Ever felt like you're doing great work, but you're stuck in a sea of sameness? 😥 You're not alone. Many experts and founders struggle to stand out, feeling like they're constantly trying to convince new prospects of their value.

This week on ‘Building Your LeaderBrand’ I spoke with David Newman, author of "Market Eminence," about how to break free from this cycle. He shared a powerful approach to building a brand that's not just visible, but truly unmistakable.

It's not about being wacky or putting on a show. It's about amplifying who you already are to create a category of one.

✨ Here are a few things that really stood out for me:

✳️ Build an "Electromagnetic Fence". Your brand should act like a magnet. It should powerfully attract your ideal clients, partners, and talent while just as powerfully repelling the bad fits. Stop trying to appeal to everyone.

✳️ Find Your Contrarian Slant. What conventional wisdom in your field do you secretly think is wrong? What harsh truth are clients desperate for someone to finally say out loud? This is where your unique point of view lies, and it's the key to differentiation.

✳️ Stop Trying to Be Liked. As businesses grow, founders often start playing it safe. They try to "sound smart" and "be liked," which leads to blending in. David argues you need to let go of these instincts and embrace the scrappy, opinionated, and authentic voice you had when you started.

✨ Ready to take action? Here are three things David recommends you can do today:

👉 Define Your Point of View. Answer these questions:

❓What conventional wisdom in your field do you think is wrong?

❓ What harsh truth are clients desperate for someone to acknowledge?

❓ What strong opinion do you hold that would make insiders uncomfortable but resonates with ideal clients?

👉 Shift Your Content from "How-To" to "How-to-Think". In a world of AI, information is a commodity. Your value is in your perspective. Share frameworks, principles, and manifestos that change how your audience sees the world.

👉 Become a Trailblazer. Help your audience prepare for what's coming next. Share trends and future-cast to help them see around corners. This builds immense trust and positions you as a leader.

If you want a quick win, start with the contrarian exercise. It’s the simplest way to stop being generic and start being memorable.

More about David :

David's assessment : https://doitmarketing.com/quiz

Market Eminence Book : http://www.marketeminence.com/

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro — Why this episode matters

Why I invited David and what you’ll get from this conversation.

00:01:30 Guest intro — Meet David Newman & Market Eminence

Who David is, his Do It Marketing work, and the idea behind Market Eminence.

00:03:48 The problem — The “marketing monkey show”

Why doing more of the same marketing won’t get you unstuck.

00:08:42 Category of one — The Grateful Dead example

How being radically different creates a category of one, not a stunt.

00:11:42 The “electromagnetic fence” exercise

A practical workshop: list nightmare clients and hires to clarify who you repel and attract.

00:16:20 Authenticity vs attention stunts

Why being distinct is about revealing who you already are, not putting on a show.

00:22:25 Contrarian slant — 3 prompts to find your opinion

David’s three questions to surface the contrarian views that will make you memorable.

00:30:35 Founder identity — the bell curve and reclaiming your voice

How leaders lose their edge and how to bring back the scrappy identity that scales.

00:35:31 Short-term memory & relationships

Why reappearing in people’s short-term memory matters more than chasing new leads.

00:37:14 Three practical things to do today (David’s closing)

Contrarian slant, industry future snapshot, and how to prepare clients for what’s next.

00:40:01 Resources & assessment — marketeminence.com and quiz

Where to get the free downloads, worksheets, and the Market Eminence assessment.

00:44:27 Outro — Final thoughts and next steps

Wrap up and where to find more from David and the show.

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It's the FREE roadmap to starting, scaling or just fixing your expert business.

www.amplifyme.agency/roadmap

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Welcome to Building your Leader Brand. This week on the show, Bob is speaking with David Newman.

So don't worry about being liked. Don't worry about sounding smart. Take that same scrappy entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial, individualistic, opinionated, smart, savvy, and sassy solopreneur or small partnership that you started with and let's do that with your company of 50 people or 100 people or 200 people. You can regain that, but you can't regain it by wanting to sound smart, and you can't regain it by wanting to be liked by everyone.

