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Branding Matters: Growth Mindset Virtual Conference
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Nov 9, 2023
A conference growth mindset, success, and motivation. Join live panels and ask your questions about digital transformation, emerging technologies, innovation, strategy, and leadership. Enjoy live music played during session breaks. Brew exotic tea, coffee, and learn how to mix drinks from an award-winning bartender. Conference Website: https://growthmindsetconference.com SPEAKER Sally Hogshead - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hogshead ๐ C# Corner - Community of Software and Data Developers ๐ https://www.c-sharpcorner.comโโโ
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0:00
Hey, so I want you to ask yourself a question
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If you had a choice, would you rather be better than the competition or different than the competition
0:17
Would you rather be better or different? Now, I'm going to bring you inside my research with 1.3 million professionals inside of companies
0:27
like Twitter, AT&T, NASA, Facebook, when we looked at what the leaders did differently
0:34
How did those leaders succeed? What were the high performers doing that nobody else was
0:38
I'm going to show you what we learned and then how you can begin to apply this
0:44
Here's what I want you to be thinking of. It's good to be better
0:49
It's good to be better, but it's better to be different. It's good to be better
0:56
but it's better to be different. Different is better than better. Different is better than
1:05
better. Now, here's the deal. This may sound counterintuitive, but we grew up with a myth
1:11
and the myth says work hard to be better. Be better than everyone else, better than the other
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students in the classroom. In your career, you're told be better than the competition because that's
1:21
how to be the best. But here's the deal. This is no longer the case. It's no longer enough to be
1:27
better or even to be the best. You could have the best software, but if nobody buys it, you may as
1:33
well have never created it. You could have the biggest idea, but if nobody listens to it and
1:38
remembers and takes action on your idea, then you may as well have never come up with it
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But better is not better. It's worse. Better keeps you chained to the same way working as your competition. And it makes you vulnerable to a more convenient location, a newer technology, a fancier degree, a cheaper price
1:58
Being the best is not enough if nobody notices or cares. Being the best is not enough in an
2:10
oversaturated, distracted, crowded environment. So what is better than better? What's better than
2:19
better is being different. Strategically being very different, identifying the qualities within
2:27
you that are highly differentiated, just like a product like Tesla, just like a person like Elon
2:32
Musk being highly differentiated. So here's what I'm going to be showing you over the course of our
2:38
time together. And I'm got to admit, I'm kind of excited because I'm brand new. So you guys have
2:46
cocktails. I have fresh Sharpies. So here's what we're going to be talking about. This is better
2:53
Better is incremental improvement. If you are better than the competition, it means that you
3:00
have some microscopic advantage that allows you to be a little bit faster or a little bit cheaper
3:05
Better versus different. And we're going to be dissecting this in this discussion. Why is better
3:12
no longer the most important thing for you to be able to be? And I want you to begin to think
3:18
about it like this. Better is vertical thinking. Better is about improving. It's about building on
3:27
something that already exists. It's about looking at the competition and watching what they're doing
3:31
and copying. Different, on the other hand, is horizontal thinking. It's nonlinear. When you
3:38
think differently, when you communicate differently, people hear you and remember you because you are
3:44
locking in on something that nobody else has ever said or done. If you want to grow a business or
3:51
sell a message or start a movement or create a startup that changes the world, you must find
3:57
what makes you different. And we're going to be diving into that today. Now, here's why it's so
4:04
important for you to be different rather than better. In my research of these 1.3 million
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professionals that I described to you. I'm going to give you one example. This is the ytics
4:18
from an IBM leadership team that I came in. The problem that they were having was that there was
4:23
internal conflict. And when, as we began looking at it, as we began seeing what their numbers were
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we began to realize that their communication patterns were focusing too much on being better
4:35
than each other rather than each person within the organization being able to identify how do
4:40
they add distinct value. So in other words, people were trying to take one model, like that one model
4:47
of what success looks like rather than standing out and contributing in different ways. So I'm
4:54
going to show you, it's kind of a, if you take one thing away from this, here's what the high
5:01
performers do differently. What the high performers do differently. There are two things they do
5:08
differently. Now, initially, I thought that what high performers were going to do differently would be based on education, a resume, network, skills, and I was wrong. The two things high
5:18
performers do differently. First, they are admired for a noteworthy ability to contribute a specific
5:25
benefit, a specific benefit to their team, to their customer, to their client, to their manager
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They delivered a specific benefit. And here's what I mean by that. The professionals that were detail oriented were really detail oriented and they look for
5:42
opportunities and projects to build upon that detail orientation so that when they showed up
5:48
they knew exactly how to over deliver. They weren't trying to be all things to all people
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They were trying to excel in one specific area. Now, what's the second thing that the high performers did differently
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They over-delivered in one specialty. One specialty. So here's what I mean by this
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The high performers would go into any type of challenge or opportunity, any type of meeting
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or pitch, any type of development or creative process. And they, instead of saying, what do I, what do I need to do differently
