With Mitchell Levy, CEO of Happy About® and THiNKaha®, thought leadership and publishing firms that help the professional expert become thought leaders in their fields. Mitchell shares his unique, creative approach to helping entrepreneurs become thought leaders and build credibility in their field. We also dig into why credibility matters (more now than ever in the internet age), what credibility is, and how entrepreneurs can more easily build their businesses and expand their brands understanding and demonstrating credibility.

Mitchell shares pointers on how we can share and spread credibility, how to do social media (the right way) in only 5 minutes per day, and the importance of understanding your “CPOP” or customer point of pain. In completing almost 500 credibility interviews, Mitchell has redefined the definition of credibility, created new words to add to the lexicon to describe credibility, created a credibility sizzle reel, and a course on adding credibility to your LinkedIn profile. If you are working to build your credibility and thought leadership in your industry, this conversation is for you!

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Biggest takeaways (or quotes) you don’t want to miss:

• Understanding your “CPOP” is crucial for success.

• Are you helping other people climb up the mountain as a thought leader?

• “It should be shareable, memorable and begs the question- tell me more.”

Check out these highlights:

8:00 Learn how Mitchell does books a completely different way. 

9:06 Why a book is the best credibility piece you could possibly have. 

11:10 What is a thought leader? 

14:55 Why care about credibility? 

20:00 What is the focus of credibility? 

24:25 What is “CPOP”? 

25:00 How to avoid sounding salesy. 

27:00 Why you need to show up to improve your credibility. 

28:30 “Show up when you show up.” 

31:40 “Every interaction is a possibility to learn and grow.” 

33:00 What is credust?

35:40 How can you effectively do social media in five minutes a day?

43:00 “Pick a lane and stay in that lane.”

46:50 Credibility means that you’ve taken as little time as possible to demonstrate to someone that you are smart and good at what you do, and they want to ask you the question- tell me more.”

48:10 “Figure out where you have passion, where you’re an expert at and then figure out what is the best way to test drive if this is the business you want to be in.”

How to get in touch with Mitchell:

On social media:

https://www.facebook.com/happyabout

https://twitter.com/HappyAbout

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchelllevy/

https://www.pinterest.com/thinkaha/

https://www.instagram.com/Mitchell.Levy/

FREE GIFT FOR LISTENERS:

Grab a copy of Mitchell’s book, Credibility Nation here.

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Global Credibility Expert Mitchell Levy (pronounced Lee Vee) is a TEDx 
speaker and international bestselling author of over 60 books. His superpower is extracting the genius from your head in a three-hour interview so that his team can ghostwrite your book, publish it, distribute it, and make you an Amazon bestselling author in four months. He is an accomplished Entrepreneur who has created twenty businesses in Silicon Valley including four publishing companies that have published over 850 books. He’s provided strategic consulting to over one hundred companies and has been chairman of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company. Mitchell has been happily married for thirty years and regularly spends four weeks in Europe with family and friends.

Find out more about Mitchell:

https://mitchelllevy.com

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below.

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®…

Mitchell Levy  00:05

Everything goes in cycles. We were in a village economy, we hit this industrial age where we’re going to be moving into a global village. What does that actually mean? Well, the same thing applies. If somebody is a vendor and they’re doing a great job, more people are going to hear about them. If somebody starts doing things that are bad, the Global Village itself would either self correct or ostracize. What does that mean? Well, that means that you can’t hide from being a charlatan, that means you can hide from making promises that are not good. And what happens in that world is it’s a world of credibility, where you just look at somebody you know, they’re credible, you’ve seen what they’ve done with your friends. You get to hire them, you get exactly what you want. And you know what, life becomes a whole lot better. And so in terms of the movement to the global village, credibility is a key component to make that happen.

GGGB Intro  01:03

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell  01:36

Hello and welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. I’m an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to another episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®. So I am super excited to introduce you to Mitchell Levy. Mitchell, so great to have you here.

Mitchell Levy  01:58

Heather, anytime I could be in the same room with you.

Heather Pearce Campbell  02:01

I’m excited about it. Even if it’s a Zoom room we welcome so for those of you listening. Mitchell Levy is the author of 60 books and one of his latest books Mitchell Levy on creating thought leaders, helping experts inside of corporations amplify their thought leadership helps the key staff leaders and proactive employees inside organizations internalize and act on becoming thought leaders in consonance. With the fast changing times, a must read for the success minded professional looking to reach new heights. He is also the CEO of Happy About and Think AHA thought leadership publishing firms that help the professional expert become thought leaders in their fields, with over 200 titles across the book publishing arms. Think AHA offers a host of services that help experts turn into thought leaders. He is close to finishing research interviews with 500 thought leaders on credibility and has made a number of interesting observations. He has redefined the definition of credibility created new words to add to the lexicon to describe credibility, created a credibility sizzle reel and the course on adding credibility to your LinkedIn profile. Given his focus and ability to clarify your messaging, one of his favorite discussions is to work with the host live to fine tune their see pop cpop which you can find out more about be sure to visit the show notes. I’ll put the link to this  mitchelllevy.com but you’ll find that link where the where you’ll find the rest of my show notes at legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. So the great thing is that Mitchell and I actually met a couple of years ago on LinkedIn. So I love this conversation because I feel like things have come full circle. And we’ve been able to participate even recently and another group that we both belong belong to. But Mitchell, I’m so grateful to have you here. I’m so happy to see you. I’m a fan of LinkedIn, I’m a fan of what you do. And I’m really excited to hear about these 500 interviews that you’ve been doing.