Every week, I speak with incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing your personal brand and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, then while you still have that device on your hand to take a second to hit the Follow or Subscribe button. I'm really excited to welcome David Newman. I'm really excited to welcome David Newman to the show. I remember putting you on my list of potential guests that I'd like to have about two years ago. Oh, wow. At that time, I mentioned to Chris Ducker that I would like to have you on the podcast. He said very specifically, Tell him I said hello. I was very delayed, but high from Chris Ducker.

Excellent. Hello back to Chris Ducker the next time you talk to him.

Well, I'm sure he's listening. So David, for people who don't know, is one of my favourite authors, the author of a new book, Market Emanence. It sounds fantastic. 22 strategies to build a bold personal brand, become a business celebrity, and drive unstoppable growth. David, welcome.

Thank you, Bob. It's great to be here.

So you are bigger than just a book. So for the listener who's meeting you for the first time, in your own words, what is it that you bring to the world?

Sure. So I run a company called Do It Marketing, and I've written three previous books all in the Do It series. There was Do It Marketing, Do It Speaking, and then Do It Selling. And I work with professional services firms and experts who want to become a category of one and be unmistakable. These are typically folks that do great work, but they're stuck in some level of obscurity, and they deserve a reputation and a level of respect that is commensurate with the quality of the work that they deliver. So I basically help the good guys win.

So you We're in the right place. This is really all we are about on this show. You couldn't be more smack in the centre of what my audience are into. And before we get into market eminence, on Amazon, The description for this book is beautiful. I'm going to just read it out a little bit. Love it. It starts off with a dramatic crescendo. Visibility, credibility, power, status, respect. Warning, this book is not for everyone. This is an aggressive book. You probably won't like it. It's quite doubtful you have the courage, conviction, or clarity to appreciate a manifesto this unapologetic. We suggest you stick to safer, fluffier business books. But if you want to separate yourself from the obscure to the outstanding, the replaceable to the irreplaceable, and the overlooked to the overbooked, then dive in. That's, I think, a wonderful place for us to begin the conversation is, who is this book for?

It's funny, and we can dig into all the different aspects of this. Almost everything I did in this book, Bob, I was advised not to do. So bad title, terrible concept, concept, off putting back cover. You can't insult people into buying a book, et cetera. But to get back to your question, who exactly is this book for? It is for people who are exhausted of the marketing monkey show that they're having to do to win attention in this crazy AI-fueled world. So they're probably buying Facebook ads, they're buying Google ads, they're selling spending all kinds of money trying to win a race that is basically unwinnable. So we're talking about small to mid-market CEOs, founders, professional service firm owners, It's almost always people that are in some form of expertise-based business, which could include the usual professions, lawyer, accountant, engineer, IT consultant, cybersecurity consultant, But it's also a lot of speakers, coaches, trainers, online course creators, people whose work is not matched. The level of their work, which is outstanding, is not matched by their level of marketplace reputation and respect. So these folks are tired of always having to start at square zero with a new prospect.

Clients love them. Clients love them. They've got testimonials. Clients rehire them, refer them like crazy. But with a new prospect, the new prospect treats them like a nobody. Who are you? And what is it you do? And why should we hire you? And wow, that sounds really expensive. And I'm not sure we can afford that. And gosh, you sound like all the other people who do fill in the blank. So that's the symptom, right? That's the symptom. But I find that experts are so much better at doing the work than they are about amplifying and magnifying and differentiating the work so that they truly stand out in the way that they deserve. And that's who the book is for.

One of the things One of the things that I liked about your book, the way that it was described on Amazon, is you probably will recognise this. There are people who feel like this is a journey that they want to take. And usually it's because they've tried everything else. They've made all the excuses, and then they come to the point where they realise, If I want something to be different, then I need to be different. I need to do different things. This whole thing of, If you want what other people don't have, you probably have to do what other people won't do. And there comes a moment where they're ready. I think that's who this book is for. It is the people who are ready. It's not going to persuade anybody that building a strong CEO brand, as you describe it, is a good idea. They should already be there. This is very much, Okay, so you've arrived. Here's what we're going to do.

