Transcription
The problem is most of us are building a barrier between our true selves and the people who want to see like, who is that person behind there? And I'll tell you what it isn't for me. Personal branding is not about how to get more clients. It's not about a tricky way to leverage your personality to get a sale. You know, it's not because it's buzzy or something that's on trend right now. Personal branding, for me, is a process of discovering who you are and getting in touch with that and healing from this trauma that we like, we don't even understand that we have. We're raised by imperfect people, then we become imperfect people.
[Music]
[Applause]
Too all right, where are all my introverts at? Can I see you guys? Okay, it's a little different because usually the introverts are like, so those are the pretend you're like the ampts over here. Okay, well, I'm an introvert, and the reason why I share that with you will be apparently or abundantly clear by the time I'm done with this. I have some, some quick things. Um, I just want to get off here before we get really into this thing. Uh, did you guys hear about what happened last night, the after-hours bonus thing? That was pretty cool, right? The rest of you guys, you guys missed something because you just didn't show up. And part of this whole thing is to show up. But there's a guy who's going to be speaking after me; his name is Phil Jones, and this is a magic wand; it's not a cigarette 'cause he's magical with words, he really is. And I'm kind of setting this up, but you know, as, as good as Phil is with words, I'm pretty good with pictures, so when I drew the cube, I got a little applause for myself, you know, so I just put that up there, right? Okay. And then, um, we, we did something funny; it was just kind of very impromptu, and I wish, I wish you guys were there because it was just, it was gold, right? And I wish somebody was there to—oh, wait, I believe we have a clip of it. Can I, can I share it with you guys? All hopefully the speakers don't blow me away. Okay, so Phil was, uh, kind of freestyling; he had this, this, uh, framework, this four-step framework on how to introduce yourself, so it's relevant to the person. And as he was doing, I'm like, wait, wait, my, my buddy Dave, who, who does beatboxing, like, Dave, could you just do this like, what, do it now? I'm like, yes, right now. So that's the setup for this; it's just 40 seconds. Here we go. Okay, do it. One, two, three, four. Well, you know how many people in the mortgage space find themselves looking to try and stand out from their competition, try to demonstrate their expertise, and look to be out of, put themselves in a marketplace of one in a crowded market, which means that what they do is they find themselves needing to demonstrate like podcasts and books and need to put themselves—and this is not distracting at all—so I've just, I mean, Phil did that freestyle, you guys, right now we'll have to forgive him; he's British, so the timing was not quite correct, but that was awesome. Okay, so let me get into what I want to talk to you about today. So I have this, this observation about you guys, and I'm not sure what it is, but it's a really warm community. I come from a design and kind of branding community, and we're all really weird, so nobody ever talks to each other. I mean, I'm telling you the truth, but when I see you guys, you're, hey, I'm like, me, you go, you want to talk to me? Okay, this is cool. And I don't know if you've gone to other conferences or belong to other communities; it ain't like this. So there's something special, and maybe it's this other thing that I think that maybe trauma bonds people together, and I know you're going through a tough time, so I'm just going to—that's how this whole thing's going to go, okay, everybody, so just get ready for it. Seatbelt and all. Okay, so yeah, so I have a confession, and, and, and I'd argue with you that I think I have the best job in the world because I get to help people achieve their dreams, and I get paid a lot of money to do that. What is better than that? And it fills me up with joy every single day. And I also want to let you guys know I'm extremely socially awkward, and I just pretend not to be most of the time. But if you didn't know me, you didn't see me, I'll just be like this the whole time. And I have developed this life philosophy that if I'm just good enough at creating content, then I don't have to develop social skills, and, and this is why my personal brand is a loud introvert. I, I want to be known before I have to walk into the room because I'm just super weird like that. So, so if I see somebody, they smile at me, I'm like, there's nobody behind me, must, okay, I guess we, we know each other kind of, and it's just, just really neat. And I share that with you 'cause you know, I'm just, I think a lot of you guys are extroverts, right? So we'll do this, we'll do this the opposite way. Introverts, raise your hand quietly, gently. Oh, that's a lot more than I thought. It seems like the extroverts are over here for some reason. Did you guys notice that? Yeah, see, that's what's going to happen. Okay. Well, the thing is, I say this is because if a socially awkward person like myself can do this, I know for certain that you can do it, and you have the resources, you have the personality type, so these strategies that I'm going to share with you, we're going to do some work together. I, I think it's going to help you. And one more quick story is that I just want to let you know that social media and creating content was the farthest thing away from my mind. And my good friend and, and former mentor told me, hey, let's go make content together. So in 2014, I made my first YouTube video, like we're coming up on 10 years here, so that's really cool. And I was 42 years old at that time, and I was, I, I told this to a smaller audience, and there was this guy, he was in the audience; he's like, bro, what? So after I gave my talk, he said, you should have just ended it there, 'cause then we, you got to just drop the skincare routine, and he's like, and you're almost ready for retirement, right? You're going to collect your Social Security and pension soon, right? That's Alex's kind of bro stuff, right? And he didn't know that, uh, Asian don't raisin, you know, it's genetics, you know, but you know, not to leave anybody out, you all know, you also know that, um, black don't crack, you know that works. Okay, all right. Okay. And then I was like, well, what else? Like, Latin smooth like satin. Yeah, somebody here? Yeah, yeah. Okay, right, right, right. Okay. And then I was like, what if you're white? Uh, and I had to make up a rhyme for that, so I'm like, good night. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay, all right. I, I woke up this morning, chose violence. I'm so sorry. Okay. But you know, kind of all joking aside, I am, I'm here mostly 'cause I want to help you find your voice, and it's a very heart-centered approach to what I'm doing, and because I think we're all children, uh, in adult suits, and there's like a lot of unresolved trauma, and the result of it is like we're afraid to do things, from business to content creation and everything else in between. So I want to help you to lean into more of you because I think when you do that, you're operating in your zone of genius. The reason why I tell you you need to lean into more of who you are, what makes you different and unique, is because I put this tweet out, and it says—and this was from last year, I'm 52 now—it says, I'm 51, I started YouTube at 42, I got serious on Instagram at 46, 'cause I learned it from my intern who was 20, and now, or the YouTube stats were 2.1 million, Instagram followers 880,000, whatever, blah, blah, and I skipped to the part, I said, I did it, you can too, but you have to start, and you have to start from a place of generosity. You have to give before you get. And if we focus on getting better and not the, the, the numbers, everything can happen for us, and we're all so much in a rush to scale and to get that engagement that we all want, but we just need to learn before we move forward. And the cool thing about this is this post on Twitter or X is my highest-performing post; it's been at the top; it's got 17,000 likes. You can see also 1.3 million views, and that's bananas 'cause Twitter's not like that friendly for posts like this. And the reason why I share that with you is because most people would not share this kind of information, and it's going to be a theme that I'm going to be talking about a lot, that when you authentically showing up as yourself and you don't give a f*** what people think anymore, what happens is you get the thing that you've been chasing this whole time; you get the acceptance, you get the love, and you get the gratitude. So that's what I'm all about here. And a friend of mine says this often times, all strategy is autobiographical, so of course, I'm going to tell you the things that's worked for me. You'll have to decide for yourself amongst the many things you've heard today and yesterday what's going to work for you; it could be one person's plan, or it could be a hybrid of many others. So I know we're in the day two final stretch here, and your energy, or whatever, extroverts, I think you're fine; the introverts like looking for the exit door, I get it. Okay. And maybe you're feeling overwhelmed, or you've received too much information or inspiration. So today, I'm going to try to help you apply some of the things you've learned rather than just give you more information, but I need your permission to do so. Okay, so I'm just going to ask you this, is a Phil Jones question: How open-minded would you be to doing something weird, a little bit different today? Yes? Okay, 'cause it's going to get weird, but I need your help. I need your help with this because otherwise we can't do this. I think we're here for a lot of different reasons, not just to hear and learn, because you can find most of this information on, on the internet, through GPT or through YouTube, but to, to really meet people and make a real connection, to, to not only just learn the things you already know or be reminded of them, but to really learn new things so you can get unstuck. And so what we're going to do is we're going to, we're going to ask you to do this, and the introvert in me is like, I'm so sorry, I apologize. I want you to talk to each other. Okay, so we're going to do a little speed networking exercise. So here's what we're going to do. Okay, we're going to pair up. Okay, you need to go talk to somebody that you're not sitting next to, that you've already spoken to. You got to find somebody new, and one person's going to just give it their introduction, and then at 30 seconds you switch, okay, and we do this three times. So you know, just go somewhere near you, some—and I have a graphic, so we, we can stay on time. I need your help here, CU, otherwise I can't get through the rest of my presentation. It's dangerous, but we're going to do this. Are you guys with me? Okay, so you understand you cannot talk to somebody that you already know. So when, when you see this, it means go; when you see this, it means switch; and when you do this, it's next. Okay. And then I say stop. This is, I'm going to ask you a really important question right now. Ready, everybody? Here's the question I'm going to ask you: Who do you remember, and why? Okay, 'cause she's awesome, Safibe. She's awesome. Hope, you said Hope, her name, Hope. Okay, why do you remember her? Okay, well, that's really interesting. What does she do? Mental health? Wait, what is it? Mental health? Me? Mental health. Mental health. What? Psy—like psychiatrist? Psychiatrist. Okay, so she's psych. Okay, 'cause—and you said 'cause she's different. Okay, and you like her name, well, Hope and psych, that's pretty cool, that worked out well. I don't know, maybe your parents knew something pretty good, right? Okay, who did you remember? Lee, 'cause he didn't talk about his, the career. Okay, is it L-E-E? Okay, yeah, Lee. Uh, well, that's really interesting because you didn't talk about work either, so it's personal. Hm. Okay, this might work out the way I planned. I don't know. Okay, like way back there, go ahead. Oh, Peter. Yeah, what? Who's, who's the person? Matt. Matt. Okay. And why do you remember Matt? A gamer? A gamer? You dorks. God, I knew I shouldn't have called on you. Peter, gamer bro. All right. Okay. All right. So here's the thing, right? I'm going to share with you an uncomfortable truth, and the