Why Understanding Your Audience's Pain Point is the Secret to Digital Success [Mitchell Levy Interview]

Today's special guest is Mitchell Levy, global authority on credibility and the author of the brand new book Credibility Nation. In this episode Mitchell breaks down why understanding your customer's pain point is the key to success in digital and social media, specifically:

• Why whatever you do in digital and social media, your messaging should be focused on your audience and not yourself
• How to create an audience-centric mindset
• How to revise your digital and social media marketing strategy with your audience in mind

Key Highlights

[02:59] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Mitchell Levy

[04:58] Who is Mitchell?

[06:46] Understanding the Area of Audience Pain Point

[10:17] Value Proposition

[11:46] Examples of Brands that Articulates Their CPOP

[15:54] How to Put Your Mission Statement Into Your Branding

[17:22] What is CPOP?

[18:25] The Three-Step Process to CPOP

[22:53] How Mitchell Recommends His Listeners to Foster An Audience Centric Mindset

[26:21] The Process of Creating An Audience-Centric Mindset

[27:56] Mitchell's Recommendation on Revising Your Marketing Strategy to Align to Customer-Centric View

[31:36] How Does the Audience-Centric View Apply to Your Brand's Credibility?

[33:19] The Credibility Nation Book

[36:40] Connect with Mitchell

Notable Quotes

• Credibility is not a word, it is a way of being. And if you're not credible, you're dubious. And so the question you always want to ask yourself is do people perceive you as credible or dubious credibility.
• If you can't come across as somebody who wants to serve others, if you can't come across as somebody who truly understands what it is your client base your prospects base is looking for, and it doesn't come across from an authority perspective, somebody else will. 
• In today's world, so much of our business comes from us from word of mouth marketing. And if somebody your who knows you and remembers your see pop, when they went across one of their friends, they want to be supportive.
• The process of creating an audience-centric mindset begins with defining that customer point of pain and really continuing to internalize it, share it, optimize it, bounce it off other people.
• Credibility is being known, being likable, and being trustworthy. And by being known, it's not that I know of you, it's that I know your intent, your commitment, your desire to serve others, your integrity.
• Position yourself better before the competitors come along and take things away because what they're going to do is they want to hear they actually want to hear from your true clients what their pain point was and what you helped solve.

Reference Links for Mitchell Levy:

Mitchell Levy's Website: https://mitchelllevy.com/

Credibility Nation on Amazon: https://amzn.to/37FMegx [affiliate]

Credibility Nation Memberships: https://lifelonglearning.credibilitynation.com/

Learn More:

• Join My Digital First Mastermind: https://nealschaffer.com/membership/
• Learn about My Fractional CMO Consulting Services: https://nealschaffer.com/cmo
• Download My Free Ebooks Here: https://nealschaffer.com/freebies/
• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/nealschaffer
• All My Podcast Show Notes: https://podcast.nealschaffer.com

Transcript

Neal Schaffer: 0:00

Are you struggling to connect with your potential customers in digital and social media? Have you ever taken a look at your own content on your profile and that you publish and thought about it from your potential customers point of view, and more importantly, from your audience's pain point perspective, we're going to talk all about that to help you better connect with your target customer in social media. On this week's episode of the maximize your social influence podcast. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number 184 of the maximize your social influence Podcast. I'm coming to you today, as I did with episode number 183. From my self quarantine hotel room in Tokyo, Japan. And I must say, walking outside, with the exception that everybody is wearing a mask. And there are no foreign tourists here because they are prohibited from entering the country. Japan is pretty much back to normal people are going out to restaurants eating inside shopping, I see families out and about. And it's good to see that once we get the Coronavirus numbers in terms of new people they get infected every day, we can get this under control and open up our economy. Currently in Japan, the number is like less than 1000 new cases per day, which is quite envious for my own United States where we recently hit 80,000. But hopefully things will get better in the not so distant future. On another note, I posted about this today on my personal Facebook. But it always seems that when I'm away on a business trip, there's always these emergencies that require me to physically be at home. I guess you call this Murphy's Law. I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you. But literally in the middle of the night I get a call from my wife. And there is a wildfire that is getting very close to our house. And we were informed along with. I think right now it's 90,000 other homes in Irvine, California to evacuate. So as it stands, I just got this phone call few hours ago, my wife just checked into a local hotel with my kids, everybody is safe. So far, the fires has not touched our house. But obviously, you never know what life deals you you just you got to roll with the punches, right? And you got to learn what you can from the experience and move on. Right. But it's just another precious reminder of really making the most out of every day, right. So with that in mind, I want to help you make the most out of your day listening to my podcast. So today I have a very special interview with Michel Lavie Michel is a serial author, I guess you could call him a serial entrepreneur, I'm sorry, that's my wife actually texted me information as we speak here. And he is the author of the recent book called credibility nation. This book literally just came out a few weeks ago, I'm currently reading it, I love it, we're going to be talking a lot about that. But before we talk about credibility, we're going to talk all about really looking at things from the other side of the table, we often get so focused on promoting our own business and ourselves that we forget all about the fact that if we want to connect with people, it has to be about them, and how we can help them. And I think Mitchell's message and his advice is really going to help us just do a sink, right? Do a little audit, do a sync and make sure that we have the right messaging, not only in all of our messages in social media, but also on our social media and website profile. So without further ado, here's the interview with Mitchell Levy. Oh, nope, that's Mitchell Levy. And I made the mistake in the interview as well. All right, here's the interview with Mitchell. Alright, everybody, it is my pleasure to welcome an old friend of mine, not just from social media, we've actually met in person on several occasions, Mitchell Levy, Mitchell, welcome to the podcast.

