Talk About Talk - Communication Skills Training

How to boost your self-awareness with Dr. Tasha Eurich.  Tasha and Andrea talk about how self-awareness can improve your communication, relationships, confidence, promotability, influence, empathy, leadership, and more. Dr. TASHA EURICH Books: Insight – https://amzn.to/42LqCIi Shatterproof (2025) – https://amzn.to/3ZLzXlM Insight Quiz: https://www.insight-book.com/quiz Tasha’s book recommendation: “Wonder Hell” by Laura Gassner Otting – https://amzn.to/3Nc4BNt   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ YouTube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube   TRANSCRIPT Are YOU a self-awareness unicorn? That RARE person with exceptionally high internal and external self awareness? Probably not. But according to self-awareness expert Dr.Tasha Eurich, just by learning some of the tools and approaches you’ll hear in the next 45 minutes, you’re way ahead of the pack. One step closer to unicorn status. Let’s do this! Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #174 “Boost your Self-awareness with Dr.Tasha Eurich.” I’m so excited for you to meet Tasha. I read her book called INSIGHT a few years ago after it was recommended by Adam Grant. The full title is Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think. It immediately became one of my favorites, a book with research that I reference all the time, and a book that I often recommend to my coaching clients. So I was very excited to book this interview. When the time finally came and we logged into the interview, we both stopped and stared at the screen. I’m sure my jaw dropped. Tasha was sitting in front of her beautiful horizontal bookcase, all sorted by color. Like a beautiful rainbow of books, including the turquoise book jacket cover of her book INSIGHT. Some of you might know that I am also obsessed with color, particularly turquoise. So there I was, in front of my vertical bookshelf, each shelf coded by colour – black then red then turquoise, then yellow, and so on. WOW. Even if you’re not obsessed with colour, our screens were a sight to be seen. You could say we had an instant connection. Speaking of connection – In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. To learn more about what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com and you can read about the coaching and workshops I run. Plus there are lots of free resources for you at the bottom of the talkabouttalk.com homepage. You can also sign up for my email newsletter, where you’ll get free coaching from me in your inbox. Head over to talkabouttalk.com to sign up now. Alright, let’s shift gears. In this episode, you’re going to learn a helpful definition of self-awareness, why it’s important, and Tasha’s strategies that you can start immediately to help you become more self-aware. Let me introduce Tasha, then we’ll get right into the interview. At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. Sound good? Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author who helps people thrive in a changing world. With a PhD in Organizational Psychology, she’s the principal of The Eurich Group, working with clients like Google, Walmart, and the NBA. She’s been recognized as the world’s top self-awareness coach and featured by Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, and more. Her 2017 TEDx talk has been viewed more than 8 million times! Tasha’s first book, Bankable Leadership, debuted as a New York Times bestseller. Her latest, Insight, explores the link between self-awareness and success. That’s where we’re focusing here today. She also has another book coming out in 2025 focused on resilience called SHATTERPROOF. I’ll leave links to all these books in the show notes. Here we go!   INTERVIEW Thank you so much, Tasha, for being here today on Talk About Talk to talk about our self -awareness. Thank you. It’s great to be here, Andrea.  So I guess we better start with definitions. When you are writing and researching and talking about self -awareness, what exactly do you mean?  So it’s a great place to start, I think, and you’re very smart to do that. It took our research team actually almost a year to scientifically and empirically. So it’s the will and the skill to understand who we are and how you’re seen. So I am familiar enough with your work that I know exactly what you mean by each of those very precise words. But I want to say I applaud and appreciate how precise you’re being with that. So maybe break it down. What do you mean by will and what do you mean by skill, first of all. So both of those are equally important, right? If you’re missing one, you can’t become self -aware. The will has to do with not even necessarily a daily commitment because life, right? Life is crazy. Most days, if you are committed to seeing yourself clearly, that really kind of satisfies that piece of it. And then the skill is not just sort of using the myths and assumptions that we have about what it takes to become self -aware, but actually looking at scientifically supported actions that will improve our self -awareness. One of the things, you know, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this that we discovered in our research was that a lot of really well -intentioned people are sort of approaching self -awareness in a way that’s not giving them increased insight. And so that’s where the skill component comes in. So it’s not just, you know, kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks. It’s saying this is my self -awareness strategy. This is how I’m going to break this down for myself. When I was listening to and then reading your book, that’s where I felt like I personally got a lot of traction as well, providing me with the skill, the frameworks, right, for how to think about or how to get input to your identity and, well, and so that you can become more self -aware based on other people’s input and other frameworks that we’ll talk about. So let’s go back to the definition, though. The second part was about, I’m going to paraphrase here, but it’s really about knowing yourself and also knowing how others perceive you. Is that’s another way of saying it. It is. And I think a lot of times when we think about self -awareness, we only consider that inner piece, right? Knowing who we are internally. What do we value? What are our passions? What are our personality patterns over time? Things like that. But we often neglect an equally important piece of the puzzle, which is to understand how other people see us. And what I always say to people is, you know, everybody has these shirts of like, what other people, other people’s opinion of me is none of my business, right? And I, while that’s very empowering, and I’m sure it sells a lot of T -shirts, unless you work in a cardboard box and live in a cardboard box and never speak to another person again, it kind of matters how other people see you. And the angle that I’ve gotten to with, you know, I’ve been coaching CEOs for more than 20 years now is they’re already having these perceptions, right? They’re already talking to other people about these perceptions. Wouldn’t you rather know? Because when you know, you can decide what you want to do about it, it doesn’t mean necessarily you have to change. But if we’re not actively soliciting other people’s perceptions of us, we are missing literally, you know, one of the two camera angles of that skill. What’s interesting in our research is that we found that very often, you know, highly self -aware people discover that those two data points don’t always match up, right? I might see myself one way. There might be a perception of me that’s very different. And I always go back there to the F.Scott Fitzgerald quote, which I really love. He says the definition of true intelligence is being able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind and still retain the ability to function, right? And so to become self -aware and to be on this journey, it’s a dance, really, of soliciting both, navigating both, making sense of both, and sometimes believing and understanding that they won’t square up, but you still have to have both of those data points. Oh, my goodness, Tasha, there’s so, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, oh, I need to ask her this, I need to ask her this, I need to ask her this, I need to to ask, there’s so many directions we could go. Let me start with a quick anecdote that when I was reading your book the first time, I was also, I happened to be coaching a gentleman who I now realize was not self -aware, but I asked him whether he thought he was self -aware. And he said, I think I’m extremely self -aware. Of course. And when I was reading your book and thinking about it after, I thought, I know based on your research and others, there’s what you call, or we call internal self -awareness and external self -aware. And I thought instantly, he’s high internally self -aware, but not externally self -aware. And in your book, you talk about how most of us think we are more self -aware than the average, right? Including me, by the way. Fun discovery. Well, everybody is everybody, right yeah um so losers and the introspectors, if you had to put the population, you know, maybe of working professionals into this two by two matrix, the introspectors would get more than its fair share of folks. I’m not, I’m not sure.  It’s interesting because I actually have the data. I could look at that. We have our insight quiz. Maybe we can put a link in your show notes for your listeners. But we’ve been doing this insight quiz and making it available to people for free for like more than five years now. So we could run those stats. I just don’t want to speak out of the wrong side of my mouth, right? It’s been a while. But the last time we did it, I want to say three or four years ago maybe, we were seeing very few people are high in both, right? That internal self -awareness, the first part of the definition, knowing who we are, and then the second part of it, understanding how other people see us, that’s hard to achieve, right? But it is possible and very learnable. It’s just that, again, most people are approaching it with good intentions, but bad tools, right? The Seeker category is people who are just starting their journey in both of those categories, right? They’re just starting to learn kind of who they are, what they want, what matters to them, and maybe they haven’t gotten a lot of feedback in their life. And they’re really trying to start that journey. What I always tell seekers, if you feel like you might be in that category for anyone, is pick one to start with. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Say, do I want to kind of get in touch with myself more? Do I want to understand how other people see me more? And then you can always add things after that. But to your question, where it gets really interesting is when people are high on one and then low on the other. And this happens because those two types of self -knowledge are totally independent. Just because it’s like the executive you were coaching, just because he saw himself clearly doesn’t automatically translate to other people, to him understanding how other people saw him. And then the reverse is true. The category I fall in, I call pleasers. And these are people who are so focused on knowing how other people see them, that sometimes they forget their own, they forget or they aren’t even in touch with the choices that they can make in their own best interest. Like the example that I give about this, it’s kind of a silly one, but a couple of years ago, I couldn’t decide what color car to get. I was renewing my lease. I was traveling. I was super busy. So I texted like my five best friends. And I said, here are the choices. Which one should I pick? Right? It’s like this, this completely other focused view, which can have its advantages, but it can also have really big disadvantages. You know, in that case, what car did I want? You know, what would make me happy? But going back to your – You’re the one that’s going to be driving it every day, Tasha. Exactly. They’re probably not going to be in it very often. But to your point, there is a pretty wide variety across those three categories. So I think it’s interesting, you know, I would argue that even somebody who says they’re self -aware may not be internally self -aware at all, right? If they say they’re self -aware and you look at them and you’re like, well, buddy, I’m not sure you understand. That probably means they’re low in external self -awareness. But what our research has shown is that regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, 95 % of us believe that we are self -aware. And the real number, according to several different studies that we’ve done, is about 10 to 15 % of us, right? So if 10 to 15 % of us meet those criteria, 95 % of us think we’re self -aware. What that means is that on a good day, 80 % of us are lying to ourselves about whether we’re lying to ourselves. So that’s the question I ask about your client, right? It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s like our default should be to believe that we probably are not self -aware or at least not as self -aware as we could be. Bingo. I always say, I put the word gently in front of that. Gently stop assuming that you’re self -aware. I wouldn’t want any of your listeners to get the wrong idea about this. I am not here as like a poster child of self -loathing or, you know, self -consciousness or neuroses. That isn’t what self -awareness is at all. But there is, I think you’re exactly right, there’s this paradox that as soon as we stop assuming that we are self -aware, we can actually become that. And, you know, another way to look at it is as long as you’re making forward progress, that’s all that matters at the end of the day. That’s very inspiring. So I want to get into some of the tactics that you recommend. I know there’s the what versus why recommendation. But before we get into that, I just want to touch on something that you said that also is related to something in your book about folks that are like the senior leaders and the most powerful people. So when you’re talking about the pleasers, It reminds me of some of the conversations that I have in workshops and coaching with my clients when we’re talking about their personal brand. And one of the most important strategic principles, I believe, of establishing a strong personal brand is to focus on what makes you unique. Because if you’re thinking and focused on your unique strengths and passions, you’re going to end up being as happy or satisfied as you can be and as successful as you can be. And so when I’m thinking about this two by two matrix, I feel like it might be okay to be a pleaser early in your career, but then at some point, you have to focus on what you want to be and what you are so that you can evolve. And this is what I say. Like it’s early, it’s fine early in your career to look around and copy people because you’re trying different identities, right? But as soon as your mid -career, and definitely when you’re a senior executive, you need to double down on what makes you unique, right? So maybe that’s when being a pleaser can really backfire on you, right? But it happens because we’re social learners. We look around at other people that are successful and we copy them. I guess the question is, do you think there might be kind of a similar insight here about self -awareness as there is about personal branding, where to, let me tell you a little bit about the sample of people that we really studied most exhaustively. And you know this. We called them our self -awareness unicorns. And these are people, yeah, that didn’t start out as self -aware, but through some, like, mysterious process that we wanted to uncover, were able to become dramatically more self -aware and, in fact, highly self -aware. And what was so interesting to me is that there weren’t any patterns in that sample based on any demographic, including age. So I’m thinking about, you know, one person, Kelsey, who is a middle school science teacher, who was very, very early in his career. But even earlier in his career, he had been an engineer and was absolutely miserable. And so he went on this journey of self awareness and said, you know what I really want to do is I really want to be a public school teacher and I want to teach science to kids. And so from my perspective, I think we miss something really for every year we’re not on this journey. We could be, you know, depending on whether it’s internal or external self -awareness, if we’re missing internal self -awareness, you know, we’ll be like somebody who, you know, is maybe not choosing a career that makes them happy. And for every year that goes by without having external self -awareness, we could be alienating everyone, right? Who knows what impact we’re having if we don’t know and can’t control it? So I see what you’re saying, and I think you’re right. I think in some sense, self -awareness becomes more important the higher up you rise because it’s more rare. But I would also just encourage anybody, like, wherever you are on this journey, wherever you are in your career, it will put you above the pack. If you use some of these tools and really use what’s scientifically supported, it’s a superpower. There’s no better way I can say it. I absolutely agree. I’ve been