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EP494: Majeed Mogharreban - How To Build A Powerful Thought Leader CEO Brand
228 Plays1 year ago
“And the most successful CEOs in the world are the ones now who have opinions and some of those opinions are quite controversial.”
Thought leadership isn't just about making noise – it's about crafting a symphony of powerful ideas, emotional connection, and transformative impact. In today's riveting discussion, we have the honor of hosting the legendary thought leader, Majeed Mogharreban, a brilliant and insightful Persian visionary in the realm of business.
Majeed and Nicky guide listeners through the journey of becoming a thought leader CEO. By sharing personal stories, harnessing values, and delivering valuable insights, thought leader CEOs can inspire and connect with their audience on a profound level. Majeed’s wisdom and Nicky’s expertise shed light on the path to building a powerful thought leader CEO brand that resonates with authenticity, impact, and influence.
Expert action steps:
- Begin, begin.
- Record a video and post it online.
- Tell legendary stories.
Check out Majeed’s book "Expert Speaker: Five Steps to Grow Your Business with Public Speaking.” by visiting www.expertspeakerbook.com
To learn more about Majeed Mogharreban, visit his website through: www.expertspeaker.com
Visit eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Thought Leadership
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, my definition of a thought leader is someone who has beliefs and is willing to share them. Some people are afraid to share their thoughts. And those are the people who are not leading today. We need to see them speak. We need to hear their voice. And the most successful CEOs in the world are the ones now who have opinions. So you do have a level of mastery that you can teach someone. And I'm a big believer in sharing wisdom.
The Thought Leader Revolution Podcast
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
Guest: Majid Moraraban
00:00:58
Speaker
Welcome to another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution. I'm your host, Nicky Baloo. And boy, do we have a special, exciting guest lined up for you today. Today's guest is a repeat guest. He is one of my dearest friend. He is a brother from another mother. He's a fellow Persian.
00:01:17
Speaker
And he is one of the brightest, most thoughtful men in business that I have ever met. I am speaking, of course, of none other than the one, the only, the legendary Majid Moraraban. Welcome to the show, Majid. It's so nice to hear my name pronounced by another Persian, Nikki Baloo. Great to have you here, brother.
00:01:42
Speaker
So we are here to do a very important episode. It's one that you and I have talked about offline.
What is Thought Leadership?
00:01:50
Speaker
And we both agree that this is the age of the thought leader CEO. And before we get into what that means, I think we first need to define, first of all,
00:02:09
Speaker
What's the thought leader? What's thought leadership? And why should any CEO care about them? Sure. So my definition of a thought leader is someone who has beliefs and is willing to share them. And now everyone has a megaphone. You, me, anyone with the phone, we all have megaphones. We all can be seen by millions. It's something that's never existed before in human history.
00:02:38
Speaker
And some people are afraid to share their thoughts. And those are the people who are not leading today.
00:02:47
Speaker
And gone are the days I think of a CEO being able to hide behind a press release or words that they're gonna type. We need to see them speak. We need to hear their voice. And the most successful CEOs in the world are the ones now who have opinions. And some of those opinions are quite controversial. One who comes to mind very famously is Elon Musk.
00:03:15
Speaker
Love them or hate them. You got an opinion about them. And when you buy a Tesla, it feels like you're driving a card made by Elon Musk. And you used to be able to tell, I bet you every single Tesla owner can tell the story of where Elon's from and how he started the company and how he saved it from bankruptcy and how he made this robot. And we're here for the stories. And Elon is one who keeps us entertained, but also
00:03:42
Speaker
leads very, very well. And I think it says a lot when the richest man in the world, one of the smartest men in the world, in my opinion, what does he buy next? He buys Twitter. He buys a bigger megaphone. So I think that's a great indication that we are indeed in the age of a thought leader CEO.
Thought Leaders vs Experts
00:04:01
Speaker
You know, that's really well put. A couple of my mentors have a slightly different twist on what is a thought leader and what is thought leadership. And let me share those with you now. So Matt Church says it like this. He says, an expert is someone who knows something. He says experts are a dime a dozen.
