Well, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. Thanks for taking a little bit of time out of a busy schedule. And as spring gets started, exciting time on our campuses as we hit the homestretch towards commencement and a nice little summer break for all of us. My name is Tyler Speer, and I am honored to represent Case District 6 on this Zoom, this career deep dive conversation about building your personal brand. And just wanted to say a couple quick words, and then I'll leave the remainder of the time to our esteemed speaker here. So you're all members of Case, or you're interested in Case, which is, you know, our national professional organization. I'd encourage you to find ways to get involved with Case in your area. And for those of you in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, half of the population of Wyoming is on this call, in case you were wondering. We'd encourage you to find ways to get involved. We have great professional development programming, ways for you to connect with peers and mentors. So look to Case for those needs in your profession. And with that, I'm honored to introduce Kent Noble. He's our speaker for today. Kent has spent a big portion of his career talking about ethics, principle-based leadership, and how we can fold that into who we are as professionals. I'm butchering the intro, Kent, because I like brief introductions. So I'll leave the floor to you. I'll be watching the chat for any questions you might have as well. But Kent's got a nice presentation for us, and then we'll do some Q&A at the end. So Kent, the floor is yours. Excellent. Thank you. So I'm going to start here by sharing my screen, and here we go, whoops, a little farther in than I wanted to be. Sorry about that, everyone. Because I have a lot of material, and we're going to try to squeeze this into just an hour, if everybody's okay, I'm just going to jump into it. And really what I want to do today is talk to you a little bit about your personal brand, who you are, how others see you, and how maybe you can improve your brand if you'd like. Now, just to make sure we're all on the same page as to what a brand is, at least what a brand is for our purposes here today, what I want to do is I want to show you an image, and I want you to just think about what it is that comes to mind when you see this image. Okay? So here we go. This iconic Las Vegas sign. Now, when I see that, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that old ad campaign that they have. You're probably familiar with it. You know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? You might be thinking, oh, maybe gambling comes to mind, or some of their night shows. I know they have some great shopping there. The point is, we see this image, and things just instantly start coming to mind, don't they? And for our purposes today, your personal brand is what people think of when they think of you. And I want you to know, it's really not so much what you say about yourself. Nope. It's much more what others say about you when you're not even around. So for example, let's say that one of you was going to leave this Zoom, and the rest of us, well, we were going to describe you. We'd probably talk about what it is you like and what you don't like, what you're good at and what you're not so good at, how you treat us, how you make us feel. Are you a hard worker? Someone we can depend upon? Are you honest? How do you look? All these things and more go into making up your personal brand. Now, I really think this is interesting. You build your personal brand based on the decisions and choices you make. And those decisions and choices you make, you know what? That's who you are. That's how we see you. That's your brand. I like this quote we have on the screen. I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday. I would say given that, if you like the general direction of your life, you kind of like the way things are going, I would say the odds are you've probably been making some pretty good decisions. All right, so now we took a look at an image and we thought about what it is that comes to mind. What I want to do now is tell you about a person and I want you to think about what her brand is like. All right. So the person we have on the screen here, as you can see, her name's Bethany Hamilton. And some of you may be familiar with Bethany. They did a film about her life called Soul Surfer. If you didn't see the film, I could tell you a little bit about Bethany. So when she was 13, she went surfing with some of her friends. There she is, out in the ocean, having a great time, when all of a sudden, a 14-foot tiger shark comes after her. Imagine that. That's a big shark. I'm a little over six feet. That thing's pretty big. Shark grabs her by the arm, literally just severs her arm from her body. So there's Bethany now, in the ocean, bleeding profusely. Her friends come to her rescue, they get her out of the ocean and to the hospital. But by the time they get her to the hospital, Bethany has lost 60% of the blood in her body. Easily could have died. But not only did Bethany survive, one month later, she's back in the ocean on a surfboard. Three months later, she's once again competing professionally. Two years later, Bethany wins her first national title. So I've read a few articles on Bethany, seen some videos, including her movie. You know what really struck me about this remarkable woman? Boy, you want to talk about someone with an amazing outlook on life? She's incredible. The other thing that really hit me, are you familiar with the term grit? Sure you are. Grit's perseverance. Grit's not giving up when things get difficult. So I would say as it relates to Bethany and her brand, once again, she's just known for this amazing outlook she has on life, so positive. She's also known for having a whole lot of grit. All right, so as it relates to your brand and my brand, are they important? Well let me share this with you. It says whether you know it or