Yes. And that's a great way to put it. The other way that I think about it is that true talent, true, truly outstanding talent or skill or capability, once that has taken you as as far as it will take you. And sadly, these days, it's not that far because, of course, everyone claims to be amazing, and every agency is an award-winning agency, and every speaker is always the highest rated speaker at every event. And every consultant has 180 LinkedIn testimonials and reviews and so on. It is really hard for buyers these days to figure out who's the real deal and who's not. So once you are exhausted of trying buying all the other things that you mentioned, Bob, there does need to be a change. There does need to be a shift or a departure from what you've done before, because I've gone down this path myself. Doing more of what is not working is just exhausting. And that's why I call it the marketing monkey show that more webinars, more Facebook lives, more LinkedIn lives, more video, more email is not going to get you where you want to go. In fact, it'll probably have the opposite effect that it will turn a lot of people off because now you're competing in an arena where it's just noise and it's quantity over quality.

And I'm going to quote the great business philosopher, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. And Jerry said famously about the success of the Grateful Dead and why they were successful. He said, We don't really play the best music. In fact, we're not even the best musicians. We don't have the best guitarist. We don't have the I'm certainly not the best drummer, but we don't try and compete on that. He says, Rather than try and be the best of the best, which is practically impossible, because a best according to who, right? Best according to what criteria. But The full quote is, Rather than trying to be the best of the best, we try to be the only ones who do what we do. So it's the entire... The Grateful Dead was so unique in what they did, how they did it from the way that they played the music to the way that they ran the concerts, the live events, the merchandise, the taping area, where they encouraged their fans to tape their concerts and to trade the tapes. And kids, you should look up on Wikipedia, what is a tape? But you'll find it. You'll find that it's on there.

And they were just so dramatically different that they were never compared to the Beatles. They were never compared to the Rolling Stones. They were never compared to any of their contemporaries. They created a category of one.

I think this is really getting to the nuts of what scares a lot of people. Mike McAlowitz wrote a book. I don't know how he does it. A lot of books. One of them, Get Different, where he talks about the importance of difference. If your marketing strategy, be it a corporate brand or a personal brand is to try and outsame your competitors through fitting in, trying to fit in better, trying to be the person that fits in the best. People are filtering you out. As a species, we're hardwired to ignore similarity. We are designed to notice difference. From a survival perspective, difference was problematic. We've been developed to have a visceral visceral reaction to the idea of being different because it could have killed us. In business, this visceral reaction does two things. Number one, it makes it very unlikely that people will do it. But number two, it makes it a huge opportunity. That difference is your golden opportunity, really. Totally agree. But it is something that we often struggle with the idea of until we've gone down the road quite some way. I'm interested to hear maybe some examples where people have initially been fearful of that difference, and then there's a snap.

And why did nobody tell me this earlier?

Yeah. So, Bob, I will tell you that there is approximately 100 % of my clients and audiences, once we get about 10 % into this process, 100 % of them have some freak out. They have some meltdown where it's like, oh, my God, we can't do that. That's not going to work. This is dangerous. This is scary. We're going to offend people. We're going to get hate mail. People are not going to like it. And so at that 10 % mark, right at the very beginning, they give you a large bag of money. You start the work and they go, oh, my God, we can't do this. So here's what I tell people. Here is for everyone listening, everyone watching. Here is your brave your bravery pill, your bravery capsule. I tell people, we are building a magical electromagnetic fence around your business. And because it's electromagnetic, it's got two polarities. The first polarity is it is very strongly going to attract all of the best fits into your world. And I don't mean just best fit prospects and clients. I mean best fit talent, best fit partners, It's best fit media, best fit investors, possibly even best fit acquirers, people that might want to buy your company.