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Instead of, instead of trying to be all things to all people, they would say the way in which I am most likely to succeed is by being different from everybody else on my team to over deliver in one specific area, such as details, such as asking smarter questions, such as being a leader whose results oriented
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such as being able to bring people in, to bring people around, to make them emotionally involved
6:56
to be able to be creative. All of these are ways in which you can over deliver
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So what the high performers are doing differently is they were not focusing on what made them
7:07
better, but they were focusing on what made them different. Now, in my career, I grew up from the
7:14
first half of my career. I was one of the most award-winning copywriters in the world
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at the age of 24 I opened up my first advertising agency in Los Angeles at the age of 27 And when I was 31 my work was hung in the Smithsonian Museum of American History And the reason why branding is such a great lesson for us
7:40
for our own individual brands, is the brands don't focus on how they're better than the
7:45
competition. The best brands focus on how they're different. These were my clients
7:52
And over the course of working with them, my job was to help differentiate them
7:57
So what the most admired brands do is they focus on what makes them different, what makes them different
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Now, Shell was describing the personal brand assessment that I created a decade ago that's alive and well being used inside of those organizations I mentioned, like AT&T, IBM, GE, Qualcomm
8:18
And here's how to take it. Go to howtofascinate.com forward slash U, Y-O-U, howtofascinate.com forward slash U
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and the code is C-sharp. Let's take a look at one of my favorite participants. Let's put this
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up on the screen here. We have Shell. Shell, when he took the assessment, we learned that he
8:44
communicates at his best, the way in which he adds value is with passion and innovation
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Passion and innovation. He is described at his best as out of the box, social and energizing
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Out of the box, social and energizing. So I'd like to tell you a little story about
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when I first met Shell. The year was 2001. We were just coming along to the end of the dot-com
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Bubble. And Shell approached me and he said, we have a completely different concept for a bank
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Now, most banks focused on being better. When he worked with ING Direct, you can probably guess
9:27
Shell was brilliant at making ING different. So I remember him calling me when I was working in
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Los Angeles at the time and saying, we want something nobody has ever seen before. We want
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to absolutely revolutionize the banking business. That is one of the ways in which not only has he
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succeeded, but that ING has had the opportunity to be at the very forefront of that digital
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direct model that nobody else did. So let's come back to this for a little bit
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Every time, every time you communicate, you're doing one of two things. You are either adding
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value or you're taking up space. You're adding value or you're taking up space. So think about
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you know, we've all been in meetings when somebody keeps talking just for the sake of talking and
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you start to tune them out and pretty soon their words go into the mental spam filter. You know
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what I'm talking about? It's kind of like they turn into human spam. You don't want to be that
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guy. But the same is true in all of your communication. You're either adding value or
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taking up space. Here's a principle. It's better to avoid putting yourself in front of your customer
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your client, your team, your manager, your prospect, or your peers than to waste their time
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with weak communication. Yep, more bad news. Today, competing in a crowded and commoditized
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sector, especially enterprise, means that you must understand how you add distinct value to the
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people around you. So let's come back to talking about this. Now, a moment ago, we were talking
11:14
about better. We were talking about better and different. So let's go into this more deeply
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What do I mean when I say better? What do I mean when I say different? How do the two of them
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compare? And what are the ways in which you are going with the default of competing on the basis
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of being better? So, okay, so we're going to start off with better. Now, when something is better
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when something is competing on the basis of being better, it's purely competitive
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not necessarily focused on the result, but on not screwing up. When you're playing for better
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you're playing not to lose. So the problem that happens within an organization is when
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they're only focused on being better is they, they tend to not have the kind, they tend to not
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have, they, they tend to not have the kind of innovation that we all need when you're gonna
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you guys are gonna laugh when I come back on camera. We're totally good. We're totally good. You know, it's great
12:19
So speaking of better versus different, hold on one second. I'm going to show you something funny