not, you are always branding yourself to friends, family, neighbors, employees, employers, customers, et cetera. You can't remove yourself from your personal brand. It's what people think of when they think of you. You are always on display. You are constantly sending messages by how you act, communicate, dress, and interact with others. Simply put, it's everything you do. Your personal brand is essentially your reputation. So is your brand and my brand. Are they important? Yeah. Critically. All right, well, so can we change our brand? I mean, let's say we're sitting there thinking, I'm not sure I have the greatest brand. Can I change it? Yeah. Absolutely. Now it's going to take a lot of desire on our part, dedication, determination, but yes, we can be much more intentional about the brand we put out there, and that's exactly what this session is all about. All right, now, as it relates to changing our brand, I want to introduce you to this young guy. His name's Josh, and I guarantee you we all know someone like Josh. Josh is a great kid, but he's one of those people that I would say, well, he's not the most comfortable around other people. In fact, he's a little bit of a loner. He's one of the kids you might see eating by himself in the lunchroom, but the thing you have to love about Josh is Josh decides to take matters into his own hands, and through this committed act of kindness, I would say Josh not only changes his brand, but he changes his life and the lives of a lot of other people, too. So I want to play a short video for you, and then we'll come back and we'll talk a little more about our brands. From what I understand, his father passed away, and he would have pictures of him in his locker. Some students thought it would be a good idea to rip down those pictures and harass him and bully him for missing and loving his father. Going through what I went through, you kind of keep to yourself. You don't know who you are or anything. You're just walking through the space, empty space. It's kind of like a puzzle. You're trying to find your way to the good things in life. No one wants to be bullied. Everyone wants to feel like they mean something to somebody. It's definitely a hard four years of your life, you know? Even like a few words can affect someone so negatively. I'd sit in the cafeteria alone. I wouldn't talk to anyone. Even if people invited me to sit with them, I didn't feel this was my place to be, you know? Coming to a city school, a lot of people said, you're just going to make it worse. I didn't know what else to do for them. So yeah, we just took the jump. I was pretty scared, you know? I kind of thought the city experience, maybe a bigger high school rather than a small-town high school. It just might be better. I hoped that attending the school, I would be treated like everyone else. I just wanted to make it and just be a normal kid. I was sick and tired of being a no-one. I wanted to be someone and I wanted to reach out to people and show who I was. I just remember at first they called him the doorman. They thought he was weird. It was definitely kind of weird. It took a while for people to adjust. But once people realized that he was continuing with it, it almost became something to look forward to in the morning. Like, you walk up the stairs and you know that Josh Yance is going to be standing there with a big smile on his face saying good morning. The first few weeks when I started doing it, they were kind of shocked. Not many people hold doors, right? But after that, people started to open up to me. Opening a door is more than a physical act. It's about putting yourself out there, getting to know people, making them feel comfortable, making them feel welcome. Opening doors, it gives people hope that people care. I think that was his way of saying I'm here and I'm not going to be invisible anymore. He literally, just by holding doors and saying good morning, he had made a drastic change in his life. It was definitely a positive effect. It made people want to do nice things. It was definitely a positive effect. It made people want to do nice things for other people. He set a good example for other students. Everything changed huge. I mean, everyone said it. All the teachers, the students felt it. They talked about it, you know, that he changed things in the school. And he was a changed Josh. We were honoured to have Josh. We were privileged. Any school would have benefited. I think Prom King was a way to say thank you from the students and the staff. So when he won, it was like his moment to shine. When we heard Josh Yant's name pulled out, it was like pretty much the whole, everyone should have just ran up there and been Prom King because it felt like everybody won. Yeah, he's standing tall and straight. He's got the big grin on his face and got the crown. I never expected to get an award or anything like that. I was just happy enough to make it through. Just one year and things are totally turned around. Totally. And it would have been fine if the story stopped there. It could have and it would have been okay. And he still would have been the same person. Alright guys, so now is the moment. Let's all line up at the side of the room. Once we're all lined up quietly, we will head down to the gym. I would have never thought he would be a public speaker because he had been so shy. But he took to public speaking like a duck to water. He draws them in and it's this aura. It's this personality that he exudes. He's been there and so they relate to him in that respect. When I heard your story, it kind of made me feel like I could be more like myself. It changed the way I thought about things. It changed the way like how I felt about myself. I personally think that you shouldn't let like what's going on around you affect your personality. Or the way you act. I think he shows them just be courageous. Don't let the bullies get you down. Just fight back in your own way. Be with a little kindness. It's amazing how just one simple