Stand Out as a Thought Leader, with Winnie Hart. Hosted by EO MEPA Bridge

Thank you for taking out time to be with us. We are very excited about this talk because, you know, I was going through your material. It's absolutely amazing. And guys, we are very lucky to have Vinny with us. So, you know, the kind of work she's done in her workbook and the kind of thoughts that she's put there is absolutely amazing. And I'm super excited about it because if you are not represented either as an entrepreneur or as a brand, as a thought leader, then there is no hope for you to win. So giving a very brief introduction to Vinny. Vinny Hart is a part of the EO Global Directorship. She is also the founder of Twin Engine. She's a prolific author with a lot of exciting books and one of the books being about how to be a thought leader. And she translates traditional marketing into forward thinking solutions. Now this is what the whole world is all about, that the traditional marketing and the traditional way we used to represent our brand is no longer relevant. I was watching a Netflix show on this Abercrombie and Finch, and it all talks about how they could have got away with what they did. But with the social media, it's given power to everyone. Everyone has the power. And you see people commenting on the US President and you're commenting on the world leaders, how they have performed. Today, everybody's voice has a view and there you have to stand out as a thought leader. And today, what you can expect to take away from this talk is what makes you stand out, your own purpose and how to translate that into a distinct or a competitive advantage for you and finally, a clear path to becoming a, you know, trusted brand or, you know, becoming a unique brand. So without further ado, I'm sorry, Vinny, I'm not talking a lot about your background. I will let you do that because you've got such an illustrative background that, you know, I would spend half the time on that. But you have played some great roles. So handing it over to you, we need to take this forward and we are very lucky and excited to have you having you with us today.

Every morning when I would wake up, I would walk up to this green leather chair. My outfit for the day was on the left side of the chair and Lori's outfit for the day was on the right side of the chair. Every morning, wake up, same thing, same outfit for two identical twins. So I would get dressed for the day, go out into the world, and for the first 13 years of my life, I actually thought that we were one person, one Single person. I didn't know what made me unique. I didn't know how I stood out because I thought we were one person. I didn't believe that I was an individual. I didn't think that I had individual thoughts. And this taught me a lot about what it means to be distinct. This taught me a lot about what it means to be different. This taught me what it and how important it is to stand out in this very overcrowded world. So for those first 13 years, I really thought that I was the only one being compared to other people. I thought that I was just being compared to Lori and that other people didn't have that same problem. But what I realized, especially in my later years, is everyone is experiencing the same thing. Everyone is being compared to everybody else. Lori and I look exactly alike. We have always been together. But I realized that it has given me a superpower to be able to see myself outside of myself. And that is what people ask me to do. Help me see myself outside of myself. Help me see how other people see me. And it has given me the opportunity to help people understand what their distinct advantage is and give them that authentic and honest feedback on who they are and how they stand out as a thought leader. So we had a very crazy childhood, as you can imagine, looking just like someone else. And this is just one example of how bad it was. So every childhood picture was taken in my grandmother's driveway on top of this flipped over garbage can. Every Easter, every birthday, we. We always were dressed the same, had the same clothes on. And in all of our pictures as children, I can't even tell myself apart, have no idea which one I was. And even today, the only way that we are distinct and different is that Lori and I wear our hair differently. We have the same voice. Our children call us moms with an S. And we have had this amazing experience in building this company, Twin Engine, together, to really help others stand out in this overcrowded world. So today, I'm going to help you stand out as a thought leader. And this is not going to be one of those talks where I spend a lot of time talking and telling you things about myself and what I do. It is going to be interactive. I mean, how many of you have read a thousand books? I mean, I was at GLC this week and I took probably 40 pages of notes. But the challenge I have, every time that I listen to and how many countless, you know, EO speakers have we seen and how many things have we learned about is I always want to know well, how do I do it? And I leave an event having all these great ideas, but don't actually know how to actually do it. So today I'm going to walk you through some of the many tools that I sent you. At the very end, I'm going to give you a QR code where you can send me your information, ask me specifically what you want, and I'll send everything to you digitally. But I really want to help set this up for you so that you can learn how to use these tools. Because standing out as a thought leader is a practice. This is a practice. This isn't like something that you do overnight. This is something that you can do with your forum. You can do it with your family, you can do it with your community to really stand out as a thought leader. So we are going to spend a lot of time talking about that. So for the Next, let's say 35 minutes, I am going to take you through a process to talk about three of the fundamentals of standing out. There are eight, but we are going to talk about three. We are going to talk about purpose. We are going to talk about visuality, which is identity and distinction. So we're going to. We're going to. This is going to be interactive. I don't know if any of you have used Minty before, but you can scan this with your phone and you'll have access to an interactive tool we're going to use today. So if you get a chance, go ahead and scan that with your phone. All right, so quick question. Let's just test the tool and see if it works. What thought leader do you follow? Who do you follow? What thought leader do you follow? Just going to have Simon Sinek. Did any see my introduction to the Purpose project at glc, my speech? I think someone here said they did. Someone was there. Was it Ritish? Simon Sinek? I talked about the day in 2009 when Simon Sinek gave me a coin and inspired me to focus on purpose. It was one of the things that changed my life. And I'll make sure everyone has a link to that speech from GLC where you can listen to what I talked about. Gary Vee. Love Gary Vee. Modi. Adam Grant. Did anyone see Adam Grant in Powerhouse Speakers? Incredible. Actually, Simon Sinek is, I believe in two weeks or a week and a half, it's going to be a powerhouse speaker of Sadhguru. Follow him every day. I get his daily podcast. Amazing. Goldsmith Marshall. This is just such a great thing. So, so many thought leaders, but we Think about thought leaders. It's just there, all of these people are people that are. Oh, some say none. Who said none? Raise your hand. No one follows any thought leaders. Who was it? Okay, somebody who I can't see. Someone said none. Okay, Winnie, that's funny. All right, so we have done this talk so many times, we're a hundred now, I think in the last couple of months and talking and sharing this with entrepreneurs and really it has come down to four questions. Four questions. So I'd like everybody to take a look and see just to get a feel for the topics today on where you are on these four questions. Okay. It was Ritesh. Okay, none for me. No thought leaders. Okay. I want to know what makes me distinct. I need a plan. I want to stand out in my industry. The couple there need a plan. Stand up mystery. Want to stand up industry. Perfect. Sounds great. Perfect content. Want to know what makes me distinct? It's come down to the, down to these four topics. Great work everybody. You're doing great. Seth Godin is someone that I also follow. I've read all of his books and obviously you know that it's important to stand out, especially in the industry. All right, so in terms of what is a thought leader, by the way, a thought leader is you. And if you had a chance to read the first chapter of the book standard as a thought leader, it talks about why it's important to be a thought leader today. And most people think thought leaders are people that are best selling authors, public speakers. They may have, you know, be in the Fortune 1000s, 500s, even the thousands. But really thought leaders are anyone that has something that they want to say and are clear about why they want to say it simply. And why is that important today? I was talking earlier today with a few of you about, you know, I don't know about you, but I am beyond tired of EO being the best kept secret. And one of the reasons that motivated me to write this book and to share all of these tools and I'll also send you there's a nano learning tool within EO that you can go access to. If we all knew what we wanted to talk about as thought leaders and shared it, we would no longer be the best kept secret. So next question, who is or was a great storyteller in your life? Actually spoke to Warren Rustin yesterday. What an amazing. He's one of my, one of my, one of my mentors about if you've had a chance to read the Leader Within Husk, Elena, the Leader Within Husk Lead Leader Within Us. His new book, he writes about me and around the concept of alignment. Such an amazing book. So if you haven't a chance to read that, my boss, my mom, my father, my maternal grandfather, my mom, who said, my grandfather.