Mitchell Levy  04:18

Thanks, man, that was a mouthful on that bio stuff we need… 

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:21

Holy cow, who wrote that?

Mitchell Levy 04:23

I don’t know. I and you know, we’re at currently at 850 books published so you know, it was interesting was both a mixture of current and past up. So the cool part once again, on anything you do in life, is what you want to do is spark interest. Maybe spark interest in somebody says, tell me more, then then you get a chance to tell you more. But yeah, we need to make that. I only have I don’t have a lot of time left for the interview. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  04:50

We’re done. We’re done. Thanks, folks. We’ll see you next week. Well, I think it’s great. I want to hear about happy about right. So you’ve got a happy about with a registration and think Aha, we you start by telling us what those are? 

Mitchell Levy 05:10

Sure. So I ended up leaving the corporate world in 1997. So we come back to that. But at the time, I was running the e-commerce component of Sun Microsystems supply chain, which is two and a half billion. And I went through a couple of iterations, I was a.com. Guy, helping companies figure out what does it mean to use e commerce. And fast forward to 2005, I started a book publishing company. And at first what I thought is, how do I name the company? And I said, Well, what would be my 32nd pitch. So I went through my 32nd pitch and the key phrase I kept using over and over again, I want our authors to be happy about working with us, I want readers to be happy about reading, I want my my people working, we are happy about work I’m happy about is that available. And and so I picked up the domain. Originally, it’s like happy about dot info, and then happy about calm, and then I registered the trademark. And so that was the initial part of our publishing company. Now, here’s what’s interesting, when you’re doing my books are 100% focused on business content to allow the author to be a more recognized expert in their space. And I have to tell you, as there are many people who like the phrase happy about, there are others who just, it just doesn’t work for them, right. And so I started creating other other imprints in the book space divisions and imprints. So we did quick to publish, we did superstar press, 42 rules, I got a bunch of books under 42 rules. And I ended up creating an imprint called Think AHA. And think I was a different style of book, that’s where we’ve got 140 bite size quotes that actually truly make up the content of the book. And after giving it a lot of thought it might have been 234 years down the road, I ended up legally switching the name of my company, which is a C Corp from Happy About, Think AHA, because it just was much more acceptable. So we still have happy about out there, because I got a bunch of books published under that brand. And people still there are people just love the happy about brand. But for those that want a my my double fingers are more serious view. We do other names.

Heather Pearce Campbell  07:45

Awesome. And I think when you and I connected you this the think aha is what we had connected about what we had spoken about because I remember coming away from that interview going, Oh, Mitchell does books in a totally different way than I’ve seen before in the marketplace. We tell us about those. 

Mitchell Levy 08:02

Oh, so here’s what’s interesting about books these days. Because the world has democratized book publishing, the world being at this stage, you could almost say because Amazon has democratized book publishing. Anyone who wants to book can have one. That doesn’t mean they’re good, right? It just means anyone wants a book and have one and anyone who really works hard. And it’s not really too hard, it can be an Amazon best selling author. That said, I still feel the importance of a making sure you do it right making sure that when the book gets in the hands of a prospect that they look at and go, wow, this is somebody I want to talk further to. And so what happens is, those people who are buying books to learn how to do something, typically, these are engineers, or if you’re in school, but nowadays, if you want to learn how to do something, you’re gonna go to an online course. So what is a book used for it is the best credibility piece you could possibly have. And what you want to be able to do is you want to create a book that is beautiful to read, easy to focus on. And then it’s easy to share. And so when you take a look at the current incarnation, and this is past the time you and I talked, Heather, what we do at the moment, it’s a done for you book writing service. And so what you have to imagine is four months from today. What can happen is you can be an Amazon best selling author in both hardcover, paperback Kindle version of your books, and you will spend less 10 hours or less of your time. So how do we do that? I do a three hour interview. And what I do in that interview is I pull your genius and what we do is we then the writing team, based on that interview is going to come up with 140 bite sized quotes. And so what happens These are messages designed to capture somebody’s attention. So, you know, if I’m talking about the legal space, it’d be really simple. If you have a website and you’re selling product, and you’re not protected legally, you’re stupid. Okay? Hashtag, I am dumb. And that would be a great is probably not the way you’d approach the world, Heather. But you know what I’m saying it’s, it’s, what happens is you want to come up with these quotes, these aha messages my favorite. It’s from. I’ve written I think, 64 books now, maybe 65, my, by the next book that’s going to come out as the most relevant, which is on credibility. But I want to give you a quote from one of my books. And it’s, it’s fun, the book called, and it’s someone I did a TED talk on, it’s called being seen and being heard as a thought leader. And for those listening, I’m actually holding up the book, it’s hardcover, it’s like, and that sound like it has lots of information. So I often turn to Aha, number four, and I love reading this to people. Mm hmm. And it says, good thought leaders are at the top of the mountain, great thought leaders are at the bottom of the mountain, helping others climb up. So when somebody says to me, hey, Michell, tell me what is thought leadership? Or somebody says to me, hey, Michell, how do I be a good thought leader? I might, at some point in time, I’ll give them a quote. But I’ll ask them. So as a thought leader, are you at top of the mountain, the bottom of the mountain? I can’t tell you how many people because of living in the industrial age, and where that came from, would say, Oh, I’m at top of the mountain, I go, you’re not really a thought leader idea. Right? Because thought leadership these days is the confluence between having a group of people who follow you and recognize you, and also a group of people that you serve as a servant leader. I could speak for an hour and servant leadership, and why do I have to speak for an hour into the book and have all this stuff that people are going to have to muddle their way through when I could basically say to somebody, hey, if you’re a good thought leader, we’re on the bottom of the mountain, aren’t you? And how you helping other other people climb up? And that you could speak volumes on just that aha message. So guess which aha message or the book gets shared more than any others? And it’s that one?

