BrandsTalk

What's in it for me regarding your brand? w/ Dan E. Silberberg

January 10, 2023 Brigitte Bojkowszky Season 9 Episode 96
BrandsTalk
What's in it for me regarding your brand? w/ Dan E. Silberberg
Show Notes Transcript

In this insightful conversation, the exceptional Dan Silberberg, visionary and thought leader, provides us with his wisdom and perspective on brands and branding. 

In specific:

💡What is brand positioning today compared to bygone times?
💡How do you rejuvenate and re-stage a brand?
💡What is the neuroscience of a brand?
💡What is the business model-core competency of a brand today?
💡3 steps to bring the beauty out of us so that we can be our best version, shine & thrive.

Dan is an evolutionary entrepreneur and the CEO/Founder of ENTELECHY.AI LLC, an evolutionary global education academy with courses serving people from all over the world to emerge into becoming who they truly are. Dan is a visionary, transformational teacher, leader, speaker, educator, coach, and mentor. After 40 years in business as a CEO and having run businesses from $7-$400million, Dan is dedicated and committed to training the next generation of transformational leaders. 

Dan’s mission is to democratize and scale knowledge around the world to the advantage of others creating a world where everyone can thrive. 

Get in touch with Dan Silberberg:

  • www.linkedin.com/in/dansilberberg  

Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:

Get in touch with Brigitte Bojkowszky:

👉 Download Your Entrepreneurial Branding Starter Checklist: https://courses.bridgetbrands.com/f/entrepreneurial-branding-starter-checklist

My guest today is Dan Silberberg. Dan is an evolutionary entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of ENTELECHY, an evolutionary global education academy with courses serving people from all over the world to emerge into becoming who they truly are. Dan is a visionary, transformational teacher, leader, speaker educator, coach and mentor. After 40 years in business as a CEO and having run businesses from seven to 400 million, Dan is dedicated and committed to training the next generation of transformational leaders. Dan's mission is to democratize and scale knowledge around the world to the advantage of others, creating a world where everyone can thrive. I warmly welcome Dan Silverberg, welcome to BrandsTalk Talk. Oh, it's pleasure to be here. Very excited to be with you today. I'm also excited to be with you today because I wanna dive deep into what you have to share, all the wisdom that you have generated in the last 40 years. Dan you have been working with and four brands, US local brands, but also global brands. Mm-hmm., would you like to tell us a little bit about what brands you helped to thrive in these years? Sure. So I've had multiple careers, as you can imagine. So the first 15 years of my career I was in the women's apparel business. And so I worked for the billion dollar publicly traded companies. So Levi Strauss and Company Liz Clayborne, the Jones Apparel Group just to name three of them. So at Levi, I started with a $7 million. That they wanted to close the division cuz it was a billion dollar plus company. As most people know, It's a men's wear company and the 5 0 1 gene, that little button up gene for men was over a billion dollars at the time. And between the time that I got hired and the time that I arrived, they brought in a new group president. And the first day that I got there, he told me he wanted to close my division. And so I was like, So three years later, that $7 million business was$130 million, and as we put products around it, it became a half a billion dollars to a $2 billion company. So 25% of the company was almost shuttered the first day that I got there. So we can talk about that. Liz Clayborn was the premier brand that started when women really entered the workforce. So I was hired to take over a division that had been 400 million in five years, had five different leaders, had gone from 400 to 250 million, and in 18 months we had it back to 390. Yeah. So it was how to restage these, how to reimagine these market. to look at what were the voids to take a look at how was the product put out there and how did it match the brand promise? And how did it match what consumers, the consumers had moved ahead of where the product in the company was. Mm-hmm.. So I think by restaging to get the, the product more contemporary to understand better what women were looking for in a wardrobe. All of those things contributed. Yeah, I have a question to Levi's because I remember Levi's very vividly when I was flying for the airline. I flew for a LaudaAir Niki Lauda, former Formula One car race driver actually started that airline and after some years we started wearing Jeans uniforms and that were Levi's five. So I loved wearing. But not everyone was fond of it, but it was a really interesting way of yeah making, making more casual the workforce. Exactly. Yeah. And using jeans as a uniform in an airline. So that was something really very. Very, very new and very questioning because I remember when we were entering the United States, they were like wondering, Wow, what this is a crew wearing jeans? No, that's