That would be me.

And tell us about why your grandfather is a great storyteller.

Because the stories had a lot of perspective. You know, they just had a lot of perspective. They had a beginning and an end, which put everything together. And at the end of it, there was something that you learned that you would never forget. And you tell those stories again and again. You tell the stories to your children, you tell it to other people. And I think that's a great story that you remember it and you tell it to many other people.

So would you consider your grandfather a thought leader?

Very much so.

There you go. Who said maternal grandfather?

That would be me.

And why is he a great storyteller?

So he just had some very interesting life experiences from when he grew up, you know, on the streets in India to his first job and carrying steel. It's always something that was very captivating, something he told us again and again from when we were kids. So, yeah, he was just a great solitaire. Very captivating.

And would you consider him a thought leader?

Yeah, I think so. I think he did. He did pretty well for himself. And yeah, yeah, I think I would.

And what is one message that he said to you that you remember every day?

It wasn't something he said directly, but it was very much how his life was around persistence and how he grew up in the streets and he then, you know, ended up starting his own factory and passing it over to his son, which is my uncle. So that whole story of persistence really sticks with me.

So that what I would. I would consider that his standout word. So persistence. And I would assume that this is something that recurs in the things that you talk about.

Yes, for sure.

It's amazing. Amazing. So I always ask this question because, you know, when we think about thought leaders, again, we think about them as these big, bigger than life people, but they're really ordinary people that have something that they're very clear about talking about. And someone mentioned something about the stories that are recreated and continuously shared so that you remember them. So everyone is here, here as a thought leader, you just have to find out what that concept is. What is that one message you want to share? And that's one thing in the book. And I know everybody got the first chapter. The book is coming out in, I think about 30 days and at the end, I can send you one of these, or I can also send you the full digital book. One thing I want to mention about the book, and the digital book is free to all EO members, is there's probably about 30 tools in here. This is not a book that you're going to read and take notes on. This is the book you're going to read and actually do activities in. So it's pretty exciting. So it's free and welcome for anyone who would like to read it. Become a thought leader. So the next thing I want to do is I want to talk to you a little bit about radar. So I mentioned to you before, we're going to feature three fundamentals today of standing out. We're going to talk about purpose, briefly, identity and distinction, but there are eight. And so what I'm going to do in the next exercise is I'm going to read to you what each of these means, and we're going to just kind of rate where each of you are. And again, these are just very slight introductions so that you can have access to this. These tools and know how to use them. Okay, so how that radar works in your book, and I think it's on. It's also in your workbook, so. Also sent you a workbook. Thank you, Alex, for sending this to everyone. You have this in a PDF format. You can print it out and all the exercises I'm talking about are in the workbook, and you can relate back to those. You can print them out for your team. So that's what this page looks like in your workbook. All right, does everyone feel like they're in standout school? Okay, so where do you rate each fundamental? All right, I'm going to read each of these to you, and I want you to think about it real quickly on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being the highest where you rate it. All right, here we go. Purpose, you know, and live your purpose. You know what you stand for and you're true to your core beliefs. Okay, that's an easy one. Simon Sinek. All right, next one. Reputation. Reputation, as you know, is really important. That quote, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and five minutes to lose it. Warren Buffett. This is a poster I actually have in my office. Reputation. There's a continuous and ongoing awareness of your reputation and other trending ideas and topics. Do you know what your reputation is in your space? And are you continuously looking for what the trending topics are? So, okay, awesome. Y' all already rocking this thing. Okay. Identity. The outward appearance of your brand truly reflects who you are and the value you deliver. So that's how you look to the outside world. Someone mentioned social media earlier. I think it was Sanji about social media and the importance of that. Like is it authentic? Is it truly like everything you do, the content that you share on, on WhatsApp or LinkedIn or wherever you might be. Authenticity. This is your messaging. Your messaging is consistent, true, genuine and communicates your key message. So that's authenticity. Audience, you have a consistent flow of new followers. Could be, if you're in your industry, could be new customers who you can define, identity, nurture and manage. That's audience distinction. You stand out in the field of competing ideas, influencers and other thought leaders. Do you stand out in your space? Many of you said I want to stand out. My industry strategy is there is a 12 month strategic plan. Enforce and align with your goals and then mindset you are focused and committed to achieve desired results. I mean we wouldn't be an EO if we didn't want to have that mindset. Right? Ok, this is fantastic. Ok, so let's see what we have here. Again, this is a great thing. I have sent this to a bunch of forums that use this single exercise for form exercise. It