[00:00:00] Jason: Hey, everybody. Thanks for coming back to another episode of the Your Grey Matters podcast. I’m Jason, and I don’t know who I’m here with. You look, who is this? No glasses. What’s going on? Hi, everybody.
[00:00:14] Neil: Hi, Jason. Well, I am Neil from the Your Grey Matters podcast, and I’ve recently had cataract surgery in one of my eyes next month, the second eye.
But it has completely opened me up to seeing, and therefore, I don’t need glasses. Don’t be afraid to get your cataract surgery done if you’ve been told to get it done. There’s nothing to it.
[00:00:41] Jason: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s really remarkable what, what you went through and are still going through, and if you’re curious about what Neil went through, then you can look at a short video on our YouTube channel.
We’ll provide a link for it, and you can check it out for yourself. But you could also say in a way that changing your glasses, changes you, changes your personal brand. And that leads us into what we talked about on this week’s podcast or what you talked about on this week’s podcast, personal branding.
How did that work out?
[00:01:17] Neil: You know, it was a terrific, terrific interview that I had with Paul Copcut, who is recognized as a guru in helping business people brand themselves. That’s a very different process from marketing oneself, and he does a great job today of doing that. explaining it.
[00:01:36] Jason: Yeah, yeah, really, really interesting.
There are a couple of things that stood out to me, the, the model that he talks about and the way he, he starts off by getting to know his, um, clients. And I also found it really interesting. I know some people don’t, I know some people are scared off by it, but I found it really interesting about the, AI process that you two [00:02:00] talked about and how, like every other field, it’s impacting his work.
[00:02:05] Neil: Yeah, I have to say, Paul gives you a full circle of understanding when you work with Paul. And I’ll tell you, he challenged me on my own thoughts and, and what I care about and what I think I’m all about. And I’m still thinking about it. He really is good.
[00:02:25] Jason: That’s awesome. Yeah. In fact, he asked you at one point, what are your favorite passions, which I think is an intriguing way to start the process.
And so to everybody watching, I would say, what are your passions? Think about that. Think about the steps listed in the upcoming episode. Let us know in the comments, how you would start this process. And please remember to click subscribe if you haven’t. Click like. Leave that comment after the episode and tell a friend about it.
And other than that, I think we’ve covered everything. Ready to go? Ready to go. Let’s go. Thanks,
[00:03:07] Neil: everybody. Have a great week.
[00:03:10] Jason: Welcome to Your Gray Matters, the podcast that unveils the miracles already amongst us. Here, we believe that the human mind cannot be defeated. Tune in to discover the fascinating people that With extraordinary stories, innovative products, and groundbreaking services.
With your host, Neil Silvert, who’s earned his gray hair and still has use of his gray matter.
[00:03:38] Neil: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Your Gray Matters podcast. I’m Neil. I still am. No glasses, but it’s me. And we’re really excited to have you back. We hope that you had a great week and we’re really excited today. We have on one of the best people in, in personal branding, [00:04:00] but I’ve known him for years.
This is a real gentleman. He’s a very smart man and we’re excited to bring him out to you today. Paul Kopcut. Welcome to the Your Grey Matters podcast.
[00:04:13] Paul Copcutt: Thank you, Neil. Very, very excited to be here today. Thank you for the invitation.
[00:04:16] Neil: And thank you for coming on. I really do appreciate it. Everybody, let me tell you a bit about Paul, because he is fascinating. He is the founder of his company called PC Unlimited, which I have to guess is Paul Copcut. He’s a personal brand and marketing agency that helps real estate business owners, Entrepreneurs in general and related professionals like myself, as you know, I’m a mortgage agent and I work in high traffic areas.
There’s a lot of us doing what we do. And Paul, he works with people to help them identify what makes them unique and then shows them how to leverage and communicate that for their own professional and personal services. He’s developed a system called the REI three step personal branding model, and that is to increase your visibility, credibility, and frankly, revenue in your industry.
I have to tell you, Paul was an early winner in this. He was one of the first half dozen speakers on this topic of personal branding. And he’s globally certified to be able to do this for people. And it is a personal brand strategist certification. And he’s also certified, and we’re going to touch on this today, to use the world leading personal brand assessment called 360 Reach.
Very accomplished man. He firmly believes that marketing might be how you get someone’s attention, but personal branding makes them choose you, and there’s the difference that we’re going to learn about today. Paul, welcome to the Your [00:06:00] Grey Matters podcast again. We are really delighted to have you on.
