money to spend. Let's take what they have and be able to figure out how to do more. And that really led me to working with clients and understanding their philosophy and understand what they are. And over the years of probably about five years ago, I came to the realization that most companies are really good at telling their story externally, but they're horrific in telling their story internally.

Their internal clients, their employees, don't know the brand story, don't understand the genesis of the organization, why was it started beyond the dates and the times. They don't understand what the impetus was and who. What was the original problem these people were trying to solve, and how did it move from where it was to where it is to where it's going. And that's really, for the last five years, has been my mission to help clients communicate more effectively inside, get rid of the silos, break down barriers, have more effective communication across different divisions, and allow them to be more successful because they're not wasting millions and millions of dollars through ineffective communication.

So what was that moment when you realized that companies don't tell their internal story very well? What was going on? What were you seeing, and how did you come to that conclusion?

Here's a perfect aha moment. I used to work with a lot of government clients and a lot of health authorities. We did a lot of work with smoking cessation, alcohol awareness, and drug addiction programs. And one of the health authorities that I belong, that I work with, is probably 200 square miles, maybe 250 square miles. They're spread out all over the place. And I was doing, by tour de force, you know, going out and, you know, checking on the trap line and talking to a whole bunch of different divisions and having a bunch of meetings. And at the end of the day, I started realizing. I went, wait a second, I've had this conversation before. I've had this conversation before today. And I realized that there was three different groups that had a similar problem, slightly different audience, but the same thing that they were trying to achieve, basically. And none of them knew each other, and none of them had the budget on their own to be able to solve this problem. They're all just saying, well, what can you do for cheap? And I'm like, well, they say, we don't want to do cheap. So what I did is I got all three groups on a conference call together, and I introduced these people and I went, guys, you're all talking about basically the same problem. Yeah, okay, we're going to have to change the logo. We might have to change the messages a little bit, but we can buy in bulk and be able to create something that's going to work for all three divisions and getting it all together and make it work effectively. Because 95% of the message was exactly the same.

Well, they were able to take the three budgets, put them together, and actually do something better than any one of them wanted to do. But none of that would have happened because none of them even knew the other teams existed, let alone they were working on a similar problem. And that happens time and time again. Inc magazine says companies of 100,000 employees or more waste an effective $62 million a year because ineffective communication. I mean, the number is just staggering.

So what do you. Ineffective communication means everybody just gets into their group, does their thing, doesn't get outside of their, their department to find out what's actually happening. How do we look at the big picture instead of just our little picture?

Well, exactly. It's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I mean, here's a perfect example. You have a job that goes from ideation with the sales team through to marketing, through to product development, into the hands of operations and out through distribution. Do these five groups ever get together.

And look at this thing as a unit and say, okay, what is this going to take to get this out the door? Because you have packaging people that are not talking to production people that are not talking to shipping people to sit there and say, what are the little things you need in order to make this thing work? How many of these boxes are going to fit on a pallet? What are the things that we need to do to make sure that the box isn't going to crash when we ship it along?

How do we make sure that, you know, these things are actually being able to be done on a production line versus having to be, you know, parts of it have to be hand done because the different departments are not talking to each other and finding out what the other department needs when I hand it off from one division to the other division to the other division. And you know, that can happen in accounting, that can happen in legal, that can happen in finance. It can happen anywhere. You know, it's, it's just people just not understanding what other people need. When, when I give this to you, am I giving it to you in a way that you can actually use it, or do you have to totally repurpose it to make it work with the systems that you're already working on within the same company?

So what about this.

Process or problem that you're solving.

Is interesting to you? Why is this interesting to you? What is the excitement over solving those problems?

I like, for me, it's, it's all about watching companies become more effective and more profitable. It's about I'm, I'm a, you know, I'm a lousy chess player. I wish I was a better chess player, but I'm a lousy chess player just because I don't play the game as much as I used to. But I like watching the whole board. I'm a bit. I'm that 50,000 foot person that likes to see how do the different pieces come together. How. How do you make sure that you can look three moves and make sure that things work effectively. It drives me crazy when you see ineffective policies, process procedures, you know, miscommunication, because it's just a lot of, it's just due to laziness. A lot of it's just the fact that you're too lazy to ask the question. You're too embarrassed to ask the question. You think you should know better or you think you do know better, which is even worse.

And therefore, things that should go smoothly, things that should go effectively, things that should cost X end up calling x times 10. By the time they get out the door and nobody's stopping to realize, it's, oh, okay, it costs $100 instead of $10, where it could have easily cost $10 if people actually took the time to actually reverse engineer things, if they.

Had more detail, if they had more depth, if they knew more about it.