not possible at all. So one, yeah. One more thing I would like to ask cause that's also interesting is how were Jeans perceived by women or how did the brand promise match with what, for example, women needed around the world. Were there differences in different country markets? How did you cope with differences if there were at all? Okay, so I actually had a product that wasn't denim. And that's why the company was like, Why are we even in this business? So in the United States, we had what they called Doubleness and Doubleness were very stretchable, right? But they would bag at the knee and they weren't very, they didn't last, right? They wore out pretty quickly. So what I had was a product called the Bend Over Pant, and it was the first woven with stretch. Yeah. And so it lasted and we had a technology with the waistband, so it literally would expand two inches. So if you were a size eight, you could wear a size six and it would fit. So we, we were able to have women think, Oh, I'm smaller. Yeah, . So at, at its height, I was able in one year to sell 6 million pair of one pant. Oh my God. It was the largest selling pant in the history of the women's. I sold a million pair of those pants in an hour. So we had a technology system where our national sales force could literally book immediately once the gate opened. And so we were, we were good at checking out at retail. All the, all the sales people had the orders in advance. So when, when the technology opened up, literally in an hour, we were.. Okay. Was it like promising you can fit into size six, but actually whil than stretching to a size of eight Yeah. We didn't advertise that, but people knew that. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so when I started, there were five basic colors. So black, brown, white, red, you.. I explored it and I opened it up to 13 fashion colors. So back in the seventies when I was doing this, Europe, fashion-wise was about two years ahead. Oh, really? Today it's all at the same time.. So literally I could go to Europe. I could see dark eggplant, I could see forest green, I could see topes, I could, and I would come back and interpret those fashion color for the moderate marketplace and women literally had 20 pair of the pan. They bought every color. Yeah. So what do you see is different now when it comes to positioning your brand? When it comes to rolling out programs across the globe simultaneously to the bygone time, like let's say four decades ago or two decades ago. Where do you see the differences? How do brands move people now globally? Well, it depends. So when I started in 1978, the, the brands like lvmh Air Maze, Louis Veto, there was no Prada, Gucci. So it was a very different world. There was a small group of fashion designers. There was still the couture world, but Europe was very far ahead versus what we in the United States call the basic or moderate marketplace. So in our world, the moderate market used to dress women. Not very well. They didn't believe that women wanted fashion. They didn't believe that they wanted to be. It was very like, it wasn't doing pretty or beautiful for. Okay. I think what one of, one of the successes was that I didn't think women were dumb. I actually thought that all women would understand beautiful. And so when I put in all those fashion colors, I was the first in the country to do it right, and it sold out like crazy. So when you look at a brand, for example, in the apparel business and you go. You know the French show, Premier Vision, and you go to Italy and you see the thing you look at and okay, Gray Heather is gonna be the market. Okay then I don't want to do Gray Heather, because in the store every brand will have it. I'm gonna do brown and tan this season, and now I look different and I give people a reason to buy something different and I'm not competitive. So I think part of looking at, at how do I move the brand? What is e everybo in every industry? If you look at the car industry, how is it everybody has the same burgundy or they have the same orange or the same, right? So I want to be something different, but still acceptable. So I think how we look at the market, what is the void in the market? How do you start to think differently than what everybody else is? So now we decide that the new fabric is.. Okay. Then maybe I'm gonna do something in Gabardine. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's not very smart, It's not all that difficult, but it, it draws people in. That, and that would be the apparel part of it. it's really hard for the US which dumbs down. To create global brands. The best ones have probably done it. Like Tommy Hilfiger, I think for a while was, but I can't think of a US brand that's like Armani or AMAs or Gucci or we don't have those kind of brands when we take what I call the moderates. So we took Target, for example, to Canada. Yeah, it went bankrupt and they moved it out. Walmart went to Mexico, not so we tend to have a more moderate, less interesting, whereas Europe, it's about lifestyle. It's about, you go to Italy, it's all about family and design. Yeah. In the United States it's all about corporate and how much can we do, so in the fashion world, the