Mitchell Levy: 4:26

Hi, Neil. Well, it's not that old. And I normally use Levy, but that's okay. Whenever anyone calls me works for me.

Neal Schaffer: 4:34

Yeah, I'm really bad at names even when you just tell me how to pronounce them. And I actually recorded a podcast earlier where I made the same rookie mistake, so Oh, I do it all the time, too. Yeah, some people are better and worse. Mitchell for those that don't know you, and I know that you're one of the most active networkers out there in in sort of the the marketing the book, entrepreneur space, tell my audience a little bit about you. So

Mitchell Levy: 4:58

I'm a global credibility. expert. And what I am doing now my primary focus in life is focused on credibility and helping people figure out people in companies, how can you be credible in your actions, because if you're not credible credibility is not a word, it is a way of being. And if you're not credible, you're dubious. And so the question you always want to ask yourself is do people perceive you as credible or dubious credibility, nations focused on credibility, what I also do in addition, as you know, alluded to, I run a book publishing company. And so we've published over 850 books. And we just started a done for you not just done for you book publishing, but done for you course, creation. So a great one hour courses for

Neal Schaffer: 5:40

you. Awesome. I know that you have been over the past years. I mean, obviously, I first knew about you when you were a book publisher. So I think you've always been helping professionals with authority and credibility in many of the things that you've been doing in the past decade that I've known you, right?

Mitchell Levy: 5:55

Yeah, I've been I've been in Silicon Valley for 30 plus years, I've been focused on thought leadership, for 25 years. And as a book publisher, from 2005. Till today, we've published over 850 books.

Neal Schaffer: 6:10

That's amazing. So we're gonna get to that whole credibility topic. Because I know as we record, this, just today, you just published your how many books is now that you've published, so under your own name? Oh, under

Mitchell Levy: 6:23

my name, I believe this is my 65th book that I've authored.

Neal Schaffer: 6:29

Oh, holy smokes, okay. And the name of that book is credibility, nation, which is available, credibility nation for professionals who want to be seen as credible. And I'm sure we're going to get a little bit deeper into that as we go through this conversation. So one of the things we talked about Mitchell, when we were thinking about what were the different angles we discussed today, that would really deliver a lot of value to the audience, was your passion about this notion of understanding your audience's pain point? And how your understanding of that can really lead you to success in digital and social media into business in general. So I want to dive a little bit deeper in into that, why do you or you know what, why is your focus on that area of audience pinpoint?

