The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mitchell Levy Discusses the Importance of Clarity in Building Credibility
Episode Date: February 10, 2024Mitchell Levy Discusses the Importance of Clarity in Building Credibility Mitchell Levy's website: Mitchelllevy.com The Referral Network Club: Referralnetworkclub.com Show Notes About the Guest(s)...: Mitchell Levy is a global credibility expert, author, and executive coach. He has written over 65 books and is a two-time TEDx speaker. Mitchell is the author of "Credibility Nation" and the founder of the Referral Network Club. He is known for his expertise in helping coaches and consultants develop clarity in their messaging and build credibility in their industries. Episode Summary: In this episode, host Chris Voss interviews Mitchell Levy, a global credibility expert and author. They discuss the importance of clarity in building credibility and how it can lead to success in business. Mitchell shares his insights on the key elements of credibility and how to effectively communicate your value to others. He also introduces his new project, the Referral Network Club, which helps coaches and consultants connect and build referral partnerships. Tune in to gain valuable insights on how to establish credibility and attract the right clients. Key Takeaways: Credibility is the quality in which you are trusted, known, and liked. Clarity is the ability to articulate a concept, person, place, or thing in a concise and compelling way. A Customer Point of Possibilities (CPOP) is a clear and compelling statement that describes who you serve and the pain point or pleasure point you address. Social proof, such as endorsements and recommendations, plays a crucial role in establishing credibility. The Referral Network Club provides a platform for coaches and consultants to practice their pitches, meet potential referral partners, and improve their business development skills. Notable Quotes: "If you are a credible human, you are of service to others. It's important to know who you are of service to and what their pain point or pleasure point is." - Mitchell Levy "Credibility is being authentic and doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do." - Mitchell Levy "Cred crud are the things that hurt your credibility, such as spelling mistakes, outdated information, or misleading claims." - Mitchell Levy
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As always, CEOs, the billionaires, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the most amazing, brilliant minds we have on the show.
And we have another gentleman on the show with us today.
Mitchell Levy is on the show with us.
He's a global credibility expert.
He's going to be talking to us about several of his concepts and ideas
and everything else. He's the author of over 65 books and probably counting the way he's going.
We'll get into it with him. Mitchell is also a two times TEDx speaker, including the 28th most
popular in 2021 international bestselling author, as we mentioned, 65 plus books,
a certified stakeholder center coach, and an executive coach at marshall goldman's or i'm sorry marshall goldsmith's 100 coaches not
goldman's screw that guy i don't know if i know that guy i'm really worried making up names here
what i'm doing it's a poetic license folks i can do whatever i want as an executive coach
mitchell is a sounding board a thinking partner and someone who can hold the mirror to generate insights for personal change
the impact has earned him a place among the world's top 200 leadership voices by leaders hum
number 16 in 2023 on the charts there he's on the charts i should do an impression of casey casem
and he's the number one thought leader in ecosystems and top 100 thought leader overall by Thinkers360.
He's an accomplished entrepreneur who's created 20 businesses in Silicon Valley,
including four publishing companies that have published over 750 books.
He's provided strategic consulting to hundreds of companies,
has been the chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Welcome to the show, Mitchell. How are you? I'm doing great. That was a thank
you for, thanks for reading the bio. It's always good to hear it and it's great to be here with
you. There you go. Surprising I'd read considering I flunked second grade. So welcome to the show.
Give us some of the dot coms you have. Where do you want people to look you up on the interwebs?
You know, best way is going to a single location.
Go to MitchellLevy.com.
From there, you could see the other things I'm doing.
And listen, if I make an impact and you absolutely need to put time on my calendar, you can do that from MitchellLevy.com.
There you go.
And one of the things we'll be delving into later in the show, you're launching a new thing called the ReferralNetworkClub.com.
Give us a tease on that.
We've got a 30,000 overview of what you're doing there with that new project.
You know, for coaches, consultants, smaller companies where there's one primary or one or two primary rainmakers, most of their business comes from referrals.
We need help practicing our pitches. We need help practicing our pitches.
We need help meeting other people.
And so the Referral Network Club is a once-a-month opportunity
to practice, get in front of others,
and hopefully pick up one or two referral partners every month.
