The School of Greatness - 96 How to Promote Yourself and Become the Brand That Others Talk About with Dan Schawbel

Episode Date: October 1, 2014

"The more effort you put in, the more you set yourself up for being lucky." - Dan Schawbel To get a list of every resource mentioned in the show, head on over to LewisHowes.com/96

This is episode number 96 with Dan Schaubel. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. What is up, greats? Thanks so much for tuning in today. My name is Lewis Howes.

Very excited about this episode with Dan Schaubel. And I want to start out this interview with a quote. That's a quote by Theodore Roosevelt that says, Do what you can with what you have where you are. Do what you can with what you have where you are. And I thought that was an interesting quote to share today, just because I've been getting a lot of messages from younger individuals or individuals in transition who've been asking me, you know, I really want to be at the next level

and I don't know how to get there and I'm struggling and it's frustrating and it's annoying and I feel your pain. I feel the pain and the frustration, but I want you to just think about this quote, do what you can with what you have where you are. It's all going to come if you do it all in order. So allow yourself to be where you are. Don't try to get ahead of yourself and do the best you can with what you have where you are.

That's the quote of the day. Very excited about today's interview with Dan Schaubel. Fun fact about Dan. We met, I think, back in 2008. We did a details magazine photo shoot together with Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin. We'll talk about that in the interview. But he's one of the guys that I saw early on and I said, yep, he's got it. He's got the hustle.

He's got the energy. He's got the energy. He's got the passion. He's got the hard work. He's doing what it takes to get to where he wants. And he's a really interesting guy, successful New York Times bestselling author, written a couple of different books. He's been featured in pretty much any news outlet you can think of. He's been featured in. He's also written for pretty much any news outlet you can think about as's been featured in he's also written for pretty much every any news outlet you can think about as well i don't even know how he creates as much content as he does it boggles my mind sometimes i feel like he lives in just his apartment all day long writing content and doing interviews and on every tv show there is so now let's dive into this interview with the one and only Dan Schaubel.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Got my buddy Dan Schaubel on. What's up, Dan? Hey, happy to be here. Now, when did we first meet? It must have been back in 2008. Is that the list is that yeah so i'm trying to go back in time i feel like maybe connie benson introduced us like 2007 wow 2007 might have been yeah that's like what i just started getting on like social media and blogging yeah 2007 was my original year of networking and i'm like always thankful for 2007

because i spent so much time with people and giving and helping and connecting and all this stuff. And a lot of those people are obviously the rock stars of 2014, right? Because they were early on. They positioned themselves. They built niches. They built companies, et cetera. Who are some of those people? I think Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those people.

Yeah, he was. I mean, remember these two basically what I think we're both pretty good at is scouting people before they hit it big. And I think Gary was still like successful, but not like, you know, you could reach him. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, he's probably one. I mean, Seth Godin has always been accessible, but like, you know, some of my like immediate Gen Y network, like Ryan Pa, you know, I would say him like, you know, he's much more successful now, but like you know some of my like immediate gen y network like ryan pa you know i would say him like you know he's much more successful now but like we're really good friends like so i mean it's all across all levels and a lot of people who's anyone who really stayed with it and invested and really believed in what they were doing back then is uh winning winning right now correct that's great yeah it's been a fun journey you know we've uh 2007 man it's

so crazy how both of us revolved over the last uh however many years it is now yeah and i'm so weird like this too because like jenny blake for instance like we're really good friends in new york we she lives like two blocks over but we just met a few months ago and i've talked with her since probably 2007 or 8 insane it's crazy and we crazy. And we, you know, this is like this whole, I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day because I was like, funny thing. You know, I'm going to meet with Bonnie Hari, who's the food babe, right? And, you know, we, you and I, and a bunch of people in this industry, we meet people all the time online. And we meet people through like what others have created online their own personal brand their

their their success whatever may be their interest their content and we meet people online for like years and we may never meet them in person we may talk to them over skype or on the phone or just like tech we just like go right to texting but never actually meet people for for years sometimes and um you know i was meeting with Vani the other night. And it was funny. As I was telling my girlfriend, I was like, yeah, I'm really excited. I'm meeting this girl. She lands. And then I'm like, I'm going to her hotel. And we're going to dinner. And she's really awesome and exciting. And I met her on the internet. And it just, if you weren't in the, she's not in the, my girlfriend's not in the online industry at all.