act can change your whole life. I never thought doing something so simple would change my life. Doing something so simple could be so rewarding. Okay. Well, first of all, love that video. All right. Well, since we all have a brand, have you ever thought much about what your brand is? Well, whether you have or you haven't, that's exactly what we're going to do right now. So what I have for you, as you can see on the screen here, I have 24 what I call brand qualities. And as you're looking through these, what I'd like to have you do is select each one that you believe you are known for. All right. So think about the people who know you best. Maybe your family, your friends, coworkers, maybe some donors, neighbors, whoever it is. Well, how would they describe you as you're looking through these 24 brand qualities? All right. So pick as many as you think apply to you. I'd like to have you select at least three, but as many as you feel apply to you. All right. So I'll give you a few moments to look through that. Again, the people who know you best, what would they say? Pick any ones that you think apply to you. Again, at least three, please. Okay, need to keep us moving. So I apologize if you haven't quite gotten through it yet. Hopefully you've got a few though. All right. See, here we go. Alright, so just curious. How many of you said, I really believe I'm known for my positive attitude. You hope so. That's a good one. How about how many of you thought, you know, I really think the people who know me best would tell you, I'm known for my integrity. Another good quality. And then finally, how many said, you know, when things get tough. That's when I'm at my best. When people tell me I can't. I know I can. The people who know me best will tell you I persevere, I don't give up. Those people will tell you, I have grit. All right. Well, the reason why I asked about those three specifically is I just personally believe, and again, this is just my personal beliefs, although I have seen some research that tends to back this up. But I personally believe that if you're going to have a personal brand that separates you from the pack really makes you stand out. I think, ideally, when people think of you, they think your positive attitude. They think of your integrity. And they think of your grit. They may think of other wonderful qualities, but these would certainly be among them. And you know what I love about these three qualities, your attitude, your integrity and your grit. The great thing is you're in complete control. Think about it. Who controls what kind of attitude you bring to work every day and what kind of attitude you take home. I mean, you do. And who controls whether or not you're living a life of integrity? Man, when you tell us something, we know you're a straight shooter. You control that. And who controls when those obstacles pop up in your life and they stand between you and your goals and your objectives? Who controls when you battle through, you figure it out, you get it done? You do. Now, is it nice to have the support of others? You bet. I'd much rather have it than not. But I think each one of us knows at the end of the day, it's going to be up to each one of us whether or not we climb that mountain. And I really believe that if when people think of you, again, they may think of other wonderful qualities, but if these are included. I really believe that you're the person everybody's looking for. That's a great teammate. Certainly a great hire. Family member. Best friend. Mentor. Maybe spouse. I actually spend a fair amount of time talking about these three qualities with the people we've put through our executive education programs, as well as my students and even my own three kids. Because I really believe that any of us that earns the right to be known for these three things, if we can pull that off, I think our success is all but guaranteed. So what I would like to do is spend the rest of the time we have looking at each one of these qualities in a little more detail and hopefully provide some hints on how we can be more intentional in these areas. Sound good? All right, well, here we go. And I'm going to kick things off with attitude. And I'll just begin by saying, you know, I really appreciate being around positive people with a can-do attitude. And you know what I appreciate them the most? I appreciate them the most when things aren't going so well. Yeah, maybe for some reason we're down, sad, scared. That person that can change the dynamics of the group, that person that can change the way we're feeling, I mean, that's a pretty valuable teammate. Are you familiar with this quote? Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it. Let that just soak in for a moment. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it. Are bad things occasionally going to happen to us in our lives? Yeah, every one of us. And unfortunately, some people are going to get way more than their fair share, things that are completely beyond their control, things they can't do anything about. And the only thing they are going to be able to control is how they respond to these situations. And hopefully somehow, somewhere, they can find the strength, wherever it is they get their strength, to respond in the most positive fashion they can. Because again, that's going to be the only thing they can't control. Now, keeping in mind this quote, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it, I have another short video I'd like to play for you. And then after we're done, we'll talk a little more about our attitude. It's just amazing to watch it happen. It is like when a superhero puts on the cape. It happens. There's a transformation there. We went on our first date March 17, 1986. And we've been together since. So you ask me what makes me laugh? He isn't afraid to be himself. Just put himself out there. So after Linda was diagnosed, that's when I went into self-therapy mode. I grabbed a tutu and went out and we started making pictures. That's