Personal Branding is Vital Now

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Personal branding is something I've thought a lot about for years. Branding is about a business, product, or service. Personal branding is about helping the person behind the product to stand out. It's a way to drive a strong perception of the type of person you are and by extension, to earn a little credibility in the process. The goal is for people to see themselves and see you in the product or service you're selling.

Brand Yourself But With Your Buyer In Mind

The weird yo yo trick of personal branding is that the best people in the world at personal branding are the ones who make YOU feel like the star. This work isn't about saying how great you are. It's talking about how wonderful the people you serve are, but in such a way that people think about you.

In brand positioning terms, you're a service brand or a community brand or a lifestyle brand (or all 3). Katie Robbert and Kerry O'Shea Gorgone created Punch Out as that place you go to learn about the rest of the lives of your favorite marketers. Their personal brand thusly becomes about being generous, lifting up others, enriching the brand promise of other people. They act as a community brand.

Tone of Voice is Critical

I built my own strong brand identity around a few bedrock details. These translate into the "tone of voice" of my brand. See if this sounds like me:

• My personal visual brand is casual, cartoonish, and almost a bit sloppy
• My core values are service, honesty, and inclusiveness
• The branding concept of me is "anyone could do this - YOU could do this"
• An emotional connection is core to all the material I share with people
• The only "consistent brand experience" you'll find with me is that I'm always experimenting

To shape your brand is to demonstrate what you stand for and for it to be a recurring part of your expressions. If you're frugal, don't show off your matching Teslas. If you're trying to say you're down to earth and spontaneous, don't be buttoned up all the time.

Think through this:

• What does your word choice say about your brand? Are you using big words when your brand is supposed to be down to earth?
• Even if you're shy, you need to show yourself. Can you dress in a way that matches what you believe and how you want to be perceived?
• Beyond selling (but also during selling) what do you talk about? What do you share? Does it match what you want people to think about you?

"Influencers" are the Devil

Before we had people trying to be "influencers," we had people trying to be "authentic." (After I typed that, I took my hands off the keys to accentuate air quotes - two pumps of my fingers each - because that word is Satan.)

The ways that people try to walk around and represent your brand are almost always about positioning and telling a story that isn't true. If you normally eat hot dogs, you're not a foodie. If you're ever trying to be something you're not, and it's part of a business pursuit, I'll save you time: it rarely ends well.

Communicate Your Brand

Ze Frank once said "a brand is an emotional aftertaste" that comes from experiences. You know "show, don't tell." That's the point. The more you talk about what you are, the less likely you are that thing. So show it.

Establish brand experiences by talking about the kinds of people you serve in terms that echo your intended brand voice. "We're moms who love to help teachers get time back in their day. We know you're busy! Let us help you get better results with your students. Your students are our kids. Let's be on the same team!"

"You have smarts that someone else needs. Sell your brains."

The best personal branding revolves around "you" stories (the kind that enrich your buyer) but that reflect your part of that equation.

How to Build Your Personal Brand

For your brand to thrive, you need the following:

• Clear and unique voice and perspective as it relates to the people you serve
• Consistent publication of media that reflects that voice
• A recurring delivery of value from the media you create and share

Think about that before your next Instagram post. "Am I saying something in my own way or am I someone else's echo?" If someone else reads this, is there a chance they'll take something from it?

"But can I build a brand and stay anonymous?"

I mean, you can build *a* brand, but it's not a personal brand. The word personal and the word anonymous really don't mean the same thing whatsoever.

What people want from you as it applies to personal branding is the following:

• Are you like me?
• Do you share my values?
• Can I trust you?
• Will you help me win?
• What happens when something goes wrong?

Think about your own experiences. When your car needs engine work, do you wonder about those five questions? The last three are definite. The first two might depend on what you're buying for some people. I want someone to be honest like me, obviously. I want them to be understanding.

The last and maybe most important step about personal branding is perhaps the hardest.

Can You Be "Sticky?"

The most powerful part of branding is whether what you create is memorable. Advertising is a powerful tool when it comes to this. Think of all the ads you remember to this day:

• Who is the "quicker picker upper?"
• Plop plop. Fizz Fizz. _______
• The best part of waking up is _____

Advertising works through a combination of something being memorable to begin with and then being repeated enough that you can't forget it. That's an element of personal branding that gets lost often.

The key to being sticky, then, is a formula. An equation maybe. Luckily, Julien Smith and I wrote The Impact Equation for just this purpose. I'll give you the quick rundown here:

Impact = Contrast x Reach + Exposure + Articulation + Trust + Echo.

• Contrast - Does what you say or do stand out
• Reach - How far does your message carry
• Exposure - How often do people see it
• Articulation - Can you say it succinctly
• Trust - Are you believable
• Echo - Can people see themselves in you

That's the impact equation and it really means a lot for the personal branding effort. More than most anything else I've written thus far. If you master that little gauge: CREATE, you will see the value of putting your marketing and outreach efforts through that lens before publishing.

Beyond saying something useful, you have to say it in a memorable way. That's the gold.

Brand Management for Personal Brands

I don't know if this is "management" per se, but what I mean is that it's upon you to create information frequently and share it often, information that serves their pursuits. "They" being the people you serve, naturally. The management aspect of personal branding is that it's so easy to fall out of being top of mind. What stops that from happening?

Reach + Exposure from the Impact Equation help. Take your Articulate and sticky phrases and share them often and far and wide, especially if they help others. Do this often. Do this in new ways with new words. Don't let anything get too old, but say things repeatably enough that others can sing along. Write the hits. Play the hits.

And now you're well on your way to mastering personal branding. It takes work, practice, and all the luck of saying something that catches the attention and imagination of others. I hope this was useful. If it was, share it?

Finally, I'm always available to help you with this through coaching. Just use my contact form or drop me an email: chris@chrisbrogan.com

Content Marketing in 2020

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Content marketing gets a bad rap because a lot of it is so badly wrapped. What happens in the land of marketing and business (b2b marketing or B2C - it doesn't matter) is that someone takes a good concept and sullies it with poor execution. A strong intention becomes a watered down effort to lure people into a sales funnel with search terms. While SEO is a useful part of earning attention, it's not the soul of content marketing. Let's talk about that.

Content Marketing Strategy is About Being Helpful

Attention spans in 2020 are shot. The COVID-19 pandemic and other world events pushed us into having to consume more than our share of news. It's built an intention of shutting out too much information. But what types of content earn attention? Helpful material never goes out of style.

One way to help: brevity. People want the payload, not the fluff. Whether it's business goals or personal pursuits, skip the backstory and cut out the fat.

Guide people by making all your content simple to scan, easy to read, and worth bookmarking for later. By this, I mean: use subtitles and bullets. Create transitions and straightforward messaging. Don't make people work to consume what you create.

Content Types for Context Types

Video marketing is an undeniable part of 2020's content marketing landscape. It's useful for when we feel like being nurtured, or when people's content needs also match a desire to lean back and simply absorb the material. But what if many of your target audience are in a car for long stretches (like truck drivers or suburban commuters)? Then a portion of your marketing methods would be better suited for audio. If not a full fledged podcast, then at least audio content you can invite the recipient to play while commuting. Remember that just because you might prefer text, the most effective way to reach people is the type to choose. Never let your preference guide this choice.

Use Different Types of Content But Tell the Same Story

While matching content to the customer journey, remember that it's preferable to tell your story across a variety of marketing channels. If a prospective customer is evaluating your product, shoot an Instagram video showing why your product is the better choice for them. Follow it with an infographic comparison chart or the like. Remember that you can get quite varied in delivery methods. Make a Slideshare of "How to Convince Your Boss to Buy Our Product for You" and arm your internal allies with what you know. But be sure that you use an editorial calendar or content calendar (however you prefer to call it) so you have an eye towards optimizing earned attention.