Powerfully pull in all of those stakeholders that are the best fit. And of course, because the other polarity is the negative polarity, it is going to equally powerfully repel all the bad fits, the people that you would never want as prospects, the people you would never want as employees, the people you would never want as partners or investors, et cetera. And I say that, and I look around the room, people are nodding. They're still scared. They're still scared. I say, Okay, let me go to the whiteboard. Let's go to the whiteboard on the board, let's do a little exercise here. I want you to describe to me, because I start by asking, have you ever had a nightmare client from hell? Oh, my gosh. Have we ever? Yes. Great. Have you ever had a nightmare employee, someone that you could not wait to fire. Oh, boy. We've had several of those. Okay, write down with me the characteristics of what you consider a bad fit. So let's start with a bad fit client. Bad fit client micromanages their perfectionists. They nickel and dime every invoice. They question your value. They undermine your team. They might be insulting to your staff.

Just horrible, horrible people. Okay, I write all that down on the whiteboard. Then I said, okay, let's go to a nightmare employee. Who is that person that you hired that was just a terrible fit and that you wish you'd never hired in the first place? They're arrogant, they're complacent, they do the minimum. They don't believe in our vision. They're not aligned with our values. They come in late, they leave early, nobody likes to work with them, no one likes to be on a team with them. I write all that down, and we go through maybe two or three more like that. And I say, okay, let me reiterate what I said a moment ago. Powerfully Really attract all of the best fits. The only people you are going to repel very intentionally are people that meet this criteria that I just put on the whiteboard. And then I look around the room and I say, How do you feel about that? And Bob, you can see their body language. You can see their shoulders start to soften. You can see this misty, wonderful dream before their eyes. And they say, wow, that would be great.

And I say, I I know. Welcome to market eminence. Because that's all you're doing is you are powerfully, magnetically attracting the best fits. And the only folks that you are going to be repelling are the ones that you would never want to be associated with and never want to come in contact with. Not as an employee, not as a client, not as a vendor, not as a partner, not as an investor, because it would just be a horrible, horrible experience for you. Once we do that little 10-minute exercise, everyone feels a whole lot better about, is the journey worth the trip and what the heck are we paying this crazy David Newman person for?

Somebody listening could be justified in thinking, does this just mean I have to be wacky?

Yes.

Or does this mean I have to come across as outrageously authoritative or senior? Yes. What's your response to that? How do people define what's different for them?

Yes. So this is the second big obstacle. You are tracking right along with the typical client mindset. And so they think this is being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous. They think this is about publicity stunts. They think this is about just being weird to have an attention grab or get on TV for 15 minutes. And it's none of those things. In fact, it's the opposite of those things. Things. It's not putting on something that you aren't. It is actually revealing, being more transparent, being more open, being more authentic with who you really are and what you really believe and what you wish you could say and what you wish you could do and what you've always believed and the values that you truly hold dear, magnifying and amplifying those. So this is my problem with of personal branding, not your brand of personal branding, which is that you're one of the good guys in the business.

Thank you very much.

But most of these branding agencies, I've had people come to me after paying 30 or $40,000 to a branding agency, and this client is practically in tears. And she's saying to me, it never fit from the beginning. What they told me I should be talking about or I should be doing did not feel authentic. It felt like I was putting on a very expensive set of clothing. It was itchy, it was weird, it was uncomfortable, and I feel like I wasted all that money because they're doing this putting on process. Whereas market eminence is based on the opposite. It is a removing, removing the façade, removing the shielding, removing the safety of that protection of, okay, let me sound like everyone else. Let me act like everyone else. Let me market and sell like everyone else so I can blend in. And that's safe. And of course, as you pointed out a little bit earlier, that is the most risky, the most dangerous thing is to blend in to the background and be grey and boring and dull and to look like everyone else who does what you do. So it's not about being wacky.

It's not about putting on any artificial weirdness or strangeness. It's about being more transparent and more authentic with with who you really are, what you really do, who you do it best for, who's a great fit and who's a terrible fit, and being very, very proud and very, very loud about that criteria. So in my earlier book, in the Do It Selling Book, I talked about, and this is still true now in 2026 and beyond, market eminence, and what I said in the Do It Selling Book, it's not about persuading or convincing. We are in a philtre Filtering and sorting. The best professional services firm, the best expert, coach, consultant, trainer, etc. They're not chasing people that don't want what they have. They are qualifying and disqualifying. They are filtering and sorting who's a great fit and who's not a great fit. And they are working really, really hard to make sure that the only people that come into their world are the great fits. And so what does that mean? That means that you have to instal that electromagnetic fence that we just talked about. So the complaints that we typically get is, oh, I'm having all these conversations with the wrong people.