00:04:26
Speaker
but a thought leader is someone who's known for knowing something. The marketplace understands who this person is, what their backstory and origin story is, but they also understand what they have to say and why it's relevant to them personally.
00:04:46
Speaker
So the marketplace goes and says, okay, Elon, yeah, it's cool that you're South African and you lived in Canada and you know, you rescued Tesla from bankruptcy. All that's cool. But why should I listen to you? Why I should listen to you is, oh, you have something to say about
00:05:03
Speaker
you know, changing the planet. Oh, what you're saying is we need to change our habits so that we leave a provenance for our children. Now, agree or disagree with that. There's plenty of people who'll tell you electric cars have a worse environmental footprint than fossil fuel cars, but
00:05:21
Speaker
It's a powerful message. And it's a message that a lot of people have bought, right? So that was really powerful. And then another mentor of mine, actually he's less a mentor than a peer, but he's been a guest on my podcast. He is an advisor to the great Tony Robbins. His name is David Mearman Scott. He writes a lot about branding and marketing. And he put it like this. He said, a thought leader and an expert, this is the best way to tell them apart. An expert is like a cover band.
00:05:50
Speaker
They could be really good, but they're a cover band. There's nothing original about who they are and how they sound. They're a cover band. There's just another thought follower, if you will. But a thought leader creates and plays original music. I thought that was quite elegant. I thought it was really well said. Yeah. So I'm wondering, what are your thoughts about these two slightly different takes on thought leadership? Well,
Courage in Thought Leadership
00:06:20
Speaker
My interpretation of the word is simply that they are amongst the few who have the courage to speak their truth. And it's never been more, there's never been a time that we have such access to sharing. And also we have this new threat never heard of before called getting canceled.
00:06:43
Speaker
And so why would people be afraid to speak something that might be controversial is because the mob can turn and want to cancel you. So I have a lot of respect to the people who can speak their truth even when it's controversial. My definition of an expert is one who has deep mastery
00:07:07
Speaker
And I make a distinction in my book. I wrote a book called Expert Speaker, Five Steps to Grow Your Business with Public Speaking. And I hear a lot from clients the phrase, I'm not an expert.
00:07:19
Speaker
to which is the reason why they're not sharing their wisdom. And I give them the opportunity to consider the fact that they are probably an expert to someone else, meaning that they have a deeper knowledge and deeper expertise relative to the person that they can help. For example, Nikki, you might not be the world's leading expert in how to run a podcast, but compared to a guy who wants to start a podcast, you're an expert to them.
The Role of Storytelling
00:07:46
Speaker
So you do have a level of mastery that you can teach someone, and I'm a big believer in sharing wisdom, and we're Persians. We come from a long tradition of learning and sharing our wisdom. So the difference between an expert and a thought leader, what I'm learning from you right now is that the thought leader has original ideas.
00:08:08
Speaker
And what I coach my clients on on how to be the undisputed expert in their own message is using personal stories from their own experience. So here's a very simple distinction. Instead of teaching people how to be a great leader or how to, whatever it is you want to teach, you can use the phrase, how I.
00:08:31
Speaker
and then teach from the phrase how I, so how I built a million dollar business, how I started my successful podcast, how I got my first two clients or how I hired my first accountant. And so the how I stories, that's thought leadership from the perspective of your lived experience.
00:08:55
Speaker
You know, it's actually very brilliant that you say that because inside the work of thought leadership that we do and we teach to people, we have them take a deep dive into their personal history. So your thought leadership comes out of your life story. And if your life story were a movie, what would the title be?
00:09:14
Speaker
you know, is one of the exercises we walk people through. And there's a deep dive into your history, into your stories. And from there, your expertise comes out. And I like what you're saying. If we marry that, putting it in this form of story too, because that's a little bit of the beautiful right brain stuff to some of the left brain stuff where you sit down and you look at your experiences and you pull out the various learnings and you start codifying them.
00:09:44
Speaker
in a structured format, I think the two of those together become very, very powerful because there's people who powerfully relate to stories.