Mitchell Levy: 7:17

If you remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when they said, What was the answer to life, the universe and everything? And the answer ultimately, was 42. I do have an answer for this. And that is, if you can't come across as somebody who wants to serve others, if you can't come across as somebody who truly understands what it is your your client base your prospects base is looking for, and it doesn't come across from an authority perspective. Somebody else will. So what what happened Niels I interviewed 500 thought leaders on credibility over a 12 month period. And the first question I asked them, was one that 98% of people needed help on sort of coming to clarity on what it is they did. And the surprising part is, once they did it opened up a series of doors for them. And that question is, what is your CPAP? What is your customer portal pain? And so the most amazing thing is when somebody would sign up for an interview, they would get a 30 minute video on how to prepare, they would get a look at past shows. So what would happen is regarding the that answer, people just can't in one to 10 words, one to three seconds. Answer, what is their customer point in pain. So if you're listening to this, think about this. Think about who do you serve? I serve b2b clients in the whatever space, and then what is the pain point they're addressing? And what you want to be able to figure out is how can you articulate that in less than three seconds? One to 10 words less than three seconds? And here's a particular reason why. A It doesn't sound like you're salesy, if you say it that way, be it short, memorable, shareable. In today's world, so much of our business comes from us from word of mouth marketing. And if if somebody your who knows you and remembers your see pop, when they went across one of their friends, they want to be supportive. You know what I just heard Neal Schaffer and he does, you know, they'll remember the sea pop, go and check him out. And so what happens is, you get the most bestest. I was trying to figure out the right word. I was already stuck by the time I said it, you get the best thing you could possibly get is a unsolicited customer testimonial or an unsolicited. I'm not even a customer, but I love what he said. So customer reported pain is one of those things that allows you when when people say what do you do don't give you value proposition. That's the third thing you should give the first thing you should talk about what is your CPAP

Neal Schaffer: 9:48

so give the listener some examples of what those might look like. So coming to mind is a gentleman I know from Orange County, and this is way back in the day. Like a decade ago before I do what I do, and he was in the job search, and there were all these networking meetings here in Orange County for the job search, and he said, I help IT leaders look good. And he was going for Director it position to, you know, better support CTOs and leadership. That's probably not a C pop

Mitchell Levy: 10:17

that actually is tactically, that's a that's a value proposition. Right, right. Because when you use the word AI, Are we one of the things that came out of the interviews? Is there a percentage of the population? You know how you have ad blockers when you're looking at a screen? Well, people have salespeople blockers, right. So when you start the conversation with ire, we you feel like a salesperson and don't hear the next thing you say? So let's just take the one you just said, you said, I help IT leaders look good. The see pop would be IT leaders. And you could even go further IT leaders or fortune 500? Who don't and fill in the blank, don't deliver all their projects on time? Or who have IT leaders of fortune 500 companies whose employees hate him, right? Because all of a sudden when you say that, I make it leaders good look good. I don't know why. I mean, I'm glad you remembered it. That's super cool. But if you said something that said, like said, if I'm thinking about this, is if I am your prospect, or if I'm the spouse of your prospect, and you say it leaders whose employees hate them, or IT leaders who don't deliver on time, and your your the spouse and you go, you know, my my my wife, my husband always comes home and they go oh my god, we never deliver any on time. I don't know how we do it. Or we get we get all the jobs done. But my boys hate me. Well, that would be memorable. And what's interesting, Neil, is so give you a couple examples. Global Supply Chain panic. That one's a beautiful one. So you know who that is? What's out. Mine is both aspirational, and a pain point. It's humans that want to be seen as credible. I've heard people give things as simple as profitability. One word statements. I've heard people say, Oh, here we go. Entrepreneurs who feel like they're the best kept secret. Okay, right. And so what happens is, at some point in time, someone said that now, if you can articulate that CPAP, if you can actually say, who the audience you serve and what their pain point is, once you put that in your mind, then what you do is you now look back at how you're communicating to the world a synchronously so what does your LinkedIn profile look like? What does your social media look profiles looks like? What does your website look like? Because if you have clarity on your see pop, and then you go back into how do you communicate, when you're not talking? When you're talking one on one, if somebody makes a mistake, like, you know, you gave me something that could have been a sea pop, and I just said, I responded quickly on what it really is, when you're talking to somebody asynchronously, you don't have that ability. So if somebody gets to your LinkedIn profile, they're going to give you 10 seconds before they decide to move on. What have you done in that 10 seconds, I have to tell you, if the banner that's on the back of your LinkedIn profile has your C pop in it, if the tagline that is you, has you see pop in it. And if you have a picture of yourself, by the way, I have a word I use called credit, credit, credit credit is not having a picture on your LinkedIn profile, or having a picture when you're the picture is 20 years younger than you are personally, that's credit crud, please go back to credit card. What happens if somebody looks at your LinkedIn profile, and they're looking for something and it turns out that the first thing they see in that first three to five seconds is your see pop in their banner, they're gonna want to then reinforce it. And so then you look through the rest of the LinkedIn profile. And what you're really doing there is you're constructing your profile to reinforce your see pop. So if you can get to the point where you've built the the fact that people get to know like and trust you just from your LinkedIn profile, which means it can't be a resume, then what happens? They go, Oh, wait, I need to follow through, maybe I should pick up the white paper if they deposit their email address to pick up a white paper, or maybe I should book a call. And some of the things I do is I just say, here's the calendar, if you want to book time directly, I'm like if this resonates with you, book time on my calendar, right, and, and so you want to be able to set up your asynchronous communication. And I, a lot of times people Neal would always use the word online and offline. And, and I and I, when I first started writing, I actually did have online and offline. But what happened is I started thinking about this, we're using squad cast, I started thinking about Zoo. When I have a synchronous communication on Zoom, where I'm looking at them from a video perspective. Guess what it feels to me like I'm in person. I can't get the hug. But it feels like I'm in person. And so I had to rethink about the words. And so I just picked up the word synchronous. So when you're having direct interaction with somebody, because they're you could really make your point, you typically get more than three seconds. But then a synchronous, and asynchronous Your job is to when somebody sees you, wherever they're seeing you, is to want to see more of you because they think you can help them solve their their pain point.