Ah, there you go.
Now, you said referral partners as opposed to referrals.
Is there a specific difference there?
Yeah, when I think about referrals per se,
you get me to the point of thinking about affiliates and affiliate marketing and people doing referrals
based on getting money.
When I think about referral partners,
I think about the type of people who know you,
they trust you, they want to share you.
And although they may get a referral commission, what they're really doing is they're seeing a need in the person they're talking to and they actually make a recommendation because they know you can add value.
Ah, there you go.
Adding value is really important so i think that's when we're going through life and you look at yourself at the end you're not going to regret you're going to not regret
anytime you've added value what you will regret are the people who you stepped over
there you go some of them what about that did i really mean that yeah i think so i forget the people i maybe stepped over
but i won't regret the people i stepped on at least most of them there's some people i accidentally
stepped on but most of the ones that i had intent were thanks for fixing that there you go most of
them are buried in my backyard so there you go so mitchell give us a rundown in your words about your life.
How did you become an entrepreneur? How did you get down these roads? I mean, when did you write
your first book? Tell us about how your youth shaped you and into becoming the person you are.
If we're going back to youth, and I'll do it super quickly, we were poor. Mom was a school
teacher, three kids, single. We were below the poverty line,
although she was one of those humans that didn't let her kids see that. So we didn't know it.
I ended up going to college, went to MBA school, started working. The biggest problem I had is my
real first male mentor was in my first job. Actually, it was one of my
faculty members in B-School, and he was hedonistic and narcissistic. And-
Say that like it's a bad thing.
It really is. And he taught me all of these rules, and I didn't realize this until I did my second
TEDx. He was actually only physically with me for one year.
He was mentally with me for 36.
And it took me a long time to unwind all of that.
But we're going to put that aside for a second.
I ended up moving, following my girlfriend.
We were living in Boston.
I followed her six months later.
She's now my wife.
We've been married for 34 years.
I've got a 25-year-old son,
and I'm in Silicon Valley. And the first dot-com I went to failed, which many do,
which I didn't know, by the way. Prior to coming to Silicon Valley, I'm like, hey,
the streets are paved with gold. This is going to be cool. And so the first one failed. I then
went to Sun Microsystems, and I worked there for nine years.
I met a ton of people.
And during that time frame, that's when I wrote my first book.
This is my first book.
I think the best way to say it, I'll step back and say, who is Mitchell?
I'm a person who challenges the status quo.
I make things simple, and I do it in a container of trust.
So everyone kept saying, Mitchell,
you got to buy a house. Everybody, you know, family, friends, realtors, mortgage broker,
got to buy a house. And so I, when I was analyzing whether or not I should or should not, I created a book called Home Ownership, the American Myth. I published that while I was at
some microsystems and that was my first taste into writing and self-published and self-publishing.
There you go.
There you go.
And that was your first book to lead you into now over 65 books, man.
That's pretty prolific.
Yeah.
Thank you.
And what happened is, as of 2005, I started my first publishing company.
And as you mentioned mentioned we published 750
books and what I would do is I'd find simple formulas so for instance we have a formula
called 42 rules the 42 rules book is comprised of 42 500 word blog posts you If you've been blogging for a long enough time, you could pull together 42,
now you have a book. And so every time I would create a new book series and new approach,
of course I had to experiment with myself. And so it became relatively easy to get to
65. And the last book I have, which is Credibility Nation, it is now time for a
rewrite of that second edition, as well as there's another book that really should come first.
There you go. What's the other book?
You know, what I've unraveled, and it was really about six months ago. So what you mentioned, during 2019 to 2020,
I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility.
And out of that is where the concept of,
I have an online community called Credibility Nation,
the book Credibility Nation,
the things that I do stem from that.
The TEDx came from that.
The interesting part is six months ago, I realized that what comes before credibility is clarity.
Because if you are a credible human, you are of service to others.
So it's important that you know who you're of service to.
