I recently wrote a blog post over at Poductivity about the secret origins of the Poductivity product.

I wove a tale together using imagery, sensations, and emotion. I talked about stepping off the plane in 2015 and into the Vegas heat. I was excited to attend my first ever New Media Expo. Little did people know I had a secret motive. I wanted to validate the idea of Poductivity and decide where I need to focus my attention, build my influence and my network in the podcasting world.

I told the story pretty well, if I do say so myself.

I sent it to Adam, a friend of mine who’s working on the product with me. He asked how on earth I write like that, turning what could have been a dry recounting of facts into something so rich and interesting, and how do I come up with things in the first place.

Adam had been thinking about writing more himself, but he felt as though he had nothing to say.

So I told him the secret. It’s all about developing a story mindset.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 479 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

You Are Surrounded by Stories

Things are constantly happening to you.

I bet you don’t think they’re of any consequence, but you’d be wrong. When you take them apart, you’ll find some really good stories in them.

I could have talked about Poductivity from the perspective of me as a podcaster, or as a SaaS startup founder. Instead, I took people right back to the beginning because I’ve developed a story mindset.

I’ll look for the little “pinch points” in life. I look for the weird little changes and tweaks that happen to me that end up changing my direction. What are those little forks in the road that you don’t notice until much later? What are those things you don’t realise affected you until you looked back on it?

I can take these things and develop them into stories.

Let’s say I want to write about Poductivity. I’ll go back through the entire history of everything I’ve done that has any bearing on Poductivity, even right back to the first time it appeared to me as an idea.

Then, I’ll take one tiny detail as the basis of the story.

For example, last week I met with a strategic partner in London. I could go in a bunch of different directions with that, including talking about the importance of strategic partners or networking to get yourself around the right people. Whatever direction I take, it would lead up to the release of Poductivity.

The Tiniest of Details Make Stories Great

Most people like to tell big-picture, broad-strokes stories. Strangely enough, that’s a good way to make a story boring.

Think of Harry Potter. It’s basically: Boy finds out he’s a wizard, goes to school to learn about magic, grows up, and eventually beats a bad mother-f*cker wizard. Everyone’s happy.

Instead, J. K. Rowling took 7 key pinch-points in the story of Harry Potter’s school years and crafted deep stories around them, using tiny details to paint the most lustrous picture for you that she could.

The first pinch-point is Harry discovering he’s a wizard. That’s enough of a foundation to create a whole book about. The second was finding out there’s a little more to Hogwarts, with the monstrous subterranean snake that he fights. The third was learning about the wider world of wizards beyond the school. And so on.

The seven books of Harry Potter’s adventures could have been told in one book. It could technically be told in one paragraph, as I just did. But how much more boring is that? The more compressed it gets, the fewer details you can offer and the duller the picture you paint.

J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, William-bloody-Shakespeare… the world has had plenty of people with master story mindsets.

I want you to become one of them.

Your personality is your secret weapon. It gives you stories to tell. Sh*t happens to you that can’t happen to anyone else because of your personality and how you handle it becomes the story.

Develop a story mindset and you’ll never run out of stuff to say.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

Jess Kupferman is brand ambassador at my business, Podcast Websites. She’s also the director of content at the Podcast Success Academy, which is one of our products to help podcasters become real audio influencers.

When we were at Podcast Movement, Jess did a talk on pricing your influence as an audio influencer. When she was developing that talk, she asked me a question behind the scenes. She said, “Mark, why are you not more vulnerable in your content? You are more open and vulnerable than most, but I still think you could give more”.

My answer was, simply, you have to be strategic in your vulnerability.

Don’t share everything, because not everything matters. You’ve got to know where the line is with your personal stuff.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 478 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Only Share What Matters to Your Audience, Not Just What Matters to You

A while ago, I went through a divorce. I don’t mind sharing that here. We’re still great friends, luckily. It just didn’t work out.

It was a difficult time for both of us. It was a sensitive time that took about 2 years to completely wrap up, which happened a few months ago.

Only a few people in my audience knew that.

The reason I kept it quiet is that it didn’t matter to you. I’m mentioning it now only because it serves as an illustration. It’s adding some value to you as the reader, so I’m happy to share it.

The Danger of Total Vulnerability

People can become too familiar.

I won’t say anyone’s properly taken advantage of me, but I’ve definitely seen people taking a mile when I’ve given an inch.