Perform a Content Audit

It's easy to mistake content marketing efforts and published material for being actually useful. But there's so much at stake. All content is a reflection of your branding. If the content marketing your organization creates doesn't serve both the consumer of that material and the sales team, it's not content marketing. It's just content.

A content audit investigates whether your organization's marketing strategy and tactics align with its business objectives. If funny dance videos don't make the phones ring, then who cares? But at the same time, if your company still pushes bland white papers circa 2000 because you're "doing b2b marketing," then you're missing far too many opportunities. There are so many ways to reach more people and earn more customers. But it takes effort and it can't be phoned in. It's 2020. Let's get you ready for the years ahead.

May I Help?

I offer consultation around business strategy and marketing as it applies to content marketing and much more. I'm quite available to help, should you want to talk that over and see how I can get your company's content marketing to serve you better. Just drop me a line via this contact form and I'll get right back to you. Or email me directly: chris@chrisbrogan.com . Either way. I'm here to help.

Personal Leadership

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Personal leadership is at the core of my new project, StoryLeader™. My premise is that in a world where effective leadership is more of a team sport, great leaders are the kind who work to develop their teams with good leadership qualities of their own. Let's talk about which leadership attributes will help the most, and how being a leader means growing even more leaders along the way.

A Change In Leadership Styles

One change since the COVID-19 pandemic is that team members must work much more independently, especially as more people work-from-home (WFH). Personal leadership is the art of training up your team and empowering them. The goal for those teams is to operate as leaders from within their role while still supporting the greater structure of the organization. An effective leader is now one who motivates and encourages the unique strengths of her team and seeks a collaborative experience to grow team capabilities.

Communication Skills for Leaders

The core of communication is a mix of clarity, brevity, participation, and empathy, with a topping of keeping the objective central to the experience. That's a lot. Let's walk through it:

• Objective-minded - always communicate from the mindset of the goal you seek to accomplish.
• Participatory - communication is a more-than-one sport. The best communicators don't only know how to speak. They know how to listen, and how to bring a sense of being valued to the other person or people in the interaction.
• Clear - clarity is so vital to good communication these days. Attention spans are shot. Be very succinct in what you're asking.
• Brief - brevity is more than the soul of wit. Teach your team the "one topic per email/message" Practice reviewing messages to see if they could be shorter. Make it an okay thing to point out how to tune up brevity.
• Empathic - communication is about understanding the feelings behind the mindsets of everyone involved. Businesses (most especially b2b) never talk about this. Which is why they're rarely as successful as they want to be with communications.

None of this just appears magically for your team. To inspire personal leadership around communication, articulate what you want for the team, and encourage constructive reviews of communications whenever possible. Practice wins this.

Collaboration as a Team Sport

If bosses teach effective leadership skills around collaboration, colleagues learn to work towards group success instead of individual contributions alone. Collaboration promotes blending strengths and weaknesses of a team. If Jeremiah loves taking meeting notes, let him. If Imani is your most charismatic team member, and she loves leading client calls, make that her core. Build your team not to be repetitive replacement parts, but instead a team of experts in their core skills, and then work on cross-training. Second only to communication, collaboration is a great place to encourage strong leadership behaviors.

Configuration: Reshape Every Space

One important leadership trait is to break free of the "factory assembly line" mentality of decades past. I've said it in different ways in several of my most recent posts. Developing leaders need to feel a sense of ownership of their environment. Bosses must value their team's approach and contribution to these projects as well. Look at this as further empowerment and a way to find comfort around their place in the organization's value.

The idea of configuration is the concept that everything we observe isn't what it has to be. Put the chairs where you want them. Take the clock out of the meeting room. Get ready... Let the team pick some of the software the team uses. (Yikes!)

If you're going to lose language like "subordinates" and stop worrying about being a "motivational leader" and instead work on growing a team of transformational team members dedicated to helping your organization win.

Chris Brogan runs StoryLeader™, a training program for leaders and growing personal leaders alike. Combining communications, collaboration, and configuration as the core of leadership training, Chris teaches the three major types of business storytelling tools available to teams, and points to a way to approach the challenges of recovering lost business and leading distributed teams in a post-COVID 19 world.

Business Storytelling

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Business storytelling is the act of using story as a way to interact with others to convey business values and/or business information. I like to say that "story is the best unit of memory" (tweetable) and that's because the goal of business storytelling is to help information stick, both internally among various teams and leadership, as well as externally in alignment with marketing, sales, customer service, and other parts of a company.

Stories to Tell

There are three types of business stories the way I teach it:

• Mission stories - stories that help people understand and align with the mission of the organization. "We work to give every mother the tools she needs to raise compassionate athletes."
• Belonging stories - these are stories that inform people that they are in the right place, so to speak. "Moms of athletes don't always agree, but they all want their kids to have what they need to thrive."
• Growth stories - part motivational talk and part "corrective" language, this helps employees stay aligned with the mission of the organization. "While we want you to sell as many coaching packages as possible, it's important to work within the budgets and schedules of the mothers you're supporting."

One doesn't have to be any kind of master storyteller to make this happen. Remember that the definition of story is simply "an account of people an events." While I'll show you some story structure as it applies to business storytelling, essentially the spirit of your work here is to learn that a story helps people remember important information better than most any other tool.

Business Storytelling Approach

The goal of every story you tell should be to convey information in a memorable (and maybe even repeatable) way. Because these are business stories, and the goal isn't to become some kind of master storyteller of fairy tales or something, let me give you a few more details to consider:

• Clarity - Business stories must be succinct and clear. There should never be a surprise. Instead, people need their information to be straightforward and understandable.
• Brevity - The attention span of people these days is diminished from stress, from too much information, and from a shift in how we prefer to consume knowledge. Create brief stories. Snacks more than meals. And seek to be as brief as possible while staying clear.
• Metaphors - To craft a compelling story, sometimes an easy tool is a metaphor. "Life is a stream. It flows in one direction and when we step out of the water, we can never get back in at the exact same moment." That sort of thing is a metaphor.

The first two should be used all the time. The last is a tool you can use more as a condiment than a meal. (A metaphor.) "Think of metaphor as a condiment, not a meal." <-- that's a tiny business story to remind you how to use metaphors in your writing. (Not much in the "account of people and events" department, but we'll stretch the definition a little.)

Content Marketing Thrives on Compelling Stories

I'm working on a project with my friend Saul Colt. The goal is to help physical stores and galleries all across Canada to build online storefronts to enable these organizations to sell online. While brainstorming ways to earn more sign-ups for this project, I came up with two different ideas (stories) that complement the project and can be told as content marketing (in this case, on Instagram).

The project is called "shopHERE powered by Google" and because I want to encourage more people to sign up, I proposed storytelling elements that are a play on "shop here." The first is built around regional business pride and uses the hashtag #myshopishere . The second is about women-run businesses and the uses the hashtag #shopHER (minus the e. Get it?) They're meant to be quite relatable (as good stories are).

If I didn't tell you much else about the campaign, can you imagine the kinds of photos people will take for 'My shop is here?' Pizza places. A favorite nail salon. Maybe a cool pawn shop would be part of it. And of course 'Shop her' is about empowering women owners, like an auto body shop, and an MMA gym, and so on.

The projects are content marketing designed to drive awareness and signups to the shopHERE powered by Google project, but the STORIES are about regional pride and woman-owned businesses. Make sense?

Storytellers Invite Their Listeners to be the Protagonist

The power of storytelling works best when it becomes a collaboration between the creator of the story and the consumer of that material. The reader or listener or viewer best experiences compelling storytelling when they are invited to tell the story from their perspective and participate in it themselves.

