Transcript

Brad Powell: 0:06

When it comes to branding, most folks are thinking they’re standing out because of things like their logo or the colors on their website and what they wear and that kind of stuff. I just want to put a little wrench in that kind of thinking because I believe really strongly that your brand and your business and your whole way of being stand out because of the way that you make people feel. So today I am going live on a Sunday morning. Today’s theme is all about why your business and why your brand needs to feel different and how this one thing that happened this week, one real world moment it kind of drove this whole point home for me. I got reminded of this in this really quite unexpected way and I want to share that story with you and how you can use this same principle which will make your business unforgettable. So if that sounds good, buckle up, because here we go. Welcome to the Standout Business Show. This is the show for expert entrepreneurs who want to make a bigger difference by showing up differently. I’m Brad Powell and I’m a video strategist who helps experts turn one hour of their life into an entire month of trust-building video. Content without becoming fuel for the content machine. Content without becoming fuel for the content machine. So I decided to go live today, on a Sunday. This is something I haven’t done in actually quite a long time. I really feel like this is one way that it can make your brand and your business and your personality feel quite different, just by showing up live.

Brad Powell: 2:03

I remember and this is probably 12, 15 years ago there was this app called Periscope. Do you remember Periscope and the thing with Periscope? It was only on mobile and what it was was a live broadcasting app and you would go live. But what would happen is that people who join like randomly would join from anywhere. The app algorithm would push people to you when you’re live and if they liked what was going on, they would hit the little hearts button and so, as you’re talking, you’d see all these little heart things, you know, popping up and going whoa, we love it. Popping up and going whoa, whoa, we love it, we love it, and it was a real kind of dopamine rush and a real just feeling of oh, I’m doing something and people love the experience. Unfortunately, periscope is no longer with us.

Brad Powell: 2:58

I think there’s a dark side to all that liking and little heart stuff going off. I remember seeing Russell Bronson on a periscope and he was just shouting at people going click, click, click, click, click, click, hit, click those hearts, click those hearts, and you would see these thousands. Like the whole screen was being filled with hearts and he was literally just playing the algorithm and I don’t know what about how many people were feeling about all of that, but it just seemed like he was playing a game rather than doing anything of particular value. So that’s not what I’m talking about, but just showing up and sharing something real in real time, like in this moment. Whatever is going to go on during this stream, it’s for real. There’s no edits, there’s no whatever it’s, you know I’m live and you’re joining me live and you get to be part of this experience. This is what we’re doing right now and I want to tell this story because this was a real moment that happened just a couple of days ago and I think there’s a really good lesson, which was certainly a really good reminder for me of what we need to get back to and what actually is fast becoming kind of a lost art, especially in the business world.

Brad Powell: 4:15

So my girlfriend her name is Susan and she went off to the dentist and the dentist is half an hour drive across town. She goes to her appointment. And the dentist is half an hour drive across town. She goes to her appointment, everything goes fine. She comes out after the appointment’s over, tries to start her car and she finds that she has a dead battery. Oh no, now what?

Brad Powell: 4:36

So the other thing that was a little additional challenge was that she had left her phone at home. So there she is in this other neighborhood, half an hour away from home, by car, no phone, no way to call anyone, and she’s wondering okay, what do I do now? Well, being the kind of friendly, gregarious person that she is, she starts going up to the houses in the neighborhood and knocking on doors asking for help, and most people aren’t home, they’re not answering. So what happens is that these two young guys pull up in a car and they park and when they get out, she goes over to them and asks them for help and they go sure, we’ll help you. Why don’t we go down the road to the place where we can buy some jumper cables? Because they didn’t have any jumper cables and we’ll get a pair and we’ll bring them back to you. She had like $22 cash to give them. And she said well, here, this is all the money I have, I hope this can cover it. And then they leave. And I’m like, wow, that was super trusting of her to do that. But this is what she did.

Brad Powell: 5:48

And then somebody who also lived in the neighborhood pulled up and got out of his car and so she went over and talked to him and he was saying you know what kind of trouble you’re having? She goes, I have a dead battery and he goes. Well, I can’t really help you because my car is electric. But they start talking and while they’re talking, the two young guys actually come back and they have jumper cables and instead of buying the jumper cables, they went to a friend’s place and they borrowed the jumper cables. And of course they’re young guys, they didn’t know how to hook them up, they didn’t know how to use them. But the other neighbor, the older guy, he does, and so he goes. Okay, I can show you how to do this. So the two young guys pull their car up, they hook up the jumper cables, they let the one car engine run for a while and within like 10 or 15 minutes, she starts the car and zoom, it starts up. Problem solved.

Brad Powell: 6:45

Then she drives home and it turns out that our neighborhood, really friendly neighborhood mechanic. He lives just a block down from where we live, so she went right over to his place and she’s developed a really nice relationship with this guy and he goes sure, I’ll fix this. And within 15 minutes he gives her a new battery, puts it in, new batteries, installed, everything’s fixed, she’s as good as new and she gets back home in time to attend a webinar that she had scheduled to attend later in the afternoon. So kind of amazing, kind of amazing from totally stuck to totally taken care of. Here’s the thing about that.