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I think maybe it was the smell of the Sharpie. Sorry, we just had my flip chart just fell in the back, so you guys didn't get to see it
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But that's what you get for being better and the different instead of being better
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Okay, so let's come back to the slide. We'll continue. you. Classic organizations compete on the basis of being better, and this is why they have that
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downward slide into obsolescence. The problem with better is that it is not a long-term strategy
12:55
for competing. Now, better is a vertical process for incremental improvement. Different is a
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horizontal nonlinear approach for quantum leaps. So what's the difference between better and
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different. Better follows established patterns. Different creates new ones. Better incrementally improves one idea. Different generates multiple ideas. Better can be repeated and replicated
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by a computer. Different requires creativity at some point in the process, such as creating the
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initial software. Better is about information. Different is about insight. Now, better was best
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a few years ago, but today we don't have the option of being both better and different at all times
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So if we look at better and different, here's the quadrant that you want to live in. The quadrant
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you want to live in is better and different. Obviously, that would be the ideal. That's where
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Tesla lives, Apple, world-dominating brands that are both loved, admired, and respected
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Now, what if you are different and not better? Different, not better
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Here's what I'm going to propose to you, and I'm going to come back to this idea because I understand this is kind of controversial. If you have a limited budget, if you are an underdog in
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any capacity. If you are not the most experienced with the biggest budget, you can't afford to
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compete on the basis of better. You must find a way in which you are different than the competition
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and then exploit that and capitalize upon it and leverage it. That is the only option that you have
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because competing on the basis of being better is like trying to outdo GE or AT at having the longest term logo It simply it not going to work You can do it without having more money time manpower Let keep going around our quadrant
15:05
Next, we have brands that are better, but not different. Better, but not different
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Okay. So I'm going to do a quick review. Different and better is branding nirvana
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These are the hallowed brands. They're not just products. They have built intense emotional
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connections on a massive scale. If these brands can remain both different and better, they become
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iconic. And that is the top of the food chain. So think of Ted, Ricky Gervais, Disney, the Rolling
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Stones, Tesla. Every brand wants to be better and different because this is the Hall of Fame
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But until you achieve this iconic status, there are three other options to combine how you are
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different and better. So option number two that we talked about just a moment ago is being different
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but not better, that lower quadrant there. So I propose to you something a little controversial
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if you want to jumpstart your business, if you're a startup, if you are a new team within an
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established organization, if you are launching or relaunching any product and you don't have the
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biggest budget, different is better than better. If you are an entrepreneur, if you are a small
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business, if you're a student, if you work inside of a large enterprise corporation that is extremely
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competitive. You can't out-better better. So let's think about what makes, what, what continuing on, why is different better than better
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So we come back to better, but not different. Better, but not different. These brands are
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stable, hardworking, results oriented. They live in a trusted reputation. They are consistent
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And here's the blessing and the curse. They deliver the exact same thing every time. It's kind of like vanilla ice cream. Better brands are an old standby. So by focusing on being better, they operate on what is now an archaic premise that brands just need awareness. People just need relationships. A product just needs a logo
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So metaphorically, it's like they haven't quite shifted over to the new world
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Now, when a brand is better, can it attract new customers by being different
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And the answer is yes, but only if they can get out of the rut of the repetitive nature of better
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They have to get out of playing at stake. They have to have some kind of polarization
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It's kind of like better is exciting for a little while, but eventually it needs to be able to incorporate new ideas, new products
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You can't just be a blue chip name forever. To stay relevant, you have to also be different
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But now let's take a look at our last quadrant. The last quadrant is that you are