is fantastic because it gives you an opportunity to find out where everyone is and then what this tool does is the book is divided into eight parts. You don't have to read the whole book. Just go to the section that you need to strengthen and read that and use the tools there. All right, so yeah, it looks like we got identity, audience distinction, strategy. So I want to mention one thing about strategy in nano learning. There is and I'll make sure to send this to you after there is a nano learning for what is called the one page strategic plan and it's a marketing plan. It's also in the book so you can definitely use that to build your strategy distinction. We're going to talk about it today. Audience wasn't one of the three topics today, but audience is a very important aspect to do in the workbook. It asks you and takes you through some key questions on defining who your audience is. So for example, one of the questions is what's important to them? This is what it looks like in your workbook. What are their pain points, motivations, where they look for information and to truly identify a day in their life. In the book it goes into much more detail so you'll definitely get the feedback that you need. Awesome. Fantastic. What do you stand for? So Purpose. Again, this is all about showing you different tools. I can send you the digital version of this book, what do youo Stand For? And this is a book that's all focused on, on identifying and discovering what your purpose is. It's all exercise based. It's a workbook, about 200 pages of exercises on what do you stand for. The primary focus is really just about going back to and you've probably seen this many times on asking specific questions within this model to help define your purpose. I originally worked with the Simon Sinek method, but felt like that that I wanted to build back into expanding purpose into more about really what you love and what you care about. I think also what's important about this matrix is what the world will pay for it because having our. Yeah, you got it right, right Icky guy. What the world will pay for it because we are entrepreneurs and in business and I think it's an important component in tying our purpose with a higher purpose and we want to achieve in our business and our lives. So a couple of questions that we're going to ask today. What do you do really well? So just let's do a couple of shout outs here in Mente. What do you do really well? What do you do really well? Just curious. What do you do really well? So for me I'd probably say wow, what would I say? I think what I do really well is really, really strategy. So if you look at urinata food any of you have worked with Strength finder, be silent at the right time. Right. Listening strategy. What do you do really well? Coach and guide getting things done. I don't know how do I tell Connect people, dots, ideas. Fantastic. So in the book you'll see some. If you go to the book and I know there was some in the sun that I sent you, there's areas in the book that have stars and you'll notice that those stars like for example, here's if I just open up the page to Tony Robbins and you can look at their purpose statements, their standout statements and look at some really great examples. So Tony Robbins, I help others grow. So that's what he does really well. If you want a Tony Robbins fan here, that man is insane. We only feel fulfilled when we are improving ourselves or our lives in some way. So that's his listening target. I mean listening, that is where everything is right? Listening. Make sense of things. Take an idea and make a plan on how you can achieve it. Strategic is the top strength as well. Awesome. Love those exercises. How is everybody doing so far, everybody good. Thumbs up. This is so fun. What do you love? So we would not be entrepreneurs if we didn't love the insanity that we bring into our lives and our families every day. So what do you love? Let's do a couple of these. What do you love? Besides people I hope will be one of your answers? Learning peace. I love peace. I love ice cream. Mint chocolate chip. The chaos and the. And the greens. What is the greens? What's the greens? Somebody tell me what the greens is. Does anybody know what the greens is? Peace. People progress. Making things simple and easy for people to make an impact. You already know your purpose. I love to make a difference in their lives and the people around me. Traveling. I love traveling too. I miss traveling. Provide solutions. Challenging the status quo. Curiosity. Learning. So I often talk to CEOs and corporations about standards of thought leader, and you would be astounded. I want to do a study of how entrepreneurs answer these questions and how the rest of the world answers these questions. So when I do, what do you love to like, big, big, massive group of CEOs. And I usually have like 100 people in these sessions. It's like making money, golfing, all the things that, like, I don't even know we even talk about. We want to make a difference in the world. So great. Thank you for those answers. So for those of you that had the opportunity to see my speech at glc, I've spent the last two years working on helping us really understand what is our purpose as an organization and how do we use this purpose to lead us into the future. And so I worked with and some of you probably got the original early surveys on how we can define our purpose. Because one thing that I know about my experience in EO and I joined in 2004, so I've been around for a long time. I had a leadership position every year, but really that we very internally focused. That's one thing I love about the Bridge chapter concept. I had the fortunate space to be on the global board during the time that Bridges were founded and released. I love this because it really makes us global and gives members more options. And I was telling Alex here I'm searching for a bridge chapter, so I'm looking at Napa too, because I just feel like you get to the point where you want to expand your experience into something else. But the thing that.