uncomfortable truth is this: It's like we're being like everybody else, so we become really hard to remember. You see, it's like when we just do something a little bit different, it's much easier for people to remember us. So the uncomfortable truth is, I have to ask you this question, just be honest with yourself: Is, are you showing up the same way on social? You're being unremarkable, not worthy of being remarked, and it just takes a little bit to change. Now, I went to the extreme, like the pant skirt and everything else that I'm doing that Trevor is going to make fun of me for. It's cool, I'm not going to take my fashion advice from him. That's all right. So what we need to be is to be remarkable, right? We need to be remarkable, and it doesn't take a lot. When everybody's talking about business, talk about family; when everybody's talking about real estate, geek out on your games, I guess, right? It, you just need to be a little bit different to stand out, so it should be pretty easy, right? Everybody standing out on social, making a difference? Uh, I didn't think so. Most of you probably not. I've seen your socials, Neil shared it with me. Okay, so I want to just tell you a really quick story. Back in the height of Clubhouse, I was hosting calls three, four times a week. I love being on there, and one of my friends, she's a professor from Art Center, her name is Petrula, and we're hosting a room together, and the room got a little spicy. I'm one to speak my mind and tell people of my opinions, and then there was some kind of funk in the room. I can feel it. It's okay. And then Petrula, 'cause she cares about me, she calls me up afterwards, we do our postmortem, and we're talking, and she goes, Chris, I think people misunderstand you. I'm like, how so? Well, you're kind of aggressive and opinionated, and I think people would appreciate you more if you were just to modify that a little bit. I said, Petrula, I don't want to do that at all. I believe the only reason why people were in that room in the first place is because I'm this way. And we come from two totally different worlds; she's in the academics, and I'm in the real world, and you know what, sorry, that wasn't even a joke. I mean, all right, I'll take it, right? Okay, thank you. You guys are very generous, right? So I, I mean, I feel this way, like I would rather have 10 people who follow me for being, for me being me than a 100 million people following me for not being myself. What is the point of life if you can't even be yourself? We think we have to show up a certain way at work or with our family, and it's like this is supposed to be an expression of your art, and for me, I feel like it's my art, so don't tell me what to do, right? These kids on the internet telling me, Chris, you should do this, no, why don't you start a channel and you do what you want, 'cause I'm going to do this. If I'm not for you, that's totally okay. Thank you. Right now, it's, right? It's e—easy for me to say, and you're like, okay, what's the real part? Well, there are real fears, and I've had these fears, like when you put out content, you're going to be judged; people are going to think something about you, that you don't know what you're talking about; they don't like the way your face looks or, or your hair, whatever it is, they're going to say something. And maybe some of you are just like, who am I? I don't want to take up all this space; somebody else should be doing that; I'm not as good as them, so I'm not worthy of that, or probably the worst part is if you do something and no one shows up, and that is devastating. And I think the reason why people aren't showing up is because you're not showing up. Sorry, shots fired. Okay. And I was sharing this with my friend Dr. Christine Lucer, and she goes, Chris, the reason why you can get away with the stuff that you get away with is because you have high trust factor. I'm like, I do. So she shared this, this triangle with me, which was something that was in Harvard Business Review that I didn't know about, from Francis Frei and Anne Morriss, which is this triangle of how we build trust, and that's really all we're doing; that's what we're trading on every single day. Do people trust us? Do we trust them? And she goes, on the top is authenticity, and then there's empathy and logic. I'll go into it, right? So authenticity shouldn't even be a thing that we need to talk about at all because you should just be able to show up as yourself, but because of all the fears that we have, we have changed; we've been socialized to go along to get along, that we learn to speak a certain way, and if you have little kids, you're like, don't do that, stop doing that, don't look at people, don't say that's rude, and after a while, that person becomes really lost; they just start to conform. Then we go to school, and schools like the worst thing that happens to all of us. Sit in a certain way, raise your hand when you want to speak. Oh, you're moving too fast; you're moving too slow; you're distracted; oh, you're doodling; you're taking too many notes. I don't know what it is, and then this just gets beaten out of you. So to me, to be authentic means the real you is when no one's watching, when no one's around, like when your hair is not done and your face a little dirty, and maybe you're in your underwear; that's you. We don't want to see that, but that is the real you. Okay, so I have this whole theory that we all show up as our persona self versus our real self, and the bigger that gap is, to the degree we're all living in that gap. Like, I'm not laying in bed like this; the belt would hurt me. I'm just putting it out there, right? But when we start to have a bigger gap between all this stuff, then we're just faking it, and that's the real problem. So we're trying as much as possible to bring these two separate selves together, and that's what I really feel is like my thesis for personal branding. I know in the marketing world you want to sell, and all the marketers are saying the opposite thing of what I'm saying, so to them I'm the anti-christ, right? 