Person-ality: Cultivate Your Human Authority To Ignite Irrational Brand Loyalty

By Deb Gabor

We look to brands for what to do, what to think, and how to feel. We want to know what to support and what to stand against. Brands are the new voice of authority. Now is the perfect time to reveal their humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781544533636

Book preview

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Contents

Introduction

Part 1:

The Rise of H2H (Human-to-Human) Branding

1. Business Is Different Today

2. What Is Trending Today?

3. What Is Authority?

4. The Rule of Reciprocity

Part 2: 

Building and Leveraging Authority

5. Establishing Your Authority Brand

6. Sharing with Authority

7. Building with Authority

8. Monetizing Authority

9. Curate New Irrational Loyalty

Bonus Chapter. E to E Marketing

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright © 2022 Deb Gabor

All rights reserved.

Person-ality

Cultivate Your Human Authority To Ignite Irrational Brand Loyalty

ISBN

  978-1-5445-3364-3  Paperback

ISBN

  978-1-5445-3363-6  Ebook

Advance Praise

"When leaders become intimately connected with their brands, they create a window of authenticity for their customers. This window helps to illuminate their brand’s authority, expertise and position in the market. In Person-ality, Deb masterfully explains how enlightened leaders make this happen."

—Mike Maddock, Founder of Maddock Douglas, Flourish Forums, and McGuffin Creative Group and four-time bestselling author of Plan D, Free the Idea Monkey, Flirting With The Uninterested, and Brand New

"Deb is a longtime colleague with a passion for building winning brands and creating an impact. When the way we do business changed, she was there to give her authority to anyone and everyone. Filled with Deb’s strategic and human insight, Person-ality outlines how today’s leaders can cultivate their authority by going well beyond their expertise alone to tap into their passion and unique points of view to attract the right clients for their businesses."

—Caryn Kopp, Founder of Kopp Consulting, two-time Inc. 5,000 CEO, and bestselling author of The Path to the Cash! Manual and co-author of Biz Dev Done Right

"Similarly to Deb, I had to cancel all of my speaking engagements at the start of the pandemic. It was a difficult time, but I quickly pivoted and realized I could help other entrepreneurs by sharing my expertise without looking for anything in return. In Person-ality, Deb flawlessly portrays how businesses used their authority to overcome the fears, worries, and changes brought upon by these uncertain times. It’s the perfect read for entrepreneurs who are looking to establish their authority but don’t know where to start. Hint: It starts here."

—Todd Palmer, Founder of Extraordinary Advisors, six-time Inc. 5,000 CEO, and two-time bestselling author of The Job Search Process and From Suck to Success

"Bestselling author and branding expert Deb Gabor established herself as an authority on branding. In the process, she discovered the formula for becoming an authority. In her latest book, Person-ality, Deb provides a roadmap for the reader to take ownership of their own experiences, share them with the world, claim their authority, and capitalize on it. Her candid and actionable advice captivate and inspire."

—Carrington Smith, President and CEO of Carrington Legal Search and bestselling author of Blooming

Experts shouldn’t self-identify! Being an expert or an authority is not something you appoint yourself. The market decides this. Your only leverage in this appointment is to wake up every day with a driving force to continually improve yourself—forever. That’s it! Deb’s new book, Person-ality, is the roadmap for cultivating your personal authority.

—Andy Bailey, Founder of Petra Coach, Inc. 5,000 CEO, and two-time bestselling author of Vitamin B for Business and No Try, Only Do

"Your ideas matter, and people are yearning to hear them. If you’re looking to build authority in your brand and become the one-stop shop for thought leadership in your industry, this book was made for you."

—Hilary Corna, CEO and Founder of The Human Way and bestselling author of One White Face

Dear Authority,

You have a compulsion to share your passion, your expertise, and your very soul with people who truly need to hear what you have to say. You have spent countless hours forming your unique point of view, building your brand, honing your message, and sharing it with anyone who would listen.

You’ve written the book (or three), performed hundreds of bathroom mirror keynote rehearsals, and earned a record number of frequent flier miles while moving from stage to stage. And you perhaps still don’t know if you’re making the impact you desire.

You have a warrior’s mindset and the heart of a lion. And you truly have something to share.

This book is for you.

Introduction

Dear Valued BigBox Customer,

I wanted to personally reach out to you and assure you that, in the face of this historic pandemic, #WereAllInThisTogether. These are difficult times, full of anxiety and uncertainty. And in times like these, my PR team assures me that it’s a good move to just check in with you. (I think we also did this after Hurricane Maria or Harvey or whatever, but I’m not sure. Check your spam folder.)

Many of you are worried about the health of your families and loved ones. And we get that. We really do. (I personally had to fire my daughter’s entire team of nannies because they weren’t washing their hands for the full twenty seconds. It was sad.) But remember: every customer is important to us. And it’s our fervent wish that all of you stay safe. Having said that, we want to extend particularly special thoughts and prayers to our BigBox Red Carpet VIP Customers who recently reached the BigBox Platinum Club with more than $10,000 of purchases. Please stay safe, Platinum VIPs. Please, please, please.

Speaking of purchasing, I know that many of you are worried in this trying time about BigBox’s ability to continue to do business. Do not worry. Our website is fully functional, and our delivery drivers have been hosed down with a sanitizing solution that I’ve been told is 99.99% effective against viruses (the drivers lose a bit of hair in the process, but that’s to be expected). And, just to show you that we can still do business during COVID-19, we are lowering the prices of all lamps, table saws, and fleece-lined driving gloves by 30 percent. It’s our way of saying, once again…#WereAllInThisTogether.

