Establishing your Market Eminence, with David Newman

Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with David Newman. I think sitting around with A-players, A-players in whatever field you're in, they're still going to talk about problems, challenges, issues, obstacles, heartaches, headaches, but they're going to be A-player headaches. It's not, where do I find my first prospect? So if you're already a six-figure 7-figure business owner. You've already been doing this for 10 years. You don't want to sit around with the person that's like, where do I get my first leads from? Nothing wrong with those people. God bless them. That's great. That's a genuine problem for them. It's not a genuine problem for you. Hi there and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gentile, and every week I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing their expertise. And the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, take a moment, take a breath, take a seat, sit down, ignore the people around you, and hit the subscribe or follow button. That way you won't miss a single thing and you'll continue my trend of smiling every time I look at the analytics. Some days I don't smile. Most days I smile. Even on the down days, I don't care. It's all good. Lost my thread there. David and I were just talking about extemporising being the clever way of describing how you're winging it. So if you're new to the show, again, hit the subscribe and follow button. So today's guest is making his second appearance on the show, and for good reason. David Newman is one of the sharpest voices in the world of expert marketing, helping consultants, speakers, and thought leaders stand out, scale up, and win more of the right kind of business. He's the author of several respected books on marketing and business growth, and his latest Market Eminence— I'm holding it up— explores how experts rise above the noise, build authority, and become the obvious choice, the obvious choice in crowded markets. David has a gift, and this is coming from me, for cutting through the cluttering, through the fluff, and turning marketing into something practical, strategic, and effective, especially for people who sell expertise rather than products. So if you want to know how to position yourself powerfully, attract better opportunities, and build real market presence. You're going to enjoy today's conversation. David, welcome back. Thank you, Bob. And that is a beautiful endorsement and testimonial. I appreciate that so much. Are you feeling sufficiently grand? I'm super. I'm way pumped up and I'm ready for our extremely highly scripted spontaneity. So this is literally the only bit of the whole show that's scripted. David, it's good to see you again. What's been happening on your side of the world since we spoke last? You don't even need to answer that question, but I'm sure it's some really exciting things. What's going on? Well, so I will tell you, this is, uh, this is a personal/professional development milestone. I am starting a second podcast. So like you, for a number of years I've had a business-focused podcast. And the last few years, on the personal front, I have been fascinated and seduced and pulled into collecting watches, wristwatches. So I'm thinking, well, gosh, I'd like to learn more about this, and I love talking about this, and I, I love learning and teaching at the same time. Why don't I start a watch podcast. So Bob, as we talk, this is not— as we're recording this, this has not been released yet, but in a few weeks there will be a brand new podcast called Watch Smarts. And the tagline of this podcast is for smart people who want to get smarter about watches. So they're not dummies, they're not newbies, but they're also not watch nerds or watch geeks. And so I'm starting a second podcast. That's what's new since we last talked. I'm outrageously excited for you. The example that immediately springs to mind is Pat Flynn and Pokémon. I don't know if that's something that's come into your world, but I know several people that have traditional careers and then they start a niche show like that and it very quickly eclipses what they were doing before. I'm hoping that's not going to happen for you because I love your books. I need them. Yes, thank you. But that does sound like a lot of fun. Yes, yes, it's sort of a passion project. So you know Jay Baer? Yeah, the marketing guru and speaker. So Jay, a couple of years ago, did something similar— not a podcast, but a YouTube and Instagram presence around tequila, because he's a huge tequila fan. He's a tequila collector. He enjoys tequila. And he now has started this tequila empire. I think it's called The Tequila Report. And he's got like 53,000 email subscribers and hundreds of thousands of social media followers. And he's got brand partnerships and sponsorships. And he started this. And this is one of my watchwords with no pun intended. This is one of my guiding principles with The Watch Podcast. He said, I started the Tequila Thing with no commercial intent, no commercial intent. I just wanted to have some fun with it. I just wanted to, you know, learn and teach and share. And again, his tequila show is to the non-nerds. He says there was a lot of tequila shows and, you know, bourbon and rum and everything else for the nerds, for like the super fans, the people that were heavy deep into it. There were not a lot of shows back when he started that talked about tequila for beginners. And, uh, when he said no commercial intent, I said, Jay, I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna adapt that, actually, and I'm gonna give it a new acronym. Because knowing me and my marketing hardwired brain, I needed to make it very clear to myself that there was no commercial intent. So My acronym is NCIS. NCIS, named after the TV show. NCIS stands for No Commercial Intent. Seriously. Seriously. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. I think this is a great place to begin. I think the one thing I noticed with Pat, I think he's probably 2 years into the Pokémon journey. I saw an article on the BBC News the other day that over the last 6 months, Pokémon cards, they've started to surge in value. And I talk with lots of young people, and I mention Pat Flynn, and I often use him as an example, and they will say, oh, is that the Pokémon guy? They won't talk about the marketing. They won't talk about Smart Passive Income or the podcast. He's really big with kids. I don't think he ever intended that either. But it is a really nice way to introduce the idea of thought leadership because I don't imagine you would consider yourself a watch expert. You're watching. Not at all. And a lot of people resist the idea of thought leadership when they don't come from, for example, your space because they think you have to be the expert. Yeah. And a lot of business owners struggle with imposter syndrome when they start to think about showing up and advocating for their work or for their industry because they think, "I have to be the expert." Yeah. Knowing this is day one at school, has that come up for you? The imposter syndrome has not come up for me. And this is such a great point. I think when we put all this pressure on ourselves to know everything about a topic on day one, So maybe you're an executive, you just hung out a shingle as a consultant, as a coach, as a speaker. Maybe you're thinking about your first book and you wake up at 2:00 in the morning in a cold sweat saying, I don't know anything, I'm a fraud, they're going to find me out. So to me, one definition— I'm going to give you a couple of different definitions of this term expert that are nontraditional. And I still believe these to this day. Even though I am frankly a drop-dead expert in a lot of what I do now. But it doesn't matter. Here's what I learned after this 20-plus-year journey that I had wrong almost the whole time. To me, number one, an expert is someone who is continuously seeking expertise. Yeah. So the master is always the student. I believe that 10,000%. If I had that belief early on, I could have just done a whole lot less imposter syndrome, perfectionism, comparison syndrome. So number one, expert is someone who's always seeking expertise. Number two, this is what you and I are doing right now, and I love doing it on both ends. Experts feature and highlight other experts. So they are not only a source of expertise, they are a source of curation. They're a source of— they're the pointer outer. Pointer outer is a word. They're a pointer outer of other cool people, resources, experts, podcasts, books. So people will find— and I've got this, I got this feedback early, early on, like even before my first book came out back in 2013, people would say to me, because they would subscribe to my email newsletter and I would always promote my friends and, you know, so-and-so has a new book and Bob just launched a podcast and it's amazing. Someone said to me, David, you always— you're tapped in to all of the great resources, books, people who's doing a great webinar. So especially now, today, in this age of AI, if you can be the philtre that separates the signal from the noise, that expertise, I think today is even more valuable than it was 5, 10, 15 years ago. We've been talking about this concept of curation forever. This is not new, right? There are content creators, there are content curators, there are content influencers, right? Now that there, you know, I would say 90%— I have no stats on this, but 90% of the crap online is AI-generated nonsense. Someone comes along like you, our dear listener, and you're like, well, you know what, I'm going to— I'm going to be curious about my area of expertise. I'm going to continually be seeking expertise myself. Reading, going to conferences, meeting people, networking, listening to podcasts. Number 2, I am going to feature other experts, point out cool books, cool blogs, cool resources, cool events that are worthy of my audience's attention because they're worthy of my attention. And that's what I'm going to do. That type of expert today in 2026 and beyond is way more valuable than ever before. So what have we talked about so far? Uh, experts are continuously seeking expertise. Experts promote other experts. And I would say the third thing, the final thing on this, Bob, a lot of people say, okay, well, You can be an expert and you can build a business around what you know. What you know to me is a very stagnant kind of statement. Anyone that thinks that they are finished learning, they are finished innovating, they are finished creating, and they have a complete body of work, I think that expert is in decline. So forget about what you are an expert in, forget about what you know. I think the experts of today and tomorrow are not going to be based on their knowledge, their static knowledge. They're going to be based on their curiosities. They're going to be based on their interests. They're going to be based on their particular little peccadilloes of what aspect and what fine-tuning of what ideas is of interest to them. So you can build a very powerful expertise-based platform based not on what you know today, but based on your curiosities, your interests, and what you're committed to learning. I think your discernment— I think this is, for me, something I'm seeing again and again. So I, I came across Rick Rubin on TikTok. Rick Rubin is not somebody I know. I don't know that much about him. But he was describing how he works, why people hire him, who hires him. And he was very clear. He says, I don't have any technical skills. I don't really know how to do these things, but I do very, very well. And the interviewer asked him something like, so what are people paying you for? They're paying you thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said, people pay me because I have an unwavering confidence in my taste. And I thought, that's, that's amazing to have that level of confidence to know this is right and this is wrong. And evidence has demonstrated you to be consistently correct. And I think this is something