A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with David Newman ~ 

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[00:00:00] Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversation, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper into what makes them special. This week I spoke to David Newman, author of Market Eminence, about how he helps experts category of one.

And guess what? The episode was titled? Dare to Become Category of One because his message is so powerful and I've got to know David's work over the last, ooh, six, seven years if no longer. And I'm a fan. I found him bold and he's very much a category of one and are absolutely loving it all.

What he says, how he says it, what he means, and what he does, because his results are proven and he is indeed a category of one. If you haven't checked out a full episode yet, let me start with these four moments and maybe convince you that you need to check out the full episode.

David: One of my early sales mentors, he saw me studying and [00:01:00] applying and practicing and having some early level of success about two or three years in, and he says, David, we need to have a chat.

 He says, you're really focused on being a good salesperson. He says, that's not, the key here. The key is to be a better person and more sales will happen, and you could hear the record needle going across the grooves going. And I was like, wait a minute. what does that mean? Be a better person?

He says, well, you really have to care about your prospects. You have to have empathy. You have to truly listen. Don't just listen in a sales way. Listen in a human way. Listen with empathy. Listen with kindness. Listen with openness. Listen without an agenda, and figure out what's the reason, behind the reason.

What's the problem behind the problem? What's the issue behind the issue? And figure out if you can truly help [00:02:00] them and if you can offer to help them. And if you can't, then move on because that prospect is not for you.

I think what David's hitting on in this, uh, in this moment in the conversation is the fact that. The sales anxiety sometimes can really push us into a different mode of empathy or actually suppresses the empathy per se, because I mentioned in our conversation that I have come across. Or shall I say, the first time I come across the a real salesperson, I was really taken aback because their attitude, behavior approach was so alien to my way of seeing things.

The example I was actually talking about I didn't mention was I used to work for a London film museum, and this is where I've come across people who are just relentless sellers. And I didn't like it because I've kind of believed that there should be two sides of all of [00:03:00] this. And, um, yeah, to them, creative work, panton, colors, whatever, didn't matter at all.

They were very much in the business of being the best possible salesperson, but not the best possible human. And you know, we have, we need people in different categories and different skill set, but. In David's, uh, situation, he was talking about a fact that, yeah, he spent, you know, many years trying to work out what he should be doing with his business that wasn't going kind of anywhere at that point, because he was still learning about how to run a business.

And when you think about it, it really opens up so much when you say, look, just be a better person because. I believe the more business deals that I've ever closed was more about how to be human, how to actually align with your, character, personality of sort of skills and negotiation that just, I guess when I say negotiation, negotiation is just basically a conversation that [00:04:00] talks about business in a way that's understandable because.

 being a better person. I don't think it's ever so ever backfired on anyone. So when David says Listen with kindness, listen with openness, listen without agenda, and figure out what's the reason, behind the reason. Sometimes to have all of these sort of, you know, receptors switched on, it might be hard because, we might be in situations where we really need work, where we need to put up up not bank balance where we need to.

Have extra work to, you know, even pay people if you're employing people. So it might be sometimes that this is impossible even to do. 

'cause actually. It reminds me of a conversation with Jessica hit many, many episodes ago, and she says, when you're desperate, No one wants to work with you. And how many times do you find yourself either sending desperate email or seeing a desperate email in your inbox or find yourself being spam on LinkedIn and everywhere else with [00:05:00] people who are desperate?

And you can smell it from the write off.

David: That's right. And this is such a great question that I sometimes get, someone who's early in their career or just getting established, you know, is it too soon to establish this market eminence positioning and differentiation and so forth? When I hear that question, I hear it in different words.

 The words that I hear Adam, are how much time should I waste trying to be everything to everyone trying to be universally liked doing crap work for crap fees? David, how much time should I waste doing that before I establish who I really am and what I really want and what's really meaningful to me? And I say, well, um,how about zero?

How about we waste zero time doing that nonsense? And you jump right into the deep end of the pool where the money and the happiness and the meaning and the impact [00:06:00] really lie.

David's concept of market eminence is about becoming a category of one, and in his instance, he talks about the fact that the eminence is about kind of, we can, we can rebrand it or we can talk about the fact that it's a, it's a.

In this instant, eminence is about creating a public profile that talks for you that that summarizes who you are, what you do, how you think, you know, how do you have an opinion and. This part of the conversation now is David like, okay, so what would you recommend to people who are starting up? Like what is the time, you know, when they engage in this, like what is the concept of market eminence?