And from their perspective perspective what is their pain
point and what is their pleasure point and so what happens is once you know that that's your compass
and everything changes and so the the the book although credibility nation dove a lot into that
it was it was my napoleon hill journey i did 500 interviews i learned a lot and when i
published it i hadn't done enough practical experience with with people so as i've been
deploying it for three years i've just learned a lot and so i would give it a different spin so
the next book don't know the name um but we'll be focused on, let's get clarity first. And I could
work with anyone and help them get clarity. I have a course that does that. I have a community,
part of the referral network club, people get clarity. What comes next? And how would life be
so much better for everyone if you could, in less than 10 10 words articulate the playground you play in there you go so
credibility starts with clarity let's break down let's lay some foundations of definitions so what
what is credibility are we talking about a leadership or are we talking about just as a
human being i think you've referenced both how do i know if i'm credible if i'm credible
why is it important yeah that was about five questions.
Yeah, I threw a bunch at you.
Thank you.
You can swing it whatever you want.
Let's start with the basic definition.
The one that's in the dictionary is only one-third accurate.
What's in the dictionary focuses only on the demonstration and quality of trust.
What I found is that credibility is the quality in which you're trusted, known, and liked.
And so if you pick up Credibility Nation or watch the TEDx,
you'll see that there are 10 values of credibility.
And what's interesting in today's world is, do I trust you?
Right?
And there are four characteristics, four values of trust.
And let's say you get to somebody's website or you get to their LinkedIn profile, or you listen
to the first five, five seconds of your podcast, right? Do you, do you trust that this is going to
be fun, entertaining, educational? We guarantee brain bleed on the show. We never fall through
on it. I love, oh man, I just so love the brain bleeds.
Here's the thing is I can guarantee any human, any company on the planet can articulate themselves in 10 words.
That's the brain bleed or less.
So if you get to somebody's website, you're going to give it five seconds.
LinkedIn profile, five seconds.
Do you trust that this person can deliver on what they say?
If the answer is yes, you're then going to spend another 30 seconds getting to know that person.
So if it's a LinkedIn profile, you might scroll down.
You might sort of start one video. If you, as you're starting to get to know somebody, if you end up trusting them a little bit more and you like them, you then actually may say, hey, maybe I need to spend a couple more minutes.
So the reason we know the phrase know, like, trust, but in today's world where everything is transparent and everything is available, everyone has a microphone and a camera. It really is trust, no like.
Let's bring referrals back in.
If there's somebody who you trust and they say to you, I like this guy.
Like, for instance, after we're done, you're going to say, hey, Mitchell, you got anyone who talks like you?
And I'm going to say, I got the perfect candidate.
You won't even, I mean, you may look at their profiles, but if you believe in me and I refer somebody to you, you're going to go, huh, done.
Let me have them on the show.
There you go.
Yeah, it's, you know, you mentioned, you talk about how much time people give you.
And a lot of people don't really think about that sort of thing. They don't realize that people, you know, if you get five seconds,
that's probably a long time in the amount of time people look at stuff.
You've looked over 100,000 LinkedIn profiles, and I'm sorry you had to suffer through that
because I probably do the same thing looking over profiles and pitches to us.
So what's the best way to,
what are some things that people base that off of in building trust?
Do they look at, okay, does this guy walk his talk
or talk about what he's really about?
Like I see a lot of people,
they have a LinkedIn profile
and they're not really posting anything,
maybe relative or even posting anything,
but sometimes they're just not posting stuff
that's relative to the application
of what should be credible to their job title
and what they espouse they're good at.
And so you just look at it, you're just like, I don't know,
is this a placeholder?
This looks like a placemat.
It doesn't look like you're doing anything that espouses your credibility,
as you put it.
What's some different things that should be there on your
website or or your linkedin profile that can can get that five seconds communicated
so when you're looking at five seconds it doesn't matter what you post or any of that stuff because
that's not enough time there are three things that the human eye goes to when you go to a linkedin profile one is the person's
name a mistake don't put all caps immediately that put like like yeah shout your name at me
i'm gone okay second i'm looking at the banner that's behind that person and i'm looking at the
their headline okay so here's what's interesting if If pick a job title, let's say, let's say tomorrow
you, you, I'm not sure why anyone would look for a plumber on LinkedIn, but you need a plumber.