Neal Schaffer: 15:27

So how would we then so you've thank you for, you know, clarifying that the difference between that the mission statement of you know, the value provide, and the CPAP. So how would then you take that and put it say, in a LinkedIn professional headline? So you know, profitability? Is it? Is it just making sure the keyword appears in this 240? or however many characters there are? Do you lead with it? Or how would it look together with that mission statement and everything else that you haven't got branded area? No, it's

Mitchell Levy: 15:54

a really good question. And I have to say, so it's, there's not 100% Perfect answer, right? Particularly when using work just like profitability. If if you think about global supply chain panic, right, it's a lot easier, you could say, I work with Fortune. So you could even say I work with, but I would probably say what I would do instead in the tagline, stopping fortune 500 from saying the words global supply chain panic, right. So you could say that as a tagline without saying I do this, or we do that, okay? In the, in the, in the actual image. So there are so many profiles that they don't use the image, the banner, they just use the default one. But that wasted real estate. And what you want to be able to do is reinforce so if it's if it's profitability, what you want to be able to do is have the types of things that you see you could have in the banner back behind it, you could have profitability from efficient use of resources, profitability from increased sales, or whatever is those taglines that you use as part of your business. And then inside what what the LinkedIn search engine can actually consume what they read, you want to have a way I said, once you know, your CPAP, you want to have a LinkedIn profile, that is the search engine optimized landing page for your CPAP.

Neal Schaffer: 17:22

Gotcha. Okay. So that that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, we the acronym CPAP. I don't know how many they, how many listeners understand that. But really clarifying that pain point. And using that as part of your branding, to really draw people in wherever they find you online and help them want to take that next step and then guiding them to that next step that's aligned with that pain point.

Mitchell Levy: 17:42

You and I are the same, in as much as if if I said to you, when we were done with a conversation, no, man, I need somebody who do this. Right, whatever that this word this is, I have a problem with something here. If all of a sudden one of your friends, you knew that that's what they did. You got a mitchard, you know, so and so let me introduce you. Right, and it's just an efficient way to create a word of mouth marketing.

Neal Schaffer: 18:07

Gotcha, a lot more memorable, and, and powerful, in many ways. So I suppose then, the pain point is really the mechanism. But what you're trying to do is focus the messaging, not on AI, or we not in yourself, but really on your audience. Correct? Because my

