Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat.

"Sarah became a CMO at Nike and Gatorade in her 20s. She launched Flywheel Sports. She’s just insane. And everything she did was an extension of who she was. Her personal brand was from was from the moment she woke up until the end of the day. She’s from New Zealand, she’s extremely sporty. Here’s someone who just knew who they were, knows who they are, and was able to apply it in everything she did at this very high level. It’s just fascinating. You asked if personal branding is just digital marketing. No. It’s a lot of things, and I think when it comes to the story she tells, there’s very little that she did that wasn’t personal, in a good way. No. We just have to know that we already are extraordinary. The idea of branding is to be unique enough to stand out among the things that are just like you. As people, we tend to fall into the ‘everybody else’ syndrome because we forget who we are. She’s a mother and an extreme athlete and an executive. But none of that sounds so extraordinary if you think that all of us know mothers and most of us will know endurance athletes. But half the time, we don’t even know they are endurance athletes. It’s how she’s presented it, and how she understands and knows that to its core, that’s what’s extraordinary. Not necessarily just her doing it, more so the way that she owns every element of it and has her priorities straight. It’s something I think we could all do a little bit more of. Yes. I think it does have to be like that, a bit. Anytime you step out of your box and do something new, everyone that knows you is a little confused. But they’ll get over it. Any time you’re doing something that stands out, someone somewhere won’t like it. You just have to be okay with a certain amount of criticism. Not a ton, but a certain amount. The other thing is, the more you put yourself out there, the more you run the risk of being wrong sometimes. That’s okay too, but you have to be okay with that. Those are the three main things that get in the way. Everything else is technical, right? If you know what you want to say, saying it becomes easy. Understanding where to put it and how to do it, those are the technical elements. But at its core, if you’re not comfortable or if you feel like you’re not being genuine, then it’s never going to work. “If you’re not comfortable, or if you’re not being genuine, it’s never going to work” There was this woman—I tell this story a lot because it was what flipped a switch in my own mind—who was a national security advisor for the Bushes, the Clintons, through to Obama. She was saying how she gets so mad about these talking heads on television: that they all have an agenda, and they’re not painting security situations in the right way. She said: ‘I feel like I could speak to it in a more honest and unbiased way” I said, ‘Well, why don’t you?’ And she said: ‘Oh, no. I’m a political careerist, not a pundit. We don’t do that. We just do our job.’ Then—I don’t know why—I replied: ‘Then if the world falls apart, it might be your fault. You have the answer, and you didn’t say anything.’ Now she’s really doing well, I see her all over the place. So I think we have to switch the way we’re think about personal branding—from a self-promotion and vanity tool to: if you’re the right person, you need to speak up because otherwise all the people speaking up are seen as the experts, when they’re not. We’re getting a lot of bad information. Information without any basis of knowledge. That is something I think people can really take into consideration. If they did, we would have a more fulfilled, more educated world."