telling people lately, I used to say a growth mindset was the superpower that would build your success in your communication skills and then in your career. But I actually think it’s a combination, a growth mindset and self -awareness. In your definition of self -awareness, though, there is the growth mindset because it’s the will, right? We just put everything in there just to make sure. So my next question is related to what you were just saying about as you get more senior in your career, it becomes more important. So in many things that I’ve read that you’ve written and interviews that I’ve listened to, you list the many, many benefits of self -awareness. Why don’t you just list some of them right now? I love this question. So we could be here forever, but I’ll kind of focus it to your audience specifically. So people who are self -aware are more successful at work. They get more promotions. They’re better communicators. They’re better influencers. I know, right? Pick your favorite. They’re more confident. They’re more empathetic. They’re more effective and respected leaders. And there’s even some evidence that’s been starting to emerge over the past 10 or so years that in companies with high numbers of self -aware, you know, employees and leaders, those companies are actually more profitable. So a lot of executives might think like, oh, I’m a very busy person and, you know, I don’t have time to work on my self -awareness. But what I would say is, you know, you are modeling this behavior for the entire organization. And an organization can only be as self -aware as the person at the top or the team at the top or the senior team, right? But wait, there’s more. This is where I’m like the knife salesman person or the infomercial, but wait, there’s more. So self -awareness also benefits us in our personal lives. There are a ton of examples, but I think kind of most universal is that people who are self -aware have better romantic relationships. They have stronger and deeper friendships. And this might be especially interesting for some of your listeners. They tend to raise more mature and less narcissistic children. Oh, wow. Right? So like pick your poison. The beauty of this, and this is why I call self -awareness the meta -skill of the 21st century is that it is literally the foundation of everything else that you’re accomplishing in your life. You can only be as influential as you are self -aware. You can only be as good of a communicator as you are self -aware, right? You can only be as authentic as you are self -aware. And so that’s where, you know, I think if, again, if you choose to work on the skill, the ripple effects are are astonishing. Okay. Well, you’ve got me convinced, Tasha, easily. Easily, when you say communication skills, I light up, as you could see. So before we move on to the tactics for how people can work on developing their self -awareness, I just want to ask you this question that occurred to me a couple of days ago. So on the one hand, there’s this research that one of the things you said was more effective, and it was effective and something leadership, more effective and respected. Respected leadership, leaders. But there, I think you said there’s also an inverse correlation between power and self -awareness. So how do you reconcile that? Because presumably these leaders have power. Right. So the way I would reconcile that is that some leaders figure it out and benefit, right? So just because it’s rare at the top ranks of a company doesn’t mean it’s not immensely powerful. And in fact, I would argue that makes it more powerful. If, you know, we all, I would argue that, like, we all probably start at a similar level of self -awareness, but what happens is when you’re the boss, suddenly you walk in and like nobody’s giving you bad news, everybody’s laughing at all of your jokes, right? Nobody’s bringing you problems before the problem becomes a big problem. And that’s just the nature of, you know, hierarchy and power. There’s a lot of other examples too of, you know, many leaders, especially senior leaders that I’m sure we both worked with make assumptions. And the assumption is something like, well, I must be doing something right. I’m the CFO. Right. I must be doing something right. I’m an SVP. And, you know, that is often true. But the success criteria change, we change, the environment changes. So we can’t ever say, I’m good, right? I’ve arrived. And I think, you know, again, with each successive level of leadership, fewer and fewer people are comfortable telling us the truth. So that’s how I would square that is it is actually, it’s empirically important at high levels, but it’s even more important because it’s so rare. Right. B, not necessarily because of something that you did differently. It’s because of other people treating you differently. And then you just, but if you have similar beliefs about what feedback is, yeah, I get it. Okay, that makes sense. Please share with us a couple of your favorite frameworks, if you want to call them that, or tactics for helping us improve our self -awareness? Sure. So let me give you two. And I think these are, in some ways, these are the, like, simplest and most practical. And I use these a lot with my coaching clients. So one is for internal self -awareness and the other is for external self -awareness. So internal self -awareness, we found that those self -awareness unicorns, almost to a person. Each had some kind of daily practice. It was very quick. And again, if they didn’t do it every day, they didn’t beat themselves up, they just tried to do it most days, where they were reflecting on their day, but not in a way that kicked them down something I call the rabbit hole of rumination, right? And the danger of sort of over -analyzing ourselves and our experiences is that we actually lose insight, and it makes us worse off. It makes us more stressed, more anxious, more depressed. And that’s probably a whole other podcast that we can do. But for the purposes of this, the daily check -in process, I would offer three questions. So think about this, like, the next time you’re brushing your teeth at night, or the next time you’re driving home from work, ask yourself some variation of, number one, what went well today, number two, what didn’t go so well, and then three, how can I be smarter tomorrow? And by the way, if you’re working on something different, if you’re working on something specific, you could even say, how can I be more empathetic tomorrow? How can I be more influential tomorrow. How can I be a better coach tomorrow, right? But I think smarter is a nice catch -all of how can I use what I learn today to be 0 .1 % more self -aware tomorrow. And what’s really interesting about the journey of self -awareness that we’ve discovered is most of the time improvement doesn’t happen in really dramatic leaps and bounds. It happens slowly, incrementally, every day. which is maybe what I’ll give you for the second tool. This is actually not something that I identified. It was something that I named. I call it the Dinner of Truth, but it was developed by a communications professor named Josh Meisner. And Dr. Meisner has been doing this exercise with all of his students for many, many years. I would guess he’s probably in, I mean, at least the thousands, if not the 10 ,000s. And here’s what it entails. So First, you identify someone. It could be a work colleague. It could be someone in your personal life with whom you want to improve your relationship, right? Then you take them out to coffee, lunch. I like dinner because you can have cocktails and one cocktail can make this a little bit easier if that’s something that you’re into. And then you sit them down and you kind of explain, trying to improve myself awareness. you’re someone that’s very important to me. I have a question I’d like to ask you to answer as honestly as you can. And the question is, what do I do that is most annoying to you? Everybody’s stomachs collectively dropped upon hearing that question. That is a hardwired human response. We’re very scared of possibly discovering that people don’t think, actionable that I can focus on. So instead of an indictment of who I am, you know, I always worry that my friends would be like, you know, Tasha, I’m really glad you asked because everything you do annoys me. And I don’t really like that much. And I don’t want to be, but that’s the fear, right? And I know it was, you know, at the time, I even knew it was irrational, but you’re afraid of it. But like, one of my friends, you know, said, I love you in person, but you really annoy me on social media. And I was like, thank you. That’s so actionable, right? And I actually complete, this was like 10 years ago, I completely changed how I was showing up in, in that sort of virtual space. And so I would encourage people as scared as, as scary as it sounds or as scared as you might be. Give it a try. Just try it once and see what happens. So I guess the criteria, who would you ask? It would be someone who probably Thank you. ask and then you just say, that’s okay. Thank you very much. Let’s have a nice dinner now. But yes, but I think if you’re a little more strategic about it than that, if you say, you know, has this person, you know, maybe been the brave soul who says the thing that nobody wants to say, like in at least one context that I can remember, that’s a pretty good sign. Yeah. I’ve gotten in the habit. I’m thinking now as I’m speaking with you, Sasha, probably based on my reading of your book and listening to you, I’ve gotten in the habit after I’m done with coaching sessions and with workshops of immediately asking for feedback and make me really clear to people that I truly believe feedback is a gift, right? Because I’m in this environment where I’m coaching people. And if I don’t ask for feedback, unless I did a really bad job, which doesn’t happen, but if I did a really bad job, I’m sure they would let me know, but they’re always like, oh, it was great. You got nine out of 10, la, la, la, whatever. I’m like, tell me something I can do to improve next time. And most of the time, they don’t share anything. They’re like, no, everything was great. Is there something you can say to people that encourages them to share feedback with you that you’ve come across? Yeah. I mean, let’s take that situation specifically, because I think it’s something very generalizable, right? We all can ask for immediate feedback. And so how can we get that feedback and have the best chance it’ll be helpful? I might even, so two ideas there. One would be to share with them past feedback you’ve gotten. You could say, you know, gosh, I remember you know, five years ago I was giving this workshop And a gentleman, you know, came up to me during lunch and said, you know, we don’t have enough breaks and we just don’t have the mental space to think about everything we’re learning. And it was so incredibly helpful. And here’s how I changed the class. Like, maybe you can give a couple of examples of that. If it’s the first time you’ve asked for feedback on something and you don’t have, you know, a past track record, I would just make some stuff up, like, or even say the things that you’re worried aren’t working, right? Like, you know, I felt like my energy was down a little bit this afternoon. And, you know, maybe that’s in my head, but maybe you can verify that for me. That’s a hypothesis I have that I can’t test without you telling me what you think. So to kind of give them, like, I’m not just saying this, I’m actually going to give you examples and show you how excited I am about hearing feedback on those examples. I think that might do a lot. It’s obviously just one thing you can do, but I think that’s worth trying. Definitely worth trying. I’m going to try it and I’ll let you know how it works. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t work, right? It’s like you’re setting the table for the feedback. Yeah. I love it. Okay. So I can imagine some people are hesitant, is a nice way of it to ask for feedback, to gain insight into particularly their external self -awareness, right, and what their identity is in the eyes of other people. So this leads me to your upcoming book called Shatterproof. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be talking about in that book? So I have to preface this by saying that the book just went to copy editing, And I am not yet as smart and talking about it as I know that I need to be. But I’m just going to give you like some headlines. I started writing this book. I worked on Shatterproof for five years. And it started out as an exploration of, you know, when bad things happen to us, what are the best ways that we can respond? So that we’re not just sort of getting back to where we were before, but we’re getting, you know, smarter, more confident, stronger, more ready for, you know, whatever challenges lie ahead. But during this research, COVID happened, as we all remember, and I experienced something that I had never experienced in my life. So I’m a person, you know, I just recently learned I’m not a fourth generation entrepreneur. I’m a fifth generation entrepreneur. and I have been raised, you know, I was raised by a single mother, taught that when you fall down, you get back up again, right? You’re resilient, you’re tough, you persevere. And I’ve, you know, I’ve had lots of challenges in my life like we all have, you know, for me, the biggest one has been a lot of, like, pretty significant health challenges. But I, you know, up until COVID happened, I had always found a way to kind of push through them to endure quiet endurance, right, where I wasn’t complaining. I was getting up every day. And, you know, for the longest time, I assumed that everyone else was in 10 out of 10 pain every day and they just didn’t complain about it as much as I did. So then I was like, I have to complain less. But what happened during COVID was literally, and I can trace the day that this happened. I woke up one day And my resilience ran out. I hit my resilience ceiling where I was, my coping tools that I had relied on for my whole life were not only not working, but they were feeling like extra stress. You know, things like exercising or meditating or my gratitude journal, right? All the things were taught will help us be resilient. My tank was completely empty. And so that actually kind of kicked me down into this hole of looking at what does the research on resilience actually tell us? And what’s the alternative? Right. And so the best way to think about becoming shatterproof is a second skill set in addition to resilience. It’s not that resilience isn’t helpful. It’s that it has its limits, right? So becoming shatterproof is about instead of bouncing back, which is what resilience is, when we become shatterproof, we are proactively growing forward through our toughest challenges. So instead of, you know, waiting for something to be over and just trying to keep persevering, we’re actually saying this is an opportunity for a profound personal transformation. In order to do that, I need to understand what my pain is telling me. I need to kind of understand the self -limiting patterns and behaviors and beliefs that I’m bringing to the table. I need to pick new ones. And so the book is really about this four -step framework to become shatterproof that we can use, you know, all the time, first of all, but specifically when our resilience is starting to run out so that we’re not, I never want anyone to experience what I experienced and it was about, you know, March or April of 2021. And so the book is really to help people, my publisher didn’t like this title, but the goal is to help people build a more beautiful life in a world of constant chaos. Instead of just bouncing back, like, and people, you know, they’re falling off equipment or whatever. And some of them, it was like not the first time that day where they had just like something’s happening, right? And I was watching with my mom and I said, well, they’ve got a TED talk. They now hit rock bottom in front of billions of people. Billions, I think, right? Isn’t that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I’m going to move on to the three rapid fire questions are you ready i’m ready okay first question are you an introvert or an extrovert big time introvert really okay i’m what’s called yeah i’m a gregarious introvert that’s the qualifier okay what are your communication pet peeves there’s only one at the top of the list and it’s lying dishonesty Dishonesty. Okay. Question number three, is there a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending a lot lately? By the way, I recommend your book all the time. Well, I and Penguin Random House, thank you, Andrea, for that. That’s very nice of you. So to your question, yeah, the book that I have been, I find I’m recommending most often lately is by my really dear friend Laura Gassner Otting. She has written two books, but her most recent one is called Wonder Hell. And it’s about what happens when we start to achieve our greatest potential and how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It gets into things like imposter syndrome and all the things that come along with success when we thought success would be easy and we actually discover that it’s hard and it’s it’s a it’s very clever she is um she’s like the best friend that’s going to kick your ass and tell you exactly what you need to do um but in a way that is so kind and warm and she’s also very very funny it’s it’s a delightful book oh I can’t wait to read it i can’t i can’t wait you know based on the fact that we’re both interested in in i guess self -identity and self -awareness And based on the fact that we arrange our bookshelves similarly, I’m going to maybe make the hypothesis that we might also enjoy reading the same books. So I can’t want to read that book. Is there anything else you want to say, do you want to share with the talk about top listeners about self -awareness? I mean, I would just say, sort of let me give them two things. Number one, I would encourage everybody listening to this to go take the five minute insight quiz. You can get it at https://www.insight-book.com/quiz.It again takes five minutes. It’s free. You fill out 14 questions. You send it to someone else who knows you well. They fill out 14 questions. Very important. And then when both results are in, you get a nice report that shows you high level, which of those four boxes are you in right now? And then it gives you, you know, usually two or three very practical things you can do if you decide you want to improve. So I think that’s the first thing. But the second thing, I’ll go back to, you know, kind of a theme that I think we’ve touched on multiple times, which is Amazing. Thank you so much, Tasha. I really appreciate your time and your expertise, and it’s really nice to get to know you. You too. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, two self -identity, self -development, bookshelf nerds. We had to come together at some point, so it was a pleasure. I love it. Thank you. Thanks again to Tasha for sharing her insights about self-awareness. Yah I got that.   Her book is called Insight and she’s insightful. Of course! OK – let me now highlight three of the INSIGHTS from our conversation that I want to reinforce: 1. Why self-awareness is important 2. The definition of self-awareness and a model for how to think about it; and last 3. Two suggestions for how to boost your self-awareness First – The significance of self-awareness. The impact that it has. According to Tasha’s research and the research of others, those with higher self-awareness benefit in many ways. This is a long list. Are you ready? So people who are self-aware are more successful at work. They get more promotions. They’re better communicators. They’re better influencers. They’re more confident. They’re more empathetic. They’re more effective and respected leaders. And the companies they lead might be more profitable. They have better romantic relationships. They have stronger and deeper friendships. And. They tend to raise more mature and less narcissistic children. As Tasha says, self -awareness the meta -skill of the 21st century. That’s the first point. Don’t underestimate the significance of self-awareness. The second point I was going to reinforce is the definition of self-awareness. This is about thinking but self-awareness in a more disciplined way, beyond self-awareness as “thinking about thinking”. Tasha’s definition is the will and the skill to understand who we are and how you’re seen. There are 4 components of this definition: 1. The will – the desire to improve. If that list I gave you of the many benefits of self-awareness doesn’t improve your WILL to improve it, I don’t know what to say. Then there’s: 2. The skill – knowledge about how to become more self aware, beyond the myths and “common knowledge.” 3. Who you are – your strengths, weaknesses, passions, values, opinions, idiosyncrasies, all of it.  This is internal self-awareness. 4. How you’re seen by others – how others perceive you This is external self-awareness. As Tasha mentioned, it might be helpful to think about these last two dimensions – internal and external self-awareness, in terms of a twox2. There’s low and high interval self awareness on one axis and low and high external self-awareness on the other axis. The rare folks who are high on both are what she calls the unicorns. If you’re low on both you’re a seeker. You don’t yet know who you are, what you stand for, or how others see you, and you probably feel stuck or frustrated with your performance and relationships. Many of us are on the diagonal – There are the Introspectors (those with high internal and low external self-awareness) – I’ve worked with some clients who are Introspectors. They’re clear on who they are but don’t challenge their own views or search for blind spots by getting feedback from others. They end up in big trouble. Then there’s the Pleasers (those with low internal and high external self-awareness) – Tasha admitted she might be a pleaser, and I think I might be too. We’re so focused on appearing a certain way to others that we could be overlooking what matters to us. The last point I want to reinforce is Tasha’s suggestion for how to become a unicorn. She has two suggestions: 1. the daily check -in process, Where you answer three questions. some variation of, number one, what went well today, number two, what didn’t go so well, and then three, how can I be smarter tomorrow? The idea here is that is that improvement in your self-awareness doesn’t happen quickly, Rather, it happens slowly, incrementally, a little bit every day. The second suggestion from Tasha is 2. the Dinner of Truth. The dinner of truth was developed by communications professor Josh Meisner. What you do is identify someone with whom you want to improve your relationship. Then you take them out to coffee, lunch, or dinner. Or maybe cocktails. Then you ask them to answer this very awkward Q, as honestly as they can: What do I do that is most annoying to you? You know what? I’m going to start doing this. I‘m not going to wait for some fancy dinner reservation. I’m just going to ask my co-workers, friends and family what I do that annoys them. Actually, I already know what annoys my family. They tell me all the time. But I’m not sure about my friends and co-workers. Hmm. Well that’s it! The three things I wanted to reinforce for you are the significance of self-awareness, which includes the long list of different ways it can benefit you; the definition of self-awareness, along with the helpful 2×2 framework that distinguishes between low and high internal and external self-awareness; and two ways to boost your self-awareness. To boost your self-awareness, ask yourself the three questions: What went well today? What didn’t go so well? How can I be better tomorrow? And, of course, there’s the Dinner of Truth. Thanks again to Tasha. Tasha, I can’t wait to read your next book, SHATTERPROOF, and interview you again. You can connect with Tasha through her coordinates in the show notes. My coordinates are there too, so please connect with me anytime. Check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website or send me a DM on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you. Talk soon! The post Boost Your SELF-AWARENESS with Dr. Tasha Eurich (ep.174) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

How to become an epic storyteller with “Under the Influence” podcast host Terry O’Reilly. Terry and Andrea talk storytelling, elevator pitches, and peeling the onion to identify what business you’re really in. TERRY O’REILLY Podcast ”Under the Influence” – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/under-the-influence-with-terry-oreilly/id493536367 Book – My Best Mistake (2023) – https://amzn.to/3zroPQe Book – This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence (2018) – https://amzn.to/3TzNbOm Book – The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture (2011) – https://amzn.to/4ewW9Et Website – https://terryoreilly.ca/ Terry’s recommendations: “The Plot Thickens” podcast The Score: Bank Robber Diaries podcast CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ YouTube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube TRANSCRIPT That fabulous voice belongs to Terry O’Reilly host of the popular “Under The Influence” podcast. I’ve been listening to “Under The Influence” for years, and I’ve always enjoyed Terry‘s sense of humor, and his skill as an exceptional storyteller. I knew we were both Canadian and we’re both podcasters.  I had no idea he’s also a huge fan of the power of three.  Did you hear what he said?  Bingo, Bango Bongo. Let’s do this! Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #173 “Under the Influence with storyteller Terry O’Reilly”. In this episode, you’re gonna learn the ingredients necessary to create compelling stories, how and why to “peel back the onion” and think hard about what business you’re really in, and so much more. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and clarity, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. Sound good? To learn more about me and what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com and you can read about the coaching and workshops that I run.  Plus there are a bunch of free resources for you at the bottom of the takaboutalk.com homepage. You can also sign up for the Talk About Talk email newsletter, where you’ll get free coaching from me in your inbox. Head over to talkabouttalk,com to sign up now.  Alright, Let’s shift gears. I can’t wait for you to hear my conversation with Terry O’Reilly. If you’ve ever heard his Under the Influence podcast, you know he is like an encyclopedia of stories and insights.  As you’re about to hear, he’s the same in real-time, without a script.  He’s also very gracious. Let me introduce Terry, then we’ll get right into the interview. At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. Sound good? Ok. Long before he had a radio show, Terry was an award-winning writer at Canada’s top advertising agencies. Creating campaigns for top brands such as Labatt, Bell, Nissan, and the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1990, Terry co-founded Pirate Radio & Television with eight recording studios in Toronto and New York. In 2005, he became the host of the CBC Radio One and WBEZ Chicago radio show, Under The Influence, with over one million listeners a week. His podcast has been downloaded over 75 million times. Terry was awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Advertising & Design Club of Canada, and has been granted Honorary Degrees from three Canadian universities. Ah – the power of three again. Terry has also written three books, the latest being “My Best Mistake” about people who made catastrophic career decisions – but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them. He has a wonderful wife and yes, three lovely daughters, Terry he says like some of this work. Here we go!   INTERVIEW Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Terry, for being here today to talk to me and the talk about talk listeners. O’Reilly: Well, it’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: There are so many directions that we could go in this conversation advertising, branding, personal branding. But I thought something that really stands out about you that I appreciate very, very much is your fantastic ability to tell stories. So I thought we would start there. And I’m curious as a master’s storyteller. What do you think makes for a great story? Is there an ingredient list that’s necessary. O’Reilly: That’s a very good question. when I think about that, I I think 2 things, I think structure. I think that’s always been one of my strengths. For whatever reason, who knows? Is story structure that may have come from almost 40 years in the advertising business, where you have to? You know, structure Mini stories inside 30 and 60 seconds, which is, you know, in a a Herculane feat at best. So I think. And even you see, a lot of movie directors start out in the advertising business, and they learn storytelling because you have to. You have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end inside 30 or 60 seconds. And I think that’s a real discipline that you have to develop. So structure is the key for me cause as a director, so I directed commercials for 3 quarters of my career. I think I directed my staff, told me at one time something like 14,000 commercials in my career. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! O’Reilly: So I got to see a lot of really great storytelling and a lot of really bad storytelling and where most stories fell down, Andrea was in the end. There was great beginnings, wonderful middles, and terrible ends. It just never wrapped up. They never had a they never had a destination in mind. It didn’t come to this wonderful satisfying. It’s like seeing a great move, and you think I loved everything but the way it ended. You know that because the ending is the toughest thing for a writer to write so structure to me is critical that you have a beautiful teasing opening, and then you have this really sumptuous middle. And then you have this inevitable end. That’s just so satisfying. I think the other little thing beyond story structure is the element of surprise. Where you don’t really know where a story is going, or you think you know where it’s going. And then the writer just yanks you to the left or to or to the right, and I think those unexpected moments add impact. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: My brain is immediately going to personal branding when you say that. But I’m going to stick with advertising for. O’Reilly: There you go! Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Couple minutes here. So beginning, middle, and end. consistent with my love of the power of 3, I’m thinking about my my self-introduction framework where I encourage people to Start with who you are, what you do, what your passion is, what your expertise is. Ground yourself in the present, then go past to establish credibility. And most people end there. Right? They’re like, and that’s me. Right going around the table or around the screen step 3 is the icing on the cake. And you you said similarly that many people or many stories, are missing. Kind of that last? Yeah, that part 3 or the ending of the story. O’Reilly: Act. 3. Yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, act 3. So that’s that’s interesting. That that analysis. O’Reilly: You know, even in sound, Andy, it’s interesting. You say that the power of threes I was known to be a I was a humor director. So if you had humorous scripts you would bring them to me. I I could do drama, but there were directors that were better at that than me, but humor was always my thing and I used to call them Bingo bango bongo moments that when things happen in threes like, you know, 2 knocks at a door is one thing, but 3 knocks is funny. and it’s hard to articulate. Why, that is, or if something falls off, let’s say a glass falls off a table. If it falls in a sequence of 3 sounds, it’s funny, and if it’s falls in 2, it isn’t so that even the power of 3 is a is a powerful rule within our audio. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I had no idea. But I’m not surprised. Yeah. O’Reilly: Fact. Yeah. that’s the power of 3 a 3. Is this this amazing number in our lives? Although they say the world’s favorite number is 7, and the world’s favorite color is blue. But I’d say 3 is really it is that key secret ingredient. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I I think 7 is like the maximum. There’s something like, that’s why phone numbers are 4. Right? Yeah, I I’m a fan of threes. You have 3 daughters right. O’Reilly: I have 3 daughters. That’s right. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I did my, I did my reading. Terry. O’Reilly: You did, you did. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So back to the storytelling. I’m I would love to hear what your take is on what brands are the best storytellers, maybe past and present. O’Reilly: My favorite brand for storytelling of all time is Volkswagen in the in the sixties. So Doral Dane burn back, which I think was the greatest advertising agency of all time, led by Bill Burnback, probably the greatest creative director of all time. What they did with that brand to me is amazing, because if you put it in context, the early sixties automobile advertising was all the same. It was, you know, see, the USA in your Chevrolet and the Vw. Brought humor to advertising for the 1st time, and then they brought incredible honesty. They would talk about how ugly the car was. and they talk about how underpowered the car was, and they’d make they would make all its faults strong points. And you know that even though it’s under powered it, doesn’t it. It doesn’t take much gas, and just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean you can’t love it. And it became the most beloved car North America, I think. And it was all due to the storytelling. You know, they, the one of the 1st ads. The headline was Lemon. and I don’t think I could sell that ad today. There’s no way a car manufacturer is going to allow me to say lemon as a headline. But if you read the story underneath that headline. It was basically saying that the car you were looking at in that ad had a blemish on the chrome of the glove compartment, so it can’t go out yet. So it really was a story about incredible quality. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. O’Reilly: Under a headline that was is the most toxic word in automobile advertising. So the storytelling made that car a an icon, and I think they were the best storytellers in advertising for all time. A little more recently, I would say. Nike is a great storyteller, you know. Just do it, and every Nike ad, you see, is a story about a team or a person achieving something in amazing yet no, Nike ad looks like the other Nike ad like they. They almost feel like they have nothing in common. But it’s a storytelling that makes campaignable. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. O’Reilly: Apple’s the same thing. I think Apple does incredible advertising. It’s always they harken back to Steve Jobs, which is so interesting to me. They’ve really been so consistent that virtually every apple ad is is about one person achieving something. It’s not a business, it’s not a company. It’s always one person achieving something with the power of a computer which was Steve Jobs vision of taking the computing power out of Ibm and giving it to the individual. So they’ve run to that strategy for all these years, and I love their storytelling. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: You asked me who the best storyteller is today. Right now. At this moment I would say, Heinz. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, Heinz. O’Reilly: Hines is doing this. This catch up is doing the best work I’ve seen in years. They and most of it’s done out of Canada. It’s got done out of rethink in Vancouver. They are winning every award. They are being written up in ad age and add news every week. They are doing things like I wrote them things down. They do. They did a big puzzle with 5,700 pieces or something is all red, you know, one of those crazy puzzles they did they asked kids to draw just ketchup. They just said, draw ketchup and kids. All the kids drew Heinz labels. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! O’Reilly: They asked AI to do to. They said they asked AI draw ketchup, bottle, and AI drew Heinz great ways. They did a tweet, which was the slowest tweet in the world. 57 letters. The message was 57 letters, Andrew, but it took 57 h to complete. So, just sitting there watching this tweet slowly appear. All of that is storytelling right? Because the richer a ketchup is, the slower it pours, which has always been Heinz raison d’etra right? And all these fun ways of getting across. How unique and how love the brand is in that category is just incredible storytelling. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s almost like they’ve gone, Meta. They’re reinforcing their equity and creating new equity with it. Right? Like, yeah, wow, especially. O’Reilly: In an in that old sleepy brand like it’s not a.com like it’s it’s been around forever. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So where are you seeing these ads? I mean, I know you’re you’re I shouldn’t ask you personally. But where cause. O’Reilly: And we’ll see them. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Where can people see them? So we used to, you know, tune in when we got home from work, and we’d watch the Evening News and everything so. And and now the media landscape has become so fragmented. And I’m I’m I see, as many ads as the average person. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But I have not seen that. So I’m wondering if they’re on certain meat that you know. Maybe they are on television or streaming platforms that I’m not. O’Reilly: I would say, most of it’s probably online in the form of videos, Youtube videos, or whatever just. They’re great at creating press. All those Heinz ideas create press, and I always say the best advertising creates press, because suddenly your budget feels like it’s quadrupled. If the press gets hold of it right, and rethink, or masters at that. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So my next question I was gonna ask you is is related to the point that you just made there. So over time other than becoming more fragmented and going into new media. Obviously with the Internet especially, and video. What else has changed in terms of advertising and storytelling. O’Reilly: I think this, I think you sort of touched on it. I think storytelling is spilled out of traditional media for sure. But even online. It’s spilled out. So, for example, sticking with Heinz, they put out on at New York’s fashion week, which just happened. They put out a line of clothes. Heinz, a ketchup, put out a line of clothes that had just a little ketchup drip. and it became the talk of fashion. Week. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I did. I did read about that. So. O’Reilly: Here’s the catch up finding a way to worm their way into New York’s fashion week. With this, with just the ongoingness of their strategy and and their storytelling ability. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, you know what I would say. There, the medium is the message right? that’s absolutely brilliant. I love that. O’Reilly: And everything they do is is tailored to that but specific medium which is so great, which I think is the sign of a great marketer. It’s not the same thing in every medium. It’s the same tone. It’s the same overall strategy. But but Instagram looks different than Facebook and Facebook looks different than Youtube. Video, like everything’s tailored to that medium. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right brilliant. So I’d love to switch over into personal branding. And you you were talking about the Volkswagen lemon ad, and how they turned that into a pot. So it: drew the reader in. You know. What? What do you mean? You’re calling yourself a lemon. I better read what they’re talking about here, right? And they basically turned. I’ve heard this term a lot recently. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Yeah, right? Right? And that also relates to humans. So when I’m coaching executives on their personal brand or their professional identity They’ll admit to me that there’s some part of their identity that they try to hide right it could be, for example, their sense of humor like. I don’t want people to think I’m unprofessional, so I hide my sense of humor, or I hide my you know my upbringing where I was brought up, or my accent, or they tried to somehow hide their identity. And then and then I talk to them about how we can create a narrative where what they’re perceiving as a bug may actually be a feature. So that’s my segue into asking you, Terry, whether you consciously and or strategically develop your personal brand. O’Reilly: You know I did an episode on personal branding a couple of years back. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. And it was the most popular episode of that season which surprised me because I thought I just never would have guessed that. Yeah. O’Reilly: And that’s why, in the book that’s sitting behind you there, there is a chapter on personal branding. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I read it that even. O’Reilly: That book is for marketers. I I really thought, you know, there’s everybody, even within marketing, has a brand. So I think, like any great brand a a personal brand has to share so many things in common with. If you look to Nike, or Apple, or Heinz, or whatever is that? 1st of all. they figure out what their uniqueness is in the category. and then everything they do kind of centers around that uniqueness. And there’s a consistency. Then there’s a tone there’s a kind of language that a great brand uses. There are guardrails, too, I think, but I don’t think they can be super super narrow. Because, as you were saying, you know, if someone’s really funny, or you know, if someone had a really tough upbringing, but achieved a lot of success. That’s a great story like that can really be. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature like it can be a really great part of your of your personal brand about how you overcame obstacles or overcame speed bumps to achieve success. So for me, a great brand is what makes you different. And then how can I express that in creative ways? And that means you have to look around the category. See what your competitors are doing because you don’t want to strike a similar tone to somebody else. You want to find your own piece of real estate that you can own. Even my radio show on CBC is different in one big way, because I looked when when I pitched the show to Cbc. Never thinking for a moment that they would ever buy it, Andrea? You know the advertising free Cbc, taking on a show about advertising. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah, yeah. O’Reilly: Shockley. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Irony. Love it. O’Reilly: No, it is yeah. I looked at all the shows on on Cbc. And I thought, Okay, I’m going to Zig. Everybody’s saying I’m going to Zig, and what that was is I didn’t do interviews like I may be the only narrative show on Cbc. Maybe there’s 1 more out there, but I chose to go narrative storytelling instead of interviewed. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that’s the only thing that distinguish. I mean, it is. O’Reilly: So it’s 1 of them. Yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So you also have a beautiful voice. You also have incredible knowledge. You’re also a beautiful storyteller, right? I could go on O’Reilly: So that was the starting point, though Andrea was that beyond all of that lovely stuff the starting point was, how can I stand out on the air just sonically. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. O’Reilly: I thought, Okay, I’m not going to do interviews. That was a big decision. Because there’s a lot of great advertising people. I could interview. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I’m sure, and it’s fun. O’Reilly: And it’s fun. Yeah, it’s fun, right? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I was. Maybe you’ve answered this next question with what you just said. But so what’s your product? Category, or your cat or personal category. I guess I mean, you’re saying other radio shows. O’Reilly: Well, you know, the 1st chapter of that book is, what business are you really in. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: And that’s that’s you think that’s so easy to answer. And it’s and I give some examples in there that Molson’s not in the beer business or in the party business, and Michelin’s not in the tire business. They’re in the safety business. I mean, you really have to know what people are buying from you in order to be relevant. Yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You see, I’m just showing I’m opening the book to show you. As I was reading that chapter in particular, I took my marker out. I started writing. Talk. Talk about talk is in the business of right. Yes. O’Reilly: Right, but that I mean that that gets to the heart of your question. You know you have to know what it is people want from you. because, as I say in the book, if you’re if someone’s shopping for tires because they wanna have make sure their family’s safe if you’re selling speed as a tire feature, and the and the place across the street selling safety. They’re gonna cross the street, even though you’re both selling tires right. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: I think you have to, really. And it’s so hard to. you know. Peel, the onion, to figure out what it is that you offer even my show it. It started out as a show about creativity. and then it very quickly morphed into a show about strategy. And that has been my ongoingness, and I’m a creative guy. I was really always dealt with strategy. But I wasn’t a strategic account director. I was a writer. But here I am evolving into strategy. So so my show is really a look. I take people on a a look behind the closed doors of advertise, like everybody’s got should have an elevator pitch. That’s how you get to the nub of who you are and what you offer is, try coming up with a 1 sentence elevator pitch. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Of what you do, whether you’re a brand or a person. Yeah. O’Reilly: And what you do, and what makes you unusual? You know I have a chapter in that in that book which I find such a great exercise. It’s really hard to do well that exercise. But you know, I always say, you know, Dirty Harry, that great Clint Eastwood film series of phones that made him famous. Really, you know, what was it about about Dirty Harry that made him so compelling? And it was that it wasn’t that he was a rogue cop. It wasn’t that he was tough. it it wasn’t that he broke the rules, which is what everybody answers. The the true answer to that is, he was more violent than the criminals he chased. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s right. I just read that. I just read that. O’Reilly: When you, when it’s articulated, you go. Yes, that’s exactly why he was so mesmerizing and and and why he created so much that character created so much controversy, and and ticket buying was never really seen before. and even I wired magazine, which is my favorite elevator pitch of all time. They, you know, it’s about entertainment technology at at trends and their elevator pitch when they were looking for funding from investors was. we want to feel like we’ve been mailed back from the future. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I, yeah, I love that too. O’Reilly: Maybe the best elevator pitch of all time. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: My favorite elevator pitch of all time is, you know, the Sigourney Weaver aliens movie. Do you know what the elevator pitch was for? It. O’Reilly: Jaws in space. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes, I probably learned that from you, Terry. O’Reilly: Yeah, you may have. Yeah, I’ve mean that once you can articulate  a really great elevator pitch. And that means, I mean, look at the language in the 3 we’ve talked about there. It isn’t like, I am a marketing communications expert like that’s not an elevator pitch. That’s a that’s just a statement that’s not an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch should make people lean right in. So when when wired magazine said to their investors, We want our magazine to feel like it’s been mailed back from the future. All the investors around the table instantly were interested in that magazine. You know what. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That that unexpected element that you said. O’Reilly: Who is it so? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Important, and it. O’Reilly: Business. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Is one sentence right? If it has something unexpected in it, then. O’Reilly: Yeah, a little surprise or or an incredibly interesting collection of words that sums up. What is the essence of you that makes you so different. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: okay, so I want to have time for the rapid fire questions at the end. But I, before we do that, I want to shift to your most recent book my best mistake. O’Reilly: Yep. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Can you share with the listeners what the basic premise of the book is, and then also share with us maybe one or 2 of your best mistakes. O’Reilly: The premise of that book was people who more, that I have a couple of other of additional little stories in there. But the overall arc of that book is people who made catastrophic career decisions where they lost their jobs, the credibility, their livelihood. They lost everything. and it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them. So I thought that as an exploration was interesting, because when that happens to most people they usually disappear, they disappear into the ether, or they just completely change careers or vocations, and just like wipe the slate clean. But I thought, it’s yeah. And I thought people who actually muscle through that are more interesting. So the 1st chapter of that book is about Jaws Steven Spielberg. It’s such a well told story, except for one detail, right? So everybody knows he was out on location in Martha’s Vineyard. He’s got 3 mechanical sharks that he’s had built to scale. which ate up most of his budget. By the way, he’s a 1st time film director really done some television. This is his 1st time with the Big Leagues. You think he’s only 28 or something? He gets out to Martha’s Vineyard. They put the sharks in the water. He’s got his cast, his crew, everything out there and the sharks immediately. Malfunction. And he’s paralyzed because the main beast of this film doesn’t work. And he goes into his hotel room one night thinking he’s gonna lose at all. He’s gonna lose his his chances. Being a director. He’s gonna he’s gonna be pulled back to Hollywood. He’s gonna be fired. He’s sitting in the dark panicking. and then he asks himself the most interesting question. He says. what would Hitchcock do. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, wow! O’Reilly: In that moment he knew the answer, and the answer was, What you can’t see is is the most terrifying thing of all. So then he, you know, he figures out a way to imply the shark, the fin through the water, or the pulling the big yellow. What it barrels through the water to show it’s or the music the great score. Right? Don’t, don’t. But the mistake he made, which is really why I decided to retell that well-told story, because everybody knows those details, is he? When he tried these sharks out in Hollywood he tried them in freshwater tanks. Mistake was he didn’t try them in salt water. The saltwater corroded all the mechanics. I thought there, I never knew that detail, and that’s why I love the story, and that’s why I loved how he let me. That that huge mistake he made in the filmmaking led to the best part of that film and lost him on his career like be ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. And the so it’s really interesting that that story is your lead in this book, Terry, because as an audio storyteller, you’re leaving just in the same way that he left the the moviegoers image of the of the shark up up to the moviegoers. Right? When you’re telling your stories on your podcast and your radio show. You’re leaving it up to us to kind of fill in the blanks in our minds about what everything looked like. O’Reilly: That’s the joy of audio. Your your listener becomes your art director. and I always thought that was so incredibly powerful. I mean a lot of writers and advertising don’t like audio don’t like raid. Let’s call it radio don’t like radio. They’re afraid of it. They much rather do television or print or film because at 1st glance. It looks like audio doesn’t have all the the same toolbox. You don’t have casts like you don’t have faces. You don’t have wardrobe. You don’t have locations. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: I always thought that was way more freeing because I could be on the moon in a radio commercial. If I have done it correctly. You’re with me as a listener. I could be at the bottom of the ocean, and all of that would. I couldn’t do on television because it was too expensive. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Right? And and this, yeah, it’s the power of audio. I wonder if these art directors or creatives are also thinking that it’s just less tangible, right? Like it’s a it’s an audio file. I can’t actually open something, O’Reilly: That’s why it’s also the hardest to present, Andrea, because you can show a print layout. You can show a TV storyboard. But with radio. You have to actually get up in a boardroom and perform it for your client, which gets to your great question, are you an introvert or an extrovert? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Bye. O’Reilly: Yeah. I love this question. I was so glad that it’s on your list. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, let’s do it. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Terry? O’Reilly: Complete Introvert. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Of really. O’Reilly: Oh, complete introvert, so they say the definition of an of a introvert versus an extrovert is, do you get recharged by being alone or recharged by being around a lot of people. So I recharge not by being alone. I’m not a hermit, I mean, but away from the crowd is where I recharge. Right? So that was, that was a big hindrance to me when I started my career. because I learned quite quickly that you had to learn how to present in a board room you had to get up. You had to be able to perform. You had to be able to feel questions. You had to be able to to really own the room. And there’s a lot of money riding on those meetings right? You could spend, you know, a million dollars on it. You’re trying to convince someone to spend a million dollars on your idea. It’s there’s a lot of pressure going on. And I hated it. It was my white knuckle fear. I would beg people to present my work for me, because I just it was just the it was the the thing I feared most. And then I realized that by letting other people present my work, most of it wasn’t getting sold. So I thought, Okay.I have to learn how to do this. so I was very fortunate because I had a great mentor. a creative director. I had early in my career was a magnificent presenter he was just. Oh, my goodness! He could just thrill you with the work. He just it was something about him, and I just watched him constantly at work. and I, slowly, by osmosis, learned how to do it. and then I actually got over the hump of fearing it. So by I would volunteer a lot. So you know, Craig, director, say, okay, who’s gonna present the work tomorrow, when I go put up my hand and go. Okay, O’reilly’s gonna present the work. Who’s gonna present the strategy? Jill’s gonna and I would go home and just rock in the dark, because I’ve now put myself in a situation where I have to do it, but I did it so many times that I actually got over the hump of fearing it to actually looking forward to it. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Amazing. O’Reilly: Introvert like me.That is a big journey. Situationally, specific extrovert. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Oh, wow, wow! You just came in with the Zinger. So the most common answer that I get is like, I’m a recovered introvert. That’s some version of that, right like I was an introvert. But I overcame it, and I’m like introverts are the best listeners. O’Reilly: Yeah, right. World needs, introverts. World needs. Yes. But your story, I’m sure, will inspire a lot of people, whether they’re an introvert or an extrovert or not Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Ok, so that wasn’t so rapid fire. But it was a very valuable story for everyone to hear. The second rapid fire question is. what are your communication, pet peeves? O’Reilly: 1st of all, I think you touched on it, too. I think people don’t listen. I think listening is a big part of communicating like 2 monologues don’t make a dialog. Right? Yeah. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Very well put. You are going to be quoted on that, Terry. O’Reilly: Yeah, I’ve seen, you know I I’ve been in so many meetings where somebody will ask a client a question and then answer it. Before the clients had a chance to add like again, it’s just a monologue, then. I think listening is a very underrated huge part of a great communicator is listening and know thy audience. The the Golden rule, you know. putting yourself in the shoes of who you’re talking to or imagining. It’s a funny thing, you know. If I’ll write an episode of our show. and I’ll send, you know. I’ll record my part, and the engineer puts it together, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll make a a list of revisions, sometimes 20 or 30 revisions long. because I’m I mean the weeds on it. and then I’ll listen to it, you know, over the course of that process like 6 times. and then I’ll then it’ll air on Cbc. And it feels completely different to me because I know a million people are listening to it. I’ll pick out little mistakes in it. Where I thought, how could I have missed that when I listened to it 6 times in a row. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! So I just wanted to share with you that over the past several years people ask me all the time, what do you think communication superpowers are, what are the things we need to work on? And I would come up with a list of 3 depending on the person. The 3 most important things probably are confidence, listening and storytelling. Yeah, right? If you if you don’t have confidence, actually, you have nothing because you’re paralyzed to your point. And then, being a good listener, is a great next step, and then kind of the icing on the cake is becoming an eloquent or effective storytelling. O’Reilly: It has to be. You know Theodore Levitt has that great line that I’ve stolen for decades, which is, people don’t buy 3 quarter inch drill bits. They buy 3 quarter inch holes, and you have to understand even not just brand advertising, but as a personal brand, or in a meeting or an exchange. You have to understand what it is. People are buying right. You have to listen to them and know what they want, and not just make it myopic in one way. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So this is what I handwrote in the front of the book. When when you you did that, you shared what the story in in the 1st chapter that you just shared here. And so I you know, I put the book down and I thought, what is talk about talk selling. is it communication skills, coaching? No. it’s actually selling confidence. O’Reilly: That’s what it is. Exactly right. Takes a long time to get to that, though, doesn’t it? To peel that onion to get to that that word. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love the metaphor peeling the onion. I’ve been dancing around that idea of confidence for years. So okay, the final rapid fire question, rapid fire question is there a podcast or a book that you’ve been recommending lately? Not not your books, not your podcast not my podcast something. Else out. There. O’Reilly: I read so much. Oh, my goodness. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Do you? Oh, yeah, you have a book club. Yeah. O’Reilly: Oh, yeah, and you can see. I don’t know if you can see behind me. I can’t see myself on the thing, but I mean, that’s just marketing books back there right. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: Yeah. let me think about that for one second one podcast. It’s got nothing to do with marketing per se, that I love is the plot thickens from classic movies. So Ben make. That’s who I love. I just love his intro. If you ever watch that channel, he always does these really wonderful interviews? And or he’ll do great introductions to movies, old movies telling you what happened behind the scenes, etc. He has this great podcast called the Plot Thickens, where every season is about a different filmmaker or actor or actress, and it is absolutely rivetingly fascinating. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh. excellent! I will check it out, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes. O’Reilly: It’s really good. There’s 1 more, I’ll say, I’ll talk to you about just very quickly. here’s a a podcast. Series called, I think it’s called the bank robber diaries. I may have that name wrong, but they enter this whole series. They interview a, a a real-life, modern-day bank robber. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh! O’Reilly: Robbed. I wanna say I may have my numbers wrong because I listened to the series a year or 2 ago. He may have robbed like 20 banks in California now, not some like now, and he tell he talks about how he does it. about how we. It was just a fascinating look into a, into a criminal mind that you would never normally get like. Here’s how I case a bank. Here’s how I make my getaway. Here’s where I parked my car because I had to run out with all the money, and I had to like. It was like just mind blowing to get inside the mind of someone like that, and then he’s he’s now, you know, re Beyond that he’s eventually an FBI guy caught him. He went to jail. Now he’s on the other side of that and he’s just. It’s a fascinating story. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I was curious whether they were interviewing him in jail. O’Reilly: Already done his time. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Done this time So. Is there anything else you want to leave with me? And the talk about talk listeners in terms of storytelling or personal branding or advertising. O’Reilly: I think I think, above all, it’s it’s to be a wonderful storyteller. In my humble opinion. I just I think it’s you have to have an enormous sense of curiosity. I think you have to be curious about people and things, and why people do the things they do and and influences in the culture. And you know again, that’s about listening or asking the right questions. And I think really wonderful writers have this ability, Andrea, to be in a situation, then hover above it at the same time. So you know you’re having an exchange with your car mechanic, but you’re also watching it from above in the ceiling, because you’re watching the dynamics. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: That I remember I I was getting my car fixed. am I? And I looked at the bill, and I had a heart attack. and my mechanic said to me, You know what it was really difficult, but you know I I didn’t even bill you for all our hours. It’s you lose, I lose. and I thought what a great way to sell a high, a high bill was to use the term you lose. I lose, and and then I as a writer, I hovered above that moment, you know, and I grabbed that moment to use elsewhere him and and I am always making notes by the way of things people tell me, or I make copious notes on every book I read. And I collect them all, and the great thing about being digitized is you can search anything, but I may not. I may find a wonderful story that someone’s told me, Andrea and I. I may not use that story for 5 years. but when I use that story it is the perfect story. For that moment. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Gosh! O’Reilly: So, writer. I collect stories. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So where do you put them? O’Reilly: So on my computer, it’s on a hard drive in case my computer. you know, dies. But yeah, but even just book notes. I have probably 1,600 pages of book notes. So far. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow, incredible. O’Reilly: Just pulling out little moments, little stories, little turns of phrase that I can attribute back to somebody. But, like, you know, you don’t buy through quarter and drill bits you buy through quarter inch holes, like all those little nuggets that just clarify. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, I’m going to sneak one last question in, because, like, you’re basically serving this one to me. have you created a language model for AI based on all of your books and all of your podcast episodes. Because I feel like people would pay money to ask Terry. I have. O’Reilly: Haven’t done anything like that. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, there’s an opportunity for you. O’Reilly: AI is is kind of I’ve I’ve been stepping back from that just to see it unfold, because it’s so new to all of us. Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. O’Reilly: Yeah. Well. who knows? Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: all right. Well, I want to thank you so much, Terry, for sharing your stories and your advice very much. I learned a lot, and I have learned so much over the years. And now I’m thrilled to share that with the talk about talk listeners. So thank you. O’Reilly: Well, this has been a terrific conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.   Isn’t Terry great?  If you want to hear more of his voice, check out his “Under the Influence“ podcast.  Thank you, Terry, for so graciously sharing your insights with us.  As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun.   Did you catch where I realized I was telling Terry a story that I learned from him? Pretty funny. Probably the best implicit compliment ever, right?  Repeating a story back to someone that first shared the story with you. Hmm. Anyway, now, as promised, I’d like to summarize three main points from our conversation: The necessary ingredients for a great story The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success –  The idea of peeling back the onion – 1-Storytelling Terry says that two things make for a great story:  structure. You have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end … As he says: a  easing opening, a sumptuous middle. And then you have this inevitable end. That’s just so satisfying. And second the element of surprise. As Terry says, unexpected moments add impact. And to be a wonderful storyteller Terry says you have to have an enormous sense of curiosity. Curious about people and things. Listening and asking questions.   2-The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success  This is the main point of his latest book: “My best mistake”? Terry talked about the example of how Steven Spielberg’s Jaws mishap (i.e. the mechanical shark rusting in the salt water) turned the movie into a long-lasting cultural icon. Terry also specifically mentioned how that weakness, or obstacle ,or BUG of yours can become andintegral and compelling part of your of your personal brand. It’s what makes you unique.   3- peeling back the onion  This idea of peeling back the onion – it could be for a product brand or for your personal brand. It’s about thinking deeply, peeling back the onion, regarding what business you’re really in.  For example, Molson’s not in the beer business, rather it’s in the party business,  and Michelin’s not in the tire business, rather they’re in the safety business.  And Talk about Talk is not in the communication coaching business, rather it’s in the business of elevating your confidence. Now ask yourself, what business are you REALLY in?  OK – There were so many more rich points, but if I limit myself to three, its: The necessary ingredients for a great Story The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success –  Idea of peeling back the onion – And  that’s it.  I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did,. I put links to Terry’s podcast and his books in the shownotes. Please check them out. Thank you again, Terry, it was wonderful to meet you and I loved our conversation. Thank YOU so much for listening. Please let me know what you thought of this episode. Connect with me on LinkedIn and DM me there.  And talk soon!   The post Under the Influence with Storyteller Terry O’Reilly ep.173 appeared first on Talk About Talk.