I had a situation a while ago where my little nephew was seriously ill and I didn’t get back to someone. Usually, I’m very responsive, but this time I was silent for almost a week. I eventually sent a reply saying I’ve had a few things going on and I’m sorry for not getting back.

They knew that my nephew was ill, and they replied saying they can’t work with someone who runs off if there’s the smallest family emergency.

I thought, “Well, f*ck you very much, you piece of sh*t.”

I couldn’t believe they even brought that up. But I realised something from that exchange. The fact that my nephew was ill didn’t matter to them. It didn’t help them at all. All it did was give them a little ammunition to be a bit of a tw*t.

Imagine if I’d talked all about my divorce while it was going on. Had there been any tech issues with Podcast Websites or any problem with Excellence Expected, my personal brand, people would have thought, “Yeah… well… he is going through a divorce, isn’t he? You’ve got to expect that”.

That would have been plain wrong. As it happens, there have been no tech issues with Podcast Websites, my personal brand has gone from strength to strength, and we continue to astound people with our level of customer service.

What bearing would my divorce have had on my business? That was my line.

There was no reason to give people something about my personal life that they could use if they were having a bad day.

Define Your Line

When you inject your personality into things, people will take advantage. I’ve had it so many times. Last February I had to draw a line in the sand with a lot of people and tell them they’re taking it a little too far. Yes, we’re friends, but ultimately we started this relationship as a business relationship. That the context, here. Let’s keep that going.

The more you inject your personality, the more people start to believe they can be cheeky with you. They think they can push the boundaries a bit more.

You need to know this going in, because you will have to push back. There is no reason whatsoever to feel bad about that. You might need to put people in their place.

Define your line. If you follow me, you know pretty much everything about me apart from the contents of my bank account and my relationship status. You don’t need to know that stuff.

Personal branding is not about being 95% open and sharing everything in your life. It’s about sharing what matters in a completely honest way.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

If you feel trapped in a lifestyle prison, if things are just “okay” and you want to build more fulfilment without sacrificing your current way of life, part of your escape plan is crafting your personality as your secret weapon.

I’ve written about how your personality is not about you. It’s about supporting other people’s goals. It’s the same as selling your products. You don’t sell the product itself, you sell how it’s going to make the customer feel and how it’s going to make their life better.

I also laid out a few formulas for injecting your personality into your content, from choosing your visual cue (for me it’s my baseball cap), how you drive home your points, and the sound-bite you sign off with.

Now, it’s time to cover how to allow your personality to scale with your business. When you’re the centre of your business, it’s easy to develop your personality. You just have to be yourself. But what about when you scale? What about when you reach your capacity and have to stop being the only face of your business?

I talk more about this in podcast episode 477 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

How My Personality Became My Business’s Personality

Over the last year, I scaled Podcast Websites. We’re on track to being about 35–40% up on our revenue from last year. Profitability is going up. The product suite is growing. Everything is increasing.

I could not remain the centre of that business.

As the co-founder and CEO, the buck will always stop with me, of course. I’ll always step in and deal with something that the team needs help with. But we’ve built our team carefully, and right from the beginning I thought about how to keep the personality of the business consistent as we grow.

I created some simple but crucial language guidelines for Podcast Websites.

When a new member of staff or a new partner (like our new brand ambassador, Jessica Kupferman) comes on board, we hand over the guidelines.

These guidelines describe how the personality of myself and my co-founder Kieran runs through Podcast Websites.

For example, we’ve included how to handle support requests. We never dead-end someone. We will never say to someone, “I’m sorry, I can’t help”. If we ever find ourselves unable to help with what we have, we do some research and find them an alternative solution, whether that means directing them to a resource in the academy or somewhere else.

We also never just say, “we fixed it.” Instead, we lay out what the problem was, what exact steps we took to remedy it, and what they can do the next time if it happens again.

We use words like, “Hey” or “Yo”. We call people “friend” or “mate”. We are informal with people. We might even be a little sassy or contrarian with the way we talk. The guidelines expressly forbid swearing, even though my own personal brand allows for a few well-placed expletives.

All our language guidelines fell under the remit of my personality, but it’s not just me anymore. I was the centre of the business, but now I’m one cog in a much bigger machine. We all need to sound like Podcast Websites, not just like “me”. My personality has scaled with the business, and now it’s Podcast Websites’ personality.

