0:00:01 - Alex Shevelenko
Today's guest is a Global Credibility Expert, Mitchell Levy. Mitchell leads Credibility Nation, so it's a special treat to welcome him to the Experience Nation. Mitchell is a TED speaker and international bestseller of over 60 books. He created dozens of businesses in the Valley, including four publishing companies that had published over 850 books that are very relevant to our audience. You know my personal ambition to reimagine the book.
Mitchell has also provided strategic consulting to hundreds of companies, has been the chair of a NASDAQ-listed company and is one of the top hundred coaches in Marshall Goldsmith’s organization. In general, a very interesting and thoughtful person on all things about credibility and clarity. Welcome to the pod!
0:00:58 - Mitchell Levy
It's great to be here! Thanks for having me!
0:01:02 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, well, speaking of the word “thank you”, I will begin with one of the quotes, Mitchell, that comes from your book “THANK YOU! Saying Thank You! in 140 Languages” that I love. And it's just a great reminder. “Thank You is more than a phrase. It is my responsibility to pass on the love received. Another great time to say the phrase is when someone pays us a compliment. When in doubt, just say thank you. Do not worry about showing too much gratitude to the people around you. There is no downside to that.”
Mitchell, this is the world that we live in. It often feels negative. People are complaining or profoundly unhappy, and they lack the ability to have the simplicity of just getting down to the essence of these simple things that we sometimes forget to do. Just saying thank you to people at work, to a colleague, that's well done. And I have to say, I could learn this, and I kind of often try to remind myself because it doesn't come naturally. Right, like, “Hey, I should say thank you.” This person worked pretty hard on something, and even in the outcome, it's better to start with a thank you.
What's your take on being intellectually honest and highlighting what's really going on for you? Because nothing is always perfect, and keeping this attitude of gratitude is important in our relationships and life.
0:02:49 - Mitchell Levy
Yeah, there's so much in that. There's so much in that question.
0:02:55 - Alex Shevelenko
Thank you. Oh, I just slipped it in. That was accidental. I didn't do that on purpose.
0:02:58 - Mitchell Levy
There's a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is what's on the outside, and joy is what's on the inside. If you have people working with you and not for you, the interesting thing is how you pull out their joy. How do you make sure they're doing what they want to do, are appreciated for it, and motivated to do more? You could do something as simple as a thank you or a compliment, even if you add constructive things to focus on. By the way, this is also a good reminder for me. Most of us sometimes fall into the negative trap of “that doesn't work”. I always try my best to start with, “I love what you did here, so thank you.”
0:03:50 - Alex Shevelenko
So you find a specific, real, authentic way to acknowledge a part of something that has been done.
0:03:59 - Mitchell Levy
Now you said something very clear, specific, real and authentic. Yes, you don't do it just because you want to do it.
0:04:12 - Alex Shevelenko
It's a shit sandwich where you have to do “thank you”. You actually find specificity in the “thank you” to be real. Okay. That makes sense. Now let's remember to execute that so you find that initial authenticity. Do you worry about that follow-up, which is the opposite of thank you, which is like, “Here's the next area of improvement”?
0:04:43 - Mitchell Levy
Well, here's something that happened as soon as you and I started talking. I started feeling your energy because, part of it, I also watched your video series ahead of time, which by the way, you guys did a great job. Even if you don't go on Alex's show, if you just go and watch the five prep videos, that's powerful!
What I felt energy there and what I feel energy now is that somebody who's authentically wanting to be of service to their audience. I'll give you an example: after we were talking, I moved my seat a little bit closer so you and I could be at the same level, and you were a little bit too close to the camera. So when I shared that with you, you weren't offended. I shared it just so that we could be similar. That was me technically giving you constructive criticism. But it was not done in a negative way. It was done so it would be a better show for those who are watching us if we are close enough or similarly aligned on the camera.
0:06:02 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah, and staring me that close in the face is not a pleasant experience for anyone. You rescued the audience.
0:06:20 - Alex Shevelenko
This is going to be a very special episode because I've read about your Marshall Goldsmith's work. You're doing some really amazing work on clarity, in particular, which we'll come back to in a little bit. But let's dive into the broader topic of credibility, the theme that we discussed before the call. This worries me about Silicon Valley tech startup culture. Our words or advice are along the lines of “fake it till you make it”.
