The Twin Room Episode 2: Identity is the Foundation

You know, I love— one thing I love about LinkedIn is that people post things and tag you in them, and you get a little glimpse into kind of where they are. Isn't that cool? Mm-hmm. So somebody today posted a picture of today's reflection and action from the Daily Thought Leader book, and The one thing I love about the Daily Thought Leader book is it's broken up into 8 different sections and each section follows one of the fundamentals of standing out as a thought leader. And right now we're in the middle of identity. And we know a little bit of identity. Little bit. Just a little bit something about that. So I wanted to read that one today to you. Yeah, what is it? Align your audience's identity. It always starts with a quote. People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou. One of my favorite ones. She's so amazing. Reflection. Building a strong brand identity isn't just about presenting who you are, it's about understanding and connecting with who your audience is. Resonating with their identity means acknowledging their values, desires, and struggles, and reflecting those insights in your brand's messaging and actions. When people see themselves in your brand, they feel understood and valued, creating a deep emotional connection. This empathy-driven approach— we should talk about empathy today— this empathy-driven approach shifts the focus from protecting your own identity to aligning with the needs and aspirations of those you serve. By doing so, you position your brand as a trusted thought leader in their journey, strengthening loyalty and trust. And the action for today is put yourself in your audience's shoes today. Identify one message, design element, or interaction that could better reflect their values and aspirations. Make a change that helps your brand resonate more deeply with its identity. That's a good one. And a great one. I love that one. That's today's Daily Thought Leader. Now that makes me think about some, you know, one of the things with your client interviews. It's really just to get an outside perspective of, you know, you talked earlier about being inside the jar versus outside the jar. So being able to see outside the jar. And I remember speaking to— it actually happened a couple times. Was this an organization or for a thought leader? This was for a thought leader. Okay. And just asking questions about what do they do, what their strengths, opportunities, things like that. What are they staying for? And he talked about how, you know, he's like one of us. You know, I see him as he's just a partner. He's one of us. Part of our team. So obviously they see him as, as they, as part of, part of them. So kudos to him for that. But I think by, I mean, that's just to just, you can't get a better compliment. Oh, exactly. Because think about, you know, you, that reflection talked about helping people see themselves in your brand, and he obviously lives their brand. Yeah. And not a vendor. Not a vendor. Not a vendor. That's hard to do. That requires empathy and care and love and all the things that people, you know, it's not on the— it's not on the spreadsheet. It's not on the services list. Maybe it should be. Maybe so. Maybe it should be. Well, it should be a value. It should be a value. If it's true. Might never be true. Most of the time. Yeah, the identity is one of those things where, um, you, you think you know who you are and you think you have a certain view of how people see you because you have a special photo filter. Yeah, the filter. I don't know what it is. I don't have one of those. The filter. But you know that people— I don't know that people even see themselves as they truly are. And if they don't see themselves who they truly are, then it's hard for them to see themselves in other people's brands. True. So that thought leader that you were talking about knows himself. He knows who he is, what he stands for, why he exists. And if it's who I think you're talking about, he's always about continuous improvement. Mm-hmm. You know, how can I do more? How can I be more? And I can't wait to to build that brand. Mm-hmm. Because it comes from such a strong foundation. Mm-hmm. There's so much there that we just have to pull out what's uniquely him. And that's, that's a good point too, because it's already there. It's already there. It's already there. I remember many, many years ago when we were, we were in advertising. Oh, advertising. We're covering now. Yeah. We're like, they needed a campaign and, you know, so we, of course, Ta-da, here's your campaign, this is what you're gonna say. And I think the real challenge is, and I think we still see that in a lot of things, is that it just falls flat. It falls flat. Because it's not real. It's not real. It's not real, it's not authentic, it doesn't align with their identity. And yeah, but in that instance, it's real. And when you communicate that, to your audience, people feel it. Going back to your quote, they feel that. They feel it, yeah, that brand, a brand is a feeling. Yeah, it's not just a color, you know. Yeah, I think that, you know, not just a logo, people, not just a logo, people lose sight of what their identity is sometimes. Mm-hmm. I have a friend that uh, just retired. And the R word. I know the R word. I'm never going to R, but good. Yeah. So she said to me, she says, you know, I'm like, what do you got for all the free time? What are you doing? How are you traveling? What are you— are you reading books? And you think it's amazing, right? I think it's absolutely amazing. She's like, you know, I just— I'm kind of losing sight of who I am. I'm trying to figure out what, what do— what is my purpose? And it kind of hit me like a brick, you know. And when we went through, when we became the Why Coaches, we went through understanding our why. It's really, it's our purpose, you know. And everyone's got their own. Gary Sanchez. Gary Sanchez. Shout out to Gary Sanchez. That, God, that was just, that just was such an amazing experience because It's just, it like, it hits you like a brick wall. 'Cause you just, it's all of a sudden you're like, yeah, that is me. That is what makes me tick. That's what I'm passionate about. And so when I think about identity, I think about purpose. And I guess my question is, in terms of when you're talking about brands, is, Is the thought leader's purpose the purpose of the company, as far as the identity? Well, I think it depends. It depends. I think, is the thought leader the founder of the company? Was the company founded on a particular purpose? I think their purpose can be different. I think if, for example, that thought leader that you're talking about and what he's doing, I know that the company is aligned with his purpose. I know that. And I think a lot of what we do is bring that alignment together so that those things do fit together. I think that in some large corporations and enterprises, you've got a whole layer of people and leaders in the company, but there has to be one central reason that they exist that people can rally around. That's why I think that clarity is so important. Such a value today in companies. Because when a thought leader is aligned on what the message they want to share is, and they can change and evolve it, it doesn't have to be fixed in stone. May not be a