that where information is no longer at a premium, we don't pay for information anymore. We don't even need to pay for creation a lot of the time. How are we going to discriminate between what's going to be of value and what isn't? Because a lot of people can't tell. And you'll recognise this. In my agency days, we would spend like 2 days producing something gorgeous for a client. They come in and they'd look at it and they go, it's really, really good. I love it. And then they come up with a scrumpled piece of paper that their friend had done in WordArt. And they would say, but I've got this. I really, really like it. I think You honestly can't see the difference. You just can't. And now this is an aesthetic thing, but there are many other things where I can't tell the difference. You probably couldn't tell the difference, but a trusted advisor can. Now I want to pivot to another question really, and you touched on this and it kind of again brings to, or it springs from what you're doing with the Watch podcast. When I speak to traditional business owners and I use the word audience, I can see them looking at me funny because they're unaccustomed to the word. They're accustomed to the word prospect or market. And for me, there's a qualitative difference, and it's almost— and it's a really important difference because it's an attitude. How do you introduce the idea of audience to people who are unaccustomed to thinking in those terms? Well, this is such a great question. I look at audience, market, and prospects as 3 different categories. So in fact, I wrote a blog post years ago about something like 17 differences between a market and an audience, and it's about you know, the broadest possible appeal that you're ever going to have is with something like a podcast or a book or some— something that's readily accessible, widely and broadly accessible to everyone. And it's either free or it's very, very cheap, right? It's a $15 book, free podcast, free YouTube channel, all of those things. So that to me is the largest circle. Is your audience. Within that is a market. Within that are some economic buyers, people who are in a position to pay you money. And this is true whether it's B2B or B2C, but obviously, Bob, you and I deal typically with B2B. So it is the economic buyer, the executives, the entrepreneurs, the people with chequebooks that can write cheques and who might be need of our services. So to me, that is your market, subset of your audience. And then within that are prospects. Prospects are people who on some level have raised their hand. They've emailed you, they've messaged you, they've booked a call, they've somehow have entered your pipeline, your sales pipeline, and say, hey, I'd like to have a conversation about doing business with you. So that is a prospect. That is an active money-making opportunity that you have probably on your calendar. I mean, ideally that's, you know, your calendar. Otherwise they're just a lead or they're in your CRM or they're kind of a someday, maybe kind of thing. But the people on your calendar are prospects. So it's funny to me when you say, oh, well, I was talking to this client and they said, well, audience equals market equals prospects. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I wish, by the way, I wish that were the case. I wish every listener of this show, Bob, was a prospect and on your calendar wanting to do business with you because frankly, they should. P.S. Book a call with Bob. I wish the people who listen to my podcast, I mean, all 6 of them, I wish all 6 of my listeners were leads and were ready to do business, but they're not. You know, there's my mum and the 5 other people and that's it. And none of them are ready to do business. So do we need to cultivate a nice, big, juicy audience? Yes, I think that's helpful. Do we need to identify very clearly, very specifically, and very intentionally who our market is and then call out to them regularly? Right. So we identify who they are so they can identify with us. And then finally, your prospects. Your prospects. My best advice— I think I talked about this on our first appearance, on my first appearance here on your show— is if you just take all the pressure off yourself in the sales process, treat prospects like they've already bought. Treat prospects like they're already in the family, they're already clients, and your next conversation with them is to get them onboarded and excited about what their future can hold and what results they're going to see. Assuming, of course, that they do pay you money and become clients. So I love talking to clients, and I used to be really afraid and, you know, full of trepidation talking to prospects, especially early on. And then I realised, well, wait a second, prospects are just clients on a different timeline. And so if I want them to be clients, because I love talking to my clients, I look forward to those calls every single day. Why don't I just treat the newcomers as if they're already in the house? And I can't tell you how quickly my closing ratio went up because those— I took the pressure off myself. That's nice. Took the pressure off them. That's the key. That's the key is all my sales conversations became pressure-free, safe spaces to process issues, answer questions, remove obstacles, and show people a potential path that their business could take if we partner together, if we collaborate. But so I initially did it selfishly, right? Take the pressure off David. Great. Now I'm more comfortable on a sales call. What I didn't anticipate is they're a whole lot more comfortable too, because I no longer have that, you know, commission breath where it's a dog chasing after red meat. I love that. I have a similar approach where the easiest way to turn somebody into a client is treat them like a client. As in physics, an object in motion stays in motion until it meets an opposing force. So the hardest part in sales and trust is demonstrate. Just do the work and then people will either want to continue it or not, and it'll become