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Raoul Davis Show Notes Raoul Davis is CEO of Ascendant Group Branding, which helps CEOs, retired athletes, and executive leaders increase their top line revenue. Ascendant’s integrated model includes brand strategy, public relations, book deals, social media, and brand design. Davis has been invited to small business forums at the White House and is considered to be an expert on CEO and executive branding. Most passionate about There are two things I’m most passionate about today: the first is the work we are doing with CEO branding, helping CEOs get their messages out in the market place, because business isn’t just B2B, or C2C, it’s H2H; human to human. A lot of people think of CEO or personal branding as an ego thing and it really isn’t. Branding is all about telling a good story. That’s what branding is at the end of the day, your ability to tell a good story, share it with the right audience, and emotionally connect with them. The other thing that I’m excited about is the book that was released in January 2018 called, FireStarters that takes a look at the innovators, instigators, and initiators that shape our world. Everyone from Elon Musk to Deepak Chopra and Christopher Columbus. We were looking at those people in terms of what was the moment for them that help trigger their passion and how were they able to find the fuel they needed to maintain that, and how did they overcome any doubt they might have had to keep their success. One of the most important insights of the book was this idea of cognitive conversion, which is a person’s ability to tap into a previous success pattern and then converge that into their current circumstances. These people assume success where others don’t because they had something in their past that has been successful and they hold on to that and apply it to the current moment. So, they have genuine belief that they can overcome a specific situation. It’s a characteristic that many of the most successful people in the world have. CEO Branding We brand the CEOs in order to benefit the company. There are three reasons why you look at CEO branding: the first is a strategic way to increase the top line revenue for the company. The second reason is to build a portable brand: a successful CEO will attract the media to a new product, although it hasn’t attracted attention yet. And the last reason is legacy. You want to inspire the next generation and to make sure that your message and key points live on. Raoul’s career My journey started back in the years of my college studies, where I was involved in all the parties in the campus until a friend of mine told me I have to run for the vice president election of the campus activity board. Then I decided to develop some leadership skills. Then I learned my first lesson about branding. I thought the fact I did a good job is enough to get me elected to a position in the student government. And I lost very badly. The next year I made sure everyone saw what I did, and I won. That’s the value of branding. It’s great to be good at what you are doing, it’s even better to be seen… That’s the lesson that I learned. Then I got an internship and started booking speakers to all the universities across the country and became the best seller of the organization. So, by the time I was about to finish grad school, two of the clients approached me and said ‘we would love to be your first clients; why don’t you open your own business?’ And that’s how I started. I found my company in 2004, and I started up managing speakers, and while working with them, we realized that their brand was what affected most on how much they spoke. So we got into personal branding, focused on PR, and with time we started to work with more CEOs and built our model around CEOs branding because no-one was doing it at the time. Raoul’s best advice about approaching customers My best advice would be the importance of achieving...