Heather Pearce Campbell  12:16

Yeah. Well, I believe, and I see a couple things from your, the way that you do your books, and you package them is mean, in some ways, you’re shortcutting, the amount of time that it takes to actually absorb out what I call the golden nuggets, right from somebody messaging or like all of their work, you’re pulling those out and putting them all together and like making for faster delivery. And this is why I love the AHA concept where people don’t have to take four hours of a course they’ve got this book, and they can get a whole bunch of these powerful little concepts. I mean it really as quickly as they’re able to read them. 

Mitchell Levy 12:58

And so what we’ve done is we have Kalani inside, you know, it’s expensive to print, but it’s not about making money per book, it’s about having the book in the hands of your prospects, so that they go, Hey, this is an expert, maybe I need to hire them for and fill in the blank, consulting, speaking, whatever that is. We also have QR codes in our books, and the QR codes point to the author talking about that section of the book. So what’s fascinating is you can now just read in what you said the AHA messages, you can share them. And I have a platform that makes it easy to share. I’ll come back to them. And you could also click on QR codes in here the author directly because you know what we just don’t learn from a two dimensional reading. We learned from listening. We learned from seeing kinesthetically, how does it feel, right? visually? How does it look? The just to make it easy to share content as well, I have a platform called Aha, that aha that has close to a million users. We have over 50,000 aha messages. And so you sign on Aha, that’s free to use free to share. And you click on an aha message and you say, share on Twitter or share on Facebook or share on LinkedIn. And it’s that easy to share content. And so authors who are using the platform are now using it in such a way where their content is now easy for them to share themselves. We also have a WordPress plugin. So you could take the WordPress plugin and take the book itself and have those aha messages sitting on your web page, your WordPress webpage so that when people come to your website, they actually can see those messages and they could share it directly from your page. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  14:37

Mm hmm. So in hearing all of this, I mean, I just get the sense of how much effort and work you have put into this whole concept of supporting people with their credibility. Why? Why do you care so much about credibility?

Mitchell Levy 14:58

Hmm, I don’t think everyone anyone’s ever asked that question. That’s a great, great question. You know, it turns out that the fundamental tenant, the way I’ve redefined credibility, so the fundamental tenet of living a good life, is living a credible life. And so, I will say, this is right now, when you look at the dictionary definition of credibility, what it says is that it is the demonstration of trust the demonstration of trustworthiness. And what I’m going to argue is, that’s only one third accurate, because credibility is a lot more than just demonstrating trust. And trust, typically, if you think about it is is part of Integrity, Authenticity, vulnerability, that’s really what the demonstration of credibility means. today. Mm hmm. It also is, and I’m gonna say, the demo, the credibility, this definition is only one third accurate, the other two thirds, it should be the demonstration of know, like, and trust. And so when you think about No, it’s not just that I know of you, Heather, what’s important is that I know your intent. I know your commitment, I know your integrity. So when you and I talk and you say you’re going to do something, I get to know immediately whether or not that’s going to happen or not. That’s part of your credibility. The same thing, I’m like, do I like you and not like you, right? So you can be credible and not like, I just may not want to do business with you. On the other hand, if he, you are not trustworthy, you’re definitely not credible, and I won’t be doing business with you. So what’s, what’s appropriate. We lived in a society before the industrial age. And that society, the way I like to classify it is simply the village economy. So when you lived in a village, here’s what’s happening if a particular proprietor or the village did something wrong, like let’s say the Baker was baking goods, and it got a couple people sick. You know, the police aren’t going to come by what’s going to happen is the village not any one person in particular will self correct, right? And if it continues going wrong, what happens is the village will ostracize. Okay, we entered this Industrial Age, the entire planet got screwed up. Because we cared more about the company, we cared more about profit, we cared less about people, we didn’t care about the person at all. we cared about the company making money, and it caused and so if you fast forward to where we are today, by the way, we’re still in the industrial age, we just have technology. Mm hmm. our educational system is screwed up, the workforce is screwed up, our evaluated and everything is all messed up. And then all of a sudden, we hit this, we hit this Corona thing that caused everyone to take a a office break or sit down, break a powwow. Right? And what happens is, we were looking back and we’re saying, I don’t think many people I don’t think I like the world we’re living in, when when I get a chance to go back to work, do I really want to Can’t I work from home? Assuming I like what I do, right? So what happens is all of that has to do with credibility. And as we move to where we need to go. So everything goes in cycles. We were in a village economy or a basically the village, the village way of doing business. We hit this Industrial Age, where we’re going to be moving into a global village. What does that actually mean? Well, the same thing applies. If somebody is a vendor, and they’re doing a great job, more people are going to hear about them. If somebody starts doing things that are bad, the Global Village itself would either self correct or ostracize. What does that mean? Well, that means that you can’t hide from being a charlatan, that means you can hide from making promises that are not good. That means that you need to be able to look somebody in the eye and shake their hand and go, this is the deal. And of course, we we, you know we finalize that with our contracts. But the contracts that come in, basically just say what we did our deal on. And what happens in that world is it’s a world of credibility, where you just look at somebody, you know, they’re credible, you’ve seen what they’ve done with your friends. You get to hire them, you get exactly what you want. And you know what, life becomes a whole lot better. And so in terms of the movement to the global village, credibility is a key component to make that happen. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  19:48