'Cause I say this is not about marketing; it's not about everything that they keep telling you it's about. And the other part is empathy, and the way they define it is, do you care about my well-being? When we look at sales in terms of authenticity and empathy and logic, which I'll explain in a second, when someone calls you up, the first question you're asking yourself is, are you who you say you are? What are your credentials? What have you done? Alex talked about this earlier today with Neil, right? What have you done? Are you just talking about it? That's why he, his joke is, I'm not going to hire a 20-year-old life coach; it doesn't even make sense; those two ideas don't belong together. And then the next part, which is really important, is, do you care? It's as simple as that; do you care? So if I show up authentically as I've accomplished X, Y, and Z, and there's all the evidence, okay, and I'm being myself, but if all I want is the sale or your follow or your comment, you don't care, care about me. And I do a lot of sales role-plays with people; I feel like they're asking fake questions all the time. You've been on a sales call before when someone says, hey, are you doing this? Are you doing that? It doesn't really matter; all the questions are designed to drive into the thing they want to sell you. I don't feel cared for. The last part is a little bit easier: Is there logic? Is there a way that I can follow what it is that you're saying? Okay. And I think for some reason, somewhere along the way, I figured out my life, and I'm like, I'm just going to, going to be me. I've been living that other life for long enough; I'm tired of that, and now I have agency and autonomy, and I'm going to do what I want to do. If you don't like it, it's okay; I'm not for everybody. Okay. So if you want to increase your trust, you have to work on these three components, and I think the two most important parts are authenticity and empathy: Do you care? And I'm going to help you with that a little bit. Okay, logic is pretty straightforward. So we get stuck in this thing, the vicious cycle, which is we have a feeling, we, we hate making content; we don't want to record. And I myself, my jaw tightens up just thinking about recording content, too. So we live in a state of fear; we feel a lot of pain around creating this stuff. So this is what's happening to our content, right? And then what happens is the action that we take is we procrastinate; we're inconsistent; we'll make two posts a year and think that's enough. And then what we're doing is this doesn't work; we don't believe it'll work, so we're manifesting into our reality a negative outcome. Some of you feel this? Yes? Okay, good. So this, this is what's happening again, and the result is we get exactly what we wanted, what we imagined, which is poor-performing content with low engagement, that no one shows up. So now our content is just completely flatlined. And this is your content; it's an awesome image; don't look at all the hands; there's some extra hands in there. Okay. And what I, I have this theory, and I want to share it with you today: It's like there's a ratio that's kind of off, you know, when there's an emergency, you dial 911. What is your emergency? My husband, my wife's on the floor; she's not breathing. Your content is in like the critical care right now, and we got to get it back online. Okay, so we've talked about this before, okay, when you give and you ask, and there's no gap between the two, it's called a transaction; there's no feelings of goodwill. I gave you money, you did a service; I give you a resource, I got your email; it's just like, so fast. That every time we ask, what we need to do is to widen the gap between the time in which we give and the time in which we ask. And I'll tell you this right now, I believe this, and I'll fight you on it if you want to: The strength of your personal brand is measured as the distance from the value to the ask; that's it. So you want to play this game for as long as possible without asking. And the reason why is social media is really, for shorthand, a value exchange platform, right? You give value, they give you their most precious resources; it's not money, it's their time. So what you want to do is you want to create so much value that you don't even have to ask; they will ask you. And some of you already doing this and doing this really well; you're crushing it because you've given so much value that the minute there's a hint of an offer or something, they're like, hey, how do I get into…
Your program. I heard about you from somebody, or you've helped to save me so much money. And how can I return that to you? So when we do this in abundance, we activate reciprocity. So what you want to do is you want to, in ratio—and you could go higher than this, but at a minimum—nine pieces of content that are value-driven. Okay, so there's a 9-1-1. So you're going to follow this right: nine pieces of content that are value-driven to help the other person without asking for anything. But if you keep doing that—and it's what I've done for a long time—it's like feels like a cold robot has written all the posts. So you do need to add in one personal thing, just for you. And this is good for your soul; it's good for the audience, audience, cuz all of a sudden they're like, "I know you're a smart person, or you do what you do, but there's this human behind it. I'm starting to relate to that story." And then you can ask one time, and you don't have to be guilty or shy about asking because you've given so much already; you're on the right side of this equation. So 9-1-1: nine pieces of value, one personal, and then one ask. And I think this is the big difference between winners and losers. So making sure I didn't spell "whiners," okay.
You know, Alex has pretty much gone from relative obscurity a few years ago to amassing seven or eight million followers across multiple social platforms. He's figured out how to deliver excessive value. How many Hosi fans are here? A lot of you guys. Now let me ask you this question: Has he given you value in abundance? Right. And his promise thus far is, "I'll never pit you or sell you anything." So far, mostly good, right? Up until recently, right? So, so that's how he's been able to build this incredible leverage because he keeps showing up, and you say, "This is an authentic guy. He made a promise to us, and he's not broken this." Okay. So I'm telling you, R, you can do this, and we're going to help you do it. Okay.