what I do when things are getting hard. I start making photographs. It just makes me laugh to see my husband dancing around in a pink tutu. It helps me be positive. The more I laugh, the better I feel. As a photographer, to get the reaction is what it's all about. You know, to make people think. What's up with the get-up? I help women during their treatment. That's a great idea. Well, I mean, I like it. When Linda would go for treatment, she would take the images on her phone and the women would look at them and it would make them laugh and make the time pass. Women really like the fact that he's standing out, that he's standing by me. And they appreciate that because they'll say, well, my husband wouldn't do that for me. I knew that it had to go further and I knew I had to keep making the photographs and they really started to mean something to me. You're going into a really big field. Oh my God, that light is amazing. Bob's dealing with emotions and of being and supporting someone who's going through this horrific disease and it's not just the laughter and making people laugh with these images. It's really sharing and reaching the people in the community. We launched the website. It was picked up by a couple of newspapers and that's really when it started going viral. It exploded within hours. Who would have thought a pink tutu would connect with so many people? I don't think this project would have grown without people sharing. It is about keeping everything light and not so serious. My focus is about real life and moving forward in life and he helps me do that. This all sucks, you know, and it's stupid that it's happening. There's no reason for us to suffer through it like this. I'm here to make people happy. It's just a good story about love, about inspiration. Thought it was so interesting when Bob started talking about how photography was his self-therapy. And, you know, it just really made me think, what's my self-therapy when things get tough? How do I turn things around? You know, how do I give myself? And maybe you're thinking about that now as well. And maybe you're thinking about that now as well. And I think, you know, some of the answers I tend to hear the most are, well, I reach out to a friend or family member who's uplifting. Or it could be something like exercise, music, prayer, getting outside. So there's lots of things that I hear. My question for you to consider is, you know, what do you think it is about Bob's self-therapy that's so impactful? As I started to think about this, it really kind of dawned on me that I think what gives him the lift is really making a difference for others. When he lifts others up, he really lifts himself up as well. And I started thinking, that's a great strategy. When we turn that focus from inward to outward to making a difference for someone else, I'm sure we've all experienced that. And it really does give us a lift. Now, as it relates to the giving of oneself, or really just giving in general, I'd like to introduce you to this gentleman. His name's Brad Formsma. And as you can see here, Forms Magazine has him listed as one of 20 speakers you just shouldn't miss. So I did. He happened to come to the area relatively close to where we live. And so I went to listen to what he had to say. And on this particular day, he was talking about a book he wrote called I Like Giving. And I liked what he had to say so much that, well, I ended up buying a copy of his book. Instead of me telling you about the book, his organization created a little 90-second promotional video. And I thought I'd just show that to you. Everything is about us. Devices memorize our personal preferences. Websites tell our friends what we had for breakfast. And billion-dollar campaigns tell us how we can be happier. But we're not. We want to live a life dedicated to something greater than our personal satisfactions. We want our actions to live beyond us. And we can. It starts by stopping. Stop and listen. Stop and see. Who is around you? What do they need? How can you help? When you decide to respond, it opens a whole new world of possibility. A generous world is actually a better world for all of us. This is why I Like Giving started. It's a nonprofit that was created to inspire a more generous world. And this generosity goes way beyond money. It's about time. Words. Ideas. Clothes. Food. Wisdom. Love. And most importantly, action. I Like Giving tells stories of people who are making their world a little bit bigger and a little bit brighter by giving. So go check out a story today. And then, go create your own. And the next time you're thinking about what you can get, try thinking about what you can give and see what happens. I like that little challenge at the end. The next time you start thinking about what you can get, try thinking about what you can give instead. And so, I recently accepted that challenge. And I started thinking about things that I can give that lift others that really wouldn't cost me a penny. And I'm just going to share some of the things I came up with with you. And you can see if you look in the top left-hand corner, I put just a listen. Sometimes that's all somebody that's close to us needs is just somebody to listen to. They're not looking for a solution, but just they need to be heard. Of course, we can give humor, kindness, our loyalty. Then if you just drop straight down from there, then never give up is encouragement. Of course, we can give love, compliments. We can give our empathy, time, talent, our best effort. And then maybe the most important thing that we can give, a little forgiveness. All of these things can certainly make a difference for others. Again, lifting others, and it's amazing what it does for us. Now, I mentioned to you, I bought a copy of Brad's book and really enjoyed it. So I ended up buying some copies for family members and some friends of mine gave those away. And now I just I keep a stash of them in my office and I give them out to colleagues or students whenever it