niches when you look at Armani, he starts up here with his. And then underneath it come all the different thing because the top brand is the umbrella to validate, the exchange, to validate purple, to validate these. In the US we don't think like that. Yeah. So it's just different. So in the apparel thing, it's, it's more, it's more difficult. So that, that's of how I would look at it. You need to take a look at your local market. If I take you to Crabtree in Evil and where I did a global brand revitalization in the us, that brand was what we call an Anglophile brand. The graphic artist was from England. The owner was an Anglophile, so it was frumpy, it was floral. There were so many cues and codes of the brand that said English up. Well, we had stores in France that were dying because Anglophile wasn't a French idea. It just didn't connect at all. Yeah.. So again, as you look at these, these marketplaces, France wasn't really gonna work for us. Italy was better. That did better. And so one of the things that I looked at on that brand is when we started, we had very little stores, so they were. I don't know in meters, but they were about 800 square feet. You can't do anything in 800 square feet. So I took the stores from 800 square feet to two to 3000 square feet. Now they could really work. The brand was dark, mahogany would old English in a market that was moving modern with Bobby Brown with Origins. So when I redid the store, I went from Darkwood to lighter woods. I did lighting in the store that were leaves, right? That would match the brand. And so we upscaled it. But one of the biggest things was the brand was known as the appropriate gift giving. So the packaging was so pretty that you would use it as a gift. You would never think women were not using it for themselves. They were using it to give to. Yeah, well that was crazy. So I looked at the brand and I said, Okay, what can we do? And I took the same product, I kept the beautiful packaging, and I decided we were gonna go to everyday usage. So I did. I didn't put it in beautiful boxes, I still put it in lovely bottles. But now you could start to use it for your. Yeah. I went to France and I worked with Feto, which was the premier, all natural hair care, and I got him to private labels. So now I had a hair care product for everyday usage. Yeah, we were in the tea business as well, so I went to Paris and I saw this tea emporium called Maria. It's the oldest tea emporium in. and I just went, This is magnificent. So when I came back, I duplicated in an upscale, modern tea emporium in the store and it became the largest dollar per square foot of anything in the store. I had a tea bar, we were sampling. I had a tea meister who knew about tea. And so all the customer and the tea emporium was at the back, but it was so visible that everybody walked to the. And then they had to walk through all the product to get to the exit. So how do you start to think about, how all of this works? It's so obvious to me what's missing.. Yeah. So I did lots of turnarounds about what was missing. Okay. I think that is so interesting. Thank you for telling us your experience and the stories and stories are important. It's not only, as you say, being different, being superior in one way or in another to show your uniqueness, but it's also to give it a certain touch. Not only when it comes to a local touch in all these different countries because we wanna have a, like a global look, but this local touch, we attach meaning to it. And we are also telling stories with our brands. Where are we coming from? What does it mean? And what is our why that we are pursuing as a brand going forward? And that becomes more and more important nowadays as well when we compare it with bygone time. And so there is more the meaning that we attached to it, the big why, also the sustainability going forward, like how can we help make the world a different place? That's what it is, what we focus on right now ? right? You did a lot of repositioning, restaging the brands, but in order to strategize and manage brands, you also need an underlying business model. And what is the business model, the core competency of a brand today? Well, it depends, but, so I don't know if your audience, if they're global, may not be familiar with a, a gentleman by the name of Les Wexner and he had started with one store called The Limited. And then the Limited, He also did Victoria's Secret. And then beyond that he did Abercrombie and Fitch. And so if you were to ask most people from a business model perspective, what was their core competency? They would tell you he was a genius at retail. That wasn't his core competence. Yeah.. His core competence was his ability to come up with an idea. And his real core competence was real estate. Yeah. He knew how to do an idea, roll it out in a thousand stores in every mall across the United States. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So that, that business, that business model of how to own the mall, which is where all the traffic was when he was doing this in the seventies and eighties. Far more the business model. Another business model was department stores in the United. Before Campo, there was department stores and it was all about product, and it was personal. Once Campo bought Federated, which was a big chain of department stores, the business model became accountants. They became a matrix. You had to be on the matrix in order to even have a buyer look at you or to buy it. Yeah. Everything was about profitability, so you could put anything in the. But at the end of the season, if you didn't hit your profit target, you had to write a check if you wanted to stay in for the next season. So the business model changed from serving customers to serving the accountants. And so all of a sudden the product became less important because management was so focused on the dollars. Yeah. So it would, it would depend. What is your business model? So today, given Instagram, given tip talk, if you're in fashion, if you're in makeup, if you're in personal care, it's, it's a different business model. So historically makeup was sold at department stores and Estee Lauder owned the entire. Now there were other brands there, but nobody outdid Estee Lauder. Estee Lauder always had. Positioning in the store. They were the ones that came up with the idea that you buy a product and then you get all these little free samples. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. It's Esteé Lauder with its premium brand La Mer, and then with its simultaneous brand. Clinique. So it really was dominating the retail stores. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it became Clinique and then it was men and women, and then as. Got more contemporary, it became Origins all natural, right? And then all of a sudden, Bobby Brown was on the scene and she wasn't in department stores, she was in single stores of her own identity. And so I think what happened is department stores and malls have shrunk in terms of, of personal interest and these individual brands, And individual stores specialty idea became more important. Well, and so now what's going on? Well, now with Covid and everything, can your brand survive on Amazon? What are you doing to make your yourself on Amazon more important, how does TikTok Instagram influencing Amazon? All of that now becomes, so we learn about what's called omni. So I wanna meet my customer wherever they are. They no longer wanna drive to the mall to pick up a, a mascara or a lipstick, right? Oh, I can just order that online. Great. It'll be here in an hour or tomorrow or whatever. So we have to start to think, differently about geography, channels of distribution, but ultimately the question. What's your name? Estee Lauder. What do you do? Personal care products. Who do you do it for? Women. What is it that, What is the promise? Yeah. And are you getting the results? So for a brand today and 20 years ago and 50 years ago, what's the promise and is it aligned with what it is the customer wants? So if you have a particular quality, So Lulu Lemon is a line over here for, for men and women, but it's really women and it's all about Oh yeah, yoga and the stretch pants and the everything. Yeah. I love it. So what? Yeah, so they have this promise and it is beyond crazy good. And then they have a president and they put out a pant and it turns out the pant is see through. I remember that. Yeah. So that didn't deliver on the promise and that cost that CEO the job, right? So we're always looking at what is this promise and where are we staying in alignment with our customer and are we delivering what it is they want? Yeah. And the brands that seem to grow as the customer grows, right? So staying in touch and being in communication is really, I.. So how many stores do you walk in where before you leave they say, Do you have any ideas for us? What do you like about our product? Why did you come here to nothing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there is also another misconception when it comes to business model of McDonald's, it's real estate, right? So it's also exactly real estate. So there's a lot of misconception out there. What is. The intention the motive behind it. So let's take, let's take a look at Starbucks for a minute. Yes. So what, what was, so what was Starbucks? Well, Starbucks was coming back from Italy and deciding that those little cafes, with espresso and every, was just fabulous. Okay. So he starts the. and he decides that it's going to be the community place. So he builds these stores with furniture and he wants you to come between work and home. You're going to come to Starbucks and you're gonna stay, and you're gonna have conversation, and you're gonna drink coffee. And ultimately it comes to, Now you might come and use it as an office. Yeah. Well guess. That's not the brand promise anymore. What's the, So what they do is they're the first to come out with mobile application. So now 80% of orders are done on the phone. Well, if 80% of orders are done on the phone, you don't need as big a store. You don't need as many baristas. Now we're going to drive throughs. So it's all about efficiency. You, you are in and out. You're not looking to come and stay there. So they're doing smaller stores, they're changing how they deliver. So they're, But you know what? They fall behind and Howard Schultz has come