In this conversation with Jill Avery, a Harvard Business School marketing professor and personal branding authority, the importance of personal branding in today's digital landscape is explored. Avery addresses common hesitations people have toward branding themselves and highlights its crucial role in showcasing individuality and enhancing visibility. They discuss how personal branding relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the need for self-awareness, and practical tips for transforming public speaking anxiety into excitement.

Seth Godin, famed author, blogger, and podcaster shares his wisdom on what communication skill we should work on, the issue with authenticity for professionals, and a new definition of personal branding. Let’s make a ruckus! BOOKS BY SETH GODIN This is Strategy – https://amzn.to/4dwi1PS Linchpin – https://amzn.to/4fIr7ux Tribes – https://amzn.to/3yHo4lI The Dip – https://amzn.to/3X4E7n6 Purple Cow – https://amzn.to/3M3SuBR This Is Marketing – https://amzn.to/46PIaXK The Song of Significance – https://amzn.to/4ctABHl Seth’s all-volunteer community project: The Carbon Almanac – https://amzn.to/3YLSIFk   RESOURCES “The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters Personal Brand FastCompany article – https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you Smart Brevity book – https://amzn.to/3pj2Jdj Roger Martin “A Plan is not a Strategy” video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYlGRnC7J8 Seth’s recommendations: Mystery Show podcast (ep.3) – https://gimletmedia.com/shows/mystery-show A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs – https://500songs.com/ The Moment with Brian Koppelman podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-moment-with-brian-koppelman/id814550071 Hardcare History podcast with Dan Carlin – https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ Just Kids: An Autobiography by Patty Smith – https://amzn.to/3ApVA0k CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/   TRANSCRIPT That, as you can probably guess, from the title of this episode, is Seth Godin. And he’s on a mission, encouraging us all to make a ruckus.  To make a generous contribution to the world.  To change the world for the better.  Whether it’s in one of his books, in his blog, or in this conversation you’re about to hear, Seth Godin always makes me think about things in new ways. Take, for example, Seth’s answer to the first rapid fire question that I ask every guest: “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?”  Seth had the most unique answer to this Q that I’ve ever heard : I never thought of it that way before, did you? You know, most of the smart guests I interview tell me they’re an introvert. So maybe he’s right. We’re evolving to all be introverts. I guess I really am an anomaly. And now I know why cocktail parties without alcohol don’t work very well. Are you keen to learn more from Seth? Let’s do this! Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #171 “Making a ruckus with Seth Godin”. In this episode, you’re gonna learn what communication skill Seth thinks we should work on, a new definition of personal branding, and why we all need to choose our genre – amongst other things. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki please just call me Andrea. I’m your executive communication coach. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and clarity, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. Sound good? To learn more about me and what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com and you can read about the coaching and workshops that I run. Plus there are a bunch of free resources for you at the bottom of the takaboutalk.com homepage. Ok, let’s get into this. I’m sure you want to hear from Seth. Here’s how this episode is going to go. After I introduce Seth, we’ll get right into the interview. Then at the end I’m going to summarize with the three learnings that I want to reinforce based on our conversation. Three things that I hope you’ll take away and that I hope will help you in your quest to make a ruckus. Seth has been on my radar since I was a brand manager early in my career, and I read his book called “Purple Cow.” That book is just one of the 21 books that have been bestsellers around the world and that have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, and of course Purple Cow. His book, “This Is Marketing,” was an instant bestseller around the world. Recently, he organized the all-volunteer community project called The Carbon Almanac. In 2023, he wrote, The Song of Significance, which is already a bestseller, and I strongly recommend it if you are a leader of any kind, or if you seek to become one. I’ll leave links to all of these books in the shownotes. Yes, Seth is prolific. Seth also creates impact. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world. His podcast is in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. In 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame. It would not be an exaggeration to say Seth changed my life. In 2018, I read a Seth blog, where he invited candidates to join the inaugural cohort of the Podcasting Fellowship. In writing the application for that program, I came up with the title of this podcast. I remember typing “the topic of my podcast will be communication skills. Basically my podcast will be talk about talk.” Wait! I thought. That could also be the name of the podcast. I checked the URL. It wasn’t taken, so I bought it – pronto. Then I legally secured the trademark. Here I am, 6yrs later, interviewing Seth. Yes, this is a moment for me. But back to Seth. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth has founded several companies, including Yoyodyne and Squidoo. More than 40,000 people have taken the powerful Akimbo workshops he founded, including the altMBA The Marketing Seminar, and yes, “The Podcasting Fellowship.” I have to tell you, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Just ask my family. Anyway, one of my favourite episodes of all time is a relatively recent episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast where he interviews Seth. Seth is irreverent, wise, and inspiring. It was when I was listening to Seth provide advice to Tim Ferriss, that I decided to finally ask Seth if I could interview him. My goal here is to ask Seth new and different questions that I haven’t heard him answer on other podcasts. Things like, “do you think about your personal brand?” and “What do you think is the most important communication skill?” Here we go!   INTERVIEW AW: you ready. Seth:Born, ready. AW: Nice.  Thank you so much, Seth, for joining us here today to talk about making a ruckus. Seth:Well, thank you for having me and for showing up hundreds of times. This podcasting thing takes a lot, and I appreciate you beating. AW: Well, as I said, I know that your podcasting fellowship was a catalyst for me in making this happen. So I am very grateful for that. And even before the podcasting fellowship, Seth, I always thought that I had read most of your books in the last couple weeks since you agreed to do this interview. I did a little bit of research, and I found a list of well over 80 books that you have written. and that list did not even include the Carbon Almanac, or this is strategy. Seth:Well, I didn’t write the Carbon Almanac, but many of the books you’re talking about are from my early career as a book packager. and if you’re doing your job right as a book packager, you’re not writing every word. every book beginning with permission, marketing. I wrote every word. There are also books. Before that I wrote every word. But I don’t have a team anymore. I used to have a team. AW: Okay, I know. I looked back at your bio, and I saw that you were in the publishing space, and I thought that explains some of it, but still. Seth:Yeah. It’s a lot. AW: Seth, you are absolutely prolific. And I have a question for you about this body of work that you’ve created. The question is, how would you characterize or summarize or label what your body of work represents? And let let’s say, your recent body of work. Maybe, since purple cal. Seth: Well AW: I hope I’m making a ruckus. That’s very aspirational. A couple of months ago I listened to one of my favorite interviews of you, which was, I think, a walk and talk that you did with Tim Ferris, and I took some notes from that that I wanted to follow up with you on. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is about again defining something, but you use the term genre. And I was wondering if you could share your take on genre. Seth:Well, genre gets a bad rap because of generic but they’re not really related. Genre is essential at a bookstore, because the mysteries have to be next to the mysteries and not mix in with the cookbooks. Because if you’re going to buy a mystery, you want a book that’s in the mystery genre. Now, that doesn’t mean all mysteries are the same, but it means they rhyme with each other, and they allow us to make predictions and to sort without wasting all of our time. So we can agree, I hope, that books have a genre but so do charities, so do political causes, so do people we go on dates with, so do restaurants. If you go to an Ethian or Opian restaurant and they serve you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It might be a very good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But you’re not happy because you went to an Ethiopian restaurant and so with lots of people who I work with, who are creatives. They seem to think it’s a badge of honor to have no genre. And to say, this is for everyone. It’s really important. and what I say to them is, if you don’t have a genre you will be ignored. AW: Beautiful. a lot of my work has evolved from focusing on improving communication skills to helping people identify their unique passions and expertise and superpowers, and I call it their personal brand, or in the context of executives, their professional identity. And one thing that really gets a lot of traction is helping people identify what their archetype is Seth:Hmm. AW: People love being diagnosed, and then it’s not that there’s a better or a worse archetype. I think the power is  seeing yourself, and then understanding yourself and focusing, and then being the best version of that that you can be. I’m curious if you think about your personal brand, Seth. Seth:Well, because I’ve been in the marketing business for a long time. I take the word, brand very seriously. Tom Peters wrote the very 1st breakthrough article about personal branding, in FastCompany. Exactly the same day that I wrote the 1st book on personal branding called, Get what you deserve. and. AW: 1,997. Seth:Something like that. It’s a long time ago. AW: And it would. 84 Seth: What’s a brand? A brand is a promise. It’s what we expect from you. So a logo is not a brand. All the stuff you think is important is not a brand, brand is what other people think you’re going to do next. And so the story that I tell is Hyatt and Nike both have Logos. But if Hyatt hotels announced the line of sneakers, we have no idea what it would be like. But if Nike announced that they were going to open a hotel. We all know what it would be like because Nike has a brand and high, it doesn’t. So most people have worked very hard to have a brand of They do what you ask them to most of the time, and you have to pay them. Yeah, that’s it. right that you know you go to see a podiatrist. The podiatrist is going to fix your foot, but that’s it. That’s their brand. It’s not the clothes you wear. It’s how do you act in a way that changes what people expect from you? Right? And a very personal, simple example is, if you were coming to my house for dinner tonight? Would I expect that you would be bringing about online. or would I expect that you would be ridiculously over the top and bring me this and this and this, and this, and I’d be like, wait, wait! What’s going on here? This is too much that could be your brand, then that’d be a good thing. It could just be a thing. And so when we want to not be a commodity, an easily replaceable cog. we have to stand for something. and once you choose to stand for it, it helps to stand for it all the time AW: Right in all ways. You, you said. It’s not how you dress. Actually, I would say how you dress is one of the ways that you reinforce that brand. Right? Do you agree. Seth:It depends on whether you’re fashion designer or not. Let’s say I need somebody to build a deck on my back porch. I don’t care what they wear, and they may have a ridiculous article of clothing on. It probably won’t affect what I was looking for when I was hiring someone to build the deck. So what you wear only matters to the extent like these glasses I’m wearing. They’re my logo. They’re not my brand that when someone is reading one of my blog posts or books, they’re not saying, Oh, I can hear the yellow glasses. No, that’s not the case. The logo is just a signifier to, you know. So you know it’s me. AW: Interesting. I think a logo could be inconsistent with your brand, though right. Of course you can have a logo, you know. this is a great experiment. Think really hard about 2 really? Well done. Logos. Okay, you got them in mind. Gay. Yeah. Seth: Are they for terrible, terrible products. AW: No, they’re for excellent products. Seth:Right. Everyone always picks Logos that they associate with excellent products. The fact is, the Starbucks logo is terrible. Terrible. There’s nothing good. It’s hard to reproduce. People think she’s naked, but maybe she’s not, and her hair is a mess, and what is that, and the Starbucks name is terrible. It has the word bucks in the title for an expensive place. None of it makes sense, but people love the experience. So they’ve now decided they like the logo.And yes, it is possible to slap an average logo on a great brand. But if you think about it. like Patagonia, is one of my favorite brands, the logo. It’s memorable, but it’s not. It doesn’t match their brand. 