I'm saying, give us a chance to pitch. I'll pitch you on MEPA Bridge.

All right, Sanjay, if you're on, get on. Europe's ahead. Right now. But yeah, I'd love to join mapa.

We'll make a good case, don't worry.

Okay. All right, you're on. So in terms of our purpose, we've been looking inside like we look at I, me, me, me, me, and we need to move to we and us. And so our purpose originally that actually I launched with the brand two years ago, was very focused on the individual entrepreneur. But as we know, through all of the challenges we've had over the last few years is the world cannot move forward without us. It cannot move forward without us. And the only way that we can achieve that is if we unlock the full potential of all entrepreneurs. What we've been really working on, Neo, is really how to move beyond the me Neo to the we in our potential. So just a question, because I'm polling everyone that I'm speaking to right now, is what would happen when we do achieve our full potential? What happens? So, you know, I've heard things like, you know, we change the world. You know, we become a new economy. We solve the world's greatest problems. If any of you have any ideas, I'd love a couple of ideas here. I'm collecting all these. I know these will be presented in the organization in the next global event. What will happen when we achieve our potential ideas? So what will happen when we unlock the full potential of every entrepreneur? The world becomes better. Yes. We look for a bigger purpose. We serve humanity. It goes back to if every EOER saw themselves as a thought leader, had a thought leader standout statement, and was able to communicate that to the world, we would no longer be the best kept secret. And I believe that we will solve the world's biggest problems, serve humanity. So when I ask this question again to non EOers, what happens when the company or the organization achieves its full potential? They talk about going public. You know, I am just like, anyway, I love us. Don't you just love us? I just think about constantly, every single day, how lucky I am to be a member of this organization, to be connected to so many amazing people. Utopia. Yes, Utopia. Haven't heard that one yet. That is awesome. All right, this will still be available for you to keep updating. All right, let's jump into Distinct advantage. We are going to talk about this just for a few minutes. So again, this is in your workbook. Distinct advantage, you said. I want to know what makes me distinct. It's really three. This Venn diagram divided into three things. What your audience is looking for, what you bring to the World and everyone else. And this looking for that space where what you do over the last week, what people looking for in a space in a place where other people can't, won't or don't. All right, what is your audience looking for? Could be problem solving, could be results, could be significance, could be impact. What is your audience looking for? Inner peace. Wow. The right fun clients. Clarity. When you work on this with your team, you're going to have. And what I'd like to do is if you have a large wall in your office or your space that you work, get a bunch of sticky notes. Let everyone do this independently on a sticky note, all these three questions and you'll see them in your workbook. Post them up and let people move these around into the space and you'll come to see where all these things start overlapping and you'll have some in the middle up there in that. In that distinct advantage space. And it's typically so trust. Who said trust? Who's trust? Answer Trust. Trust. Trust. Someone that it's on mute. All right. Precise communication. Looking to find inner peace. Ideas that help them stand out. Excellent. Easier way to get things done. Someone in marketing. Here I'm stand up. Define what it. What's there. Enough. Brilliant. That's a standout statement right there. You know that your money is safe and growing. Financial planners love that. I want to know that my money is safe and growing, especially in today's market. Looking for inner peace. Supporting that they worked on. Wonderful. So I will say that that trust is one of the. One of the things that comes out a lot in this exercise with groups. And again, this could be a great form exercise too, to look at. But trust is one of those really great ones too. So distinct advantage. And then what you do in the book, it tells you how to take that and build it into. And build it into a statement. So a value proposition also. Let's move on to the next one. All right. What do you bring to the world? What do you bring to the world? Could be from your business, could be from yourself. What do you bring to the world? Oh, joy. I don't know if you know Shelby Scarborough. She was former chair of EO probably in 2003. I think it was the year before I joined. Just wrote a book about joy. It's fantastic. It's a book about joy, knowledge, a caring approach, success and growth, life experiences. My story, Happiness, stability. Fantastic. So you can kind of get a feel for how this would work once you work on the full thing. Love. I bring love. Clarity in a cold, cluttered world. I'm liking mepa. This is awesome. Fantastic. So someone said, you know what? You know, I don't know if it was the same person, but the first response was clarity on what people are looking for. And then what you bring clarity in a cluttered world. So clarity in a cluttered world is a much more powerful statement. My wife says myself, one of the things in this book, which I will send you a digital version of, is it and I will talk about this in a few minutes. But there is a section in here that is called Ask others. And one of them is as you ask five people five questions and you would be fascinated with the answers you get, really helping you discover your purpose. Because again, it helps. Like I talked about being identical twin and not being able to, you know, not being know that I was a person for the first 13 years of my life. But this whole concept that sometimes you can't see yourself or sometimes someone says something so profound that you're like, well, I didn't really see that in myself. Freshness, answers. Ooh, what do you bring home? Answers, Love. I see some sadhguru in here. I don't know who it is. All right, what's your distinct advantage? Does anyone know what your distinct advantage is? What is it? What is your distinct advantage? Distinct advantage? Oh, vulnerability, authenticity. Somebody been reading some Brene Brown books, High on empathy, persistence, trustworthy, Kind of a quick maybe hands up, maybe thumbs up on this one is I know that before I was someone else, before I came to eo, I was not the same person. I would also say something like my distinct advantages is myself too really bringing all of me to everything I do. But that is not who I was before I came to EO and through the process. And I know that we've all experienced this through form and all the exercises and constall. I am so I'm a much better person. I didn't know I really liked myself before. When I talked about at GLC last week was when I first joined eo, I really thought that leaders told people what to do. Like, I thought that's the skill I need to do. Like, great, I want to join this organization so people can do tell me more effectively how to tell others what to do. And I really thought that that's, you know, why I started a company, why I was successful and how would be more successful in the future. And it was actually the opposite. But I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if I would still be in business if I hadn't joined EO so many years ago. Does everybody else feel the same way? Different person. I mean, completely different person. And what's interesting to me is, like, at glc, you know, all of these people that came together, I think we had 1200 people there. I felt like that I knew them all intimately. That whole intimacy thing that Dave Galbensky brought up many, many years ago, just absolutely phenomenal. It's changed the way I see the world. Multitasker. Yes. There was somebody at GLC talking about multitasking. The recording's out. I'll give it to Alex and make sure that you have the recording of all the GLC speeches. But someone talked about multitasking. Definitely watch that one. Being a good listener. Ability to analyze a problem and come with a solution. Loyal and trustworthy, authentic. I love this group. I mean, and this book is just really in all of these processes. Again, I said that standing out of thought Leaders of Practice is really a practice where you can go back to these tools. You can look at these tools, you can study these tools. If you feel like you're struggling with how to pitch something, communicate something, speak to your. To your partner, you can go back to some of these tools that really help bring you to a space. So I want everybody to look at this image right here and tell me what you see. I want you to post it into the Zoom Chat. What do you see in this image? Everybody remembers Rorschach. This is not a psychological evaluation. What do you see? You see a pelvic bone? Yeah. What else? A mask. What else do we see? We see a bat.