[00:06:05] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, excited to be here,
[00:06:06] Neil: Neil, looking forward to our conversation. So, Paul, before I ask you a little bit more about yourself, because you are very interesting, just so everybody understands, what’s personal branding? Why is it important? Why is it more than marketing, as we said in introducing you? So perhaps talk to that a bit.
[00:06:26] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing is that everybody listening to the show today has already has a personal brand. The key is understanding what that brand is and then how do you best communicate it to the people that you’re trying to reach. And personal branding really has come from the marketing and branding side of business.
It’s the same process that you would apply to a product or a service. But you’re applying it to a person. So you really are trying to understand, you know, what is the core foundation of your brand, you. So that would be things like values and vision and purpose and passions. And then, how do you kind of package that, for want of a better description, into a unique selling proposition for you to position yourself as the mortgage agent, as an example for you, versus, as you mentioned, the hundreds or thousands of others who also, they do the same thing as you.
[00:07:23] Neil: Right. And Paul, how did you get started in this? What, what is it about your background and your interests that took you into this personal branding field?
[00:07:33] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, it’s funny. I was, I just did a post very recently on LinkedIn about this, where I first sort of came across it. I was in the, my background is sales and marketing.
I was actually having dinner with a friend in the UK, when I lived in the UK, and he mentioned this book called Brand U50 by Tom Peters. And Tom Peters, a couple of years before, had written a very iconic fast company [00:08:00] article called The Brand Called You, and it was really the first person that had put it out there in any way to, to kind of position this idea of being a brand yourself.
And this was 2003, maybe, maybe even earlier than that. Maybe it was even earlier than, and, and Peters actually, the first time he presented this, funnily enough, was to the British government. And I met Tom Peters a few years later and asked him how he got into it. And he, he presented it as a, as an idea to the British government.
And they just laughed and, and threw him out the room. But doesn’t surprise me, it, it certainly resonated more with people in, in sort of corporate, in the corporate world. And then I was in recruitment. And I was coaching candidates as to how to stand out in an interview. And I started to use this personal brand approach.
And one of the candidates turned around one day and said, could I pay you to continue coaching me on this? I thought, well, yeah, I guess so. And that’s how it all started. That’s how I got, got into doing personal branding as a business and then slowly transitioned from, from recruitment, stopped doing recruitment.
And then. Continued to do personal branding for individuals inside corporations, running workshops, doing presentations at conferences, and that’s how it
[00:09:24] Neil: all took off. So it seems to me, and that’s when you founded PC Unlimited, which is your company, and of course we’ll be posting your website and things like that for you, and for all of our viewers, thank you.
But Paul, it seems to me what you’re doing is you’re working with people to help them bring the best part of themselves out. So that they can tell people about themselves. Does that make sense?
[00:09:49] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, absolutely. You’re absolutely right, Neil. I mean, and that is the thing. I think that raises a good point is it’s not about buying trying to be somebody you’re not.
[00:09:57] Neil: I
[00:09:58] Paul Copcutt: mean, maybe somebody that you’re aspiring [00:10:00] to be that might be a little bit different. But, you know, I see it often. And I cringe every time I see the phrase fake it till you make it. It does concern me when I see people thinking that that is the way to go about presenting a personal brand. It isn’t.
It’s, you know, what is that brand? Where do you want to get to? And how do you make more of your brand attributes visible to people so that they can start to see you as that brand?
[00:10:26] Neil: Sure. Sure. And that makes sense. I’ve always believed that you’re probably the best one to be you because that job’s taken.
You’re you. Right. And one of the reasons for this podcast. Is that we truly believe that the human mind cannot be defeated and that every single mind has something to offer. So get to learn yours and learn your personality. And with someone like you, you can be helped to bring the best of that out to your clientele, your family, to the world.
[00:11:01] Paul Copcutt: Right. And it, and it presents. And again, this is a little bit of an overused word, but it is, it does capture the best way to kind of. The essence of what personal branding is, it’s authenticity. It’s a, it’s permission to be yourself. That’s bottom line.
[00:11:17] Neil: I love that. You know, I tell people in my mortgage business, I understand mortgages.
But I’m not the best guy to underwrite them. I have a team for that. I’m good at listening and conceptualizing what you’re looking for. I’m interested in you. For me, that is my personality and I’ve found that for me that really helps. But it took me quite a while to learn that actually. And, and I had professionals who helped me get, if you can imagine, sort of a grasp of who I am.
