Every Business Leader Believes They have Credibility but 98% of Leaders are Not Credible. How do Leaders Get Credibility?

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Mitchell Levy.

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He is a author, a two times TEDx speaker and a global expert in credibility.

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Welcome to the show.

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It's great to be here.

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Thank you for having me.

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Really, it's an honor.

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We appreciate you making the time, so why don't we start by you giving us a minute or two of context about who you are and what you do?

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I know you've had a long career, you've done a lot of many great things, but give us a little bit of context for what you're up to.

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So the who.

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I am happily married 35 years, lived in Silicon Valley around that time.

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Have a 26-year-old son.

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I've started 20 companies in Silicon Valley, so I've done lots of fun things, including sitting on the board of a public company publishing 750 books.

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What else is fun?

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Running four CEO networking groups, since you said you remembered the dot-com days ran four conferences for Comdex, the largest IT company.

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But all that stuff.

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Who I am now is someone who could help any company or any human articulate how they're executing on themselves and their purpose in less than 10 words on themselves and their purpose in less than 10 words.

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I think that's super important.

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I think that is very hard for a lot of people to do to determine and summarize who they are.

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Someone told me that it's hard because when you're inside the jar it's hard to read the label on the outside.

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Is that why it's hard, or do you think it's hard for different reasons?

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That is one of many reasons it's really hard to see yourself.

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So that is exactly it.

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There is, however, a competing force that's even greater, and that is we've been taught all these marketing, cookie cutter, bs, ways of doing things and, for instance, fake it till you make it.

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One of the stupidest phrases I've ever heard Setting your goal bigger is better, because the wider the cast you make, the wider the net, the more fish you catch.

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The opposite is true the more narrow, the more people you attract.

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So they're just things that people, typically consultants, who get paid a lot of money and they get a lot of money because they want to make stuff difficult.

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It turns out that it could be really simple, and it's so simple that many of us go wait, it can't be that easy.

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So tell us a story about some of the best marketing that you've done.

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There are so many things when I've written 65 books and a number of them have been really memorable.

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Running four conferences for Comdex was absolutely incredible.

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The creating, during the dot-com days, the e-commerce management program.

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We had people fly around the world to the US.

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So there are many things that I'm excited about.

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When I was thinking about which would be my favorite and which could be one that would be different than most people would share, I landed on the timeframe between 2019 and 2020.

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Landed on the timeframe between 2019 and 2020.

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So, as a book publisher and I have four book publishing companies I recognize that the democratization of book publishing, by the way, the democratization of everything, including thought leadership, is among us.

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So I was under the impression that the democratization of book publishing would cause me problems.

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I need to change who I am and what's next, and so the marketing that I've done here has so many elements to it.

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I'll give you the end result.

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It has a research component, it has awareness component, it has an infrastructure building of potential partners going forward, and it has an opportunity of what, as I'm learning more, what new products and how it's going to evolve Mitchell into something different.

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So that was the end result.

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So I woke up one day and I go okay, I'm going to need to change.

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How do I change?

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Who am I changing into?

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And I wasn't sure.

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I had a great business that I had been running since 2005, allowed me to take trips to Europe every year with the family.

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We'd rent a house for a month, and so what I ended up doing is I go okay, what's common?

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What's common about everyone that I published books for is they were thought leaders.

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Great, what did the thought leaders have?

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What did they need?

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What did the book provide for them?

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Credibility I go okay, that sounds cool.

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What's the definition of credibility in the dictionary?

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And I read the dictionary definition, I go it's not right.

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It was right maybe at a pre-internet time, but the definition of credibility in the dictionary is the quality in which we are trusted.

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I go wait, there's more to it.

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In today's world, when everyone has a camera and a microphone, there's so much more to it.

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I want you to imagine you're a part of my staff.

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I walk into the staff meeting and I actually walk in and I said the following because I had a dream the following night.

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The dream was Napoleon Hill interviewed 500 millionaires and did the book Think and Grow.

