165. Building Your Personal Brand Makes a Promise: Are You Keeping It?
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and your communication are predicated on the purpose you define for yourself and the promises you make to your colleagues and company. My name is perhaps, and I teach strategic communication at stanford graduate school business, welcomed to think fast, talk smart. The podcast today, I am looking forward to speaking with seh golden seh is a best selling author, entrepreneur and marketing expert.

His books include purple cow linchpin, and this is marketing. His twenty first book is this is strategy, creating the conditions for change. IT is out now, says blog is one of the most popular in the world.

And his work is shake the way we think about communication, branding and creative work. Well, thanks, welcome. I am really excited for our conversation today.

Happy to be here.

I'd like to start with the basics. How do you define branding and marketing? And why is IT so important for companies and individuals to focus on their own branding and marketing?

Branding is not low going. And when you hear people talking about the fact that they work on their brand, they probably are confused. All the brand is is a promise and expectation. So the way to understand this is if nike announced they were going to open a hotel, I think we would understand what I would be like. But if hired said, they going to come out with the line of sneaker ers, we would have no clue because nike has a brand and hired has a local got IT.

So it's the expectation that has been built around whatever the company does, right?

That if you're an individual, you have a brand, whether you want one or not. If your brand is that you're invisible and doesn't really add a lot of value and that your brand, that's what I expect. If you bright up a room every time you leave IT, that's your brand.

If you're the kind of person who regularly under promises and over delivers, that's your brand. We get to build a personal brand through deliberate action. How do we make IT so that when people encounter us, a promise is implicit and then we keep that promise?

So in some ways, your brand is your reputation, right?

Yes, but it's intentional. You're not invested money in ads, but you are investing money in all sort ative interactions in of your summer in turn. And you organize the lunch every friday without asking anyone's permission, that becomes party your brand.

So it's the intentionality behind that. So what branding and marketing advice would you give to, say, a global podcast focusing on communication and careers is looking to expand and that actually reach more people?

So how many people listen to the podcast? The first week .

you did IT meet? We were very few by ten. Yeah, ten to twenty. Most of those were related to me.

exactly. So how did you get from twenty to hundreds of thousands? IT wasn't because you ran a lot of ads, and IT wasn't because some person put you on a bill board on the super ball.

IT happened because the people who listened felt like their status would go up or their affiliations ation with others would go up if they share the podcast with other people. That story is inherent in the spread of every idea, because people care about status and they care about the filling ation. So podcast that spread aren't necessarily good in the sensor, well recorded or well edited.

They spread because people benefit from spreading them. And so the opportunity you have, as you think about your podcast growing, how do you use the permission and trust you've earned to create a change for the people who are listening? So they spread IT in the gold standard in this, which always surprises people, is alcohol analyst because it's not anonymous.

The thing is, no one knows where their headquarters are. No one knows if they have an add budget. They all need one. But the first rule of alcohol anonymous is always talk about alcohol anonymous, that principal number nine of making immense means you're going over to people you're interacted with and explaining to them why you an it's spread the same way podcast spread because other people wanted to spread IT.

excEllent. So you have to focus on the value you provide for others and help them and equip them, give them something good to be talking about.

Good is fine, you should make work, are proud of. But what you're trying to do is help them get to where they are going. They will not talk about you because it's good for you. They will talk about you because it's good for them.

So I want to pull on this thread of story telling a little bit more. I have heard you say that people don't just buy products. They buy stories. Can you dive a little deeper into the role of story telling? And in your perspective, what makes for an effective story beyond the fact that IT helps people find value that they can then propagate?

So what's about what a story even is? You go to an open house of houses for sale and you smell an apple pie backing. That is a story the real state broker put in in the of turn on the oven because they wanted to remind you of your childhood.

The story IT has no words, but is still a story. If you are resume, IT has types in IT, you are telling a story because they don't know anything about you other than this little sheet paper. But that paper just gave you a way.

We see story in class. We see IT in sophistic tion. We see IT in the language that people use.

So we get to pick the story we tell from the way we shake hands to the way we hand in our work, too, whether we roll our eyes to, yes, are narrative of, well, my story as I grow in this country. But I was an army brand. I ve been to forty two country.

That's still a narrative and a story that will visit IT with some tea book and not others. You are associated with my arma matter. The G S P. Nobody who teaches at the G S. B was teaching when I was there. And yet we still called the G S B because what IT means to be at stanford is there's a story, an expectation of brand, of what IT needs to be a stand for graduate, even though there is not one thing about IT that to say.

I find this really, really fascinating that the way you see storytelling is very broad. It's beyond the narrative. It's the experience, is what you do and show is part of your story.

The intentionality is clearly important in all of this. I'd like free to share a little bit more about this promise perspective because IT implies, you mentioned empathy. The promise implies an understanding of the personal people you are promising to bingo.

So in the book, this is strategy. I talk about the small, viable audience. We are attempted to want to please everyone.