Identifying the Ideal Client
00:09:54
Speaker
And most people, I think powerfully relate to stories. But then there's another group of people who they need all the facts and figures and all that stuff to back it up. So I think that's part of what's very powerful. So this is what Matt taught me. This is a tool he created called a pink sheet or an IP snapshot.
00:10:11
Speaker
And this is just like an example of me using it to create a little bit of intellectual property, some thought leadership, right? So I came out with, if you want to find out who your ideal client is, best place to start is by looking who you've already worked with. So your ideal client is an intersection of who you've gotten the best results for, who you've enjoyed working with the most,
00:10:34
Speaker
and who has been the easiest to transact with, like they paid you top dollar, they paid you right away, you didn't have to pull teeth to get them. And then there's the visual diagram here, best results, enjoyed the most, paid the best.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that's where the ideal client comes in. And then over here, I've got some case studies of people I've worked with. And then there's some books, like a literature review, to kind of back some of this up. And then there's a metaphor. An ideal client is like your dream girl. She checks all the boxes and makes you giddy just to be with her. Or if you're a girl, your ideal client is like your dream guy. He checks all the boxes and makes you giddy just to be with him. You know what I mean? So that added to stories, I think,
00:11:17
Speaker
makes thought leadership very valuable for a business owner. Yeah, yeah. I'd like to share with you a couple of insights about harvesting treasures from your past in the form of stories. So one of them is discovering your values. And in my opinion, your values are the things that you stand for, that you care about, and evidence shows over time you have consistently acted within those values.
00:11:44
Speaker
Like for me, I care a lot about wealth. I've been studying money since I was a little kid. I was the kid on the playground selling candy bars at a profit. I've really been interested in money, even since a little kid. I've always been interested in travel, love discovering different cultures and going to different places, adventure, learning, creativity. And so I can see evidence of this in my stories. And so the importance of being able to
00:12:13
Speaker
identify and articulate your values is that's how you make aligned decisions. That's how you make, quote unquote, the right decision for you is when you know what's important to you. People who don't know how to make decisions or feel stuck or they're overwhelmed because they start things and they can't finish things and they don't know how to make decisions.
Reframing Past Experiences
00:12:32
Speaker
They're constantly second guessing themselves. It's because they don't really know themselves. They haven't really studied themselves.
00:12:40
Speaker
So that's the first thing I think you can really gain from looking at your stories. And then I also think you can, if you're suffering from feeling like you're a victim to the world, a victim to the economy, a victim to those people who did those bad things to you and the person who left you and the person who screwed you over and you're constantly telling stories about your past, that things happened to you and those things were bad,
00:13:08
Speaker
That's not someone you want to be led by. And so when you look at those stories and you want to upgrade yourself and become a leader, you can ask questions like, how did this actually help me? How did this make me better? How did this make me the man that I am today? How did this actually help? And how it happened for me. And in a way, you can change the past because the past only really exists as a story in your mind.
00:13:34
Speaker
So if you make it a different story, like instead of my partner screwed me over and stole all my money, it's like that guy taught me how to...
00:13:44
Speaker
cross my eyes and dot my T's and follow my contracts. Or, you know, this person left me and you can tell a better story as like, well, that freed me up to go on that adventure that I went on. So you tell the story in a new light through the lens of like, how was this actually good for me? How did this actually happen for me? So going back through our stories and retelling them from a new perspective can actually be a really
00:14:13
Speaker
empowering exercise and seeing how all those things led to making you the person you are today. You know, it's really cool that you bring this up.
00:14:28
Speaker
I have another podcast, a podcast for men, and I interviewed Patrick Francie on it a few weeks ago. Patrick is the founder of RAIN, Real Estate Investment Network. Are you familiar with RAIN? I am, yeah. Patrick's a good man, good friend of mine.