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Rich Mitchell Levy is going to interview 500 thought leaders on credibility and then have whatever the appropriate book is.

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In this case it's now called Credibility Nation.

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And so imagine, you're in my staff and I walk in and listen.

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Guys, we're going to continue to do everything we're doing.

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We've got three podcasts we're running, we're producing books.

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We're going to continue to do everything we're doing.

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We've got three podcasts we're running, we're producing books and we're going to interview 500 thought leaders.

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I'm not going to hire anyone new.

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It was like I took the air out of the compartment, out of the room, and what I said was hey, listen, don't worry about it, I'm good at building systems and processes.

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But I said, listen, I'm going to do the first 10.

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I'll be there 100%, I'll document the workflows and the processes and after that I'll pass it off.

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So we'll do the first 10 together.

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And then I got a sigh of relief.

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But then over the next year, every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, I would interview somewhere between 12 to 15 people every day, every Tuesday, every Wednesday.

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And so you might not say, hey, mitchell, that's not marketing, but what do they do?

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I talked to over 500.

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I built my mailing list over 500.

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I built brand among that 500 of people who get to trust, know and like me by the way, the updated definition of credibility and it turned out that it built my platform of who I'm going to be going forward.

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So, if I'm going to answer the question, what was my favorite marketing?

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I think it was that.

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I think that's a great one, and you then took the learnings from those 500 interviews and created a TED Talk from it.

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So, thank you, thanks for leading the witness, appreciate that.

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So, yeah, out of that came eighth most popular TEDx in 2021.

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And also a book, a membership community called Credibility Nation.

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And then I'll get back to what happened eight months ago, because that was a really interesting turning point for me.

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What the TEDx was about, and it's called we're Losing Our Humanity and I'm tired of watching it happen.

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It's just as I was talking to people and I recognized the simplicity of credibility, and, for those listening, credibility is not just the quality in which we are trusted.

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Credibility is the quality in which we are trusted, known and liked, or, potentially, the quality in which we're trusted, known and loved.

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So, in the business world, trust is one thing, but people are going to get to know you, whether or not you want them to or not.

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They need to get to know you and they need to get to know the people in your company, and so you might as well have all the elements that allow them the intent, commitment to do the right thing, that you are a servant leader with the desire to help them be successful, who they are and what they do, and, in the perfect world, you want them to love you, because that's how they're going to talk about you, and so that was what came out of the interviews itself is the updated definition and the TEDx, which I truly believe if we did nothing more than act credibly, we will be more humane to each other.

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I think it's more important today than ever to be credible, to have that as part of your personal professional brand.

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Is that why you picked to focus on credibility?

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Yeah, it was when I was thinking about we have now published over 750 books, and when I was trying to think about in 2019, what is the next morph for Mitchell Levy?

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I was thinking to myself.

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I have all these thought leaders I've worked with.

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What is one common thing that they hold to themselves that could use that?

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They're not thinking about it properly or I can help them expand that, and that's where the word credibility came from.

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It was that common.

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Everyone wants to do a book.

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Not some people want to do a book because they think they're going to be a significant bestseller, but that's not why you do a book.

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You do a book because it gives you incremental credibility.

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That credibility will then open up doors that will allow you to do more speaking, more consulting, more products or service sales.

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So I do agree that a lot of people do a book for credibility, and I think most people get a lot of credibility for doing a book and I was doing some research.

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It seems like there's about 3 million nonfiction books published each year, and so I'm curious why does publishing a book give credibility to authors?

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There's so many different reasons.

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We'll start off with the fact that people like it when you have an expertise and it's easy for you to explain what your expertise is.

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So, when you're doing a book, if you're going for a doctorate and you're doing a dissertation, you're focused on a particular area of focus.

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Now, one of the things the dissertation does that, and one of the things that the New York style book does, is it's a peer based focus, as opposed to now, when you could self publish a book.