Mitchell Levy: 18:25

fact let me give you the three step process. So the answer is absolutely, yes. I'm glad you said it that way. Because I'm not asking you to sell pain. A lot of salespeople, there's a methodology that that sort of Yeah. Okay. Do you have a problem here? Yeah. That I don't want that. What I what I want you to do from a credibility perspective, if you can articulate that you are expert at a particular point of pain, then the person is going to say, this is the best question you could say when you give a CPAP. Tell me more. So there's a the first thing you do is you say your CPAP The second thing you do and I had to have to give attribution to Kim waltz Phillips, who showed me this is you want to say the what do they want? So your product name is what do they want? The best product name have? What do they want that I've ever seen in my life is a product that went from zero to a billion in a short period of time. And it's five hour energy drink. Right? That is the most beautiful, what do they want? So if in this case of the CPAP was professionals who get tired during lunchtime or professionals get tired at 5pm Okay, so generally speaking, what your CPAP what what your professionals get tired at at 5pm we have a product called five hour energy drink. And then the third thing you say is your value proposition. So we have a company that's done this amount of sales, this amount of marketing this amount of research that has come up with a safe and secure and tested by a series of experts energy drink that only costs x amount and you could pick up at your local store. Right that that's the proper sequence. Because what happens is you're building trust along the way. First, if you're see pop is not about you, but about your audience, like, oh, he understands or she understands that area, then if you have a product, whose name is exactly what your prospect wants, like, oh, I want that. And then you're filling in at that stage, it's okay to use the IRB, my company is capable of doing that, because and that's the value proposition.

Neal Schaffer: 20:37

So now we're talking about the messaging, you know, from a brand profile product name. But really, this same sort of messaging can be included in all your content on the Zoom, your blog content, your web pages, are there would you use it differently in that sort of content, versus sort of profile, brand new product name, or

Mitchell Levy: 20:57

I think the most beautiful thing in the world, is what happens when you when you put on a different set of lenses. There's a book called Six thinking hats. And given that I wear hats all the time, it's now appeals to me. And what happens is, is when I ran strategic exercises, I get a bunch of people in the room together. And then you break into groups and you say, Okay, you got the red hat. Red Hat means anger. So what do you hate about this? Okay, you got the white hat neutrality. What do you what? What do you need to think about, okay, you got the and you know, there are six different hats that you wear. And surprisingly, each set a group when they were given a different parameter in which to live, they came up and then everyone talked about what they came up with. And it was so different. So here's what I'll say to you. When you put on the hat of your CPAP, you will never be able to look at your marketing material. Again. You're gonna look at what you what you did the past, man, that's crap. Why did I say that? This is not about them. This, this is not about my audience, this is not getting my audience to say, Tell me more. And at the end of the day, your job a good see Pop is a magnet. And magnets a beautiful because they do one of two things. They either attract those people who are a good fit, or they repel those people who are not. And so being clear on who you serve and who you don't, and saying no, for somebody who's not a prospect will earn the type of respect and credibility that will allow them and want them to recommend you to others. And also when they're ready, they'll come back.

Neal Schaffer: 22:37

So how do you recommend, um, this is all part of this audience centric mindset, right? So how do you go about recommending listeners to foster or create that sort of mindset, if they're not used to doing it, or maybe they just need to improve upon doing it.

Mitchell Levy: 22:53

It's a teeny bit self serving. So I'll talk about what what can happen without any money, right, and they'll talk about so pick up the book credibility nation, we talked about that created a book, I'm sorry, I created an online course on how to actually build your, your CPAP. So that's what credibility nation you could get to that course. And those people were part of the lifelong learning, they get access to that course for free. You could actually also go to a site where I did the research called THOUGHT LEADER life at thought leader life, the what I ended up doing is interviewing the 500 people and I asked the same question of every person. And that first question is what is your CPAP so listen to and I've got some consolidated videos where I had 1010 people given their CPAP I even have a webpage where it lists all see pops of people who who were there and I have a dictionary definition of the word CPAP at Mitchell levy comm slash CPAP. And and then you can actually see the, the actual dictionary definition. And so what I would say is, figure out your CPAP think about it, and then start talking to other people and say, What do you think of this? What is this? I just I wanted to capture in less than 10 words what I did, this is what I do, and see what people say. And and that you know, it's there's no right a many of these things. There's no right or wrong. What I will say Neal, and this is absolutely beautiful. night as I mentioned 98% of people needed support. So now I actually make it a test. I said I when people are going to come on the interview ahead of time, I'll send them a couple weeks or a couple months ahead of time. Hey, listen, 98% of people need a little bit of coaching on their CPAP Are you going to be in the 2% so it's a challenge. And the quality of the see pops coming in are beautiful me really beautiful. And so when I saved my first question, what you're seeing pop, they gave me their CPAP and we always do coaching at a time. And then I say, you know that sounds like it could be a good CPAP but let me see how you reinforce it with your next two questions. So I'll share with you an extra question. Because what happens when people talk about the next two questions, sometimes their excitement level is something other than their CPAP. They just kind of thought that the world thought that CPAP was right. So the second question is, it's so funny is Tell me more, which is kind of like, what do you do? Right? So in one minute, what do you do to solve the CPAP? And then the third question is, how do you have credibility to do what you do? And surprisingly, when you answer those three questions together, if you do it, right, it really denotes trust, people get to trust you, if you have a good C pop, you actually execute on that C, pop, tell me more, and you have credibility to execute on that see? What happens if if there's this continuity between those three things? It's kind of easy to figure out hey, wait, that's not really your so you pop, maybe this is your CPAP.

