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Episode 1
What you will learn from this episode:
3R's - Read, Resource, Reflect
Read:
The Brand You 50 by Tom Peters
Resource:
StrengthsFinder Assessment https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/strengthsfinder.aspx
Reflect:
"A brand is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is" - Marty Neumeier
Summary:
As a real estate investor, people would associate you with other real estate investors’ attributes. And it gets you in the game. It gets you considered. But it doesn’t differentiate you.
How, then, do you stand out from the rest?
A strong brand’s foundation is built on maximizing one’s strengths. Every interaction, every time somebody comes across you, hears of you -- they make that connection back to your brand.
In this episode, Paul shares that understanding your soft skills helps you uncover your strengths and leverage them more than focusing on technical skills. That even years back, working on soft skills -- negotiating, communicating, and leading had already established and made successful personal solid brands more than relying on technical skills.
Topics Covered:
01:18 - Paul’s confession
02:26 - Personal brand - understanding your soft skills and less emphasis on the technical side
04:36 - How branding established and made a success of engineer personal products years back
08:09 - The core foundation of personal branding
09:08 - The three key areas of a great personal brand -- why the need to understand these three
11:45 - Why it’s critical to know how others perceive you in terms of your brand and your business
12:56 - What you should do to know how people perceive you
14:13 - Why look for emotional more than your rational attributes when getting feedback from others
15:34 - Disadvantages of using this feedback approach
15:47 - A FREE tool for 15-day access to help you get honest feedback: 360 Personal Brand Assessment. Click here: https://www.reachcc.com/reach/survey.nsf/page/home
17:31 - What you can uncover and make of the feedback from the tool used
17:57 - Leveraging your strengths
19:23 - More tools and books recommendation to help you in building your personal brand
19:50 - What is this tool, StrengthsFinder 2.0, all about, and what does it help you with?
22:21 - How to highlight the strengths uncovered from the StrengthsFinder tool
Key Takeaways:
“85% of your financial success is due to personality, the ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Only 15% is dependent on technical skills.” - from the Carnegie Institute of Technology research
“It is up to you nowadays to own the definition of who you are. You really can't let your work speak for itself. If you're only relying on the technical skills and the technical side of running your real estate investing business, that is probably not going to be enough.” - Paul Copcutt
“A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, or service, or a company” - Marty Neumeier.
“When I look at that quote, it's one that I can certainly extend further out into a person because a brand is a person's gut feeling about another person.” - Paul Copcutt
“A great personal brand kind of focuses on three key areas, like a Venn diagram, with three circles. The first circle is you; the second circle is the target audience. And the third circle is competition. And if you kind of intersperse those or relay those over each other and right in that center that where those three circles intersect is the essence of a great personal brand.” - Paul Copcutt
“If you took just you and target audience, but you ignored the competition, it's very difficult for people to compare; they’re confused and might misinterpret what you're saying because they don't really have anything to compare it against.” - Paul Copcutt
“If you look at target audience and competition, but you ignore you, there's no connection for people, there's no differentiating, you'll end up being in the areas of a commodity because there is no kind of personal influence there.” - Paul Copcutt
“If you look at you, and the competition, but you ignore the target audience, you could be spending and wasting a lot of time and resources and marketing dollars trying to reach your target audience you haven't even identified.” - Paul Copcutt
“When you're getting those feedback from people, you won't be looking for those rational attributes; you want to be looking for emotional attributes, the differentiators. It might be that you're caring; you don't necessarily need to be caring to be a great real estate investor. The emotional attributes are the reasons why somebody will want to work with you potentially as an employee or a contractor, do business with you as a joint venture partner or private money lender.” - Paul Copcutt
“Quite often, even though you don't know who said it [feedback from the tool used], because it's all anonymous, what you can do is lift some of that information and turn them into mini testimonials that you could potentially use on marketing materials.” - Paul Copcutt
“The other thing you want to think about is uncovering other hidden talents that you have or maybe not so hidden. And one of those quite often is strengths.” - Paul Copcutt
“You can spend a lot of time and energy trying to make a weakness a strength, when in fact, you've already got some great strengths.” - Paul Copcutt
“The foundation of strong brands is built on maximizing your strengths. Take the time to get to know you, and then ensure that you're delivering on everything that you do.” - Paul Copcutt
“Every interaction, every time somebody comes across you, hears of you, they make that connection back to your brand.” - Paul Copcutt
Additional resources and recommendations:
Books:
The Brand Gap and ZAG, both by Marty Neumeier
StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Now Discover Your Strengths - Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton
Resources:
360 Personal Brand Assessment - https://www.reachcc.com/reach/survey.nsf/page/home
Connect with Paul Copcutt:
Music: Thank you to Zoax for the intro music