Exactly.

So when your why came up as mastery and you read about mastery like I just read to you.

Yeah.

How did that feel to you?

It made sense. I mean, it truly made sense. Because, you know, the one thing about that you were telling me about a master that you didn't mention is that a master never thinks that they're a master. You know, a master. I consider myself a lifelong learner. I consider myself always sitting there going, is there a better way? Is there a different way? Is there somebody that I should be aligning myself or consulting with or talking to that may know more about a specific part of this than I do? I may understand things from the grandiose point of view, but when it comes down to the weeds, the nuts and bolts, I want to talk to the person who's actually doing that. I want to talk to the person. When I was in the printing business, if I wanted to know the challenges of putting something on a press, I talked to the pressman, I talked to the person, or if I needed something about how do we convert something from a great big piece of paper into a box or into a package or something like that, I talked to somebody who's running the converting line or the Die maker just because they're going to have insights into things that I didn't even. I didn't even know what questions to ask, let alone know what the answers are. And I don't. You know, maybe being 51 years old gives me a little bit better, you know, ability to not have the ego to think that I know everything. But, you know, I. I know that I. The. The older I get, the less I know. And, you know, and I don't see that as a weakness. I see that as a. Okay, how do I find the answer or how do I find somebody who knows the answer and bring them on board to be able to be. For us to be more successful? Yeah.

So you started helping companies communicate better. You. And then how did you get from doing that to podcasting? Because I know you have your own podcast, you've written books, you've got, you know, you help people tell their story. How did you get there?

I've been podcasting for years. I've had my own podcast, the your livingbrand live show. We're in our fifth year somewhere, as you said, I'm over 250 episodes. I might be over 270 episodes by now, but I've been on podcasts for eight or ten years.

Before most people even knew what a podcast was, people were inviting me to be on their podcast to sit down and talk. So I, you know, I know some of the grand, the grandparents of the podcasting industry, you know, people sit there, go, oh, you're an old man of the podcasting industry. I said, you don't even know. These guys have been doing this for 15 plus years, you know, or longer.

But about five years ago, I got into my own podcast. And during COVID.

A couple different things happen. I speak around the world.

And February of 2020, I had speaking gigs lined up in Australia, Europe, the Caribbean, across the United States. And in three days in March, it was wiped out. It was absolutely gone. And that not only the years worth of podcasting, or sorry, of speaking gigs that I had, but probably the next year of speaking gigs, because, you know, you go to one gig, somebody taps you on the shoulder there and says, listen, we've got an event coming up. Could you come and speak to us? Sure. So I sat there and said, I have two choices. I can either grab my knees, rock back and forth, or I can figure out what's next. And what I realize is that there's a lot of large organizations that are either trying to do podcasting and doing it poorly, or they have no idea where to start?

I created the podcast Host for Hire program and what it is is for the most part these are internal only, stream only on a secure platform. Podcasts allowing companies to have an internal communication message that's asynchronous and allow to have communication across multiple divisions, multiple people, multiple projects and allow to have better insight into the company. And I help with that in strategy. I actually voice the podcast for them and then help them with the entire distribution channel and the editing everything. But that, that is really become a Covid baby. But it's, it's, you know, it's starting to become fairly successful and there is, you know, companies that are reaching out to me going, okay, what would this look like? Can we try a six month, you know, or you know, six month trial to see whether it works? People ask me for three months. I go, three months isn't going to give you enough time to understand whether it's going to work or not. We really need to do it in six. But there's a lot of companies out there where, you know, productions and conversation with a variety of different people doing test markets for them to see how this works for them and how this is making it better for them. And you know, so far the information that I'm getting back is fairly positive.

So give us an example of a company that would want to have their own podcast.

Okay, I can't mention names because everything I do is under non disclosure. But we're talking about 100 million to multibillion dollar corporations that are across different cities, different states, different countries.

Maybe they have multiple divisions, they probably have 1,000 more employees and they have multiple projects going on simultaneously because we'll work on things like change management.

Culture and purpose issues, diversity and inclusion issues. If you've got a new project you're trying to, or a new.

A new division or a new project or a new thing that you're trying to get out into the marketplace. We'll work you, with you to build a launch strategy for that, for that through the podcasting. So everybody knows and everybody's on board and sales is prepared to sell this thing when it goes out the door. So those are the type of issues that we deal with. Usually it's with companies where they just, you know, you know, Bangalore, Maine has no idea what LA is doing.

And they readily admit it, you know, so that's, that's really where we get time to, we get where we tend to get involved.

