Speaker 1: No matter where you woke up this morning, we all live in the same home, yep. And no matter what people tell you about how many different types of people live here, there's only just two types of people. Those who use themselves to benefit others, and those that use others to benefit themselves. Yeah, I first learned this lesson when I was five years old. I was sitting having a conversation with my dad, which was kind of rare because my dad is a, well he was a busy guy, and I was the middle child and sort of starved for attention, so I never wanted to miss any opportunity to get his attention and to impress him. Well anyway, this is how the conversation ended. Hey dad, I'm thirsty, okay? Milk or water? Uh, hmm, both. Okay, which first? Uh, water first, because then you won't have to wash out the glass before I have the milk. Wow, Annie, great idea. What a smart little girl you are. And there was the lesson. There was the lesson. I had always assumed if I was ever going to get dad's attention, it would be because of something about me. Turns out it was something about him. And all I really did was save him the time and trouble of washing out a glass. You know, years later, I learned the same lesson again. When someone said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Don't be deluded into thinking that real life is going to be like college. It's not high GPAs in the world. Life is really a whole lot more like high school. See in high school, it's about popularity. And in life, the things that make you popular start to matter again. You go into the store, you see all of these brands on the shelf. They're there because they're popular. They're there because they do something that benefits people. People seek them out. They talk to other people about them. They follow them. It's the same thing with your personal brand. You're not entitled to a place here. You have to earn your place. And I'm here to talk to you about that. Powerful personal branding. How do you define who you are? How do you get attention from people? How do you earn your place here? So we're going to talk a little bit about the benefits of personal branding. And then I'm going to tell you what steps you go through. There's just three to build and cultivate your own. First of all, you already have a personal brand. You know what it is? Forbes did a study. And they found out that 70% of professionals believe that they've defined their personal brand and that they know how other people feel about them. They know their public reputation. Except only 15% of them were right, especially about the reputation part. So what happened there? Well, people, when they hear the words personal and branding in the same sentence, think it has something to do with talking about yourself all the time and self-promotion. But yes, see, the lesson is it's not about you. It's about who other people know you to be. So how does that work? Why should you be concerned? Because there are three important benefits of having a strong personal brand. You lead more, you win more, and you earn more. You lead more because people think they know who you are authentically, and so they follow you more enthusiastically, and they get more people to follow you. You win more because it turns out that life is really just a lot of negotiations, one right after another. So if you're trying to get into grad school, or if you're trying to negotiate a new starting salary, or if you're just trying to win an argument with your significant other, it's important to know what the other person truly values in you. Then you negotiate from a position of confidence, not of fear. And you earn more because, well, if you have a strong personal brand, you win 10-25% more earnings every year. So for perspective, a business school graduate makes $52,000 a year on average. 25% more than that is $65,000 a year. Pretty big difference. Especially when you know that two-thirds of lifetime wage growth occurs in the first ten years of a career. Now if you think about a 40-year business career, that initial difference blows up to something like half a million dollars. This is important stuff. So how do you do it? How do you build your own strong personal brand into what you want it to be? Three steps. So self-awareness. This is not just about the you you know. This is not just about who you know yourself to be between your ears, in your head. Because by definition, that's your personal identity. So nobody but you knows that. Self-awareness is just as much about your reputation. Who others know you to be. So if you're concerned about whether or not your personal identity matches your public reputation, there's an easy way to find out. Find some friends and peers and colleagues who will be brutally honest with you and ask them, what's it like experiencing me as a friend, as a colleague, as a peer, as a leader? And if you hear answers that you hadn't expected, you'll have a little bit of direction about where to start building your personal brand. You see, we're all just a little bit like Mr. Potato Head. Really. I mean, who knew that Mr. Potato Head had all this stuff inside him? And the same is true with you. You have all this stuff inside you. Mr. Potato Head is a very multifaceted, multi-talented guy. On any given day, he can pull any of that stuff out from inside him and define who he is to the world. And so can you. But see, nobody knows what's inside you except you. So the first thing you have to do, step one, is you have to decide who do you want to be defined as? And then look inside your potato head and figure out, what do I need to bring out to prove to people that's who I am, that's what I can do? Now you can't fake this because you can't bring things out of your potato head that weren't there to begin with. But that's how it works in terms of self-awareness. Now once you've decided that kind of stuff, now, step two is about telling your story and living it every day, providing the world with living proof you are what you say you are. Now this is a lot like my conversation with my dad, in that you cannot waste an opportunity to try to share your story with them. Why? Because you're always getting evaluated, you're always being interviewed