The wrong people are coming to our website. The wrong people are responding to our social media. The wrong people are clicking on our ads. It's like, well, have you looked at your website and your social media and your ads? And are you talking to everyone or are you just talking to the best fits and the people that have the problems that you love solving?

I think what you described there is I looked to see who came up with this phrase. I never managed to work it out, but your vibe attracts your tribe. If you're not transmitting clearly or you're transmitting on a frequency that's not aligned with what you want, you're going to attract the wrong people. I think one of the things that for me was a real moment of revelation, because I struggled with personal visibility in the beginning, it was hard. I remember one day realising it doesn't matter who you are. One-third of people will not like you. One-third of people will ignore you, and one-third of people will really like you in an active way. It doesn't matter who you are. That ratio will remain. So once you realise that, you realise two-thirds of people are not for you. They're not relevant. And then you've got the one-third that's really into you. And then you think, well, if that's true and it It doesn't matter who I am and what I do. Wouldn't it be cool if I could just relax and be myself? And then I realised, But hang on a moment. That's going to mean everybody that comes into my world is going to like me for who I am and what I do.

We're going to be aligned, the energy is going to be right, and we're going to enjoy each other's company. Wow, wouldn't that be a cool business? And that's something you can then lean into scaling quite confidently.

Yes.

The other thing I think you mentioned somewhere, I don't know where it was, is probably in those exceptional notes that you sent me as a podcast host, which for the listener, if you want to know how to brief a podcast guest, ask David to send you how he does this because it's first class. Thank you. One of the things you mentioned is the importance of, I think you used the word contrarian.

Yes.

That you need to have an opinion, you need to make a stand stand. I'd like to lean into that a little bit and find out what that really means to you, perhaps personally, what your hill is, if you like, and how you help people towards making a stand that they don't feel is necessarily going to cost them, but it's going to add a little bit of mission to their business.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, can I share a three-step process that our listeners can jump into right now and maybe get a little bit of contrarian mojo happening right away. So there are three... I'm going to give you three questions to think about. And I want you to notice the pattern here that these are not things that you are making up or putting on. These are things that already exist within your mindset, your philosophy, your values, your personal and professional ecosystem. So to define your contrarian slant, question number one is what conventional wisdom in your field do you secretly think is completely wrong, but you've never publicly challenged? So this is something that you say behind closed doors. This is something that you might share with your team. This is something that you might share with clients once they come in and they say, or you say to them, we don't believe in X because of Y. We We don't practise this very common thing because we feel it is harmful to the project. It is harmful to the client. It doesn't really work. It's outdated. It's outmoded. No one needs to go through that hassle.

So that's question number one is what conventional wisdom do you secretly think is completely wrong, but you've never publicly challenged? And now might be the time to publicly challenge it. Number two, is what harsh truth about your industry Are clients desperate for someone to finally acknowledge openly? And Bob, I call this the elephant in the room question. So everyone knows this. Everyone knows this, right? And no one has openly acknowledged it. And I'll give you an example from the legal industry, the law firm world. Imagine if there was a law firm that started to rail against hourly billing. About 90 % of law firms still use hourly billing. Clients hate it. It's like, why are you paying? Why am I paying $800 an hour? Why does it cost me $6 for you to photocopy one page of a document? Why do I feel nickel and dime that people are always running the metre when I make a phone call to you people? And so imagine the law firm that says, We don't believe in hourly billing. We no longer practise that. We are a flat rate law firm, which means no surprises, just results. It could be the hero image on the website, right?