seems like it makes sense. Now, regarding this book, I want to introduce you to this gentleman. His name is Michael Jr. And if you're not familiar with Michael Jr., he's a comedian. And the reason why I'm introducing you to him is because he's taken the concepts in this I Like Giving book. And he's really integrated them into his comedy, into his craft. And I want you to see how by doing so, it's really changed his mindset on how he approaches his work. People ask me all the time, Michael, what was your big break? Our next guest has performed on Comedy Central's Premium Blend. He made his first appearance on The Tonight Show for the Montreal Comedy Festival. You've seen him on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. That wasn't a big break. The big break was at a club. And right before I got on stage, I had a change in mindset about comedy. Normally when a comedian gets on stage, he wants to get laughs from people. And I felt a little shift take place. Where I felt like I was to go up there and give them an opportunity to laugh. Now I'm not looking to take. I'm looking for an opportunity to give. This changed everything. My name is Michael Jr. I'm gonna do some jokes. And ultrasounds come in color now. Which is ridiculous. I know it's a black baby. It better be a black baby. I leave the club that night, and there's all these people. Giving me hugs and high fives. Telling me their favorite jokes. Then I look across the street, and I saw a homeless guy. And I thought to myself, what about him? Most comedy, most jokes are set up. My son, a four-year-old. Most comedy, most jokes are set up. My son, a four-year-old, looks at me out of nowhere. He says, Dad, I want to be a doctor. I was like, yes, yes. And then a punchline. Then he said, or a dinosaur. I understand that me doing comedy and doing all of these TV shows and making all these people laugh is really just a setup. My punchline is to make laughter commonplace in uncommon places. We go to Montrose, Colorado, a place called the Dolphin House. They take care of children who have been abused by their parents. And this grandmother explains to me that her grandson is being abused by his mom. He's so afraid of his mom that everywhere he goes he wears a Spider-Man costume. So I get on stage, sitting right up front, Spider-Man. I start doing comedy. People start laughing, slowly but surely. Probably about 25 minutes into it, I hear a voice. And the voice says, My name is Ronan. And this little boy pulls off his mask. And it was one of the most powerful moments in my entire comedy career. Here's the deal. If we could just stop asking the question, What could I give for myself? And start asking the question, What can I give from myself? I think people would learn that you don't have to be a comedian to deliver a punchline. It's really what I want to get across to people. And I think I just did. I looked at the camera again. I don't know if I was supposed to do that. Emphasis. Anything else you can think of? Yeah, I'm going to say it right now. You've been set up. You in the set up. Be the punchline. Okay. I'm going to walk off dramatically. So I love how Michael Jr. there at the end says, Be the punchline. And then I started thinking, What's he instructing us to do? I think I know. I think he's saying maybe to make the difference, make a difference out there. Then I came across this. I want to share it with you. Michael Jr. says that most jokes have a set up and then a punchline. He says life is also a lot like that. In life, the setup is your talent, your resources and your opportunities. Most of the time, our setup is used to ensure the audience or the people around us are moving in a direction that serves us. What can I get for myself? He goes on. The punchline occurs when you change that direction in a way the audience wasn't expecting. When this happens, the audience receives revelation, fulfillment and joy. In other words, the punchline in life occurs when you use your talent, your resources and your opportunities to make a difference for others. What can I give from myself? He then concludes by saying the punchline benefits the person who receives it as well as the person who gives it. There's that concept again of turning that focus from inward to outward. When we do that, not only are we lifting others, but we're lifting ourself as well. So my takeaway from all of this, as it relates to our attitude, is all of us need to find ways to, you know, adjust our attitudes from time to time. And we have these go-to activities that we tend to do, again, you know, maybe getting outside, visiting with someone, uplifting, exercise, whatever it might be. And oftentimes those are effective. But if we find ourselves stuck, I would like to suggest that maybe instead we try to focus our attention outward to someone who's maybe in a worse situation than what we're in. What can we do for them? And see if that doesn't lift our boat as well. Okay, so that's a look at attitude. That's by far the longest of the three that we're going to look at. So don't get too nervous. I want to turn our attention to integrity. And I'll start off with just a simple little quote that I'm sure you're all familiar with, integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. And for years and years, I've thought, that's going to be the perfect definition of integrity. I mean, how does it get any better than doing something, whether anyone knows we did it or not? Now, as it relates to integrity, I really feel like integrity needs to be the foundation of our personal brand, needs to be the foundation of who we are as people. And when you think about a foundation, for example, maybe the foundation of wherever it is you live, I mean, you certainly want that foundation to be strong and stable, right? Well, if integrity is going to be the foundation of our personal brand, is there a way we can strengthen our integrity? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because you know what? Our integrity is a lot like a muscle. And every time we make decisions or choices where we remain true to our values, our beliefs, those principles that are really important to us, we strengthen that integrity. Now, I want to look at a couple of these images again. Here's some people, looks like they're enjoying themselves, maybe a night out at the movie. And I think a lot of us tend to enjoy going out, seeing a show. I don't go to a lot of movies, but every once in a while, there's something that I think is worthy of the big screen. When I go, it tends to be fun. But you know, one thing that's never going to be a good time, never going to be fun at all? Price of treats. I mean, let's face it, that stuff is expensive. And it's very tempting to sneak some into the theater, wouldn't you say? I saw a study that said, well, over 60% of us do just that. Is this an opportunity for me to strengthen my integrity muscle? You know what? It's a small one. It really is. Texting and driving. My wife and I, we have three kids. Two of them are in their 20s. They've been driving for a while. Our youngest is 19. She's becoming a better driver. Probably like a lot of you who have kids that are driving age, we've talked to our kids. And we've said, you know, please, please promise us you're never going to text and drive. Can't even stand the thought of what could happen if you're a distracted driver. You know what? I drive a lot for my job. Literally all over the region. I've got a smartphone. I take it with me on these trips. I hear buzzing. I know I've got emails coming in. Opportunity for me to strengthen my integrity muscle, to walk the talk, to do what I'm asking my kids to do? Yeah, it really is. All right, I'm gonna switch gears for a moment. And this is going to take some of us, namely me, some of us a lot of imagination. But let's imagine we want to be an Olympic athlete. And specifically, what we really want to do is run the marathon in the Olympics. What would we have to do to get ourselves ready? I mean, the Summer Games are like maybe three and a half years away. I mean, we're gonna have to get after it. We are really going to have to do some serious training. A lot of working out, a lot of getting ready. Do you think maybe it's possible, instead of committing to all that training, all that work, that maybe we could wait till the weekend before the big qualifying race, then try to run four, five, six hundred miles and get ourselves ready? Of course not. That's not going to work. It's going to take a sustained effort. Lots of practice, lots of training. You know what? I really believe the same thing is true with our integrity. We want to be good at this. We need to train. And a great way for us to train, all these small little integrity decisions that are constantly coming our way. And why are the small ones so important? I think this quote says it all. Character may be revealed in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. In other words, if we ever hope to be ready for these big integrity challenges that are going to be coming our way, we need to be practicing and training on all these small little ones that we face every day. I would say yes, even sneaking candy into the movie theater. Okay, so we've looked at attitude. We've looked at integrity. The third brand quality I wanted to look at is grit. And for this one, what I'm going to do is play a short little video just to kind of set the stage for us. Now Steve Hartman brings us the story of a war hero. He began a new mission today in a new uniform he'll be wearing as he drives a white and blue car on the road. He began a new mission today in a new uniform he'll be wearing as he drives a white and blue car on the road. Here come the latest graduates of the Suffolk County Police Academy on Long Island, New York. Making it through seven months of police training is a big achievement for anyone. But for this recruit, today's accomplishment borders on the miraculous. I just got chills. You know, you hear the pipe band and this beat just going through your body and having this pride within you, knowing that you finally, you know, completed the dream that you didn't know if you would be able to do yourself. 28-year-old Matias Ferreira used to be a Marine, served in Afghanistan. And in 2011, he stepped on an IED and lost both legs from the knee down. It was a nightmare and the end of a childhood dream. Matias immigrated to America from Uruguay at the age of six. Not long after, he saw a Marine in dress blues and decided, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up. His plan was to be a Marine for life, until he lost his legs and had to come up with a new plan to serve. So I started looking into the police department and seeing if they would take me with, you know, the situation of prosthetics. And I spent numerous hours Googling police officer with prosthetics, pilots with prosthetics, anything that would come up and I just couldn't find anything. Because nobody had done it. Well, I'm kind of going in blind. I don't know what's going to happen. Fact is, as best anyone could tell, there had never been a full-time, active-duty, double amputee police officer. But that didn't stop Matias. He applied like everyone else. Really, the only special accommodation he wanted was that he not get any special accommodations. If I feel like somebody helped me, I wouldn't have wanted it. It wouldn't have been fair to me and it wouldn't have been fair to the police officers behind me. So, he went through the same exact training. That's him with the baton. Some in the department were curious. If he fell trying to apprehend a suspect, could he even get up? And that answered that. Which brings us here. Today, Matias not only graduated, he graduated class president. Wife and daughter, clearly proud. Matias told me when he lost those legs, he knew if he worked hard, another door would open. And here he is, on the glorious other side of that threshold. Steve Hartman, on the road, in Rentwood, New York. Okay, I'm going to try to