You might have certain language quirks that are specific to you or where you grew up, too. For example, I’ll sometimes say, “Right, I’m going to get off and have a brew.” To me, that’s a Yorkshire tea. To my friend Raf, who comes from DC, that means a beer, so I’ll sometimes use that to joke around and build rapport. These little differences in language can give you a subtle edge. The worst thing you can do is try to sound like everyone else. Lean into how you naturally talk and use that in your guidelines.

Build Your Own Language Guidelines

Create a simple set of instructions that you and anyone in your team can take and use to maintain the personality of the business as you scale.

You’ll probably get a VA pretty early on in your business, for example. Since a VA is usually public-facing, you need to give them your guidelines or the personality of the business will crumble. It could be as basic as a list of words you use, how you sign off, and how you communicate with people in your voice.

With your language guidelines in hand, your personality will scale with your business.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

It sounds easy to “be yourself”.

And you have to be, because your personality is your secret weapon when building a fulfilling business and life for yourself.

Problem is, it’s not easy. It’s daunting. It takes a lot of undoing of old habits. Luckily, it only takes a few well-placed injections of “you” in each piece of content you create for everything you do to start feeling authentic and unique, with all the bottom-line benefits that come with that.

Adding your personality to your content is more than just developing a visual style or a brand. It’s a subtle way to distinguish yourself from everyone else out there. I want to give you a few formulas to help you do that ASAP. The foundational question to these formulas is this — how will people recognise you?

I talk more about this in podcast episode 476 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Formula 1: Wear a Visual Identifier

I’m always in a baseball cap. And it’s usually backwards.

I even went to my mum’s house the other day and she said, “Oh, nice to see you without your hat on for a change.”

Brand-Mark is working!

I reinforce the baseball cap look in my podcasts and in my writing by mentioning it from time to time. I take the mick out of myself for it. My profile picture in most social networks shows me in a baseball cap.

It seems like a small thing, but who will be remembered? The guy with a recognisable “trait”, or the guy with nothing that stands out?

What’s going to be your visual cue, and how can you reference it? Look around for what other people are using as their visual cue. Take Seth Godin for example. He’s always wearing those weird yellow glasses. That’s not an accident.

Anything that makes you stand out and feels like it meshes with your personality can work as a good visual identifier.

Formula 2: Create Your Own Style for Driving The Point Home

What are you going to do to make people stand up and listen to the most important concepts or information in your content?

It’ll be different for audio vs written content. For my podcast episodes, I do one or both of these two things:

1. I leave a bit of silence.
2. I’ll drive it home with a well-placed expletive.

If I’m writing, the “silence” means leaving some space around the statement by making a single sentence paragraph.

For example:

You have to change how you play the game.

If you don’t, you won’t stand a f*cking chance of winning.

That’s my style. That’s how I like to deliver the important parts of my message. It’s noticeable, and it’s recognisably “Mark”.

Your style will be different, but you need some way of driving home your point. What feels like a very “you” way to do it? Some people use a laugh. Some people damn-near yell down the mic. While writing, some people like to use a lot of bolding and italics. Others use more visuals.

However you choose to make your big points, be consistent. Your audience will soon start to subconsciously expect it and feel closer to you and your message as a result.

Formula 3: Invent a Sound Bite to Sign Off With

I sign off every one of my podcasts and articles with:

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

I started doing that right from the beginning. I didn’t know it would stick, I just liked it and picked it.

I knew it was truly my catch-phrase (meaning people were starting to expect it and wait for it) when I was doing free coaching with Annett Bone and I said, “And remember guys, the more you expect from yourself…” and Annett said, “…the more you WILL excel!”

Start listening out for what other podcasters or writers sign off with.

On Frank Skinner’s radio show, he signs off with the strange but amusing, “If the good Lord spares us, and the creeks don’t rise, we’ll be back again this time next week. Now get out!”

A vlogger who goes by “Mr Reagan” ends his videos by saying, “If you liked this video, give me a thumbs up, if you want to see more videos like this, please subscribe, and if you hate me…” followed by a new and funny suggestion every week for his hypothetical haters (which he keeps self-deprecating and in good taste).

You can sign off any way you want. It doesn’t need to be clever. It just needs to be something you agree with, makes you smile, and/or gets you pumped up.

If you implement all three of these formulas, your content will start to feel like “you”, instead of merely being made by you, making your content arsenal more and more powerful.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

Your personality is your secret weapon in life, in business, and certainly in the journey of breaking out of your lifestyle prison.