Mm.

What else? Two Sophie dancers. Sufi dancers. Batman. I can see Batman. Awesome. So you're gonna think I'm weird, but I see two bunny rabbits connecting, like, with. In between, like, something. I don't know why I see a bunny rabbits. I have no idea. But the interesting thing is, like, I've always really been curious about this whole process of that. You see symbols, you see things, and people take those things away and think about them in different ways. And if I. If I showed a picture of a dog right now. Oh, spider. See a spider. So when you see that, see someone say bat, do you start seeing a bat? I do. I can see it. But when someone says bat. Batman. Batman. I think that's one of the best ones I've seen. I have not seen pelvic bone yet. That is amazing. But, yeah, I can see that. Is there a gynecologist in the room here? Ok, form. Hey, I forgot to Say form confidential. Ok. But I want to, I want you to look at these symbols. This is kind of one of my favorite exercises. And I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. We're going to go to Minty in a second year to pick one. So again, in the book it goes to this process of, like, pick a symbol that you feel like represents you. And this isn't a logo, this is not a mark. This is just like the meaning of a symbol that would represent you. And this is also a question you can ask other people. Like, if you had all these symbols, which one would you choose to represent me? I actually love this, love this exercise. All right, so we're going to go to the next one and you're going to. What symbol would you associate with your personal brand? You can go on Minty and you can see Alex, thanks again for posting it there. It's 7720 6172. If you lost it, I lost mine because something came up on my phone. So I'm going to go back to it. And you just move that little white dot onto the symbol that you feel like best represents your personal brand, minty.com. awesome. All right, so far, look what we got here. Okay, we got a star, we got a mountain, gears, peace sign, trophy, lightning bolt. We got the party drink, got two of those. We got the connectors, we got the focus and we have the notebook. So let's someone unmute and tell me why they chose the symbol they chose. Who's going to do it. You can do it. Press the button. I'll go.