And I think that that, well, I know that you do that very well, actually. And, but you also said, and this is interesting in your bio, you’re certified. [00:12:00] And who certifies you? What’s the structure of this whole industry?
[00:12:05] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, so
[00:12:05] Neil: it’s
[00:12:06] Paul Copcutt: a little bit like, you know, who certifies coaches? And there is a little bit of a, Again, a mis, misnomer is probably not the right word, but there was somebody I came across very early on, a gentleman called William Arruda, who had very similar, he got influenced by Tom Peters article and started down this personal branding route.
And he’d taken it to a point where he developed a process. And steps and tools to help people identify what their brand was. And then he took it a stage further and said, well, I could start rather than he wanted to reach millions. So rather than his trying to do that all on his own, he decided to engage other people, coaches or strategists, personal brand strategists to do that.
Sitting. So take his process and go do the same thing. So I got, he announced it. I think I’m so I’m pretty sure it was on Twitter or something on social media. I immediately emailed him and said, yep. Count me in because I figured. Yeah, I’m kind of working my way through it, but if somebody has already invented the wheel, why, why do I need to reinvent it much quicker because that wasn’t the thing I didn’t need to own a process or a system or even a certification I wanted to help people brand themselves.
So that’s what I did. I signed up for his certification. I ended up actually running it for him for a number of years and certifying other people, probably certified 50, 60 people across the world in personal branding for him. And then the other thing was, which you’d mentioned in, in my introduction is the 360 reach, so that there’s only two personal brand assessments in the world that I’m aware of, called how to fascinate by Sally Hogshead.
And that’s a very good personal brand assessment. There’s a great book that goes along with it. The only thing with Sally’s assessment is that it’s, it’s purely a self assessment. [00:14:00] As with any self assessment. The answers are only as good as how you felt at the time when you filled it in. It’s
[00:14:08] Neil: very subjective.
[00:14:11] Paul Copcutt: So, I mean, I’ve done things like Myers Briggs, and I think I come out differently every time. So, it’s, they’re not perfect. Um, whereas Williams won the 360 Reach. actually goes to other people anonymously and gets feedback as to their perceptions of your brand. So they ask questions like, what words would people use to describe you?
What skills do they think you have? What’s your greatest strength and why? What’s your greatest weakness and why? And then they actually compare you to objects, which always, people always kind of hesitate and go, Ooh, that doesn’t sound right. But it, it’s interesting because you’re given the option of being compared to a car.
a cereal, a breed of dog, or a household appliance? And people say, oh, yeah, that’s a stupid question. And actually you see it sometimes when people are filled in the responses, they say, stupid question, I’m not going to answer this. It’s amazing how many times I’ve sat down with clients and gone through that part of the assessment.
And we’ve lifted out taglines, we’ve lifted out names of companies, Literally people’s feedback is, is amazing, but you also see a lot of similarities. And sometimes people can’t find the right word to describe somebody, but they can say, Oh, you know, Neil’s a Volvo because he’s safe and reliable and I can trust him.
Or, and I had a client was a consultant and 85 percent of her respondents came back with BMW, Mercedes or Porsche. Wow. And the comments were well engineered, great systems. Uh, you pay, you know, you, you would expect to pay more for this. And immediately we went out and upped her prices by 15%. And nobody blinked, blinked an eye.
Nobody. Wow. So the, [00:16:00] so the 360 really can. And the, the attribute side is also key to when you go to describe and package your personal brand. Because there are a set of words that people will use to describe you, but they’ll also use them to describe other mortgage agents and brokers. So, for example, trust, I would imagine, would be a word that you would want in a good mortgage broker.
Or trust and, you know, something like accurate or knowledgeable, you know, and we see that all the time. I see it in with realtors all the time. I just laugh every time I see a realtor that says, Trust is part of them, you know, tagline or something. Well, I’m not going to hire an untrustworthy realtor to sell my house.
So, so, so those are what I call the table stakes. They get you in the game. They get you considered, but they don’t differentiate you. Because everybody else is saying the same thing. But if suddenly we said, and you mentioned yourself, Neil, that you, you like to get to know people. So maybe it’s, you know, maybe one of your attributes is caring or analytical, or, or maybe it’s, maybe it’s quirky or maybe it’s something like that, but those are attributes that you would not necessarily need to be a good mortgage broker, but they differentiate you.