back now for the third time to turn that business around. So what is about him that's so intuitive? He owns the brand in an emotional ownership way that when he brings in what I call corporate managers, they dumb it down. It doesn't work. Over the long haul. So what is, what is this emotion of the brand? Because when you're emotionally tied to a brand, this is the neuroscience a little bit. Yeah, there's, there's do, there's dopamine. Oh my God, I just bought, How much stuff do you buy that you go, Why did I buy that? I don't need that. It's the dopamine hit for men. It's dopamine for women, it's oxytocin. For both sexes. It's pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about neuroscience and how do you relate that to brands and branding? You have touched on that just in the last couple of seconds can you go a little bit deeper into that? Yeah, so how I look at neuroscience is I look at the world today and if I had to come up with one word that would describe what's going on out there, it would be chaos. Yeah, so what happens in chaos is that our brain is wired to search for threats. This is the evolution of the amygdala. Part of the brain is the most, it's the oldest part of the brain. It's 20,000 times more powerful than the neocortex, which is where your executive function, creativity, and decision making. So if you are in stress and you're searching for threats, this part of the brain actually shuts down. This is why impulse buying happens. Mm-hmm.. So you have fight, flight, or freeze. Yeah. And so I'm really anxious today if I'm not slowing down to feel what's going on in my body and. Oh, I think if I breathe for two or three minutes, I'll be back to homeostasis. So this is, I go to the store and I'm hungry and I impulse bought crackers and ice cream and all these different, Then I get home, I go, Why do I have this? Because that frontal cortex shut down. Cuz oh my gosh, it's, I, I've gotta go home. I have to make dinner. My, I'm late, picking up my kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Fill in the. You're, you're functioning and your good decision making is offline. Yeah. The other part of that is this dopamine, oxytocin of I'm on pain island, how do I get to Pleasure island? I go shopping. Oh yeah. And, and, and that's . Yeah. So then here's another part of it, which is why do women buy shoes? They just want something new. We all just want something new. So when we get bored, so do we risk. Teenagers are particularly good at risking because this frontal cortex doesn't really fully develop to make good decisions till you're about 20. So what happens with that is they take more risk driving, they take more risk With alcohol, with drugs, it's, it's not that they just don't have the capacity. Little children, they have instant gratification. I want my bottle now. There's no executive function going on. It's just need and, and so when we look at that, when you go to the store, If you go to the mall, have you ever walked by a store where they've got perfume and, and fragrance that's coming out of the door? Those pheromones are meant to draw you in. That's part of the brain. And the neuroscience, the limbic system, which is the mid part of the brain, that's where our emotions are. If I'm having a bad day, I think I'll just go buy more nail polish, more lipstick, more beer for men, more whatever, more Bri souls, And then, and then all of a sudden I'm in the bathroom and I've got 52 different things on the counter and go, What the heck? I haven't, I haven't used up, I, when I was married, I would look at the number of lipsticks and I would go, There isn't one of these that looks like it's even been used more than once. that's usually, that's, I'm bored. I got tired of it. I did for me, like coming out of the apparel business, I love clothes. Mm-hmm., I counted a particular style that I like. I have 11 different pieces of it. Uhhuh really, really, I can only wear one at a time. 11 different colors.. Exactly. So black, red, gray, tope. It was just, I. And so this is how our brain works. And so I think from a branding perspective, when we look at food, for example, part of the brand is how do I make a formula that is so tasty that you want to eat the whole bag of potato chips at one time? Cuz then I'll get you to buy more from a brand on food. What's one of the things going on? They're shrinking the package to keep the price point. So it used to be 32 ounces of Cheerios. Now it's 28, then it goes to 26, right? Yeah. When we looked at a Snickers bar and it used to be this big and now it's like this big same price, sometimes the packaging size is still the same. But the content you, you feel it like something is different. Too much air . Yes, it is . Yeah. So all of these things, so when we look at at business, We have to look at what's the product, what's the price, what channel? Because for example, in Japan, they have small refrigerators. So if you're gonna do liters, bottles of a liquid, you're not going anywhere. So they're, they're doing bottles that are, four ounces, six ounce. Again, thinking global, but also thinking local, how it's gonna work. Japan is already an extreme example. Europe is in between because I always