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People make the assumption if you call it a Amazon bestseller, which is relatively easy to do, people make the assumption that it's that same style book that ever everyone else has.

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If you want credibility with your book, you need to at least have a good looking cover.

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You need to have a story that's consistent or content that's consistent.

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You need to make sure you have a good copy editor and you do good content layout.

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That said, this is something you could do yourself.

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You don't need an outside publisher to do that for you.

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This is a publisher talking.

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You can do all this yourself.

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It's just a matter of time.

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And how does that give you credibility?

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Because when you quote from your book so if I quoted from Credibility Nation, the international bestselling book, in seven countries.

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I can actually now give quotes that credibility is now the quality in which we're trusted and liked.

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That has apparently more, if you think about it.

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That has more appeal to it than it's just Mitchell Levy, but I also now have the title Global Credibility Expert.

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So Mitchell Levy, global Credibility Expert, from his international-selling book says the following that has incremental credibility associated with it I think a lot of it comes from you took the time as an author to write down, put in words, organize it, edit it, make it really good.

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Organization of your thoughts on a particular topic versus, let's just call it, on social media.

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People go on Twitter and just brain fart things out all day long that are not organized, not really well thought out, not edited, not vetted in any sort of way, and are just shooting from the hip, if you will, and so I think that's why people like I think that's why people assign credibility from books is because it's a much more thoughtful way of sharing ideas than other ways that people have sometimes done it right?

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I'll add this a little bit, Eric If you have a methodology for what you do for venture-backed startups needing hypergrowth and you've done it multiple times if you then document that methodology in the concept of a book, there are some people who are the DIY people who are going to grab the book and they're going to try it, but most people are going to say, hey, I like what you wrote about, I like the approach you took, I'd like to have you do that for me and that's what I recommend for the authors.

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Right, If you have a methodology and approach that you've deployed multiple times with clients, why don't you give everything away in your book?

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Because the person who's going to take it and run with it themselves the DIYer.

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They're not your client anyhow.

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The person who wants to have somebody do it for them or with them, those are the clients that you're going after, and the book is the best way you can demonstrate to somebody else that you have the expertise If they actually spend the time just even browsing through it and they see that you do have expertise in who you are and what you do.

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Yeah, I think that it's a great way to tell your story, a much more organized and thoughtful way to share your story and experience than many people do.

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Let me ask you how do you measure how much credibility someone has?

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Does someone have dramatically more than others, and what does?

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it take to do that.

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That's a question that there have been many firms that have tried to put their arms around that.

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It's not like your typical.

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If you're a financial institution, you're looking at a FICA score, right, you're looking at what is the score, and there are organizations like CRED, k-r-e-d and others that try to put credibility associated.

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I don't think there's a recognized approach.

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There are many that have tried different things.

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At the end of the day, if credibility is the quality in which you are trusted, known and liked, the question becomes who you trusted, known and liked from right.

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In your case, the average mom pa doesn't need to know who you are.

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It's the VC firm, it's the private equity firms, it's the recommenders of the clients that you're going to work with.

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They need to know who you are.

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So that makes it easy the trust knowing.

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They just need to know that.

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Who you are and what you do they need to like having worked with you in the past and I'm currently getting a PhD and I'm not going to be building a model to determine what credibility is, because it changes so much over time in terms of different ways that we're credible.

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What I'm going to be focusing on is purely clarity, and that is the.

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It's the simple thing that's missing out of the corporate boardroom today, out of the company today, is the simplicity of which we can be clear of who we are and how we show up.

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I agree.

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I think that's a big challenge for a lot of people and organizations.

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How do you think about credibility in relation to someone's personal professional brand?

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How are those two things related?

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Yeah, so credibility has has.

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As I mentioned, it's the quality in which you're trusted, known and liked.

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There are 10 values associated with credibility.

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Now it turns out that the value that most affects human emotion, and this is this, has been brought to, brought to us by a index called the shane s S-H-A-N-E index.