And those are the ones, those are the emotional attributes that we want. So if anybody thinks about brands that they know and love, you know, Apple is, you know, Apple produces a phone and a computer and so does. 10 other companies. That isn’t why you buy Apple,
[00:17:34] Neil: right?
[00:17:35] Paul Copcutt: Apple is about the emotional connection that you have to that brand.
And even when you see other people with an Apple laptop in a Starbucks, You kind of know to them because you’re in that tribe, and that’s the emotional connection to a brand. It’s the same for personal brands.
[00:17:48] Neil: So, Paul, what I hear you saying then is when you work with a person, you’re looking at their attributes.
You’re taking into consideration what existing [00:18:00] clients or people know them. Know about them and are willing to tell you and I think it’s more than just sitting with Paul like in a counseling session at the end of it we’ve drawn out everything everything’s fine what I’m hearing from you this is probably an ongoing process as a professional develops themselves into their own industry I don’t know if I said that right but it sounds like an ongoing process
[00:18:26] Paul Copcutt: yeah and and sometimes you’ll have people that think they know what their own personal brand is you And then we get that feedback and there’s a disconnect.
Uh huh. Then you’re having a conversation around, okay, why is there a disconnect? What do we need to help move you towards that if that’s where you believe you are, but you’re not? Or if people have got that impression and that’s the wrong impression, how do we change that impression? And sometimes we’ll go back and do It’s really 12 months later to see if our actions or our activities have changed that perception.
[00:18:57] Neil: Yeah, well, I have to say, I certainly spent some time over the years reading books like how to win friends and influence people and, and, you know, those kind of books and I know that you’re a great reader. I’m going to come to that. But Paul, it taught me that. Even the numbers business, which is what mortgages and real estate are, they seem to be just about numbers, but they’re not.
They’re about people’s lives and joys and goals and dreams, and, and I think that must be part of your process is really understanding who that person is, so that they can even express themselves to others. Does that make sense or am I wrong on that?
[00:19:35] Paul Copcutt: Oh, you’re totally right as well. Yeah, vision, purpose.
You know, your vision, what’s your bigger vision for the world? Purpose is more about what is it that you want to do to help affect that bigger vision.
[00:19:46] Neil: And
[00:19:46] Paul Copcutt: that values, values is a core part of, of a brand family. And then passions, passions is, passions is the fun part. And again, some people kind of avoid this, but you know, if you’ve got a passion for [00:20:00] Well, what are your passions, Neil?
Tell me, tell me a little bit about what you like to do outside of work, you know, what, what, what are you passionate about outside of?
[00:20:08] Neil: Oh, you know what? I love traveling with my bride, Linda. We love just hanging out with the grandkids, but I, I really love interacting with people, Paul. So I have some other businesses that I run and they always bring me in contact with people and their dreams and goals and where they are.
And. That’s just a big part. It’s just something that I love to do, but it’s helped me in all areas, actually caring about someone else and really caring about myself too. Right.
[00:20:36] Paul Copcutt: And, and so you could take, say, your travel passion and incorporate that into part of your social media posts, partly to people so that then I start to see, well, okay, Neil’s not just a mortgage broker.
He’s also, he also enjoys traveling. Well, I like traveling. So maybe they have a conversation with you about traveling before they even start to talk about, I’m thinking of refinancing.
[00:20:58] Neil: Sure, sure. And I have to say that even being on the mic for me doing the podcast before COVID, I want to talk about COVID to you.
I was on stage a lot as a motivational speaker and a real estate pitch guy. And I just loved The talking to the people and I didn’t have to worry at that point whether I had a sale or not. I was just looking for people saying I feel better and the podcast seems to be doing that too. But paul, let me ask you talk about the landscape of personal branding How has it changed and a lot of my speakers lately on our show have talked about interesting changes in their market and since COVID.
And I’m wondering what you’ve seen changes and has anything major changed since we exited our houses after a year of sitting in our houses.
[00:21:49] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, I think, well, you’ve probably found this from, I’m sure from other guests and probably found it yourself as well. People are craving personal connection again.
[00:21:57] Neil: Yes.
[00:21:58] Paul Copcutt: You know, that’s, you know, [00:22:00] we saw a big spike after covert once people were comfortable going and meeting in person again, you know, conferences meetups get togethers, even social gatherings, you know, went off the charts. I think that’s starting to settle down now, but I think people have realized that that’s.