00:14:45
Speaker
What he brought up in that interview was that most people's lives are shaped by the fact that they keep telling the same 10 to 20 stories to themselves again and again and again and again, and it keeps the reality structure in place. And what he said that you need to do if you're looking to shift your life
00:15:10
Speaker
You need to tell a new story to yourself, a new series of stories. So like you were saying over here, if you're telling yourself, she left me, woe is me, I'll never have a marriage or girlfriend again. The way to tell that story is, first of all, stop telling it. Secondly is, wow.
00:15:30
Speaker
I learned how not to be in a relationship. I have a masterclass in how not to screw up or be in a relationship. Man, I'm the best there is at this. So I know the next relationship is going to be so dope, so amazing. And that's the sort of thing that Patrick was talking about. And that concept of retelling those stories to yourself or having those same thoughts go through your head.
00:15:56
Speaker
is an important one for people to understand. So if you want to become a thought leader who's worth listening to, you got to watch what stories you're telling yourself and other people, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know the story of the hero's journey? Joseph Campbell says that the human journey is like we start as a humble human
00:16:19
Speaker
We are faced with some impossible challenge. We're called to adventure to go slay that dragon, that impossible challenge. We find ourselves a guide who helps us figure out how to overcome this great adversity, and then that makes us the hero. And so when we speak from the perspective of the hero,
00:16:39
Speaker
We talk about that challenge not as something that happened to us that was so bad, but it's something that happened for us because it made us who we are. And when people see us speaking as the hero, they actually see us as their guide in their journey to help them overcome their big challenge or slay their dragon.
00:17:02
Speaker
It's beautiful to see someone talk about adversity as though it was a gift, as though it was something that taught them a lot. And we're attracted to heroes. And everyone is a hero over some challenge that they've overcome, however small. And so when we choose to be a leader,
00:17:24
Speaker
We choose to tell stories as a hero. We choose to tell stories as someone who has overcome great adversity, but also we want to be relatable and human. So the way we're relatable is we say, listen, we were there. I remember the day. I remember exactly where I was. This is how we tell stories. Bring us back into the moment.
00:17:43
Speaker
And you talk about how you were down and outs. You were ready to give up. You thought there was nowhere to turn. And then people can empathize and connect with you because nobody connects with the perfect person. They connect with the flawed person because we know we're flawed and we connect with other people who are flawed, but we also want to get to where they've gotten to, which is they've overcome the adversity.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's very powerful and very true. No one wants to just look at a hero and think to themselves, well, I could never be like that. They want to look at a hero and think to themselves, could I be like that? Yeah, maybe I could, because that's what makes it real for them. Yeah, that's very powerful. That's very true. So let's look at CEO thought leadership for a moment.
Leadership Styles: Jobs vs Dell
00:18:39
Speaker
So let's look at the difference between Steve Jobs and Michael Dell. In 1998, Steve Jobs headed Apple, Michael Dell headed Dell Computers. Dell was twice the size of Apple. There were $12.7 billion a year in revenue and Apple was just $5.9 billion.
00:19:02
Speaker
Steve Jobs made a deliberate, conscious decision to amplify his brand, to go out there and speak about what mattered to him as the leader of Apple. And Michael Dell made a deliberate decision to retreat into the back office and just let the computers do their thing.
00:19:22
Speaker
Dell's been a successful company. It's grown to $101 billion a year company in 25 years. No one's gonna say that's not successful. That's hugely successful.
00:19:33
Speaker
but Apple has grown into a $394 billion a year company. So from half the size to four times the size in a 12, 25 year period. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but I know that one of the reasons is that the popular imagination was captured by Steve Jobs. How many CEOs have you heard of who've died in the last 20 years that had a lineup of members of the public
00:19:59
Speaker
crying, going to his final resting place with flowers and notes. Besides see jobs, I don't know anybody.
00:20:07
Speaker
to you and because he built that brand for himself and he captured the popular imagination, he was able to uplift Apple, the brand, but he was also the CEO of Pixar and he uplifted the Pixar brand at the same time. In a sense, he became bigger than his company. And that to me is what makes a thought leader CEO very powerful. Maybe you're not gonna be Steve Jobs, right? Because there's only one Steve Jobs, but you could be like Steve Jobs in your industry.