apparent. I need to explain to the kids what a chequebook is. It's what we used to have before debit cards. Just to be clear, I used to get a lot of checks. It drove me nuts. I had to go to the bank all the time. I know. I hate checks. I so hated cheques back in the day. Can you imagine? You're going to make me get my book. Drive 10 minutes and cash this cheque at the bank? Are you insane? This was before we could take a picture of a check. You can look that up online too, kids. Like a bank, a bank teller, it's a building, there's money in it. So something you wrote in the book that you have a chapter called, I think it's a chapter called Love Them in Advance, which really got me. I think it's something that a lot of people kind of— but for me, it really appears at the content layer that if you create your content as an act of service, it colours everything that follows. A lot of people look at content marketing as it's persuasion, it's, it's turning people into customers. But when you approach it as an act of service, it does something quite different. I'd love you to speak to the idea of love them in advance and what it means for you. Sure. So love them in advance, the, uh, the specific chapter is Gifts, right? And so Gifts: Love Them in Advance. And so this is about being radically helpful and radically useful even if people never buy. And, you know, Bob, I'm sure you've had this conversation. I know I've had this conversation several times. We encourage people to be radically helpful and radically generous, and they say, well, David, I can't give— I can't give that away. I can't share that white paper. I'm not going to share that PowerPoint. I can't— I can't give that PDF away because, quote unquote, That's the good stuff. That's what I get paid for. That's the secret sauce. What I would say to them is, so two things. Number one, if that is the secret sauce, you will need more and better secret sauce. Is that it? Is that it? So if— are you telling me that if I give a prospect this 7-page PDF that you think is too good to give away, they will be able to solve their problem totally on their own, just as if they had given you $30,000 or $50,000. And then my client says, well, no, not, not really. Okay, so what's the difference between that? Again, fill in the blank— video, slide deck, webinar recording, PowerPoint, whatever it is. What's the difference between someone getting their hands on that and someone coming to work with you? And then they start giving me the list. I'm like, okay, that's fair. So are you still reluctant to give that thing away, or now have we put that thing in perspective? The good stuff, the secret sauce, the stuff I get paid the big bucks for. And they go, no, I guess I could give that away because, you know, first of all, If they could do it themselves, they would. Some of them, not, not many. And if they're able to do it themselves, wonderful. Let them. It's great, you know, but they wouldn't have come to me anyway because the only people who come to you for help are the people that are not able to help themselves. Here's the good news. The world is broken up into a 95%, 5% balance. There are 5% of the do-it-yourselfers that can actually probably solve most, if not all, of their problem on their own. You give them the steps, you give them the recipe, you give them the cookbook, and they make a beautiful 3-star Michelin meal. Most of us read a cookbook, we salivate, we get— because the cookbook has exactly the right ingredients, exactly the right instructions, the perfect timing for every stage and phase. Of making this recipe and making this beautiful restaurant-grade food. And most of us look at that recipe. Most of us don't even try it. And we go, man, I got to eat at this person's restaurant. This sounds amazing. Now, the ones that try it, let's go to the ones that try it. They go, hmm, wow. Okay, well, this is kind of close, but it's nowhere near as good as what they make in the restaurant. It's like, Okay, fair. So they also then go to the restaurant. The only people who are not going to go to that restaurant after they make the Beautiful Chef's cookbook recipe, the only person is going to be the person who, number one, has the gumption to attempt the recipe. Number two, who is really, really skilled at executing the recipe in its exact steps and format and timing and everything else. And number 3, who doesn't mind putting in the time, the labour, the effort, and the skill to learn what the chef has learned in implementing that? And again, what? So, so, you know, famous celebrity chefs shouldn't come out with cookbooks because that's the secret sauce. That's why I get paid the big bucks for. I can't give that away. That's how celebrity chefs make a living, is they give it away in books. They give it away in TV shows. They give it away on YouTube. They give it away in every possible channel channel, and people still buy their merch, go to their restaurants, and talk up the place to 10 of their friends. That's the business that we're in, Bob. That's the business that all of our listeners are in. I've never thought to use that as a metaphor before. That's really smart because it does illustrate the point clearly. And there is one other person who won't go to the restaurant. It's the person who can't taste the difference. And I think there are plenty of people who just wouldn't see the point. They don't see the vision. There is a cliché that you'll have heard 1,000 times that people don't pay for information, they pay for implementation. Yes. And there are some people who will take information and that's what they value. Others value their time and the shortest route to the result the most. Yes. That's who we're for. And the purpose of the giving away your best stuff is to build trust and demonstrate credibility and offer transparency so that the psychological least resistance is with you rather than some other random, seemingly perhaps more glamorous route or more expensive route or whatever. I ask this question reluctantly. But I think it's a really good