So they bring you in, say, hey Ben, we need to create our own podcast. This is the goal for it, we need you to help us set out, get the right equipment. So if you're listening to this podcast and you want to set up your own podcast for your own company, or how about if you just want to help someone start their podcasting business, would you be somebody that they should call?

Well, not if they want to start their own podcasting business. But if you're looking to start your own podcast, that's what I mean. There's two different ways if you're a small to medium sized business. I've got an online course called the your successful podcast dot com. It's backslash launch. Gary. I'll give you, I'll give you that. You can put it in the show notes, but that's, that's a course that's designed for small to medium sized businesses to teach themselves how to, you know, how to podcast effectively. And it's everything that they need. There's a resource page, There's a first 30 days. What do you need to do every day for your first 30 days to make sure that you're successful? I host a monthly zoom chat for anybody who's a, who is a client that they can come up and they ask me anything. I have email that people can email me if they've got questions. You know, it's, it's really designed for that. But the next level is the companies that are sitting there going, we want to start a podcast. We're not do it yourselfers. We don't want to do this. We want somebody who can grab us by the hand and help us through this. That's where I really, you know, where the magic really is, is to help them. And either I can host the podcast for them, I can co host a podcast and teach somebody how to become a podcaster, or I can just train the person and give them the tools that they need to, you know, to be on the air themselves and then enable them to be successful moving forward. My, my goal is to enable your company to shine on your own and for me to be there in the background like, you know that, like that security blanket. If you need me, how you need me, I'm here for you. I'm not going away, but use me as it makes sense. But let me help you set it up properly and get you up and.

Running now that have been so great when I was setting mine up the first time, had no idea what I was doing and just kind of wing it and do a bunch of poor ones at first until you, you start to figure it out. But I know there's something about you that our audience doesn't know, which I found fascinating. And so I'm going to ask you this question because I know you have an interesting answer. But why would I choose you for somebody to help me with my podcast? Because I know what you've been doing the last five years as far as being on other people's podcasts.

Well, I mean, you would use me because I'm the person who's going to have the details. I'm the person who's going to be looking ahead. I'm the one who realizes that there's 2 million podcasts out there today. There. In 2018, there was 500. 500,000 podcasts. Now there's over 2 million podcasts. 75% of those podcasts fail within 10 episodes. And the reason for that is people don't understand why they're podcasting, who they're podcasting to, tone of voice strategy, what they're trying to achieve from the podcast and. And how to set it up for success. So for me, it's. I'm all about the process. I'm all about understanding you as a person or you as a company. And no two podcasts are going to be the same. You and I could talk about the exact same type things on a podcast. We could have the same audience, and your audience and my audience are going to get different insights out of the same information. We can even talk to the same guest, and we'll interview that person differently. That's the beautiful thing about podcasts. You're not in competition. What you're doing is you're providing long tail communication and building trust and relationships with your audience that eventually are going to sit there and go, oh, wait a second here. Maybe we should talk to them about the project that we're working on. This isn't advertising. This isn't immediate call to action things. This is about know, like and trust. Mm.

So how do I know that you know all these details? That's what I'm getting at. Because you told me something the other day that surprised me. I was like, really? You do that?

And I'm trying to remember exactly what it is.

Because you've been on 50 podcasts a year.

Yeah. Okay, that's what you're getting at.

I, who goes to. On 50 podcasts a year to find all this information out and why are you on those podcasts?

Yeah, it's true. I go on somewhere around 50 podcasts a year. My goal is 50. I made. I did 57 last year. During COVID it was a little easier. But my goal is to find out, what do people do well? What do people not do well? What are the new and innovative things are doing? Different intros, people have different exit, people have different cadence, people have different tone of voice, people have different questions people ask. And all that kind of stuff gets built into a repository in the six square inches between my ears, and it enables me to sit there and go, listen, do this, but certainly don't do this.

This will work for you, but it won't work for somebody else. I've got somebody the other day that we ended up putting the strategy behind a podcast for. And it's a rock and roll podcast. It is, hey, how are you? And it's all upbe, you know, heavy music and all that. But that's his audience. I would never listen to this thing in a million years. But once we realized who his audience were, his audience are the young turks. They're the, they're the. They're the guys that are out there storming the walls in the business community. The guys that, you know, what want to be, you know, to work 80, 90, 100 hours a week. The go getters, you know, maybe some of the wannabes, call them whatever you are, but that's who this guy speaks to, and that's who his audience is, and that's who he relates to, because he's one of them. And, you know, it's not a podcast for me, it's a podcast for these people. So the podcast needs to reflect that. Yeah. And, you know, I knew the perfect piece of music for him. I knew the perfect intro for him. I knew, you know, what we should be talking about, who his first five guests should be. And a lot of that came down to the fact that because I've been on 50 plus interviews a year, besides my own show, plus the shows I do for other clients, it gives me insights into things that most people don't have.