Neal Schaffer: 25:59

So the process of creating an audience centric mindset begins with defining that customer point of pain and really continuing to internalize it, share it, optimize it, bounce it off other people. And it's sort of I mean, you're you're It's a never ending process, I assume. But that's really how you begin the process.

Mitchell Levy: 26:21

Can I say yes, and so let's say, for a company that already has a whole series of existing customers, but let's say you're trying to do something else, if you're trying to do something else, creating groups of people to come together and say, Listen, we've been going left, we're now going to turn and either go 90 or 180 degrees in a different direction. And you go to a customer say, what do you need? How can we help you? We're going to pick six clients, or you know, if you're a small company, we're going to pick one person, can I do this for you? And and then what happens is you start learning is this really, because sometimes when people say, when customers say what their pain point is, they're going to say something. But that's not really that's just a symptom, not the real problem. And so what your goal is, if you're, if you're, if you don't have enough customers to actually articulate your true CPAP, is to go out of your way to figure out ways in which you could actually work with your clients and solve their real problem. And that's the way you could actually uncover the true CPAP.

Neal Schaffer: 27:22

Gotcha. So based on that, if people are listening, I know that we went into a lot of detail here. But once you uncover this, you can see how powerful it's going to be for your branding, for your content and for inciting that word of mouth, which is really what you know, influencer marketing is all about, how should the listener now take what you've been talking about for the last 20 minutes, and revise their their marketing strategy or their digital strategy, their social media marketing strategy? With their audience in mind, I'm assuming it really begins with that profile branding, both from the text and the visual. But what are the other things that can be doing that you recommend?

Mitchell Levy: 27:58

Oh, well, here's what's really, really fascinating. So I'm gonna say this, when you put the lens on of your CPAP, a, you're most likely you're gonna look at everything you have, and say, This is crap, I need to fix it. So So what does fixing mean? Well, if you have a LinkedIn profile, and you haven't talked about your CPAP, and where you have expertise in things you've done in the past, by the way, going into an older and older company that you worked at in the past, but then bringing out the types of things that are relevant for reinforcing your CPAP going to the bottom of your LinkedIn profile, where people are endorsing you, making sure that what you're Dorsa at the bottom of your LinkedIn profile, are things that are relevant to your CPAP. So many times people just accepted the default. Having customer testimonials. One of things I did with a 500 is starting somewhere around interview 80, I realized I can get a testimonial, I now have 420 video testimonials, right. So if I have any particular market, I'm going in, I can now craft the series of testimonials I need to to address a particular area. So I put on a hat of a particular CPAP, which is a particular vertical market, I'm going after with a particular pain point. And now I have a whole series of videos that I can pull together. Because when you when you see the best important thing, so if you don't have video, testimonials of your clients, get them. If you don't have audio testimonials, or your clients, get them if you don't have testimonials at all from your clients. I'm curious why you're in business. So you know you're in business. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. If you don't have any customer testimonials, and you're still doing business, fantastic. Fix it. Position yourself better before the competitors come along and take things away because what they're going to do is they want to hear they actually want to hear from your true clients what their pain point was and what you helped solve. And, and that is by far the best form of marketing. And so if you're taking a customer centric view, well don't tell people what you do. Yeah, let your customers tell people what you do.

Neal Schaffer: 30:04

And this I mean, it parallels sort of the whole idea of leveraging. I mean, not just influences but customers for your content right of having of the Disneyland's the Ritz Carlton's, having 100% user generated content on their Instagram feeds of their customers and their experiences, right? It. It says, Wait, it's better advertising, anything you can do.