So if you're not in that space, it might be a little off putting like, wait a minute, you met a girl on the internet, but you're meeting for the first time at her hotel. You're having dinner with her. She was like, really like, it was like,

what's going on. But this is kind of the world we live in. I know it's, it's crazy. But my whole thing, the way I look at it, because I'm an introvert is, is that using basically like the network i have you shouldn't be able to have this as an introvert right your network is ridiculous for being an introvert and i ever

being an introvert yes it because well an extrovert yeah but so i guess joe but but the thing is is that i under i understood early once social networks hit and and we're being popular that oh i can use this to connect to the right people, you know, without being kind of stressed out about that, like being in a social situation and walking up to some random person in a networking event. Build those relationships and then it's going to be very easy. Like I was just at this Inc. magazine event last week and, you know, I had interviewed Simon Sinek a few times. I kind of built something with him and spoke at an event with him years ago and i walked right over him it's no big deal why because we already had some sort of connection that was built in in a very uh you know online way but he already heard of me so it's just easier and that means as an introvert i'm less afraid i'm

kind of you know more open to doing something like that so using the internet to filter and find the right people and then you know in situations, it becomes so much easier. Yeah. It's kind of like a gradual connection over time as opposed to just like, hey, we're meeting in person for the first time and trying to create some type of connection. Obviously, if you're not comfortable with that, I feel very comfortable doing that. But for a lot of people that don't, this is a great way to definitely connect. And you've done, you're one of the most, the people who've done the best job

of building relationships. You know, when I look at your site, of all the people you've interviewed, what is it, like 1,300 people that you've interviewed? Of authors, entrepreneurs, executives, and celebrities since 2007, is that right?

It's crazy, I know. It's like, and I'm still going. You know, and it's one of the things, Lewis, it's like, everything's a long-term strategy. It took me nine months to get Chelsea Handler, three and a half years to get Donald Trump. I'm willing to wait, be patient. When people say no, to me that means wait six months, wait a year, go again. I keep going. I have Eric Schmidt coming up. I'm interviewing him and I'm actually seeing

Colbert interview him a few days after I interview him, which is very interesting. And, uh, but I've been working on trying to interview him for like a few years too. Crazy man. Who, you know, you've interviewed all these different people, but that's not really like your business is, you know, you don't want to be someone to interview someone, you're not like a show host, but why do you connect with people to interview them first for your business or for what you want to create in your business world? I think really at the foundation, obviously being interested in other people's works. And a lot of these are self-selected. To me, even though there's so many, it's still not random. There are a lot of people you can interview in the world.

For me, it's how do I build such a network? It's almost the reason why I feel like when I was first starting off, I had Personal Branding Magazine, Personal Branding TV. I had an events business. I had two blogs. I'm doing a million things. Everything. And a full-time job. And you were writing for 100 publications.

Every news outlet you were writing for, right? Part of my thought process is, how do I do so many things? So if I'm in situations, I can connect and relate to everyone, everyone's business. If you say, oh, I know someone, I'm like, oh, I interviewed him or I know her. It creates a situation where it enables me to, you know, build bridges faster and bridges lead to sales and business and new opportunities. It's interesting you say that because I feel like I can relate to everyone, anyone I meet. I feel like there's some thing I can find out about them where I'm like, okay, yeah, I can relate to that. Or I've done that before. I know someone who's done that, or I know that person in that industry. It's because we do so many different things. And some people may say, you know, you spread yourself too thin, Dan, you're,

you're doing too much. But I like how you said that there, uh, that you really can build a bridge with everyone and it generates more sales for you. And whenever someone asks me, you know, what do you do? And I'm sure you get this a lot, Dan. It's like, what do you do? What, you know, and it's really hard for me to say, but I love, I love figuring out what they are up to first. Cause then I can respond with a bridge that connects what I have done or one of the 20 things that I'm doing to what they're doing. Exactly. Right.

Do you do that too? So if you're working with an author who's a book author, you'll be like, well, I'm an author as well. Yeah. I mean, I think relatability is interesting too. For me, it's like everything connects. So the second I published the Promote Yourself and the first book was Me 2.0, I realized what I had done. And I, and I, it just hit me is that I really have this overall like vision, vision and mission in life that I can connect everything to. And really what it is, is I'm following my generation from college to CEO.

So me 2.0, even though, you know, the folks on personal branding, et cetera, it's really a career book that helps you go from college to first job, promote yourself. It's really first job to management. And then eventually the next book is management to executive level. So in terms of overall mission, I do that. And then in order to help millennials do that, I have to speak at companies in order to help them improve their cultures and management styles in order to appeal to these upcoming generations. So from a business standpoint, it's all for millennials as they grow, because I'm a millennial, I'm growing with them. So I'm retaining the same audience. So it's easier to sell.