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The value that generates the most emotion, potentially even manipulative emotion, is authenticity.

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But there are nine other values of credibility, and the one that I think really resonates most with me is there is one word, that there's one value that, when I was doing the 10 values of credibility, that appeared twice and actually, truthfully, I didn't know why it appeared twice, I just needed to publish it.

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And that word is integrity.

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And, as it turns out, what I recognized is that, under the being trusted, it's your external integrity.

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By the way, I figured this out a year later it's your external integrity and out of being known, it's your internal integrity, and that is probably.

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So.

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Being authentic and having consistency with your external and internal integrity is probably the two most important things you can do, but then it's really hard to say Vulnerability is important, coachability is important.

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There are many things that are valuable, but those are, if I'm going to list the top three.

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It's the two types of integrity and authenticity that's great.

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So how do marketers, founders, founders, business leaders, how do they get credibility?

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They can write a book.

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They can work with you and they can write a book.

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That's one thing they can do.

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What else can they do to get credibility?

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oh, by the way, for me it's books are one thing, executive coaching is another, but what I'm really focused on now is that, as a clarity certification program, where they're actually getting that.

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How does anyone get credibility?

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I'm going to say, let's start with and this is, by the way, this is the mistake we all make and I made it too.

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I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility and then for three and a half years I sold credibility and my wife, by the way.

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She was kind enough to tell me something at the beginning, that I wanted to prove her wrong.

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Here's what she said she goes honey, do you realize?

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All business people consider themselves credible and I wanted to prove her wrong.

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But she's right Now.

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What I was doing is I was talking about credibility first and clarity second, and eight months ago I flipped that I had somebody come to me and actually walk through my business models.

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And so if somebody wants to get credibility, start with clarity.

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And what comes before the why?

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Why comes last?

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What comes before the why is the who and the what.

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So if you are a credible human, if you are a credible company, you are of service to others.

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Who do you serve?

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And what pain point or pleasure point.

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Are you actually working on that?

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You're helping them, you're helping your customers solve, and if you do that in 10 words or less, that level of clarity, and then you reinforce it with your actions, that's how you get credibility.

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I think that makes sense.

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What percentage of people really are credible, though it's not 100%.

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I would say, using that model, there are maybe 10% of the world who even have an inkling of being able to articulate their level of who they are and how they serve.

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Most people have all this marketing, cookie cutter stuff associated with them.

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If you look at any polls, it's absolutely always less than 50%.

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It's absolutely always less than 50%.

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And if you look at the to me, the people who have credibility and specifically know how to share it in a very clear, consistent, short way it's less than 2% of the population who actually have credibility.

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They have clarity in who they are and they're comfortable being able to share in less than 10 words.

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That's 2%.

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I think that actually is a number that makes sense to me, because I think a lot of people just don't take the time and effort to do it.

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I think a lot of people don't know how to do it, but then I think even people who do know that they need to do something, they prioritize other things is what I've seen pretty consistently, which is unfortunate given how important I think it is in business these days.

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But tell me just a little bit more about clarity.

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You're now prioritizing that clarity.

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You're now prioritizing that.

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It turns out that I was under the impression when I was doing the credibility interviews.

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The first question I'd always ask somebody is what is their CPOP, what is their customer point of possibilities?

00:21:29.042 --> 00:21:32.391
Essentially, what is their level of clarity of who they are and what they do?

00:21:32.391 --> 00:21:43.586
And it turns out I was just under the mistaken impression that if I interviewed 500 people on credibility, I needed to focus on credibility, right.

00:21:43.586 --> 00:21:47.016
So when I realized it was clarity, it was like oh, that's really simple.

00:21:47.016 --> 00:22:10.707
So if you look at any company or any individual, the clarity because we have so much opportunities to get distracted ADHD is with almost anyone and everyone right, we have so much opportunity you need to hear in the first set of seconds who that person is and how they serve.