Just kind of throw some shit against the wall and see what sticks, for lack of a spaghetti, but it's mostly that kind of culture. There is a bit of a non-Silicon Valley world, which we see a lot at RELAYTO. There are a bunch of people who say, “I'm a sustainability expert”, and then show up with an 80-page printout that killed two trees while talking about digital sustainability initiatives.
0:07:35 - Mitchell Levy
By the way, he probably created them for that. So right.
0:07:43 - Alex Shevelenko
So they're incongruent between the messages that they say. As a consultant, you could get involved. We feel really sad when consultants start teaching you about innovation because that's not necessarily the path of a typical management consultant, to be going down the direction of innovation. Although there are exceptions, and that has changed. But in general, if you're showing up talking about innovation or digital transformation with a very conventional approach, you immediately lose credibility and trust. So I want to dig into the faking of credibility or incongruencies. You've talked to 500 people who are experts on this. What are some of the most common mistakes or incongruencies that make people lose credibility?
0:08:40 - Mitchell Levy
So, anyone who tells you to fake it till you make it is someone that you want to run away from. You want to politely let them know that's one of the most “uncredible” things, or I call the opposite of credible – dubious. One of the most dubious things you could do is actually fake it till you make it Because you're being inauthentic, you're not being of service to your customer base.
If somebody says that, you can actually come back with a word, “Well, isn't it inauthentic to fake it till you make it?” Listen to their response. If they want to sell you something, they want to keep you on that path, they're not credible or coachable. If they're not coachable, it's somebody you don't want to interact with. So if there's an area of passion that you're excited about and you want to learn and grow, but you really don't have a lot of experience in it... If people say, “Fake it till you make it”, no, that's stupid. What you could do is go to somebody who trusts you, knows you and likes you. You can say, “I'd like to try this experiment. I'm working on this area. Do you mind giving me an opportunity to do this?” You can either do it for free, for a dollar, or for a small amount, and let them know that, “I'm going to work really hard to make this work, but I haven't done this before.”
0:10:16 - Alex Shevelenko
That's exactly why I love this phrase because I think you're reframing it exactly the way we think the customer development should be happening. Hey, we are new to this. We will work hard to figure this out together. If you're interested in that type of partnership, being an early partner, we'd love to figure this out together. That's going to be way better than faking it and saying, hey, I'm an expert in this and I've done this and I have that, Alex, I'm doing that right now.
0:10:50 - Mitchell Levy
I'm 13 weeks into a certified clarity specialist program. And the people in the program. I said, listen, I don't know the answer, but I'm going to give you as much time and energy as I can so that we've made this. By the way, I don't think we should ever press an easy button. I don't think they exist, but I'm going to press the simple button, and so will the team that's working with me. We're about ready to convert from alpha to beta. I'm still in beta, but those people who come on, who trusted me, they trusted that. I looked them in the eyes and I said listen, I don't know the answer, I know where we're heading and we're going to go there together and I'm going to spend all my energy to make sure you're successful. Those people heard that and I'm honored that I have their trust. Got it.
0:11:39 - Alex Shevelenko
So we got, fake it till you make it, and then the opposite of that, which is building trust by saying, hey, this is where you are and we could align directly. Second, any other kind of things that you see that are obvious, things that were smart, capable people it was actually valuable things to say and to bring to the world are stepping on their own shoes and falling off the ski slopes in a very painful way.
0:12:13 - Mitchell Levy
Let me give you. I'll give you two. I'll give you two. Let's do it. First, let's go to the definition.
Credibility is not a plaque on the wall. Credibility is the quality in which you are trusted, known in light. Okay, so what's interesting about those areas is you can't be a jerk and be successful in today's world. There's too much competition. The trust shows that you can do what you do. As people get to know you, it's not that they know of you, it's that they know who you are. They know that you're a servant leader. They know that you have the intent and commitment to do the right thing.
As I'm talking to you and I gave feedback before I was uttering part of the 10 words or 10 values of credibility, we'll do the second one, then actually I take it back. There's three, but I'll do them quickly. I'm adding a new, second one. We've been told that we need to cast a wide net and serve everybody, and what I'll say is the more narrow you could focus the audience you serve, the easier it is for people to believe you and the better the opportunity that they're going to refer you to somebody else.
Now let me do the third and we'll come back to the second. The third is you need to make sure, as people get to know you, they're going to want to see consistency with how you show up. Whether on Zoom or live in person. It is also how you show up asynchronously. How do you show up on social media and your websites? And if there's inconsistency between those areas, there's doubt put in place, there's dubiousness put in place, and so it's harder to be credible. If you don't have a consistent view. People don't have a consistent view of who you are, who your company is and how you serve All right.