I chose the mountain because, you know, Sir Edmund Hillary's quote said you never, you don't, you never conquer the mountain, but you conquer yourself.

The Hillary Step, right? Yep. Have you seen. What is her name? Her name is. She does seven summits. Shailey Basnet, the speaker Shailey Basnet from Nepal. Yeah.

Yeah. She's part of the. Part of a group of a few women that were doing it together.

Yeah, like seven women, seven summits or something like that.

Yeah, I've heard her speak. I've met her actually. Yes.

I think. Is she 3ft tall?

She is very short. I think she's less than five foot tall. Yes. And she's carrying a lot of weight on her back to do some of the summits.

She is the biggest short woman I've ever met in my life. I mean, she has like this presence when she walks in the room and she's like this this big. She's like this big. I love that. About the. I just was reading about rotations. Are you familiar with rotations and climbing mountains? Rotations? I didn't know. So when, when, when I was. I've always had this, like, thing about wanting to climb Mount Everest and that'll never happen, but anyway, and I was studying about how that works, and basically what it talks about was this concept of rotation, so that when you climb a mountain, you're actually climbing it multiple times. You think you just go from the bottom to the top. What you do is you go from a base. Base camp, a base, and you climb as high as you can, and then you go back down to base so you can come higher on the next one. And it's a series of rotations, which I thought was absolutely fascinating. And I think about that, and I think about our entrepreneur journey and how, you know, we keep having to find what that base is. And that's one thing that I think about with all the content that we're talking about today is if you can establish that base and keep going down, back down to it, that. That you can climb higher in the next round. So.

Thank you, Winnie. I would just add to that and say that it's to acclimatize, because once you go above a certain altitude, if you're going up and you're not acclimatizing, it's life and death. And so when we acclimatize, what we're doing is when we get used to, we actually eventually raise the height of the base. So your base might be at 3,000 meters, you know, a couple of days later, it could be at 4,000, a couple days. So you're constantly going up. And that's a wonderful analogy that you've used for entrepreneurs as well. I love it. Thank you.