And as you just heard, he says like, well, how much time do you wanna waste? Because we. Find our way into situations, professions, you know, status by emulating others. How many people, how many [00:07:00] people would've earner put their hand up saying, Hey, who did you copy? And for how long until you find your own voice.

And it's hard to be you in the world when everyone is everyone, and they seem to be established by being that so. I love when David said, look, start now. Start already, like find your own voice and look for it, because it's easy to say that from someone who's in their early sixties. You know, he said a lifetime was working stuff out.

But this is why it's important to listen to people like David and to not to pay attention to his concept of market eminence, because it does make sense. And guess what? It works.

David: you see these spirit animals of people that are being contrarian, that are shifting beliefs, that are establishing their sense of market eminence. It's always unique, it's always personal, and it's always authentic.

 That's the authenticity and the transparency is so key. This is why I said a moment [00:08:00] ago, it's not a PR stunt. It's not something that you're just grabbing outta thin air. Well, let's see how people respond to this. It comes outta here. Not only is it coming outta your brain, it needs to come outta your soul.

 It needs to come out of your very being because, you mentioned the word feel and feelings. people can feel the difference. They feel it when you're faking it. When it's a pr stunt, when it's a cheap attention grab. And equally they feel it when you're finally busting out and speaking, you know, radical truths and being radically generous and radically helpful.

When David talked about people being contrarian, I was like, they sound like a complicated people. Contrarians or not something that you were set out to be, but. In our conversation when David was telling me this, I was like, wait a minute, I can think of someone like this.

Oh yeah, it's actually Simon Dixon and I love Simon [00:09:00] dearly. he has opinion. He's got lived experience and he talks about it. Of course, this can contradict what I just said in the previous standout moment that, you start early and try to establish yourself.

What that means is that you don't want to waste. Time by just absorbing conversations. you want to spend time observing conversations and finding the parts that make sense and the parts that potentially need more time to digest and, ferment in our minds in a way of making sense of them.

So to David when he was talking about the fact that, you know, being contrarian isn't a PR stunt, it isn't a gimmick, you know, grabbing something out of thin air. Um, it actually is important because it's valuable to have something of importance to say about the current state of our industry or a certain aspect of it because.

I know in the past, in previous conversations, I [00:10:00] do talk about a lot about LinkedIn baiting, you know, people who rage baits certain opinions, and that's not contrarian, that's just an idiot. And, you know, having something proper to say is more about value and what we can see and we can learn from one another.

David: AI has taken over the world of how-to content and, and good. I'm glad because you should not have been posting just boring. Same old lamo how-to content in the first place where humans have the edge, or at least today they have the edge before the robots take over the world is three other kinds of content that is completely, completely in the realm of flesh and blood.

People like you and me. One is not how to but how to think. How to think. In other words, strategic, high level insight based. Advisory type of [00:11:00] content. This is based on your personal experience, your battle scars, your war stories, what you've done, what you've seen, what you've learned, your recommendations, your biases, your perspective, your lens onto the world.

 Nobody can take that from you. That is organic human DNA, that is sitting in your chair right now. And perhaps you haven't thought of talking about that or sharing that because, oh my gosh, what if someone doesn't like it? What if someone doesn't agree with me? What if someone has a different perspective?

This is the exciting part. the how to content, like how to do this and how to do that.

You know, those 15 years of blog articles, they've all been hoover up by AI engines and you can say, how do I do this? And there you go. you can pretty much create your own coaching program. 

 But it'd be fair to say that the basic content has been, you know, digested by the LLMs and they can [00:12:00] tell us what X, Y, Z can mean and what we can do and how we can follow the step by step, um, processes. But. In Dave's, in David's instance, he talks about, let's talk to people how to think.

And you might think that's a bit bold. Don't tell me how to think. But it is more about a strategic insights, the high level insights advisory type of content that's based on personal experience, battle scars, the war stories. You know, what we've done and what we've seen and what we've learned and what we can recommend are biases.

That's what we can tell people, how we can learn from one another and what to think of certain situation that we see and then come across to. Because it can seem bold. But again, are we in a situation where artist doesn't want to sell, artist doesn't want to do this, artist doesn't want to tell something to somebody else, but how often and how much on daily [00:13:00] basis are you being told by everybody else what to do and how to think and what you know?

What's your how to content? And this is the question of what David is establishing here with a category of one. Be who you are. Exactly. Be who you are. Have something to say. Have an open mind. You know, see observations of our industry and shape your own opinion because you don't have to say them straight away.

But they will mean something over time. 

 Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. I hope you check out a full interview with David Newman and I'll look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thank you.