Mm hmm. I love that and I think that you’re right, credibility is everything you described, the know liking and trusting of that person and being able to establish trust. credibility is critical. And you look at the online world. And I’ve told people for ages right, the online world is the Wild West business. how I’ve got a couple of questions for you. One, is this focus for you around credibility? Is it about supporting good people? Is it about supporting good people in entrepreneurship? Is it about supporting relationship building and the relationships that come from that? Like, what is the what is the be all end all for you? 

Mitchell Levy 20:34

Hmm. Well tell you where it came about. So here’s the origin story. So between 2005 and 2017, I published over 800 books. And when I realized towards the end of 2017, so I did a TED talk, he started to be thinking about the world a different way. And I realized that I was actually serving the wrong audience. The wrong audience, for me were the people who were actually spending time to write their own book, the way the world was going with democratization of what’s happening is people would spend their time writing the book, they would hope that their book would solve world hunger, and then everything would come their way they’d be happy. And what happened is, I was disappointed with the people who didn’t do a good job marking their book afterwards and be the people who said they were going to do a book but never got to it. So I then created the creative writing school started hiring people. And that’s when I created the done for you book writing service. about a six months or so into that, I realized that the title that I was using for me wasn’t going to work. And it was thought leader architect, like, who knows what a thought leader architect is, apparently, nobody because I couldn’t get anyone to recommend me. They’re like the AHA guy, they liked a lot better, but thought leader architect they didn’t like so I went to a branding exercise, and came up with a term because I’ve been doing thought leadership for 30 years, I came up with a term global credibility expert. And I was using that term for about, you know, three, four or five months when I realized I wanted somebody to say, yes, Michel, this is you. Hmm. And so that’s when I came up with the concept of I just thought Napoleon Hill 500, millionaires thinking Grow Rich, Mitchell, levy 500. thought leaders. And at the time, I didn’t know the title of my book. Yeah. That the title of the book that I had up until last week, was for humans that want to be seen as credible. What I’m going to call that will be my subtitle, the title of the book is going to be called credibility nation.

Mitchell Levy 22:42

And what happens during the interview, is I’d meet these people who were just, I think everything I’ve done in life to go back to your fundamental question was how to help people be better at what they do. Yeah, whatever that might mean. So when it was during the e commerce days, I was an ecommerce consultant going into companies laying know that I go to the CEO, VP of Operations, I go, you know, this is new technology. It’s going to allow you to talk directly to your customers, it’s going to allow you to take your content from their sub component manufacturers and ship those products directly to your customers. I actually was, was walked out the door by some VP of operations, who said, this is not going to happen, the internet’s a fad. Right? And so that was one thing and the book side. The truth is, it’s not about a book. It’s about what the author’s going to do with a book. So what’s interesting about the credibility interviews, and I didn’t know this up front, is it sounds like a podcast, right? It sounds like and we do, we do a vlog and we share. One of the cool things that happened is the the content that we create, not just the videos, but also we pull for every six, eight minute video, repol 10 aha messages, we share those for the next five to 10 years. So if you’re on the show, you get shared for a long time. What’s interesting is, although it’s disguised as a vlog as a peek at a podcast, what it really is, it’s an opportunity for the person who comes online to get clarity. Hmm. And it starts with a term that you read in the Bible. See pop customer pointed pain. Yep. And and so what I’ll say is, and for those that are interested, you can take a look, Mitchell levy.com, slash c pop, you could read about it. And what’s what’s interesting is, I used to say that the value proposition is bad, and the C pop is better. I’m going to I’m going to change that thought process. The value proposition is great. It’s just not the first words that come out of your mouth. Right? Because you know, Heather the the first when you say a value proposition, you typically say, I do this or we do that which sounds like Little salesy, and there’s a percentage of the population that when you sound salesy, they’re not going to listen to anything that comes next. Right? So keep your value proposition. But I want you to put two steps before that. The first step is your customer point of pain. What it shows is that you understand the customer community you serve, and what their pain point is. Right? And so, for me, it’s simply humans that want to be seen as credible. What I like about that one, it’s both aspirational and a pain point at the same time. One of my friends, her her. I’ve known her for 1015 years, and we did the interview, I didn’t know her see pop, because she never talked about it this way. It turns out her see pop is global supply chain panic, huh? All right. A guy did the interview of this morning. Really beautiful. Thought Leader. Digital confusion. Right. So what a good c pop is is Who do you serve? And what is their pain point. And if you want to do is make that 10 words or less. And it should be shareable, memorable and begs the question, tell me more.