And then most of my sales come from B2B. But B2B, the objective is to help companies better work with these millennials so they become more successful, which connects to the main vision. I like that. Now, when you were starting out learning about personal branding and branding in general, just as a young, you just graduated college, you're at your first job, you started kind of doing all this stuff. Why were you so interested in personal branding? And what does

it what does actually mean? What does a brand mean? Like, what's the definition of a brand mean to you? Great question. So for me, like a lot of this, as you can tell, has been pretty natural. It's not like I'm faking it or anything. And when I was starting off, you know, I kind of I knew it's going to be hard to graduate with a job in marketing even back then and obviously it's harder now and so i was like what can i do and so like even in even you know i've been working since i was 13 i was creating personal websites when i was like in middle school i had my first internship in high school i started my first business in college i had seven other internships in college so like i was like learning how to do this and how I would get these opportunities is I had a website, I had a business

card. You know, I became really good at like graphic design and web development back then. Obviously I don't do that really anymore, but I specialized in certain things for a specific audience and that was people in my neighborhood. And from there, you know, I kind of learned a lot of skills from how do I present myself. I used to bring an interview. I would bring a CD portfolio, and it ages me to say that. I just actually just turned 31 on Sunday. Congrats.

And no one knows what CDs are who are young, you know, Gen Zers now. And, you know, I bring it, and just remember, and again, this was all testing. I didn't know what was going to work, but I would go into interviews. I'd be like, you know, here's a strategic portfolio to show that everything I'm talking about, I've actually done before and here are case studies and here's my business card and the business card has my website. So basically the way in which I presented myself without 100% knowing the reaction back then in early college years was how I differentiated myself.

No one else had done that. And they would say, oh, this CD is a keeper. And I was like, that was one of the first things that hit me. Like, I'm really onto something here. This is why I keep getting these internships. This is why everyone wants to mentor me and support me. It's because they realize that I'm taking this seriously. I'm practicing marketing by doing it kind of for myself in a sense.

But it really wasn't until I tried to get a job when I graduated that branding hit me in a big way. This was the first of two. And then I'll tell you the other one. The first one was trying to get a job when I graduate. My resume is kind of of it's like two pages it's like eight it's eight internships seven leadership positions on campus my own business has so much stuff like um that i worked hard for uh but because i was afraid of networking because i didn't have these online tools back then um i kind of avoided it and it took me eight months, but I started really early to get a job when I graduated at EMC Corporation.

I met 15 people for three different positions and got one of the positions. And during that last interview, it kind of changed my view of branding and the importance of it and personal branding. They were looking at my resume. I had internships at like Reebok and some of these a little bit more brand name companies and then internships that companies you never heard of before. And the companies you've never heard of before, I got so much experience with them. But at Reebok, if you're like a marketing intern, you're not doing it. It's all admin. I mean, I don't care what anyone says. It's nothing, right? You have to be like a manager in order to do work that is cool there.

That's just kind of retail, I guess. But then – but they always – they looked at Reebok. They were scanning the resume. I could see their eyes land on Reebok and they're like, oh, you worked at Reebok. And to me, to me, that was like, wow, brands matter. Brands open doors. Brands create opportunities. And that was like the aha moment is like, wow, pay this is this something here right and and then and then i think what you see throughout my whole career as you know as you look at like my bio and everything that i put out

everything i do every sentence is associated with some sort of brand everything why because if you don't know me or don't trust me, you know someone of these other brands. And through the association of those brands, my brand is more trusted, so you might want to work with me. That's the entire logic. That's why I work with so many different companies, especially the Fortune 1000. I want to work with people you know, so it's easier for me to network and build upon all of that. And, you know, I'm so happy I worked at a Fortune 200 company when I first started because I can leverage that for the rest of my life. People don't understand the long-term play. I always, and Gary, you know, Vaynerchuk talked

about this a lot. Like, I'm obsessed with this. You are too. It's like, let me do things today. I know they'll pay off in 10 years and I'm fine with that. I don't care because I know this is my trajectory for, till I can't like move anymore. And so, you know, I'll make the investment day in and day out. I'll do things that might not be smart. I don't, let me just do it. And I always want to be doing like every, I want to have like a portfolio of things that I really enjoy. So I don't get bored. So if I only do one thing, I'm bored, hands down. And because everything I do sort of relates to everything. It's not like random. It's not like I have a car blog. Even though I like cars, I don't have that. Everything is interconnected. So personal branding and workplace trends and generations, everything is really connected.

And so everything I do, in a sense, supports everything else I do. And really, the other thing that was huge was when I started the blog in 2006, then turned into, it's called Driven to Succeed. That was the first version. And then Personal Branding Blog after I read Tom Peter's Brand Called You article. And that article for the cover, that changed Fast Company Magazine's trajectory. And now it's like, you know, there's 800,000 print subscribers. I mean, it's huge. And the article said, you have to be the chief marketing officer for the brand called you.

At the end of the day, you know, success lies in your hands. You have to be the CEO of me, Inc. And then there's one other part of the article that stood out to me, probably more than most people. The smartest people, he said, are the ones

that create a unique position in their companies. What's crazy is that hit me and almost accidentally basically building the blog, doing … I had a magazine, I blogged 10, 12 times a week. I did a million things. I had a Six Sigma project. I was working over 100 hours a week. I used to call my apartment the cave. I didn't see my project. I was working over a hundred hours a week. I used to call my, my apartment, like the cave. I didn't see my friends. Like that was, that was, I was locked in writing the book. Like there's so much going on. And, and so perfect, perfect for an introvert.