Injecting your personality into your business is an incremental process and takes a bit of smart strategy, so I want to lay out where to direct your focus as you do this.

It’s all about you, right? This is your life. You’re aiming at building a fulfilling life for yourself. You’re figuring out how to take your next step towards an ideal lifestyle. Well… that’s all well and good, but focusing on what you get out of it will leave you high and dry.

Why? Because no man is an island. In Secrets of the Sale, Zig Ziglar wrote, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

I talk more about this in podcast episode 475 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Selfishness is Self-Destruction. Helping Others is How You Help Yourself.

Everything you do should support other people.

Success will only ever follow that approach. This concept was catalysed in my mind a while ago when a coaching client of mine, Raf, who is on a mission to connect a million veterans, realised that his show needed to be the “Raf Show”. He’s got to be the centre of it for it to work. I agreed with him. However, we also need to think bigger. Raf’s personality is key, but how does it tie into what his audience is trying to achieve?

Let’s use my business as an example — Podcast Websites. Your goal as marketer for Podcast Websites would not be to sell Podcast Websites. It would be to sell the successful path to becoming an audio influencer. It’s to sell getting your time back. It’s to sell having an amazing holiday and not worrying about your podcast going down or your traffic dropping because Podcast Websites has your back.

Whatever you sell, you’ve got to sell the outcome through your product, not the product itself. You’re selling the desire, the need, the experience… the emotion. Think about your personality through a similar lens.

Let me tell you about another friend of mine, Andrea Frank. She uses positive psychology and a methodology called Appreciative Inquiry to help parents create the best possible environment for their kids to develop in. But what she doesn’t do is “sell” those things.

She doesn’t sell consulting in Appreciative Inquiry. She sells a better disciplinary dynamic, more well-rounded kids, better results at school, and a more mindful family life. She sells a better lifestyle for family oriented people.

For Andrea, Appreciative Inquiry and positive psychology are only tools to help her audience and clients achieve what they really want, which is a better family life. Her content is not about her and the methods she likes. It’s all about the outcomes.

Ask yourself: What do you help people to do?

Who Do You Help & What Are The Outcomes You Encourage?

Check out the podcast at SuccessAcademy.com. In their free tier, they give you a very simple exercise which is worth writing out and sticking on your wall behind your computer screen.

“I help [X] do [Y] so they can [Z].”

Using Podcast Websites as an example: “I help [podcasters] to [create their own path to audio influence] so they can [monetise their audience in ways that benefit them, not just their sponsors].”

Write down your own X-Y-Z statement.

Then, think about how your personality fits into that statement. You need to serve your audience’s outcomes. That’s your whole reason for doing business. Your audience are those you serve. They are not there to serve you.

It’s the same with any leader. A good leader serves the people he or she leads. Only the tyrannical dick-head serves his or her own outcomes above the people that follow them. Be a good leader. Support your audience’s outcomes through your personality, just as you support their outcomes through your products.

Your goals, your mindsets, your dreams, your desires, your financial recompense… all these things will come only as a by-product of supporting other people in their outcomes.

Fill out the statement, “I help [X] do [Y] so they can [Z].”

Tweet it out to me @MrAsquith. Put it out there and make it official.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

I wear my hat backwards. I swear a little bit too much. I’ve worn shorts to work for the last 12 weeks. It doesn’t matter who I’m seeing. It’s warm, so I wear shorts.

People see all that and they assume I’m really dialled in on my personality, that I know exactly what makes me, me.

But here’s the dirty little secret — it’s taken me 10 years to be comfortable enough in myself to do any of those things.

Wearing my hat backwards? Holy sh*t, people are going to think I’m a bit of a chancer. Wearing shorts? Hardly the “professional” thing to do!

It’s taken me 10 years to talk on a microphone without any script, or to talk for 45 minutes on stage while being “myself” and keeping the audience engaged.

Life is incremental, and introducing your personality to your business is no different. It’s not a light switch. It’s just like breaking out of your lifestyle prison by building a side-hustle that can support your current way of life. None of it is a light-switch. It takes time.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 474 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Be Kind to Yourself… Hardly Anyone is “Them Self”

Don’t beat yourself up.