have troubles with the sizes that I. I buy a lot of groceries at Trader Joe's, and when I bring them home to Austria, a lot of things just do not fit into the fridge or into my drawers because the sizes are much larger than here in Europe. That's different as well. Yeah. Okay. So Trader, Trader Joe's is one of my favorites. So it's like, and this is a whole other experience going shopping than here in Europe. Enjoy it every time I go there,. All right, so Trader Joe's business model. Was to have smaller stores than the big grocery. They don't have the gift cards, they don't have all the pots and pans. They didn't become everything to everybody. They decided that they were gonna have a very high quality, most of it private label made by the same people, making the brands at very attractive prices, and they keep switching, so they're constantly bringing in. And then they get the customers to put out on, on social media, Oh, I just tried the, the cauliflower noki and it's magnificent. Or I tried this little cookie, or, And then they have this wine department extremely well priced. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a different, So in a way, they're competing with the major grocery. And, but if you're loyal to Trader Joe's, you're buying, now you have to go to, to traditional to get your cleaning products and different things like that. But yeah, they do it different. Yeah. You go in the US they package vegetables. You don't go in and pick your broccoli. It's in a tray and it's got Saran wrap on it. And so they've created. A culty idea. And yeah, people love it. Yeah, people love it. And I would really be happy if it came over to Europe, if they were to expand into Europe, because actually it's a brand owned by a German discount retailer, Aldi, North Aldi, it belongs to Aldi. Yeah. Yeah. I know Aldi Group. Yeah, so I'm still waiting. So also, so also when you talk about brands, here's how simple it is. When you think of Nike performance, when you think of Volvo safety, when you think of Mercedes engineering, when you think of bmw, ultimate driving experience, right? So when you start to think of your brand, , What's that little thing? Because when you get that right, it, it helps you to make decisions. How many, when? When you look at the personal product industry, 90% of products have no market. They don't do well. And so they're innovating all of this stuff out there and it's not resonating. And part of it is they're too wide without thinking, What do I stand? What am I a stand for? And if you can't explain it really simply, that's why when you bring in new people, the brands go all over the place. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah. Let's switch gears a little bit. I wanna talk about you and what you are doing and your mission. And it is to democratize and skill knowledge around the world to the advantage of others, creating a world where everyone can thrive. So what role does branding play in here? How does being a brand matter in this context, what's the benefit for others? Okay, so my company is called Intel aki. Intel is a Greek word that came from Aristotle, and when he first started with it, it was formed to function. So we both know, we know this from two different things that are. Acorns become oak trees and caterpillars become butterflies. Intel is that which resides in each of us to manifest out the best of our human potential. So if I look at a brand and I talk about Intel Key, what does brand stand for? What is its brilliance? What is it meant to bring into the., Yeah. So what my company is about now is training the next generation of leaders. So my intellikey are how I work with the next generation of vice presidents who are identified fast track to be the next leaders. Self awareness, authenticity, empathy, social, emotional. The more you upscale those attributes as an individual, the more they actually will surround the brand. What is the social emotional intelligence of the brand? Does the brand have any empathy at all? You can't bring to market a product with those attributes to any degree greater than you have within your. And so as I look at the brands to move forward and the reason of democratizing knowledge is the more we understand that we're all connected. This is an en we are energy. Yeah. Our heart is an electrical system. And so my program is called the Leader Operating System. And that's because when you look at the neuroscience zero to seven, you have no analytical mind, you're a. Feeling and sensing being, and so who you are. If you look at yourself today, all these beliefs were downloaded just like software is downloaded in a computer. You had no say in that formation. So childhood formation, adulthood transformation, personal transformation, brand transformation as the world is changing. all of a sudden, brands that are gonna speak to sustainability, brands that are going to speak to having a better planet, brands that are going to speak to millennials are different than brands who speak to baby boomers. So how do we now, if we're not self-aware, we can't infuse that into the product, right? So you know how you go to a restaurant and you come out, you go, That food was made