Okay. If I said, Hey, give me plumbers in the local area. I am looking at five LinkedIn profiles, I'm going to want to look
at the person who the back end picture probably has a picture of some plumbing operation and says,
we do plumbing the way our customers love it. When I look at the headline, I want a good picture
of them smiling. And when I look at their headline, I want a good picture of them smiling. And when I look at their headline,
we focus on customer service in the plumbing thing, you'll be happy. That five seconds,
and I just made up plumbing. I don't think I've ever looked at a plumber on LinkedIn, but
that five seconds is enough to go, hey, I need to know more. So Chris, can I tell you what's next?
I'm going to scroll down to the bottom of the LinkedIn profile.
Now, I'm going to see as I'm scrolling, I'll see if they're doing what's proper.
Like, do they have videos?
Do they have words?
Are they doing things that make it easy for me to see who they are?
I might read the about section.
But I'm going to scroll down to the bottom where I can look at endorsements and I can look at how other people and recommendations.
Really?
So if they say I am the America's number one breakthrough expert, I'm going to look at recommendations.
And if there are a very small number of recommendations given or received, I'm like, yeah, you do not have the social proof.
Your audience is not saying that you are who you say you are.
So I'm looking at the endorsements or things that say,
if somebody is a project manager,
I want the two endorsements that LinkedIn shows to say,
project management, big picture thinker, or strategic planner, project management.
And I want those to be 99 plus.
And so what I look at second is the social proof.
And by the way, sometimes if they look like everyone else, I might actually read a couple of the recommendations, not just recommendations that they've received.
But I'm going to read the recommendations they've given because that'll give me a pattern onto how they think and what's important to them.
Really?
I'm going to have to delve into that some more. did you know the one of the things about recommendations on linkedin is they really
turn trashy where it was like getting referrals where you know people refer for a job and they
put those their family members you know it was it became that sort of thing and you know i've had
people ask me for referrals or references on the linkedin thing i'm like i don't know who the fuck
you are you just wrote me and i don't know who the fuck you are. You just wrote me.
And I don't know,
you're one of 30,000 people that I have on LinkedIn.
Like I,
I've never met you or heard from you and you're hustling referrals from me
that I work from you.
And so I,
I,
I,
it kind of became like a shit show there for,
it's become like a shit show for the last 15 years or 2009,
whenever LinkedIn started.
So do you,
do you try and hone down through the junk and try and
find actual real quality referrals that's my question you know you could sort of read through
the shit right you could read through the you you look at the the give and receive and this they're
the same name right and and the content looks like it was written by chat gpt right you can see through
that you know i i chris let me tell you something that i often do i i've gotten i've gotten those
requests before and i go and my response is you're kidding like i don't know you how can i
or somebody who i don't know endorses me for something like oh yeah I've I'm like you know
if you don't know me how can you endorse me but what I what I did do once and it's so funny
somebody somebody who I wanted to know asked me for a LinkedIn recommendation says I don't give
recommendations for people I don't know but here's my calendar link and if you want to book time
if we spend enough time and I get to like you i'll i'll give you a recommendation i should do that i should i should tell people that want a
recommendation for me i'm like if you book an hour of consulting for you know several thousand dollars
i'll do that for you we you know as a as a trick what's interesting is a lot of the people who are
running programs and they get to a certain way in life they're like i'll be nice to my clients yeah right so that is a way in what what might be
interesting i have to think about this a little bit more i i i i think it's a little bit rude
to although it's it is your humor to to actually go hey listen you because you don't want to what
if you talk to the guy and they book you
and you still don't like them?
You know, there's integrity,
even beneath that soul that you have.
I wouldn't be on the show otherwise.
There's a little bit of integrity
or a lot of integrity that says,
I can't give a recommendation to somebody
that doesn't deserve it.
So that's why I wouldn't i wouldn't take that
approach because you you don't know until you talk to them there you go you know i it looks
like they've really advanced the recommendations it seems like i have a different memory of it than
i i sit when i'm reading here i actually like my recommendations but i you know there are people
that were it looks like now you can turn them on or off or if you don't like one. Because I would have people that would give me a recommendation and then they would do the extortion thing.
They do that with a podcast referral sometimes too.
In fact, there's kind of a cheat they do where they fill out the podcast referral or the recommendation or review.
And they'll send me a picture of the box.
And they're like, hey, I wrote a great review for your podcast.
Can you write one for mine?
