003 Dr. John Tantillo –– Go Brand Yourself as a LEADER!

Welcome to Walking the Walk, the program for people who want to become better leaders and leaders who want to become better people. Start Walking the Walk with your host, renowned leadership speaker and author of The Sensei Leader, Jim Bouchard.

Our guest today is America's Marketing Doctor, Dr. John Tantillo, and in the spirit of full disclosure, he's one of our dearest friends and mentors as well. You'll see Dr. Tantillo frequently on television offering his expertise on Fox News, Cavuto, and the French edition of 60 Minutes. He's a prolific contributor to journals and periodicals all over the world, and he's the marketing editor for Fridge Magazine. He's also the author of People Buy Brands, Not Companies, and he's now doing workshops and seminars to help you go brand yourself. And that's what we're talking about today. Effective leaders must have the ability to attract willing followers. Now notice the emphasis on the word willing. And that means people must identify with you as a leader. Don't leave this to chance. Most effective leaders are constantly branding themselves, whether they realize it or not. It's about how you carry yourself, how you look, what you say, and most important, how you say it. Now, there seems to be infinite choices for how a leader can brand oneself, but each leader will establish a personality and a readily identifiable brand, and it must be a brand people can trust, or you won't be be a leader for long. Your brand is especially important if you're an aspiring leader. Do people recognize you as a leader? Are you actively creating a sincere impression that you're ready for greater opportunities and responsibilities? Well, thankfully, you can go brand yourself as a leader. Now let's talk to Dr. John Tantillo and find out how. Thanks for coming on the show, Dr. Tantillo.

Hey, Jim, always a pleasure. You make me feel so young and excited and passionate about branding. No matter if we're talking to leaders, leaders in training, potential leaders, we just want to help people to go brand themselves.

Well, there you go. And I think we're going to have a variety on the program today. And of course, they can listen on demand as well. There is a live chat area if you're on Spreaker. Join in. Feel free to introduce yourself and ask questions or insert some comments there. We'll do our best to get to them. Dr. Tantillo, let's kick things off this way. I have a question that I've been thinking about all week for you.

Sure.

One of the challenges facing leaders and aspiring leaders today is to create an identity that can be trusted, right? One that's consistent with one's actions and the expectations of the people they serve. And so let's start off by talking about how can this best be accomplished?

Well, I think the first thing you have to do is be yourself. To thy own brand be true. And if you are going to communicate something that you're not, you are going to get into a lot of trouble connecting with your potential target market. So my— the first thing for you to do is do some soul searching and find out who it is that you really are. And then use Tantillo's first principle of branding and marketing, which is it's not about you, it's about your customers. And with that, it's important to listen. And one of the nicest things, one of the nicest compliments I ever received was from a dear friend of mine who was a famous designer in Australia. Gary Bennett, and he said, you know, we were having a few drinks out in LA a few years ago, and he said, you know, John, the wonderful thing about you is that you listen. And I'll never forget that. And when we're leaders, we're always motivated or we can't wait It's for us to respond to what the other person is saying instead of listening to what the other person is saying and responding best to what they say. And that is— and if you can begin to do that, wow, you really have in fact become a true leader.

That is one of the greatest challenges we see, and it comes up in workshops all the time as we're traveling around. And, you know, that thought, you know, it goes along with the great challenge of just communication. Of course, I know we're singing in harmony. Communication is a two-way process, and the listening part is the most important for anybody, but especially for leaders. But sometimes leaders need to do a little bit of work in that area. They've forgotten how to do that. What should they specifically be listening for when they're trying to create or trying to reinforce their brand? Because of course, you know, a lot of leaders have great brands. It's not that they need a brand remake, right? But it does— brand, a brand does need maintenance, doesn't it?

It certainly does. And my— another one of my little tidbits is ABB, always be branding. And, you know, the corollary to that is always be learning. And you're going to get in trouble when you feel that there's nothing else to learn and you become jaded. And I'm not going to that seminar, because I've heard it before. And then what I do is I go to a Jim Bouchard seminar and my mouth is open from what you have told the audience or informed the audience about, and I get excited. And so there's nothing more exciting than hearing a new idea or learning something new. And if you can't learn something new, I think there's something wrong with you. And you're going to fall short on being a leader. So not only are you in fact listening to what people are saying, but what you're doing is you are learning from what people are saying. And another corollary from the JT checklist is not only to be always be branding, but to always assess what the needs of your clients or customers are. So if you're going for a job interview or you're applying for, um, a slot in an academic position to be, um, a, um, a student in a graduate program, what you— and you got that first interview with the admissions person or with the department chairman, the secret is What do you think they're looking for? You don't go and start talking about yourself and how wonderful you are. It's what do they need and how can you best serve their need. And you too, as a leader, have to be listening and finding out how you can best help them. Do they want to be a better salesman? Do they want to be a better student? Do they want to be a better professional? What exactly do they want to accomplish? And then based on that, come up with an action plan that's going to help them achieve their needs rather than your needs.