Brad Powell: 7:28

I believe that the people who helped her, I believe that they felt like they benefited I mean, susan got, you know, got their gifts, got their generosity but because they were able to help, because they were able to extend their goodwill and their time and their patience, all of a sudden they started feeling really useful. I think this is especially true for the two young guys. They’re like oh my gosh, look what we did today. We’re like the auto rescue team. You know, if Susan had her phone with her, none of this would have happened. She just would have called me or she would have called AAA and, you know, nothing out of the ordinary would have happened. But the two young guys, the older guy, they went home feeling like they really have benefited from this interactive experience that they had.

Brad Powell: 8:19

I just want to pause for a second and kind of drill in some of the lessons that I think are the big takeaways from something like this. The first one is that in the time that we’re living, we really default to our phones, I think, way too much. Anytime something’s coming up and we need to find out the answer to a question or we need help or we’re looking for answers of any kind, we just pick out our phone and it’s right there, it’s too easy and we go in and we find out everything we want to know. And, as artificial intelligence is coming online and we have access to basically all the information, everything like it was sort of already there, but now you have an assistant who can help you find it and collate it and curate it and give it to you in exactly what you need. So you don’t have to spend a lot of time searching anymore. You just say, hey, I have this question and your artificial intelligent buddy goes oh, here, here’s exactly what you’re looking for.

Brad Powell: 9:24

So where’s the human interaction in any of that? What it’s doing is it’s leaving us out of the equation, like us, and connecting with another human being is no longer part of that puzzle. Real human connection it happens when you ask directly to another human. You ask to another human, and the best case scenario is when you’re doing it face to face. So you go out to a human and you go hey, I need some help, I have a problem. I got this thing that I’m trying to work out. Can you help me figure it out? Everything from can you help me charge my battery in my car to whatever complex thing you want, and in business the same principle applies.

Brad Powell: 10:15

What could you be doing to interact directly with your audience? You know we all go online, we all say stuff and most of the time we’re getting into this kind of broadcast mode where I have stuff to say and this is really true for people who have an expert business you put on your expert hat and you go well, I’ve got some expertise and I’m going to give value by sharing everything I know for as much as I can. That, I think, would be helpful and there’s nothing wrong with that. Like that’s fine, but if you want to interact in a personal, connective, empathetic way with people, there’s got to be some back and forth. And, of course, no matter how expert you are, you can’t know the answer to everything. And if you’re any good at what you’re doing, you’re still constantly learning, you’re still constantly exploring, you’re still constantly solving puzzles.

Brad Powell: 11:15

And while you’re doing that, while you’re solving those puzzles, this is where you can be interacting with your audience and say hey, I’m solving this puzzle. Wouldn’t it be cool if we all solved it together? I need help to solve this puzzle Now. Your audience feels plugged in Now. Your audience feels useful, and as they help you solve the puzzle, they will benefit because they will be feeling useful. You will help them by making them feel useful, and this is probably the most beneficial thing that you can do with your audience Help them become like useful people, and this is a mission that I’ve been on for many, many years.

Brad Powell: 12:04

I mean years ago I worked for Outward Bound. In fact, I was the program director for a school in the Pacific Northwest, and our whole methodology was how could we help young people feel more useful in the world, to go out into the world as useful humans, and that was our main mission, and we had lots and lots of ways to encourage usefulness, so that this group of people would feel like I can do amazing things not just amazing things, but I can do things that are genuinely useful and then go off and take that with them. That’s how the world changes. If you are doing anything in your business where you’re invested in the success, not of your own business, but in the success of the entire community that you’re engaged with and you’re getting them engaged in feeling useful, in helping to increase that, you know community success, that global success, oh my gosh, you’re going to have a bunch of loyal, amazing, connected people who you’re interacting with on a regular basis connected people who you’re interacting with on a regular basis.

Brad Powell: 13:24

I would love to know when was the last time that you asked for help, either in person or online? Just think about it for a minute. When was the last time that I really went out and I asked for any kind of assistance? And it could be online, like it could be in a post that you did on LinkedIn, or it could be in person, when you were waiting in line getting coffee at a cafe.

Brad Powell: 13:50

As we wrap this up, I want to just point out that your business’s real advantage, your brand’s real advantage as you’re thinking about building your personal brand, your brand’s real advantage as you’re thinking about building your personal brand, the real advantage is how it feels to interact with you. It’s not how much you know, it’s not how much you share, it’s not how much information you can give. It’s how it feels to interact with you if people come away after they interact with you and they feel like they benefited, particularly if they benefited by making themselves feel useful. That’s one of the greatest gifts that you can give to anyone. And if you want more ideas for making your brand stand out and feel different and be absolutely unforgettable, follow the show, subscribe and uh, tune in regularly every week. The standout business show goes live every single week. We talk about this stuff all the time and until the next time, so long.