140 AW: True. true. So your previous comment reminded me of the famous quote from Jeff Bezos, where he says your brand is what other people say and think about, say about you when you’re not in the room. right? It’s really about your identity which may or may not have something to do with the yellow glasses that you’re wearing right like when I think about Seth, I picture you in yellow or orange glasses right? And sharing expertise about how to make a ruckus. Seth:Well, I would argue that my brand is different than my logo. because most of the time. if people have me show up in the room. They expect me to do 2 things one say something that is both true and surprising at the same time and 2 be pretty kind and there are plenty of people in my line of work who are not kind. and there are plenty of people in my line of work who say things that are not surprising. So I am distinguished from those people by those 2 things. AW: I love that I love that that’s like the intersection I was just listening to. This is marketing for at least the second time. Maybe the 3rd time. And you talk about what’s what’s on the X axis? What’s on the y axis right? And plotting. And and I even do this actually with my clients when we’re talking about their archetypes, and I used to say, identify the one archetype that represents you. And now it’s like the intersection of 2 can often be at least as powerful. I think that’s a huge insight, I mean, the consultants would be laughing at us right like. Of course it’s a 2 by 2. It’s always a 2 by 2, but. Seth:And consultants are up, and consultants are always laughing at it. AW: Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess. So I want to shift into communication a little bit. So my, this podcast talk about talk is really targeted to growth-minded executives who are trying to grow their career. And they have this idea, this epiphany that communication skills, are going to help them get there, right? Based on your observations and conversations? What communication skills do you think are the most important? Maybe it could be that they’re the most lacking. But the most important communication skills that we should be focusing on. Seth:I think the biggest problem most people have is they don’t actually want to communicate that they so semiotics is the science of flags and signals. If you can watch a movie with the sound turned off and understand what’s going on. It’s a pretty well made movie. I guess the symbols and the signs are expressing themselves. If you get on an airplane and someone who works there is pointing with that 2 finger point in each direction, you know in whatever language they’re talking exactly what they’re doing. You know it by heart. but lots of times we’re hiding. We are talking, talking, talking, talking, but we are hiding because we don’t actually want to be seen, because it’s scary to be seen. We don’t actually want to make a point, because then we’d have to be responsible for it. So that’s why, when you call a big company, and they have all this gobbled ego gobbledygook gobbledy book that they just said to you on the phone instead of just saying, Yeah, it’s broken. right? Because they don’t want to say, Yeah, it’s broken. And so the hardest part for me when I see people who have trouble communicating, I think the hardest part is, people don’t actually want to be heard, so they’re afraid to directly say what they mean. AW: Wow! Okay, that blows me away. Let me tell you. The typical answer that I hear is Oh, it’s confidence, or Oh, it’s precision. Or Oh, it’s storytelling. One answer to the question that gets a lot of traction also is listening. And I thought, that’s where you were headed at first, st right? We think we’re communicating. But we’re not really communicating because we’re not listening. And you’re saying, no, it is actually about amplifying what you’re saying. But people are. It’s almost like they’re afraid to put their stake in the ground. Yeah. okay, I’m going to do some thinking about that. I was just listening to. A new book called Executive Presence 2.0. Where the author talks about Sylvia Ann Hewitt. She talks about how the 3 ingredients to executive presence are communication skills, gravitas, and showing up. and people that have these things and have exceptional executive presence, are the people who put their stake in the ground and say what they mean, and back it up. They make the tough decisions. Seth: Yeah, I think it’s very important to realize that there are 8 billion people on Earth. Nobody is for everything. No one is for everyone you need to find your people. So I don’t go to Paul Weber’s anymore. Because Weber sells hamburgers. I haven’t had meat in 40 years. I can’t even smell the place right. And if I said Paul Webber, you gotta stop doing that. Start serving kale milkshakes instead made with oat milk. They should appropriately say, there’s a place 5 miles up Highway 11. You can go, you know. We don’t do that here and a key part of communicating is, I’m speaking to people who speak this language, who wanna go in that direction, who believe this sort of thing? And if you’re not one of those people, you might be in the wrong room AW: So that relates to another topic that I wanted to ask you about this. I don’t know if it’s tension or integration, maybe between authenticity and consistency. I love how you, Seth, define these terms, and then talk about how they’re the same and different from each other, and how people may confound them. Yeah, I have a whole rant about authenticity, as you know. Seth: you and I do not know each other well, so I have no idea if you’re having a good day or not. because you’re a professional. If you were showing up authentically, and your cat had just thrown up behind the refrigerator, and there, you know, crank collar just bothered you, and you had athletes, foot, and you were cranky about all those things. I wouldn’t like you more. Because I wanted, I came to the podcast to talk to a professional professionals are consistent. They’re not authentic. We want a consistent doctor. We want a consistent customs and border patrol agent. We want a consistent gas station attendant. We don’t want to have to guess every time we see, because we’re not their friend. we are engaging with them on a transaction. So yeah, I’d like my friends to be authentic with me. I can call my friend Lisa in Italy, and she will tell me her truth But if you’re not my friend, please just be consistent. AW: So during Covid and after Covid there was this this phrase going around, should we bring our whole selves to work. Seth:- 228 AW: And I replied to some of these articles and said, I hope we don’t bring our whole selves anywhere. Right? Sounds consistent with what you’re saying so. But back to this authentic, so consistent professionals need to be consistent and authenticity. You’re equating with full transparency. And so we don’t want that is that right? Seth:Well, even partial transparency, you know we were. We started by talking about brands. Is Nike consistent? Right? That Nike isn’t going to sell you a 3 inch heel. and they’re not gonna sell you something that breaks in a week, because if they did that their brand would fall apart. Maybe they authentically feel like doing that, because they would make some money. AW: That. Seth: What what we want is to build something that even if the logo wasn’t on it, people could tell we did it well. The only chance of that is, if it’s consistent. Now, the exception which social media has amplified are divas, rock stars, and people get paid for throwing a tantrum. Those people are supposed to be authentic. But guess what they’re faking it? They’re consistently being fake authentic, right? They’re having tantrums all the time, because, like maybe, Bob Dylan feels like being eloquent and singing in a way that we can understand, but he can’t. because he has to be consistently authentic as a mumbler. AW: Yeah, I love this. I interviewed an academic from the Us. On the archetypes of female pop stars. And she was talking about this, you know, you go from like the innocent girl, and then you rebel, and you go through these stages. And oh, oh, my goodness! That’s but you need to consistently conform or show up consistently, as that you know, hot mess, or as that diva right. Seth: Yeah, and that’s what killed Amy Winehouse. right like. And there’s a lot of misogyny. There’s a lot of family trauma. But the fact is that if you make a reputation as a diva who’s living right on the edge, you might not make it to AW: Yeah. Oh, gosh! It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wow! So be careful what you’re conforming to. What archetype, if you want to use the term archetype, or what persona, or what brand. or what genre. Seth: Right. And this this rubs people the wrong way because they think it’s fake. But is it fake that a surgeon’s wearing a mask and the rubber gloves, and standing like this in front of you before they do surgery right? The fact is that when you put on the uniform you become the professional, and the word uniform is the word uniform. For our reason. AW: Yeah. So I’m curious about your take about transparency at work like so I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the work of Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, right? And she talks. She talks about psychological safety and creating an environment where it’s safe to take risks, and she encouraged. Leaders are the folks that create the culture so they they can’t. They can’t allocate the adoption of psychological safety. They need to create it themselves. And one way they do that is, by being vulnerable, admitting mistakes, and so on. And the the term authenticity shows up a lot here in in this body of work. So  how do you. Seth:Okay. AW: And so. Seth:Let’s let’s break this into pieces a little bit. If you are consistently creating culture in an organization by doing things like admitting mistakes, acknowledging that you’re not infallible. You’re not being authentic doing that. You are being consistent, doing that. You are showing up to do it even when you don’t feel like it. even when you’re like. Oh, I can’t believe they need me to tell that story again. It embarrasses me every but you tell it anyway, right? That is consistent. So if Amy is writing down steps. she’s encouraging people to be consistent. She’s not encouraging, encouraging them to say, whatever the hell pops into their head. AW: That’s right. Seth:The key for me about transparency at work is let’s get real or let’s not play which is a simple sentence. That means we’re going to agree on what things are like around here, and we’re going to agree on where we are going. If you don’t want to buy into that, I get it. Here’s a severance package you are welcome to leave. but we’re going to agree that that’s what things are like around here, and then we can be honest with each other about whether we’re accomplishing that. So my friend Danny Meyer owns a bunch of restaurants. He started. Shake shack. If you work for Danny Meyer at one of these restaurants. We don’t have to revisit on a regular basis. Why, people are coming to spend a hundred dollars for dinner. and we don’t have to regulate regularly. Revisit. Why, we fold napkins. I know you don’t fold napkins at home, but we fold napkins here cause we’re putting on a show. And if you’re grumbling about that, if you’re grumbling about the, you know, systemic income inequality that leads it so that people can come by a $200 bottle of wine I get that. That’s totally legit. But the show we put on here that’s at the center of it. So let’s get real. This is what we do. This is a game, and I get to say to you that napkin wasn’t folded properly, and I’m not attacking you, and I’m not making a personal statement. I’m talking about the napkin. and if we can’t agree on what the napkin’s supposed to be, then we can’t work together. AW: Love it. Okay. I have a boot camp that I’m running after this interview, and I’m going to be talking to folks a lot about consistency. I love this. Okay, I want to shift to a different element of communication, and that is brevity. conciseness.precision. I know you have a very famous short blog, the shortest blog. What was the shortest blog you ever wrote. Seth:You don’t need more time. You just need to decide. AW: Yeah, I love that. I love that. In fact, you’ve already made the decision. So just do it right back to Nike. Just do it. So I recently read, brevity.  Is that what it’s called? The book by the axios founders? Smart brevity. It’s called. Seth: Okay. AW: Yeah, highly highly recommend that. But Seth: I hope it’s not too long, and I probably will just AW: It’s they. Seth: I probably would have just in the book brevity. I’m not sure they needed the word smart. So right there, I cut it in half. But okay, go ahead. AW: They could have cut it. No, they it’s very meta. They use all the principles that they’re teaching in the book, in the, in the communication of the book itself. So I have this theory that a lot of people think they’re being generous with the volume of information that they’re sharing. I know that I did early on when, 6 years ago, when I started blogging and podcasting, I thought, the more I shared the better. And so I have this new theory that if you really want to be generous, you do the work to sharpen the message, to make it more concise, more brief, so that it’s easier for other people to understand. Does that sit well with you? Seth: I’m always in favor of people doing the work. But let me challenge the concept of brevity the way many people understand Nordstrom’s founders and employees frequently tell a story A guy who was working at the tie counter at Nordstrom’s men’s ties. and a 75 year old man comes in with 2 snow tires. AW: I knew you’re gonna say that. Seth: And he puts the snow tires down on the desk, and he says, I bought these here. I don’t need them. I need a refund. and the person who’s working at the counter reaches into the cash register hands the guy $300 and says, Thank you. And he leaves and part of the punchline is nordstroms doesn’t sell. Snow tires this story, which I’m happy to explain it. But I don’t need to. This story is told because it is way longer than always give people a refund but it works better than saying, always give people a refund. True, because stories stick with people. So brevity actually means as short as possible, but not shorter. I mean, I used to know a kid who’s really young, he said. It’s simple the boy! Cried Wolf, and the villagers didn’t come. that’s it. You can’t tell that story more briefly than that. AW: Yeah. Okay, okay. okay, I want to ask you about your upcoming book. This is strategy. very cleverly and simply titled consistently with your previous book which I told you I’m rereading right now. This is marketing can you share with? I know it’s coming out in October. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Can you share a little bit about that book? Seth: There aren’t any books on strategy I’ve ever been able to recommend. because they’re not really about strategy. There are big, thick books for Mbas. There are books for generals. but mostly there are books of tactics. and strategy is a philosophy of becoming. Strategy is deciding what work to do today to get the results we seek tomorrow. Strategy is about systems and games and time and empathy and an elegant strategy is a path that gets better as we go. And most people, small companies, big companies, nonprofits, political campaigns. embassies. do not have an elegant strategy. They’re constantly pushing uphill. They’re constantly insisting that the world align the way they want it to align. and the thing is good. Waves make good surfers. So 1st we got to look for the right wave 1st we’ve got to understand how the world is structured, and then the change we seek to make in that context, not insisting that the whole world rearrange itself because it’s unjust. AW: So that’s the systems thinking that you were talking about. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I read a summary. And I thought, it’s if I had to choose the 2 things. The 2 things that this book is about in terms of strategic thinking is systems thinking and longer thinking longer term. I think you? You just said it, you said it’s it’s about, what are we doing today to plan to succeed tomorrow? Something like that. Seth:So longer term might just be one day. And it might be 100 years okay, that people who listen to podcasts like this, love curves and graphs, the long tail, the crossing, the chasm, the Gartner Hype cycle, and all of them go like this right? But we forget that the axis on the bottom is time. Right? Time is Nature’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen all at once. And so we do something today. And we have 3 customers. But we get traction. That gets us to 9, and then we get traction. That gets us to 81. But if we start today and don’t get 81. That doesn’t mean we failed. And if we start today and hustle. trying to skip 3 and 9, 81 that we are planting seeds. We are watering, fertilizing. We’re gardeners, and if you go to the wrong soil, or you use the wrong seeds, it’s not going to grow. AW: So recently, I interviewed Roger Martin, who was. Boss. He was the Dean at Rothman when I was on the faculty there. and he is also a prolific thought leader, and he has the most downloaded video at Harvard Business Review called A Plan is not a strategy, and I was listening carefully when you were talking about your book. You did not use the word plan. but it sounded an awful lot like a plan. Seth: This is fascinating. I’m gonna have to go find that video. I’ve never seen it. Rogers, a big Rogers, a big brain. So I can’t wait to see it. Yesterday I changed the subtitle of my book. the subtitle used to be creating the conditions for change and that’s what the book’s about, but I don’t think I don’t think that’s and brand for me consistently because it’s a little too hard to understand. So I changed it to make better plans. AW: Oh. Oh, wow! Oh, I can’t wait to hear what you what you say about this video. Seth: Well, I need to watch it right away, cause it’s not too late for me to change it back, so we’ll see what. AW: Amazing. I’m I’m going to send it to you right when we’re done here. I’m also going to put it in the show notes. Okay. So one last thing before we get to the the 3 rapid fire questions that I can’t wait to also ask you is. did you happened to read. Arthur Brooks, one of his recent books, called from strength to strength. Seth: I did not. AW: Okay. So let me tell you the one graph in this book that to me is basically the thesis of the book on the X-axis. You have time, and on the Y-axis you have some sort of output that humans have over their lifetime. Right. Seth: Right and. AW: And so he talks about how, as ambitious, smart, well-intended folks, we jump on this curve in our career, and it’s about productivity and output and status and getting promoted. And all these things And at some point we hit cognitive decline. And it’s earlier than we all think. It’s in our 40 s. So I’m well past that. And then many of us, especially the ambitious folks. keep fighting for, you know, dominance for productivity, for.  