Heather Pearce Campbell  26:16

I love that. Yes. Because if if people are messaging the right way, right, it’s it’s the hook, it draws somebody in rather than repels them, or gives them everything they need in one swoop. What in doing because I think before we got started, you mentioned that you’ve done 400 and however many interviews right, you’re nearing, you’re nearing the end of that. 500. What have you learned from doing those interviews? I have the bit have there been any surprises? Or new AHA for you?

Mitchell Levy 26:45

Oh, shocking. So I tell you the biggest surprise when I first created the interview structure and approach I what I didn’t realize I needed to keep track of when people actually showed up and whether or not they were prepared or not when they showed up. And also whether or not they communicated effectively. Right? Surprisingly, so let me let me give you this number, because it’s gonna kill you. 474 interviews done so far. Congrats. Oh, thank you very cool. But here’s the number that’s gonna kill you. 4% of that number, when they’re being interviewed by the global credibility expert, think that it’s credible to come after the half hour for live show. When they’re talking about their credibility?

Heather Pearce Campbell  27:34

Say it again. 

Mitchell Levy 27:34

What does that mean? Come after the half hour? Oh, so typically, if I’m, if I have a show at noon, Mm hmm. I send them a 30 minute video on how to prepare ahead of time. I send calendar messages, I say, oh, by the way, please come 10 minutes before because I’m doing back to back interviews. And instead of coming, so what happens is…

Heather Pearce Campbell  27:58

To me, they’re just missing their time. They’re just missing their time slots are coming at 12.

Mitchell Levy 28:02

They come at 1201 or 12? Well, three or 1204? Oh. So what happened is, and by the way, if you’re a salesperson, and we have a meeting and you come late, guess what you’re not going to make, you’re not going to make a sale, now you’re not going to make a sale, then you may never make a sale with me ever. Because you’ve disrespected my time as a human. Right. So what I came up with Heather, is one of the demonstrations of credibility is to show up when you show up. What does that mean, come early. Be prepared and come with your heart. Yeah. And and once again, shockingly, I have five questions. It’s the same five questions. So you could watch past interviews to see how people have done you could watch a 30 minute video on how to prepare. And this is not like any other podcast, right? This is not like any other set of interviews. So you got to prepare 98% of people do not have their c pop when we first talked to them. Wow. So what happens is I do a little because what we we’ve not been taught on how to focus on shortness on brevity. Right? It’s not what we go to school for. And so what what’s interesting is being able to listen to somebody and go, and this is where I do have a superpower is clarity. And is to be able to give somebody a C pop that is so powerful, and it’s particularly if they spend time preparing for it, but they still don’t get it. That is absolutely beautiful because now we’ll drill at home. Once you have a good customer point of pain, your LinkedIn profile, your website should be search engine optimized landing pages for your see pop. Right and you say that you’re like, Oh, now I know how to fix my LinkedIn. Of course you do. Right, right. And a lot of what I do is not, it may not be like how to build a rocket ship to the moon. What it really is, is how to give yourself the power the tool sets so you can help yourself or have somebody help you so that you even know what they’re doing. And so how do I guess I was shocked that people would come late, I was shocked that people would show up and not prepare. The biggest shock is when somebody gave me their C pop and was there, you know, it should be five seconds at most. And somebody gave me their seat pop 30 seconds long was their value proposition? And so I said, so can we shorten it a little bit? Right. And he, he shorted by like five seconds. I said, so do you mind if I do a little bit of coaching? And, and he’s the only one who said this? He goes, yes, I do mind, you have your way of doing thing. And I have my way of doing things. And I don’t think you know, I want to do it your way. I’m like, so here’s where, by the way, I have learned a very interesting technique. Instead of saying what was on my mind, which was not positive. I just let there be about three, three or four seconds of silence until he said, I don’t think it’s gonna work out, is it? I said, No, I don’t think so. But best of luck with everything you do in life, you know, and then I hung up the thing, and I wondered to myself, how many people hire somebody like that, who’s completely uncoachable? Because that’s not in the world of credibility. You could learn from it, you know, if you’re a grandparent today, or even a parent today, you’re gonna learn from your kids about technology. Just Yeah, you’re gonna learn from many other places, but you’re also going to learn from your kids. And if you don’t recognize that every potential opportunity for interaction is an opportunity to learn and grow. You’re missing out on so many things. And so another shock for me.

Heather Pearce Campbell  32:02

Interesting, when so much of this I mean, still it boils down, like when I hear all of this. And the idea around credibility, like so much of it is really about our messaging, and how does it land with the receiver? Right? Do they get it? Are they hearing us are we and I agree, people generally have a hard time condensing down what they do, who they serve down into the golden nuggets. And obviously, one of your skills is brevity just based on the way that you put your books together. So I love what you do. And I love the effort and the irony of making things shorter, right. There’s that famous quote about like, I would have written a shorter letter, but it takes too much time. I think that’s the struggle that people have, like, how do you condense something down? If you don’t have the time that it requires to really be thoughtful about it? Talk to us and I’m going to switch gears here talk to us about the concept of credit dust, what is it? Why are you so enamored with it? What is credit dust? 