Well, I think all. All symbols represent different things to different people. And what I highly recommend is you take your workbook and go ask. Ask your former. Ask your family. This would be a fun, really fun dinner exercise with your family. You know, okay, mom, you know, what symbol would you choose to represent me? And then ask why? Be absolutely fascinating. Because I think people really underestimate the value and the power of identity. I know because I'm an identical twin. I know what I look like, I know what I sound like, I know what pants don't look good on me. It's a beautiful thing to be able to know that and to be able to see that. But I think a lot of us also need that perspective ourselves. So fun, fun Fun. All right. I mentioned before about asking others, about asking others, really thinking about who, whether it is your form, your family, about taking some of these exercises and bringing other people into the process of standing out as a thought leader. Two questions that I really, really love, and I know they seem like really odd questions to ask, but the most insightful answers come from what color would you pick to describe me? And why? What color would you pick to describe me? Why? In the book, there's a section on color. It starts on page 89, and it goes through the psychology of all the different colors. For example, green, peaceful, healthy, calm, natural and friendly. If somebody says you're a natural peacekeeper, you strive for comfort, you need love and to be loved. Green may be your color. Really great exercise in the book. I don't think it's in the workbook, but if you want it separately, you can let me know. I can send that to you as a separate file. What color would you pick to describe me? And why? You're going to get the most interesting answers out of anything. I think sometimes you have to ask people things differently than you typically do to get really a more clear, honest and authentic answer. Another one is, what three words would you use to describe me? There is a list in your workbook, and I know you're thinking that you're in school right now. There's a list in your workbook. I don't know exactly know what page it is. Oh, here it is right here. There's a lot of words here. You can add more. You can create your own list of words. But. And then why they chose the words that they chose. And then you ask people separately and you look at them and combine them together to really help see how you, how people see you so that you can see yourself outside of yourself. Amazing way of thinking about it. All right, so before I go and talk about a few other things, I want to just pause right now and think about from all of the content we've talked about today so far, what is the number one takeaway? What is your number one takeaway? Number one takeaway. Your perception can be very different than what you think. Winnie. Winnie Hart is joining me, Upbridge. Oh, Mavericks. I love Mavericks. I like that. The workbook. I know everyone read the first chapter of the book that Alex sent. Thank you, Alex. I'm sure you haven't, but definitely spend some time working reading that because it really sets up why this is important and how it really relates to, I think, our role as entrepreneurs on this planet. To really be Clear about what we stand for and stand out as a thought leader. When progressing, it is important to climatize workbook. That's a little takeaway. You must have a strategy and execute it to stand out. Ask people what three words describe me. I love that exercise. Reiterating the importance of purpose. The perspective of different can be so different. And leaders job is to bring everyone on the same page. One thing also to think about maybe with your leadership team to pull some of these tools out and bring them to them would be amazing exercise to really help them understand where you are and why you do what you do. Transitioning from traditional marketing to being relevant in today's world. I launched an advertising agency in 1990. Traditional advertising agency, TV, radio, print, all the things, speech writing. We did all of those things. And I realized after I had a tragic experience in my business during Hurricane Katrina that I didn't want to sell things to people that they didn't need anymore. And I completely changed the way I saw business and what I felt like my purpose in the world was. Because even now, the way we used to market and sell does not work anymore. Those traditional methods don't work. Selling doesn't work. You know, it's really about having great products. It's about influence and your influence as a person, your integrity as a leader. It's about how other people talk about your products and services. And the only way to really do that is to tap into your own authentic self and to really understand how you're perceived so that people will follow. And I believe that when you become the thought leader you're meant to be, that that will inspire other people to do the same. What you bring to the table, what does your customer really, really, really want? Because what they tell you they want isn't probably what they want. One of the exercises in the book asks what keeps them up at night, you know, what are their fears? What are their problems? And then think about ways that you can solve those. Awesome. Thanks for all that feedback, everybody. So in the process of thinking about these things, what are two things that you are going to do, you're going to commit to. You can write this down in notebook, you can share with the team that you're going to do in the next 30 days to stand out as a thought leader. What are two things you're going to do? Two things, two big steps. So I'll tell you about what some of the typical ones are. One is to have a forum exercise with some of the content in the workbook to bring it to forums so that everyone's on the same page. There have been a couple of forum challenges. I can connect to some forums that have done that. Do these exercises for. There you go. I can send you the digital version of the book because the print is not out yet, but I'm happy to share that so that you can spend some time reading that. But really to think about really what you want. That's one of the big questions in the book too. What do I want? Do I want to be more successful? Do I want to be a thought leader? Do I want to transition my company? Do I want to focus on mindset? Remember, we talked about 3 fundamentals today? Mindset is a really great one that you'll be able to spend some time thinking about. That's very powerful to help you build that mindset. And again, for strategy, there's that one page marketing plan in Nano Learning. There's also a printed version in the book. Okay. Revisit, purpose and refine. What do you bring to the table? Take a minute to collect my thoughts before reacting. Think about priorities. Do the whole exercise of the workbook. Find the areas to improve and then work on the same. Exhale, inhale, breathe. Read your book. Awesome. Fantastic. So when I was a child, there are actually three of us. There's myself, there's my identical twin sister Lori, and my little brother Tommy. Being identical twins brought a lot of focus to Lori and I as children. I mean, people would look at us and talk about us and talk about the little twins, you know, and obviously we always were dressed the same as, you know. But my dad decided that he wanted to spend more time with my little brother Tommy. And so what he decided to do was he said, and I don't know if you ever did this when you were little, but remember those little remote control airplanes that you build and you fly? Those little planes that you build, you fly. So my dad decided he was going to build these. These remote control airplanes with my brother Tommy, and he was going to go out into the airfield every Saturday and fly these planes with my brother to have a more closer relationship with Tommy and Lori. And I would sit there, I mean, I can find a four leaf clover in three seconds because I've done it. I did it every Saturday for the first 13 years of my life. Maybe not 13, but maybe, maybe seven or eight years of those years. But that they spent so much time building these planes like our kitchen table. There was always, like plane parts everywhere. They would build them, they would fly them, they would crash them, they Would rebuild them. They had discussions about what they did. They would paint them. They were all branded. They were amazing, these model airplanes. And one day at the small model airplane field, my dad was talking to us. I remember we were sitting around a table eating lunch and he said, you know what? I want to learn how to fly big planes. And my dad, he worked in a refinery, worked for Exxon Chemical, and he worked shift work and so he decided that he wanted to learn how to fly a plane. So like for, you know, I remember him, you know, going, having shift where he would work all night, come home in the morning. He would read these massive manuals. They're always stacked up in the house like big, thick manuals about how to fly a plane. And he actually taught himself how to fly, fly a big plane. And I will never, ever forget that day. I feel it every time I talk about it. Looking up, I'm standing on the driveway in our 800 square foot house, North Main Drive in Louisiana in the US and looking up and watching my dad do the flyover over our house. And it was one of the proudest moments that I've ever had in my life because I was so proud of him. And one of the most amazing lessons I've learned from my dad is you have to fly small planes before you fly big ones. And that's how I feel about standing out as a thought leader. You know that we as entrepreneurs have we flown small planes for years and years and years and years. And sometimes we've, we've flown them, we've crashed them and rebuilt them. But it's really time for us to really fly big planes because the world depends on it. And that's why we have to really discover what we stand for as a thought leader, to really impact this world because the world depends on it. Thank you so much for today. Love speaking with you all. Thank you. Before I wrap, and I know there's a Q and a. This is the QR code that you can take a picture of or you can scan. That'll take you to. I think it's a three question and I know that Alex is going to send you a question answer after. But this will also ask if you want any of these materials. This is not a marketing thing. I'm not going to send you much things unless you ask me to that I can send you any of the materials so you can scan. This takes a takes. I think there's maybe three questions on it. That's what that is. Awesome. All right, I'm going to stop Share.