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Hold on. Come back there. You know, it's funny that it's actually not in there
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So imagine it says that you're not better and you're not different. You're not different
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you're not better. So this is, you're screwed if you are in this quadrant, because unless your
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brand becomes either better or different, it'll slide into that gurgling quicksand of commoditization
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So these brands have to keep spending more and more money on marketing. They tend to go out of
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business. They don't have raving fans. They don't have people who are willing to pay more for their
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products. Think about a brand like Blockbuster when Netflix came around or Taxi Cabs when Uber
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came around. So remember, different is better than better in situations when you have limited
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resources and need an immediate turbo charge. Okay, let's move on for a moment. Communication
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trend, more reason why you need to be different. 85% of your financial success is due to your
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personality, your ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, their word, not mine, only 15% is due to technical knowledge. Let that sink in. 15% is due to technical knowledge
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I want you to absorb that for a minute. This is from the Carnegie Institute of Technology
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It's not the Carnegie Institute of Leadership. It's not the Carnegie Institute of Communication
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or Personality. They say that only 15% of your success is related to your technical knowledge
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Now, if you're in a field like software development, if you're in any type of startup
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or enterprise organization, what that means is by focusing on the qualities in your personality
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that make you different have a much higher likelihood than of you having better technical expertise
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than your competition. Another trend, 39% of B2B buyers select a vendor
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according to the skills of the salesperson rather than price, quality, or service features
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This one from Harvard Business Review. So let's come back to this one
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39% of B2B buyers, especially enterprise buyers, make their selection based on the person
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not on price, quality, or service features. Price, quality, and service features are the commodity
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The person is what makes the brand different. It's that secret sauce of the sales process
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Now, when we take an ysis of results of what makes people different, what exactly makes people different
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Here's what I found in these 1.3 million professionals that I measured that I described earlier
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There are seven different ways to communicate, seven different ways that you can fascinate your listener
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In other words, earn their attention, keep their attention, have a competitive advantage in their mind so they remember you instead of thinking about your competitors
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This is what the IBM results looked like when we measured their leadership
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You can see the average results here. And I want you to take a look at alert
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Alert on the end in the green. The IBM leaders were far more detail-oriented than their peers, far more detail-oriented than other technology companies and than the overall global population
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Next up, alert is the language of details. Now, when you take the personality test that we described for you, and we'll give you that code again, when you take the test, it'll tell you, do you score high in alert or do you score high in something like power and prestige
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Here's another little piece that we learned. Take a look at trust which is the blue bar The IBM leaders scored extraordinarily high in trust meaning they were consistent they were stable they were dependable and they were reliable
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But here's what we learned. The team was so focused on being detail-oriented and on being
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consistent that sometimes the potential downfall was they resisted experimenting with new approaches
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And I want to tell you a quick story about a personal friend of mine. His name is Conrad Lee. And when I was talking to Conrad about the growth mindset, I was blown away by him
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Now, let me tell you what front Conrad is 18 years old. He lives in Seattle. He's on a professional soccer team. He was a chess champion while he was growing up. And I remember him telling me this story. So I asked him to describe it more in a recent conversation about growth mindset and how that's changed his life
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He said when he was eight years old, living in Montana, he would play online chess
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But as he started competing in tournaments, started getting a ranking, that he became obsessed with the ranking instead of with the challenge, instead of with the lessons
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And in sixth grade, Conrad had a new chess teacher. And the chess teacher said to him, forget about your rating
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Now, it's not just forget about your rating in terms of play for the sake of playing or have fun
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It's about success requires stretching yourself to make sure that you're going to challenge yourself and fail so that you can find fresh success