question. It's at least a good sandbox to play in. Having ambition or aspiration is a really good thing. And I will accept there are some people for whom there is a resistance to leaning into building a personal brand, and we want to encourage them through baby steps. There are others where the resistance isn't there and the means are. And for them, it's maybe not a case of establishing themselves in a little corner of the market, but they really want to go big. They want not to be an influencer, but perhaps an icon is the word I would use, really reluctantly, but I can't think of anything other than icon that really sums it up. When you see somebody that's managed to accomplish that, it's going to be partly tactical, but it's also going to be partly mindset. It's who they were. If you were to meet somebody and think you could do this, or if somebody came to you and said, I want to accomplish this, what would you be looking at for them to bring to the table? I know it's a really weird question, but if somebody is not very well known but they're really good at what they do, like a proper Yoda, what does your roadmap look like for them? Yes. Well, let's— I, I wanna go back to the premise of your question, which is the ambition versus the actual substance. There are people who have tremendous ambition, and this is in every aspect of life, not just entrepreneurship or not just the business of expertise, ambition. And then there's people that have the genuine substance. So the premise of your question is we have an actual Yoda, right? So Yoda has tremendous substance. We're going to determine about his ambition or not. But there are people— and this is the cautionary tale. This is what I think should piss people off and get them off the couch and on the phone with Bob and ready to take over the world. There are a lot of people out there, and there always have been who have tremendous ambition and very little substance. You know what I like about this is you're asking to answer the question I wish I'd asked properly. Okay, good, good. So I'm, I'm not afraid of flying my political flag here. I'm in the US. The president of the United States at the current moment, Donald Trump, is a fantastic example of ambition is off the charts and substance is zero. This guy is the dumbest, most corrupt, most horrendous human being. There's anti-intellectual, anti-everything, just self-aggrandizing, greedy bastard, if I can say that. The ambition and the certainty of his supremacy in his own mind is what has driven him to the most powerful seat. In the world. It's not his talent, not his smarts. It's not— it's not in any of that. It's— and if you want to— if you want to benchmark me on this, whether you're conservative or progressive or anywhere in between, watch the footage of the election, election night 2016. It's a 3-minute clip when he is announced, why all the media have called the election. And they say Donald Trump is going to be the 45th president of the United States, he is in shock. He was like, I was just kidding. I, I don't really want this. Like, this is a huge pay cut for me. He's like, he's like, he's like, it's a— his facial expression is a combination of mortification, surprise, shock, and regret. Like, what have I gotten myself into? Anyway, so there are people like that in every walk of life where their ambition, their greed, their certainty, their ego far exceeds their actual substance. That's annoying. The sad thing, the tragic thing is what Bob and I see every day. It's the people that have this amazing substance, this incredible expertise, these fantastic principles, practises, experiences, knowledge, and they have no idea how to make this commercially viable and commercially successful. Their ambition is not only zero, it's probably negative, right? All kinds of negative self-talk. I can't do this. It's too hard. Entrepreneurship is for other people. I'm terrible at selling. I just love doing the work of the work. I don't want to worry about marketing. And so those people also have some challenges. Now, your question, which I love this third category. So we have people with, you know, huge ambition, very little substance, people with enormous substance, very little ambition or confidence. What do we do with the person who has the ambition in moderation and has the, has the substance? In moderation, how do we get them on the bike? How do we get them doing the reps? How do we get them building up the strength and the muscle and the bandwidth to magnify and amplify what they do and attract the right kinds of prospects and the right kinds of conversations and the right kinds of deals and stages and contracts and so forth? I think that is a process where you can build out a roadmap. For example, your roadmap is a brilliant roadmap. I've got nothing like that that has, you know, 22 steps. And stages and phases and so forth. But I do think that there are macro level, right? I think we need to build in some differentiation. We have to build in some very clear positioning. We have to build in an offer structure that it's easy to say yes to. So what's the gateway drug? What's that first initial yes that gets people in the door, even if it's at a small, you know, a small baby step level? Small baby step service, stop small baby step assessment, you know, relatively small price tag. And then what, what is, you know, what does small, medium, large and supersized look like? Because someone invariably much sooner than you think is going to buy your entry-level baby step programme, your initial front-end offer, and they're going to say, oh my gosh, Bob, this was amazing. Where do we go from here? And you saying, oh, I don't know, it's not a good answer. You know, what does it look like to work with you long term? Oh, I don't know. Again, not a good answer. So you need to have this all clearly dialled in. So if people were to ask me, it's like, okay, we have the Baby Step. If you love that, we have our 90-day mentoring programme. If you love that, we renew that. If you really love that, we have this