0:14:03 - Alex Shevelenko
So let's double click on that third one. Sure, like I would call it incongruity, right, where you say one thing but you do something different through your behavior. And in today's world we can have, like at my company RELAYTO we observe that for digital body language we could say, hey, people say that they will look at your proposal and they never show up, right, for example. That's actually a really interesting thing. And then you all of a sudden, hey, you're not the type of deal that I want to pursue or the client that I want to pursue, right. Or you have clients to whom you deliver your content. They don't look at it, they send you to do more work, they don't give you the feedback, and you're like, hey, I'm spinning wheels here. So there's kind of accountability that gets built by having more digital transparency.
0:14:57 - Mitchell Levy
But that's actually just I'm going to point out the benefit of your company, as I was diving into and learning more about it, is that not only is there accountability to do that, but you actually provide the accountability to be able to do business that way, which is kind of fascinating.
0:15:15 - Alex Shevelenko
It's fascinating because I think we need to like you can't bullshit that much in face-to-face conversations, but I think you could. You could bullshit a lot more asynchronously, I think, and so I think we're getting into a culture. I'm thinking about that.
Yeah, well, I think, look, people spin up. People spin up a fake LinkedIn profile, for example, right, or fake websites. That's easy to do, right, that's not, that doesn't cost a lot of money, but stupid, but I got it, but it's doable, right, and? But if you actually talk to somebody in detail, right, if we have the privilege to talk to somebody in detail, you could really uncover that the person doesn't know what the hell they're talking about, right, and so that becomes pretty, pretty obvious pretty quickly if you're discerning listener and participant in conversation.
But in the digital realm, I think our attention gets sparse.
And we can. We scan things, right, like the way we read it, the way we consume content, we scan, and so people, okay, and then where I think that creates a lot of noise, and so the real trick to me, it feels that you need to be able to show the high level, easy to digest, a clear message of what you're specialist in. But that's not enough. That we challenge, and I want to come back to that. What you need to do is then be able to drill in, and then people that want to drill in, they need to see, hey, there is substance underneath that, real evidence of actually somebody does what they do, says what they say they will do, et cetera, that you can either build that over time or you could have a digital site that allows you to do that. And I think we find that in the industries that require evidence, like life sciences, where you do have those PhDs was expert titles, you do need to provide that, that element of credibility, even though people are overloaded, they don't have time to process alone.
0:17:30 - Mitchell Levy
But, Alex, that, depending on who you are and how you show up, that level of credibility is very simple. That's done through social proof. That's easy. You know, for me, I have over 500, probably close to 750 video testimonials of people who have given feedback on what I've been able to do with them. I can't show all those on my website, right? That's the level of social proof you're talking about. But let's go back to, let's start with, the most simple element of credibility. Okay, the simple element of credibility is clarity, and that is in less than 10 words. Can you articulate the playground you play in? And I use the word playground specifically because if you don't love what you do, you should be doing something else. There's so much opportunity in the world to do that. So if you love what you do, Amen, work is more fun than fun.
It depends on what you define as work and fun, but we'll say okay.
0:18:34 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah.
0:18:35 - Mitchell Levy
That's the definition for me. There's not a work-life balance, there's just a life balance. I happen to do some stuff that people call work, that I make money, and I do other stuff which is fun, and I like both, right. So the thing that's interesting in the playground you play in is, in 10 words or less, can you articulate with clarity, with simplicity, the audience you serve? And if you can do that, I call that the CPOP, your Customer Point Of Possibilities. And what comes next is to tell me more. So what's interesting to me, Alex, is that your CPOP will be consistent. Your tell me more will change based on the audience. If you're speaking to a marketing audience, you're probably going to throw some marketing terms. If you're speaking to your investors, you're going to talk from an investor perspective. If you're speaking to clients, you're going to speak from the client perspective, right? So tell me more is about a minute and it reinforces the CPOP for the person you're talking about. Does that make sense?
0:19:40 - Alex Shevelenko
Yeah. So before the call, you hinted that you want to put me on a cold call and test out if we can do this clarity process that you work on with your clients. And I raised my hand because I'm full of ideas, very excited to communicate, and I think there's way more ideas that coming out than clarity about specific ones. So I would say, guilty as charged. I love your advice on what we can do better and I'm wondering whether we do it for the podcast or more for my own company.
0:20:17 - Mitchell Levy
RELAYTO is more defined and makes more sense to do it for the place where you're making money.