00:22:10.707 --> 00:22:15.305
Let me share a couple of CPOPs that are valuable, just so you could hear the words.

00:22:15.305 --> 00:22:17.708
One of my friends, raji Sethi, has one.

00:22:17.708 --> 00:22:28.980
He's been in Silicon Valley, he's worked with 3,000 companies and what's fascinating is thinking about his CPOP.

00:22:28.980 --> 00:22:33.353
It's game changers looking for their secret sauce.

00:22:33.353 --> 00:22:36.337
Oh, that's an interesting guy.

00:22:36.337 --> 00:22:37.405
I want to get to know him.

00:22:37.405 --> 00:22:39.794
Let me talk to one of my clients today.

00:22:40.704 --> 00:22:42.152
Hersey Popp is five words.

00:22:42.152 --> 00:22:48.777
Think about these five words Successful women living with regret.

00:22:48.777 --> 00:23:01.410
So what happens is if you could explain who somebody is in less than 10 words and then when somebody says, tell me more.

00:23:01.410 --> 00:23:03.256
So, eric, here's what's next.

00:23:03.256 --> 00:23:07.967
If you're consuming content and you read, in your case, five words.

00:23:07.967 --> 00:23:13.307
If you read my eight words and somebody is interested in learning more, go to my LinkedIn profile.

00:23:13.307 --> 00:23:14.369
You'll see those eight words.

00:23:14.369 --> 00:23:16.255
And somebody is interested in learning more?

00:23:16.255 --> 00:23:16.977
Go to my LinkedIn profile.

00:23:16.977 --> 00:23:17.898
You'll see those eight words.

00:23:17.898 --> 00:23:21.743
That should encourage somebody to learn more.

00:23:21.763 --> 00:23:24.511
If they are one of two people and when you're actually sharing your CPOP, there are three people who could listen.

00:23:24.511 --> 00:23:26.017
First person referral partner.

00:23:26.017 --> 00:23:31.251
Right, so if you're setting up a network, you're looking for referral partners to refer others.

00:23:31.251 --> 00:23:33.484
Second person is prospect.

00:23:33.484 --> 00:23:36.682
Ah, this is something I'm personally interested in.

00:23:36.682 --> 00:23:38.386
Third person they don't care.

00:23:38.386 --> 00:23:40.491
It doesn't mean they don't care about you.

00:23:40.491 --> 00:23:42.526
It just means they don't care about the playground you play in.

00:23:42.526 --> 00:23:43.750
They don't care about your CPOP.

00:23:44.601 --> 00:23:51.202
So when you say something that you could say in seconds and the person on the other side, you could see them.

00:23:51.202 --> 00:23:55.981
When I say coaches who've created a job, not a business side, you could see them.

00:23:55.981 --> 00:23:58.147
When I say coaches who've created a job, not a business, for my prospects.

00:23:58.147 --> 00:23:59.191
I could see them violently react.

00:23:59.191 --> 00:24:03.644
For the referral partners I could say oh, I know somebody like that, mitchell, tell me more.

00:24:03.644 --> 00:24:08.948
And then, when you're explaining the tell me more, you're just telling about how do you execute, how do you play in your playground.

00:24:08.948 --> 00:24:14.045
You have so much more credibility because the clarity in which you've been able to express who you are.

00:24:14.045 --> 00:24:15.926
Does that make sense?

00:24:17.388 --> 00:24:18.109
It does make sense.

00:24:18.109 --> 00:24:30.345
If you can't be clear about who you are, who you serve and what your value is, then why would anyone consider you to be credible?

00:24:30.345 --> 00:24:33.872
That really just makes a lot of logical sense that you have to lay those things out very clearly for people.

00:24:33.872 --> 00:24:37.259
Sense that you have to lay those things out very clearly for people.

00:24:37.259 --> 00:24:52.413
I hadn't really thought about the third audience being so important of recommenders, but I do also deeply believe in the referrals and the recommenders and treating them like an audience and having something very concise that makes them want to refer.

