#021 Stand Out As A Leader Online with Chris Cebollero

Hi, I'm Sheryl Plouffe. I'm a video marketing expert, and today you're watching Personal Brand Breakthrough with an interview with Chris Sabolero. I can get it out. Chris Sabolero. Maybe the fresh air is getting to me. He is a leadership expert, and he's also a number one best-selling author. And today Chris is going to share with us how to stand out online as a leader. And Personal Brand Breakthrough is all about helping you as an entrepreneur to stand out online so that you can make more money with online video through social media, through the power of personal branding, as well as simple, uncomplicated video production. So we're going to get into the interview with Chris, and I want you to pay particular attention around the 4:15 mark. I believe that what Chris shares with us is true gold. So we're going to get going with the show right now. My name is Sheryl Plouffe. I'm a video marketing strategist, and this show is broadcast on my Facebook page page and on YouTube every Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern time. So let's get started with the interview and with today's episode. All right. So let's dive in today. I am so pleased to have my friend Chris Cebollero with us today. He is a number one bestselling author., and he is a leadership expert. And I just so happen to be one of the residents, or the resident communications expert on his leadership podcast. So Chris, welcome to Personal Brand Breakthrough. I'm excited to have you here today.

Cheryl, I gotta tell you, I've been looking forward to this interview for some time. And it's true, you are our resident expert when it comes to communication, when it comes to video. And I gotta tell you, in this space, I don't know that anyone's doing it better than you.

Thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to be to be on your show, and I'm so happy that you're on mine. And Personal Brand Breakthrough is dedicated to the idea of helping entrepreneurs to really build their personal brands and to build, to forward their business faster and more efficiently. And so you're a leadership expert, and I wanted to dig into this topic as it relates to personal branding. So talking about, you know, leadership and thought leadership, which I think is ultimately what we as entrepreneurs are trying to do, is to you know, put ourselves out there as experts in our field. Can you explain what thought leadership is and expand on that for us?

You know, when we think about the concept of leadership, it really is an art and a science, and you've got to know the science before you can paint the portrait of organizational success. So in that, in that concept of the science, you have to be able to think about the components that are going into that and how you can make that work. You know, if we just, you know, let it go by the wayside and say everything will work themselves out, you know, I was consulting with somebody the other day, said, "How do I hire good employees?" I said, "Well, stop thinking about hiring good employees, and then hire employees and make them good, make them great." So, we really have to be able to take the concepts of leadership, figure out how to put them into our organizations, figure out how to put them into our workforce's development, and then put those into practices. But it just doesn't happen by chance. You've gotta kind of think about the concepts, you've gotta develop a plan, You've got to work with the vision and then make sure that that comes out in the execution.

Is that really where it starts, though? Does it start with the vision or does it start with the strategy? Where does it start?

You know, I think that the vision statement is the most important document in our organizations. And the reason for that, Cheryl, is if I ask you to think about a front door or to think about a car, you don't see the letter C-A-R. You actually picture a front door. You actually picture a car. So we are, we are wired to think in pictures. In the absence of a vision, how does the workforce know where they're going? So if you're able now to get them to the table and say, here's the vision of the organization, here's the responsibilities you have into reaching this vision in making this organization or an organization great. This is now where that comes from. So, you know, I read a good book one time that said, where there is no vision, the people will perish. So now we have to think about the vision statement. If— and one of the things I'll ask leaders in my talks is, how many of you have a vision statement in your organization? Raise your hand. And you see all the hands go up very, very proud. And then I'll say, who can come up here and recite it for me? Well, if the leaders don't understand the vision of the organization, how does the workforce care about the vision of the organization and hence make the organization successful?

Yeah, and from an organization standpoint, it's so true. I think that, you know, we're talking about solopreneurs or people who have either just working for themselves right now or maybe have a small team of people. Vision is still really important. How do we then take, you know, vision and thought leadership into the content creation space? I mean, you're a content creator, you have the Leadership Podcast. Do you have some tips for entrepreneurs and how they can really kind of set out to carve themselves out a niche, if you will, in a space as a thought leader.