for jobs and roles that may not even exist yet, personally, professionally. So everything counts, the way you talk, the way you work, the way you play, the way you interact with people, all of it, ultimately, all of those things, even status, happen because other people believe they know who you are and believe you fit with them. And if you fit, they hire you, they marry you, they loan you money, because they know your story. So what does it take to tell a compelling story that's relevant to the marketplace? Well, turns out there's three steps to that too, it's just like an advertisement. Number one, it's got to be attention-getting. We do live in a turbulent, chaotic world where everybody's vying for attention, so it's got to be attention-getting. Secondly, it's got to be relevant, it's got to be clear what the relevant benefit is that you offer to the world, so people can tell what it is, the ways that you might match with them. And third, it's got to be memorable, because if you've done all this work to try to earn your place here, you don't want people to forget your name or not know where to find you. So these are the things that go into telling your story. The third step is in deepening relationships. It's not really enough just to be able to fill the needs of those who matter most to you now, their current needs, because this is about building trust and loyalty. So this also involves recognizing and anticipating their future needs, and filling them before you're asked to do it. So you might remember Nicholas Sparks' novel, The Notebook. In this love story, the woman develops Alzheimer's, and the man in the story finds within his potato head a whole new capability. Because of his love and his loyalty to her, and he goes to her every day and reads to her from a notebook, a diary of their shared experiences together. And that helps him cope with this devastating disease. Another example, Apple is terrific at building and deepening relationships. You guys Apple users? Probably lots of you, sure. And your relationship with Apple began, probably, when you bought a laptop, which was more simple and more convenient than a desktop. The Apple story is about simplicity and convenience, everything about it. So you buy the laptop, they start the relationship with you, and then they look inside their potato head and say, is there anything else in here that we can use, that we can bring out that will show people new ways to simplify their life? They have more convenience in their life, and you know what, they found miniaturization. They found more functionality, and that's what they built into the iPhone, that's what they built into the iPad, the Apple phone. You know the idea, you probably own all those things. And this doesn't mean that they don't have competitors. Their competitors offer similar products, sure. And they're all trying to tell you their story, but you're not listening to them. Because Apple has been so terrific at knowing what it is that you need and anticipating what it is you're going to need in the future, and taking care of that before you even ask them. You know, every time I talk about this subject, I always think it's important to tell you about one of my first job experiences, because it turns out to have been a master class in personal branding. I played volleyball and basketball at Indiana University, and graduated with a graphic design degree, and a few months after that, I was named sports information director for the ten varsity women's sports, which involved promoting the sports, the ten teams, and talking about the results and so forth and so on, so this was terrific for somebody who eventually wanted to get into big time advertising, me. And I was in that position for about a year when I developed a friendship with Bob Knight. Now, in his 29 year career at Indiana University, Bob Knight won 75% of his games. Three national championships, 11 Big Ten titles, 12 coach of the year titles, two international gold medals as the coach. Bob Knight is a guy who used himself to benefit others, specifically his players. To a boy who wanted to play college basketball, wanted to earn a degree, wanted to win championships, wanted to be best prepared for the NBA or whatever else life held after graduation, Indiana was the premier program, and Bob Knight was the reason why. Now the thing was, Bob had two different public reputations. One of them was he was clearly, unquestionably, the best college basketball coach anywhere. The second one was that his language, that his behavior, that his ways of motivating his teams were sometimes so over the top that some people thought that was completely unacceptable no matter what his win-loss record was. I became friends with Bob just about the time he was named head coach of the Pan-American basketball team. And our friendship started, as most do, you know, pleasantries in the hall, head coach, you know. And then these little pass-bys sort of graduated to longer conversations, more substantial. I found myself thinking of him, it was again, almost like these conversations with my dad where I'd think, you know, I'm just really listening for things that I can do, things that I can say, maybe he hasn't thought about this yet, maybe I could come up with something to help him. And so then he started to ask me for my opinion about stuff. We talked a lot about, you know, what should he do in this situation with the Pan-Am organizing committee or, hey Annie, what would you do to publicize the Pan-Am games because nobody out there seems to know what the heck they are. And how important they are to the Olympic movement. We talked a lot about the media, we talked a lot about sports writers, as you might imagine. Well and one of these conversations finished and he said, I got to tell you what man, you, your ideas are completely different than everybody else I know, including me. I'm telling you, one of these days we're going to work together. I'm thinking, yeah, sure we are. Well the team went off to Puerto Rico to play the Pan-Am games. It was the best of times and worst of times for Coach Knight's brand. Best of times, the team won the gold medal convincingly, scored more than 100 points a game. But Coach was