The Hidden Key to Success: Aligning Yourself with Your Audience & Market

In this episode of 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life, Jim Krigbaum breaks down a critical—but often overlooked—factor in success: YOU

Before the right product or the right market, you need the right version of yourself to build trust, influence decisions, and create meaningful connections. Jim shares powerful real-world examples—from business meetings and sales environments to leadership and personal interactions—showing how aligning your image, communication style, and presence with your audience can make or break your success.

Learn why people trust those they relate to, how to avoid unintentionally creating barriers, and how to adapt your approach without losing authenticity. Discover practical strategies to improve leadership effectiveness, strengthen relationships, and position yourself for better results in any environment.

If you want to improve your influence, communicate with confidence, and succeed in business and life, this episode is a must-listen.

Subscribe and listen to 10 Keys to Thrive for more strategies on leadership, business growth, and personal development.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Am I the right me for the product I'm trying to sell? To the people that I'm trying to serve? Is my image what I want to portray? Those are the questions we'll answer in this session of 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life. Stay till the end and we'll give you some questions and some challenges to help you adapt and adjust and identify the right you for the market and how to apply those to real world situations.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Are you sick and tired of spinning wheels, wasting time and money in your business, but getting nowhere fast? With the 10 Keys to Thrive podcast, it's your masterclass in momentum by International Business Strategist and your host, Jim Krigbaum.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Hi, I'm Jim Kraigbaum, your mentor and host of the 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life. Today we're going to talk about ensuring that you have the right you. Because if you don't have the right you, the right product and right market don't matter. If you have the wrong you, bridges will be burned and walls will be built before you get anywhere. As a returning listener, you already know the charm dance principles. Now you're going to learn how to apply them in real life to make sure that you have the right you for the situation. Let's start out with an example. I would go to an exercise class and the exercise instructor comes in and they're truly out of shape. They're not fit. We do the warmups, and at the end of the warmups, they sit down. They're out of breath. They've pulled in muscle because they hadn't worked out. Then they tell us throughout exercise, keep pushing, go harder, as they sit there. Now, is that an image that I'm going to listen to? Am I going to trust them? Am I going to believe what they say? Now they may have all their credentials in the world. They may have a PhD in human physiology and exercise science. They may have been a trainer for a professional sports team. But as I see them and I try to instill in my mind that they're an authority, I have a conflict. How can they be an authority if they don't follow what they say? Now let's give an example of a football coach. Let's go with Pete Carroll. We've all seen sports coaches who are out of shape. But Pete Carroll's an example of a coach who motivated his players. He motivated his players to always compete. That's his slogan, is always compete. And what he did there is he was able to communicate with them because he was fit, because he was energetic. He ran onto the field with them. He celebrated with them when they scored a touchdown or had an interception or made a tackle. Pete Carroll's record at USC was 97 and 19 over nine years. He won 10 Pac-12 championships in a row and two national championships. How did he do it? He did it by motivating the student athletes. He did it by giving an example, by living what he preached. He was able to show them by always competing and always challenging yourself to improve. That's how he improved his team to become a leader in college sports. He went on to win an NFL championship with the Seattle Seahawks because he was able to motivate his players because he set the example by who he was and what he did. Let's take a look at the Met Gala. It is a premier fashion event in the world. People from all over the world spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars on gowns and dresses and their attire. It's a place to be obscure in what you wear and make a statement by being so extreme, such a fashion. It's a fashion statement. What if I show up in gym shorts and a sweaty t-shirt and my tennis shoes on? Now, unless I'm trying to make a statement that says I'm fit and I'm an athlete and this is uh the fashion that I am, it's not going to fit in. People are gonna look at me and say, Who is this? Why is he here? Did he not understand our culture? Did he not understand what it takes to fit in? Now, somebody like Jensen Wong can show up in his black leather jacket because that's who he is. That's a signature of jacket. People see him and they know who he is. So he may be able to pull it off without having a black tuxedo on and his tie and being very formal because he has a statement. He has a style. But until you get that statement in the style, you need to fit in. You need the people to understand that you understand what they understand. The best way to get what you want is to help people get what they want. And the best way to help people get what they want is for them to listen. And the best way for them to listen is for them to trust you. The best way for them to trust you is for them to relate to you. So how do you get them to relate to you? You don't get them to relate to you if you've already put up walls between you. Here's another sports example. Let's go with the Seattle Seahawks once again, and the San Francisco 49ers. The Seahawks and the 49ers have had a great rivalry for decades. Seattle fans don't like San Francisco fans when they're supporting their teams. Outside of that, they can be perfect friends, but as soon as one of them puts a jersey on for their team and the other one puts a jersey on for their team, they're enemies. So if I'm going to make a sales call in San Francisco, do I want to come in with my Seahawk hat on, my Seahawk jersey on, my Seahawk shoelaces? No, I don't. Because as soon as I walk in the room, I've told them