purpose, may be a message or a vision or a mission, whatever that might be. Then everyone has something to rally around and that could actually influence what their purpose is in the company. And I think with her, you know, maybe she had a purpose in her role, in her job, Maybe she never really thought about what her individual purpose is as a person. Maybe she, I don't know how many years she worked there, but maybe that never was, I don't remember even talking about this before, at least my own experience with Simon Sinek, that was 2009. Even as like a young adult, I don't remember thinking about what my purpose was. I thought I needed to get a job. Good point. By the way, my first job, I was a printer. I worked for a printer. You know this about me. I worked for a printer because I had a fine arts degree. Probably like, what's a printer? Printer, printer, like traditional printing. Like we would, we would code type, kind of like how you code type today in Claude Code. And you would, you know, code type in terms of like, I want it to be Times Roman, I want it to be columns to be this wide, I want it to be this long. And then you would— these things would print these galleys is what they were called— would print out You'd paste them on a board with images, and then you'd take a photograph of it, and then you would make a plate out of it on a printing plate, and then you'd put it on a roll on a printer, and you would add ink to it, and then you would do an impression on paper, and that was printing. Not the printing that you think about today, a little bit different. But what I loved about it was that I understood the process and the depth of what we do at a level that has helped me even understand people in that way. You know, that it's not just the piece of printed material that you have, it's all the things that went into building that piece of material that make it what it is. And it's really, it made me really think about how that experience impacts so many things, you know? And it kind of goes back to Dad with, you don't know what you don't know. You know, most people don't know what is involved in the printing. Industry. Actually, it's not that at all today because now you just put it in and it digitally comes out. People have no idea what goes into what 4-color printing is, you know, nor that they need to either. I remember many press checks, so many press checks, and they were always at like 2:30 AM or something like that. 2:30 AM to 10 AM. So what a press check is, is you would go to the printer and you would— let's say we're printing an annual report and we're printing, I don't know, 300,000 of them. And you would have to look at the, look at, look at the, the, the piece of paper that came outta the press to see if the color was in register. If not, like people looked yellow or maybe the type looked off. Or if the content was missing. Some content was missing. Maybe something got missed or there was just a headline missing. Oh yeah. We experienced all of that. All of those. Yeah. All of the above. All of the above. Yeah, but that was, it's been an interesting journey in how we are here today now through talking about printing out galleys and doing press checks to technology that can do these typically, you know, 3-week processes in 3 minutes. And it doesn't, what happens because it happens in 3 minutes versus 3 weeks is you don't spend the time thinking about it at the depth you did and would. Before. In a 3-week project delivery. So, you know, I'm going to say press pause on many of the AI projects you work on and really think about what is the strategy, why am I doing this, and if you're a thought leader and a company or a brand, how does this impact my identity? Um, because, you know, even on the, the, uh, the work we're doing with digital twins right now, I'm really trying to push, please, 80% on strategy, 20% on technology. Mm-hmm. The challenge is we go to the, we, we go to the technology and start experimenting and, you know, creating things. Yeah. And you lose sight. And you lose sight of like, why am I doing this in the first place? You lose sight of that. Yeah. So in, in terms of identity, we talked about, um, you know, the purpose, obviously. What else is part of identity? Well, it's how you're seen. You know, it's, it's the impression of you when you're not in the room. Mm-hmm. I think many people think it's literally like what an image of me looks like or what my brand identity is, my color, my style, what makes my brand identifiable across all different mediums. But it's much more than that. And I think that today, actually a few weeks ago, there was a, I cannot remember who to credit this to and I was trying to remember it earlier, is this removing from agentic marketing AI to identic AI. So identity is going to become a massive important aspect of what's happening in AI with, um, the ability to consider how AI impacts identity, you know, especially on the digital twin side, on the, you know, um, building, you know, visual digital assets for humans. I mean, it's so exciting, but it's really scary at the same time. And I think spend the time On the strategy. Think about why, back to Gary, why you're doing it, and then really build a plan on what you're gonna do with it once you actually build it. Because I think that, you know, what we're doing right now is we're building hundreds, maybe thousands of digital assets every week, and they exist out in the world. Mm-hmm. And we have a responsibility for those, especially when it comes to this emerging identic AI and how that's gonna impact brands and identity of thought leaders. Yeah. And if you don't tell your story, someone else will. If you don't tell your story, someone else is going to tell it. You know, protect your brand, protect your identity, um, leverage others that see you to understand who you are and how you're seen. You know, I think, um, you know, don't rely on, you know, Claude or whatever tool you might use to tell you who you are. You know, really did Do the work, spend the time, understand what that is and what that means and what you stand for and what difference you wanna make in the world. I think this is such a magical time, such a magical time for all of us to really stand out and stay human and to understand what it is that's human about us, what makes us unique and beautiful and how we serve others. It's a great opportunity. It's such an amazing opportunity. I think about back to Maya Angelou and about the feeling aspect of what a brand can be. And the one thing that I know that AI can't do yet is I don't feel things. You know, it sort of takes the feeling out of— there's not quite a sensorial experience yet with AI. I'm sure it's coming, but now it's flat. You know, it's, it's not multidimensional. And I think that maybe, you know, spending some time really thinking about your identity and how you want people to feel when they think about you, how you want people to feel when they see you, how you want people to think and feel about your organ— the brand of your company when they see it. I know that, um, there's so many brands right now reinventing rebranding, refreshing, whatever that might be, just to recalibrate to how they want to be seen and how they want to be felt. Mhm. So what's next for the Twin Room? Stay tuned for next week and find out. Stay tuned. See you then.