with. Yeah. How do you know that? Yeah. Intuitively, how is your, is your brand made with love? Is your brand made with, with real attention to detail? Is your brand made to elevate that person into beauty, for example? I think the apparel business, the whole purpose of apparel is about beauty. Yeah. I think. I think that's the inquiry. And so for me, training people, What's your story? Your story is your belief system. Mom said, You know what? Money's bad. Money's dirty. We should thank the Lord for what we have. It's not okay to ask for more. Now you're running a brand. Are you gonna see the world as safe? Are you gonna see the world as abundant? Are you gonna see the world as your customer really wants what you have? No, you're gonna, you're going to be constricted as opposed to expansive. Yeah. So we want you to become aware of what are your patterns? What triggers you, what's your value?, what do you value? Loyalty, integrity, authenticity, Telling the truth. If you have those values, your go brand is gonna say one thing, the world's not safe, I win. You have to lose. If you have those belief systems of negativity, your brand will reflect that. Yeah. So I think that's what's really important. I'm gonna say to a, in a, in a certain way, this idea of who are you as a leader will trickle down into your brand being so much more authentic. It will have emotional connection. Yeah. It's packaging will be different. Yeah. So that's how I'm looking at the two combined. If you have an emotional connection, you do not sell anymore. Yeah. People. Yeah. Mm-hmm.. Do you have any helpful advice how we can bring the beauty out of us? Where do we start? Do you have any, let's say, first three steps that we can take to become this great leader with all the attributes that you have mentioned before and that we can tell our band story that reflect our belief. Yep. Well, the first thing is, what I said is what is your story? Write it down and then tape it. Put yourself on tape. And then just listen to it over and over and over. And then start to ask the questions, Gee, I told this story. So if I ask people, Tell me about your childhood, they go, Oh, I have a normal childhood. Everybody thinks they had a. Yes, there are some abuse things and, and alcoholism there. I'm not denying that. But if you talk to most people, they'd say I had a pretty normal childhood. Say more of. Yeah. Say more about that. Well, mom and dad didn't really get along, but it was okay. But dad was really angry most of the time. But that was okay. And now we start to see underneath. Dad was allowed to be angry, but I never was allowed to be angry. But I am angry as a human. So maybe I want to exercise my anger. If you ask women, what is one of the things, the biggest fear of being around a man? They never know when his anger is gonna come out and which side. It's gonna never comes out straight. It comes out sideways and it's untrustworthy as opposed to in the moment I'm angry and now I'm done with it. So how much anger do you. How much people pleasing do you do wanting to be acceptable? So these are the, I'd love to tell you that it's quick, easy and cheap, which is what everybody wants. No, it's rigorous, it's hard, and it takes time. But the payoff is significant. So tell your story and as you're looking at it, what are you not saying? The second thing is for a brand and for you, do you want to be authentic? I think we all want to really be who we truly are. If you want to be authentic, take a pen and paper, put a line down the middle and put all the places you're authentic, which are gonna be really easy. Yeah. on the other side. Put all the places you're inauthentic and that's gonna be really hard. And in order to be more authentic, to be more who you are, you need to know who you where. So, Heiddeger German philosopher speaks about what he calls the enculturation of they. These are the cultural norms. Most of us are inauthentic, trying to fit in because we have the fear of being rejected, of not being liked, of being judge. As we grow up, who cares? I don't really care what you think. What I care is, am I authentic? Am I being who I am? If it's not for you, it will be for someone else and I will have a tribe who will see me, who will know me. I'll matter, I'll be able to contribute, right? So all of those things matter. Another exercise you can do is what are your deepest yearnings? I got promoted today. I eat a pint of ice cream. I got fired today. I eat a pint of ice cream. Okay, No. So write down what are your deepest yearnings? I'm really upset right now. My yearning is to be held. My yearning with my parents is they don't see me. They don't know who I am. I want to be seen. My yearning is I'm working on this brand and in this company, and they. Just telling me what to do, and I'm not seen and I don't matter. Right? I, I wanna know that I exist. I wanna know that I'm lovable. I wanna know when you get to those deeper yearnings, you're authentic and you're in your truth. So what's the deeper yearning of your brand? What do you think those customers, deeper yearning are? Well, if it's personal, I wanna look my best. I wanna, I wanna be attractive, I wanna attract others, I wanna be touched, I