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Here's what he said. My coach, Eric, insisted that I detach from the outcomes of the individual games and focus on my willingness to play and improve
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He explained that this was the essence of growth mindset, taking every opportunity to fail in order to learn from mistakes
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So here's what I want to leave you with. If you focus only on pure success, you're just focusing on better
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Now, it's good to be better. It's good to be better, but it's better to be different
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if you want a growth mindset, if you want to exponentially succeed, if you want to stop paying
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a little more for marketing or a lot more for overhead or investing more time, and instead
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you want to be able to have a nonlinear jump, instead of going A, B, C, D, E, you want to go
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A, E, then that's in the land of different. In order to scale, a brand must eventually become
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better. Expansion requires structured systems and repeatable processes. In order to stay relevant
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a better brand must also become different or risks being surpassed by new competitors and
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changing tastes and technologies. But if you have to choose in situations when you need to turbo
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charge, when you need to play your A game, it's not about being better. It's about identifying
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what makes you different, and then articulating that, exploiting it, leveraging it to make sure
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that you can compete at the highest level, but more importantly, contribute to your company
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to your team, to your family, to your world at your best. Thank you. Shell, are you here with me
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The digital Viking. Why didn't I ever get to see you wear that when you were at ING
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Shel, you're on mute. Now I can hear you. Yeah. Hey, Shel
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Shel, you are a perfect classic example of different and better. Yeah, so I took your advice to heart, right
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I want to be different. So listen, let's take some questions. I think we have some, and then we'll close after that
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Sally, can you see them? Can you, are you asking if I can see
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You know what, just... Okay, so how much, this is from Pradeep. How much time would someone spend marketing themselves in the workplace
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Marketing themselves in the workplace. Well, so there are two different ways to market yourself
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One is you're marketing yourself outside of your organization to get a new job, to get a juicy press interview, to chase new clients, to make a career shift
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And then there's marketing yourself inside of your organization, which is more of an entrepreneurial mindset
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You don't necessarily have to spend money, but you do have to make sure that you are making finely tuned decisions of find the one way, find one way in which you are different
27:54
I suck at expense reports. I don't enjoy them. I'm not good at them. And I think it's really expense reports are a parody
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It's a dime a dozen. I can pay somebody else to do it. So I make sure that I never spend time doing expense reports and instead my time is invested
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Or if this was the monetization, it's on creative ideas. So, Shell, that's my that's my feedback
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Don't just think about the money. Think about the investment. OK, great. Next one is from a simple creatives tend to get bored easily
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What's the best way for them to stay engaged and continue to drive towards company goals
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I hear you. Growing up as a creative director in an ad agency, I live and breathe and bleed
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creativity. And one of the things that I've learned that I have to do in an extensive project
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like writing a book or developing a huge piece of software, is you can't do repetitive tasks
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the same way for the same outcome every time. And this is where the concept of growth mindset is so
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crucial to be able to give yourself the opportunity that when you're experimenting
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build into the process, make sure that you know, and that your team knows that there will be some
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failure because it's those failures that give you the pivots so that you can have that, those
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awesome creative transformations for yourself and your product. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great advice
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Okay, another one from Arjun. Being different may be scary for someone. What's the best way to ease into the concept for a company or employee like myself
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That's a great question. The way in which you are different is hardwired into your personality's DNA
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So it's not about showing up with a nose ring or color streaks in your hair or talking in a different way or being artificial and manipulated
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Instead, it's about finding what are those qualities that make you different than the person on your left and the person on your right
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so that when you're working with someone who is detail-oriented, if you're creative, you may bug the crap out of each other sometimes
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because the detail-oriented person wants to know budgets, deadlines, timelines, and the creative person wants to know, what else can we do