0:20:25 - Alex Shevelenko
Okay, well, we're not officially confirmed here. We're not making any money. Was the podcast? It's a service to all those that want to create awesome experiences for work, for employees, for customers, investors, and for students. So we are not making money here, neither is Mitchell, but yeah, RELAYTO would be a great example. So what do you want me to? To give a attempt to do the 10 words, or how do you run this process? You're the boss here. It's your pod now.
0:21:06 - Mitchell Levy
So we'll go through that. So, just for those who are listening or watching the CPOP is the who. So who do you serve? Typically one, two, three words, and I'll ask you questions, Alex, and the second part of that is from their perspective what is the pain point you're addressing, what is the pleasure point you're helping them reach? So I'll give you an example of mine and then and then, Alex, I'll ask you a question, because I want you to be thinking about the who and the what.
So for mine, coaches who've created a job, not a business eight words. And if I'm looking to somebody and I'm talking to them, I'm seeing right away whether or not they fall into one, two or three categories. First category are they potential referral for me? Second category are they a prospect? Third category they don't care. Now, it doesn't mean they don't care about me, it just means they don't care about those 10 words, In this case my eight words.
If they're in the first two categories, they're going to say tell me more. And if I said the tell me more, I would basically say coaches, there are so many of them and there's so many certification programs and they have all these degrees and methodologies and approaches to deliver and they're really good at delivering. But what they're not good at, they kind of suck at business development. So I have a program that helps combine not only getting clarity for them, helping them give clarity to their clients, but a business development system that gives them business on an ongoing basis. Notice, when I shared my tell me more, which was less than a minute, I was sharing it from the container of the playground I play. So I'm already listening, I'm already sharing from a container of credibility, from a container of trust, because you're like oh, I know somebody like that, Mitchell, I might want to recommend somebody like that to you. So that's the process.
0:23:13 - Alex Shevelenko
Wow, Well, I got the sub. Funny that I'll raise my hand in human nature, as you were saying the first part. I started immediately playing from my head what I would say, which is kind of embarrassing. I lost a little bit track of the follow up questions. But it shall, we give it a go Like, was that who was it?
0:23:36 - Mitchell Levy
Who is? Who do you serve? Who is your primary audience?
0:23:40 - Alex Shevelenko
Creators and communicators whose content doesn't reach their audience.
0:23:51 - Mitchell Levy
Okay, so that's what you'd like to say, and that's actually not a bad CPOP. Tell me about what is a creator and a communicator.
0:24:03 - Alex Shevelenko
So in the business world and we could, we could split into different varieties. But in the business world it's typically somebody who creates a PowerPoint or document, and communicator is somebody who either presents, presents that or sends it over, you know, sends it over to a customer, potential customer, employee, right, so I would distinguish. Sometimes they are the same person and oftentimes they are not. A creator could be a designer, a kind of a marketer that creates a piece of collateral which then the sales person delivers to the customer.
0:24:51 - Mitchell Levy
Interesting, and what is it that they need to communicate that's not reaching their audience? What is it? What are they doing?
0:25:03 - Alex Shevelenko
Well in business. What tool do you use to write your books?
0:25:09 - Mitchell Levy
No, it always depends, but at the end of the day we're in some form of Google Doc or Word.
0:25:18 - Alex Shevelenko
So that's one of the common tools. Another one is PowerPoint. And then for the communication, typically people take the presentation, the Word doc, and save it as a PDF. In the case of a book, that you may actually use the PDF to print the book, but in general that's the toolkit of a typical business communicator. And increasingly now, of course there's multimedia, video, audio that people add in. But interestingly, some of the most important communications, important messages, are the ones that are presented in the worst possible way, which is, you know, put the ideas in a Word doc and then save it as a PDF and hope that people will consume it on a screen. And I think that that hope is where the disconnect is right, because on the screen we are not used to consuming documents that are traditionally presented. We're great at consuming videos, scrolling for blogs maybe, but we're not as deeply engaging with long form content on a screen as we would like. And that is a big opportunity that we help those communicators to really get those ideas across to their desired audience.
0:26:35 - Mitchell Levy
So the pain is what? I heard it in there, but I was pulling it out. Tell me what the pain point is.
0:26:41 - Alex Shevelenko
Waste. You work hard on something that's really valuable and nobody really engages with it. You don't get any feedback on it. It doesn't move your audience forward.
0:26:54 - Mitchell Levy
Oh, that's interesting. Dive into that for a little bit the engagement part. What does that mean from your perspective?