So a couple things you need to know about branding: A commodity is a product or service without a story. This is a commodity; it has no story. And if you're a commodity, the only thing that matters is price; lowest price wins. So I know in many of you guys in the mortgage space—I don't really understand your industry; my wife deals with that—it's about money, and if you just trade on money, it's a commodity now, and they will just go with whoever can get them the better loan or the better rate. So look at the look at what happens here. So a commodity: there's no perceived difference between you or someone else, and it's actually not that hard to be different, as we've just seen earlier, right? Okay. So this is another bottle of water, and it's kind of shaped with the French Alps in there. It says, "Made made by the French Alps." Now it has a story. Most of us cannot tell the difference by taste alone, the difference between all these bottles, but they come in at radically different prices. Then there's Fiji, which is natural artesian water from the island of Fiji. And I like the next one the most for what it's trying to do, and this is all about positioning and packaging. The next one is Essentia. It says, "Ionized alkaline water." I don't even fully understand what that means, but then they say, "Overachieving H2O." What, my water doesn't work hard enough? Okay, lazy bastard, I'll go with this; take my money.
So there's a gentleman, his name is Rory Sutherland, and he's a legend in advertising, and he talks about, "We're focusing on the wrong things; we need to focus more on intangible perceived value, cuz there is no real value here," right? There are doctors who say, "Drinking all this alkaline water—your stomach is all acid anyways; no amount of water that you're going to drink is going to balance this stuff out"—but they told some of you a really good story, and we want to believe the story. Okay. All right. So I want to tell you about my antisocial tendencies: When I'm in a room with people I don't know, I don't really know what to do, so I just literally just stand there. Okay, I, I mean, some of you might have seen it; I'm like, it's it's real. And somebody asked me, "So you don't like to be around people?" I said, "No, I love being around people—people that I know, people that I like, people that I trust." That feels real. Okay. So what what happens there? So if you look at the introvert, and you can say, "What if the introvert were your client, your next prospect?" They can't talk to you unless they get to know you first, and that's what you're doing with your content, and you have to be willing to show them one point of differentiation. Maybe it's like where you come from, maybe it's the city. I was talking to Sean earlier—where's Sean? He's over here somewhere. Sean's like, "Hey, I'm on the farm," and it's working, and it's because people who see that content, Sean, are like, "Hey, I'm like you; we might have grown up in the same way, and we have the same beliefs or values, or I respect a person's work on the farm." Like, "You're all high and mighty here making a lot of money, driving fancy cars; you're going to get your hands dirty." I haven't seen no content, but I assume that's kind of what it feels like, right? Or they maybe they see the sprawling hillside or the acreages that you have, and they they they want your life. Now there's a point of differentiation versus everyone else. So every one of you has multiple points of differentiation; the more that you can overlap them, the better your brand becomes. Okay. There is not a trick; it's not a hack.
So for me, personal brand in the age of social media is build familiarity and and trust at scale. How do I become familiar with you? Social allows us to amplify it, and if you keep showing up consistently, that's where trust begins; that's all it's doing right now. So the problem is most of us are building a barrier between our true selves and the people who want to see, like, "Who is that person behind there?" And I'll tell you what it isn't for me: Personal branding isn't everything that maybe other people have talked about on the stage. It's not about how to get more clients; it's not about a tricky way to leverage your personality to get a sale, you know, it's not because it's buzzy or something that's on trend right now. Personal branding for me is a process of discovering who you are and getting in touch with that and healing from this trauma that we like we don't even understand that we have, right? We're raised by imperfect people, and then we become imperfect people too, right? So if you can lean into this, and you know, maybe another time I can get deeper into this, then all of a sudden you are going to have a really strong personal brand. And the great thing about this is more people buy from you; they'll be more inclined to give you money and trust you—everything that you want, you'll have if you pursue it with the right intention. Okay. And there's this powerful concept in psychology; it's called the self-concept: Who are you? What makes you you? And this is what makes you unique. So I don't want you just to be different; I want you to be radical different. When everyone is zigging, I want you to zag, or zug. Now we're going to step into the next exercise. I'm I'm to need Trevor in a little bit here; we're going to get into some stuff together. How many words does it take to tell the story? Six? Zero? Well, not zero; that would be the introvert's answer. Go ahead. One? Really? One? Okay, it's not it's not an auction. I just—five? Okay, three? Okay, two? All right. Okay. If you guys were here last time or part of the Mastermind, you know I was giving you this exercise: your two-word brand. And Trevor—where's Trevor? He's over there. Trevor was telling me, "Bro, easy for you to say; not so easy to do," right? And so people are just mashing things together because we didn't—I have a different way of doing it today. Okay. My answer is two, and I like—allow me to make the argument. Okay. But first, I'm going to ask you this question: What's the first thing you learn about any brand? What's the first thing you learn about any brand? Just shout it out. What's that? Name. Right. Hey, you should buy Nike shoes before I go to Nike. So it's your name. Okay. So I've I've been looking at this. Okay. The answer's name, and there's