Star Wars has stuck with us better than many other media properties because the stories are bigger than the main characters. Even if you don't want to be Luke or Leia, you can decide if you want to be an Imperial Tie fighter pilot or a rebel scout or someone else in the captivating stories that follow.

Story, as it turns out, works best when it is a collaboration.

In business, this can happen in branding. On the day I wrote this to you, Nike's website has a tag line that says "Where All Athletes Belong." They're pushing inclusivity and this goes beyond a marketing strategy and instead pushes deep into the fabric of their brand stories overall. It matches.

Story Structure is a Powerful Starting Point

You've watched a TED talk before, I presume. Reserved to no more than 18 minutes (there are very few exceptions to this online), presenters are trained and drilled in how to craft stories that start with cores of data visualizations or case studies and add an emotional connection to the material. Sometimes these are funny. Other times, they make us see what we thought we fully understood in a new light. And even other times, we simply enjoy the experience and go along for the ride.

The structure of TED, the little details, how it all gets wrapped together into a compelling narrative is worth understanding for your future business communications as well. I recommend Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo, a book that is every bit as useful today as the day it was published.

How to Get Started

With business storytelling, you might be thinking: "Okay, I don't disagree with you, Chris, but I'm not sure what to do now with this information." Fair enough. I'll help.

1. Write a story of what your product/service is and who it helps. The agile user story template works well for this: As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>. Being able to answer this succinctly helps you see your business more clearly.
2. Work on a few sentences around this: The type of people who buy from us are ___ . They like __ and they don't want ___ . (This is a belonging story.)
3. If you were hiring a new employee today and she will be working from home, what story does she need to know that sums up the culture of your organization? Are you sticklers for timeliness? Are you a very collaborative company? Are the rules cut and dry and there's not really a lot of flexibility? (Remember, this isn't always a bad things: franchises must follow the systems that are in place.)
4. Write a few sentences around the ideal customer experience. "If everything went flawlessly, a customer would start on our website and click here. And then..."
5. At a team meeting, host an exercise around "A meal we used to have at home." Have people write down some details or a paragraph to explain something about food that inspires at least a little emotional attachment.

End Clearly and Strong

Another detail. For whatever reason, it seems that the art of ending a story is lost on the world. The best endings point to what might come next. In many ways, the best endings are beginnings. This piece ends with me offering help, which might lead to a beginning. Your stories might end in different ways. But "stopping" and "creating an ending" are vastly different efforts and exercises. You want to end clearly. Like this.

If You Want More Help

My core business at StoryLeader™ is dedicated to improving your success with expressing yourself within (and outside of) your organization. I help you convey your intentions, clearly express your business goals and values and needs. And I'm an expert at turning that terrifying blank page into something you can run with and complete on your own with confidence. Never hesitate to drop me a line either by email (chris@chrisbrogan.com) or by just filling out my contact form.

Don't Try to Be Authentic. Be Brave

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"How to be authentic." People talk to me about authenticity a lot because they pay me the "compliment" that I am authentic. First, I don't think it's a good pursuit: learning how to be authentic. Second, I feel there's a better goal: how to be brave. Because when people talk about authenticity, what they really mean is that they want the confidence to be who they really are and feel brave about talking about it.

"How to Be Authentic" Isn't a Very Good Goal

I say this because it means you're learning how to portray authenticity, not how to live with confidence. The term "authenticity" when used in the way people throw it around means to be accurate, factual, reliable. It means that you mean what you say and say what you mean. It troubles me that people feel they can't do this. But of course, that's not really what one is saying.

Learn to Be Brave. You'll Appreciate It More

Bravery is built on courage, and the root of courage is the ability to do something despite feeling fear. That seems a better concept to master. For instance, if you're like me and you deal with depression, it's "authentic" that I say that because it's factual and reliable and accurate, but it's also "brave" because I say this information knowing that it might sway someone to not hire me. (In my calculus, if a company doesn't work with people who deal with depression, they're probably not my kind of people.)

The path to bravery is simply through repetition of effort on one hand, and through contemplating what matters to you on the other. There are so many areas of your business and life where you would do to be more brave:

• Learn not to talk so much, and listen more without fear that people might think you're not so smart.
• Practice hearing someone's concerns without overlaying their words with your own autobiography.
• Experience that it's okay not to know everything without worrying that people won't trust your knowledge about what you do know.

Bravery is about repeatedly confronting what you thought would scare you (or does scare you) and beating it. It's also about learning more about what matters to you.

Bravery Beats Authenticity

A lot of my friends suddenly found themselves working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their bosses at various companies hadn't run many remote teams, and didn't have the tools necessary to manage remote employees. Instead of bravely telling their teams: "Hey, we're all new to this. Let's talk about how we can make this work best for everyone," they acted as if they were professionals in this regard. But lacking that knowledge, they put their teams into greater stress and reduced productivity by forcing more frequent status meetings, and far more video contact than is necessary.

Imagine being a team member working with that group, and having some suggestions. Is it authentic to share your ideas with the boss? No. It's brave. Which one helps more? Authentic means being factual and trustworthy. It doesn't mean you'll tell people you report to what you think might better suit the team as far as arrangements for remote working and status check-ins.

How to be Brave

Instead of worrying about authenticity, focus on helping others. Instead of wondering when you'll get your turn, work on what you're doing. Instead of thinking about what you're missing out on, sink yourself into what you can build for yourself.

Stop worrying about what you'll lose. There are always more things and people and opportunities out in the world than there are days left in your life. Don't hold on so tight, and you'll find your hands free to reach out for the next opportunity and the next.

Bravery is a verb. It's an active state. It's a morning ritual and a daily promise. It's learning that mistakes aren't failure as much as they're another opportunity to try something else. And failure is just an outcome you didn't expect or intend.

I wrote a book about bravery a few years back. The lessons all still work the same way. It's about building up the tools to be more brave and it might be useful. Let me know. I'm always here to help.

Work With Me

If you're looking for personal or corporate team coaching, I'm always available to help you win. Just get in touch.

I'm always here to help.

Leadership Skills for After the Pandemic

Restaurants Reopening After the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

Leadership skills haven't changed much in some ways. In others, we're at a whole new turn in the road for organizations as they learn how to manage teams remotely, as they grapple with issues of transmitting corporate culture without so much physical proximity. What we knew before March 2020 must be checked, edited, revised, and maybe just plain thrown out. So what can we do? What should we do? What does it take to be a great leader now?

Leadership Skills for After the Pandemic

The top qualities of an effective leader revolve these days circle a "Big 3" traits to focus on: communication, collaboration, and configuration. When you see those three topics, your first response is likely: "What? I do all that. I know all about that." But it's different these days. I'll explain.

Communication - The new rule of communicating and being a leader involves brevity and clarity. In writing and verbally, learn to be crisp and clear. Start at the "ask" or the most important point. Chop out explanations and segues. One topic per message.

Collaboration - Bring part of the project, and let the team fill in the rest. Embrace and encourage a diversity of thought. Motivate team members to share their experience as it applies to the project. Inspire team members to own some of the leadership tasks of any given experience.

Configuration - Factories are over. Leading like you run a factory is over. Teams and leaders must embrace more chances to make work what they need it to be. The Work From Home (WFH) elements of COVID-19 showed that office hours didn't exactly have to be synchronous. What else can be configured differently? Do you need people to live near the office any longer? If not, what else has to change?

As leaders work on their own efforts with communication, collaboration, and configuration, so too will team members need to learn more about how to do the same. Distributed teams means remote leadership and personal leadership become quite important to everyone. Not only will management skills need to exist at the individual contributor level, but also the competencies of listening, delegation and strong interpersonal skills will hinge on being able to improve in the three big Cs.