And well, actually, their needs and your needs are usually in harmony, right? Because what you said just, just struck so many chords.

Well, yeah, we would hope so. But a lot of— sometimes we become so— excuse me for cutting you off. But what I want to— what I want to say is what you don't want to do is think that you know better than they do and what you really want. You have to listen. That's the secret. Listening. You know, when you go to a doctor, sometimes in the old days, not so much today because the young guys and gals really do in fact listen to patients, but in the old days, you would do exactly what the doctor I told you to do. Well, that works. He has or she has some experience. However, you have to be able to communicate. It's a dialogue, right? It's a way of conversing. Go ahead.

No, I couldn't agree more. You know, a lot of times— and I hate being pinned with this— but sometimes people will say, well, you're supposed to be a motivational speaker. That's not my job. But, uh, you know, how do you motivate people? And my stock answer is always, hell if I know. I mean, really, right? We have to sit down and listen to the folks who we're serving. And please notice that we say that all the time. I don't talk about, from a leadership perspective, I don't talk about the people that work for me. I don't talk about the people who serve me. I don't talk about, right, the people under me. As a leader, my job is service. I'm serving a constituency, right? And that's who you're talking about. That's really who we need to listen to. Sometimes I think it's harder the higher you go up the ladder, isn't it? Because then, you know, it's rarefied air and there are more people— I hate to use the term, but there are more people under you than there are above you, right? So you have to consciously elevate them. And that, I think that's an important point. The organization does not— you cannot run an organization on your own. And the larger the organization, the more people you need. So you actually have to have bigger ears, don't you? You can't be the undercover boss, right?

I couldn't agree with you more, and the way you do that is you have to always think of this idea of always be open to learning something new, you know, and I can't say enough about that. You don't know everything, and you know, you get to a certain point in your life, well, What do they know? What do these digital marketers know? Well, digital marketers know a technique for getting your message out. They may not be great strategists, but they sure know a technique that I'm in the process of learning. That's really the secret of life, knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know.

No, I hear you. I believe the best leaders are really in tune with that. You know, we know from research that 80% to 90% of the intellectual capital in any organization exists at the front lines, not in the C-suite, right?

That's correct. That's correct.

So leaders have to be open to that. And they also have to be trusting to let things go. But, you know, there's a little conflict. And I want to make sure we get to, you know, what's happening with some of the aspiring leaders. We're working with a lot of aspiring leaders these days. And some industries we've noticed have a leadership gap. And some of the best industries have this problem. And it's— I'll say, I know a lot of folks listen from the credit union world. And their leadership gap is really nobody's fault. The problem is they've had great leaders that have hung around for a long time, right? And what's happened is there hasn't been a lot of opportunity over the last few years for that middle level. They go sideways, they go somewhere else. A lot of times they work their way back in that industry, which is kind of unique. But all of a sudden now they've got an entire generation of great leaders that are retiring, and they're going to the youngest folks in the ranks and saying, okay, you got to step up. Now, the problem being, and I hear this a lot from younger leaders and aspiring leaders, a lot of talk about just being yourself, right? And that comes through in dress, it comes through in manner, it comes through in language, it comes through in method of of communication, right? So how do you help them? Obviously, you want them to stay true to their own identity and to their generational identity. I think that's important because that, as you were saying, that appeals to the folks that they're going to serve. But still, they have to project a certain image of trustworthiness, right, of competency to the folks that hold their careers in their hands. So how do they serve both masters, or can they?