And social media has made IT worse. We don't want anyone to give us a time down. We don't want anyone to unfolding us.

We want to be popular in front of everyone. And if we are in business, we want every single person to wanted buy our brand of this and our brand of that. What's the biggest possible addressable market? This is nonsense.

This never ever works. What we want is molest viable audience. The small group p of people might be a lot, but the small as group of people that if they would miss us, if we were gone, IT would be enough.

So how old shirts should not call me on the phone and try to persuade me to drink coffee? I don't try coffee. I'm not for starbuck. Starbucks isn't for me that fine. Because what he needs to do is please the people who match the persona that they're setting out to, please. So what we seek to do is making promise to a group of people where we can say for people who believe blank and who want blank, that's what I have implied.

That answer is clarity of message. You can't be waffling or ambiguous. You have to be very clear what if you found helps you and helps others you've worked with to be clear in their message.

This is a tRicky quest because language is not emotion. Language is a step that triggers emotion. And so google is famous for asking ridiculous questions in job and accuse, how would you move mount fuji? And they took a lot of criticism, because IT was shown that someone being able to think on their feet and that sort of thing wasn't gonna help you do your actual job.

I think IT was a great idea because IT was a message in a signal. IT was, if you're uncomfortable with this order on sense, you shouldn't come here because we do a lot of nonsense around here in the service of our craft. This isn't an actual useful question.

I know how to fear. Family gas stations are the united states. So I am asking you, my asking because I want to work with people who are okay with that.

In the old days, you went to visit C A, A, the talent agency in los Angeles, where real states very expensive. You walked into a room that was huge and there's nobody in IT. They have to walk all the way across to get to the reception is to a buzz in and is just like visiting the visitor, right?

You're trembling and is fire coming out? That's a story, right? Is is today, we have so much money and so much status, we can afford the waste and entire floor here. And you Better be nervous when you get to this absolutely beautiful person right at the front, and that person just sits there and only works two minutes and hour pressing a button. Let folks in.

But if that kind of status is important, you that our store so you're basically a hollywood director, you're trying to figure out I use lighting and words and sounds and imagery to communicate the people. What genre and and on was really important here. If you go to the cockpit section and your book is in IT, IT looks wrong and weird. That is, in the cookbook section, we know what a cook book is supposed to look like. So what section of the bookstore does your career fit in that the quest .

in with that clarity of purpose in mind, you can then orchestrate the story. And yet again, you remind us that the story IT has visceral components as well, and they have to all be conclusion to reinforce. What IT is you're trying to get across.

And I would add that in that confluence, you get clarity, and if you're not congruent, then IT becomes confusing. I wanted turn into your latest book because your latest book focuses on strategy, something I spend a lot of my time doing is somebody, you teachers, to teaching communication. How do you define strategy? And can you explain what you mean by the four strategy threats?

So strategy is a philosophy. IT is a philosophy of becoming, is not a road map. And instead of tactics, IT says, you're gonna spend time and money over years to make a change in the world.

Can we be clear about who you seek to change and watch the change you seek to make? Now you need a strategy to get there. And strategies have four components.

One of them is empathy. You are not in control, you are not in charge. You need to engage with other people, and they are not going to do what you want cause you tell him to.

You need to feel like they don't know what you know, they don't see what you see, they don't want what you want. So you have to go to them with a story and an offer that they will voluntarily embrace. That is really hard for people.

The second one is games not like an appliance scrap, but games are any situation where there are constraints and players and feedback loops and outcomes. And the reason it's worth calling in a game two recent one, we know a lot about game theory. So if you learn about game theory, you can apply IT.

And two, you won't take yourself so seriously, because if you make a move and IT doesn't work, doesn't mean you're bad person, just mean you made a move that didn't work next time you'll make a different move and there are moves to be made if you applying for job that has A I screening, IT is a very smart move to either make sure your resume is easily scan and understood by A I loaded with all the keywords, or decide that's a game you can't win and refuse to play that game and either apply somewhere else or fear how to get around IT with a referred by arguing about IT doesn't help you. The other two are time, which is, I remember getting my first job at a business school. I would not approach to the same way today because I have forty years of experience.

Over time, your career starts become an asset or an impediment to the next thing you want to do. What seeds are you planning to get there? And the last one, the biggest one, is systems.

They are all around us. They can not be invisible. You are a cog in the educational industrial complex. The education industrial complex is four hundred years old, and IT is deeply buried in so many elements, not just the window of stickers on a car, but everywhere we look. So when we see a system, we should be aware what that system creates, the node in that system, what the people who are not in that system want and have empathy for them you got, acknowledge that the system exists and learn to dance with IT.

IT seems to me that there's a level of meta awareness that you're talking about in strategy that many of us don't think about this notion of observing the systems, the time variables, seeing using the analogy of a game verses something else and then being other focus. So the skills required to be strategic, by your definition, are quite different than I think many people get trained in. When IT comes to developing strategy, where do you advise people to start? What's the process that you encourage them to take to craft their strategy?