Mitchell Levy 33:06

Well, so here’s it’s one of those things. I was talking to David Meerman. Scott, he’s the guy who invented the word newsjacking. And I go, David, so he’s one of the guys we interviewed, great interview, by the way, and I go, David, how do I get known globally, for credibility? He says, invent a word. And I go, like, immediately I knew that word. I said, credit dust. He doesn’t know Mitchell took me six months to do my I said, No, no, I just don’t know if it’s one day or two. So if you’re curious, you can go to Cred dust with one D, credust.com. And he said, inventa word, don’t put a copyright on it. Don’t put a trademark on it. Just make sure when people look for it, that they get there associated with you. And then at some point in time, enough people use it will get put into the Oxford dictionary. So that’s one of the goals is to have a couple of words that is a Dutch Oxford Dictionary, credit justice, one of them. Cred dust is simply the sparkle that happens when you share somebody else’s credibility. And that sparkle happens on both the other person and yourself. So by having a podcast by bringing people online, Heather, you are spreading cred dust.

Heather Pearce Campbell  34:14

God, but I love it. It’s about sharing other people’s credibility.

Mitchell Levy 34:18

Yeah. Yeah. And well think about our, our joint friend Jay Forset when he stands on stage. How many times I’ve heard him say good things about you. Right, what is he doing? He’s spreading Cred Dust. it’s beneficial for him because he knows you. It’s beneficial for you because he’s on stage a position of power. Right? And he’s actually sharing Yes, his credits with you and everyone wins. And sometimes you it’s even shocking when somebody from stage says, oh, by the way, you know you have legal needs. You got to talk to Heather Campbell. How many people come to you just because Jay gave you a couple seconds from stage. Do we do it all the time? We just never had a name for it before?

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:03

No, I love it. I love it. So how is your mission going to share that word around?

Mitchell Levy  35:11

You know.

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:12

And uptaken and being used? 

Mitchell Levy 35:14

Oh, it’s funny when people use it and say it. What I haven’t done yet is, is gotten any major pubs writing about it. So I just haven’t. I haven’t spent the P or energy yet so well, we will make that that’ll be next.

Heather Pearce Campbell  35:31

Oh, that’s fun. Um, well, and on the topic of brevity, I know that one of the, you know, one of the areas of expertise that you can share with us and for people listening, who are struggling to know how to focus their efforts on social media and how to do it in just a few minutes a day. Right? How can you effectively do social media in five minutes a day? 

Mitchell Levy 35:53

Oh, absolutely. Happy to share that. And by the way, if you’re curious, I’m happy to do your see pop live, if that’s something that’s of interest to you. So, here’s what I’m gonna say. Social media is two words. It’s social media. And when everyone was given a camera and a microphone, we one of the initial things, it’s sort of like if you have a two year old and you’re, you’re walking around with a two year old in in a place that has a public Broadcast System, and the person who owns the microphone, hands, the microphone to your child, and you’re sort of screaming, jeez, oh, please don’t do that. What do they say? Hey, me, me, me. Look at me hear me, right? I mean, that’s what people do. Well, guess what happened when everyone got a microphone and a camera? They talk about themselves. And people get why

Heather Pearce Campbell  36:44

If they get on, right if they get on?

Mitchell Levy 36:47

 Yeah, well. So the thing is, social media is two words. And if you think about a practicing social media appropriately, the word social should have 80% of the focus. And media is 20%. So how do you do social media in five minutes a day, I love that, you wake up in the morning, and you spend one minute spreading credit dust, you basically spread and one minute sharing somebody else’s credibility. And listen, if you went to Aha, that calm, I have 50,000 aha messages you could share other people’s credit does. Or if you read an article, or seen a newspaper or see somebody sweat, whatever it is, good YouTube video, wake up in the morning and share, spend a minute sharing somebody else’s content, come back a couple hours later, and spend the four minutes the 80% of your time touching the people who touched your content. Um, right, just even if you just say, yes, or responded to him, or whatever it is, what happens is, if let’s use the physical example, you’re in a, you’re in a physical office, you send stuff to the printer, and somebody picks it up and brings it to you. Or it’s the morning time and somebody sees your coffee cup is empty, they bring your coffee cup. Well, what happens if, normally what most humans are going to do is going to say thank you, right? Well, what happens to you don’t say thank you. And they do it the second day, and you don’t say thank you. And maybe you do it a third day, they don’t say thank you, they’re not gonna do it a fourth day, right? It’s just simply, it just they just, it’s just so obvious when they think about it that way. And so it’s not about how much you share. And it’s not about all being original content. It’s about you been able to have interactions, social interactions with other people, sharing the type of stuff that’s important to you, because it allows you to attract people to you, that are like the same sort of things you like.