Mitchell Levy: 30:23

Let me just take one word you used influencer. So we had this Nirvana to get an influencer to talk about us or a thought leader to talk about us. But let's let's reframe that. If you have a client that has five friends, if that person, if they said something good about you, we get those five friends. And by five friends, it could be five CEOs of Fortune 500 companies to take a look at you. You know, in the definition of the word influencer, that's not an influence. But let's be clear in your target market for your CPAP that person is influential, because they have the credibility and and you just need one nod from that person and a ton of doors open. So I it's not that I'm against influencer marketing, per se, what you got to figure out is, who is the right set of influencers from you, from the person who is the thought leader, and everyone knows, to the person that nobody knows, but has a lot of weight when they speak?

Neal Schaffer: 31:23

Yeah, I mean, there's a incredible amount of business influencers that aren't online. Right, but they have tremendous influence when they speak. So I agree with that. 100%. So Mitchell, I want to make sure you know, in the final minutes here, we get to your book credibility nation. So tell us how does everything we've talked about especially this customer pain, points centric, you know, audience centric view of your brand new your content, your strategy, how does that apply to credibility and what you write about in credibility nation.

Mitchell Levy: 31:48

So it's one of those things that are really interesting, many people that the deck, the definition of credibility in the dictionary is wrong. It's only 1/3 accurate. What it says today is the demonstration of trustworthiness. So I actually had taken trustworthiness and defined what are the four components of it. But I want to say that what's equally as important is that we all know the phrase know, like, and trust what actually is true. Credibility is being known, being likable, and being trustworthy. And by being known, it's not that I know of you, it's that I know your intent, your commitment, your desire to serve others, your integrity. And if I know that about you, then I feel a lot better potentially doing business with you. If you're likable, you know, and it's so there are 10 components inside the book, there are 10 components of credibility, and they're all explained. And then how does that fit into the world? Not just how does it fit your business? But how does it you're thinking about it from a client perspective. Your customers are not just business people, they're humans. Well, how do you deal on a human basis with those people? And so the the overall book, credibility nation, what it's talking about is how do we live life more credibly? How do we live life with whether or not you want to add all these other adjectives, with integrity, with authenticity with all the components, which are part of credibility? If you do that, and you're a business, and your business has 1000 employees that all live the same way, the ability to be that magnet that people come to you is great. So credibility, nation, the book is really the start of the call. It's the manifesto for credibility, nation, the movement, and that is to allow us and I'll just do something real simple, Neil, based on the definition of credibility, you can decide whether or not you're credible enough. And there many people are not, I would say that 1000 times over people live who are not credible, what I call if you're not credible, you're dubious. And so my nemesis is dubious nation. And so the question is, and I believe that dubious nation is winning 1000 times over to credibility nation. And my goal in my lifetime is to tip the scale. I want there to be more people, incredible. Nisha, I want to be able to have the type of relationships where I look somebody I and I shake their hand, whether it's virtual or real, and that they give me exactly what I want, regardless of whether and I have a contract. That's the world we used to live in. When we lived in villages. That's the world we will live in. When we go to the global village. That's the world that I want us to live in is one that we're proud of one that our kids one of our grandkids, when that future generations can look at and go, Wow, I'm just happy to be alive. There's lots of opportunity. And there's so many people I get to play with, by the way, incredible creation. If you're doing stuff that's credible that you love doing. It's not work anymore, it's play. And if you're playing, what's nice is you're you're living, you're living to your brand, you're living to yourself, you're living to your potential. And when you meet somebody else who's that you really get to know them. You really get to like them, we really get to trust them, respect them and, and this is okay to say unless your HR department doesn't say it's okay to say you Love them. And there are some people on the interview, Neil, that I only spent a half hour them at the end of the interview, we said we loved each other and agitate. It's a beautiful world to live in, when you could do that and understand that it's just because you both connected in your hearts. And you're both serving something and understanding each other. So fully. And imagine going through life where you have many a large number of those relationships. That's where credibility and ation is. That's where, where I'd like to see humanity move towards.