I don't see very many strategies that are made by committee. I see mission statements and logos that are made by committee. But strategies usually begin with one person articulating a set of assertions and describing a plan, right? So Louisa Clark had a strategy for how they were going to work a map to the midwest.

And Steve jobs didn't really have the words for the strategy, but he stuck with his strategy for a long time. So you don't have to be the C E, O or the founder, but you do have to be able to articulate. So the example I like to give, I was at yahoo in one thousand ninety nine.

I was not in the room when this decision was made, and i'm glad yahoo had the chance to buy google for ten million dollars, not billion million, and they declined and put the money into yahoo kids instead, because they are unstated. Strategy was the internet is they cant and filled with speed bumps. We're going to build a place where people come and don't leave.

We want to turn one click to ten to one hundred. We have yahoo, yahoo 的 weather， yahoo k, yahoo this, yahoo that and put ads on everyone. And google had the strategy of the open web is mattering.

We're going to build the site where people come and then they leave. We're going to measure how many seconds IT takes between the time they come and they goes somewhere else. And so to yahoo's credit, they get just a little credit.

They were aware that IT was a different strategy to their detriment. They didn't see that the world has changed and they didn't change the strategy. And that's why no one goes yahoo anymore. So what we get to do as strategists is get smart about understanding how to make these assertions in describing the forth threads so that other people can come along with us.

I appreciate the commercial in advertisement that you have done for the type of work that I do, because embedded in everything you've said about strategy is assertion, and assertion is communication. We have to be able to define the strategy, but we also have to be able to communicate in assert for that strategy. Well said, before we end, i'd like to ask you three questions. This is my way. When I create just for you in another two or similar for everybody have interviewed.

you bring IT on. It's my understanding .

that you studied philosophy and you also got an M, B. A. Very curious about that.

How do you apply what you learned in your study of philosophy into the work you do? Now I heard you talk about the philosophy of becoming as a strategy. How does philosophy in the study of IT play out in what you do?

Philosophy is the science of thinking about thinking hand. That means you're asking questions. You're trying to look at the structure of things.

And when I was an undergrad, a Steve, janis and I go to the largest student run business in the country. He ended up going to harvard. I want to stanford, and I got there.

I was second person in the class with chip, and I was wildly intimidated by the stories that were being told about the fact that I hadn't worked in a consulting firm for two years. I wasted two years at a commercial bank, and I was never going to be able to do IT. So I needed to tell a story about my relationship with the professors.

And I knew that if I got called on to do the spread sheet stuff, I was just gonna fail. So I just marketed myself to the professors, if you want to get someone to contribute, when it's time to talk about the personalities and the stories and how fit together, call on me. But when you get to spend.

So once you want to embarrassed me, i'm not even in the room. And they found that useful because I had empathy for their problem. And so that's how I combined understanding business with philosopher and computers.

There's a lesson in that know your strength, be willing to communicate those strengths and help other people solve problems. And you can benefit. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why i'm going .

to pick murray, my puppy. I think that murray, without a narratives, is extraordinary good at suddenly communicating his fear, or his urgencies or his desires. And when we think about how much of a mess we've made hiding what we really think, he gets what he wants a lot.

Where he gets into troubles is when he doesn't get what he wants, he doesn't know what to do. And I think that people could think a little bit harder about how they will be seen. Murray has the advantage being one of the country dogs in the world.

Me, you and I might not have that advantage, but there are other things we could create that make IT so that people see chroma and they might experience. The only thing the people who have Christmas having common is other people are interested in them because they are interested. And Christ as a choice. And Christmas is a skill, and we can get IT if we practice.

A good communicator is a communicator that demonstrates Chris ma. And in your answer, IT doesn't have to be a human. Final question, what are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

Who's IT for? What's IT for? What's the change we seek to make?

Who's IT for? Pick the smaller viable audience? What's IT for? What exactly are we offering? If we're not trying to have anything happen, don't bother. And the third is very specifically, if this works to worry what what has changed.

who's IT for, what's IT for and what has changed. I think if all of us were to reflect on these three questions, you could really help us focus our communication and general. But certainly, what we are marketing and how we are defining our brand said, this has been a fantastic conversation.

I've taken copious notes. I appreciate the support for the work that I do in terms of the way you think about strategy and communication, the notion of us being intentional, making promises, searching for the smallest viable audience, this is all great advice for helping us to connect with others into community. Well, thanks, sir.

Thank you. Keep make IT a ruckus. We need your help.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of think fast to talk smart, the podcast to learn more about personal branding, listen to episode one eighteen with story Clark and to learn more about reputation, listen to episode sixty four with alison lugar. This episode was produced by jenne luna, Michael rally and me, matt Abrahams. Our music is from floyd wonder, with thanks to podium podcast company. Please find us on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts, be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on linked in and instagram and check out faster, smarter dao for deep die videos, english language learning content, our newsletter and so much more.