Yeah. And, and so like after six months of all the work, um, fast company profiled me and it was actually 10 years to the day when Tom Peters' article originally came out. The article basically showed that I was doing all this outside of work, kind of building my personal brand by doing all this stuff around personal branding. Then PR got wind of it because it mentioned that I worked at EMC. They sent me to a vice president, and I got to co-create the first social media position potentially ever in a Fortune 200 company.

I remember this. Maybe there's a few others, but it was, this is 2007. This is way, we're in 2014. I remember you getting this gig. Yeah. And when I got the gig, my, here's the transformation. It went from, you know, Hey, you know, Jason, who was my boss before I got that new, my second boss at EMC.

And I'm like, Oh, like, you know, what do you need me to do today? Two, you know, Dan, we're working on this project. You know, how can we use social media to make this cooler or better? And I'm like, wow, this is transformational because now I'm the expert in my company. I fulfilled sort of everything that Tom Peters had talked about. And I became my own kind of case study and improved everything that I was doing. And it was just like this really, really cool moment because I mean, literally my boss, when he, when he saw my second boss, when he saw that article in fast company, that was like, it was like flying around the company. And this is a 45,000 person company worldwide. And, and he got, he literally cried at work because it was my, my hobby. It wasn't like, I wasn't really thinking that this was going to turn into a huge business or anything like

that. And he got it. He could not believe. And when you're first starting out a company, to even have a meeting where the vice president calls you in at a company like that, it's ridiculous. And so I got to create my own position. They didn't even have the job description for it. In the system, it actually had to say PR specialist because it was so new that it didn't

have anything more to do with it. Right. So I was in the early days of corporate social media, which was interesting. And then, you know, I kept building, sacrificing nights and weekends and working and working and growing. And, you know, obviously getting that new position inspired me to point out the first book, hustled for it, as you know, rejected by 70 out of 70 agents and two publishers, got it on my own, which is probably like impossible to do now. I

mean, that publisher doesn't even publish anymore. And then, you know, I listened to David Meerman Scott, who said, you know, the publishers aren't going to do anything for you. You're on your own. You make it happen. You do the whole marketing. And I did the whole program for that. And that, you know, you can compare that to today's book launch. And that book launch was seen by more people because it was less noise. Yeah. So like, literally, people know me for that book over the new book, even though this one had so much more firepower under it. The other one, it was much easier to break through back then. I was on Mashable. They did a book review on Mashable and people saw that. Now, they publish 400 articles a day on Mashable. Right. They won't see it. Yeah. Then for the second book, as you know the story,

three and a half years, fired two agents, hired four consultants, three book proposals, barely got it. I always felt like the underdog, to be honest, clearly. And I created this huge marketing plan. I just worked so hard. I did the campaign from December 2012. Book came out September 3rd of last year. Marketed the heck out of this thing. Asked for all the favors, as we talk about, like helping out everyone and then getting help.

And what's crazy is I got the book deal for two other reasons, which I typically forget to talk about, is one is I wanted to challenge myself. I had never done primary research before. It was always secondary. So I was like, I got to get a company to sponsor this. So I pitched 120 companies. 119 said no.

American Express said yes so I thought that and then that was right and I was like I was like dying because my agent was like Dan you're gonna get the sponsored these was December and he wanted to go out with it like January 2nd to publishers and like art don't believe me I'll get this I'll get this and I got it and like it was so ridiculous when I got it was amazing and then and then I actually had this other uh study that I had launched that was launching in January too and this was like my first foray I mean the Amex study didn't come out until last year but this

was my first study that comes out and I like invest completely in this thing it was my second biggest launch to date you know 71 national media outlets it was so big it basically went viral and then and then the publisher basically you know so it was you know all the publishers dropped out and it was just saint martin's and they're like oh we kind of like this but we're not 100 sure and then bam that even with the amex sponsoring and everything and then boom the the the basically i do that huge launch and then the publisher's like okay we trust him he can sell this thing and it was like ridiculous the timing of all of that like happening together like if i got rejected this time around

like and had to do like another year of trying to get it i would have died but it happened and then still like i'm sort of being bad against because it's it's a paperback and then i just hustle like crazy on like unbelievable amounts of hours i put into this thing uh my database you should see my database of like people i had to contact a hundred like thousands maybe uh i pitched 650 media outlets for this thing wow um and and and so the book comes out and I also got it. Ernst and Young to sponsor my book launch and that I got rejected for another like 80 companies to do that.