0:27:06 - Alex Shevelenko
So there's three modes of engagement that we see.
First, where I choose the adventure that I go on when I'm consuming your content.
So I pick hey, I want to go to this chapter, or I go to have an interactive menu of some sort that takes me to the areas that I want to consume.
When I go into those areas, I have a high level overview, so it's not overwhelming, it's not like a wall of information that I can't process. But then I can drill in, and so drilling in could be a, you know, I have a high level summary, but then I can watch a detailed video or actually drill into detailed document for the area that I really care about, because then I'm motivated to consume it. And then the third piece is, as I'm drilling in and I'm consuming this supporting relevant content, I stay inside the experience, right. So I think, typically, if you click on a YouTube video and it's site of PDF, what's going to happen, Mitchell, you're going to leave to YouTube and then God knows what happens there, right, like you never get immersed in the political debate of the day, the war in Ukraine, all things that don't relate to the message of the person that sent you over into YouTube.
So it's really important that we keep you inside the thought leadership experience or the communication experience that you want that person to have and you continue to engage more, richer, and deeper. So it's sort of a safe environment that you've created. So that's what we mean by engagement and the ultimate goal of that engagement is to move forward Right. So the watching a video per se may not be the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to follow up, sign up to book, to have a meeting or go to whatever is the right next step. For the author believes what's the single most important thing that a person should do at the end of reading that book? And it's a tragedy that most presentations don't even think about that and even if they do think about it, somewhere in the last page unclickable, un-do anything.
Where is it like? In common digital mode today, that should be persistent call to action. That's obvious relatively quickly to the user. So what's the one thing they need to do after consuming this content? Does that make sense? So it's sort of navigation, immersive experience, like moving towards a call to action that hopefully you've earned. That's obvious and clear. What's the next step? Those are the components of engagement that we see.
0:29:50 - Mitchell Levy
Ooh. So what's the importance of the CTA at the end?
0:29:56 - Alex Shevelenko
It depends on the industry. So, if you're a marketer, a CTA is a is an ebook. Every marketer has this idea that, okay, I'm going to get a gated lead, right, I'm going to put them through some, you know, get somebody's name and they'll download the ebook and then our sales team will follow up and schedule an appointment with them, right, that's kind of the classical Silicon Valley B2B marketing playbook that you see all day long. There's a few problems with that, right. In the concrete example, number one, if you fill in your details, most likely you're not even you're going to be getting an email somewhere that will likely be caught in spam with a link to the download of that ebook. So high probability, you'll never even get to that email. If you get to that email, you will. If you click on it, you'll be taking out of your email experience into a PDF that is typically not designed for consumption of the screen, as we discussed, doesn't have navigation, doesn't have rich experience and doesn't have a call to action. And what's the call to action is book.
A meeting was a sales rep. Instead, you get bombarded by a bunch of spammy sequences you know from reps or from marketing hey, learn more. Hey, follow up hairs, this. At that point, you may have already lost your interest, right, like you had an interest when you're filling out the form. So the CTA is like at the moment when you're most engaged. Right, what are you going to do? Right, because then you're gone. Right, we get lost in the noise.
0:31:40 - Mitchell Levy
So I had it early on, but I wanted to add a couple more questions, because the the problem with somebody who is extremely bright like you is that you thank you, I'll take that like you is that you had a lot of really different points. That all made sense, but there were a number of different paths. One can go yeah, so I've created two, one these are all things that you said, and I was just in the incremental questions. I was reinforcing how to present it. I created one which was a pain point for you and I created one which was a pleasure point. So let me share both and we'll see which one you like better. I'm going to share. I'm a visual, so I'm going to share it in chat and then I'll read it to you. So CPOP stands for customer point of possibilities.
Now you started off by saying communicators and creators. I'm going to pick just one. I'm going to say communicators, one of the things that we didn't talk about yet. I'll just say that with GPT, thought leadership is now ubiquitous. I'll take it another step. Being a creator is now ubiquitous. If you have the right prompts to the right AI, you can create whatever you want. So I'm going to drop the word creator from your, from your thought, and just go with communicators. Okay, and so the first one, the pain point one communicators with non-engageable content. Yeah, it's interesting, I didn't like it as much as this. The pleasure one, and I'm going to lean towards pleasure, but it's an interesting word because non-engageable is not a common word.
0:33:21 - Alex Shevelenko
Like I've been talking about engaging, you know content, I've never come up with that. I like it. It's or interrupts you.
