The Exchanges

Q It sounds very benign, uh, put that way. When people hear, I need to build a personal brand, it sounds like I need to post on LinkedIn, I need to post on Twitter, start a newsletter, start a podcast, which I know is a kind of a part of it, but what are some examples you've seen of ways to build a personal brand that are effective?

A So I have a friend who I bring to the class, a lovely tall Asian woman named Laura Chow, who made partner at a venture capital firm after four years, which is fast. Law works for Canaan Partners, C-A-N-A-A-N. Law said, I do not work for Andreessen Horowitz. I do not work for Sequoia. I don't work for Greylock. I don't work for any of these very visible, large, you know, VC firms. So if I am going to get deals in the consumer space, that's her domain of expertise is consumer and consumer tech. Somebody is going to have to know Who are Chow is? Because again, you're not going to get the deal if nobody knows who you are. And so she basically did everything you talked about. She wrote, she would, she did writing. She started a podcast in which she invited influential people.

AI assessment note: “So I have a friend who I bring to the class, a lovely tall Asian woman named Laura Chow”

Q That touches on something you teach in the book is in your networking. You want to become a broker. You want to be central. That's kind of what you want to work on. Can you talk a bit about what that, what that means?

A Well, that means you want to connect people. So many people with benefits and many groups would being, would be, would benefit from being connected and they're not connected. What does a venture capitalist do? Connects people with ideas to people with money. And takes a fee for doing it. What does an investment banker do? Connects people trying to sell businesses or raise capital with people trying to buy businesses or who have capital. What's a real estate agent do? Connects buyers and sellers of houses. I mean, there are all kinds of examples where persons, where the person's entire job is connecting people. But even for the people whose job it isn't, you know, you, you, you benefit from knowing people. The more people you know, the more things you know. As I sometimes say in my class, if leadership management, call it what you will, is getting things done through other people, it seems like common sense that the more other people you know, the more you'll be able to get done.

AI assessment note: “Well, that means you want to connect people.”

Q notes, make eye contact, keep it brief. You say that anger can be a signal of power because it's outside the norm. It's kind of breaking the rules. Uh, don't apologize. It's kind of the opposite. More gestures, which is interesting. Open body posture. Lou, louder voice. Okay. I'm gonna speak louder now. I like this. Okay. Uh, what else, what else comes to mind as ways to appear powerful?

A Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching, standing close to someone. We're not talking about sexual touching. We're talking about touch on the arm or the shoulder. You know, shaking people's hands. Uh, that's a, that's a way of, I think, being more powerful. But, uh, you covered the main ones. I mean, eye contact. Uh, one of the problems with Tony Hayward of BP is that they, he's been given a statement to read. You cannot read something in front of you and make eye contact at the same time. So he looks like he's scripted. He looks like he's insincere. You know, so I, you know, so, Jack Villani, who I had the privilege of knowing, who for 38 years was the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, and typically rated one of the number one or number two most effective lobbyists in Washington, D.C., said to my class when he came to my class, which he did, I never appeared before Congress with notes. I wanted them to believe, which was by the way true, that I was in Complete control and complete mastery of the material, and that I did not need notes or a bunch of assistance around me to help me, that I, as the head of the MPAA, understood the motion picture industry, and then he would give you a little aside about how it was the one industry that consistently had a budget surplus in trade. He would talk about how many jobs it created, and he had all this stuff a…

AI assessment note: “Invading people's personal space. So gentle touching, standing close to someone.”

Q I think that's a really good balance to the entire conversation. Maybe just as a last question, what if we give the audience a homework assignment to work on these power, uh, rules? What's something that you'd recommend someone try to do? I know it's probably dependent on what they're good at, not good at. What's something that they could do to start moving towards one of these rules?

A So what I would say, and, and it comes from, it comes from something that you talked about in our conversation at several times. Which is, this is uncomfortable. Okay. So if I want you to do something uncomfortable, I can say, Lenny, go do this uncomfortable thing on your own. Or I can say, Lenny, I want you to do this with help, with social support. And so the first thing I would say to someone is, if you think this is uncomfortable, or if you think you're not skilled at this, Get coaching. Get a coach. I send out regularly the list of the coaches who work with my online and on-campus classes. Happy to do it. And they're happy to have the business. Get a coach. Get a personal board of directors, like they talk about in the Wall Street Journal. In other words, get people who will give you advice, give you social support, and hold you accountable. That's the very first thing I would tell people. It is hard to do anything on your own. If I said to you, Lenny, I want you to start an extraordinarily successful podcast. I didn't want you to do it without any help. You would not be where you are today. So that simple principle, get

AI assessment note: “Get coaching. Get a coach. Get a personal board of directors”

Q with power four, which is around personal brand, and the reason I want to start here is I have a friend that's actually in your class right now, Raph, and I saw that he started a podcast, and he told me that he did it because it was part of the homework that you give students. You call it, um, doing power? Is that the name of the homework assignments?

A Yeah, I, I have. So we give them a bunch of assignments throughout the class, which are self-reflective assignments, but their big thing for the class is they have to do power. They have to do something During the quarter to take the principles of the class of what they're learning and put them into practice. And that is because, you know, everything I do, I do for a reason. That is because if you don't use what you learn, the learning will disappear. So if I, if you go to a French class and you learn French and you never speak French in about a relatively short period of time, you'll forget everything you learn. And I want the learning to stick with them. So I try to get them, uh, to do something with it.

AI assessment note: “their big thing for the class is they have to do power.”

Q talk about the last power. So we've talked through six already. We have only one more to go, which is maybe the one that probably upsets people most, which is that once you have power, people forget what you did to get there. Talk about what that looks like. And, and is that, is that a power or is it more just like, this is what you should know about?

A So, and I, I put in rule seven for the following reason. In spite of everything that you and I have been talking about, many people Any stage of, I don't know, denial or something say, I'm worried that if I do this, At the end, you know, people believe that the world is homeostatic. It is not, you know, that it's going to adjust, but whatever, you know, at the end, you know, at the end, I will be brought low. They have the myth of Icarus in their head. You know, you fly too close to the sun, your winds are going to melt. You're going to be brought down. And so I tried to convince them partly through a lecture and partly through rule seven and some of the principles that I talk about in rule seven, that in fact, Life is not homeostatic at all. That life is actually self-fulfillment. If I believe you're powerful, you will become more powerful. If I believe you have no power, you will wind up with almost no power. And that therefore, it is all forgotten and forgiven. And I begin, I believe I begin, but if not, I could begin with the story Of the South Carolina senator who says nasty things about Trump, and then Lindsey Graham, and becomes Trump's biggest acolyte. And the New York Times, of course, is fascinated by this. How can you call, how can you say all these horrible things about Trump, and now be his, you know, basically have your lips to fix to some part of his anatomy? And…

AI assessment note: “I put in rule seven for the following reason... therefore, it is all forgotten and forgiven”