00:20:37
Speaker
If you're listening to this and you're wondering, is it possible for me to create a brand that's going to elevate me and my company? The answer is absolutely yes. Yeah. Well, I think a CEO's job first and foremost is to make sure the company doesn't fail, which means keeping it profitable, which means keeping sales.
00:21:00
Speaker
which means leading the people, whether it's leading customers to the store or whether it's leading...
00:21:07
Speaker
the best employees in the world to come work, do their best, do their life's best work and stay. And I think Steve Jobs was amazing at that. There was a famous moment with him and Apple CEO, John Scully, where he said to him, are you going to keep selling soda water? Are you going to come over to Apple and change the world? Because he was CEO of Pepsi at the time. Or are you going to keep selling sugar water? Sugar water, yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker
So he had a way of attracting the world's best talent and having them do their life's best work and wanting to stay. And I think the reason why so many people came to his funeral in tears is because they had an emotional connection, even though they probably never met the man. So how is it that you have an emotional connection to someone that you've never met?
00:21:53
Speaker
Well, I'd say that there's a similar feeling for many social media influencers. Kim Kardashian, I don't know if she fits your description of thought leader, CEO. But I'm sure there's a lot of people who feel like she's their big sister because they've just spent so much time with her.
00:22:16
Speaker
Uh, you know, when people can look at a lens of a camera and talk as though they're speaking directly to you and you feel that emotional connection, like they're your brother, like they're your sister, like maybe they're your dad or your mom. Um, that's part of being a thought leader CEO is, uh, people really connecting with you emotionally.
00:22:40
Speaker
So I think Steve Jobs did that really, really well. The first person that came to mind for me that when I was thinking who else is going to have a line of crying people was Richard Branson.
00:22:50
Speaker
And when I think of Richard Branson, when I think of him, a smile comes on my face. I picture him with the wind blowing his hair. I picture him like surfing or sailing or skiing. And he's just like, there's so much joy and there's so much movement and energy with him. And it just, you put his brand on anything and it's associated, that feeling transfers. So I think this is a big part of like what a brand is, is it's a feeling.
00:23:19
Speaker
that's transferred across the whole company and the whole product line. And I think the purpose of a brand is to create trust. And when we have trust, we can transact, we can do business when there's a trust. A trust comes from consistency, predictability, McDonald's, love it or hate it, you know exactly what you're gonna get when you order it. That's a consistency and you trust that brand. You can be in the middle of any country in the world. If you see a McDonald's, at least you know what you're getting.
00:23:51
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of truth in what you're saying, right? Yeah. I think there's a difference between someone who is an influencer and a thought leader.
Influencers vs Thought Leaders
00:24:01
Speaker
And I think it's important for us to draw that distinction. I would argue Kim Kardashian's an influencer. She's definitely able to attract a lot of attention. She does evoke emotions in her followers. They do see her as someone that's part of their family, their daily life, blah, blah, blah.
00:24:19
Speaker
But she doesn't lead a company that's out there with a world beating mission. And I think that's the difference between an influencer and a CEO. And I think a CEO's job has got to be more than just the sizzle of making people feel good. There's got to be the stake of the value that you offer to people. And that's one of the things that I think is a
00:24:45
Speaker
is a dangerous thing about simply following an influencer because an influencer could be really skilled at hooking people emotionally but really not have anything valuable to say while a thought leader CEO is somebody who has both. They've got something super valuable to say. They've got something that's relevant to the people in the marketplace and they've got the ability to move people emotionally.
00:25:12
Speaker
love him or hate him, as you say about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was able to get people excited emotionally, but he also had
00:25:22
Speaker
very good advice to give to you about how to live your life, how to use computers in order to make your life work better, and how to create innovation. The very example of Steve Jobs was about bringing massive innovation to the table.
Steve Jobs' Legacy vs Tim Cook
00:25:40
Speaker
Since he's passed on, Apple is not the same company in terms of its ability to create innovative things. It's been coasting on what they created during the Steve Jobs era.