00:24:52.413 --> 00:24:57.022
You is a very interesting concept that I haven't heard anybody share before.

00:24:57.022 --> 00:24:57.924
So that's pretty.

00:24:57.924 --> 00:24:58.768
It's pretty unique.

00:24:58.768 --> 00:24:59.711
I like that a lot.

00:25:01.441 --> 00:25:14.865
There was a reason why, Eric, if you can talk about the playground you play in the way that, for instance, you want to talk to me as a referral partner, and that comes first, because you're not going to talk to me as if you're selling me.

00:25:14.865 --> 00:25:15.848
That's how we're taught.

00:25:15.848 --> 00:25:18.903
That's one of the mistakes we're made that we have to sell the person we're talking to.

00:25:18.903 --> 00:25:20.167
You never have to sell me.

00:25:20.167 --> 00:25:26.106
You just need to show me the clarity you have and the credibility you have in serving the audience.

00:25:26.106 --> 00:25:34.553
That you do, and that's when I get to trust, know and like you, and when I do that level of credibility means that I'll recommend you.

00:25:34.553 --> 00:25:45.251
It's really what we're talking about right here is so amazingly simple and but it's just not easy to do because we're taught all these other things I'm going to say.

00:25:45.251 --> 00:25:52.163
That audience of the referral partner, that audience you don't even want to educate, because you don't need to educate me.

00:25:52.163 --> 00:25:56.545
You just need to share with me how you're credible at doing what you do.

00:25:57.106 --> 00:25:57.808
I'm loving this.

00:25:57.808 --> 00:26:02.541
These are great insights about credibility and clarity.

00:26:02.541 --> 00:26:19.040
What final thoughts would you like to share with the listeners about credibility and what final thoughts do you have about these two topics that you'd like to share so?

00:26:20.282 --> 00:26:27.134
as much as you have people who are in your life that you know, that you love, that you trust.

00:26:27.134 --> 00:26:38.801
If they're living by marketing cookie cutter approaches, their suggestions to you are going to be marketing cookie cutter suggestions so deep in your heart.

00:26:38.801 --> 00:26:49.744
If you know who you serve and you're very clear of who you're going to serve and it's very finite of who you serve you don't need to listen to somebody else that says, hey, make it bigger, you could attract more people.

00:26:49.744 --> 00:26:51.924
Focus on who you serve.

00:26:51.924 --> 00:27:02.666
And if you know who you serve and you know that they have a pain point that they resonate with or they have a pleasure point they want to reach, and, depending on who you are, then stick with those words.

00:27:02.666 --> 00:27:05.862
And I think, eric, this is the one thing I'd like to say to people.

00:27:06.282 --> 00:27:13.122
I've now helped over a thousand companies and individuals articulate the playground they play in less than 10 words.

00:27:13.122 --> 00:27:17.048
That's CPOP and it turns out to be their frequency.

00:27:17.048 --> 00:27:18.671
It's how they resonate in life.

00:27:18.671 --> 00:27:26.288
Here's the sad part Only 10% of those people know what to do with it and live with it.

00:27:26.288 --> 00:27:39.430
90% are influenced by other people sharing marketing cookie cutter stuff, not because they're mean people, it's simply because that's what they were taught and so deep in your heart.

00:27:39.430 --> 00:27:44.287
If you know the who and you know the what, you should stick with it.

00:27:44.287 --> 00:27:52.980
Make it 10 words or less, and living in that playground will completely transform who you are and how you show up in the world and how other people see you.

00:27:54.285 --> 00:27:54.685
I love it.

00:27:54.685 --> 00:27:57.372
Thank you for your story and this great advice.

00:27:57.372 --> 00:28:08.663
I'm going to link to your website and your TED Talk so people can learn more about this topic, can reach out and connect with you directly if they'd like to learn more from you.

00:28:08.663 --> 00:28:14.358
Mitchell, really appreciate you taking the time to share these things with us today and being on the show.