wanna touch others. So this language of yearning is a love language. And I, It should be touching your heart as I'm speaking it. Yeah, If you're aware. So I think, that's another thing. In French, there's an expression existence precedes essence. We are the only species on the planet where who we are when we're born is just the beginning of who we can become. By the end, a stone is always a stone. Yeah? An oak tree is always an oak tree. It's never a fur tree. It's never a table. It's never a car, but a human being. We exist moment by moment to see who we can ultimately become. That's the. And isn't that really the journey of the brand? Yeah. I start with the idea that it's this , but season by season, however you launch product, it's ultimately becoming what it can become. And so I think I, I'm hoping those three exercises right, Absolutely. Will help you because the more you embrace that, the more you're gonna embrace your. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The brand is what you think, what you feel, and it's evolving over time and always growing and you just have to be aware of. And there is no, there's no limit. You are setting the limit. You're making the choice. Exactly. So that would be the last thing is if you want to raise your consciousness and your awareness, , we all are running so fast. Can you just slow down? Can you relax? Can you start doing some breathing to open? And can you connect to yourself and to others? So if you're at work and you're, you're going, I'm like nuts right now. Just sit at your desk, put your feet on the floor. Imagine that you have a root system from the bottom of your feet going to the center of the earth, and that you are bringing up the earth's energy into your body and you are becoming your breath. It's not, it won't happen right away, just notice your breathing. Oh, I'm breathing really shallow. I'm not breathing from my belly. I'm breathing from my. If I open my arms and expand my chest and I slow down, can I start to breathe from my belly up and now I'm taking in? And so we go from sympathetic of stress to parasympathetic of conscious relaxation. An exercise is started at the base of your butt in your chair. Do you even notice? Can you feel your chair? Do you feel your butt in it? Are you feeling your back against? Oh, my chair is supporting me. Yeah. Cool. All right. Now I wanna know, can I take my energy from the base of my butt on the chair to the top of my head? And if I start with that, I might only get halfway up. Okay, So I'm gonna breathe more. I'm gonna relax more, and if I can get from the base to my. I have a whole new consciousness. I have a whole new way of being in the world, and you only need to do this a couple of minutes. This isn't like take an hour outta work, three to five minutes, become your breath. Just notice your breathing because our truth is in our body. Our brain is not our. Our brain is our heart, our gut, and our myofascia. So if you don't believe me, think of an experience that was awful, and ask yourself, Where in my body do I feel it? And then ask yourself if it's open or constricted. All right. Now that I'm there with it, what's the lesson? What lesson was I supposed to learn there? And then, . Yeah. And it disappears. It goes away. It just How'd that happened? Cuz it had a yearning to be seen and to be known, because that's a lesson that you're here to learn. Ah. So all of these things are, So anyway, I have a year's course in how to do all of this called the Leader Operating System. And I also have some jumpstart programs of eight weeks. And so if, if your audience were interested in that, they, they'll know how to get ahold of you and I would be happy to spend time on that. Wonderful. I'll put everything into the show notes. Still get the link. Thank you so much for this exercise tip. I think that guides us through and brings a lot of awareness to things that we can incorporate, and I think doing that like every day gets us there to make it a habit, right? So we become fast and faster understanding and going forward. Yeah. So the neuroplasticity of the brain. What, what? Fires together. Wires together. Yeah. So if that's the case and you want new neuro neurons firing, you habituate. So you're right, it one time doesn't change. But eventually when you habituate, the old stuff dies off in new neurons, and this is why we can, You're never, you're never not able to become who you want to become, and you can actually have the childhood you always wanted, if you can imagine it. Beautiful. Thank you so much. We are almost at the end of our show, but I would like to do a a rapid fire terms exercise with you now I'm throwing up the term and you ask top of mind, whatever comes right. Are you ready? Okay, good. I'm ready. Neuroscience, neuroplasticity, opportunity to change. Okay. Globalization. I'm the decline. Values loyalty, women empowerment, love it. and brands. Emotions, emotion. Good then. Thank you so much for being my guest today on Brands Talk. It was a pleasure having you here and learning your perspective on how organizational brands matter and how I, as a personal brand matter today. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Okay.