Sincerely,

Marvin G. Houser, CEO, BigBox Inc.

P.S. Please don’t mistake this heartfelt message as an invitation to try to contact me or visit me in person. We’re all in this together, but at the moment, I’m on Richard Branson’s yacht in an undisclosed location in the Mediterranean.

• • •

Okay. Not all of the corporate emails we received were this bad.

But in 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis started to unfold, most of us got a steady stream of personal messages from CEOs that we had never met (and never knew existed before the pandemic hit). Every brand that we patronized in the last decade was suddenly reaching out to us with messages that were almost identical.

The emails tried to sound sincere. They tried to connect. But they missed. And as the generic hang in there and we’re with you messages flooded in, it became more and more absurd. Because…

No one knew what to say.

When CEOs communicate but have no idea what to say, they lack authority. Of course, there was no authority on what to do in the face of COVID. We were all still figuring it out. So the emails were almost comical. And then, only two months into the COVID crisis, the universe said, You think this is as bad as it can get? Hold my beer…

When George Floyd was killed, it set off nationwide protests and demands for social justice. And once again, incredibly, every corporation felt the need to weigh in. We got another round of pathetic emails from the CEOs of companies—companies that had never before made a stand on equality or human rights—telling us that in support of George Floyd, they were declaring a special Social Justice Tuesday or some other ridiculous gesture. It was cringe-worthy.

So should CEOs stay quiet when the world is being turned upside down? What is the answer?

To communicate with authority in a human way.

It’s rare for brands to nail the right tone of authority and compassion, but it can be done. And when it’s done right, their customers will give them irrational loyalty for it.

Here’s an example for you. Going into the COVID crisis, Brian Chesky sat at the helm of a still-growing, $30 billion company. But it was a company that was designed to fail in a pandemic: Airbnb. When COVID hit, no one could travel because of lockdowns. But even if there hadn’t been shelter-in-place orders, who the hell wants to stay in a stranger’s home with a deadly virus going around?

Chesky faced the crisis with authority. COVID was a true disaster for Airbnb, and he didn’t hide that. For the first few weeks of the pandemic, Chesky communicated regularly with the Airbnb community. A month and a half into the crisis, he sent an email to employees that was the exact opposite of the generic CEO emails that were swirling around.

Chesky let his organization know they would be conducting layoffs for the first time in the company’s history. He laid out the financial reasons behind the layoffs and let employees know they faced a couple of difficult truths:

"We don’t know exactly when travel will return. When travel does return, it will look different."

He was honest and to the point. He thanked his employees, told them he loved them, and laid out exactly how the company would help them with a severance package and finding a new job. He had something to say. And a concrete plan.¹

From one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, Chesky guided Airbnb back. He wasn’t perfect, of course, and he didn’t always get it right (early in the crisis, he neglected to consult Airbnb hosts before issuing blanket refunds to all guests). But he kept communicating with authority and leading the brand. He spoke on the changing definition of workplace, and promoted the idea of using Airbnb for remote office space when people couldn’t gather in office buildings.

In December of 2020, Chesky’s company went public with one of the most successful IPOs of the year. Their stock prices soared, and they ended with a valuation of $100 billion.² By July of 2021, startups were spending more on Airbnbs than they were on commercial office rent.³ Instead of playing defense, Chesky humanized the brand. He led the conversation about the revolution in remote workplace travel and encouraged digital nomads to find their spaces with Airbnb. He proved the importance of communicating with authority and showed that authority has a financial value as well.

The Great Leadership Void

After everything that we’ve been through in 2020 and 2021, the world is craving strong leadership. People need information. They need inspiration. They need hope with a dash of realism—but they’re not finding that leadership, that strong voice of authority, in the people they’ve elected or appointed to lead. Unfortunately, the pandemic showed us that, in the absence of leadership, people fill in unknowns with the worst possible ideas.

When our elected leaders fall down on the job, people look elsewhere for the leadership they crave. And as crazy as it may seem, in this leadership vacuum, many people have turned to brands to be the voice of authority. They’re looking to brands to tell them what to do, what to think, and how to feel. They want to know what to support and what to stand against.

And so, with a population looking for a point of view that they can attach to, brands need to humanize. Brands emanated from humans, and now is the perfect time to show that human side. Showing your humanity will give your brand the authority to lead.

We’ve never needed authority more than now. But when we go looking for new information on authority, there’s simply not much out there. Strangely enough, there hasn’t been a lot of thought leadership on authority in three or four years. And it’s not that authority is dead, it’s just that no one is writing or talking about it at the moment. Since 2017 and 2018, when it was last in vogue, no one has pushed the discussion forward. Back then, the thought was that authority equaled content. Write a book, do a speaking tour, and boom—you’ve got authority. But times have changed, and the meaning of authority has changed as well. It’s time to update the general principles on authority.

This Unique Moment

Why is this the right moment to examine the importance of authority? Is it because of the pandemic and the social justice movement? Well, no. There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface. These crises have forced us to halt our routines and re-evaluate some of the very fundamentals of how we define work, life, and even consumerism.

When the pandemic hit, many people took the opportunity to assess their employment. More and more of them—literally millions of people—started searching for more meaning from their work. And many of them came to the same conclusion: I can do better than this. The Great Resignation began. In August of 2021 alone, 4.3 million people in the US resigned from their jobs.⁴ As of this writing, the monthly numbers haven’t fallen.

The rumblings weren’t limited to rank-and-file employees. Even business leaders started to reassess their careers and the idea that there has to be more to life than this. We all know we have to work in order to live, of course. And it has always been suggested that we shouldn’t live to work, that we should find a work-life balance. But after 2020, we started taking the conversation a step