Blair gives David some homework to identify patterns in the principals of creative practices who are successful and have that "je ne sais quoi."   LINKS 2Bobs Episode 28 - "Positioning Cheats" Start With Why by Simon Sinek "Top 10 Podcasts Agency Owners Listen To" by Daniel de la Cruz Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today, we are going to catch up with the rest of the world. I can't even say that with a straight face. We're only 80 years, 90 years behind. We're going to talk about the X-Factor. Okay. And the first time that phrase was used was in 1930, and we're just now getting ready to talk about it.  BLAIR ENNS: You've actually done homework. That's not fair. DAVID: Well, a little bit.  BLAIR: You went and looked up the first use of the word X-Factor... But hold on - you have to explain who used it. What was the context?  DAVID: Well, it was like in the urban dictionary, so it's totally unreferenced, it's just somebody's idea of when it was first used. I probably shouldn't even brought that up. But the phrase that popped up a lot when I was researching the X-Factor 'cause you really wanted to talk about this and I'm intrigued too. It's the "je ne sais quoi" which means, "I do not know more." Have you heard that phrase? BLAIR: Yeah, "je ne sais quoi." I always thought it just meant ... And I should know because I'm Canadian. It's one of our official languages. I always it meant, I don't know. So it's, I do not know more.  DAVID: I do not know more, it's a French phrase "je ne sais quoi." In other words, there's this X-Factor. I don't know more. There's just something about them. There's this X-Factor about them. It was pretty interesting. We're going to talk about principals that exhibit this X-Factor.  BLAIR: Principles, the people: ...P-A-L-S. DAVID: Yeah, right.  BLAIR: Not ...P-L-E-S. DAVID: I never use the other word anymore 'cause I'm so used to using principals ...A-L-S.  BLAIR: So principals of creative practices who are successful, who have this "je ne sais quoi," this X-Factor of success right? DAVID: Yeah. You really enjoyed saying that with such a great accent didn't you. So you gave me homework.  BLAIR: Yes. DAVID: Here's what you said to me: think of one recent client - this presumes I even have clients, right? But think of one recent client who is very successful, what three things come to mind about that person? So I dutifully answered my questions here just following the script. And then you said, "Now do it for two or three more clients." And so I did that. Now what do you want me to do with this? BLAIR: I want to talk about the patterns. If you've done it for three or four clients, when you think about the attributes of that person, how common are those attributes across those three or four people?  DAVID: They were just surprisingly common, and I hadn't ever really thought about it quite like this. But I almost felt like I was wasting my time as I extrapolated to others, because they all came up about the same. Maybe the order of the three things is different from principal to principle but the same ones kept coming up. Did you do the same thing?  BLAIR: Yeah and I thought of a couple of people and then I just kind of thought of a group of people and made my list even a little bit longer. So I've got six things, but I would say those six things, they all roll up into one word. So if you had to take all of those different attributes that you've identified of these successful agency principals, and you had to put them all under the banner of one word, what would that one word be?  DAVID: So I popped back and forth between these two. But I think the one word would be confident.  BLAIR: Yeah, me too.  DAVID: Really? The same word? OK. BLAIR: Yeah. So the X-Factor is confidence. But I think we'll get into this and maybe a little bit later on, we'll talk about some kind of big pictu