00:25:51
Speaker
Tim Cook is not a thought leader CEO. He's a CEO. You know his name, maybe. No one's going to cry when he dies the way they did when Steve Jobs died.
00:26:01
Speaker
Elon Musk, there's people that are gonna cry when this man dies. Richard Branson, there's people that are gonna cry when this man dies. Sarah Blakely, there's people that are gonna cry when this woman dies. And they also have a powerful message to bring to the marketplace. And that's why they attract the best people. You know, I really like what you said, attract the world's best talents.
00:26:24
Speaker
and do your life's best work. And inspire them to do their best work, yeah. Here's what I'd like to leave the people with.
Becoming a Thought Leader: Steps for CEOs
00:26:32
Speaker
I'd like to work on a training with you, Nikki, and I'd like to give CEOs a in-depth step-by-step how to build their thought leadership brand. I think we can work on that together. And I'd like to ask you, if you could give us in two or three minutes
00:26:49
Speaker
What is the step-by-step process a CEO would work on to become a thought leader CEO? If they came to you, Nikki, and they said, Nikki, turn me into a thought leader CEO, what would be the steps you would take them through to get them there?
00:27:04
Speaker
Well, that's a great question. Number one is we work with people to help them get clear on their expertise. Before you can get your message out there, it's got to be grounded in your expertise. So we go into that exercise that I talked to you about around, if your life story were a movie, what would the title be? We go deep into the events of the individual's life. We help them take all of that out and get clear by
00:27:30
Speaker
by doing that, that they got a big picture of their expertise. Then we take that and we help hone that into a powerful set of messages that are relevant to their audience. And then we hone it down to one powerful message that's relevant to them being able to deliver top level value for their audience. And the job of the
00:27:52
Speaker
doing all that, it sounds simple and easy, but it actually takes about two and a half days of intense work to do to get through all of that. That's how we get the steak. And we're not just like throwing some oil and getting some sizzle going, right? We got to actually go butcher the animal and cut off the meat and prepare it properly. So that's the process of doing that. Once that's done, then we got a five step process on how to amplify your message with the big megaphone that starts with videos,
Amplifying a CEO's Message
00:28:22
Speaker
Being a guest on podcasts to deliver the signature talk that you talk about, because whether you deliver it on stage or on a podcast, and I think on a podcast these days makes a lot more sense for a lot of CEOs than simply going on stage. It's powerful. Then there's actually having your own podcast, having your own book, and having an overlay of social media to make it all work. Very good. All right. Can we put together a deep dive training and invite our audiences to learn the roadmap to becoming a thought leader CEO?
00:28:49
Speaker
A hundred percent. You and I, we talked about this offline. We're definitely going to sit down. We're going to come up with a date or two dates and we're going to make it happen. And I think this is going to be very powerful, very valuable for a lot of people. All right. I think we covered it, Nikki. Anything else today? So my G, the way that we do our podcast is we ask you as our guest expert.
00:29:15
Speaker
to end off by giving three powerful bullet point pieces of advice that they can act upon immediately to make their life or their business better. That's how we end every show. So what say you? Three things that they can act on immediately. All right. The first thing is to begin, begin. Second thing is record a video and post it online. Third thing is tell legendary stories.
00:29:46
Speaker
Majid Marabon, the real deal. Folks, Majid and I are teaming up to come and do a couple of webinars on thought leadership for CEOs. We're both super excited to be doing these. We're actually going to also do a series of short podcasts and video clips over the next few weeks and we're going to release them to kind of tease out this webinar.
00:30:10
Speaker
Make sure you go check him out on his work. Go to his website. It'll be in the show notes and keep checking back over here for us to do this webinar. We're super excited to be bringing this to you. Majeed, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for having me, Nicky.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, my pleasure. And that wraps up another exciting episode of the podcast, The Thought Leader Revolution. To find out more about today's incredible guests, the one and only Majid Moraraban, go to the show notes at thethoughtleaderrevolution.com or wherever you happen to listen to this podcast, be it iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Google Play, or what have you. Until next time,
00:30:57
Speaker
This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.