I'm like, I've never been on your podcast.
Why would I do that?
And they haven't hit send.
And it really pisses me off when people do that
because it's extortion, basically.
So I've had that with recommendations too.
If you write me one, I'll write you one.
I'm like, I don't know who the fuck you are.
Here's what's interesting.
So remember, credibility is the quality of which you're trusted, known, and liked.
If you want, let's say, a Chris Voss to introduce you, first of all, be nice to him and have the intent and commitment to do something good for him.
You do enough good things, Chris is going to come back and say, you know, I keep seeing you sharing my post. Tell me who you are and how I might be able to support you.
But that, that's going to happen after you have shown that you have the right intent to help him.
If your goal is for him to recommend you and you just say, give me your stuff,
it's just not going to work. so this is this is truly what credibility is
is doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do and when it makes sense you can you
can ask for a favor but you know i i normally don't ask they just happen although actually
what i often do for instance chris i could sit with any human on the planet i could give them i call it a
c-pop their customer point of possibilities i will do that first and and when somebody can for the
first time in their lives articulate who they are with clarity in less than 10 words like their
their body is tingling yeah that's the right time that i might say you know this seems like you're
pretty excited would you mind giving me a video testimonial?
Cool.
I'm going to use that to pick up chicks.
I haven't tried that yet.
And because I'm happily married, I probably wouldn't.
You just gave that to me.
Oh, it's probably the right word?
No.
Probably is not the right word.
Because I'm married, I absolutely wouldn't.
No, I mean the CPOP is a...
Anyway. Yeah, you know what's funny is I've never really delved down here for the longest time
because i gave up on recommendations but you're i think you're bringing me back to the fold here
and more people should look at this because i actually like the recommendations i have
i nice it seems like i had a memory that they were it just got so bad where you were just
getting there was a time there several years ago where people were just peppering you.
And what is funny is now I see what I wasn't happy with.
It's in the pending column of recommendations on LinkedIn.
Oh, nice.
And so you didn't accept it.
There must be 500, no, there's probably a hundred.
There's probably a hundred pending of people who've requested to me and I'm looking through them and 90, 90% of them, I have no idea who these people are.
In fact, I can delete these.
Oh, this is awesome.
By the way, that's what I, I, as I see those, I don't know that my delete.
Yeah, I'm going to delete these.
But we're going to go back to the simplicity of, as somebody is getting to know you, one of the ways to do that is social proof.
And I mean, real social proof, not the fake stuff.
And social proof in LinkedIn's case is the endorsements and recommendations.
And by the way, same thing here.
People get to know you by how you interact with different guests.
I hope so.
They've been doing it for 16 years,
so hopefully somebody's paying attention over there.
What about this verified thing?
There's a new thing on YouTube or on LinkedIn
where you can get verified by turning in your idea.
I wonder if that, does that build in your new thing?
It's a new feature, I believe.
I did it when it first came out.
I don't know if it adds any value.
The only reason I say that is I've never looked at a LinkedIn profile
and saw that and it made a difference of who I was talking to.
What about the, you know, what's funny is the shield is pretty,
it's hard to really see.
It kind of blends in the way they colored it.
And so it almost doesn't seem important. You know, One of my problems is my birth name is different than the name that I've used for the
last 16 years on social media. And we have Chris Voss YouTube, Chris Voss LinkedIn, Chris Voss
Facebook, Chris Voss Twitter, Chris Voss Instagram. Everything's Chris Voss. And that's how I built
the brand, The Chris Voss Show. And so one of the problems with Facebook's and LinkedIn's policies is they want you to match what's on your driver's license, from my understanding.
And I'm like, that's not going to work for me because we've built this brand this way.
And it's not that we're fooling anybody.
I mean, my name's a bit longer than that.
So that's kind of interesting.
What about when you looked at LinkedIn profiles,
do you look at if they pay for their LinkedIn? They've got the big yellow, I pay for this.
That's not something that is necessarily important for me. What I'm trying to size up when I look at
somebody's LinkedIn profile is, are they a person of service to others and who do they serve?
Based on who they serve, who I might be able to recommend if I like them.
And that literally is what I think about when I look at a profile.