Heather Pearce Campbell  38:51

Mm hmm. No, I love that. And I think bringing it to life with that real life example. It’s, it’s so clear to me, and actually, LinkedIn is a perfect platform to use as an example, when somebody does it the wrong way. And I’ve, I think I mentioned to you like, I’ve crafted my own little system on LinkedIn, but I care very much about treating people the way that I would treat them in real life, like, Hi, who are you? What do I need to know about you to be a great connection? You know, not, me, me, me. Here’s my stuff, go look at this website, you know, and it’s so irritating to connect with somebody on LinkedIn, and then suddenly have all their stuff shoved in your face through your messenger, or suddenly you’re added to their email list, right without asking to be there. And I just feel like, people are really forgetting that human element of like, how would I treat this person if I was sitting across the table from them or sitting face to face and actually having a real conversation? So I love that approach to social media and how to do it the right way and five minutes a day. Let’s talk about one more thing before we sign off and I feel like this word gets thrown around a lot. I thought leadership, right? Being a thought leader, will you? Will you tell us what that means to you? What’s your definition of thought leadership or being a thought leader?

Mitchell Levy 40:11

It’s a really fascinating word. So by the way, we can do your C pop offline, too. But I’m excited about doing it. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:20

Are you really quick I couldn’t, I didn’t know if your offer was for me directly. Or if you were saying to listeners that you would do their see pop on.

Mitchell Levy 40:29

For listeners go to the website we mentioned earlier, but I’ll do it with you, Heather. And then I’d love people to go to the course that we created. Because it’s a one hour course that completely changes how they think about. Alright, so here’s thought leadership, think about, by the way, think about your C pop, it’s less than 10 seconds. So you serve. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  40:48

So I’ll write in really quick. I just want to be really clear for people listening, don’t gloss over the part that Michell just tried to slip in about a course that he’s writing on LinkedIn. No, because I’m really committed. LinkedIn is a fabulous platform. And if people can make the shift to using it the right way, I’m just a huge supporter of that. Right. So make sure that you check out all of Mitchell’s links in the show notes, I’m gonna list them all, including, you know, his credit does the sea pop stuff, all of that legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, okay. Mitchell, go.

Mitchell Levy 40:48

Alright. And for the course, you can just go to credibilitynation.com. And you’ll see the LinkedIn course. So we’ll do thought leadership, and then we’ll do your seat pop, and then we’ll sign off. So thank you. So thought leadership is very simple. And it’s very similar to nowadays, I’m using credibility, because it’s easier to wrap your arms around thought leadership is simply that you have a one or more people who are following your thoughts. Right. So what we used to think thought leadership was as we’d stand on top of the mountain, and we get the world to follow us, but you know, if your community is much smaller than that, why do you care about anyone outside your community? to actually see you? And the answer is, you really shouldn’t. So why spend money doing Facebook ads to Ohio, if you’re in Florida, and you’re never going to actually go to Ohio, right. So. So the thing that’s important is a thought leader is someone who is and I’ve got if you think of my website, I actually have a definition of the word thought leadership. So it’s, it’s, it’s a complete, it’s a two by two focus directly on what is a thought leader. Essentially, it is somebody who is knowledgeable in a particular space. And they have a following that follows them in that space. And the, if you look at or remember the aha, number four I mentioned before, the following, it doesn’t mean they’re on top of the following, it probably means they’re at the bottom of the following helping push everyone up the mountain, right. And so it’s people who care about what you say, in your focused area. So what you need to do to be both credible to be a thought leader is an essence, pick a lane and be good at that lane. And that lane Now we go back into into the C pop is what is that? For you? Personally, Heather. So here’s here’s the definition of a C pop customer for any pain. Who do you serve? Mm hmm. Right. If you could do it, do it quickly. And then when is that primary pain point? Yeah. So how would you say yours if you if you serve, who do you serve?

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:22

So I serve what I call information entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, online educators, speakers, authors, people who are in the online space, and their businesses and service, all their services are really primarily built around their information, a body of work that they’ve created. 

Mitchell Levy 43:40

Right. Okay, that sounds great. And then what is the what is the pain point they have?

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:45

Well, I help them to stop wandering around in the dark and trying to make legal decisions without a map.

Mitchell Levy  43:52

And what does that mean?

Heather Pearce Campbell  43:54

What does that mean? It means that people typically, first of all, they’re not well served by the traditional legal industry, the barriers to entry are very high. Most people don’t go there in this space to get their legal needs met in a timely manner. But they’re trying to prioritize their business needs and legal needs without understanding what the full range of needs are, and how their priorities rank compared to other needs. And so it’s really education. First, I give them the information that they need to become a more strategic version of themselves that will lead their business by making successful decisions in the legal arena that will actually support long term growth trend and long term growth.

Mitchell Levy 44:33

All right, and that. So normally, so by the way, you gave me a vision of your see pop, which is 123456 words, and I’ll share that too with them. And, but what’s interesting is normally what would happen is I have two other questions that help reinforce the see pop it’s, it’s what do you do so what are your services and then how do you have credibility to do what you do? Yep. But because of our limitation of time, we give you see policy Something to think about. And then you could make a decision of is this good? Or do we change it slightly but based on what you said, what I would say you see pop is information entrepreneurs who are legally clueless.

Heather Pearce Campbell  45:13

Right? Very spot on most are ironically.