That’s such a part of who we are as humans, having personal connection. So I think that’s one. I think what I have seen, you know, when I was first involved in personal branding, Twitter just started. I think I was one of the first 150, 160, 000 people on LinkedIn. Yeah. There’s a billion people on LinkedIn now is very early.
And now you see people leveraging social media to the nth degree for their personal brands. And we saw that accelerate during COVID because how often people do it. And I think we’re still seeing a lot of that, that, you know, there’s a lot of noise on social media, so it’s hard to stand out and, you know, personal brand can help you do that.
But, you know, I think that’s. Probably a lag of social media or lack of coven is social media is still it’s still pretty heavy for personal brand.
[00:23:10] Neil: It’s really interesting, Paul, because yesterday I spent a couple of hours. I drove from my city, Hamilton to the far end of Toronto and I sat down with 3.
Business people, we talked about how we might put our services together. My mortgage and they’re in a different part of the financial world. But what we all found was that we were having fun. Just being people talking and learning about each other. We found out that these 3 people, and I think that this is intrinsic to our discussion, Paul.
Everywhere you look in the office is Godfather stuff, stuff from the movie, and an actual cutout statue of Robert De Niro, and all this kind of stuff. The owner just happens to love the Godfather, but we got to talk about the fact that my mother was an extra in movies, and she spent some time with [00:24:00] Robert De Niro.
That doesn’t really happen when you’re talking Godfather. On a zoom call, if you’re trying to establish relationships, I think relationships is the key word. Is it not? Yeah,
[00:24:11] Paul Copcutt: relationship
[00:24:11] Neil: and being
[00:24:13] Paul Copcutt: being open to that, Neil, because, I mean, you can walk in, you know, you’ve probably been in meetings where people walk in and they are so fixated on the sale or the presentation or whatever it is that they’re there for that they They miss all the signs and the signals to actually make a connection.
[00:24:30] Neil: Yes,
[00:24:31] Paul Copcutt: yes. Being open to that, being aware, listening for, what is it, the famous saying, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. We should be listening twice as much as we’re talking, so.
[00:24:43] Neil: Yeah, and I have two eyes and one of them actually works now. All right. So, Paul, I want to drill down a little more on your REI three step personal branding.
So a person comes to see you, could you walk through just a little bit of some of the steps that you would do with the person and how it, uh, benefits them? Let’s take real estate. How would that work? Yep.
[00:25:06] Paul Copcutt: So, I mean, it really doesn’t, I mean, REI is obviously an acronym that kind of connects to the real estate space, which is the reason I did it, but the, you know, the process is the same for anyone.
We probably covered quite a bit of the first step, which is reveal and research. So that’s, that’s all about learning about the, you know, the values, the passions, the vision, the purpose, looking at target audience, looking at who your competitors are. So doing some competitor analysis and how are they positioning themselves?
So that’s kind of looking at brand foundation. It’s doing the 360, getting to understand what are your unique differentiators from that. And then looking at, you know, market focus. And, and differentiation. So that’s, that’s the first part, reveal and research. We then get into engagement and explanation. So that’s about messaging.
That’s about building relationships. [00:26:00] Looking at what mediums that you want to be present on, what social media platforms, website, logo, taglines, all those kind of things. And then the final step is influence and impact, which is about communication, connection, spending time on social media. You know, not just posting and ghosting, but posting and engaging, thought leadership, philanthropy, you know, going beyond that.
And then obviously measuring, you know, measuring and, you know, is that having an effect is what I’m doing there. Maybe doing a 360 again, as I say, in six or 12 months. You know, what, what difference have I made? And personal branding isn’t a one and done thing. It’s, it’s part of who you are. So it’s going to evolve.
It’s going to change. Um,
[00:26:48] Neil: but I think that that’s a very important message that you just gave to people want to do personal branding. What you find today might be different in a year from now or down the road. So it’s an ongoing process as are many things that we do consistently in business because being consistent is 1 of the great secrets of success.
Yes, so I think that that’s where you come in really well, and you’re looking for the unite meekness of that person, as you said. And then finding the best way to leverage that uniqueness. Is that a fair way of putting it?
[00:27:23] Paul Copcutt: So, so somebody like a real estate investor, you know, quite typically is looking to raise extra capital.