No hourly billing, no surprises, just results. Then they say, later on, when they explain this a little bit later down the web page, They might say, the reason that we don't believe in hourly billing, unlike most law firms, that's a great little entry phrase into your contrarian slant, unlike most, fill in the blank, unlike most personal brand landing consultants, unlike most law firms, we are much more concerned about getting you to your destination than we are in running the metre. Boom, mic drop. Now, every other law firm, every other law firm in your city, every other law firm is looking at you going, you can't say that out loud. Are you insane? This is one of the sacred cows in our industry, the mighty billable hour. Now, let's say you're recruiting for talent. And what's the problem with most associates that go to work for a law firm. It's called the 100-hour Work Week. Imagine if this place said, you know what? We're a 40-hour-a-week law firm. Why? Because we don't measure hours. We don't get compensated by our clients for hours. So this is a job where you can actually come in at 8: 00 or 8: 30 in the morning and still be home at 6: 00 or 6: 30 in time for dinner, and you never need to work nights, and you never need to work weekends.

Now, do you think they will attract a higher calibre of talent in law school graduates and attorneys who are ready to change jobs because they're sick and tired of the 100-hour work week? Do you think you'd be able to attract a higher calibre of talent that can make the same money or more money working for your law firm? Because fixed fees does not mean cheap. Fixed fees means no surprises, just results. So you're making the same money that you're making at 100 hours of trying to kill yourself versus you do that in a 40 or 45 hour work week. So now you're getting more clients. Now you're getting top tier talent, and you have freaked out the rest of your industry who is still stuck in this ancient practise of hourly billing. So that was all a very long example for question number two, what harsh truth about your industry are clients desperate for someone to finally acknowledge openly? And then the third prompt I would give people as they're starting to think about what contrarian slant they could adopt, what strong point of view do you already ready hold. You already have it in your heart.

You already have it in your mind. You teach it, you preach it, you talk about it that would make industry insiders uncomfortable but resonates deeply with your ideal clients. So for this one, I want you to think of all the clients that have come to you with battle scars and war stories of how their last provider screwed them over. What did their last provider not do? What did their last provider leave out? How did their last provider disappoint them, burn them, or screw them over? And you are so strongly against that practise. You are so clearly the good guys and the good gals in your industry that you would never do that to them. But so how to collect data for this third one is what do people who have tried to solve this with another provider, what do they come to you complaining about? What are they bitter and disappointed and disgusted exhausted about their previous experience with someone who looks like you do and does what you do, but you do it in a much better, much more high integrity, smarter, more painless way. So what strong point of view do you already hold that makes industry insiders uncomfortable but resonates deeply with your ideal clients because they've been screwed over before?

So listening to that, what comes across really clearly, and I think this is something that's running through everything, is this is not a process that you can come and instal with a client. There's something has to happen in the inside. A personal brand is an expression of an actual identity. Yes. Identities are not fixed. I think this is one of the things that particularly very senior people need to wrestle with a little bit because it's very easy at that level to think, I have a arrived. I have an entitlement now to exist and be rewarded. And vulnerability at that level to go back and think, Well, no, I need to understand who I am. I maybe need to start thinking about how people see me. I need to look in the mirror and I need to think and I need to capture my thinking. And my goodness, I'm going to have to express myself. It's quite tricky. And I think thought leadership requires that we think and that we take people along. It's not about blog post. It's about leading in public.

Yes, for sure.

And that asks for something quite different. How do you approach, which for some people, I think, is probably quite a sensitive issue, that in order for you to be able to do this, you're going to need to look in as well as out.

Very much so. Well, I think some founders and CEOs have a bell curve experience with this. Not all, but some. And by that, I mean, when you started your business, you were small, you were scrappy, you literally had nothing to lose. You're just getting your first couple of clients just getting your first couple of assignments. At that point, you were 100 % you. You were not worried about the competition. You were not worried about annual reports. You were not worried about managing a staff of 30 people on day one.

You were a little bit punk, probably.

It was you and a chequebook and the first couple of clients, and you were 100 % you. And then as you've grown, you've junked up. You've added all these layers of, I think you called it samefication, but I love that. It's absolutely right. Because here's the deal. I think what the founder needs to let go of is two very human basic instincts. Number one, the need to sound smart, and number two, the need to be liked. If we can let those two things go, because here's what happens. When we want to sound smart, we are looking at competitors. We're saying, well, what's the language they're using on their homepage? How are they describing their services? What does their bio look like? What content are they posting on LinkedIn? I want to sound smart. So by definition, I want to sound like them. I've got a much bigger competitor. I have the spirit animal that someday I'm going to be like Company XYZ. Let me just copy and clone what Company XYZ is doing. And so that is the definition of samefication. And you don't want to do that. So that's why you don't want to sound smart.