make this interactive, if I can. And what I'm going to do now is I have six clues that I want to give you. And I want you to see if you can guess who it is we are describing. And feel free to jump in at any place among these six clues here. Sound good? All right, first clue. My youth was filled with crippling shyness and anxiety issues. I even had to repeat a grade because of it. Right? So that's clue number one. Again, anytime you want, just jump in. I've got the chat up and I should be able to see. All right, clue two. My parents always hoped I would play professional basketball, but I decided to take a different path. Clue three. I have overcome racial issues and inequalities in my industry. No guesses yet. Bear with me here. Okay. Clue four. I still have significant anxiety issues, so I continue to seek therapy. Clues left. This next one might, no, not Barack Obama. Thank you, though. I have battled through my problems to become known. Oops, I went too far. I have battled through my problems to become known for my acting, singing, and dancing. Anybody want to take a shot there? Okay, last clue. My movies include, nope, not Beyonce. My movies include Dune, Spider-Man, Smallfoot, and The Greatest Showman. No, not you. Female. Yes, Zendaya. Excellent, great. All right, there we go. Yes, my name is Zendaya. And look, I realize I don't need to tell you much about her. I'd say, you know, based on what she's accomplished in her life, got to be one of the more remarkable people on the planet, really. But here's what I really want to know. How did a woman with her kind of start, which, you know, clearly wasn't ideal. How did a woman with her kind of start in life get from there to, let's see if I can do it, here. You know, one of the most successful and best-known celebrities going. How does that happen? Well, as you're probably guessing by now, there's a school of thought out there that perhaps, just maybe, it's this quality. We've been talking a little bit about this quality called grit. And one of the people doing a lot of nice research in this area is this Dr. Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania. And here's how she describes grit. She says, grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is living life like it's a marathon and not a sprint. So, as I was originally pulling this information together on grit, you know, I started thinking, well, that's a great quality. I wonder if I have grit. Think I might have some grit. Well, if you're wondering that, in fact, even if you're not, at some point, not now, but at some point, I would like to encourage you to Google grit scale and Angela Duckworth. And when you do that, what you're going to see is a link that will take you to a little 10-question questionnaire. And there are no right or wrong answers, but you will answer those questions and it will give you your grit score and kind of rank you as to where you compare or how you compare to others within the U.S. here. So, I think it's kind of interesting. So, again, maybe later today you could do that. Now, regarding grit, I just wanted to share a few little tips on how you might be able to develop grit. These are some things I've cobbled together from some research I came across. So, I'll just share them real quick. All right, first one says, pursue your interests and or something for which you have a passion, which to me makes a lot of sense. Because if it's something that we're deeply interested in or have a real passion for it, you know, when things get tough, we probably are more likely to stick with it. So, that one makes perfect sense to me. This one, I thought it was interesting. Practice building willpower. How do you do that? Well, start small and slowly increase the challenge. Our brain is like any other muscle. It grows with training. So, the point they're making here is, let's say, you know, as an example that you want to eat better. You've got this poor diet and you just want to do a better job of eating well. Well, instead of just saying, well, I'm never eating, you know, bad food again and just going all in on the healthiest diet you can put together. Their suggestion would be, start small. Eliminate potato chips. Get rid of them. Once you feel like you've got your arms around that and you've conquered it, get rid of sugar drinks. Slowly increase like that. Build your willpower. Just, you know, one thing at a time until you just become much more capable of taking on this challenge. So, I think that's a good suggestion for all of us to consider. Remember, it says failure isn't the opposite of success. Often, it's part of the success process. We know that, don't we? There's so much we can learn from our failures. And I love this quote from Dr. Duckworth. She says, we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, and to start over again with lessons learned. The problem is, sometimes we let failure just stop us. No, let's don't do that. Let's adjust. What did we learn from that failure? Let's go at it again if it's really important to us. I think this one's really interesting. Connect to a higher purpose. People who can connect what they do to a higher purpose are grittier. And when I think of a higher purpose, I think of something that's bigger than me. Something beyond myself. Something that involves others. Lifting others. We do that, we tend to be much grittier. Surround yourself with gritty people. We tend to reflect the values of the people we spend the most time with. This makes sense. And then finally, accept that you're going to experience adversity and challenges. We know that, don't we? It's just a part of life. We all face them. We shouldn't be feared. We just have to deal with them. And we can't let them stop us, because if we do let the adversity stop us, maybe we're falling short of who it is we're really supposed to be. I want to just share one quick quote with you, and then I'm going to give you a little wrap-up exercise here. This is from Bill Daniels, cable television pioneer, really