You know, they’ve maxed out at the banks or the credit unions, and now they’re looking at private money. So how do they position themselves, you know, to attract that and, you know, what are the strategies that they can, they can do to, from a social media perspective, what’s, you know, what’s allowed, what isn’t allowed.
Yeah. So those would be the kind of things, you know, a realtor could be. Yeah, realtor tends, I find realtors are very much more about the external image and getting their message out there. So they’re a little bit more focused that way. Whereas obviously, I find real estate investors don’t necessarily [00:28:00] feel the need to do all of that.
[00:28:01] Neil: Exactly. I’ve found. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know over the years, really know 50, more than 50 real estate specialists. Some are investors. Some are in the sale. Most are in the sales and some are brokers. When I do thinking about if I’m connecting people and everybody wants you to connect them with somebody, what goes through my head is personalities.
And I’ve spent a lot of time developing my own knowledge and personalities. So if someone’s detail specific, my way or the highway. I have certain real estate agents that are absolutely going to satisfy that client’s requirement. The other person is, no, I just want someone who’s hospitable, I’m not knowledgeable, maybe needs a bit of a sense of humor.
I have certain people I turn to for that. And the only reason I’m saying that is because I think it’s very exciting what you’re doing because it helps consumers really understand the uniqueness of your client, their private branding, and if there’s already going to be a comfort zone when they reach out to them.
I don’t know if I’m right there, but that’s how I’m perceiving what you’re saying. You’re right. And,
[00:29:10] Paul Copcutt: and, and people should be okay with the fact that their personal brand is going to repel some people. Aha, you’re not for everyone. If you try to be, you’ll end up being very vanilla.
[00:29:21] Neil: Yes.
[00:29:22] Paul Copcutt: And that’s, that doesn’t serve you because again, we go back to.
Yeah, what is it in Hamilton, Burlington? There’s 2000 realtors, so I’ve got 2000 people to choose from that could sell.
[00:29:34] Neil: I know, and don’t even have to remain in that city in your own city nowadays, either. So quite remarkable. I love what you’re what you’re teaching me today. I hope the rest of you are enjoying this.
Paul, do you have any without names? Of course. Can you think of any real big success story that you’ve had that you’d love to share with us?
[00:29:55] Paul Copcutt: Yeah. I mean, well, you know, I, I got involved in, in real estate investing. It [00:30:00] wasn’t, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t a market I was looking at. And that’s the interesting thing.
I think that’s part of being, you know, that openness to, well, maybe there’s something here and it’s worth exploring. Yeah. So, you know, personal branding, I’ve done everything from helping job seekers to corporate executives, to, you know, to real estate investors. And there’s a good example of how a personal brand.
Can change because the way that you position yourself is different for each 1 of those, those groups, but it was actually a real estate investor who found me. They found me on LinkedIn. They liked what I had as my profile and they said. You know, you look like, you know, something about branding. Can you help me with my brand?
And that’s. And I thought real estate investor, I’d done some work with realtors. I’d worked with 2 or 3 of the large realtors, you know, like top 1, 2. Top half dozen with REMAX, Royal LePage, but not real estate investors. And, and the interesting thing I find with real estate investors is they’re a group that are willing to invest in themselves as well as properties and portfolios.
And so this, this particular real estate investor, they had, they had a podcast, but they didn’t have, they didn’t have a business card. They didn’t have a website, very limited social media. And then. Worked, worked with them to build out, start to build an email list, which I’ll talk about in a little bit in a second, but we got business cards.
We got the website out there. We started to get sponsorship for the, for the podcast, and then we basically took them from, they had a full 9 to 5 job that they were trying to get out of. And we, within, probably within 2 years, we’d replaced their corporate income with additional. income from beyond their real estate portfolio.
So sponsorship, coaching programs, uh, other things that generated, generated revenue. So [00:32:00] they were able to quit their nine to five and go full time into real estate.
[00:32:03] Neil: And isn’t that the best for them? If that’s what they wanted, then everybody’s happy. And that’s marvelous. Paul, I remember, uh, when I was studying marketing as a kid, so it’s a long time ago, but I remember the marketing wasn’t sales.
Marketing was a part of sales and success, and it fits in to, to, if you can imagine a closed circle of the sales. Circle marketing’s a part of it. I imagine that personal branding is also a part of it where you want to go, but Marketing and personal branding are in fact different from each other There are tools that work together But what you’re suggesting to me is they’re not if you’re marketing you’re not necessarily doing personal branding I think that’s what I’m trying to say.