the one that you're given, and then there's the name that you could be known for or known as. Now, when you're growing up, a lot of times your mom, your brother, sister, your dad, or your cousin, they might have given you a nickname because that's shorthand for you and your personality. So I've been looking at this. Okay. Now, if you're if you if you know this—it's fine if you don't know who these people are; this exercise becomes even more powerful. Okay. Those of you guys that are old enough will know who this person is: Mike "The Situation" Santino. Okay. Now. Okay, the ones who are laughing are old enough; you just outed yourself. Okay. The Situation. What can we assume about this person's character or story? What's the situation like? If you don't know, I would like to hear from the people who don't know for sure; just yell it out. What? Do you know this already? You do? No, I I ask the people who don't know, who don't know. When you hear "The Situation," what do you think? Troublemaker. There's some issues. Going to create a lot of what? The bomb. Mob. Okay. Yeah, like bad relationships, maybe like a lot of drama. The situation, maybe self-important. It kind of sums up this person. What you don't know is the producers of the Jersey Shore ask each person, "What is your nickname?" And some of them were made up on the spot, or they helped them to make up because they understand branding and storytelling. Okay. We're going to run through a bunch of these; I only want you to answer if you don't know. If you know, and it's not as fun. Okay. Do you guys know who Israel Adesanya is? Okay. Well, those people don't say anything. Okay. What can you assume about this person? The Last Style Bender. You're good at branding. Unique. Asian. Asian. Why do you say that? Don't look at me; read the words; ignore me. Yeah, don't do this. No. Style Bender. Does does this remind you of anybody? The Last Airbender. So there's like anime or something in there, some martial arts, some special power. And if you've seen Israel Adesanya, you'll know exactly—this was the perfect name, and he picked it. Okay. And I know there's a lot of fighters. The Notorious. You already know there's some trouble here; there's a bad boy here, right? Notorious. Okay. Now this one: Mirko Cro Cop Filipović. Do you guys know who this person is? I'm dipping into like the deep, you know, deep cut here. Do you know where "Cro Cop" comes from? Somebody. Some some of you guys know, but some—like, why what a weird name? Cro Cop. Because he's Croatian, and he used to be in the police force. And I've been watching him; I don't even understand why he wears the Peruna shorts. Croatian, right? Okay. This one's too easy, right? And then everybody's talking about MrBeast. I think MrBeast is brilliant beyond his age. Why is he called MrBeast? Because he doesn't do anything halfway; he goes into beast mode. I mean, you think about all his videos; like, he doesn't just give you a car; he gives you the Lambo. He doesn't give you the house; he gives you the island. See? So now it's consistent. When you think of MrBeast, he goes to the extreme. So I need a little help from all of you right now. Okay. And I just want you to shout out the first thing that comes to your mind. I'm sorry for whoever's going to get hurt by this exercise. Give him a nickname. The Wizard. The Wizard. Okay, hold on; I'm gonna get my marker out. Sorry, I'm a little slow. Okay. Neil, the Wizard. Okay. The Giver. The Giver. Okay. Okay. I heard "Relentless" over here. Relentless. Authentic. The Nerd. I was—did you see that montage on day one? I was like, "Who's that point? Dexter with the hair in the middle? What a dork! I can't believe you guys follow that guy," but it is the mortgage space; maybe that's cool for you, right? I'm just going to write "The Dork." Okay. The thing is we want to have some fun with with this. Okay. So when we give ourselves a nickname, we can't be so precious. So when we think of something that's relentless, what character can we sum it up like? Is there a fictional character that you can think of that's relentless? Huh? The The Little Engine That Could? Okay. Maybe more contemporary, you know, adult, like going back to childhood here. What? The Hulk. The Hulk. The Hulk is not relentless. Hulk smash. But good try. Jerry. Jerry. I can't—I have two people are talking at the same time. Tom and Jerry. Tom and Jerry. Okay. All right. All right, guys, we've stretched our creative level here. You know what I was thinking? The Terminator. Terminator. Vision, right? He's not going to stop. You cannot—like, he's got an army still coming after you. Sign up for the Mastermind; he's coming after you. Get away from me! Yeah, you know what I mean? Next one: This guy. You know this guy. Don't say new—what? Oh, got the room got real quiet. Trevor, what? Josh Peek. Okay, I didn't know who that is, but all right. Oh, did you hear that? Handsome. I didn't know your brother was here. Hype man. Hype man. Okay. Wingman. Okay. Robin. Okay. To what? Toxic? Sorry, Neil, I apologize; this is not working. I cannot hear a single person. Okay. Okay, we're we're good. I like this. I like like this. Okay. And I'm like looking at my clock here; I'm running out of time. You know, I was like, "Go ahead, dude, say it. Turn turn it on." You want to say something? There's a personality here. The more time I spend with him, he plays like the wounded dog, but "wounded dog" doesn't sound so good, guys, right? So I think it's no love, you know. They they just pay me so I can give him a hard time, and I hope it's working. So here's the cool thing—uh, let me give you this other thing. So many of you have done the two-word brand, and you've failed miserably. I've seen you; you've DM'd me. I'm like, "No, no, stop it; stop it." So I had to think of a different way. So maybe you can try just come up with a nickname. There's a couple of criteria the same before: It needs to be true; it needs to be unique—unique to you, at least—memorable. And you get bonus points if it's vulnerable. Okay? Like if you call yourself Trevor Badass York, I'm like, "Yeah, okay, come on." You got to lean into a personality trait, a character, or some something, a characteristic about who you are. So here's what I want to do: I'm going to give you just 30 measly seconds to come up with a nickname. A silly nickname. Can