arrested, accused of assaulting a Puerto Rican policeman. Now there wasn't really reliably good news coming out of San Juan at that time so the only thing the public had to go on was Coach Knight's personal brand and his reputation. So the Hoosier faithful, the people who supported him, they were concerned, worried. And the people who were his foes and the people who really were against him were emboldened to be more critical than ever. It was absolutely unrelenting. The team returned from Puerto Rico, the entire Pan-Am delegation and nobody knew where Coach Knight was. I mean, the athletic director didn't know, the president of Indiana University didn't know, the governor didn't know, which was important because people were talking about extraditing him. So this is the scenario when I'm in my office one day, sitting there working, all of a sudden there he is in my doorway. It's Coach Knight. Does anybody know where you are? I don't think so. And he stepped inside the door, closed it softly behind him, Annie, I've decided it's time we work with one another, okay? I said, what? He said, give me a minute. Now listen, you know what my priorities are. I know that what you want to do long term, I don't want to deal with all this stuff. I love the way you think. I said, okay, but what do you want me to do for you? He said, I want you to explain why I do the things I do right after I do them. I said, how could I possibly know why you do the things you do? He said, listen, I don't know why the hell I do the things I do, I'll go along with whatever you say. So, self-aware, absolutely self-aware. Coach knew that it wasn't in his Mr. Potato Head to deal with constant criticism from the public and the press. He might not have even had the capability to do that. But we'd had enough conversations, we'd spent enough time together, we'd shared each other's stories enough that he knew it was in mine. And he knew that that's what I wanted to do big time someday. So he outsourced his personal brand to me. Coach Knight was the best coach in basketball. But nobody but Coach Knight could control his behavior. What I could do, however, what I could do was try to limit the occasions on which he might get provoked. So I started to study the sportswriters, the people who were in these press conferences, and I saw that a troubling number of the guys who were there had never written a positive story about him, ever. And then I started to watch how they were behaving, and they seemed to just needle him in these press conferences. There weren't good questions about the game, or him, or the strategy, or anything else. Just needling him. So I revoked their press credentials. And what was left was a press corps that honestly and earnestly reported what happened in the game and what Coach did. In fact, one of those guys was John Feinstein, who wrote for the Washington Post. You might remember he wrote a bestseller about the Hoosiers and about Coach Knight, a season on the brink. Step three, deepening relationships. Well clearly, after Puerto Rico, the relationship between Coach Knight and the Hoosier nation, and frankly, the public at large, was fractured. And so we had to come up with a strategy for that, and it seemed the best strategy was transparency. For Indiana University, we're the premier basketball program, and he is our coach. He's the best in the world at this. I called the producer at 60 Minutes. I'll give you an exclusive story. You have complete access to Coach. You can go into locker rooms, you can go into the games, practices, hunting, fishing, whatever it is you want to do. He loved it. And when the public and the press found out we were willing to be that open and that transparent, all of that negativity and public criticism kind of died down, almost died dead away. When that 60 Minutes program ran that following spring, just before the NCAA tournament was the highest rated 60 Minutes program at the time. So what happened to the Hoosiers and Coach Knight? Well in February, we won the Big Ten Championship. He was named Coach of the Year in the conference. In March, we won the NCAA Championship, and he was named National Coach of the Year. In May, half of the team was drafted into the NBA. And six months later, the Olympics Committee named him the 1984 Olympics coach. You know, once he didn't have to deal with all that stuff that wasn't in his potato head, he could deal with the stuff that was. And what about me? Well, after I had worked for Coach Knight, my own reputation kept expanding because I became known as someone who could take challenging communications issues and communicate to the right people at the right time with the right message. I really remember I really wanted to be in big time advertising, and Coach Knight was good to his word. It did help, having worked for him. I did my MBA. I went on to launch my career in advertising, and that led to famous campaigns that are still running today. Two Scoops of Raisins for Kellogg's Raisin Brand, Lego My Eggo for Eggo Waffles, Dow Bathroom Cleaner Scrubbing Bubbles, Happy Meals for McDonald's. Now what about you? If you haven't listened to anything else I've said here today, and I hope you have, but if you haven't, here's what you need to remember. Having a strong personal brand will allow you to lead more, win more, earn more, and it's a pretty straightforward process. Self-awareness, telling your story, living into your story, and deepening your relationships. So I think when you came in, they gave you a pen and a Post-it note. Did they give you that? I got a challenge for you. Pull those out and write down what's in your potato head right now that needs to come out. This is really important stuff. You are always being evaluated, you are always being interviewed for things that may not even exist today. I want you to take that Post-it note when you're done with it, put it in your wallet as a reminder to live that way starting right now. And if you decide you want to change your mind, that's okay, but do it consciously, live deliberately, because you can never know the day when someone might appear in your doorway and change your life, or even better, when you might have the opportunity to change someone else's. Thank you.