Yeah, you the way I
[00:32:51] Paul Copcutt: the way I see it is that you know Marketing is more of the the activity. It’s more of the activity I mean, yeah, it’s more of the activity to get the message of your personal brand out there consistently, clearly, constantly. So you’re constantly working at getting it out there. So the two go hand in hand, but if, if you’re not clear about what that brand is, then there’s probably no point in marketing it because as Donald Miller says, you confuse, you lose.
So it really is, really is the case of. Get clear on the brand and then you can do the marketing and sales piece.
[00:33:28] Neil: Yeah, and and you’ve brought that across so beautifully and and I thank you for that. I’m already thinking of things I can do very differently. Paul, you’re a strong reader. I read on your LinkedIn profile that you you’re addicted to business books.
I have an incurable
[00:33:45] Paul Copcutt: addiction to business books, yes. If I got my camera and took you around a couple of angles, you’d probably see. And I’m looking at them now, probably 150 books, at least.
[00:33:57] Neil: So, so let me ask you, [00:34:00] what, what ones are you thinking about right now? What might you recommend to people? If, if there is a specific one or two or three, like where do you go with books these days?
[00:34:11] Paul Copcutt: Yeah, so probably two books this year that have made a difference for me. The first one is Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. So Dan Martell’s a BC based SaaS software as a service entrepreneur.
[00:34:27] Neil: He’s
[00:34:27] Paul Copcutt: built and sold SaaS companies. I followed him in the book. I followed his, what he calls email GPS. So how to deal with email.
So now I don’t touch email. My virtual assistant touches email first and then sorts it or deals with it. And then I get to see the emails that I need to see. And that’s made a huge difference. Just in productivity on a daily basis. So buy back your time. Dan Martel. And then I just recently read Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera.
I dunno if you know the, the Netflix show, the Bear.
[00:35:05] Neil: Yeah,
[00:35:06] Paul Copcutt: with Jeremy Wyatt, but one of the characters had it in in the restaurant is based on restaurant and will get there was a partner with Danny. I’m trying to remember his second name, the guy that ran started Shake Shack and a bunch of high end restaurants and he basically.
It’s it’s all about customer service and going above and beyond and some of the stories in that book and it’s got dozens and dozens of great one liner kind of leadership customer service quotes. But the stories in there are phenomenal that what these people were prepared to do to impress a client in one of their restaurants was just phenomenal.
And you think. You know, you’ve been to good restaurants and you always have great stories when, when you go to restaurants, good and bad, uh, but these, these ones are just 5, 10 notches above [00:36:00] anything I’ve ever heard.
[00:36:01] Neil: Well, I, I’ve heard, and I’ve learned over the years that leaders are readers and readers are leaders, and I never would have believed.
Paul, in 1996, I heard a gentleman speak from stage, his name’s Paul Zane Pilzer, he’s sort of the anti economist, even though he’s an economist. And I heard him say something that now you hear on my show, which is that the human mind cannot be defeated. We will always find a way and that was his whole passion.
That was 1996. That stayed with me to this day and helped me to create a podcast. And in real estate, it’s funny, my bride Linda and I, we were lucky. We got to learn directly from Robert Kiyosaki when Rich Dad Poor Dad was the big Bible.
[00:36:46] Paul Copcutt: That’s a great example of a personal brand that’s built around a framework.
[00:36:50] Neil: Yes.
[00:36:51] Paul Copcutt: Yes. And you just mentioned, as Paul Zeimpel said, he was the anti economist. He is. That’s a personal brand.
[00:36:59] Neil: That’s, yeah,
[00:37:00] Paul Copcutt: and People were doing it before the label was even there. We just needed something to hang on to.
[00:37:07] Neil: It’s absolutely true, Paul, and that’s why I wanted to bring that up, because I find it so fascinating that something I learned years ago, all those years ago, have propelled me to where I am now.
But it’s like basic principles that you can learn from reading that you may not just get in a conversation with someone. So it’s, I just wanted to bring that up because I know part of your greatness is the fact that you’re a wonderful reader and you learn from them. Paul, how is AI going to change personal branding?
Are you finding things already?
[00:37:41] Paul Copcutt: For sure. I’m using AI more and more each week. It’s, it’s again, you need to use it correctly, just like anything else. You know, it’s a tool. It’s not a replacement. I’m not, I’m not one of the doomsayers that thinks AI is going to replace everybody and everything, but it does help in terms of, [00:38:00] it just gets you to a point faster.