And the second impulse is the need to be liked. And we do not want to be liked by everyone. It is very, very important. And early on, when you had nothing to lose, you knew who that ideal client was. You knew who your first couple of employees should be. There was no mystery. It was crystal clear. Who's a great client? What's a great project? What's a good fee for these kinds of things? But then as you get bigger, you start to play it safer because now you have more to lose. Now it's more important to be liked. Now it's more important to sound smart. And then so now we're at this maximum BS, the maximum BS of the Bell Curve. And And then once you realise, well, wait a second, I've hit the plateau. There's no further to go, and no one can tell the difference between what we do and what our top five competitors do, now you start to fly your freak flag again. So once you've established some market evidence, you have a personality, you have a point of view, you have your contrarian slant, now you're differentiated again. Why don't we just skip the whole middle part of that nonsense?

So don't worry about being liked. To, don't worry about sounding smart. Take that same scrappy entrepreneurial, individualistic, opinionated, smart, savvy, and sassy solopreneur or small partnership that you started with, and let's do that with your company of 50 people or 100 people or 200 people. You can regain that, but you can't regain it by wanting to sound smart, and you can't regain it by wanting to be liked by everyone.

One of the things I like about the market eminence book is it's almost a recipe. It's really well put together. All the ingredients you need in order to really stand out and do so with real clarity and authority are there listed. It's very, very clear. One of the things I think a lot of people in our industry, in particular, can be quite guilty of, and I think you're not on this list, but you'll be very familiar with people saying, You need a better funnel. You should be doing search. You should be all of these different musical instruments. For some reason, the trumpet's always the most important instrument.

Yes.

The truth is, the conductor knows how to play this orchestra. The musicians are supposed to just follow what's on the sheet. One of the things that we know to be true is in the expert space, and I think this is probably true for a lot of your clients, 70% of opportunity comes through a relationship you probably already have.

Yes.

But they're not really clear on who you are, what you do, why that's important, why your high status in this space. You're probably locked away somewhere in long-term memory with very little emotion or energy attached to that. That's right. What I like about market eminence is it offers some clarity about how to fix that, how to climb out of long-term memory and how to reshape what's held in short-term memory with the a degree of persistence. I think that's something people listening really need to take home is a lot of the opportunities that you're likely to see in a healthy expert business will come from someone you already know. But how recently did they discover you? How recently did you pop back into front of mind? And what version of you, and for me, this is the definition of a personal brand. It's how you exist in the mind of another person.

Yes.

And that's entirely in our control. I think your book does a wonderful job of providing that control for people who see that task as quite chaotic and scary. So thank you for that contribution.

Awesome. Thank you, Bob. That's great.

If you could pick out three things from your book, we'll call it. On my podcast, we often have a three things section at the end. Sure. I have no idea if my briefing of you was as good as your briefing of me. But knowing that you know your book well, if you could offer people three things from the book that they could focus on today that they could take action on, what would they be?

So I think one of them certainly is answering those three questions that I shared about creating your contrarian slant. The second thing, which I talk about more in the book, is building your industry future snapshot. So this is one of the premises of of the book is that sharing information is no longer relevant. In the age of AI, information is ubiquitous and free and created by machines. The three things that humans and human founders and CEOs need to be embracing is, forget about how to content, share how to think. So share things like frameworks and manifestos and principles and practises and things that people that will shift the way that they see the world. The second thing is share content that helps people understand what to believe and what not to believe. So doing some myth-busting, separating the wheat from the chaff, separating the signal from the noise, separating the truths from the false hoods, or even what's really dangerous, separate the truths from the half-truths, the things that sound right but really aren't anymore. And that's number two. Number three is help be a trailblazer laser and help people prepare for what's coming next.