Mitchell Levy 45:17

And so one of the things that happened remember the movie clueless, which had a woman with blond hair, so you can do your icon with information opera drummers with the blonde wig on actually that that would probably cause problems. But, you know, the thing to think about is, when you say something like that information entrepreneurs who are legally clueless, what is the first thing that someone tell me more? Or? I’m not clueless? Right or? Right, and basically, what it does is, is giving you permission for the next thing you say, Mm hmm. And I started it before, but I’ll we’ll finish up. The next thing you say should be what do they want? So it’s typically that program name. So I have a five week, five week legal to use to uncoolest label to inform. Right? Or it could be the the annual have a lawyer in your pocket? Mm hmm. Right. So that’s what do they want? And then the third thing you say that’s where your value proposition comes in. And your value proposition, obviously, you tie in the first two, right? I work with information entrepreneurs who are legally clueless who want to have a lawyer in their back pocket, right? And then all of a sudden, it’s like you’ve, you’ve walked down the path properly. And that’s, and that’s it. So what does credibility mean? That you’ve taken as little time as possible to demonstrate to somebody that you’re smart and good at what you do? And they want to ask you the question, tell me more.

Heather Pearce Campbell  46:57

Hmm. Well, and I love that because you’re helping people connect the dots between the key part of the messaging that has to land?

Mitchell Levy 47:07

Yes. Oh, sorry. I’m shaking my head because we’re on video as well. But yes.

Heather Pearce Campbell  47:13

When the opponent, please use verbal I know, verbally? Yes, or not kidding. Oh, well, Michell, this has been fun. I mean, you obviously are an expert at what you do you I feel like this could go on and on. And we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg. What final thoughts do you have to share with people today before we sign off?

Mitchell Levy 47:36

You know, because we all had to take a timeout around the world. Because we’ve all had an opportunity to view who we are when we wake up in the morning and what what we did in the past day to day, and for some of us, for me, I’ve worked out of my house since 97. It’s it, it life is the same, right? And for my family is the same but for many, it’s not. Right. And what I’m going to say to you is, if you if you’re sitting there thinking I did not like my life in the past. What I’m going to say is don’t wait for somebody to fix it. That’s your job. So figure out where you have passion, figure out where you if you don’t like the word thought leader, figure out where you’re an expert at a particular area. And then figure out what is the best way to test drive whether or not this is a business you could be in and the type of stuff you do Heather in terms of that that legal stuff so that people become an clueless on that sort of work, you know, learning and learning from a Heather on who she is and what she does and what you need to do. But the short answer is if you want to take a stab at being an entrepreneur, and by the way, everyone is an entrepreneur, even if you work inside a company or you’re an intrapreneur, you want to take a stab at it, figure out what you’re good at, and go to one of your friends and say, Hey, I’m interested in trying this. Do you mind if I do this particular one for free? Your your cost is a is a video testimonial, and then go to the next one saying okay, here’s my video testimonial. What would you want to pay? Go to the next one. Okay, so money paid this, what would you want to pay? So, in essence, don’t wait until somebody to anoint you with what you’re doing next in life. Right? It’s now time to figure out what excites you where your passion is. And if you could tie your passion into what you do and who you are. It just it shows for those people who are doing that today. You know, when I look at you, man, I just so adore every conversation because you love what you do and you love being a mom. And and there are other aspects of Heather. Same thing for me. There are other aspects of me. And it’s just, I can only say the word beautiful. It’s It’s actually beautiful when you actually been able to do what you love doing, people appreciate it, you get paid for it. And you wake up every morning thinking it’s not a job, this is fun.

Heather Pearce Campbell  50:12

Well, I love that. I mean, in a nutshell, that last minute of what you’ve said, is, is why I do what I do, right? If we can create a whole industry or group of people that are better at what they do, and more successful at it, they thrive, their families, thrive, their communities thrive, they’re able to give back and have influence in the world in the ways that they maybe were not able to before. And that is, to me, what the path of entrepreneurship is all about. And why I do what I do is I love supporting people to create that beauty of like living really on purpose and living from their strength. So I hear you and I love that as a final point to wrap up on.

Mitchell Levy  50:55

Super cool.

Heather Pearce Campbell  50:56

Yeah, and I’m so excited. I’ll share all of your links with folks. Where do you like to connect? I’m going to guess that it’s on LinkedIn. But if people are listening to you’re like, awesome, I want to connect with Mitchell.

Mitchell Levy 51:06

Oh, absolutely. So feel free, of course, feel free to connect to me on LinkedIn. And by the way, if you’re going to connect with me, particularly if your LinkedIn profile sucks, make sure you say I heard you with Heather Campbell. Because otherwise, if it sucks, we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna accept it. But probably the best way is mitchelllevy360.com. So that’s my name, mitchelllevy360.com, what’ll happen, you’ll get access to the course you will see video testimonials. And you can connect to me on social media. And if this was interesting enough for you, if you say oh my god, I need to and from the back, I need to have 100 people might company take the course or I need to have a book with you. You have access to my calendar book time directly on my calendar there. So that’s mitchelllevy360.com

Heather Pearce Campbell  51:57

Awesome. And I will include that in the show notes as well for a place for people to connect. Thank you, Mitchell. I’m so glad that you were able to join me today. It’s always good to connect with you. And I’m sure that we will have you back and you can join in and share. I’m curious, right when do you complete the interviews and what’s coming next for you. I look forward to learning more about your journey and supporting you in the process. 

Mitchell Levy 52:20

So thank you so much. I can only say I’ve learned so much and there’s still more to learn and I’m excited to share credibility is a beautiful word to be focused on. So thanks for having me.

Heather Pearce Campbell  52:33

Thank you.

GGGB Outro  52:37

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.