known for his values and his ethics. He once said, a business reversal or personal setback will often bring out the best in a person and enable them to find courage and strength they never even knew they possessed. And it's true. I mean, adversity does make us better. We have to get better, really just to get through it. All right, here's the takeaway I want to leave you with. You'll remember at the beginning of our session, we looked at this worksheet, and we had you select at least three brand qualities that you said you were known for. In fact, the people who know you best, you said they would use these three to describe you. So what we want you to do now is select three brand qualities you want to be known for. Maybe you're not there yet. Maybe you're not even close. It does not matter. Please select three things. And don't limit yourself to this sheet. You can use these for sure. But if there's something else that's not on here, that's fine. Please select three things that when we think of you, oh, you would love for us to think of these three qualities. All right? So take a few moments to do that. Once you have those, I'm going to have you like write them on an index card, something that looks like that, or maybe a little sticky note, because you're going to need it. Three things that you want us to think about you when we think of you. Stretch yourself. This should be at your very best. What would you love for us to think? Thank you. OK, I'm going to keep us moving. If you don't have them yet, you can finish a little later. I want to give you the exercise, though. All right, as I mentioned, once you have them, I want you to either put them on an index card, please, or a little sticky note, something like that. You can see, as an example, I put the three up here that we talked about today, all right? So you'll put whatever your three are. And here's your homework. You're like, what, homework? Are you kidding me? Yeah, homework. All right, so here's the homework. We'd like you to put your card, when you're done, or your sticky note, somewhere where you are going to see it every day, without fail. I think, ideally, you see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night. So a spot that occurs to me is maybe taping it up on the mirror in your bathroom. Although, I suppose, really, most of us probably look at our phone first thing in the morning and last thing at night. But I don't want to promote bad habits. So let's just say you're going to tape your index card up on your mirror. So there you are, beginning of day. You're getting ready for work. You see your three qualities. Nice way to just kind of set the tone for the day. However, the real work comes at the end of the day. Now you're in the bathroom. You're getting ready for bed. You're brushing your teeth. You look in the mirror. You see your card. I'd like to ask you to think about the decisions and the choices you made during the day, the actions that you took. And are they in alignment with what you put on your card? Are they a reflection of what you put on that card? And we're going to ask you to do that for 66 days. And the reason why we selected 66 days is because research says that's how long it takes the average person to create new habits. So let me just quickly recap. For the next 66 days, we're going to ask you to work really hard to make sure those decisions and choices you're making, those actions that you're taking, are in alignment with what you put on your card. And if you're disciplined enough to pull that off, and it's going to take some grit, I will tell you. But if you pull it off, you may have done something pretty special. Let me just share this with you. It says 66 days ago, you spoke to us regarding personal branding and the 66 day challenge. Every day when I leave my home, I see my brand hanging next to the door. I remember that the choices I make need to be reflective of the legacy I want to leave, and that my choices are always in my control. Every day I tell myself that even though I'm not the smartest, the strongest, or the most charismatic, I can always control whether or not I'm gritty. 66 days later, I'm a much different person than I was at the beginning of the challenge. My outlook, mindset, and approach are dramatically altered, and I intend to keep growing better from here. Hannah took the 66 day challenge, and now we're challenging you. Let's give it 66 days, and let's see where we are. I would love nothing more than to hear from you after your 66 day challenge. You can see my email address here, or if you have any questions, please send those to me as well. I will stop sharing my screen here, or maybe I'll leave that up there for just a moment. And maybe we should see if there are any questions. I know we're kind of at the end of our time together here. Well, if not, thank you all. And yeah, I really would love to see your results after 66 days. I really enjoyed getting that feedback. And the number that I had up on the screen is also my cell number. So I'm happy to visit with any of you. Jacob, are you still around? Yes, yes, still here. OK, good. I don't know. Do we just sign off? Tyler will give everybody a warm goodbye. And then we'll let everyone get on with the rest of their evening. There we go. Thanks for your help. Thank you, my friend. If just so that you're all aware, this recording will be made available. So if you want to go back and revisit anything or if you want to find Kent's cell number so you can throw a little spam his way, you'll be able to see that. But thank you all for joining. Thank you all for looking to CASE for your professional development. And we hope to see you down the road at another offering from our district or anywhere around the world that CASE represents. One more time, Kent, thank you so much, sir. Really appreciate all you do in this space and for all of us.

personal branding

positive attitude

integrity

grit

resilience

habit formation

self-reflection

motivational stories

Tyler Speer