And so like they sponsored that. And so now I have like Amex or why now I'm feeling a little bit, a little bit better. Um, and then the book comes out and I sell like 6,500 copies the first week. And then the results come in the week. So basically the second week was when my book launch happened in New York. And then the results came out the next day, New York Times, Wall Street Journalist.

I didn't pay anyone off. I did the whole thing on my own. And then I turned 30. It was the most ridiculous week ever. Congrats, man. Thanks then I turned 30. It was the most ridiculous week ever. Congrats, man. That's awesome. And you definitely wouldn't have been able to do that without putting the time, the energy, and building your brand and your credibility, creating all this content, all this information for years since 2006. There's no way that would have just happened

if you wanted to do a book and just start selling it. All those things happen because you put in the hours, you put in the work, the connections, the relationship, and you gave and gave and gave. That's what I took away from that story you just shared. And I wanted to talk about, I wanted to keep diving into this branding topic because I'm seeing the value of having my own brand grow and grow and the opportunities that come my way. You know, you mentioned once you have this brand, these opportunities start coming your way

and you would never would've got the book deal. If you didn't have the brand, you never would've got the position at the job. If you wouldn't have the brand, all those different things. And you know, I remember, you remember the, uh, the details magazine shoot we did. Oh my God. That was hilarious withh godin and he wouldn't do he wouldn't hold on the microphones that's what i remember most about it yeah that was awesome uh that was pretty badass it was like i'm so successful that i'm not doing what you tell me my own rules yeah it was amazing so just recap what happened you know we're in the middle of times square and um it's 2009 right 2009 uh yeah it's december 2009 december 2009 and i'll tell the whole story i remember getting an email from i think his name is simon yep that's

it and i remember getting an email from him saying hey lewis i'm doing a feature in details magazine um and tim ferris we're going to be featuring Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Dan Schaubel, and I want to feature you as well. And I remember being like, and I just started and kind of like, I think I wrote my, when did I write my LinkedIn book? I think it was 2009, I guess, like earlier that year. But I remember just kind of like getting into the space and really not doing that much. Like I literally just got in like a year prior to like creating anything and was pretty much faking until I made it with everything, just creating content, adding value, going to events, creating events, doing a lot of stuff

that you talked about, Dan. But I remember being like, I'm not really that well known of a name. I haven't really done anything. I'm still not really making any money. I haven't built a business yet, but I'm creating. And I remember getting this email and being like, yes, whatever you need, let me know. I'm happy to do the interview. I'm happy to be out in New York. And so we do the interview. We go out to New York. We do the thing. I'll talk about that in a second. But afterwards, I just emailed him. I didn't want to jinx it before. So after the thing ran, I just said, hey, thanks so much for interviewing me and including me in the magazine. It's great. It was like this two-page spread of us.

And I said, by the way, how did you hear about me in the first place? And he goes, someone influential that I follow, I forget who it was now, retweeted one of your posts. And I went to your website. And you had a great looking site. Your brand looks so quality. And I noticed that Inc and Fast Company and Fox Business and Entrepreneur Magazine had featured you because I saw the logos on the top of your site, right? And he said, because of that, I realized that you'd be good enough for Details Magazine because your brand was quality enough and because these other people had already featured

you. So it was trustworthy for me enough to want to interview you. And it was something along those lines. I'm just kind of regurgitating what I remember. But I remember at that point realizing, holy crap, the power of building your personal brand and doing exactly what you just said. This may seem simple or you may think it doesn't make any sense or it doesn't really work by having these,

the credibility on your website of where you've been featured, of who is talking about you. You know, Dan has a great example. If you go to dan shaw bell.com, check out his about page. It's like all the places he's been featured, every media that says something about him,

like how he's the guru in every space, like all the top names, you featured, every media that says something about him, like how he's the guru in every space, like all the top names, you see them talking about him. And, you know, that gives him credibility. It gives him a lot of equity for what he's created. So that's where I really saw the value of this. And I know you've interviewed Grant Cardone, right? Yeah, he's great. He's obviously very good at this too. Yeah, he is amazing at it. And I remember asking him a asking him a question i said you know if there's one thing that you could do if you could go back to when you're like you know 25 or 30 again because i think he's in his late 40s or maybe early 50s even i'm not even sure um i was like what would you do differently he was like i would invest more in my brand he was like i would spend as much money on my brand as possible

and i was just like that's a really interesting concept because I really see the value of having a powerful brand. You can leverage it at any time, right? Decisions that I've made earlier on, I think myself. So a lot of people are like, I get asked a lot of questions and I'm always like, I am so thankful that I put the work in earlier on. All those hours, all of that, because it's not that my life's easier now, it's that I have more opportunities. So if something goes wrong, you know,

I'm not as stressed out, you know. It creates a foundation where, you know, opportunities are created for you. And more of a pull rather than a push, meaning that, you know, I find it a little bit less of me saying, hey, let's do this, and more of people coming to me asking for my advice. And so the only way to do that is obviously to build and build and build, and it takes time.