Yeah. One of the things to remember is that leadership is an action. It's not a position. It's, it's, it's not a noun. It's a verb. OK. And the hardest thing that we have to do as leaders, whether we're sole entrepreneurs, is we have to be able to lead ourselves. We've got to be able to inspire ourselves. We've got to be able to motivate ourselves. So once we know the direction that we want to head and we have that vision in our mind and even write it out, read it every day if you need to, so you know where you're heading. Now you need to start to think about how do you grow this brand of a thought leader or as a leadership expert. As I was setting out into the field to be a leadership expert, you know, I came from the medical field and I was a thought leader in my career field. I was recognized as a motivational speaker. And now as I needed to branch out, people outside didn't care how, you know, how successful I was in my own career field. And now I had to change the component of how do I take my knowledge, how do I use that in content creation to now develop myself and brand myself as a leadership expert. I got to tell you, it doesn't happen overnight. And I was a little bit disappointed, Cheryl, in that transition because I thought it would happen overnight. So it's important now when you think about the content creation, a couple things. The people that you are trying to reach, what content really helps them? Number 2 is, how does that content help you develop your brand as a leadership expert? So I could sit here and say, I'm going to talk about cybersecurity today. But if the people I'm trying to reach don't care about cybersecurity, and really it comes down to— we've heard it for a long time as speakers— Understand the audience and what they want and ask them. If you don't know what they're looking for, you know, we post things on social media all the time and people will like our stuff or they won't like it, say, well, this wasn't a home run or not. So I think that you have to be able to take the audience into account. You've got to be able to know who you are as a leader. And then really, a lot of times it comes into your growth. Sometimes I look at things that I'm trying to redevelop myself on or polish my knowledge on.. And I said, you know what, I'm going to share this with the audience once I get to a point of understanding it fully.

I think those are great, great tips, Chris, because that is where I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle. Sometimes they don't understand the value of their own expertise. And so they think, well, who, who doesn't know that? Or who would care? Or why me? But what they need to do is, like you said, you understand your audience first and foremost. And once you understand their challenges, you can more easily come up with content ideas that are aligned with what's really going to resonate with them. And that's the key. And like you said, it's not an overnight thing. It doesn't happen in a snap. It's a long game. But would you agree that it's totally worth it? I mean, I agree it's totally worth it. But what's been your experience?

No, I think it is. I mean, you're going to have, you know, in my book, Ultimate Leadership: 10 Rules for Success, rule number 7 is experience comes from mistakes and mistakes come from lack of experience. You know, one of the things that we have a great relationship on is, again, you know, I tout your expertise is I want to do what you're doing with this Facebook Live and kind of use it to reach my— but I keep making mistakes and I keep checking with you and like, how do I do? And recently we had a podcast together and you were talking about setting up your own program. Well, I was a student of that more than I was the host of it because you make those mistakes and you want to be able to learn from those mistakes. So I think that the road that you take to your own development isn't an overnight thing. You've got to be able to develop your vision. You've got to be able to set goals against the vision. You've got to be able to set plans to reach the goals. And then however long that takes is the time that it takes. Sometimes we got to go back to the drawing board. We've got to rip up all the things that we did. We've got to recreate. But that's part of this process. And that's what makes it great. You know, when, when we do what we do, Cheryl, I mean, you from a communication standpoint, you know, from all things, I think from a video live standpoint, You learned it because of the challenges and the hurdles and the successes and the failures over your years in broadcasting. And right now, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to capitalize on your— the scars that you have on your back that you've created. Well, the same thing for me from a leadership. You know, my first, you know, few years in leadership as a leader was horrible. I was a horrible leader. And rule number 1 in the same book is don't allow your emotions to dictate your actions. I learned that the hard way. By allowing my emotions to dictate my actions. And, you know, so you have to be able to develop this track record of failure, success, lessons learned. So now it's your wisdom after reflection that you're able to share with your audience.

Well, it's so interesting, Craig, because I lean on you for leadership expertise. And so we're all leaning on each other. And I think you made a really great point that we're all students, or at least we should all be students. Lifelong learners. And I think any entrepreneur who is reaching any level of success or growth or progress is someone who's committed to lifelong learning. So I really appreciate your thoughts on this and some really great tips for our entrepreneurs who are watching. Chris, how can people connect with you? Or if they want to buy your book, how would they go about doing that?

Well, my two books, Ultimate Leadership: 10 Rules for Success and Ultimate Success: Strategic Leadership Excellence, you can find that on Amazon. Go ahead and join me on the Ultimate Leadership Podcast. You can hear Cheryl's latest episode. And you could always find me on Facebook at Subalero and Associates. I'm also on LinkedIn, but go ahead and give me a holler. Go ahead and become a fan of the show and listen to Cheryl's show coming up. It's really excellent.

Thank you so much, Chris, for your expertise, and thank you so much for watching Personal Brand Breakthrough. If you have any comments, you're watching this on Facebook, you can leave a comment or question for Chris. I'll make sure that he gets it and we get a response back to you. And if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel and make sure you hit the ding notification bell so that notified next time I go live. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.