OK, first of all, what you have to do is understand yourself. And once you you understand yourself, you then have to craft what I would call an image, okay, as we used to say in the old days, that is going to be consistent with your target market. So if you are a 30-something and you're trying to attract an older group because you're, let's say, going into, for example, let's say, physical therapy, therapy, what you really want to do here is develop a style that's not necessarily going to appeal to your age group, which are 30-somethings, unless you're going to go on a date and you're on the prowl or you're on social time. But what you want to do is you want to develop a style that is going to resonate with an older person. So it might be wearing a tie, or it might be wearing a turtleneck. It might not necessarily be wearing sweats, because as, as a friend of mine once said, who was transitioning from being a personal trainer to being a person in real estate, No one wants to see me in my sweats now. I have to— and with my long hair, they want somebody who they can trust. So what you really basically have to do is number one, look at what we call in marketing your core product feature. What is it that differentiates yourself from everyone else? And then secondly, develop a style that's is going to resonate with your target market. Depending on your target market and if you segment the market, you are going to have to basically perhaps change those appearance or that image.

Depending on who you're in front of.

That's right. That's right.

You know, it's interesting too. Tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but I seem to be hearing that when you're talking about building an image, sometimes people have the perception that the creation of any kind of image is somehow, uh, faking it. And that's not at all what you're saying, right? Your image is not— it's not fake. It's who you are and who you want to project. And that's why I know, you know, your image is a bit edgy. It's, it's interesting. If folks haven't seen Dr. Tantillo before, you know, he—

what do you mean by that, Rashad? I'm edgy.

I love it. You know, you wear the fedora and the bow tie and the, you know, colorful shirts and whatnot. And you know, but people accept that. So when you commit to an image, particularly now we're talking particularly about how you look, although some people do it in voice. I know for speakers sometimes, I've always been output, and I don't think I'm going off on a tangent, but I'll try to circle it back. I've had folks that, you know, presented themselves a certain way, then all of a sudden they went to a seminar and came back and they're dropping the F-bomb every other word, you know. And I say, well, that isn't who you were. I mean, I can accept that if that's the first impression I get from somebody and that's the way they are, then it's up to me to choose whether I'm going to accept them or not. So I think you have to— right, we want to be true to who we are. And I think we have to be very careful about going hip or edgy just for that sake, right? That image has to reflect who we are as well as who we're appealing to. Am I off base or is that—

Oh, no, no, no. I couldn't agree with you more. I get a kick out of 70-year-olds who wear jeans.

I was just gonna ask you about that, right? Yeah, because it goes the other way too, isn't it? Right, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it has to fit that person, right?

Right. Well, you know, the jeans, I had what, you know, I've yo-yoed with my weight, and there were jeans that I bought in my 30s when I was really, really, I got to a thin point. They were 36s and I was sprayed in them. And you know, I would gain weight and I wouldn't be able to fit in them. And then about 5 years ago, I said— well, maybe even longer than that, but let's say 5 years ago, I decided I was going to get rid of the jeans. I could fit in them. They were the loosest, the loosest the loosest the pants have ever fit. And I said, "I'm not wearing jeans anymore." And if you remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer, the jeans are so tight and—

Oh God, yeah, yeah, they could hardly walk, right?

He can't move in them. You know, there's a point in life where you might not, and you gotta accept it. It's that, you know, you just aren't going to wear jeans anymore. And I'm sorry if I'm hurting the Levi Corporation, but they— I think that's right.

I'm going to save them in a second.

They have a new— they have another line of pants for you no matter what, right? Because they know, they know all that data. It's just when you as a personal brand fail to launch when it comes to going and hitting that next stage in life.

And it does take some testing too, doesn't it? I mean, I went the other way where when I first got into the speaking business, and especially when I started to get into the leadership area, I would feel obligated all the time to wear a suit and a tie. And then I switched a little bit, and I'm fairly comfortable with that in the right atmosphere. I mean, if it's a formal dinner or something, that's how I'll dress. Then I started dropping the tie a lot more and wore an open shirt or a golf-style shirt, a polo shirt.

Right.

And I started feeling much more comfortable. And then in most of the conferences that I work at, you know, not everybody there, even if they're C-suite, they're in a more relaxed mode and they're not in suits. And I noticed something really interesting. You know, of course, you're good friends with my wife Alex as well. And she does a lot of, you know, my clothes shopping for me. And she wanted me to be in slacks all the time. So I was, you know, I was doing these slacks and, you know, they looked okay. But I kept telling her I felt like that guy that Chris Farley used to play on Saturday Night Live. And I said, this isn't comfortable. I needed to go back to the jeans. And you've said it before, because I'm a blue-collar kind of guy. I'm teaching some very fundamental ideas. I wasn't comfortable presenting in more of a slick. So I went back to the— but I do— here's the thing, and I always remember what my grandmother used to say. She grew up in the poor neighborhoods of New Britain, Connecticut, is, you know, immigrant families from Poland. And she would always say, you know, you may go out in rags, but your rags will be clean, right? So, right. So for me, it's right. It's the branded jeans. I like to wear something that's, you know, they're dressy jeans, a nice sport coat, you know, that type of thing. But it's about, I guess the point is there's this balancing act, right, between who you're with and honoring them and who you really are and how you feel comfortable presenting yourself. Because I'll tell you what, if you're in the wrong outfit or you're using the wrong language, man, you will come across as being a fake, right?