Because people love when they can be prepared. They're prepared, they're forewarned, they're forearmed. And what most sea-level people hate, what most economic buyers hate, is being sideswiped, surprised or ambushed by something they could have seen coming, but no one warned them, no one told them. So if you can start doing a little bit of future casting or trend spotting, help them see around corners and help them get ready for what's coming next, those three things. So how to think, not how to, what to believe and what not to believe, and then how to get ready for what's coming next, you start shifting all of your thought leadership content into those three buckets, you will have a dramatically different business 90 days from today.

And I think that's important for people to understand is these things can move fast. Yes. Because a lot of this is really shaping or reshaping how the people who already know, like, and trust you think. They just don't have context for you.

That's right.

I've had a lot of fun. I've learned a lot. I think one thing I love about having people like you on the show is it's a great opportunity to get to know you. A lot of the time, this is the point at which I feel I'm ready for a conversation. I would love to have you back. In fact, I would love to have you back quite regularly.

Oh, thank you. That's wonderful.

This brings me to another important lesson for the listener. This is about creating a category of one. This is the job. This is about moving you out of a universe that's hyper competitive into a space where, frankly, somebody would get fired for not hiring you. The listener at home could be justified in thinking, Don't Bob and David do the same thing? Yeah, but different. It's unusual, I think, for people like you and I to show up on the same podcast because there is a lot of competition in the world. I don't think either of us actually feel competition or competitive. I think you're working in a very different space, and I'll be honest, at a slightly different level to me. If you're listening at home on audio, I indicated that's probably slightly higher. But I think my world is such now that I don't feel competition on a day-to-day basis. And in that space, I take joy in learning from everybody around me, which, go back a decade ago, I couldn't have. It put me in a room with a competitor, turn off the lights and give me a knife. I was the guy that was coming out alive.

I just don't feel that anymore. And it's because of the work that you describe.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, this is the definition of a category of one, right? So But let's go back to the Grateful Dead just as we're landing the plane here. People who love the Grateful Dead probably also love other bands, but they're not going to the other bands for what the Grateful Dead is giving them, and they're not going to the Grateful Dead for what the other bands are giving them. They're different. And so people, it's like you've got all of this choice. And so I'll close on this, another Grateful Dead marketing tip. Another Jerry Garcia quote, he says, We're a lot like licorice. People really don't like licorice. Most people don't like licorice. They take out the black jelly beans. They don't like the flavour of licorice. They feel it tastes like soap. But the people who love licorice, love licorice a lot, and they collect licorice, and they get raspberry licorice, and they get Swedish licorice, Finnish licorice, Danish licorice, German licorice, French licorice. They collect it, they talk about it. There's hobbyist groups, there's festivals, of licorice. So he says, We're a lot like licorice, that not a lot of people like us, but the people who like us, like us a lot.

Yeah. I think that's a great place to bring it to an end. My dad is one of those licorice people. Yes. Don't even get me started. We have a family mythology around licorice. David, I've had a lot of fun. This has been great, but that does bring us to the end of another show. Thank you at home for listening. If you did enjoy the show, then I would gently encourage you to leave a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, that's five. Count them. And if you did like the show, then you will love the personal brand business roadmap. Everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business. You'll find a link somewhere. David, if people want to go further with you, they want to go deeper with you, what's the best way they can do that?

Well, the first stop is to grab all of the free resources, downloads, templates, and training that are waiting for you at marketeminence. Com. Those are the companion tools to the book. So you can buy the book if you want to, but you don't even have to buy the book. Just grab all of the companion tools, resources, and worksheets, and that's marketeminence. Com. If you want to buy the book, that's optional. And then the other things that we do, resources, website, blog, podcast, are on the main website, which is doitmarketing. Com.

And you mentioned that there's an assessment, and I said we should talk about that because everybody likes an assessment. Everyone likes to look in the mirror and benchmark themselves. Yes. Where can you find that?

So that is if you go to doitmarketing. Com/quiz, Q-U-I-Z, you will find the market eminence assessment, and that is a self-scoring tool. You answer 12 questions, and it kicks out a report back to you by email, doitmarketing. Com/quiz.

David, you have been great fun, and I really look forward to having you again. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me, Bob. This was great fun.