Neal Schaffer: 35:31

So this book goes well above and beyond just your branding, just, it's really, it's really a manifesto for society. But I think that's awesome. And it's interesting that when I speak to a lot of entrepreneurs, from other countries, especially developing countries, like Philippines is one example. Um, there's a lot of social entrepreneurs, there's a lot of people that are doing things because they want to create positive change in the world. Of course, we have those people in the United States as well. But there is this movement that just didn't exist a little while ago. And I see what you're doing is is, you know, is part of that this bigger movement of just trying to make a better world, which is awesome. And I think, when your audience is so defined, and the way you serve, the audience is so defined, and you have that credibility that you've been talking about, it just sort of becomes this natural, inbound driver. And when you get the business, it's not the type of clients that you wish you didn't sign up. They're going to be the perfect fit. And hopefully, they become good friends as well. So hopefully, I've got the gist of the book. Awesome. I just got my copy of Amazon's AI notes. I know it's available there, Amazon worldwide. Where else can people find out more about you, and this membership group or courses that you said, you started up?

Mitchell Levy: 36:43

It's some it's credibility nation, or just the by the way, I always have a problem spelling the word credibility, because all the I's and ELLs come together, but it's just credibility. nation.com, okay. And it's, it's a membership committee. So at the very minimal five bucks a month, you get a badge, you get incremental monthly learning, and you get to take a pledge if if you're so inclined. And the pledge is one of those things that it comes back to, I think, do what I want to say is it the pledge is beautiful, and then there's lifelong learning there. And then there's a, there's three different levels of service. When I hear you talk about the social entrepreneurship, what this is, is an opportunity for us to make money, because if you don't have a self running entity that can take care of itself when the owner goes away. And by the way, what I'm talking about is 30 years from now, or 40 years from now, when I when I pass away, I still want this thing running. Sure is I need to create a an entity that would run, but also give back. So 20% of profits from critico donation goes to charity, and to enough time that I take on my first charity, bring it on my friend. So first charity, really guy by the name of Jonathan stone, he during a COVID. He he left his company as a side because it wasn't it wasn't it didn't work extremely as well, given COVID times. And what he's figured out is how to get companies to donate shipping containers. Oh, his see pop is food insecurity. Specifically childhood food insecurity in the United States. So he's gotten companies to donate shipping containers, other companies to donate, basically solar panels, and a third company to donate food. And for every shipping container, he sets up in the city, he ends up delivering 2 million meals a year. Wow. So we will donate to many charities. But that's got to be my first one. And, and I think that's the fun part is to know that you're participating in something that's good for you. That's why you're going to pay money, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to grow a lot, you're going to meet peers. And you're you're helping a cause that still shocks me that there are kids in the United States that go hungry.

Neal Schaffer: 38:58

Yeah. It's funny because Joe Pulizzi, you know, the godfather of content marketing reached out to me today, he started a foundation, and they're currently doing a campaign to raise money for children with speech disorders to make sure that they have the resources they need. And I think that, you know, no matter no matter where we stand on politics and government funding, there's there's just never enough to go around to serve the people that need it. So I think that's great that that you and Joe and all the other great leaders out there are taking a stance so kudos on that. Oh,

Mitchell Levy: 39:24

thank you. Awesome.

Neal Schaffer: 39:25

So credibility nation, the book, the website, the program, Mitchell, thank you so much for being here. I'm sure those that are interested in taking the next step for reach out to you. I look forward since you've already published dozens of books I expect next year I'll have you on with with credibly credibility nation part two.

Mitchell Levy: 39:42

That goes I actually probably some of the members or credit voted nation that are doing amazing books. I'll just recommend them as well. And Neil was so happy how easily you were able to grok what was going on? And thanks for having me. I really appreciate you.

Neal Schaffer: 39:55

Thank you, my friend. We'll keep in touch. Beautiful. All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Michel Michel. Joe is really a great guy, a sage He has published, boy go to Amazon. He's published a lot of books and is really open about sharing all of his knowledge and experience with you. So I hope that you'll take his advice to heart, and that it helps you give a another perspective on how you could be maximizing your social influence. I also want to remind you, I have had businesses reach out to me, I still do have openings for my fractional or outsource cmo service. If you're looking to bring on an experienced hand for help, be it for an hour a week to up to a day a week. While I still have open slots, for a minimum contractual commitment of three months, we can do a lot of great things together. So if that's up your alley, and you'd like to get a shot in the arm and get some help, please feel free to reach out to me in the show notes. We'll have a link to my contact form. I'd love to help you and your organization. Alright everybody. Well, I'm signing out from Tokyo, Japan until next week, make it a great virtual social Day. Bye Bye and sale nada