So many people, and particularly if they happen to be in an industry
where LinkedIn is the predominant tool they should be using,
and if they say, I don't have a LinkedIn profile, I've never liked it.
That is one. What I'm going to say is there's a term I like using, I call it cred crud.
Cred crud.
Cred crud are the things that you do to hurt your credibility. So for instance,
if you're a publisher and you have spelling mistakes on your website, that's cred crud. If I look at your webpage and the copyright date is not the current date, that's cred crud.
If you had a picture of yourself that was a decade or more older, or you have a picture of your dog, that's cred crud.
Cred crud is like plaque on your teeth. When you go to the dentist and you have plaque, you're not guaranteed cavities.
But the more plaque you have, the better chance of cavities.
The more cred crud you have, the better chance that somebody does not think you're credible.
There you go.
Note to self, check the spelling on all my stuff.
I'm really bad at that.
You're not a publisher.
You are technically a publisher.
I'm an author.
So they're like, hey, did you write this way in your book, you idiot?
No, the thing is, it's for some people, that's who they are, particularly many people who are dyslexic.
Their world is so much different than others.
If that's you, then are you ready?
You're being authentic to yourself.
So being credible is being authentic, right?
And if that's authentically you, you should be you.
You threw the F-bomb before I did, I wouldn't have.
And if that's authentic you and what you do, then that's great.
That's how you show up.
There you go.
You just have to tell everybody you're dyslexic and then spell it in a dyslexic format.
I'm not sure I can spell dyslexic right now but okay yeah yeah i mean that's just
that's start different ways you've given us on what credibility is we've talked a little bit
about c-pop and clarity that now you you we we laid this kind of in the early on the show about
clarity leads into credibility do you think we've defined clarity well enough in understanding how that leads into credibility, or do we need to expand on that?
I think we should expand on that.
Okay.
Was that your hint?
Okay, Mitchell, go for it.
Yes, let's do.
All right.
You know, the thing is, I've actually never thought of a definition of clarity, so I'm going to make it up right now as we speak.
That's how we do this whole show anyway.
To me, clarity is in as brief of a way as possible.
Can you describe a concept?
Person, place, or thing, right?
So if when somebody in the place that the clarity I focus on is regarding a person and that,
and what I'm focused on in particular is I,
when somebody says,
who are you?
What are the tools we have today is they give a job title.
That's not who you are.
They give a 30 second elevator pitch.
That's not who you are.
And companies,
they give value propositions,
mission statements.
You know, none of that is as elegant with clarity as it could be.
So for me, if you're a credible human or if you have a credible company, you are of service to others.
So the definition of a CPOP, so CPOP is a representation of clarity.
CPOP stands for customer point of possibilities.
So if you're credible, you are service to others.
So I'm going to say who are you service to?
Now, there are two elements of a CPOP.
It's the who and the what.
So who are you service to?
Here's one mistake that we've been taught throughout our
entire lives, that when we talk about who we are, we need to make it as broad as possible.
I'm going to say the more narrow you could make who you are and how you focus, who you serve,
the more intriguing, A, the people you serve, that audience will find you. And there are going to be
people who are close to that audience who's going to say,
for instance, there are women I work with who serve as women.
And their CPOPs are one of my favorite right now is successful women heavy with regret.
And so a guy who's sitting with a bunch of regret has asked her more than once,
different guys, hey, can you work with men bunch of regret has asked her more than once different guys hey can you work
with men then she has a choice but that she's not limiting herself by saying successful women
okay so first part is who second part is from your client's perspective what do they perceive
as their pain point or what do they perceive as their pleasure point? 10 words or less.
Chris, can I share mine?
Yeah, go ahead.
Please.
Now, when I share mine, the natural outcome, if, are you ready, you're a referral partner
or a prospect, is to say, tell me more.
If you don't give a shit, it doesn't mean you don't give a shit about me.
It just means you don't care about that CPOP. So for me,
coaches who've created a job, not a business. So let me tell you a little bit more about what
that means. In the coaching world, there are hundreds, if not thousands of organizations
that actually train coaches how to do transformation, how to allow somebody to go from A to B.
And let's just assume they're really good at it.
There's one thing they don't train
and one thing that coaches in general do not have,
they have no idea how to do business development.
