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Identify Your "Known For"
The moment that I can identify what my potential or current clients will have discussed, or talked about, over the next 12 months, it puts me in a position of power, I'll call it. It puts me in a place where I can create opportunity where maybe someone else didn't see it, or hasn't seen it yet. Specifically, what I'm gonna look at is the answer to one of these two questions, if not both. First, how do I want to be thought of regarding those topics that I know the people around me are going to be discussing? Do I wanna be thought of a journeyman, as an apprentice, as a foreman? Do I wanna be thought of as someone who knows a little bit about some things, or do I wanna be known as the expert in that domain? The other way that I do this is I'll ask the person that I'm working with, 'How would you like to be introduced 'if that were the topic of discussion?' And so this... Kinda asking myself, where do I want to kind of wedge myself in? I mean it's amazing, because if you took that convers...
ation that you just had of what you think the people that you are serving, or working with, may have talked about, here's the thing. The more you imagine... I like to use the word 'image in.' The more you imagine what the people around you will be talking about? You're gonna start to see it all over the place. You're gonna start to see it as a headline of a magazine article, you're gonna start to hear it over the loudspeaker at the airport, you're gonna start to hear people two, or three rows away from you at the movie theater, or on an airplane, at a restaurant, talking about that topic, and it's gonna be one of those, 'I wish I could talk about what I'm so interested in, 'but I don't know you.' We haven't made awkward eye-contact yet. And so this concept of, how do I wedge myself in? How do I create the opportunity to have those discussions? So let me just go through a couple of my favorite ones. I won't read each one of these, because you're already reading them as I'm talking. The first one out of the gate, and I will end every course I teach by inviting people to connect on LinkedIn. It seems to be a professional place to go, still. And what I suggest to people is once a month, once a month, you open up your LinkedIn account, and you give us an article. A good-old, high-school, five-paragraph essay. Pick an opinion up top, give us your thesis statement, the thing that you believe in, that you've learned lately, that you trust, that you want to be seen, known, and heard of, and then give us those three supporting paragraphs. Why should I be looked at as an expert, as a journeyman, as a foreman in that area? And then conclude, and this is where I think there's opportunity, conclude with some call to action that makes it easy for people to contact you. So in a lot of my articles, whether that's for a magazine, an online magazine, a blog, or my own LinkedIn profile, I'll put that essay out there. I'll say hey, here's what I think about topic X. Here's why I think that about topic X. And oh by the way, if you'd ever like to discuss this further, let me know, I'd be happy to come and talk to your organization. Now for you, it's gonna be your unique piece on the end. Books on your desk and magazine subscriptions, I've mentioned this a couple of times. Lemme just make the case, and connect all of the dots. See, when we buy a book, subscribe to a magazine, print out a web article, we're telling the universe, 'I wanna dive in here.' Now that can be in an area that I'm already well-versed in. So as a psychologist, if there's another book that comes out on psychology, I know I'm gonna go down that line. If it's cryptocurrency, because that's something that the people that I work around have used, and I dunno what that word means. So whatever that spectrum is that you're in, when you buy a book, subscribe to a magazine, or print out an article, you're telling the universe, 'I wanna know more about this.' One of the fastest ways I know of to learn about new things is to get three, four, five of my buddies, we all buy the same book, and we all schedule three, four, five video meetings. And I use a service now where I can get several of us on the video at one time. So I've got two buddies in Oregon, I got a buddy on the East Coast, I got a friend of mine in London, and about once a month, pretty much standard, we meet for a beer, on video, and we share what we've been reading lately. Every now and then, out of that, we decide 'Great, let's all read 'that Leonardo da Vinci biography 'that Walter Isaacson just wrote,' and now we can dive in. And then, I think this is a real important one, which is what you're overheard talking about. If someone were sitting behind you at lunch, if someone were sitting behind you on the bus, if someone were sitting behind you at a conference, you opened up the phone and you were having a conversation about what you do on the planet, what would they hear, and is that what you want to be talking about? Not because that someone's gonna overhear what you're talking about and come into the conversation, but again, I believe in this idea of putting out to the universe what the more is that I would like to bring back in. Now if we go to the beginning of this course and we say okay, great, a dictionary definition of the word meeting is when people come together with some kind of an agenda and leave with a task. Or, you take the definition that I've presented a few times, two or more people coming together, one or more person's walking away with a task, it means we're in a lot more meetings than we may have thought. And when we know, when we know what we wanna talk about, and we know what they wanna talk about, it puts us in a position of power. It puts us in a position to serve. It puts us in a position to help. And so what's gonna serve you well for the next piece of this course is to do, again, that future casting process. As you think our 12 months from now, I asked you that question, what will they have thought about, met about, discussed? Another way to spin that: what will you want to have met about, and want to have discussed? And this is where I would like to introduce one of the tenets of our teaching, we call it your 'known for.' And your 'known for,' it's another way of saying your personal brand. And again, something that you'll hear me say quite often, I don't believe we create our brand, I don't think we really build our brand. What I know I've done is I've magnified my brand, or I've modified my brand. I know in some circles that I work in, people know me as the leadership executive coach. I'm the guy that people call to come into their companies, I get to work with the recently-promoted manager on her or his leadership skills. Based on the work that I've been doing for the past 18 years, in some circles, I'm also known as the guy who knows how to clear out an inbox. Because I studied email management and digital communication. What's interesting is, I get to decide, with every conversation, with every meeting, with every presentation, with every article I write, which 'known for' do I wanna magnify, and which 'known for' do I wanna modify? So I brought this one to the room today when I was thinking about this course. And by the way, I hope you're noticing this. And for those of you online, the way I built this course was I used this course as the meeting example. When I added the salt, I talked to you about the summary, and the agenda, and the logistics, and the time of this course. For those of you in the audience here in the studio, for those of you in the audience online, I want to be known for helping people identify professional challenges, develop personal professional skills so they can achieve more of their goals and dreams at work and in their lives. Now here's the thing. The moment I advertise that, and the longer I leave it behind me, and if I could get an audience to take a picture of that, and if I could get someone to lean over to the person they're at work next to, right now, and say 'Hey, this guy Jason, 'the longer I leave that there, 'the easier it is for this audience to know 'what meetings to invite me to, or not invite me to.' And so in other tactics that I teach, I've taught things like goal setting, and purpose setting. So when you're setting a goal, sometimes what I'll do is I'll say well, don't just tell me about the goal you set, I'd like to know why you've set that goal. And then if I can get you to tell me why you've set that goal, I may layer underneath, give me two or three or four, up to seven reasons that that goal is so important to you. What I want you to walk away from this piece, is that next meeting that you get invited to, the next meeting that you invite someone to, I'd like you to know, 'Is this building, expanding, magnifying my brand? 'Is this modifying, changing, 'or moving the direction of what I wanna be known for?'
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Ratings and Reviews
Sheethal Francis
A great take on what should be the guidelines for an effective meeting and how to engage the participants of the meeting. This course provides an insight about encouraging healthy discussions with specific objectives.
Deb Boone
This was a wonderful class that completely delivered in content coupled with the strategic tools that have helped me to start the process of creating a totally new infrastructure for the meetings I facilitate. All of the steps that Jason focuses on for this class are easy to implement and I know will promote positive results on many levels of my professional business and my personal life. This class is a must take for anyone who wants to me an effective and efficient meeting master!
user-e5ce5a
Fantastic class! Highly recommend- Jason has such positive energy and enthusiasm, all his courses have been fun to watch and very informative.
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