Almost no one is completely comfortable with them self. I’m not totally comfortable with myself half the time. I’m always working to become more comfortable in my own skin. I guess when I’m on my deathbed, I will have hopefully cracked it and become 100% comfortable. I’m not holding my breath to achieve it any sooner!

I don’t want you to feel bad if the self-improvement techniques I’m talking about with you are difficult or foreign to you. It’s not easy. Knowing who you truly are after 30 years of pretending to be “professional”… discovering who you really are underneath all that pomp and bravado is difficult. It’s not clear where the lines have been blurred.

Find Out What People Resonate With

Experiment. Find out what people resonate with. People resonate with me on things I would never have predicted.

I get tweets from people about something I spoke about a year ago, almost off-hand, and they say it has changed their life.

I hear that and I’m like, holy f*ck, I had no idea that was even worth saying.

You can’t orchestrate those things. If you want to change people’s lives in interesting and serendipitous ways, you’ve just got to put stuff out there. You have to get to the point where you’re vulnerable enough to share things you might be judged for.

Start Bleeding Out a Few Tidbits About Your Personality

Lean into some of the hobbies you’ve got.

I’m a keen amateur photographer — I’ve an Instagram account just for this hobby (@AsquithPhotos).

My Instagram profile is just me f*cking around and taking pictures. If they’re good, they’re good, if they’re not, I learn.

To put myself out there and expose this new work was like entering podcasting all over again. It was like entering the world of business all over again. I was scared.

I was putting a piece of myself on the line for people to critique. And guess what? Whenever people do, it’s for the right reasons. No one’s been a dick about it so far, and so what if they did? People enjoy watching what I’m doing, and when I talk about it at conferences or in interviews, it gives me an “in”, an ice-breaker.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow there will be someone who wants to wear their hat backwards but is afraid to get slated for it. They might need my help to get past it, and suddenly the sale becomes easier.

Anything like that, that you can offer…any oddities you thought were only yours, try putting it out there. I guarantee you you’re not the only one. It allows you to build kinship where you never thought you would. Sounds weird, but it works.

Start incrementally. Re-introduce yourself into your life and your business.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

I know my weaknesses.

Here’s a weird one — when I’m busy, I expect the rest of the world to be, as well.

I get frustrated by other people being relaxed when I’m under pressure. We’ve recently taken on some big, big projects at Podcast Websites. I was in the office recently, really focussing on them, and some of the other team members weren’t so strung out. They were taking breaks a little too often and chatting a little too much for my liking.

It pissed me off, but I gave myself some space before reacting. I know it’s a personality trait of mine. I’ve always been like that. When I’m under the cosh I expect everyone else to be under the cosh. It’s silly, of course, because the situation is often reversed. It’s just the way of work. But that’s how I am. I understand that. I’m wholly aware of it. It’s how I handle it that makes the difference to my in-person personality.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 473 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Your Personality is Your Choice

I’ve written about legacy, how we are remembered, and how the best way to be remembered well is to be consistent, to be the same person to everyone.

So, if we react to things from instinct when we’re under strain, it distorts our personality. It distorts how we are perceived. It distorts how we’re remembered.

Reacting from instinct makes you inconsistent.

You might think it’s more authentic to act from your gut, but it’s often not. You get hungry, but hunger is not your personality. Your personality is shaped by how you choose to react to hunger. Does it take you out and make you whiny and insufferable until you get your next bite? Or do you suck it up and not let it ruin your mood?

Likewise, your instinct to react in anger (or in fear, or whatever) is not who you are and it’s not your personality. You are not the anger. You are the thing that reacts to the anger. How you do that is your choice.

Reactions are key to your personality. Give yourself 10 seconds to react. Watch yourself. Be aware of your behaviour. What do you normally do that’s negative and what you do that’s positive. The more aware you are of yourself and your behaviours, the more easily you can choose and implement your best traits.

How to Uncover The Things That Are Holding You Back

Sit down and write a list of all the things you do badly and their causes.

Write down all the ways you react that make you feel bad afterwards. Write down the tendencies of your personality that make a calm head difficult. Write down the situations you find yourself in that don’t bring out the best in you.

Once you have them written down, look at them regularly. Remember them. Then, when you see them cropping up in your life, give yourself 10 seconds to react.

React in a way you would want to be remembered for.

Remember, your personality is how you show up. It’s everything you do every single time you have a conversation or have to face a challenge. That’s who you are.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

Be the person (the boss, the entrepreneur, the spouse) that you want to be by giving yourself a little room to think.