0:33:28 - Mitchell Levy
You should use not, and that's, by the way, what's nice about a CPOP is when somebody says, what do you mean by non-engageable? You could do non-consumable right if you wanted to do that. Right, because all you care about is not changing the words once you settle on it. A does it feel good to you and B is the person one or two? Are they a potential referral partner or are they a potential client? Right, because they're going to say it down to you more. Second one which is interesting is communicators creating action with their content, and that's really so what happens on that? So you like that one better, I could tell.
0:34:07 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, I think it's just more. You're positive and I can go talk about negative stuff all day long. As you heard me describe, I think it's like a tragedy, but I think there is something affirming Creating action was your ideas. Creating impact was your ideas.
0:34:24 - Mitchell Levy
Even who you are. It makes more sense. If you don't mind, Alex, let me share your CPOP and your Tell Me More, just based on this conversation, and it's recorded so you can go back to it, the CPOP you always want. To remember that Tell Me More will be different based on the audience and if you're listening or watching, tell me how this feels to you, all right. So if you said what's your CPOP or what do you do, I typically would say something like clients typically attracted to us and I'll do a pause. So clients typically attracted to us.
Communicators create action with their content. In today's world, anyone can create content. As a matter of fact, many communicators are creating non-engageable content that is just sitting out there, and you don't know why people aren’t following through with it. What we do is we help facilitate communicators creating the type of content that's robust, that gets the energy that is attracted to. However, somebody processes information aesthetically, visually, and orally. We keep track of that for the communicator so they actually see how their content is impacting the audience. And that would drop it, like there, oh mic drop.
0:35:42 - Alex Shevelenko
Can you join our advisory board and RELAYTO? Effective immediately.
0:35:49 - Mitchell Levy
Yes, just send me the paperwork. The power of having I'm going to say what I said before, but now you have experienced it the power of having a CPOP is you now know the playground you plan. I often ask people that, hey, when they wake up in the morning, does the words communicate or creating action with their content? Is that what flows off the top of your head? If it does, now this is the downside. You're going to look at how you show up asynchronously and you're going oh my god, we need to change stuff, because what you want to do is empower and reinforce, both synchronously and asynchronously, that those words one, two, three, four, five, six, six words. That's the playground you plan and everything you do stems from that playground. And now, if you talk to your investors from that playground, you would say different things than if you'd talk to marketers versus if you talk to your prospects.
0:36:49 - Alex Shevelenko
Hey. So let me ask you a very specific challenge. Maybe it's relevant to us, but I think it's a global challenge for technology-driven businesses. We've taken an approach at RELAYTO is very broad.
We saw a particular problem at the beginning around PDFs. We saw, hey, PDF, is this fossil from the analog paper era, yet we're using it in our digital screens. This makes no sense, but it's still easy to create, easy to share, so can we help people transform this? The problem turned out that PDFs are really used everywhere, across everything. We have 10,000 page books and one page infographics, presentations and scrawlable micro-sites. That can all come out of a PDF transformation as an example. And so, as a result, you have marketers, you have sellers, you have educators or different personas that are using it, and the word communicators that we've used in this case it's a generic, abstract, one word and a person may not be connecting to it. If I said marketers that want to create content that drives actions Sorry, I'm messing up the C-Bup already as we speak, but if I personalized it specifically to a marketer and the VC that you would talk to say which kind of marketer? Oh, B2B marketers with 100 to 2000 employees in, located in Silicon Valley.
0:38:34 - Mitchell Levy
Exactly that's what you need to say for the VC. What's interesting to me is, if we decide that this is your CPOP, you don't need to change the CPOP. You need to do is you may have taglines that stem from your CPOP. You know the space you play in. Your taglines are the marketing things, so you're going to have taglines that are focused on different audiences. You'll have tell me more. Is that focus on different audiences? Deep down, though, the people inside your company need to know the playground they play in. In a bigger picture, that's the playground they play in.
0:39:13 - Alex Shevelenko
And I think the sort of universality. Actually loved another one of your quotes and I want to bring it up, pulling out of this a little bit. I think it's really related. In a book called Turning Ideas into Impact Insights from 16 Silicon Valley Consultants, your team of writers wrote alignment and employee engagement around a shared understanding of the customer can be a corporate superpower, driving higher profits, customer satisfaction and employee retention, and sounds like a few buzzwords brought together, but actually it's brilliant in the way where it brings it together, because what you just said alignment around the customer and sometimes people are going well, we align around our mission and we're going to align around that and we're going to change the world.