other higher-end group. And I will tell them that they're, you know, what stage and phase their business is in would indicate typically what stage and phase of programme makes sense. You don't want to sell a stage 1 prospect a stage 7 programme, nor do you want to take a stage 7 prospect and sell them a Band-Aid. So I think part of this also, not only do you have to be confident in your substance. You have to be confident in your ambition, right? In your— that you deserve the business and this is going to be great for the client. But you have to be confident in the— your offers. You have to be confident in that your services and your solutions actually will move the needle and produce the results that you say they're going to produce. If you're brand new at this, that can be tough. So the first couple clients, I'm going to ask you to take a leap of faith and bet on yourself. Once you start getting some raving testimonials about how you helped Client A and then Client B and then Client C, right? By the 4th or the 5th client, you're like, yeah, this stuff really works. This is great. And you're probably learning and iterating and changing things along the way. You're probably pivoting and making some adaptations to what you're doing and how you're doing it. It's funny, I look back on my first handful of clients and I literally feel sorry for them. It's like, man, oh man, you got, you got David Newman 2004. Oh my gosh, David Newman 2026 is so much better. But at the time I didn't know that. And at the time I was still 3 or 4 steps ahead of where they were. So I was great for them. I'm not as great as I am today, but I was great for them and I did them a really, really good service. And they were beautifully happy. I have an incredible amount of amazing testimonials, LinkedIn recommendations, like hundreds of them. If I have a bad day and I still do, and I think all of us do, if I really have a bad day, I'm down on myself or I've lost 3 prospects in a row or a client has, you know, resigned after working with me for 3 years and say, you know, no, David, it's not you. You know, I'm rocking and rolling. I'm great. I think I've got everything I need. It's like, oh, man. I'm really sad. I will go to my recommendations. I, I will go to my kudos file. I will go to my email. I have a folder. I have a— I have 3 places actually. And I say this because I recommend this to our listeners. Have a kudos file. Have a celebration file. Every thank you note, every email, every letter of gratitude, every handwritten note, every, uh, LinkedIn recommendation, every endorsement, every testimonial. Have it easily accessible to you. I literally have a paper file in my filing cabinet, and I have a digital file with screenshots and emails in my email folder. I call it Kudos. Kudos, like a little acronym— not acronym, it's a nickname for congratulations. And literally, Bob, on a bad day, I will either thumb through my physical Kudos file, or I will, you know, digitally kind of scroll through, and I recharge myself that way. So I think there are solutions for people that are the Yodas out there that do have a moderate amount of ambition and a moderate amount of talent, and they are ready to increase them both by serving great clients and doing great work and getting them great results. I love the kudos file. I, I remember I used to really struggle with the idea of personal visibility and lots of imposter syndrome and and all the rest of it. And I was having a drink with a guy called Ian Anderson Grey, who is a live video coach, live video confidence guy. And he said that when he was new to personal visibility, he kept a compliment journal. It's just the nice things that people had said about him. And what's fascinating, because I did it, I only needed to do it for 2 weeks. And when I did that, I mean, it sounds so narcissistic, but you would be astonished what you're filtering out. There is no survival benefit to noticing the nice things about yourself. We all have a negativity bias, but by using that journal, it's the same with your kudos file, we get to see what other people see, and it's really valuable. As you were speaking, I think there's one thing that I've found, which is when you're accustomed to doing business locally or within a vertical market and you're not connected, that's with a small c, not a big C, you feel like a lone wolf. You are a hunter and everybody is competition. And one thing the podcast has really taught me is that quality recognises quality. And quality elevates quality. And if you are Yoda in your industry, spending time with other Yodas builds community and it normalises different behaviours. And it also becomes a bit of a self-reinforcing loop that if you're accustomed to thinking, you're thinking of yourself in small terms, in very local competitive terms, spend time with people in your industry who are content creators. Who are leaders. And if you're good at what you do, they will recognise that. And I often use the metaphor, it's a little bit like trying to get a rocket into orbit. Breaking orbit is incredibly difficult. If you show up, if you take safe bets, if you lose a few times, you get to the point where you break orbit and you realise nobody else made it. Nobody else tried. And there are other people who have broken orbit and they're all looking around sticking up their thumbs saying, well done, we're here to help. It was so to get here. And that's why I love spending time with people like you. Yeah. Because obviously it makes me feel good. It makes me more confident in my abilities. And it also— you talk about this in the book— is you're judged by the company you keep. There's that part of it, but also the company you keep changes how you see things. Oh yeah. Which I think is really important. I'd love you to speak to that, how spending time as we are just now can change your vision. And if you can change your vision, it changes everything. Yes. Yes. This is so funny. So on our, I think on our first interview, I shared this with you that when we first came into each