Oh, you know, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, you have to, you have to be yourself. And I said it earlier, to thy own brand be true. And, uh, you know, to In terms of jeans, for me, that train has left the station and I'm never going back to jeans. Here's another thing I don't do. I don't wear shorts anymore. The reason I don't wear shorts is that about 4 years ago, I was visiting my grandson in Arizona and I was wearing the shorts and I was in Arizona. And I'm the kind of guy that every insect in the world— oh yeah, bites me. Okay. Not only that, even though I'm Italian-American, I have the weeniest white skin that you ever want to see.

Yeah.

So not only do I have to worry about the insects, I also have to worry about skin cancer and sunburn. And why am I wearing shorts? Yeah, why am I wearing shorts? This is nuts. And that's what it really takes. And that's what leadership is all about, being able to take that information and say, I don't care what people say, I'm not wearing shorts, I'm not wearing jeans. And I don't like garlic, you know. I mean, whatever it is, that's what being a leadership— a leader means. And with that, explaining to people why you don't do these things and, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. I get— I get a lot of heat from my friends because when I go to the— when I go to Yankee stadium. I'm the only one that goes with a bow tie, a hat, my spectator shoes.

The way people used to dress, right?

Yeah, yeah, I dress the way I normally dress. Well, when I go, the ushers genuflect. I can get into any section. I'm getting— I'm getting— the gals are saying to me, oh, you're so cute. You know, this is an older guy and I'm I'm taking this. So my point being, my brand is a bow tie, a hat, and being formal. Well, this drives my good friend Willie crazy. Can't you just dress normally? No, leave me alone. And that's what it's about. And it's my brand.

Well, again, it's individual, right? When you're telling that story, I couldn't help thinking about the differences between two tremendous leaders during World War II, and that was General George Patton and General Omar Bradley, who worked together quite a bit toward the end of the war. And Bradley was known as the GI General, and his language, his dress was very much of the folks. He had come up through the ranks to a larger degree than Patton had. Patton had the opposite idea. He was very accessible to his troops right down to the front lines, but he felt that you had to look a certain way and you had to act a certain way to project that, and both were very effective, but for each man, that was the truth of the image. Now, when we're talking about this too, and I want to make sure before we wrap things up, there's a lot about language these days, and not to get political, but Donald Trump stunned a lot of people when he continues to shoot from the hip. I'm sure we're going to have this debate for the next 4 to 8 years, right? Right. It seems to work. Whatever he's doing seems to work for him. Um, is— you can argue whether he's projecting himself as a leader, and that was what the debate was all about, right? Is he being presidential? Well, a lot of people seem to think so, huh? Um, is where we just talked a lot about dress, same rules apply to your language. I mean, is it really— is he just being who he is and is that why it's effective, or is there—

well, well, let's be honest, it's effective to, uh, his target market, right? It's not effective when it comes to people who didn't vote for him, or what I like to call— this is a new term that I have, I have just come up with to, to define people who are political junkies. And I call them pollies, like foodies. Yeah, these are pollies. And in terms of that crowd, he's doing everything wrong. And, and I tell my Democrat friends, well, you realize that the people that he— that voted for him and who's attracted to them could give a darn that he's doing it the wrong way, or he could have been— had more finesse. He's just doing it his way. And the percept— the more the— the more the polis a protest to stronger his base.

Now, if he shifted, if he took a radical, you know, turn at this point and all of a sudden switched his language to try to build more consensus, is— would that, would that come across as fake, or could he really build a brand then based on transformation? Or is that just— is it difficult to do that?

Okay, this is the problem. When you go after a target market. That is losing your present customers. Think diet and think New Coke. What did they do? Research showed that people liked sweeter beverages at the time.

Right, I remember that. I didn't because I liked the original Coke.

Right, right. And what happened was they changed it and by doing it, but to attract a bigger market and as a result use their loyal customers or their brand loyal customers. So you got to be very, very careful about that. So that if— so the Pollys might be happy if Trump changes, but certainly not his present customers. And the question is, will the Pollys ever be happy with Trump? Trump. It's very risky. And that's the, that's the, that's the issue, right?