0:40:14 - Mitchell Levy
You're all about the people who are your customers today and tomorrow's customers. Who do you serve?
0:40:20 - Alex Shevelenko
And it's just so simple. But you do need the alignment, you need that right Like that's.
0:40:25 - Mitchell Levy
Yeah. By the way thanks for that quote. You know it's so funny. Yes, I wrote that at some point in time and powerful, thank you, it's super powerful because it's so hard to know where do you start.
0:40:40 - Alex Shevelenko
Some people say, well, we started with our team and that's it right, like they all take care of the customer. But if the team doesn't know who the customer is and what they care about, they won't be that motivated. Right, it becomes like a little naval gazing exercise. You know that. You see some companies they kind of get self-absorbed in their like little culture building. And if the culture goes around the customer, right then the culture building, the alignment, makes a ton of sense because it connects ultimately to that. So I and if you're all customer and you don't care about your team, that also doesn't work right, because they wouldn't be able to serve them. So yeah, it's tricky, but you got it, thank you.
0:41:25 - Mitchell Levy
I like it. I like it. Thank you for doing the research. I'm honored.
0:41:30 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, and this I need to celebrate as well as my amazing team who is supporting me. I can't take credit for that. I am backed by an amazing team. Thank you for driving alignment with our customers and our community.
0:41:44 - Mitchell Levy
No so, oh, by the way, let me I'll just share one thing. There are two things you did which were powerful, yeah Right, and these are two ways to be likeable in terms of credible, and you just demonstrated two of them in the last two minutes. One is you showed me respect by actually doing research ahead of time. In terms of being likable, there are two values. Showing respect which typically means coming early, prepared, coming with your heart. I came in close to 10 minutes early on the interview because it feels like I need to show respect to you. The second is “spreading cred dust”. It's spreading the ideas, thoughts and actions of others. So it's the fact that your team did the work and you thank them publicly is how you should be as a CEO, not take credit for others’ things.
0:42:40 - Alex Shevelenko
Wow, I, you know, this is true, we try to live up to it. Actually, we have run, for example, an internpreneur program, which is people that run through and they're no longer part of the team. And I take a point and I think it's really I kind of love it because they're great people. They took a bet on us when we were a startup. They didn't know what we were doing and kind of did a lot of experiments, and I thank them sometimes in our public team meetings because I ultimately believe right, if you were doing something worthwhile.
It's sort of a legacy. You stand on the shoulders of people that have been been there before you, right, Like, and we're, and we as a we are related. We stand on the shoulders of people that have done like. You talk about social proof. You know, I don't think I would have been aware of what we're building had I not Chaldeany and read Chaldeany at some point and understood what social proof was right and that I have to thank Stanford for, because they exposed us to these ideas and they made sure that we didn't abuse them but thought about them in a good way.
So the legacy of thanks is incredible and, as a book writer, you probably, you know, spend a lot of time thinking about that. So, yeah, I salute you and I actually want to salute, in our case, the people that inspire us and actually question you. Like this is really hard to do, because you could go on thanking people forever and ever, right, Like in. In fact, the whole history of human progress more or less stands on things we've gained from others. Where do you draw the line, Mitchell? What's your, what's your advice here?
0:44:23 - Mitchell Levy
I think I need a little bit more clarity on the question. So it's a very open-ended question.
0:44:28 - Alex Shevelenko
So it's an open-ended like. So we like in the book acknowledgement sections, right, like you, there's typically a very long list of acknowledgments and so you brought up the value of of bringing up as as a, as part of building credibility, is kind of recognizing people who have helped, but there's not a like. If you do that, you could spend the whole, the whole time a lot of doing right.
Oh yeah, it's a very long and distinguished list of people on the shoulders we stand and actually it's an interesting question, right? Because when you're recognizing somebody else, then you're not potentially recognizing another person that has helped, and so you just got me down that rabbit hole. Oh, I see it Like who we're going to hurt by not recognizing you potentially right? I don't. I don't worry about it all day long, don't be, don't you know to be sure. But it's an interesting question.