These things, and it gets harder and harder, and often to the detriment of our physical health, our relationships, and our life in general right, and what he advocates is that we jump to a second curve. Instead of being productive, the output is sharing our wisdom. Seth: Interesting. AW: This. I was like this perfectly described. It was very validating for me, right? Because I used to be a brand manager at Kraft, and I was working really hard. And then I went, and I earned my degrees, and I was on a faculty member, and then I jumped off. I started. Talk about talk, and I’m sharing wisdom, and and I find it incredibly fulfilling all the things that he talked about. And then I thought. I think Seth has been doing this from the beginning Seth: Well I am not a role model for anything except maybe not eating hamburgers. The sharing wisdom is a broad statement right that I happen to be in a line of work where my words are on a piece of paper, and sometimes people pay money for them. But you know, if I think about the A/C heating contractor down the street, who’s my age? He has apprentices and people coming up in the business. He spends a good chunk of his time teaching those people how to install air conditioning. That’s wisdom as well. So I don’t think that what Arthur is saying is that everybody should become a pundit. No, I don’t think he is, either. I’m not saying you were saying that I’m clarifying for me right that what we have is the chance. You know I spend almost all my time helping nonprofits and people I care about for free figure out what they ought to be doing. and I don’t do that in public cause. That’s not my brand. I do that because that’s my my craft, my work, and I’ve been doing that for a while I couldn’t do it when I was 35, because no one would trust me to do it. And so what’s really happening is it’s not the internal thing of physical or cognitive decline. It’s the asset value of the benefit of the doubt. And as we gain the benefit of the doubt. I think we have leverage to amplify our insight. and even if we lived to 200, it feels to me like it’s a good use of your time long before you have to worry about whatever’s gonna have to do next. AW: I love that I love that so it’s not just that you’re shifting your idea of what the what’s on the y-axis right? It’s that over time you accumulate more wisdom to share and back to branding. Maybe a reputation for credible wisdom. Seth: Exactly. AW: Beautiful. Oh, my goodness! I love that you are going to be so quoted on that, Seth. Are you ready for the 3 rapid fire questions? Seth: They’re all rapid fire the way my brain works. What do you got. AW: Yeah. So I just want to. I want to share with the listeners that, like all of the people that I interview for my podcast once I said to Seth, once we book the interview, I’m going to share some of the ideas that I have for questions. We’re definitely going to go off script, and you replied to me and said, I don’t want the questions I love that I love, that you don’t want the questions so1st rapid fire question, official, 1st official rapid fire question is. Seth: because people get there, and they don’t know what or why to engage right? So when I’m doing my work, I am eagerly showing up for other people the same way. A swimmer is swimming as fast as they can. But that doesn’t mean that in their spare time the swimmers swimming as fast as they can, just for fun. So I regularly. you know I have no one in my office. I have no employees. I can go 12 h without seeing another person quite happily. Huh! AW: Not me. But that’s okay. That’s okay. All right. Next question. what are your communication, pet peeves, or a pet peeve that you have when other people are communicating, and you wish they would change the way they’re communicating. Seth: Well, peeves make lousy pets because they’re just. They’re hard to keep but with that said it hurts me when I see someone who is on a useful, righteous path undermining their work by falling into common traps. It could be something as simple as regularly. I will hear people on an interview use ums, and us to stop person from taking the mic back. That’s not a hard problem to fix. It’s 4 days of work. and that’s a trivial one on a bigger scale, much bigger, much more important, much more common scale marketers, particularly people with a personal brand in quotation marks hustle too much. They interrupt too much, they hassle too much. They try to get the word out, I think getting the word out is a ridiculous mantra. It’s not effective, and it it undermines everything you’re trying to do. AW: I know you talk about that a lot. And this is marketing. Yeah. okay. The last rapid fire question I’m really curious. Given the bookshelf behind you? Is there a book or a podcast not one of yours, and not one of mine, a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending a lot lately. Seth: Okay. So the best podcast ever made was mystery show episode 3. She only made. Starley only made 6 episodes. Don’t start with episode, 3. Start with episode 4. Episode 2. But you should listen to mystery. Show episode 3. Mystery. Yeah. AW: Joe Seth: Mystery show. It’s in each. In each episode she solved the mystery. AW: Okay. Seth: She’s she was terrific. But the problem was, she tried to make one a week, and it needed to be one a year, and if it was one a year there’s no way she could have made it work anyway. I listen to history of rock and roll in 500 songs. I’m up to the current episode, which is 189.  And that’s a lifelong project for Andrew. It’s gonna outlive me for sure 99% invisible is nothing but wisdom, wisdom. Wisdom. Roman is a superstar. My friend Brian’s podcast, the moment highly recommend it. I used to listen to Dan Carlin’s history podcast. They’re a miracle. After a while. It’s too much Genghis Khan was too much Genghis Khan for me. So I took a break. Who else we got and then the best audio book ever recorded is just kids by Patty Smith. AW: Okay. I am going to put links to all of those in the show notes, and I’m going to definitely listen to all of them myself. Is there anything else you want to share? Seth, with the talk about talk listeners, about how they can effectively make a ruckus. Seth: Big problems, demand small solutions. find one person. find a tiny pocket of a system. find someone who is lonely and begin there. do not wait for the Pope to call you and put you in charge of solving something. Giant. Build things that are small. We gain traction, and then we do it again. AW: Wow! All right. Thank you so much, Seth. I appreciate you sharing your time and all of your insights with us. I’m very grateful. Thank you so much. Seth :Thank you for having me keep making this ruckus. It matters.   Did you get that? Don’t wait for the Pope to call you and put you in charge of something. Thank you, Seth. Personally, I’m inspired to take action and make a ruckus. Now I’m going to quickly summarize with three of the themes or learnings here that I want to reinforce for you. But first, I want to share a few things he said that I’m not sure I agree with. Im curious what YOU think. The truth is I’m still thinking about these things, which is what I love. As I said at the beginning, Seth always leaves me thinking. The first thing I’m not sure I agree with is how Seth said that how you dress isn’t your brand, its your logo. Remember when I asked, “how you dress is one of the ways that you reinforce your brand. Do you agree?” His response? Hmm. I think how you show up, including how you dress, is a significant part of your brand. The second point where I’m not sure whether I agree was when Seth said “Professionals are consistent, they’re not authentic.” I understand his point about being professional and consistent, but I think things are changing in terms of authenticity. More and more, respected leaders with strong personal brands are sharing parts of their personal life, their humanity, their vulnerabilities, with others at work. They’re encouraging others to also “be themselves” and not conform. Of course, you also must be dependable, accountable, and trustworthy. Again, I’m curious what YOU think. Is it true that Professionals are consistent, theyre not authentic.”? So as you can see, like I said, Seth makes me think. Now, the three themes that I want to reinforce with you from this episode. Here they are. The first is based on Seth’s answer to my Q: what communication skill should we all work on”? His answer was something I never expected. He said ,“the biggest problem most people have is they don’t actually want to communicate” Wait what”? I thought he would say we are too verbose or that we lack confidence. But no. Seth identifies that many people struggle with communication because they are afraid to be “seen” or to take responsibility for their messages. This fear leads to evasive or unclear communication. I think he’s right on that one. Take a stand, people! The second theme I want to reinforce is about GENRES. Like books have genres, people should too. He said I work with lots of people who think it’s a badge of honor to have no genre. He talks about the importance of genre in helping people categorize and predict experiences, whether in books, restaurants, or personal branding. Most importantly, he highlighted that if you don’t have a genre, you will be ignored. Again, take a stand! The third and last theme I want to reinforce is Seth’s definition of personal branding. I’m definitely going to be using this definition in my coaching. Remember Jeff Bezos’ definition: Your brand is what people say about you when youre not in the room. Seth’s got a slightly different take that I think is at least as compelling. “Your Brand is what other people think you’re going to do next.” Aks yourself, what do people think YOURE going to do next? That’s your brand. LOVE IT! Phew ok – that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, I just cant wait to read Seth’s upcoming book THIS IS STRATEGY. I’m sure he’ll have a new take on strategy that I haven’t considered before. I leave you with this. If the action you are taking is generous and would be missed if you didn’t do it, that’s what seth calls making a ruckus. Making a ruckus is not having a tantrum. Making a ruckus is showing up with leverage to change the system for the better. Let’s all make a ruckus. Alright. That’s it. That’s everything for this episode. Thanks again to Seth for sharing his thoughts and for encouraging us all to make a ruckus If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will refer it to one of your friends, and I also hope you’ll leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Now go make a ruckus. And talk soon!   The post Making a Ruckus with Seth Godin (ep.171) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Discover the secrets to confident self-introductions! Learn a simple three-point framework—covering your present, past, and future—to engage your audience. Gain insights on how to highlight your personal brand effectively. Plus, explore four powerful tips to enhance your delivery, including the importance of enthusiasm and context. Ditch the dread and master the art of introducing yourself!

Communicate with confidence: There’s the mental preparation, then there’s confidence in the moment.  In this first of a two-part series, we focus on the 4P’s of mentally preparing to communicate with confidence: Practice, as in rehearsing; Proverb, as in adopting a mantra; Pep talk; and Pirate, as in copying that confident feeling.  (Re-release of ep.58)     CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ The post COMMUNICATE WITH CONFIDENCE: Part 1 – Mental Preparation (ep 169) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Do you communicate with IMPACT? Deloitte Vice-Chair Jennifer Lee defines impact as the ability to get someone to take action. Learn 3 specific communication tactics to elevate your impact, plus insights about how respect, being curious, and establishing the value of each person in the room can increase your impact.   (Re-release of ep.112) CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/   RESOURCES Jennifer T. Lee LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifertlee/ Relevant episodes: Ep.79 STORYTELLING – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/79-how-to-use-storytelling-to-elevate-your-communication/ Ep.93 THE POWER of 3 -– https://www.talkabouttalk.com/93-the-power-of-three/ The post Communicating with IMPACT – with Jennifer Lee, Vice-Chairwoman at Deloitte (ep. 168) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

How self-aware are you? Andrea shares the definition of self-awareness, different types of self-awareness, and how we can improve our communication effectiveness by being more self-aware.  (Re-release of ep 121)   TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ RESOURCES The 3 Point Body Language Scan Podcast Episode: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/96-3pt-body-language-scan/   The post SELF-AWARENESS & Communication (ep. 167) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Communicating with precision improves comprehension, recall, persuasion, and likeability! Whether it’s verbal or written, clear and concise communication is appreciated by others. Learn three strategies you can employ to communicate with precision.   (Re-release of ep 103)   TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ ***When referencing resources and products, TalkAboutTalk sometimes uses affiliate links. These links don’t impose any extra cost on you, and they help support the free content provided by Talk About Talk. The post Communicating with PRECISION (ep. 166) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Gratitude is a communication skill that can build loyalty, serve as a catalyst to connect, and release endorphins! Andrea interviews The Currency of Gratitude author Michele Bailey, who shares insights on how to express gratitude in a professional context, how gratitude relates to brand ambassadors, how gratitude relates to reciprocity, whether expressing gratitude makes you sound weak, and some provocative thoughts about work-life balance.  (Re-release of ep. 155)   TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ RESOURCES BOOK: The Currency Of Gratitude: Turning Small Gestures Into Powerful Business Results by Michele Bailey – https://amzn.to/434Vqpe Michele Bailey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-bailey-a111b6a/ Michele’s agency is BLAZING: https://blazing.agency/ Recommended podcasts: Tim Ferriss – https://tim.blog/podcast/ Smartless – https://www.smartless.com/ Happier – https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/ On Purpose – https://www.jayshetty.me/podcast Huberman Lab – https://www.hubermanlab.com/podcast Voices of leadership – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/voices-of-leadership-insights-and-inspirations/id1710435149   The post The Currency of GRATITUDE with Michele Bailey (ep.165) appeared first on Talk About Talk.