Well, in our case, for you and I, when I knew I was going to have you on the podcast, you sent me an email and said, hey, you know, I was listening to one of your podcasts and I think you need to get a new microphone. And I'm like, what? He said, yeah, I think it sounds like you're underwater.

I felt bad about that. I never like giving that advice to people because I'm sitting there going, I'm costing somebody money. But I'm sitting there going, okay, if you're just doing one interview, all right, you had a bad, bad mic but not having good sound on a podcast is horrific because nobody listens to it. If people are fighting through the sound, if it all sounds muddled and stupid like this and nobody can understand what you're saying, people are going to toot out. Yep, yeah, nobody cares. You could be as brilliant as you want to be. But if it's not easy for people to listen to, they're going to, they're going to go find somewhere else to be.

So that's so for the listeners we were going to. Ben was going to be on the podcast a couple weeks ago and then he sent me the email that said, hey, I think you need a better microphone. And I have a really good microphone. The one I've been using all these years was at that time when I got it. It's supposed to be one of the best ones. But he said, you know what, that one's kind of mid, mid level and you need to get a better one. So I ordered a new microphone. So I'm using this new microphone right now. And I waited until I got it. In fact, I postponed our interview until I got it so that I could have the good mic. So I wasn't going to get a post podcast interview email that said, hey man, I wish you'd have had a better microphone for our interview. So I got a really nice one here and hopefully we sound better.

But here's the thing. You didn't pay $500 for that mic.

No.

Certainly didn't pay $1,000 for that mic. No. How much did you pay for that mic? About 150 bucks.

150 bucks? Yep.

About 150 bucks.

Nothing.

For $150, you sound 100 times better. Yep. And it's not about spending a fortune. The mic that I'm using right now is 150 bucks. The new mic that I have on order is about 450. Guess what? I'm ready for that next level of mic. But I've been using this mic for almost four years now and it's time for me to take that next level up for me. But for the most people, $150 microphone is all you're ever going to need for your podcast. And that's going to make you sound good. It's going to be crisp, it's going to be clean, and it's going to allow you to be able to sound good to your audience.

And you know what's interesting is my other mic has. So right now if you're watching this, you can tell that I Have headphones in, and then my headphones are plugged into the microphone so I can hear my own voice in my ears where I couldn't do that before with my other. Well, I could do it, but I didn't know that I could do that. So I didn't know how I sounded. So I'm sure this microphone is still better than what it was when you heard it. I just didn't have it in the right place on the right settings, and I didn't know that, but you had me buy this one. And then I realized that I could hook my microphone, my headphones up to it to hear myself. And so just that little tweak was really valuable. So you're the guy that dives in deep, looks for all of the nuances, looks for all of those little things that make a big difference. That's the whole thing with the why of mastery. Because that's the question I asked you, if you remember. I said, ben, you know, your why being mastery. Give me an example of an area that you have a lot of knowledge about. And you said, well, podcasting. I said, what do you mean? And that's when you started Talking about the 50 podcast a year that you're on. So that you know what works so you see the nuances, because it's the little things that make the big difference. Is what you told me so super valuable.

Thank you. I find that, you know, I don't need to know everything. There's a million things I don't know about. My son is brilliant at physics. My wife is brilliant at other things. You know, neither were the things that they're interested in are not things that I want to spend a lot of time working on. Because I know if I really have a question about it, I know where to go for the answer, you know, but my thing is, is the things that I want to know about, I want to know a lot about. And because those are the things that are not only going to help me, are going to be helping help my customers and my customers. Customers. And that's. That's really where I focus.

So, again, if you're watching this, you can tell that Ben has half of his screen. He's on half of his screen, and on the other half of his screen, he has his logo. And it says, what's your story? So tell us about that. What do you mean, what's your story?

Yeah, well, the what's yous Story logo came out of the youe Brand marketing logo. And it really is what it is. It's Two people sitting there talking to each other. And that really came from the podcast. The podcast is the your livingbrand live story. But the first question I ask everybody is, what's your story? You know, I may not ask it directly. I may not just sit there, go, hey, tell me about what your story is. But a lot of people ask us, so where did you come from? Where are you. Where. Where are you going? You know, what are the things that are important to you? What are the challenges that you've had? What are the insights? What have you learned along the way? And that's your story. And the more we can understand people's stories, more we can understand what they're passionate about, what they believe in. What's the hill that they're willing to die on? What are the things that are so important to them that they're deal breakers? And if we can understand that about people, we can help them better. If we assume that everybody thinks the same way that we do, we assume everybody acts the way that we do, assume that everybody wants the same things that we are. They don't.