Good Leaders Inspire Action. Great Leaders Grow More Leaders.

Gone is the fear that you as a boss have to know everything. Empathy and self-awareness become much more important, as do a strong emotional intelligence as well as the humility to presume that you don't always have the best answer, and that maybe your team members do.

Develop your leadership by growing more leaders. Invite team members to take parts of a project as their responsibility. But empower and educate them a little bit first. The leadership skills necessary to run parts of your business aren't immediately obvious. (Remember when you started?) Teach them the Three Big Cs above. Everyone needs those. And here are a few more leadership skills to encourage strategic thinking.

If this, then what? - Teach your budding leaders to walk through decisions before taking the action. In his book "It's Your Ship," Captain Michael Abrashoff teaches as part of his leadership method the concept of "I intend to." It's a level of leadership where team members don't execute without permission but where they bring their recommended path of action for review by saying, "I intend to take the following action."

Which decisions need making? - Team members sometimes burn time not knowing which parts of business need more thorough decision making and which don't merit the time spent. Sometimes, aspiring leaders weigh the strengths and weaknesses of every possible step of a project, instead of knowing which parts can be accepted as a given, or which can be ignored. Teach your aspiring leadership candidates the skill of knowing which parts of a project need a solid decision making system.

Is this aligned with the ultimate goal? - Some people as they attempt successful leadership get far too stuck in task oriented mindsets. Instead, drive goal-level leadership at all turns. Ensure that tasks completed are only valuable if they advance the goal and that filling out a checklist every day isn't nearly as valuable as moving a project towards a timely and cost effective solution.

Inspire Two-Way Mentorship

As the leader of a team, make it clear that you thrive on developing your team. But also, be just as clear that you seek to learn from the diverse wealth of backgrounds your team employs. Be open to learning new approaches, to understanding different cultural and skill experiences. Actively seek out this two-way mentorship and guidance. Build it into how you spend team time on projects. The rewards will be remarkable.

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Ask About Leadership Training

Chris Brogan wants to talk with you.

If you want to explore what leadership training looks like for your organization using the StoryLeader™ system, please get in touch. Drop an email at chris@chrisbrogan.com or fill out my nifty contact form.

People Need Brevity in Stories in 2020 and Beyond

It seems that when people try to communicate, they mostly try to push the most stuff they can into our heads at one time. We say that business storytelling is very important but we don't teach people how to do it. In the absence of instructions, a lot of people believe that saying more is the same as giving someone useful information.

Brevity is Key for Business Storytelling

Have you looked at a recipe on YouTube lately? We often have to slog through 11 minutes just to get even the simplest recipe. But it doesn't have to be that way. Look at this amazing video to see a great example of brevity:

He got three different hummus recipes into a video that was less than three minutes long. Think on that the next time you say that brevity isn't possible.

How Do We Work With Brevity?

1. Start with the end point in mind: What does this story need to do?
2. Trim any explanations: The #1 killer of brevity is thinking we have to explain something beyond a brief in-context line or two at the most.
3. One idea per interaction: We try to cram too much information into all communications efforts. Make each interaction about one thing. Or one small grouping.
4. Read it aloud: Any writing benefits from your voice out loud. If it doesn't sound like something you'd actually say, delete it. (Hint: read this post out loud. Sounds like someone talking, right?)
5. Think bullets and lists: Our brains love small lists. We love bullets. Communicate that way.

There's a Time for More Words

But it's far less often than you'd think. You can fire someone politely and professionally with three sentences. You can profess your love with three words. You can communicate entire oceans of meaning with a single look.

Think brevity first at all times. Every time you add more, it's usually because you're feeling insecure or afraid. Hurts to hear that, I know, but it's true.

Until it's time to NOT be true.

If you want to learn more about how I can help you with leadership, marketing, and sales advice, peek at this and then drop me a line. I'd love to help.

Why Business Storytelling is a Necessary Tool for 2020 and Beyond

Whenever someone tells you "stories are an important part of leadership," you do what most people do: you nod and shrug and wonder what the heck anyone means by that. And yet, we use stories informally every day. Your business meeting with prospects breaks for lunch and what do you do? Tell stories of your families and where you're from, or seek out what each of you have in common. (These are belonging stories in my Three Story Types for Business.) Everyone knows they should be doing something, but what? Why? And how?

Stories Transfer Leadership DNA

When I launched StoryLeader™, I realized I needed a way to explain the core benefit of the leadership training practice. What we do when we tell business stories is we transfer leadership DNA throughout the organization. The goal of the stories then becomes ensuring that people at all levels understand what kinds of goals and intentions their leadership has in mind, that people closer to the front line understand what decisions their leadership might make in a given situation, and that with everyone operating from the same perspective, friction is reduced to a minimum.

If you run an analytics group, one of your core mission stories might be about how your organization's role is to act as a "backup brain" to the groups you support, and that your primary function is to absorb and relieve all their primary brain worries while being alert to prompt for future threats and trends. The more your team thinks about what it means to be a "backup brain," and that "absorbing worry" is a core function of that brain, they'll align their decisions and efforts accordingly.

2020 is About Upskilling and That Requires Growth Stories

In the fast world of transformation culture, organizations have to be able to shift quickly with new opportunities, adapt and be more resilient. As human capital starts to account for as much as 50% of a company's value (source), it becomes important that leaders tell belonging stories so that people feel valued, included, and most vitally part of the solution for all and any challenges that arise.

Employee retention is an exercise in storytelling matched by actions that support the story. The third story type in StoryLeader™ are called growth stories. Sometimes, these are corrective or lesson tales. Other times, they are the stories that empower us or invigorate us during the challenging parts of our work.

Studies say over and over that when an employee starts to seek employment elsewhere, it's almost never an issue of pay. More often than not, disengagement comes when the employee no longer feels like they are working on meaningful work. The right growth stories and belonging stories (fronted by action that shows that employee a path to being part of solid execution) are more vital than any dollar or title increase.

Telling Stories is Now a Participatory Sport

The 2019 movie box office revenue for the US was $11.9 billion, but if you add worldwide revenue, the number goes up to $42 billion. That's a pretty decent figure for movies as entertainment.

UNTIL

Until you realize that the video game industry took in $120 billion last year. Before you scoff and think of yourself as not a video game person, mobile games accounted for $64.4 billion on its own, dwarfing traditional PC or console games.

Why am I sharing this? Because storytelling (movies) has become far more interactive (video games). That means we as leaders have to learn not only how to tell a business story, but that we have to build participatory stories where everyone absorbs and acquires the leadership DNA you intend to transfer.

No, you don't have to create video games to tell business stories (they fail horribly when people try). But you do have to learn how to tell a more participatory story. (I can help!) Stories must be crafted to be more bite-sized (like a series of text messages) and with room for others to participate and lead from their own level, while retaining the core importance of the mission stories that form the organization's objectives and intentions.

What Does This Do?

Working on business stories improves decision making, cuts down on rework, reduces friction, and obviously saves time and money in the process. By learning the simple (but not easy) skills of telling better business stories that reinforce the organization's mission, people's sense of belonging, and everyone's path to growth, leaders can focus more on vision and clearing roadblocks. Smart leaders let stories do the heavy lifting, and what I shared in this article is why.

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Chris Brogan runs StoryLeader™ as a leadership training experience. Get in touch here.

My 3 Words for 2020

Happy 2020! Since 2006, I've been recommending that people choose 3 words to guide their actions and choices over the year to come. With over 13 years of experience and more to come, I want to share with you how this works because I want you to choose your own 3 words and share them around. (We use the hashtag #my3words when sharing so that others can find your examples.)

What is My 3 Words About?

