Brand yo self | Ryan Deal | Ep. 117

[Ryan] (1:00:00 - 1:00:13)

I really don't think just looking across the CS environment, specifically working with a lot of professionals like I do. I don't think people think about this very often. So if you do, you're going to stand out.

[JP] (1:00:19 - 1:00:20)

Take it off, man.

[Dillon] (1:00:21 - 1:00:32)

What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man JP with us. JP.

Do you want to say hi?

[JP] (1:00:34 - 1:00:37)

Yo, I got my man Rob with us.

[Dillon] (1:00:37 - 1:00:38)

Rob.

Do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (1:00:40 - 1:00:43)

Yo, and we've got Ryan with us.

[Dillon] (1:00:43 - 1:00:44)

Ryan.

Will you say hi, please?

[Ryan] (1:00:45 - 1:00:45)

Yo.

[Dillon] (1:00:46 - 1:00:49)

Oh, geez.

He got caught up in it.

[JP] (1:00:49 - 1:00:49)

Come on.

[Dillon] (1:00:49 - 1:00:59)

Do it up. It's okay. It's okay.

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Yo, do you want a yo from me?

[JP] (1:00:59 - 1:01:01)

You can't spell Young without yo baby.

[Dillon] (1:01:01 - 1:01:08)

That's right. Dillon. Yo Young.

Okay. There we go. Ryan.

Thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself, please?

[Ryan] (1:01:10 - 1:01:33)

Yeah. So my name is Ryan deal. I've been a customer success leader for about the last three and a half years.

I'm a recovering salesperson of eight years and just love all things around building businesses and customers and psychology. And I'm here to share a little bit about some of the things I've been thinking about recently.

[Dillon] (1:01:34 - 1:01:37)

Don't say psychology. You're going to get Rob all riled up.

[Ryan] (1:01:37 - 1:01:37)

Why?

[Dillon] (1:01:39 - 1:02:07)

Yeah. Well, yeah, you I think you really like it. JP.

I feel like Rob just pulls out his textbook and he's like, oh, what do I think can apply to it? It's all in the noggin man. I know.

I know. It's actually very impressive and I'm mad about it because all I know is the roster of the Eagles. Anyway, Ryan quick question for you.

Eight years in sales now three in CS. How'd you make that transition? And why?

Why do you stick around? This is obviously not your topic. I'm just curious.

[Ryan] (1:02:08 - 1:02:46)

Yeah. Yeah. Well now about four a little over four years officially in CS over three in a leadership role.

Got it. I moved over from sales just for necessity. I got laid off actually built.

I was kind of a one man sales and marketing team for a small e-commerce business in the pet products industry and I built their business to business program from the ground up over about eight years, but things happened. I found my way into the organization. I work for now after about was of six or seven weeks or so of unemployment and I've been there ever since and absolutely love it.

I feel like the CS space is always where I've meant to be.

[Dillon] (1:02:47 - 1:02:56)

Pretty cool. All right. You know what we do here.

We ask every guest one single question and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success. So why don't you tell us what that is Ryan?

[Ryan] (1:02:58 - 1:03:24)

I am here to talk about personal branding. We don't know anything about this. And I have to say I had a lot of fun just thinking about what I wanted to prepare to talk about here.

So I'm going to break down what I have. I want to talk a little bit about what my definition of personal branding is out the gate. Why I think it's important and then maybe how to start.

Does that sound good?

[Dillon] (1:03:25 - 1:03:28)

Love it. We got 10 minutes Ryan. So keep it punchy.

[Ryan] (1:03:29 - 1:06:50)

No worries. Yeah, I'll control the space here. So what is your personal brand?

I'm thinking of it here as like how you present yourself in a professional environment at work or an environment like LinkedIn. Personal branding is really just bringing some intentionality, maybe some definition to that presentation. So why is this important for professionals to think about?

If you're putting yourself out there in the workplace or on social media, you're building a brand whether you like it or not, whether it's intentional or not. So taking actions to define how you want to present yourself and just being conscious about how others perceive you can do a few things that I've listed out here for us. So first and foremost, just practicing this myself, it will absolutely help you build a better understanding of yourself.

You provide a level of consistency and predictability in these areas where maybe for your content, for your audience, people like predictability and consistency or maybe these day-to-day deliverables that you're building into your personal brand are helping your leaders or your direct reports. I can tell you the people that report directly to me, they appreciate consistency and predictability around what I bring to our one-on-one meetings and the team meetings, things like that. And next thing I thought of in terms of why this can really serve us as professionals.

When you have control of your personal brand, you just give off an air of confidence and I have this old sales cliche that confidence closes. I really believe it. You've gone through this process of building some level of certainty to your professional interactions, whether they're maybe job interviews, QBRs with customers, EBRs with your leaders.

You've already made that agreement with yourself about how you're going to come to the table and that confidence is actually communicated in a lot of verbal and nonverbal communication. Mastering your personal brand and knowing when to kind of manifest, that is a great way to just stand out amongst peers who may be competing with you for a role inside or outside of your organization. And I really don't think just looking across the CS environment specifically working with a lot of professionals like I do, I don't think people think about this very often.

So if you do, you're going to stand out, right? I believe that building your personal brand, one that genuinely reflects your values, will help you avoid situations where as a professional you're being asked to do things that compromise or maybe contradict those values. One quick example, I like to introduce myself in job interviews if I'm in that situation as like one of the things that makes me me is I'm a family man and my family drives absolutely everything I do.