0:45:24 - Mitchell Levy
Got it. One of my, one of my early on, one of my authors did something thanks to all my customers who invested the time in allowing me to be successful for them, and that, as opposed to pointing out particular customers, okay. But he then went on in specific things too and then highlighted a couple of people as an example when I it's a great example. My second TEDx was during COVID, and so when I was practicing, I did 30 of these Zoom calls where I had somebody actually listen to the TEDx and give me direct feedback. The everyone gave me amazing feedback. I mean, the end result was having a bunch of advocates who who said hey, Mitchell, we, this is they. They wanted to share it because they helped contribute it to it. It just so happened that my 10th reviewer, guy by the name of Ted Lau, gave me something so valuable he impacted my life, and so I actually used his name in the TEDx. I don't feel that the other none of the other 29 said hey, Mitchell, how come you didn't use my name, right?
0:46:36 - Alex Shevelenko
Nobody said that. Yeah, that's not okay, right, yeah, and this is the. This is the second one, so we are losing our humanity. I actually seen the first TEDx talk of yours from 2018.
0:46:52 - Mitchell Levy
Yeah, and the second one is called we're we're losing our humanity and I'm tired of seeing it happen. And it's the really the 10 values associated with with credibility.
0:47:03 - Alex Shevelenko
So I can't, I can't speak to that. I didn't get to the second one, but in the first one, I love this idea of aha. Right, and you've written a series of books around the notion of an aha. So for our audience, who are entrepreneurial, who have a marketing DNA, a creator DNA, as you've heard, communicator DNA, what are some of the ahas that you want to leave them with? Let's say three, right, and you? Can repeat some of the core themes that you've already covered, right? Oh yeah.
0:47:35 - Mitchell Levy
And I'm not. I'm not thinking about we got to wrap up shortly, but thank you for this time and I'm so honored and we'll have follow up call too. I'm going to say the most important thing you could do in your life is to know who you are. Don't wait until your deathbed and say to yourself, “I wish I'd done something else.” Having the clarity of saying, “This is who I am and this is how I serve”, is probably the most important thing you could do, and then sharing that publicly so people can bat in it. If it's appropriate, they could share you. If that's appropriate, I think there's nothing more.
0:48:19 - Alex Shevelenko
So it's that clarity exercise, but for a human.
0:48:22 - Mitchell Levy
So the clarity exercise for yourself. One is to recognize that the person on the opposite end of you, whether you call them a customer, prospect, or partner, they're human. So the question becomes for you, how can you be of service? Yeah Right, one of the. There are two core values, so I'll leave you a third. One core value is basically being a servant leader, and the other core value I want to highlight is being coachable. Always being open to an opportunity to learn. No matter if that person looks like they have credibility and are superior to you. or ready and for those around the radio I'm doing the double quotes or they look like they're so far beneath you, you're not going to learn anything. You can learn and as long as you're coachable, you're going to learn from everyone you interact with in one way or another.
0:49:28 - Alex Shevelenko
This is really powerful, especially for the CEOs and folks that have to play the visionary, the leader kind of role, to be able to have a gear switch.
0:49:45 - Mitchell Levy
We've. You've heard people talk about the management by walking around the management and learning from from your, from people two, three, four, eight levels below you. There's a lot of knowledge there that that you're going to interpret in a different way, but you have to at least listen.
0:50:02 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, I'll tell you on a very personal level, since we're talking about you brought up the first know who you are. So one of my roles as a parent and I'm delighted to be a father to three kids, and I have to say I'm learning quite a lot from the kids, which is not the thing that you think about when you don't haven't been a parent. I think I was not a deeply thoughtful expert on parenting and what I realized is that kids help you grow up as an adult. You know, not the other way around, absolutely.
And it's hard to be coachable with kids right, but it's like if anybody's going to teach you patience and presence, it's the. You know, a kid in the middle of a meltdown and it's not a good word.
Absolutely Powerful. So I love that you've brought these universal values and lessons and a haze to our audience, because I think, ultimately, we believe that to create great experiences in your organization, you need to create great human experiences, and that's universal right, and I think what you've basically provided us as a roadmap for doing that. So, Mitchell, thank you so much for the chat. How can people reach you?
0:51:25 - Mitchell Levy
The easiest way is just go to my primary website. So it's MitchellLevycom. So that's with three L's: mitchelllevy.com. There you could link to LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn often. We have a clarity booster session. You can see the stuff that we do. I'd love to have you join us for a 90 minute session, but it's all at MitchellLevycom. And if, if this is inspired enough that you need to make time on my calendar, you could also directly go from there to my calendar and book time.
0:51:58 - Alex Shevelenko
Well, I'm going to book a session, if that's, if that's an invite or something, this is a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Mitchell. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
0:52:06 - Mitchell Levy
It's truly credible, Alex. I loved it. Thank you so much for having me.