The My Three Words idea is simple. Choose 3 words (not 1, not 4) that will help guide your choices and actions day to day. Think of them as lighthouses. "Should I say yes to this project?" "Well, does this align with my three words?"

How to Choose Three Words

I started this process back in 2006. Back then, my 3 words were "Ask. Do. Share." I picked these very simple words and they served me very well. One of my best years ever. When I asked questions, I learned. When I took action based on what I learned from asking, I made more ground and took over more of the universe. When I shared what I learned with everyone, I made connections and some friends.

Choose any three words you feel will guide you forward. I can tell you a few things about this:

• Don't make it a phrase. "Publish the book" is a terrible choice. "The" is wasted.
• Try to make the words actionable. "Expand" is better than "bigger."
• The more utilitarian the word can be, the better. These words have to be your compass.
• Stick with the 3 words all year. Every time I've changed one a month or two later, the year mucks up. I can't explain it. But I can report it.
• Years where I've tried "fancy" words with layers of meaning, I lost the thread. Use plain words, maybe.
• BUT the words don't have to mean anything to anyone but you. Don't worry about explaining them.

Review Them Daily

The more you review your 3 words, the better. I have mine built into my daily planning guides and action stacks. I try using them for a mantra when I can. Sometimes on walks, I just repeat them over and over. I like to reflect on them and meditate a little with those words in mind.

Past Iterations of My 3 Words

2006 - Ask. Do. Share
2007 - Seek. Frame. Build. Bridge (yes, that was 4. It also was a less successful year.)
2008 - Believe. Loops.Farm
2009 - Equip. Armies. Needles
2010 - Ecosystems. Owners. Kings
2011 - Reinvest. Package. Flow
2012 - Temple. Untangle. Practice
2013 - Walt. Ender. Monchu
2014 - Lifestyle. Monchu. Black.
2015 - Plan. Leverage. Fabric.
2016 - Home. Shine. Win.
2017 - Move.Voice.Game
2018 - Ritual. Execute. Value
2019 - Station. Stacks. Movement.

And My 3 Words for 2020 Are:

Push - This one is so simple. Every day, push. Do something. Move forward. Push. Bring your efforts forward a notch. Even if it's a little notch, do it. Contact some prospects. Swing the kettlebells. Make media. Push. I've got a good feeling about this word.

Structurequence - Yes. I made this word up. Yes, it's cheating (kinda). Structure and sequence. The point is that structure doesn't mean much without sequence. They go together. When I build structures for companies or myself, I need to bake the sequence into everything I create. Structure and sequence had a baby and this is it.

Package - I will do a much better job showing the labeling, the edges, the decoration, and the careful consideration of what I'm creating. This reminds me not to be so much an improv guy and instead be a polished guy. It tells me to put the extra effort in and wear the button down instead of the tee shirt. This one has been a long time coming.

Your Turn. What are YOUR 3 Words for 2020?

This process is a million times more fun if you share your 3 words as well. If you have a blog, I recommend writing a post and sharing it. If not, it's okay. Just tweet or post on Facebook or whatever makes you cheery. Use the hashtag #my3words so that others (like me) can find what you've got to share. I love hearing people's three words every year. It's truly one of the best parts of every year for me.

And grab my newsletter?

I put out a really really good weekly newsletter on Sundays. It's the best stuff I do, so if you're interested, I'd love it if you grabbed a copy:

First Name *

Email *

And thanks!

Mitch Joel is a Wizard

I did a 3 part video series with my pal, Mitch Joel. He's so smart and I just wanted to dig in and get his smarts.

You'll learn so much if you dig into these!

How Do You Absorb Information Best?

I just released a new episode of my podcast, the first in a little while. Just before I hit record, I decided to also record it as a video show (and I use the term "show" loosely as it's just a multi-camera talking head thing). But I did it for a reason. Some of us prefer to read text (like this). Others prefer audio because they're on the go. Still others prefer video so they can watch when they have a moment to absorb something new.

How do YOU absorb information?

That's the video (embedded above, if you can't see anything, maybe click here.) I used that same video to create the audio player below:

It's essentially the same thing, but for some of you, audio is the way to go. For others, it's all about the video footage. Still others prefer text and only text. (Obviously, if you have a hearing or sight impediment, you'll align your preferences accordingly.) Which is it for you?

Should you produce material for all the various media types?

This becomes interesting because ultimately, this can be as simple as what I did: record once and split off the audio file. But that creates a challenge.

• People prefer audio lengths of 20 minutes or more.
• People prefer video lengths of 10 minutes or 20 tops.
• People only want to read for 300-500 words tops.

If you create something ONCE, you either have to make your videos twice as long as preferred or make your audios half as long as preferred. The (nearly obvious) trick for making this still work is as follows: shoot a 10 minute video, peel out that audio, dump it into GarageBand or Audacity, and create another 10+ minutes of content to go with it. THEN you have what you can go with.

Oh. But wait. There's a frequency issue. People PREFER daily videos. They are tuned for weekly podcast episodes. Can you create daily videos and weekly podcasts? Sure. But then you're going to have to mix and match your production methods a tiny bit.

Should you even be thinking this way?

Yes. That's the short answer. People want to consume your content where they want to get it. I offer a YouTube channel, a podcast, a blog, and an amazing newsletter. Why? Because I need to reach my buyers where they are. I'd do the same for clients (and have). It's a powerful way to make it all happen.

So, what's it going to be for you?

Marketing in the Faster World

A few weeks back, Jac and I took a week's vacation in the woods, with no access to our devices or the Internet. There was electricity and water and a small fridge, but there was also the basic requirement that if you wanted a meal, you had to start a campfire and cook over open flame. Imagine having to coax wood to burn, get some coals going, prep the food, and cook it slowly every time you felt like a meal.

Compare that to our regular fast world. We eat when we want. We get it delivered or pop something in the microwave. When we think about buying something, we can say "Alexa, order me more True Lime packets" and it will show up a day or two later. But if everything is so much faster, why is your marketing so slow?

Marketing in the Faster World

Your buyer doesn't have time to read Moby Dick. Mind you, they'll binge a whole season of Mindhunter in a day's time, but if you slow them down with print, it's not going to happen. (Says the guy typing this to you.)

I've been pushing the same simple (but not easy) marketing premise over and over: the snack, the show, and the letter. I'll repeat it here.

Snack - small media bites. Things like an Instagram posts, tweets, little bitty tastes of what's going on in the world of your buyer and what you sell to them.

Show - something longer, entertaining, and with more substance, like a podcast, a YouTube channel, or a well crafted newsletter (not to be confused with "the letter" I talk about next).

Letter - access to your prospect's inbox. This last one becomes the most important tool right now. Why? Because you can't trust someone to choose to buy or take follow-up actions when they're consuming snacks or shows. Besides, Google and Facebook own all the other access points to your customer. You own a direct path to their inbox.

The map of where to reach your buyer changes so often that we have to write it out in pencil. For well over a decade, people have asked me where people hang out online, as if that's the right question to ask. It's not. The question is and always should be: how do I get access to their inbox? And then: how do I get them to read what I send?

Device-Sized Messaging

The inbox is the phone. We keep forgetting. And anything we send in text has to be short form these days. So even when we earn their inbox, it's all about short messages well-targeted.

If you want to reach people in this too-fast, too-busy world, my best advice is that formula: the snack, the show, and the letter. Get clear about showing your prospects their problems and your solutions. Deliver a message that reminds them often that they're in the right place and you're the right guide.

And do it quickly. We don't have time to start a fire. People are hungry now.

Send It

What comes next is production. We want something to chew on. We want to sing along. We want it to make sense in our lives. We want to know all the words. We want to collect it.