And not to hang on, on, uh, you know, President Trump or anything, but the, a lot of organizations go through that. I've worked with a couple organizations this, this past couple of years that were going through huge, huge reorgs and, and cultural shifts, right? And that's, that's part of the reason I asked that question. You know, the leaders that were still entrenched were trying radically to shift their image, to shift their— and to me, a lot of times it sounded phony. And not being in the management consulting business, I had to— when I was asked my opinion, I had to say, well, maybe that isn't the right person to be at the helm anymore, right?

Right.

You might need a different person that fits that culture better. Hey, listen, we will have to have you back again because we've got a lot more to talk about. Let's make sure we— how would you like people to best reach you?

Well, you can email me, very simple. Are you ready for this? This is not hard. doc@johntantillo.com. That's how it works. Right? And you can subscribe to my YouTube channel where every day or every other day I come up with a Go Brand Yourself moment and today it has to do with eating pizza with a knife and fork. And they're screaming here in New York City because our beloved mayor only eats pizza with a knife and fork.

Yeah, talk about that, Alex. You know, she's from New York too. She always screams at me when I do that.

Okay, well, you eat pizza with the knife.

I do sometimes, but it's wrong, right? It's wrong, isn't it?

Because if I don't, I shouldn't say this. I'm going to schlop myself up. Right. And it's just a better way of making sure that I don't get a, you know, a wonderful sauce stain or a pepperoni stain on my beautiful tailored shirt.

So, so how is the good mayor violating his leadership brand in New York City by eating with a fork and knife?

Well, well, a lot of people. And I just got my— I just got a text from Johnny's Pizzeria in Brooklyn, who is my, you know, go-to pizza brand in Brooklyn. Right, right.

They must be disappointed.

And he's telling me this is a mortal sin, this is sacrilegious, how dare they do that, what are you doing? And I'm saying from a leadership perspective, it just might be a great differentiator. He's the politic— well, first of all, he's not saying he dislikes pizza. He's just eating it his way, which is, you know, kind of cute.

But he might be better served just bringing a couple of extra shirts along, right?

Yeah. You know, the political geniuses would probably— his handlers would probably are pulling their hair out of their heads by him doing that. But I would argue that it's better if it's to thy own brand be true. And if When he explains it, it's much easier to accept as to being someone who's going to do something. What would happen, for example, if he did that and there's a piece of cheese going on the chin, right? And every, you know, Jim Bouchard—

That's why I don't eat before I speak.

That's why.

Right, exactly. But then again— Some people would say, that's good. He's identifying with the man on the street. Okay, enough of the pizza.

No, you know what? This is a— I think this is the best way to wrap it up. We've got a lot. We've got a lot of work to do as leaders. We've got to make sure that we're creating and nurturing an authentic brand and that we're taking care of that. We're maintaining it and that we're making sure that that brand appeals to the folks that we're trying to attract, right, the willing followers. So Absolutely.

Follow me on Twitter, by the way.

I'm just going to say that. I'm going to give a plug. You know, this work, you don't have to do it alone. That's a constant theme here at Walking the Walk and with the Sensei Leader. You do not have to do these things alone. There are great people and great resources, and Dr. Tantillo is the best. Make sure you get in touch with him. It's marketingdoctor.tv, and he gave you his email, which is— we've got it on the chat area too.

Doc@johntantillo.com.

Yeah, and he does consulting. He does workshops. He does work with companies, corporations, and individuals and aspiring leaders especially. I'm going to put in a plug as I've been really pushing this with folks that I'm running into, Dr. Tantillo. I think aspiring leaders would be greatly served by getting in touch with you and utilizing your wisdom and your services. So if you want to move up the ladder, right, Get to Dr. Tantillo, he'll help you out.

Sounds good to me.

There you go. Hey, thanks so much for being with us today, and we'll have you back again very, very soon.

Thanks a lot, Jim.

All right.

Bye. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Walking the Walk. Please share this episode. We encourage you to download and share the program with both experienced and aspiring leaders in your network. We also encourage you to suggest guests for future episodes. Complete information at walkingthewalkpodcast.com. Jim Bouchard is in high demand presenting keynotes and workshops for conference, corporate, and community audiences all over the world. To book Jim for your next event, meeting, or retreat, visit thatblackbeltguy.com or call Alexandra Armstrong at 207-751-4317.