Most of their business comes from referrals
and referrals are hot or not.
So I actually have a system I call
it's my certified clarity specialist program where we not only allow the coach to have clarity,
but we also have a business development system built in so that they are continually getting
appointments and conversations. And then we assign a coach to them to actually help them
be successful. So at the end end and actually there never really is
an end they actually have a business ah so what's interesting is when you share a c-pop okay mitchell
i get the playground you plan when you then do the tell me more in a minute you actually also
you already have extra credibility because you've asked me, you're joining my playground and saying, I want to hear a little bit more about that playground.
That's what we do in the Referral Network Club is I send a 10-minute video, how to create your CPOP and tell me more when people sign up so that they get to practice that three times in three different breakout
groups with the people that they get assigned to go into breakout rooms with. And then publicly,
we'll have two or three people demonstrate how to do this. And so after an hour,
you get to practice three times, you get to meet six other people. And you also get to see how other people are sharing themselves in a minute in a way that is compelling.
That's interesting.
Definitely.
And so you can get better at pitching and selling yourself through the referral network club.
Yeah.
I don't use those words.
I'm going to say yes.
What words would you use? it's a it so you're absolutely right ah never mind i would use that those words as long as i get to define what
pitching and selling means right because a lot of times and that's what you did up front with me you
go hey mitchell what what how do you Mitchell, how do you define credibility? How do you define clarity? How do you define pitching and selling? It's making those around you aware enough of who you are and how
you serve that they then can make a decision of whether or not they want to refer you or buy from
you. Interesting. And so they can join the meetings you have. You have several meetings, looks like.
It looks like every third day.
Is that a pattern?
Every third or fourth day?
Not exactly that.
We do, as you mentioned in our dream room, you're all over the place.
But I do a lot of things, but it really is all focused around this concept of clarity.
And the Referral Network Club is once a month.
And so it's ReferralNetworkClub.com, $20 to participate.
Listen, if you go and you really don't like it, let me know and I'll either refund you or get you the next meeting for free.
The real benefit is you're going to get a 10-minute video that will help you articulate.
I'll still say pitch and sell, but what you're really doing is,
how do you articulate yourself in such a way that the person on the other side goes,
you know, I know somebody who needs you.
Imagine saying something in a minute, and the person who is paying attention goes,
I know somebody who needs you.
Can I make a recommendation?
That's the intent and goal of that there you go and then every month you host a 90 minute clarity session where you can be guided on
a clear and compelling customer point of possibility is the c-pop that articulates
your purpose in 10 words by the way thanks thanks for looking you know so i'm gonna even though
i'm gonna send you a 10-minute video,
two minutes of the video is how to construct a CPOP,
four minutes of the video is actually how to do the Tell Me More,
and the rest is sort of an intro of what to expect in the Referral Network Club.
That's the 10-minute video I share,
and it's the two and four- minute segments are from the asynchronous course that
thousands of people have taken to develop their c-pop now i said that to establish a little bit
of credibility and then to say that i don't do this on purpose i could tell you with a hundred
percent certainty that 98 of people won't get their c-pop right the first time yeah and the problem is we're so
chock full of marketing cookie cutter shit that we just incorporate that in terms of who we are
so the 90 minute session we it's a group session a number of people come and my guarantee to each
and every person who comes that that you will have a a CPOP that will make the back of your spine, the hair in the back of your spine stand up.
There you go.
That sounds like a way to get people's attention is doing that.
How can they onboard with you?
How can they reach out for this new thing that you're working on or on a lot of the other things that you do on your website you know one of the problems when you when you say to people hey what are your socials and then
people iterate a gazillion socials you never really remember any of them mitchelllevy.com
from there if you're interested in direct time on my calendar or more importantly come come to
the referral network club there's a link that clicks there. If you want a clarity session, there's a link that clicks there. I keep that
site up to date, currently creating a summit. So what's coming out soon, probably available next
month, there'll be a summit. We expect 10,000 coaches to learn what does it mean to actually,
by the way, here's what coaches don't always understand,
that they're entrepreneurs. And if you're an entrepreneur, it means you're running a business.
And so we're helping, we're not helping coaches, you know, do the transformation.