Thank you Vinny for an amazing talk. I think it was power packed and we covered so many things that we'll probably need a workshop. So my takeaway from this is next time call Vinny for a workshop and Sahil as the incoming learning chair. I think you have a great workshop potential with Vinny for our next year MEPA Bridge where she should be doing it as a chapter. As for her chapter, hopefully you would have joined us by then and we would have convinced you. So guys, we are now open for questions. We do have couple of minutes. We have seven minutes on our planned time. So if anybody has any questions please do ask.

I can go. Winnie, thank you so much. It's always pleasure to meet and listen to you speak. Question for you. There's so many golden nuggets there. From your experience of having worked with so many entrepreneurs, is there a particular starting point that you recommend that this is a, this is a good first exercise or question? Because you know, even in your notes, I mean in your workbook, there's lots of things. And I know sometimes when I see many things I just go, oh my God, too many things, overwhelming and I don't do anything. But if I, if I got that one, two or three things that like, okay, these are the first two or three things that are one thing you should do as a starting point, what would that be?

So I'm going to say two, I'm going to say two things. One, the radar exercise. Really spend some time thinking about where you are. And that's why, and I know it comes from working with so many entrepreneurs for so many years is there's not one tool, not one size fits all for anyone. So if you look at the radar, they're going to be, they're probably typically going to be three areas that you rate the lowest in. And typically for entrepreneurs, distinction is one of them. So the distinction tool. So I would do the radar first and then focus on distinction. I think that we've all spent a lot of time on purpose. We've seen dozens of people that speak about purpose. So I think we all have a really good idea what that is. It's really about just getting the message right. But if you can get distinction right, I think that covers most, most of the, of the things that you need to start with. So do the radar. I believe there is and I can send Alex this, I think we have a link where you can do the radar online or you can get other people also. Maybe if you think about the radar, maybe getting your company to do it as well. So do it yourself as a person, as a thought leader and then as a company as well. Get everyone to figure out where you are to see if maybe your team is aligned as well. It could be an exercise of form so radar and then distinct advantage.

I think that's superb, Vinny. So Vinny, how do you, I have a follow up question on that. How do you do it as a company? Because we have gone through the worksheet. So if I want to do it in my own company, what is the process? What should I be reading first or should I, you know, how do I go about this exercise about, you know, how to reposition my brand or my company to be more relevant on today's world. So how would you, you know, would you like me to read your book first? Would I, you know, what should be the steps?

Well, simply I would ask why, you know, why do you want to and have that conversation with your team. There are, there is a. If you could share the first what I, what Alex sent you the first chapter of the book that talks about why it's important today. Just send that to your team. I don't think you need to read the whole book or they need to read the whole book. Just read that first thing which focuses on the first chapter, which is purpose. But there's a large section in the beginning that talks about why this is important and it takes you to the radar exercise. That's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is the workbook is specifically designed to give you a few different exercises based on where you rate. Every exercise in the book is available. I can send you PDFs or I could jump on a call with you and walk you through a custom just facilitation on how to take them through the process. But you know, like I mentioned before, standing out is it's a practice. This is not something, this is not a one and done because markets change, situations change. You may want to go through this exercise with some big contract you're trying to receive and do that distinct advantage and say, okay, what do they really want? What do we provide? What is everyone else that's bidding on this doing that we can do better than everyone else. I mean that tool right there to me is like it's a go to tool that everyone goes to the distinct advantage one. So again, back to the same answer. I would get them to read the first chapter that I sent you. Share the workbook. I can provide you any other exercise that you see in the book. And then again go back to distinct advantage and start there.

Not it. Perfect. And do you, for the, for our entrepreneurs out here, do you do it, help them do it as a facilitated workshop for their business?

Yeah. So we do two different types of workshops. We'll do large group group workshops with chapters. So we'll have everyone break into teams. So it's a process. It's a, it's a full day workshop. And then we also do four hour workshops in a platform called Miro with teams. So it's all these exercises. Everyone works together in a digital space and you have a board where all of these exercises are and people work on them together. So two different ways.

Okay, superb, guys. And one final question that we can take and before. And we would also request everybody to put on their cameras so we can have a takeaway photo from today. Guys, any final question, please.

I just want to ask how important is distinction? And I see it because it's not, I mean, it's not among the highest and probably among the lowest. Well, I think in today's world we're being compared to so many people, companies, and really understanding what it truly is that is distinct about you and your brand and, or your business, I believe is critical. It is the one that we've, I mean, we've gone through thousands of surveys. It is the one that rates the lowest. And I think maybe that's because entrepreneurs are always looking for ways that they can reinvent themselves. Could be one of the reasons for that. But I personally have seen the most success and enlightenment from people working through that exercise.

Thank you, Vinny, for an amazing, amazing session today. So we all at EOMEPA Bridge really enjoyed our time with you today. Alex, I'll hand it over to you for the picture before we close. And again, a heartfelt thanks to you, Vinny, for being there and everyone who attended. And please do take the time to go through the chapter one and going through the workbook and doing it for yourself. And please, as a chapter, please do share your experiences and we would love to share them back with Vinny and I'm sure she'd really appreciate that it.