other's orbit, I was looking at your website, I was looking at your services, I was looking at your podcast, and I was having all kinds of envy, like, look at this guy, he's doing this right. He's He's doing that right. This is amazing. This is beautiful. Oh, this is so well said. And like the, the envy monster started to take over. And then you and I connected for our first call and you said, well, David, it's so funny you say that because I'm having the same exact experience with you. So that's fun. And I think, I think you're right in that connecting with peers, connecting with colleagues, even connecting with quote unquote friendly competitors, right? People who are just similar business, similar, et cetera. But I'll tell you, no one's in a similar business. Here's the other aha that I've learned after many, many years, because especially in the, in the professional services world, people hire you not just for your expertise, not just for your unique slant or unique capabilities, they hire you for your personality. Yeah. And unless someone else also has your exact personality, which nobody does, Your personality then is another factor in the buying decision. So for example, I know because they've told me prospects have turned down working with me. Everything was wonderful. Everything was looking good on my end anyway. And they said, well, David, I found someone who's just a little bit less loud. I'm like, well, you definitely wouldn't like working with this because this is loud. This is big, right? This is exciting. And there's other people that said, David, you know, I was working, I was looking at a couple of other marketing consultants, coaches, etc., programmes, and I decided to go with you because I love your energy, period, full stop. So unless someone else has Bob Gentil energy, right? Unless someone else has David Newman energy. Yes, all the things we talk about are important. Positioning, packaging, messaging, articulation, distinction. But don't forget, you're a key ingredient to this recipe. You're a key ingredient to what makes working with you special. And so don't lose sight of that. But I also want to just go back to the company that you keep, whether it's a free mastermind, whether it's through your professional association, whether it's just a group of colleagues that you decide to convene. I think sitting around with A-players A-players in whatever field you're in, they're still going to talk about problems, challenges, issues, obstacles, heartaches, headaches. But they're going to be A-player headaches. They're going to be A-player problems, right? They're going to be champagne problems, problems that are vibrating at a much higher level. It's not, where do I find my first prospect? So if you're already a 6-figure, 7-figure business owner, you've already been doing this for 10 years, you don't want to sit around with the person that's like, where do I get my first leads from? Nothing wrong with those people. God bless them. That's great. That's a genuine problem for them. It's not a genuine problem for you. So you say, I've got multiple 6-figure per year clients. I've got multiple clients that are paying me $200,000, $300,000 per year. I'm having a real hard time keeping them around for more than 2 years. Year 1, Total rock star. Year 2— this, by the way, is not my problem. I'm giving an example from one of my clients. You know, year 2, they love it. Year 3, my retention falls down to like 40%. 60% of them leave in year 3, only 40%. How do I solve that problem? It's like, well, wait a second. So they paid you how much in year 1? $300,000. They paid you how much in year 2? $400,000. And you're worried that they're leaving in year 3? I can't even find a $10,000 client, right? Wrong room. Wrong room. You want to be in a room where they say, well, here's what I found works really well to retain 6-figure and multi-6-figure clients for 5 years. We figured this out a couple of years ago and it's been working like gangbusters. And then that person tells you the secret sauce. And now they also come to the table with an A-level problem, whatever that A-level problem, champagne problem is. And maybe you have some insight now, you can help them, you have some experience or expertise on how to solve that problem. So again, it's not like you shouldn't hang out with people that are much further ahead on the ladder or much further behind. I think there's a place for that as well. But being in a room that lifts you up, being in a room that says, yes, the struggle is real, but we've also figured some things out. We're also, you know, if you're at level 3, hang out with other level 3 people. Hang out with also a couple of 4s and 5s, and also, you know, visit the 1s and 2s, but make sure that you're at level 3. If you're at level 30, hang out with other level 30 people and, you know, talk to some 35s and 40s, and also talk to some 10s and 15s and 20s. But level 30 is where you— that, that's where the elevation and the escalation is really gonna happen, is talking to smart, kind, generous, warm, ambitious people who are doing well and want to do better, and they are looking to help you do better as well. That has been enormously helpful to me. I've only been doing that for the last 8 or 9 years. I wish I had started that sooner, but it has been phenomenal. I absolutely echo that. People see the personal branding work and they think it's about what gets transmitted, but what's doing the transmission is really important. And your identity is a big part of your personal brand. And if you don't identify as the version of you that you need to present, it's going to be very, very difficult. And I think this is where these kind of groups can be really useful because they do facilitate a change in vision, which can over time lead to a change in identity, which is really, really important. Yes. Somebody said your internal reality creates your external reality. Now there's a woo version of that, but it's also very practical and pragmatic that if it's not real for you on the inside, if it doesn't