We all may be part of one race, the human race, but each person wakes up every morning with their own hopes, wants, needs, fears, desires, and it's our job to understand people on their own terms. You know, we don't have to agree with it. We don't have to believe what they believe, but we need to understand and empathize with them, because if we can, then that's how we can help them. And that's. That's what. What's your story is all about.

Is there a.

Way that you like people to tell their story, or is it just however you want to tell your story?

I let people tell their own story. I mean, I am. It's interesting. I, as I said, I do a podcast weekly. I know the first question I'm going to ask somebody, and I know the last question I'm going to ask them as they walk out the door. Between that it's a conversation and it's, well, wait a second. What did you mean by that? Can you elaborate on that? Well, where did that take you? How did you feel when that happened? And the more I can sit there and listen and listen, not to interrupt, not listen, to ask my next question, but to actually actively listen, to care, and to understand what their internal motivation is, the better the conversation is. I mean, I get guests ask me all the time. Can you give me some prepared questions? And the answer is no, because I don't know what the questions I'M going to ask are and I tell them that I said, look, I haven't a clue what I'm going to ask you until I ask you. I'll have done research, I'll have combed through your social media, I've combed through your website. If you've done other interviews, I've done that. If you've got a book, I've read the precipitate, I never come into an interview unprepared, but I don't really care where the conversation's going as long as I understand where we're going. To me, I understand where I want to get to. I understand that this is the angle and these are the things that we really want to discuss. How we get there or what happens along the way, it doesn't matter as long as it helps us achieve our goal.

Love it. Okay, so last question I'm going to ask you then. What's the best piece of advice that you have ever given or have ever gotten from someone else?

The best thing that a piece of advice I've ever given is and I. Sorry. That I've. That I've given is I teach it at universities all the time and I find that these third and fourth year students are really smart, but they have no idea how to tell their own story. And I tell them, I says, you need to understand who you are. Don't worry about a job title, don't worry about a career path, don't worry about any of that kind of stuff. Understand what you're passionate and what you're good at and they are different. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you're good at it and vice versa. It's got to be the combination of the two. If you can understand how you can solve people's problems, if you can understand how to listen, if you can understand how to listen and understand people and fix people's problems, you will always do well and your career will blossom regardless and it will go in directions that you never thought it will. And that's the biggest piece of advice I probably give every third and fourth year student that I come across. The best piece of advice I ever got given to me is.

That a lot of what you see on stage is an illusion.

Our job as speakers.

Is to touch hearts and souls. If we can touch hearts and souls, they may not remember 90% of what we said, but if they feel it, if they can internalize it, if it means something to them, if they see how it benefits them and they can see A clear path to success.

That's when you've got them. That's when they're on board. That's when they're running with a chick in their hand towards you.

I think that that's what I do every time I'm on stage is going, how do I connect emotionally with this particular audience? And how do I give them what they need to succeed? Maybe not what they want, but what they need.

Great.

Well, Ben, if people are wanting to get in touch with you, they want to set up their own podcast. They want to connect with you. About what, your story or the podcast host for hire. How do they get ahold of you? What's the best way to connect with you?

The Repository is your brandmarketing.com. everything is there. You know, there's 50 different websites that all push to one central location. There's but. But the central hub is your brand marketing dot com. And that's where my podcast is. That's where all my programs are, my workshops, Anything and everything that you want to know. Even. Even. There's even free chapters of my two books are on there that people, they can download for free. I don't have a paywall. You don't have to give me your email address. You don't have to give me anything.

Come there.

You can even. You can even sign up for a free 30 minute conversation. I'm more than happy to talk to anybody, find out what you're trying to achieve. And if I can help you, great. If I can't help you, I'll try to find you somebody who can.

Awesome. Well, Ben, I appreciate you taking the time to be here. I look forward to staying in touch with you as we continue on our journeys. And I know I was on your podcast, so that was exciting and I'm looking forward to us just staying in contact. So thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be here.

Hey, Gary, I loved every minute of this. Thanks for being such a great host and I've enjoyed sharing the mic with you.

Sounds great. Thanks, Ben. And thanks for my new microphone.

Hey, you're welcome, but don't send me the bill.

Okay, take care. So thank you all for listening. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so@why institute.com. the code for that is podcast 50. You can discover your why for 50% off. If you love the beyond your why podcast, please don't forget to subscribe below and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you are using to listen to your podcast. I'll see you all next week. Have a great week.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.