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Hand me the sticky notes. And yet, the best products and brands are built
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with this yin-yang, salty, sweet kind of combination. So being different is not about reinventing yourself
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You don't have to change who you are. You have to become more of who you are
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Being more of who you are allows you to be more different. Great, great
30:41
Thanks. I'm just going to keep popping the questions here because they're coming in at rapid pace there
30:47
Fadeep asks, how have you made yourself different in your world? What a wonderful question
30:55
Shell, I don't know if you mentioned my last name. I did
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Hogshead. Hogshead. So imagine I'm on the phone with customer service. It's Sally Hogshead
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And they're like, tell me, no, really, what's your real last name? No, it really is
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It really is Hogshead, like the head of a hog. When I go to restaurants, my reservation is canceled
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When I show up to a hotel, people think it's like a stage name. So I was born with difference
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but I'll tell you, I was beaten up on the playground. So having a different last name
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was a massive competitive disadvantage when I was growing up But then when I went into advertising it started making it really easy for me to meet people and develop relationships quickly
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because I could, they remembered, if not me, my name for sure. So you can have
31:50
you could borrow the last name Hogshead if you want. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, next one
31:55
This was an amazing session. Thank you. My question is, is first impression important
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And do you have any advice? Yes. Great. My advice is take the assessment that I gave to you because it's about how people perceive you in those first crucial seconds at your best
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I want you to think of a first impression like this. A first impression is like a door
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Now, you can't open the door all the way in a first impression
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That would be building a relationship over time and developing rapport. But a brilliant first impression can open the door just enough that you can start to get to know the person and build a true relationship
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Great. And then let me see another one. Thank you. I look forward to learn more
32:51
I took the personality test and loved it. But how do I put it to use
32:55
How do you put it to use? Here's what you learned when you got your report
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You learned how other people see you at your best. Now normally a personality test is about how do you see other people How do you see the world What I created is the exact opposite
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It's how do other people see you? How do other people value you and appreciate you
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So think to yourself, would you rather know how you see your client? Or do you want to know how does your client see you
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So in the report, when it outlines what those traits are that you already naturally have, it shows you how to do it intentionally
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So instead of showing up in the meeting and trying to figure out, should I be the funny one or should I be the good listener
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Instead, your report tells you exactly how the people on the other side of the table are most likely to be impressed by you
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So go through the information and begin to apply. In what way is it consistent with how you're already communicating and working and building your personal brand
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And in what ways is it not? If you're a detail-oriented person, you don't have to be the rah-rah cheerleader
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If you are a passionate motivator, you don't have to focus on the spreadsheets and Excel docs at your best
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Yeah. Okay. We have one more. I really like this one. If we all become more unique, that will be the day
34:30
Will management look at us as we are stepping on their turf
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The bad news is yes, because management gets threatened by thought leaders
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unless the management is enlightened enough to understand that we need thought leaders as part of our talent pool who are willing to have a growth mindset But here how I want to shift it If you are in management the biggest mistake managers make is
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they hire to replicate themselves, not to optimize themselves. The point of a team is not simply to
35:07
have more people. The point of a team is to have each person be so highly differentiated and so
35:13
highly optimized that they're all performing different parts of the process. They are not
35:18
replicating each other. They are optimizing each other. And so if you think about it that way
35:24
it's not you just drawing attention to yourself for the sake of, you know, having blinking lights
35:29
and shouting into the room. The point is for you to add value in a specific way that other people
35:35
will hear, remember, appreciate, and monetize. Yeah. Great. Okay. Well, I told you guys earlier
35:43
on. I'm 2% German, so we're sticking to the time here. But Sally, thank you so much
35:50
We really appreciate it. And your donation to the ability to take
35:55
these assessment tests. Wonderful. Yeah, we can't wait to see. I'll be following along
36:01
Shell, and I can't wait to see people's results and learn what patterns
36:05
that we discover inside of our group. Yeah, and then I don't know if you're
36:09
able to listen in, but if you want to hop backstage or if you can listen to this
36:15
I'm going to review some of the numbers. So thank you, Sally. Great. Wonderful. That's great. Wonderful
36:21
Thanks, everybody
#Brand Management
#Self-Help & Motivational