So that's a big core value of mine. That's genuine to me. If that aspect of me sets off red flags for that company, that employer, that's not going to be a good fit for me, right?

In a way, it's bringing up a level of protection.

[Dillon] (1:06:52 - 1:07:22)

I want to, so I think out of the three of us, but even if I were to zoom out and say, you know, the folks that I admire, the way that they present themselves, top of that list is JP. And the reason I think that is because that last point you made, Ryan, is around, you said genuine. I call it authenticity.

I can't think of anybody who threads the needle better than JP. And so I want to cede the rest of my time to the gentleman in the Yo! MTV Raps hat.

[JP] (1:07:24 - 1:08:37)

Ryan, thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your preparation.

I think that something you said, and I want to, I want to speak a little time for Rob here, but something that you said, you said you want to put for how long, six to seven weeks, correct? That is amazing. In a time where sometimes people want to employ it for three, four, five, six months, right?

It was marketing. You said you've been at your current job for how long? Almost four and a half years.

Almost four and a half years. You made a really good point about basically what I think is filtering, that if you think about your brand as a way to really filter the opportunities where you're going to thrive, who the hell wants to get a job where they're going to go and be miserable? You know how much work it takes?

You know how much work it takes to just land that one row? I know people listening to this are going to know what I'm talking about. And so what Dillon says about me, like I knew that I had to bring something in my branding that was basically going to filter the right opportunity for me.

And that's why I think that I'm at the right company for me because I was able to really sort of send those signals. And then, like you said, that helped me to understand myself so I could bring it to an interview. Rob, go ahead.

[Rob] (1:08:37 - 1:10:06)

I just love this. I mean, I think I hear this topic and I've never really thought about this as a package, really, as a whole conversation around this. I've certainly observed it, right?

When I heard this topic, I thought about, I have a friend who's like the surfing sales consultant. I have a friend who is, she's the blue haired recruiter. I think of myself who's some doofy pseudo-academic with intense imposter syndrome that should have been a dentist in another life.

I'm nodding along to all that. Or like, so I was talking with my sister because she's about to, she's leaving her master's program and she's studied basically like user research for software, basically. Internet and technology, I think is what it's called.

Internet and society, I mean, something like that. Anyway, so she's like, well, what do I do now? Like, how do I build my brand as I get to the workforce?

And I was like, I think she'd do great in product management. And I was like, what if you're like the product academic? Because most product managers out there haven't studied this nearly as intensely or as scientifically as you have.

Like, who do you know that has like genuinely scientifically studied product adoption? And so I think it's a super cool topic. It's very challenging.

I mean, my sister took two years kind of like working toward this identity, whether she knew it or not. And I feel like I've taken a ton of time and energy to try to define whatever it is that I bring to the table.

[Ryan] (1:10:07 - 1:12:23)

Well, do you guys want me to take a couple of minutes to show you how I think people should get started if they've never thought about this before? Or do. Yeah, let's do it.

So here's the thought exercise. And again, this is like a professional context. This is absolutely something you can do outside of a professional context, as long as you're genuine.

We're not putting on masks here. This is not a narcissistic exercise or anything like that, right? Hold up a mirror to yourself.

And this can be pretty uncomfortable for people. But just ask yourself, like, how do you see yourself? What are those characteristics you believe define you?

And then pinpoint the behavior that drives those characteristics. Next step, go through the same process. How do you believe other people perceive you?

And how do you want to be perceived by others? Then pinpoint the behavior that drives those characteristics. So commit to just a few behaviors or even mindsets that you think are genuine to your personal brand and just build off that.

It's meant to grow organically. You can experiment. I don't believe your personal brand should necessarily be something that you can summarize in one or two sentences.

Check on the stuff with yourself regularly. These things should just feel natural. They should bring you fulfillment and happiness.

And maybe a nice side effect is that you bring that same thing for other people around you. A couple of examples. I like the rule of three.

So I have three examples of things I incorporate into my personal brand. Core values. If you never thought about what your core values are, start now.

Try to define at least one. Something simple too. What's your favorite quote?

That can be something you can incorporate into your personal brand. Stand out amongst your peers. Maybe even in a job interview.

That's a nice little thing to remember you by. And then I always encourage professionals I work with who are doing this. Try to build something into your professional personal brand that you wouldn't necessarily find on your resume.

So like me, growing up, I was a theater kid. And so I bring that energy into all the work I do. And I'm always thinking about how people are perceiving me, right?

So that's a quick little example of where to start. Ryan, I love this.

[Dillon] (1:12:23 - 1:13:24)

What I'll say is a lot of this we're couching within professional development. But I know at least from my perspective, I have done a ton of work just personally about the way in which I want to be perceived by others in the world. I think we don't spend enough time thinking about like how the way we speak or the words we use or the tone we use, the way we engage with others, how that impacts the experience they have and therefore impacts the way in which they view us.

So I would encourage folks like even if you don't give a damn about the way like you are perceived at work. How about just the way you're perceived as you go out into life? But Ryan, we have not talked about this before.

So this is a fantastic and refreshing topic, but we are out of time. I would love to come back and dig a little bit more into the how and maybe some stories of success you've seen with yourself and with others. But for now, we've got to say goodbye, Ryan.

Good seeing you guys.

[Voiceover] (1:13:28 - 1:13:59)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com.

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