you do that? The time starts right now. Anybody want to share their nickname? Go ahead. Mr. Liftoff. Okay. He's committed to that; he's got a tattoo on himself, so I can't even critique that one. Who else has got one? Okay, go ahead. The Lone DeLorean. Hey, did you work on this ahead of time? You sure? It's pretty clever. Oh, I get it. No, you're—I get it. So clever. So clever. This is real estate humor; I get it. Okay. Someone else? High Definition. Okay, High Def. Can you imagine a fighter now introducing to the ring? Hi Def. Okay. Who else? Okay, go ahead. Unfiltered. Unfiltered is your name, Phil? Okay. I thought—okay, Unfiltered. Uh, let's go over here, the extroverted group, who surprisingly quiet. Got no love for you guys. Okay. Bad Girl. Bad Girl. That that girl. Oh, okay. Somebody else in the back. I'll write it down. Go ahead. Mortgage Professor. Okay. Okay, let's try this, man. I'm stressing out over this clock. That Girl. And Mortgage Professor. Tequ. Okay. Okay, hold on, hold on. Okay. Careb. Okay. And then what? One more? Tequila Guy. Tequila Guy. Yeah, Rick. Okay. All right. So all I wanted you to do was to try this on for size, to kind of loosen up a little bit and just come up with some words and and you know, have fun with this. Come up with a silly nickname. And here's the part: You're going to have to eventually say this to somebody, like, "Known as the…" in my industry. So if it sounds goofy, just keep working on it, and hopefully you can come up with something that might inspire your two-word brand. Like, remember mine's "A Loud Introvert," and it tells a part of my story. And the reason why this works so well for me, it becomes a filter for how I tell stories and how I show up; it's woven into everything that I do. And then that's how people get to know you and remember you—that familiarity that we talked about. And keep showing up, just like that. Okay. Um, Trevor, the clock is completely stressing me out right now. It says I have two minutes. Should we—do you guys want him to stop? Okay, we could add another 30 seconds. Okay, I'm just kidding. Okay. All right. I I'm breaking the golden R. I told them I'm Asian; we do things on time, and it's 1:48, so I'm going to do this either fast or we'll just get to the part that we can. The problem that many of you have in creating—you could have five more—thank you—five more seconds. Yeah, five more minutes. Okay, five more minutes. Go! Five more minutes. Okay. Is that—we're writing to anyone or to everyone? When we really need to write to someone. When you're not clear as who you're writing to and creating content for—this was this came from my podcast with Aan Abdullah. He used to run AppSumo. He says, "Writing—it's like writing a love letter and starting with 'To Whom It May Concern.' Like try that sometime. 'I really care about you, dear whoever,' right?" And if that's how you're writing your content because you're not clear on the avatar or your ideal customer, it's "Dear Whoever"—anyone will do; everyone will do, not just someone. So the question for you is: When you look at your content, would you follow you if it wasn't you? Sorry, hard truths. Uh, I want to share with you this exercise that we usually do when we're doing uh, journey mapping and and building customer profiles; it's called empathy mapping, and it's a way for you to understand the customer profile or the buyer persona a little bit better. Okay. So we're going to do this together, everybody. Okay. I'm going to show you first, and then you get to do it by yourselves. Okay. Like I said, we're going to do some work today. Okay. So what you want to do is describe your customer by pretending to be them: "I'm a something but an adjective." Okay. So an adjective and a job title. The way it would look is: "I'm an overworked CMO." Okay. We need an add an adjective because that gives it a little personality. So I I'll give you an opportunity in a second to do this. Okay. So "I'm an overworked Chief Marketing Officer," and then you fill in: "I struggle with"—what's a personal professional challenge? What is the pain point for them? Okay. So as an overworked CMO, I struggle with getting noticed against bigger, more established brands; that would be a possible answer. I want something based on my problem or challenge. So some solution, a feature, a benefit, something like that. "I want a scrappy branding agency that specializes in underdogs because I need to move the needle to be recognized as innovative." Then you have to add in the pain: "And what is the pain, or I risk"—what's at stake if I fail? "Or I risk getting fired, demoted, professional embarrassment, and future opportunities." Okay. So this is the part you you're going to do by yourself. I'm going to give you a little bit of time to do this. Okay. Just try this on for a size. Okay. We're trying to make this easier for you. So you take a picture of this. So I'm in—so you're going to take the voice and the personality of the person you'd like to work with the most. For Sean, you're pretty clear on your avatar; give this a shot. Okay. You are—I know you are. So everybody, we're going to give you like, you know, one minute of my precious five minutes. Anybody want to share anything that they might have gotten from trying to just imagine the world to the eyes of your ideal customer? No? Go ahead. Lee. Analysis paralysis. And I—out. Okay. So "I'm a stressed engineer." That's super specific. Is that who you'd like to work with? That's yeah, a lot of Tesla people, a lot of tech. Okay, Tech. Wonderful. That was super specific. Have you done this before? Been master—I haven't done this. Okay. So does that give you insight into the kind of content you want to create? Yeah. Okay. All right. So my my hope is when I learned how to build user profiles or user personas and customer profiles, it gave me a lot of insight because before I was just making things, I guess mostly to make myself happy, but it became a lot easier when I was making it for someone. So if you're going to make the world's best meal, you might want to find out what their uh, maybe if they have any allergies, what their preferences are, what kind of dining style they like, what kind of cuisine. And that's really what the content is; it's to to for to suit someone's very specific needs and wants. Okay. Now, I I wish I could just do a deeper version of