We know your personality is your secret weapon for building a fulfilling life. We know we need to add more personality into the mix if we’re going to break out of our lifestyle prison. To add more of the personality we want, we need to understand when and how to change our reactions.

It’s strange to consider, but the majority of your personality is how you react to things, right?

So give yourself a little time.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 472 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

How I Sculpted My Personality to Be Happier & More Productive

When I was at my previous agency, Hacksaw, I was often an angry bloke. I had a reputation for being short and snappy with people. I wasn’t someone you came to if you f*cked up and needed a helping hand. I was someone you hid your mistakes from, and that’s not a good thing for a boss to be.

The reason was there was a lot of “carrying” in Hacksaw. There were some hard workers, but a lot of people were not pulling their weight. There was any number of reasons why they weren’t doing well, but their perception was always “it’s not my fault”. This frustrated me.

Now, I’m not the sort of person to suffer fools gladly. Not that anyone there was a true fool, but things would get done faster and better if I or one of the other Directors did it.

It all amounted to having a reputation of being abrupt and short with people toward the latter days of Hacksaw. That was the part of my personality I was living out. It wasn’t the best side of me.

Now, things are very different.

At Podcast Websites, we’ve built a team that fires on all cylinders. We’ve hired A+ people. In addition to that, I’ve learned how to choose my own reactions, especially when something’s annoying me, threatening to bring out the worst in me again. I take a breath and be who I want to be in that moment.

My reputation now is completely different. My sister and team member, Izzy, said to me the other day that she’s never once seen me angry. That’s a radical shift to how I used to be.

You can use this same framework in your own business and life:

1. Fix your external environment as much as you can to remove those elements that bring out the worst in you

2. Fix yourself by giving yourself ten seconds whenever you’re faced with something challenging, and in that buffer time, choose your best self

If you react to things the same way you’ve always reacted, you will have the same reputation you’ve always had.

Instead, when you react to something, react as you. React as the best you. Not “sharp business person you”, but you.

Often, when you react to things in a negative way, in a way that makes you feel bad about yourself, it’s not the real you. It’s usually a product of your circumstance. That’s it. So give yourself 10 seconds to think and choose a better you.

Our legacy is how we’re remembered, and how we’re remembered is shaped by our reactions.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

Your legacy is not your business.

Your legacy is how your family and those closest to you remember you. It’s the way they talk about you to the next generations.

If that’s true, why do we insist on wearing a mask in business?

Having two different personas, one the “professional” and one the “personal”, will only fragment your legacy. People won’t really know who you were, and won’t know what to say about you.

Why does that matter?

Because people who know who they want to be and are purely themselves in all areas of life make a much bigger impact on the world than those who are fragmented.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 471 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

The Legacy of Reuben Asquith

In 2016 I flew into New York City to stay at the famous Jane Hotel. I was there for about 14 hours before I got a call from my dad.

It’s rare that my dad calls me when he knows I’m away on business, so I picked up wondering what was going on. I could tell he was upset. In a pained tone, he told me the news.

My grandad had taken ill.

My grandad and I had always been extremely close. He’d told me all about his colourful life. Edinburgh Castle actually has a little chunk missing from the time he crashed a truck into it when he was in the army! He had also worked hard in the civilian workforce and built a great family. He had a legacy.

My dad said he probably wasn’t going to make it.

I said I’d buy a plane ticket and fly straight home. Dad told me not to, that grandad would be pissed if I “wasted” $1,000 on a short-notice plane ticket just to see him. He had always been a practical, frugal sort of guy.

I didn’t listen, of course. I jumped straight in an Uber at 6 am in the morning, cancelled everything I had planned, and got on the first flight home.

I got back in time, and we shared a few more precious moments together before he passed about 3 hours later.

What it’s Like to Be Authentically You for Your Whole Life

When the funeral came around, Dad told me he wanted someone to give a eulogy. He didn’t think he’d be up for it, and out of everyone who knew my grandad, I was the best one for the job.

I told him I would be honoured.

Over the next few days, I strained myself to write this eulogy. I couldn’t do it. Nothing sounded right. As the day approached I started to panic a little bit.

Finally, I decided to stop trying to write a “speech” and to just talk about my grandad instead.