And then

We want to take it, modify it, make it ours, do our own version.

Old Town Road isn't a hit simply because the song was catchy. Gazillions (that's a real number) of people used it on TikTok to make their own thing with it. They started with the product belonging to Lil Nas X, but at some point, they felt an ownership of their own.

Send It

Make something and put it out there. Make it memorable and unique and give it a flag and something for people to latch onto and take it as their own. And that's what messes people up and confuses companies and why marketing is always so crappy. Because we create "material" and "content" that's built to sell something, which isn't inherently bad, but it's also not at all interesting.

And forever more, you have to use as many channels as you can. Posts, letters, audio, video, and whatever else makes sense. Postcards. Phone calls. SMS texts. But ONLY if you're contributing to the anthems of the people you hope to serve.

Only if you're bringing something to the picnic.

Skills for the Coming Years

I was asked which skills would be important for business professionals in the coming years, a question I love because I definitely read every article that came out giving me this guidance when I was young and hungry in business. (By this, I mean I still love these articles - except I'm old and hungry.)

Skills for the Coming Years

I feel you'd do yourself an incredible favor if you focused on a few capabilities more than others. You might not need everything I am about to share, but pick as many as you can.

Project Management - you're the boss of you more than ever before. In a massive company, you have more autonomy. In a solo business, you can only turn to yourself. But people are horrendous at managing their time and resources. Learn some basic project management skills, and learn to stick to your own commitments.

Clarity/Brevity - people have less time than ever before -- at least they feel that way. They multitask and split their attention. To communicate, you need to be brief and clear and say what needs saying without having to write a novel to get there.

Video and Audio Making - people are reading less than ever before. The same people who don't have time are the ones who binge watch entire seasons of TV shows in two sittings (one if you're really committed). Podcasts are having their fifth or sixth renaissance. Learn how to simply "be" on video and audio. Practice that the way it wasn't natural for you to email or text people back in the day. Get GOOD with being you on camera and in someone's ear. Even if you never produce an actual "show." This sounds fancy but it's basic. It's the basic building blocks of modern communication.

Information Curation - you can try to read everything and watch everything and try to catch up and blah blah, but it's not working. You have to pare back. A lot. There's no value in blindly searching haystacks for inspiration or to "stay informed." There's so much content coming out that you will never make a dent in it. Pick sources to learn from and jettison the rest. Swap it up from time to time. Learn to stop reading/watching. Learn to discern.

Interfacing - I'm using this like a verb which kinda grosses me out, but stick with me. Learning how things and people and systems and the like all connect is a VITAL skill in the coming years. Nothing is staying the same. Everything is adapting. We need to keep sharp with our skills to connect one thing to another, be that people, culture, technology, foods, etc. Working with others. Collaborating. Matching what you do to what someone else does. This is the hardest one and probably the one that will save many businesses. (Sociology is a good subject to study.)

What We Thought Mattered Didn't As Much

Someone was bragging about all they knew the other day (stuff like all the state capitals). I realized that everything they were talking about was at my fingers with Google and that if I cluttered my brain with it, my life wouldn't be any better or worse. No one ever pulls a gun and says, "Quick, the capital of Pennsylvania!"

Coal miners don't want coal mining jobs. They want jobs. They want to provide. They don't feel they have the skills to do something else.

A lot of times, we cling to the wrong part of the equation. I used to think that the more domain knowledge I had in a particular technology, the more useful I was to the world. But everything I once mastered doesn't even matter any more. Almost all of my technical proficiencies were wiped out by cloud computing, the death of middleware, and people's shift to apps over server-based environments. If I had doubled down, I'd be a coal miner of another kind.

Are you working on your future skills?

Is There Any Value in Blogging and Podcasting and All That Media?

The technology behind building a blog or a podcast or a newsletter is easier to operate than ever before. You can get started for very low money and it doesn't require a boat load of technical skill either. But the two questions you should ask yourself are these: do I have something helpful to share and will anyone bother to read/consume what I create.

I don't know that there ever were any "gee whiz" days in blogging and content creation. I feel like more people used to do it because they were told to create something, but really so few people actually liked writing and making media. They saw it as a chore. People did it until they felt they didn't have to any longer. "No one's reading blogs anymore anyway."

That was never true. No one read your boring blog.

Podcasts: The New Rage

Everyone and their cousin are finally launching podcasts. It didn't take off in 2005, like I thought. Nor 2006, 2007, 2009. All the years I figured "Wow, now THIS will be the age of podcasting" ended up being wrong. Because people tend to start doing something only when it's saturated. So now everyone also wants to start a podcast and/or get on Instagram and do what everyone else is doing.

You can do a podcast. It's okay. People are consuming more audio than ever before. (And people are reading less and less.)

You can and should do video, too. Start a YouTube channel and put something up at least weekly.

Will you? Not as likely. Podcasting is another thing people became willing to do because it seems easy enough. Video still seems hard and scary.

None of it matters. Unless.

Blogging, podcasting, video, and whatever other tools you don't seem to want to use to reach people don't matter all that much unless you have something interesting and useful to say. People make the mistake all the time of thinking that what they're writing or speaking about is interesting because it's what they sell. Not many people sell inherently interesting things. And even if something has a little pizazz, that wears off quickly if it's not something anyone wants to buy.

No, you shouldn't bother. Don't make media. Of any kind, really. Just knock on doors and ring phones. It's worked well for decades and decades.

Even though people don't read as many mainstream news sources any longer. Even though people stopped listening to terrestrial radios and podcasting is having its heyday. Even though YouTube serves over a billion hours of video every day displacing a lot of eyes that used to just watch whatever was on TV. Don't think much about that.

Or

You can take a stab at creating something interesting and compelling and worth someone's time. You can write helpful articles and posts. You can record podcast episodes that entertain and inform someone (I just spent the better part of a day in my car and ran out of GOOD podcasts to listen to - because I'm not all that into true crime shows).

You could try to reach the millions and millions of people who are looking for something entertaining and informative. And do it regularly, and across multiple types of platforms. Because that might be worth something to someone.

Or you can wait a while longer. Until no one's doing any of these things either.

It's Not Who You Know

You've been told that it's not what you know; it's who you know. That's almost true. It's who you know that you maintain good relationships with that matters most. Warm contacts, not just contacts. Years ago, my friend and boss at the time Jeff Pulver told me, "You live or die by your database." I've guided my business by that principle ever since, and it continues to pay off.

Warm Connections Beat "Contacts"

I'm typing this from the dining room table of two friends who are now also clients. I've known them for years now. Gary is a chef and author and Sylvia is a photographer and creative. They own a boutique inn located in the fabled Hamptons in New York, and through that, I've seen them nurture guests and deliver amazing customer experiences. They treat their friends as if there's no one else in the world besides them and it's a treasure to bask in their presence.

When they asked me to come work with them on a few projects (some marketing and some business work), I said yes without a moment's hesitation. And while I've worked with the two of them in limited ways over the past several years, this is our first big business undertaking.

My point is this: these are the types of engagements you want in business. You want to work with people you like. You want to work with people who matter. And that takes time and effort.

The Opposite of Serendipity

Some parts of life happen by chance. They're beautiful. Sometimes, we meet someone simply because they've wandered into our world. That's great.

But for business purposes, and for life plans, and for mapping out a way to thrive, I have to caution you: your business success will increase if you learn how to nurture warm connections with people who you want to work with in business and in life. This particular success comes from effort, not serendipity.

How to Keep Contacts Warm

I could tell you the simplest method possible:

• Make a simple spreadsheet with names and contact columns, an area for notes, and an area for an ongoing log of dates.
• Ensure it has a "last contact" column where you can add a date.
• SCHEDULE TIME to reach out and connect with people on your list daily (or almost daily).
• Do this a lot.
• Visit people when you can.

