Let me break this down so you can improve in true Maz Farrelly style.
We came together on a hot afternoon in Singapore in a delightful space to learn how to stop being boring and cut through noise.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing Maz speak before and what I am always impressed by is Maz’s ability to capture the attention of the audience so brilliantly with humor, shock and telling you so directly how it is and what you need to hear.
I am a Maz supporter, I’m a fan, I love Maz. In my eyes she can do no wrong. I love that she’s competitive. That she takes on too much and then asks for more. She’s my kind of soul. She’s my cup of tea.
The essence of the session was to have us ‘Think Like a TV Producer’ but instead of creating the next version of Big Brother apply these same rules to our own personal brand.
Buckle up, it’s about to get fresh, fresh with new thinking, and bold actions, in this article I’ll break down what you need to know to improve your personal brand and stop being dull.
Please don’t be dull
This was the first point of her talk, you could feel it cut through the room, and everyone lean in, thinking collectively this is going to be good, you came to shake us up.
Maz said “You can have the latest tech, the thing that stands in your path is your brain, nobody is excited by dull”.
Imagine you are applying for a job, you’re using AI to write your CV like the other 487 other applicants hoping to trigger the algorithm to include you in the pile of applications titled ‘shortlisted’, except this isn’t what helps you to stand out.
Having AI write your CV reduces your story to the homogenous, the mediocre and the stale – you have more to offer, you need to get out of ChatGPT and start thinking about the following:
What do you want?
For example, “I want to be have the number one Negotiation Training Academy in Asia and the UK” or “I want to have long term relationships with high paying clients that I am excited to be around that bring me in to transform their teams” or “I want to have a summer house in Italy” – Know what the hell you want.
The question is then “Why not me?” Sit with this, why not me?
“It is not my job to be interested in you, it is your job to be interesting.”
Wow, okay Maz, thanks – let’s get to work. She’s right, it is nobodies’ job to be interested in your LinkedIn profile, your pitch or your business. The key thought Maz makes crystal clear is, when you tell people about what you do, you must hear “that’s interesting, tell me more” in reply and if you don’t, nobody cares.
I told you Maz came to play, she hits you with exactly what you need to hear but no one is willing to say.
Hot tip
If you’ve got a pitch coming up and you want to get the truth, run it by someone who doesn’t love you. They’ll give you the truth.
The take home is “in everything you do, every pitch, every room you walk into if you’re not hearing, that’s interesting, tell me more, you’ve got to change it.”
We’re not done yet, far from it, if you thought that was good, keep reading, you’re in for a treat.
Hope is not a strategy
Maz makes it clear that “you’ve got to make sure everyone is interested.”
If people can repeat your idea back to you then you’re on the money, and if they can’t, it needs to be changed.
There are only two ways of thinking:
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You do the same as everyone else, but you do it better.
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Or do the opposite – if you do the opposite well, then there’s a place for you in the marketplace.
Just ponder on that for a second, if you have the same opinion as everyone else, I can get rid of you. But if you think different, I value you – you become invaluable
The thread Maz kept pulling, asking us to go back to was “why you?”, “why are you more interesting than everyone else in the marketplace?”
Nobody has ever bored me into meeting them
Isn’t that the truth. “Nobody has ever bored me into buying anything” eyes are wide open now and the room gasps. “We thought harder than everyone else in the marketplace”
How are you thinking harder? Maz asks with deep inquisition in her eyes, the audience is in the palm of her hand now, begging for more, “tell us Maz, where do we go from here.
“Nobody has bored me into dating them. Nobody has ever bored me into doing anything.”
Hot tip
How can you make sure that when you leave the meeting that they are still talking about you? How can you be front of mind for them
Maz suggests leaving an A4 page that is laminated –
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People keep it. They put it up on a wall.
When you go to meetings how do you make sure they love you before you even begin?
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Maz suggests - Always bring cake to meetings. Who hates cake. Why? They love me more. I am a strategist. If there’s too much cake people leave it in the kitchen.
“Why you?” She’s pulling on that thread again, asking us to go deeper.
“Why should we choose you? Above everybody else in the marketplace. People take my meetings because it was always funny and entertaining, there was always a great showreel.” Maz stop it, I now want to re-do everything I’ve ever done and make my show reel great like yours!
If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s you need Maz in your organization, I’m convinced of it.
When you see Maz at work you see that there’s a depth to what she is saying, it runs deeper that don’t be boring, she’s subtly priming us to become strategists, to not leave anything to chance and to never dull our brand. She’s giving us the worldclass playbook on how to become very buyable.
What is the job of your brain?
It’s to keep you alive. When you are their pitching your product to a client, their brain is not to pay attention to you, so how do you change that behaviour? You understand how humans work and think like a dog or child. Okay Maz, tell me more.
If you want to get attention you have to be different. If you sound like everyone else, how much attention do you have?” People decide very quickly. Maz reminds us, this session is all about how not to be boring. She tells us how she did in TV, “I’ll give you a cliff hanger before the ad break, you cannot leave.”
Hot Tip
Loose white noise
- The brain really likes threes. Three facts about you. Market yourself. Now I am really seeing how can improve my pitch deck. Three is my favorite number.
Complicated is bad and simple is good
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It is so easy to be complicated. Maz knows, really simple messaging repeated goes in, but the question is, do we know it?\
Maz’s talk is an example of these points in real time. Have we got the message. I can tell the group is on the edge of their seat, we are dialed in, and Maz is leading us further into her world, deeper into the mind of a TV producer. It's about the chorus – what’s your chorus Maz asks us? She means, what is it that you are repeating to everyone you meet about yourself that people can sing along to. She is so good. Puzzled and confused people sing nothing.
Did you think I wouldn’t take Maz’s advice in this article? Hell no, I’ve got it now. Threes – feed the brain. Pay attention, here’s hop tip number three.
Emphasize your USP. What is different about you? Be exact. Remind me of your USP.
Ok Maz is on a roll now, a bonus number four hot tip.
What’s your white coat? Why should I trust you? What makes you an expert? What is the cost of not having me on your team?
Anyone thinking about how to position themselves in this market should re-read that last one.
What is the cost of not having me on your team! It slices through butter like a hot knife, except this is a hot tip straight from the woman who made your favorite TV shows and managed $30 million budgets and turned them into $300 million empires.
Your job is to sell the show and create noise around the show. How do you create noise around you?
Maz is building now, the energy in the room is on fire, she asks “what would you do if you had no fear? We are either going to win, or we are going out in a blaze of glory. Don’t be average.” I love you.
Her point is nobody is paying attention, people are so worried about themselves they are not thinking about you.
In summary, there’s far too much value for me to jam it into this think piece and do it justice, all I can say is, there’s only one Maz Farrelly and you need her in your life.
It will change you for the better, in all the ways you wished someone would tell you but your too scared to ask for. Thank you to The Marketing Society for making this happen.
If you want to pitch better, upgrade your personal brand or just stand out, re-read this and then apply it to your business, yourself and your talk track. Better yet book Maz and get her woven into the fabric of your companies’ mindset.