that I may be different from they are. I've told them that I am a Seahawk. They may be San Francisco 49ers, they may not be, but the chances are pretty high that they're not going to be Seahawk fans. So do I want to tell the world in this meeting that I'm different than them? Maybe. Maybe you do. And you have to have a strategy behind that and a reason and a story behind it. But in most cases, you want to fit in. So you don't wear a sports insignia. You don't wear a team that they may be opposed to. You wear something that fits in with what they're going to wear. Here's an example from a business standpoint. If I'm a businessman, in the morning I have a meeting with the bankers and the lawyers. Meeting with the bankers and lawyers, I'm dressed up in a suit and I have a tie and nice polished shoes. In the afternoon, I have a meeting with my computer programmers and my founders. They're a different style. I don't come in with my suit and my tie because all of a sudden, who's this suit over here? He doesn't fit in. I come in, I change my clothes, and I fit in with them. I come in with the style that fits. So I understand that the two groups are different. I'm the same person. I haven't changed who I am. I can relate to both. So if I walk into the bankers' meeting with my jeans and my t-shirt, I'm not going to be taken seriously. If I walk into the programmers' meeting with my suit on, I'm not going to be taken seriously. So how do I address it? How do I understand that? Here's an example from sales and from beauty. Am I going to trust a salesperson that sells cosmetics that doesn't use them? If I go into a Nordstrom's and I try and buy cosmetics, I try and buy cologne, I try and buy eyeliner, whatever it is, and the person that's trying to sell it to me doesn't have it. Do I trust them when they say, hey, put on this lotion, it'll make your skin glow? I look at their skin and it's dry and it's it's lifeless. Am I going to trust them? And you think to yourself, you may not ask them, you're not going to say anything, but you think to yourself, why would I buy this product from them if they don't use it themselves? That's one of the things in hiring people. If you're going to hire somebody to work in the cosmetic department, you want to make sure that they use cosmetics, that they understand it. That's not discrimination, that's fitting the person, the role that people expect them to have when they're selling that product. Now let's look at the situation and apply into home. In home, you also need to fit in. You want to be the leader and you want to be part of the group, part of the pack. There's a statement that says the strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. The strength of the family is the individual. The strength of the individual is a family. So into home, you want to fit in as well. You want to understand, you want to listen, you want to try and understand what it is they want. People have always said Jim gets what Jim wants. Jim does what Jim wants. That's great because what Jim wants is for other people to be happy. I want people within my family to be happy. So I do things to move things that direction. How do I accomplish their objectives? What are their hurts? What are their pains? How do I address those? And how do I make sure that what I have to say is listened to and accepted? How do I determine what the right me is? How do I know what the market is? How do I know how I should dress? It's easy. Ask ChatGPT, ask AI, ask your cohorts, ask your workers who have been there. Ask others. Listen, do the research on your stand. What is it their culture expects? One culture is going to expect one thing and another is going to expect another. How do you match it? How do you fit in? Here's a challenge for you in the next week. When you have a Zoom call or a person a face-to-face meeting, before you go into the meeting, think about your audience. Think about what it is you'd change in your persona to fit in. What is it that you're going to do differently to make them feel like you belong? It's not just you. A good example is this background behind me. This is actually my library. But do I want to have a library behind me if I'm talking to a sports team? Maybe I want to have a picture of the stadium. If I'm a farmer, maybe I want to have a picture of my farm, if I'm a boater, a picture of my boat, a picture of my family, whatever it is that best fits that audience. Different scenes fit different audiences. You can't have the same for everything. When I have my grandkids on Facebook or on Teams, I'll have a shark behind me. Well, I can't have that shark behind me when I'm talking to people in business. When I'm dealing with my blueberry farm in Egypt, I have blueberries on the screen behind me because that's what they can relate to. All of a sudden, there's something they can relate to. How do I get it so I'm on the same level as they are? Now you've got to be careful. As a leader, it's often easy to become on the same level. As soon as you become on the same level as people, you often lose your authority. I had a situation where a friend of mine owned a company and we were at a convention, and at night at the convention, he went out and he drank with his employees. They were side by side, they were peered, they were shoulder to shoulder, which was great in some aspects. But at the end of the night, he and one of the employees got into a big argument. Everybody saw it. The next morning when they got up, the employee wasn't fired. They just moved on as if nothing had happened. But the owner of the business, the CEO, had lost his credibility. Other people it's like, well, I can disagree with them and nothing's going to happen to me. So as a leader, you have to be a leader. You have to be do things differently. You have to understand that sometimes the things that you do and the things that you decide and the actions you take are not going to be popular. You're not hired, you don't run a business to be popular. You run a business to be profitable. If you want to be popular, there's other things you can do. You need to be effective. How do you be affected? Now you don't want to be affected to the point that you're the idiot, you're the unrespected by your employees. You want to be listened to and respected. And you have to understand what it is that they want. Stay tuned, and next week we'll talk about the right product. If we got the right you, now we get the right product. Now we'll take it in that right market.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeystotrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's gift. And join us on the next episode.