And most people aren't willing to put the time in, but basically what I think a career is accumulation of the decisions you make on a daily basis. Right. And so everything accumulates. You know, the example I like to give is I'm still getting traffic from a Mashable article I wrote back in 2008. No way. Yeah. Jeez. And that's the point is like the more you do, the more effort you put in, the more you set yourself up for being lucky.

So like position yourself so you have a shot at being lucky. Me, I have a shot now of other crazy things happening because I've done enough. My body of work kind of speaks for itself at this point. But again, my life is still not, it's not going to be easy now because I want, I want to keep upping my game. And to do that, it's going to be, it's going to be that much harder. So like, I don't think I'm guaranteed another book. Like I don't, who knows what's how things are going to play out. Right. Um, the only thing is, is that, um, now I have more experience in other areas. I'm learning.

I'm meeting even more people. I'm kind of challenging myself. And I think that's where everyone should kind of be in a position for. It's like you don't want to get bored. You don't want to be replaceable. You have to keep on. This is the tough part. And we just talked about it.

You have to reinvent yourself. I have to keep on. I can't be the personal branding guy for life. I can't be the Gen Y workplace guy for life. I have to keep reinventing myself so that I stay relevant to the marketplace and people want to keep hiring me. Yeah. It's interesting. We were talking about this before we started the interview is that we're always thinking a couple of years ahead, even though we may not be creating or working for the goal we want to have in two or three years. It's like we're thinking about it. We're creating the relationships that could support that when it comes. And I'll give you

an example really quickly about, about my experience is, you know, I was creating all these social media courses for a long time. And I really realized after about four years, it done a lot for my business. My brand blew up because of it. You know, I was generating millions in sales every year for the, for our company. And it was awesome. But then there was a point where I was like, I don't really feel like talking about this anymore. And it's not what I'm excited about. And I was like, okay, I need to reposition myself. And it was kind of scary because I've been known as like this LinkedIn guy for a while and then the webinar guy. And I was like, man, but what am I really excited about? What am I really passionate about? And it's

connecting with inspiring people and sharing their message. And so that's where the School of Greatness came about. And I've been able to evolve into kind of reinventing that. But without that brand in the first place, without creating that brand in the first place, I don't think I'm going to be able to do it as easily. But talking like what you said, like really setting yourself up to get lucky and to have that equity that you can turn it on whenever for a new project or whatever it may be. Now, what are some things, whether you have a job, you're an entrepreneur, you want to get a new job,

you want to start something on your own on the side, what are some things that you say would be necessary for people to really start the foundation for building a powerful brand in today? Not five years ago, but like right now and knowing what's going to be happening in the next few years, what are some things that anyone could do in any position to set themselves up for success for two years down the line, five years down the line because they're building their brand now?

Yeah. So I think it comes back to pitching, finding a niche audience to serve and a specific expertise that you think is going to become more valuable. For me, I knew personal branding, especially using social networks was going to become more important because more and more people are going to use social networks every year. Right. And it's going to be harder to stand out. And so, like, it's almost like, you know, again, like, you have to think like an entrepreneur. Like, how do you fit in the marketplace? What are your strengths? What audience is underserved?

How can you serve them? And, you know, the aftermath of doing all of that is you get what I call personal brand statements. So, like, what are you an expert at and what audience do you serve? And so, like, knowing your audience is really, really important. And, you know, choosing the right level of expertise is good and you can always become better at something. So like for me, it's not like, you know, I randomly became an expert at, you know, millennials or personal branding or anything like that. It's constant effort to learn as much as possible, to network the right people, to read the right books, to do the right research, to read other people's research. Like it's a, it's a process. And actually my process in the

morning works pretty well. Basically what I do is I carve out an hour in the morning when I wake up, and I review all my, and I still do it, RSS feeds. So I see what's going on in my world. That's what I tell myself in the morning. What is going on in my world? I look at all the articles. I read the best articles. I bookmark those articles. And now, whenever I'm on a call, whatever I'm doing throughout the day,

I'm that much more relevant and smarter. That's interesting because I actually don't look at the news ever. And maybe it's something I should do. People were talking about the Ray Rice incident recently. And I was like, I thought that was six months ago, but I guess it resurfaced. And then I started watching videos of it. And then they were talking about the celebrities that all got hacked and they're like nude photos or something and I was like I had no clue this was happening and for me uh I see the value of having like your pull your finger on the pulse and knowing what's happening but I also don't like to get too distracted and I like to stay focused for what I'm up to but it sounds like you've got a pretty good sense of it where you just check it briefly in the morning and then you go and create the rest of the day as opposed to be enamored by it, right?