Stepping up on the little stage at the crematorium, I looked into the gathering in front of me. I saw his family, his friends, his co-workers from his time working as a miner, and his old army buddies. People who had known him 5 years like my niece, to people who had known him for 80.

Here’s what’s so cool — for all the great stories I told about this great man, everyone could nod and say, “Yeah, that sounds like Reuben.” It didn’t matter if they were a neighbour, old colleague, or his son. Every story I had was imbued with his ethic. Everything he did contained this sense of, “Do the right thing, not the easy thing,” and, “Don’t be overly hard. Be overly fair.”

Reuben was the same man to everyone he knew.

My grandad’s personality was truly his “secret weapon”. I’m now exploring how to cultivate your own personality into a force for good in your life in no small part because of his example.

Like any good legacy, Reuben’s is rippling out into the world.

How Will You Be Remembered?

Consider this: Do you want to be remembered as the same person by everyone?

Imagine a time after you’re gone and a mix of people you know are gathered around a fire with a couple drinks, reminiscing about the times they had with you.

Do you want them to be surprised by what the others are saying, as if they’re talking about a different person?

Or do you want the same, pure, you-ness to be woven into every story they tell?

If so, you have only one choice. Commit to being you. Not next week, not tomorrow, but right now.

Remember, your personality truly is your secret weapon.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook — 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer — just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.

In order to really embrace your personality as your secret weapon, in life and in business, you’ve got to move the “line” of your inhibitions.

Let’s get specific.

Your inhibitions are probably holding you back. The weird thing is, a lot of them stem from where you choose to draw the line of “professionalism”.

Most of us operate from two “boxes”, the personal box and the professional box. In each box we like to put the traits, the opinions, even the values that we think are appropriate there. Right away, you can see how this can weaken your ability to affect change. You’re dividing yourself up.

If you live this way, you’ll be natural up to a point. Pretty soon, however, you’ll bump up against a “line”. Everything past that line is, according to your definition, “unprofessional”.

Don’t fool yourself. Being “professional” really means being “comfortable”. Be honest with yourself. The idea of “professionalism” is, more often than not, used as a way to justify to yourself staying where you know is safe, and refusing to push the boat out.

I talk more about this in podcast episode 470 of The 7 Minute Mentor.

Aim at Where the Ball is Going to Be

You never go to where the ball is now.

When you play football, hockey, tennis, you go to where the ball is going to be.

Draw your line of professional vs unprofessional behaviour based on who you are going to become, not who you are now. That’s how you can start to sculpt your personality into your secret weapon.

Try it. I bet you’ll be surprised. When you draw your line based on who you want to become, it’s usually far past your current line, deep into the scary wilderness of “unprofessionalism”.

But what if you’ll be fired? Maybe you’re working in a corporation right now. Maybe your boss won’t allow any personality into the workplace because he has his own, tyrannically stringent “line” of “professionalism” that no one is allowed cross.

That’s fine. Don’t risk your job too soon. Be smart about it. Use the stepping stone technique to help build something that can sustain you, first. Only when you know your destination, however, can you plot a course to get there.

Get Back to The Future

Your present can hold you back just as much as your past.

Whenever you notice yourself drawing the line based on your present level, like Marty McFly, get back to your future!

Don’t pat yourself on the back for just “adding some personality into my day” when it’s based on where you are now. Ask yourself what kind of person you want to be in the next 2 to 5 years. What kind of personality do you want to be portraying? How much of your true self do you want to be able to project at that point?

Your future line will always be drawn somewhere. You’re never going to be 100% open, and nor should you. I believe that the more open I am about myself, the better I do. However, there are of course certain lines I won’t cross. I won’t expose something embarrassing about someone else without their consent. I won’t talk about business specifics that are either confidential with clients or that might get us in legal trouble. There are certain aspects of my personal life that I keep private.

Wherever you draw the line, figure it out. Decide where it is, and start moving confidently towards it.

If you want help with solving your business problems then come along and join me at my free coaching sessions that I run every single Friday live on Facebook - 4pm UK, 11am Eastern, 8am Pacific. Together we can define, challenge and conquer your biggest problem.

Reserve your seat on the next free coaching session, now.

Don’t forget, the more you expect from yourself, the more you WILL excel!

By the way, I’m a big believer in email marketing and in having the best email marketing tool to help you grow your email list. That’s why I use AWeber and I’ve paired up with them to bring you a special offer - just head to excellence-expected.com/aweber and use code exex.