I know it's insane. I know you wanted there to be more to this. But this is how it works. You connect. You observe. You leave messages. You recognize the good work of others. You find ways to help however you can, even in small ways.

And here's the most important one:

You make warm introductions where it makes sense between people you know, and using the following model.

1. Ask party one if an introduction to party two might be helpful. Wait for a yes.
2. Ask party two if they're willing to connect with party one. Wait for a yes.
3. Introduce both parties and get out of the way.
4. Follow up with party one and party two separately after the fact.

(I can't tell you how many times someone sends an email to me and someone else without following this model and how rarely this is beneficial to either me or the other party.)

Trust in Relationships

I never connect with people solely for business. I have to like the person. I have to want to eat meals with them, drink beverages with them, and laugh outside of work with them.

And I just lied. I said "never." Every time I end up doing business with someone I don't really like much, it fails. Either I don't give it enough love, or the other party treats the business relationship as transactional, and nothing good comes of it.

I don't know. Maybe other people can do this. I can't. I need to actually like the people I work with.

I just gave you a super easy recipe to work this way. Trying it might benefit your business. What do you think? Willing to try?

(And drop me an email - chris@chrisbrogan.com)

If a Recession is Coming Soon, We Have to Prepare

The data is piling up. Nobody says we're headed for a recession definitively because no one really wants to be wrong. But look at this from Brookings. Peek at these points in Newsweek. Some experts have a guess on timing, but that one reads a bit too political for me (economies aren't exactly subject to political pressure as much as people like to claim their influence over them). I don't know enough about this, so I look at what investors are saying.

When I think of recessions, I think about customer acquisition and retention.

The way through a recession is to service your existing customers such that they want to stay firmly in place, and this is also an opportunity to acquire new customers who feel poorly treated by your competitors. To get there, we have to think about all this from the buyer's perspective. Remember, we're all in the same recession. You know how you're looking around at which expenses to trim? So are the people who pay you. You're their expenses.

Acquisition efforts need to shift towards efforts to show your company's ability to handle clients/customers with care and personalization. One of the biggest recurring complaints in business is that people feel like a number. This is B2B, B2C - it's universal. We're sick of fitting in. We want to go somewhere that we feel like we belong.

In these times, the "little guy" customer feels lost in the shuffle while dealing with your competitor, so show them how you'll treat them like a VIP. Be clear about it. Give them tangible details like "We give you one number to call and text-message-simple service interactions."

Retention becomes about helping your customers weather the same storm you're going through. This can take many forms. If you're doing net-30 payment terms, can you switch to net 45 or 60 for the next six months or so? Can you work with the clients through education efforts to get more out of the product or service you've sold them? Can you help them "stretch out" what you've sold to serve them longer? (Like hamburger helper for business.)

These are just a few strategies. In lots of cases - very many - it's as simple as improving communication, outreach, and being more visible. I know that sometimes the feeling is that if you "lay low" people will forget about you and skip over you in the chopping process, but that's not a great plan (in my not-at-all-humble opinion). When the chips are down, we remember the allies who got us through the rough months.

I'm working with companies on this and other acquisition/retention issues right now. I've got slots for a few clients, so if you want me to kick the tires on what you've got going on and make some informed recommendations and build a few plans out for you, just get in touch. I'm here to help!

Who Put Chocolate in my Peanut Butter?

In his book, Choose Yourself, James Altucher turned me on to the concept of "idea sex." Mash two things together. Get your ideas mingling with other people's ideas. Little column A, little column B. That kind of thing. You get it, right? Just whatever you think it means, that's what it means. But I think you're already there. Idea sex is a good way to mash things for a better output.

Collaboration and sharing and getting better ideas comes from trying something new, something that doesn't always go together, or not for necessarily for everyone. Kool-Aid pickles, for instance. That's a thing (google it). I love China Poblano, Chinese and Mexican food mashed. Old and new. Whatever it is. Mix it all up.

Adam Sandler did this quite successfully when he collaborated with Dan Bulla on his 100% Fresh special on Netflix. (If you're not a fan of Sandler's other work, watch this. It's really really really good. If you're a fan, you don't need me to tell you.)

Smash Your Ideas Together

Today (like today today), I realized my next book has to be two books mashed into one. Dented is about how we can be a bit dented and still show up at work and in life. The Picnic is about how companies can create better spaces for the people they want to serve. The ideas are mashed. They have to be. Take your dented self and bring it to the picnic. It totally has to go like that.

And the thing is, with ideas that don't immediately make sense to you (like Kool-Aid pickles), it needs explaining. Over and over. This is where people muck it up. If you share your crazy idea and it goes over like a fart in church, you'll be inclined to shelve that thought and move on to something else. Don't do that right away. Give it a try. A lot of tries. Give more than a few people a taste and see if you can get the recipe just right.

On the Conan Needs a Friend podcast, Lin-Manuel Miranda talked about how he was working on this rap-musical multicultural adaptation of Ron Chernow's book about Alexander Hamilton. People literally laughed in his face and thought he was joking. Jon Stewart poked fun at him on the daily show the day after Miranda debuted it (at the White House for the Obamas, by the way). Well, his joke has earned him almost half a billion dollars in gross receipts, an Emmy, Grammy, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize and plenty more accolades.

Keep Swinging

I've said for decades that the big difference between me and a lot of other people is that I'll make 100 attempts at something, and if two of them succeed then I've got two more wins than someone who hasn't taken one shot. Swing for your idea. Mash it with something else.

There are so many derivative and copycat ideas in the world. But give an idea just a little twist and it works. When Ridley Scott pitched Alien, he said it was "Jaws in space." People got the idea right away (Julien Smith used this reference in Trust Agents). Years ago, Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield founded (the widely popular and innovative at the time) Flickr when they were really trying to make a chat app for video gamers. It was a shift from the original idea (the kids called this a "pivot" for a while).

Swing. Take more swings. Try new things. It's all good. Find your groove by trying a lot of things.

Fear of failure? That's so 1994. Stop it. Give it up. Fail. Shake it off (Thanks, Taylor), and then get back to it.

Ready? Go!

Chris Brogan (that's me!) is a business advisor and keynote speaker, and an author, and all kinds of things. You can be all kinds of things, too! You're invited to the picnic!

10 Years After Trust Agents

Just about ten years ago, Julien Smith and I wrote and published a book called Trust Agents. It talked about the rising experience of companies being able to use the web to reach people directly and connect with them in a world where companies could no longer really control the information out on the web about their brand. It was a rallying cry to invite companies to be real and transparent and to connect with the people they most wanted to serve.

The book did well. It was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It won awards from Inc Magazine, USA Today, 800-CEO-Read and more.

Ten years have past and I want to share what's changed in that time. (I've written some thoughts on this already at LinkedIn, if you're interested.)

Ten Years After Trust Agents

In 2009, I wrote: "Companies can no longer hide behind a veneer of a shiny branding campaign, because customers are one Google search away from the truth."

It's more true today. And people have endured ten years of feeling unseen and unheard. As companies adopted the tools (but not always the spirit) of the social web, they pushed information blindly to people without thinking much about who they were addressing. It felt the same as telling every woman at a bar that they're beautiful and hoping the line worked eventually.

In 2009, I wrote: "Trust agents have established themselves as being non-sales-oriented, non-high-pressure marketers. Instead, they are digital natives using the Web to be genuine and to humanize their business."

I would change this a bit. Sales isn't bad. Bad sales are bad. A trust agent sells you something they believe will help you win the game you're trying to win.