this with you; I cannot. But I was going to do a ask you if you want me to try to whiteboard a user profile, or we can just show you the GPT way to do it, and then I think you probably just want the GPT version. Okay. So I'm going to teach you how to just type this in, and it'll create a user persona for you, and then you just have to say, "Is that somebody I'd like to work with?" If not, roll it and ask it to do it again and give it some parameters to work with. Okay. And so the first part of the prompt—and I I'll I'll share the resource with you later; don't don't worry about screen capturing this right now—"Act as a marketing expert with decades of experience in the field across direct response funnels and copywriting; create a comprehensive and detailed buyer persona for your niche or your industry or your vertical or your job," whatever it is. Okay. And then you add to it: "I am"—you have to describe what you do, working in X market, like whatever city you're in. "I'm passionate about"—something; we need to tell it something about you so it can match you with your ideal buyer type. Does that make sense? So you can't just leave this empty. A lot of people hate AI because lazy input equals lazy output; you just need to give it some information. It doesn't even need to be formatted or spelled correctly. "My company is"—and any kind of relevant detail. "We do $14 million a year; we do 40 million; 400 million; we have four people; we use X kind of technology," whatever it is, you put that in there, and then you have it create the profile for you. And what you're looking for—sorry, I have to skip around here because I'm all over the place—is this part: Demographics—is like age, gender, education, size of family—all the things are very easy to measure, but the psychographics are the most important things that you need to know. Okay. They're wants, needs, hopes, fears, dreams, pain points, beliefs, values, preferences, affiliations, and brand affinities. If it can give you this information, you can easily create content to meet them where they're at, not where you're at. Okay. All right. I realized the wrap-up sign is here, so I'm going to wrap this part up. Is anybody here really concerned about their legacy, like what you leave behind? Okay. I was asked this question recently, and they asked me, "Chris, you're so present in your brand; what if something horrible happens to you? What is going to happen because no one else is on the channel? You're really the face of the of the company; aren't you concerned about this?" Yeah. I've made a lot of content; I've…
I've made over 1300 videos, 200 podcasts, and so many coaching calls. I've written a book, I've written courses, and my notebooks are filled with drawings and ideas. And here's the thing: all of this stuff is great training material for something else, like for an AI.
So I would encourage you about something. So I have a dad; he just turned 82 years old yesterday. And I was reminded of this when I was working on this deck that I need to fill—I need to ask him lots of questions about his life so that if and when he does pass, his great-great-great-grandchildren will have someone to talk to, so they know their great grandpa's story. And I think that's really wonderful.
Like, a lot of us are really scared about deep fakes, but we're looking at the negative part of it, not the positive part. So we're really close, if not months, years away from being able to do this. So a reasonable proximity—or proximity of you—can exist that can help future generations of your family have some connection to you. The thing is, you have to start making that content like right now, in the greatest fidelity.
So even if you don't believe in marketing or branding, and you don't, you know, you're well off financially, just think about that future—that future generations might want to have some connection to you. And I think that's a really good reason to make content. So in the age of AI, you can possibly live forever. All right, and I think that's really cool—some form of immortality, the legacy that you leave behind: your ideas, your voice, your likeness.
So here's the Real Talk part: none of us are getting any younger, and today is a really good day to start. Okay. Now, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to wrap up here. Some resources to share with you—this part you may want to just take a picture of. I'm not going to have time to read it because I'm at over time.
So there's a gentleman, his name is Robert Bly; he wrote this book called *The Copywriter's Handbook*, and he—he gives seven amazing tips, just seven, that I can share with you right now. So I'm just going to step through it. These are writing prompts: What secret do some content creators know that you don't? Stay one step ahead of the stock market, just like Martha Stewart, but without her legal liability. So you want to tie to current events, right? So here we go. I'm just going to step through this. Okay, I know I'm feeling the heat, guys. Okay, this is the prompt I said you can have—there it is. Okay, and these are the books I think you need to read—so fast, I warned you too fast. Okay. Okay. All right, here's what we do. Ready? You know what? If you turn on video mode, you won't have to be that good. You know what I'm saying? You ready, everybody? It's going to go fast; I warned you. Here we go. Ready? Here we go, everybody. Cameras up. Y's—sorry, I'm over time. These are the books. Okay, you can put your phones out; we're done.
Okay, final thoughts. Final thoughts. Okay, wait, wait, wait. Sorry, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Final thoughts: There, if there's one thing that I want you to take away from this, I want you to know this: that branding is about this one key idea—different is better than better. I want you to be obsessed with being different, to lean in. We're all waiting for you. We're all waiting for you. And the—the last little idea is: all of this social content, it's all garbage if you lose yourself in the process. So it's so simple and so stupid; we just want you to be you. Or, as my friend Westcott said, "the truest you you can be." That's it, everybody. Thank you very much. Thinking of going to WMax's year? Use code M24FUTURE to get $400 off a ticket, then come visit the Futures Booth to see a live whiteboard session with Chris. [Music]