Exactly. So it's basically because my whole business is based on relevancy and reading and research and all of this. And so if I want to sustain a good value proposition to my audience, the secret is to make reading and learning part of every single day of my life. It's the only way I'm going to be able to pull this off and to be taken seriously. And I think everything, again, accumulates. So like, let's say I'm, you know, on TV and CBC, I can not only just talk about the study that just came out that I worked on, but I can be like, oh, and this compares to what I've seen in the past. And like, I can build a better story. It's like, I just did the study on Gen Z globally. It's like, I can now teach millennials how to manage Gen Z. Like I can

make, I can do a lot more because I'm putting all of these pieces together and it just reiterates, you know, my expertise. I'm allowed to position myself like next year. You're going to you're going to just see, you know, I'm going to go probably focus more on workplace trends. And I wouldn't be able to focus on workplace trends, really, unless I had all of these other niches accounted for. That gives me credibility to speak at the higher level now. So it's a long journey for for me i like that i've

done a lot of the consulting and the research and all this stuff over the past few years because now you know when i when i create a scalable model um i already have everything right right now and it's going to already be taken seriously and i have the connections in the media and i have the corporate people who are into like i have everything there but i wouldn't have it there if i didn't have all of this journey accounted for over the past eight plus years. What about someone coming out of college right now? Do you feel like – what are some things they should really be focusing on, I guess? Because from what I remember in college, I didn't learn anything about how to build a business, even if I was in business classes.

And I didn't learn anything about how to get a job. So let's focus more on someone who wants to kind of like start their own thing. Maybe they want to get a job to get some skills to then eventually start their own thing. What's something that they should be focusing on? What's something you think they really need to do that they don't teach you in school? That's a great question. So as you know, and I'm sure we're on the same page, the education system is not what it should be. And it's not like we're the only people complaining about it. I've done research on it, and it's too many. $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. 40% of millennials are unemployed when they graduate. There's just

so many problems. 21 million graduates are living with their parents when they graduate. 21 million? 21 million. Yeah, it's huge. There's so many problems right now. And mainly what it comes down to is this skills gap. So what's really interesting is you have three people competing for every job in America right now, but there's 4.7 million job openings. And that skills gap has been consistent over the past two months, and it's widened over the past four months. And really the opportunity is in STEM, so science, technology, engineering, math. And basically the schools, they keep pumping out these liberal arts majors who graduate

into not having jobs. We did a study on this that kind of, it should have gone viral, but I mean, it did well. And we found that only 2% of companies nationwide are hiring liberal arts majors. They want business majors. They want engineering majors. They just, it's just not, the education system is not matched up and aligned to corporate America right now

where the opportunities are. And that's truly why it's broken. And I'm not saying, you know, you shouldn't take writing in college. I think you should. But I think that there needs to be some sort of business component or entrepreneur component

or technical component or something to every major that you select. You have to be like that because otherwise companies are hurting. They can't fill those positions. And so they're less effective. And then students are unemployed. And it's just a whole thing's a mess because corporations and the education system are not aligned like they should. And they can fix this. The problem is that the school system is so political. It's more political than any company you could ever want to work for. I sell into schools sometimes too, and it's so hard.

But if you got like the dean of a school together with, or the head of the curriculum for a school together with the head of HR at a company, or the companies that recruited that school, and then you connect them both together, then you can create a cooperative class or curriculum that's going to help everyone. And it's going to be good for the companies because the company is going to help their pipeline. It's going to be good for the schools because their graduates are going to get jobs. It's going to be good for the schools because their graduates are going to get jobs. It's going to be good for the students because obviously they get jobs.

But to make that happen, sadly, it sounds obvious, right? It sounds, oh, wow, that makes sense. But then to make it happen is hard because of the politics, and it's too bad. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I want to get a couple more questions in before we wrap it up. I want to get a couple more questions in before we wrap it up. One of them is what individuals and companies do you believe have the best brands out there right now that are just really impressed with?

So maybe a few individuals and then also a couple of brands. Okay. So let's see. That's a great question. And why? Why do you think they have the best brands? No, I think, you who I like, and you like him too, we're part of similar networks, James Altucher. I think he's, I listen to him every day. I always listen to him.

Why? It's because I know it's unfiltered. I know he's had unlimited experiences. I know I'm getting the most unfiltered things that you could possibly get. I mean, he's like, sometimes he has his wife on there. And I'm always nervous that he's going to say something that's going to upset her on the show. It's really funny. But no, I think he's like, he's a rock star.