We're helping coaches transform themselves from who they think they are today to recognizing that
they're running a business and they're an entrepreneur. And so that'll be on the site probably sometime next month.
And Mitchell Levy, so it's three L's, M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L-E-V-Y.com.
And from there, you could find what you need.
There you go.
Thank you very much, Mitchell, for coming on the show, man.
We learned a lot.
We've covered a lot of ground and learned a lot of stuff.
And now you maybe look at these referrals on LinkedIn a whole lot more.
And I'm going to go to my LinkedIn and try and look at it and be like would i trust this idiot well
and i don't because i know him but you know you're you're right for the promise of your show which is
really setting high expectations there you go you know you you had a good point too if i don't see
that you put the banner in your linkedin you know, and you have a really great banner.
I really love your banner.
It's got all the data and information there, and it's got your branding.
I need to do better on that.
I'm going to interrupt slightly, and I could do this offline.
If you're ever interested, I will help you get your CPOP.
For people like you, it's very fast.
And then what you do is you put your CPOP in your banner.
Because your CPOP
is really who you're serving
and the pain point or pleasure point.
And your CPOP is bundled into
your intro of the show.
It'll be easy for you to put your arms around
that, and I'm happy to work with you on that.
I don't even know what my banner is.
I think it's the Chris Foss Show logo, but we're changing that soon we're trying to get a better
logo put out but yeah i'll have to look at mine like what's the trustability factor and and i'm
glad that it looks like linkedin has given some more power to the recommendations to value them
more because yeah it did really become like like i mean it's seen, I'm sure you've seen it too. You know,
the same stuff we get on LinkedIn that you're just like,
and I love LinkedIn people don't,
if you're not on LinkedIn and you have a master LinkedIn,
you're an idiot.
And I mean that genuinely,
I'm actually soft launching it,
but it's such a great place.
It's,
it's beautiful.
Is there a little bit of spam over there?
Yeah,
but there is on everything.
So just deal with it.
I know you were about to kick me off, and I'm just going to say I was commissioned by Reid Hoffman and Constantine Gerlich to write LinkedIn's first book.
So that's how I got to the 100,000.
I've been practicing for so long. to encourage my coaches to think about if somebody's trying to spam you with information
and they want to meet with you if you talk to them can they be referral partner or a customer
and if the answer is and even if they can't can you learn something and so i don't look at you
know some of the spam stuff it's just so easy to ignore but some of it you know deep down they're a good human
they just have been taught wrong they've been taught dubiously and and you know maybe with
a little bit of your coaching if you're a coach or a little bit with your guidance hey watch this
episode on my show it'll tell you exactly what you need to know right maybe a little bit of
guidance you'll change who they are and their life will be better as a result.
There you go.
One other way that I check for credibility in my mind,
because I'm an asshole,
is I look at how many followers you have on LinkedIn.
I don't know what you think of that,
but that's one of the things that got you in the show.
I think you have 32,000 connections.
If I go to your thing on LinkedIn,
I only see you have like 100 connections
or 500 connections or something it's like dude i don't i don't think i i think of the same way
if so for instance there's somebody i know her audience is on facebook so she has a linkedin
profile with one and you know and i'm sort of coaching, hey, listen,
sorry, one doesn't work because even though
your general audience is on Facebook,
you're talking to me, I'm on LinkedIn, you need
to fix that, right?
But if somebody claims to be
a LinkedIn expert
and then they have
350,
you know, followers on LinkedIn,
you could run as fast as you can because that's really okay.
It's funny.
But I'll look at it.
I'll look and see how privy.
You know, people like us, we're pretty successful across all social media.
TikTok is the one exception where at first I wasn't into dancing and singing.
We're still trying to master it.
I think we finally come up with a formula for it.
But even then, the real question is the target audience is really there.
YouTube is another place.
I mean, we're not really the target audience for 10 to 15-year-olds on YouTube.
But Twitter, social media, all those other places, we did really well
until one day I friended so many people on twitter
oopsie but yeah it's just one of those things where you're like you're you're either successful
or you're not or it looks at it and some of those different benchmarks that we use for testing so
the very thanks mitchell for coming on the show we really appreciate it man my my my pleasure thanks
for having me this was a ton of fun there There you go. Lots of information. I hope you enjoy. Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
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