feel like it's you, it's going to be very difficult to bring it out. And if you've got other people around you nurturing that identity, it's very, very beneficial. I spent years working in search and rescue doing really scary things. And I remember going to a conference, a personal branding conference, and I knew the work that I wanted to do, but for me to do that, it was going to be a big change. I was not somebody who was comfortable even taking a selfie, let alone posting a selfie. Which is hilarious now. I'm the selfie guy, but I just, I couldn't do it. I was nearly in tears at this conference explaining what I needed to do. And I thought, hold on a minute, you're very comfortable doing very scary things. How do we do this? How do we teach people to do scary things? And it's through a gradual process of desensitisation on the one hand, but also being around people for whom really scary things are normal. It's exactly the same. Yeah, so this whole idea of the mastermind, it's, it's bigger than simply a group of business owners. And if you're listening thinking, I'm accustomed to doing things on my own, trust me, that's not how this business works. If you want to be an A-player in any industry, you need to be around other A-players in or, or around your industry. And if, if you want to be a local business, do it local. But if you're listening to this podcast, that's unlikely to be the case, in which case find people to have around you that are fellow travellers. It's so important. Yeah. So I'm trying to think where to go next and if I should— I think, well, it's two things actually, if we can just do a little edit interruption here. I actually have to run here in a few minutes. So why don't we jump to our three things? I apologise. I usually don't book things wall to wall, but, um, and it's not— where are you gonna go next? Let's go to 3 questions, or 3, the famous 3 things. So, David Newman, let's turn to your amplifiers. What is amplifier number 1? Amplifier number 1 is 3 recommended actions, is that correct? It's 3 things people can go and do to move themselves forwards in one way or another. Excellent. Podcasts you might love, books you recommend, mental models, doesn't matter. So I'm going to give you sort of 3 interrelated— can I give you all 3 at once? Yes. Okay, I'm gonna break the rules here, bend Bob's rules. That's why the first thing that I recommend, and Bob and I were kidding about this before we turned on the recording, but I strongly recommend that you go back and you listen to 3 previous podcast interviews that Bob has done. So that's assignment number one. Why? Experts feature other experts. Experts are based on curiosity, right? We talked about this. And so you're going to build your expert databank by learning about 3 of Bob's previous guests. Number 2 is based on those 3 podcast interviews, I want you to listen to each one with a certain lens and a certain philtre. And the philtre is this: not, do I already know this? Not, am I already doing this? Because those are, those are just kind of practitioner type of questions. I want you to make a list. So listen with a pad of paper or your favourite notebook and a pen and write down what are you curious about when you're hearing something that either Bob said or Bob asked or the guest answered, you say, wow, I'm curious about how would this work in that industry, or how would this work in this particular situation. So write down 3 questions slash curiosities slash interests that are a unique angle into teasing out more from what that expert was sharing. Maybe they address it later in the show, in which case, yay. Maybe you research it and you start to think about how this applies and, you know, you answer your own curiosity or you research your own curiosity. Then the third assignment, and I've done this a lot, but I'll give it to you as a baby assignment, as a starter assignment. I would love you to interview 3 people. My first name is David, and so I had a series that I do sporadically— wasn't a podcast, it was just like a blog sort of interview— called David's Cool Friends. So if Bob were to do this, it would be Bob's Cool Friends. If Sally were to do this, it's Sally's Cool Friends. Take 3 people that you admire, that you follow, that are friendly colleagues, friendly competitors even, and interview them, showcase their expertise, grab a couple of their favourite sound bites. If they have a podcast, refer to their podcast. If they've written a book, refer to their book. If they have a website, promote their website. And get into the habit of featuring and leveraging other people and promoting other people. So I think if you do those three things, you will have gone miles ahead in your pursuit of, uh, thought leadership excellence for the present moment that we find ourselves in. Because at this point, when the AI robots are taking over everything, our biggest advantage is to be more human and to connect with more humans. That is outstanding advice. I am going to have to go back through and to spend a bit of time with that myself. That does bring us to the end of another episode. Thank you for listening. And if you enjoyed the show, I would gently encourage you to leave a 5-star review wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with one person. It really does help me a lot. If you did enjoy the show, you will also love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, 50 pages of everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. David, before I let you go, How can listeners get closer to you? How can they find out more about you or connect with you? Thank you for asking. So a couple of resources, everything connected to Market Eminence and the book and the ideas we were talking about is at marketeminence.com. And the rest of the Empire blog, podcast, all kinds of free resources, including podcast interview or two with Mr. Bob Gentil, is at my main website, which is simply doitmarketing.com. David, you have been awesome. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks for having me.