I mean, he's built an incredible following. He sold 200,000 copies of his last book. I mean, it's just, it's very impressive, especially in this climate, this economy. So I think he's great. Obviously, Tim Ferriss is cool. I like Ryan Holiday. We have a lot of mutual connections, of course. I think for brands…

Before you go on the brands, what is it that those three have in common or those four have in common? Not afraid. They're not afraid. Yeah. common are those four i'm a common uh not afraid they're not afraid yeah they're gonna just they're gonna tell you what not what you want to hear always but what is important to hear from their research and perspectives uh i mean you know take ryan holiday's book i mean he's basically pulling up the cordon curtain and media like some people know what's going on but he's actually telling the world hey this is actually what's going on for instance for's actually telling the world, Hey, this is actually what's going on. For instance, for, for Tim Ferriss, he's like, you know, a lot of, you get a lot of this like health information and career advice. Well, I want to, I want you to maybe think of things

differently and here's why, and here's some examples. Okay. I like that. Um, and the brand side of things and the brands, um, you think what what zappos is doing and i know you hear this so many times it's kind of annoying to even say it but what they're doing two things that are really interesting i'm not just saying it for the typical things that they do with social networks i'm saying because what they're doing is there's you know obviously they're known for corporate culture which is really important for the younger generations. But to take that a step further, you can't really apply for a job. You have to be part of their social like community. And then if you show interest in that community, then you might get selected for an interview. That's interesting to me,

right? I don't know how scalable it is, but it's interesting because it's like, let's hire for personality fit. And in my research, the number one thing that companies are hiring for now is cultural fit. And then the number one thing, so you'll find this interesting. So for college recruiters looking to hire, you know, graduates, recent graduates, the number one thing they look for is attitude. for managers who are looking to promote people in their organization, the number, I think it's number two thing that they look for is positive attitude. Right?

It's crazy, but that just shows the importance of hiring for cultural fit, you know, following the personalities, because if they get along with the team, if they network with everyone, then, you know, great things will happen. And so that to me is great, because a lot of people are like, oh, I'll just apply for 1,400 jobs and hopefully someone says yes, right? I'm more about, okay, you can apply for like 400 jobs if you want, but make them the jobs that you'd actually want to have in the companies you're interested in. Because otherwise, you're competing against people who really want the jobs and you have no shot. Yeah, I like that. Interesting. Last couple of questions.

One is, what are you most grateful for recently? Ooh, okay. I think I'm grateful for the fact that I'm able to live in New York, to be honest. I never thought I'd ever end up here. And just to like, just to kind of be here, like everyone always complains aboutains about their rent and how if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. It's kind of cool that I'm able to live here. And the other thing that I think is really awesome is when you're growing up, I don't know if it's for you, but my parents paid for a lot. If we weren't out to dinner, I'm not making money when I was really, really young.

And my parents would pay and whatever. And now I don't let them pay for anything and i think that's awesome you don't have to pay for anything no i don't let them pay oh gotcha gotcha so it's almost like it's like a cycle it's like okay it's almost like my and they kind of get they still want to pay for things but i'm like you know it's almost like my thanks mom and dad for kind of investing me forever and now it's my turn almost and that's kind of cool like you know we talked to ramit ramit like takes you know parents on like these epic trips uh and and i think that's really cool is that it's like returning the favor you know working really hard and then returning the favor yeah i like that awesome well i want everyone to

go and before we do the last question i want everyone to make sure to check out danshawbell.com, personalbrandingblog.com, and also the book, Promote Yourself, The New Rules for Career Success. But Dan's just got a lot of great content and information in general. So just make sure to follow him, check out his information, and check out the book if you're looking to get a new career and learn about branding and yourself inside the workforce. The final question of the podcast is, what is your definition of greatness? You know, being the best at what you do for a specific audience. And that connects back to personal branding and kind of my way of thinking of the world is if you're going to choose something, try and be the best at it. Because if you don't, you kind of get the scraps, you know,

it's it becomes really hard to compete. I love it. Dan Chabelle, thanks so much for coming on, man. I appreciate you. Nope, no problem. I appreciate you as well. Thanks. There it is. Great. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you did, make sure to go head back to the show notes over at lewishouse.com slash 96. lewishouse.com slash 96 to get all of the notes, the links, where you can find Dan, his websites, his books, all those different things back at lewishouse.com slash 96. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review over on iTunes and leave a comment over on

the blog. Share it with a friend. And I would love to connect with you guys. So share with a friend, post a picture on Instagram. Let me know where you're listening to this. Again, reach out to me in the way that you feel works best for you, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, let me know where you're listening to this. Again, reach out to me in the way that you feel works best for you, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever it may be. I want to see where you guys are listening to the show and see what you're up to. So thank you guys so much for being amazing listeners, for diving in. And we've got some big, big guests coming on in the next couple weeks,

some huge, awesome interviews that I am pumped. I'm so pumped because it's those interviews where I was like, man, I just want to go longer and longer and longer because I didn't know how to cut it off. They were so entertaining and inspiring. And yes, juicy stuff coming ahead. So thank you guys so much. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music