So I think the danger is that people are going to rely too much on this. And we’ll start to see, going back to my comment earlier about being vanilla. Uh, You’ll start to see vanilla posts on social media, and then you’ll start to be able to see, I’ve already started to collect a list of words that AI produces that is so obvious it’s AI, Realm, R E A L M, you know, I mean, who uses that?
And seasoned, you know, if I see people have put seasoned in their bios, I typically go, you know, no, so I know, so what now when I’m putting stuff in AI prompts, I’m saying, do not include these words.
[00:38:43] Neil: Yes, isn’t
[00:38:45] Paul Copcutt: it to generate because otherwise I think you’ll just you’ll see vanilla posts and everybody will get more.
So it was interesting. I was reading an article just this morning about this from a personal branding person in Australia. And they said with the advent of AI personal branding, the personal connection of personal branding is going to be even more critical. So thank you. I think that’s the thing that’s underlined it.
Well, now
[00:39:10] Neil: you’re going to want to stick out as a human being versus, uh, uh, technology that comes from online. I mean, it’s fascinating. My son, Jason, who people see on this show, he’s building our back end right now with AI. And it’s fascinating because He spent two days just trying to figure out how to get AI to listen to him so that he could give it the prompts.
[00:39:32] Paul Copcutt: Well, and that’s the skill that, you know, if you, if you, anybody listening with young kids or nieces or nephews, if you’re thinking about what are the skills they need to develop, it isn’t knowing how to do an Excel spreadsheet anymore. It’s how to write clear prompts, because if you know how to write clear prompts, then you’ll get the right results from AI.
It’s, it’s, you know, it’s a classic. It’s the old adage, garbage in, garbage out. So if you put in [00:40:00] good things into AI, then you’ll get good stuff out. I, I literally had a conversation with chat GPT the other day. So I get some, and then I said, now interview me based on that. And so it asked me the first question.
I gave it the answer. It even said, Could you clarify that? That’s not quite clear. And then ask me the next question. And then, so it’s like an interview. So
[00:40:22] Neil: I did something yesterday with you, actually, that I’ve never done before. This is not the base AI system. We purchased a little higher end one for what we’re doing.
So I actually took the bio that you sent to me. I didn’t know I could do this. And I put it into the system. I copied and pasted in the system. And I said, So now give me a five star interview with Paul based on only what you read and perceive from Paul’s bio. And it came out. Some of the questions we used today, I mean, I know you and I like to do the human stuff, but I was blown away because I could not have counted to 30.
And it had read it and come out and the questions were good. They were interesting, but I still go back, Paul, to the fact that yesterday I also spent three hours in a car going back and forth somewhere because I deemed it worthwhile and the sitting around and and talking as people. Was huge because a relationship was started.
I still don’t think that you can do that online in the same manner
[00:41:33] Paul Copcutt: And ai will never well, let’s hope I I never
[00:41:38] Neil: I’m 70. I don’t think i’ll have to worry about it too much. But paul this has been wonderful ladies and gentlemen, I I Believe in paul cop cut we met many years ago And we both have been involved in real estate investing, but what Paul does well is that he builds relationships with people, but Bill builds into [00:42:00] that relationship, wonderful skills, rewards for you, rewards for Paul.
And I want to encourage you to reach out to Paul. If you want to get your personal branding up to speed or to even learn how to put your best, best foot forward to learn how to do it. Paul, how shall people find you?
[00:42:19] Paul Copcutt: But the easiest place, very simple, uh, my website is paulcopcut. com. That’s C O P C U T T or any of the social media channels, all of them are at Paul Copcut.
[00:42:31] Neil: Wonderful. And I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, when you go online and you look up Paul, including his website, you will find some really interesting things. If you’re looking to upgrade your personal branding, or you’ve just today went, Oh, personal branding. What’s that better look into it. Go on to Paul’s social media, then get a hold of Paul.
It’s worth your time. Paul, thank you so much for coming on to Your Grey Matters. We appreciate it.
[00:42:58] Paul Copcutt: Thank you, Neil. It’s been a blast. Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed it.
[00:43:01] Neil: Yeah. And I’ll see you again, I’m sure, out on the circuit. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. Have a great week. And as usual, we’ll be back next Monday with another Your Grey Matters podcast.
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