Make Your Own Game

The first of the six tenets of a trust agent was to make your own game. It means to define your own space. Be specific. Create the rules of the story instead of competing against other similar products. Amazing books like Play Bigger have really expanded on this in smart ways in recent years. I stand by this.

Julien wrote about how creating your own keywords was a much better way to win at SEO instead of competing with existing words. He pointed out that if you could earn enough media attention for a phrase you coined, all roads would naturally point back to your site. I've been using this trick since 2009 and if you look at the traditional SEO markers of my site, it stinks, but I have massive authority around all the terms I created for myself.

In 2019, there's something more. We are in an age of identity, where people want to be very specific about who they are, what matters to them, and they want to support only those companies that share their values. If you can buy the same kinds of products from multiple sources, why buy from a company you don't respect? Or most importantly, who doesn't see you?

We've made our own games, and we want companies to see and speak to who we are.

Companies keep saying they know what people want.

"A black guy can't do a country song." On the day I'm writing this, "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X is on its 11th week at number 1 on the Billboard Top 100.

"No one will want to see a black-led superhero movie." - Black Panther made $1.3 billion at the box office.

"Women superheroes won't bring in movie viewers." - Wonder Woman made $800 million; Captain Marvel made $1.1 billion.

Inclusivity matters. Seeing people for who they are matters. REPRESENTING THEM IN MEDIA AND MARKETING AND YOUR BUSINESS PLANS matters.

One of Us

This chapter pointed out the importance of connecting beyond advertising. Not that ads are bad. They're just one tool.

In 2009, I wrote: "Gaining the trust of another requires you be competent and reliable. It also requires you to leave someone with a positive emotional impression, which is something the Web has the potential to do quickly and well."

We included our first of many references to the work of David Maister and Charles Green who wrote the amazing work, The Trusted Advisor. Julien was already friends with Maister, but we befriended both authors, and I still talk to Charlie Green about once a month to learn at the feet of a master.

Of all the chapters in Trust Agents, this is the one I feel companies discarded. I think very few marketing departments held conversations about the trust equation (even though Maister and Green helped companies make millions on this detail alone). And I know that very few companies set about trying to humanize their brands to reach people.

The Archimedes Effect

I've always called this "Julien's Chapter" because he had a much stronger bead on what was going on here. Leverage was the topic. How do we understand leverage? What are the ways we can use arbitrage to our advantage. It's still heady stuff, but if people spent a little time investing in this chapter, they often reported some great results.

The parts I contributed were about leveraging time better, about building stronger relationships, about making the most of your appearances.

One fun detail about this chapter is that I cover the first inklings of the rise of Gary Vaynerchuk, when we all started to realize that this guy was going to fly to the stars and back. It's laughable now that I covered him in the book because he was already on the way to being a massive star.

Agent Zero

I believe with all my heart that nurturing a network of great people you want to serve is the absolute most important work of a person or a company. To be the connector that helps others thrive is a powerful business driver, even if it isn't an instant kind of reward. (It never is.)

This talks through the concept of having to become more visible. To put your presence out there on the web. To be seen on the social networks.

Over the years, companies seem to only put their CEO, CMO, and a few very junior people out on the social web. They never did quite adopt the belief that having people reachable via the social web was a benefit to the company. And frankly, many people were afraid of this kind of visibility. These tools seem foreign. Interactions on places like Twitter feel fraught with peril. And so many brilliant people worry that they'll "do it wrong" or "look foolish" and so their brilliance is withheld from the many who would benefit from this.

The people within companies who work on "Agent Zero" type work see great rewards. Sales professionals get it. Deal makers get it. But I wish more of the folks who have non-selling jobs but massive amounts of helpful ideas and thoughts would come out and play on the web.

Human Artist

I might have said that no one cared to do the "One of Us" work. Human artist is married to that. It was our effort to point out that the Golden Rule was alive and well. So many great works focus on this. Bob Burg's Go-Giver comes right to mind. Same-Side Selling by Altman and Quarles. Many more. Tim Sanders and Love is the Killer App.

We wrote about transparency and empathy and intimacy, all topics that most every company in the world would rather pretend doesn't exist, though they'll talk about it in speeches or ads.

People are SO sick of feeling invisible, being lied to, having to "find out" that a company has done them wrong. They're so fed up, and when there's a chance to pick another company to deal with, they will.

In a 2017 study, Cone Communications found that 67% of people wanted to align with companies that shared their values, and that furthermore, most people wanted to align with companies who would move their values forward in some way.

Identity matters to individuals more than ever before. My 17 year old is both gay and trans. He spends a lot of time online finding and listening to like minds, learning how to navigate his life, and so on. He pays attention to which companies really support trans and gay causes and not just in June.

We all want people to love what we sell, but it is only when people feel seen and understood that they're ready to pay attention.

Build An Army

This chapter is about scale. How do we grow beyond where we are? How do we find more hands to lighten the load. Of all the chapters in Trust Agents, I could never have predicted the outcomes that companies have developed in this area.

Automation is nearly the norm in so many areas. Robots talking to robots. Everyone agreed that we needed scale, but sometimes to the detriment of human contact.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of places where automation is preferred. It's the best. I love when companies reduce friction where they can (Roger Dooley has an amazing book on Friction).

But the human touch matters. We want it more than ever. And in a world where automation is doing the lion's share of the heavy lifting, it means we have opportunities to earn more attention, retention, and stronger business relationships.

Trust Agents in 2019

I think there's a lot to update and revisit in this book. I've been talking with Julien Smith about looking this all over again. I spoke to my publishing friend Matt Holt. I've talked with all kinds of people who I've known for the last ten years or more.

Keep your eyes posted. You might see a lot more about this. And regardless, it was super fun to look back on it all.

I help companies earn the right to sell and serve the customers they most want to nurture. Connect with me, if you want some ideas and help.

No One Is Reading Your Blog

Traffic is down all over. It's not just you. No one is reading your blog, and no one is reading anyone's blog. The reason is that so many people wasted readers' time. Too much junk. Too many marketers trying to capture everyone's attention and failing. And far too many vague stories without real value.

No One is Reading Your Blog

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't write. It means you should write better. It means you should be more specific. It means you have to tell stories to a very specific group of people you hope to serve. That's what's next. Well, one of many details of what's next.

What Not to Do

Should you shut your blog down? Not if you don't have any other ways to earn the attention of others. Should you move your writing efforts to someone else's website like Medium or LinkedIn or Facebook? Not exactly. Sure, share an article there sometimes, but don't give up your home base.

How To Get People to Read Your Blog

First: don't. Get them to read a specific article, something you've invested time in, and something you feel will deliver some value. But then what else?

• Design each post like an important article. That doesn't mean write extra long posts. It means to think of it as if the post will stand alone, will be accessed by someone who won't actually ever land on your website, and who is plucking through this post as if it's standalone.
• Make every post extra-readable. From the design of your site to the layout of your post, be super crisp. Use larger fonts. Use bullets and subheadings and graphics to break up large banks of text.
• Be brief and concise. As best as possible, get right to the point. People want their information and they want to get out.
• Write to SOLVE a specific need. This post tries to help with "how to get people to read my blog" types of challenges. Make every post a specific solution.
• Give people actionable information. You can write about ideas all day, but without something to do, people will stop reading.

What Else Can You Do?

People will read if you give them something of value. I've found that you can give away a lot of your best ideas in a blog post and it won't break the bank. People will still hire you. They still need what you know. What else can you do?

Video. Record videos. Upload them to YouTube, and post the embed of that video on your blog.

Podcasts. Record a podcast show and post the embed of that audio on your blog.

Profiles. Write about the people you serve. About them, not about how great you are for working with them.

And so on.

Don't quit. Just get better. And if ever your company wants to get better at reaching people and driving more value, get in touch.