The Power of Real Influence in Business
"We need to realize what's in it for us." - Ben Baker
Ben and Syya dig into what it really means to be influential in today’s workplace. They draw the line between popularity and purpose, breaking down how true influence is built through trust, storytelling, and problem-solving. From identifying the people who have shaped their own thinking to sharing how anyone at any stage of their career can lead with impact, this episode challenges the traditional definition of an influencer.
Key Takeaways:
✔ Influence comes from respect, not reach
✔ Storytelling is a powerful leadership tool
✔ The 'why' behind influence reveals its value
✔ Anyone can become influential by solving problems
✔ Clear, simple communication builds credibility
✔ True influencers help others move forward
Learn more about Ben Baker at IamBenBaker.com
Chat with Syya and the Team at Brilliant Beam Media
Transcript
If there's one thing we've learned about business and life is that people are the X
factor.
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:They constantly surprise us both in amazing ways and not so much.
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:We're Ben and Sia and welcome to the Nod This Business Bites podcast.
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:This show is all about real life things we all deal with every day, how they relate to
business and how to make some sense out of our daily chaos.
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:Welcome to the show.
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:And welcome back to another episode of non this business bites.
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:I'm Ben and this is Sia.
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:Now we've all heard the term influencers.
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:We have the social media influencers, yada, yada, yada.
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:Everybody that's, you know, since there he goes says, look, look at what I'm selling
today.
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:That's not the influencers I care about.
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:I care about the influencers in business.
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:The people that, that when, when somebody says, she's like, I don't know what to do.
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:They know who to go to.
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:You know, it may be just somebody on the line, somebody who's 30 years working, you know,
on the line somewhere.
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:says, hey, listen, we've got this problem.
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:We need to jig this thing up.
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:You you're the one who works with this all day long.
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:What do you think?
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:All the way up to the senior vice president who just came from a different industry says,
hey, listen, we've always done it this way.
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:Is there a better way to do things?
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:and being able to utilize people's experience and expertise and knowledge and the holes
that they've been down, the ability of them that they've gotten out of them, and they know
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:how to sidestep.
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:Those are people that are influential.
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:People who I can go to or you can go to and say, what do you think?
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:And you respect their opinion.
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:You respect their expertise.
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:You expect their experience.
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:You respect who they are as individuals and you're willing to listen to them because you
know that when you listen, you're going to become better and be able to do your job better
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:or you're going to create a better product or be able to help customers better, whatever.
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:Those are the influencers that I think are the most important influencers in the world.
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:Zia, let's not on this.
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:Well, look, being that I'm in the social media business, right?
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:Obviously, this is near and dear to my heart because I tend to have a...
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:It's interesting.
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:I'm in the social media business, but I tend to have a pragmatic view about influencers.
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:Again, I'm helping to build brands so they become more influential, but not necessarily
influencers in the context of an individual.
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:One of the things that's always...
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:bothered me, I think is there are influencers who have been manufactured as influencers.
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:I would say like the Kardashians are manufactured influencers.
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:um And then they have grown into a capacity that they have now become influential because
of that vacuousness of culture and society, which could be a totally different other
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:conversation.
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:But
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:It made me think about what, when we think about some of the other influential people in
our world, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, right?
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:Abraham Lincoln, you know, what is it about?
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:I mean, and I'm going to do this more like vaguely, even people with that cult of
personality, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, okay.
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:This is, this is just about their influentialness, not a statement on their activity as
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:leaders okay.
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:Right, I can take you there.
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:I can go with you there.
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:I'm clarifying because this is going on the internet.
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:oh I um am not taking these people and saying they're good.
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:All I'm saying is, but how do you describe why they have such an appeal?
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:Why is it that people have listened to them, glommed onto their words, again, good, bad,
ugly and different?
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:What was it about them that had that it factor that made them kind of
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:create a community around them, right?
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:And I was fascinated by that.
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:oh
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:Yeah, and it's a great question.
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:is an absolutely great question.
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:And for me, there's a number of different factors.
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:One of them is their ability of oratory.
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:It is their ability to sit there and say, take complex situations, make them simple, and
make them personal.
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:be able to sit there and say, let me take this absolutely complex, you know,
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:complicated situation and turn it into something that the average person could not only
glom onto, but identify with and be able to relate to.
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:And, you know, if done on the political sphere and stuff like that, this can become
jinguistic.
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:It can create movements on the left and the right.
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:Doesn't matter.
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:We can go into that way.
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:But when it comes to
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:business, it's the same effect.
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:The great people that are influential are the people that can take complex, sophisticated,
chunky, serious pieces of information, digest them, mold them into something that is um
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:identifiable and create a story around them that people resonate with.
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:all of sudden they can
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:digest it and not only that they can recall it and they can retell it to others because
all of a sudden you become influential when all of a sudden I heard this from Sia she told
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:me this story and da da da da da da da and this was the lesson that we learned out of it
what do you think all of a sudden you are elevating your being able to elevate yourself
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:through the information that you learned from something somebody that you find is
influential
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:because you've taken the story that they've given you and be able to look smart and look
um knowledgeable to somebody else through transporting that information that you learned
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:from somebody that had somebody of influence over you.
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:So I think that storytelling is a key factor in creating influence, being able to
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:take data and turn it into something that is relevant and something that is meaningful and
something that is in the language of the person that is being influenced because you're
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:going to influence an engineer completely different than you're going to influence a
doctor versus a TV repair man.
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:And not giving any weight of who's smarter is different, but the language is different.
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:The analogies that you're gonna use are different.
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:How you make that information relevant to that particular person so it's relevant for them
in their job, in their life, in the people that they need to influence is different.
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:So it's being able to make stuff translatable that makes you influential.
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:I think I like that perspective of that, right?
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:To take complex concepts and digest it in a way and articulate it that the masses can
consume it, ingest it, and then they themselves have thought-provoking whatever emotion
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:connection to it.
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:I think that is a really valid point.
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:Again, everyone in the audience vibe with me here.
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:Write down the names of the people that you find that have influenced you in your life
that are influential to you.
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:really tag them.
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:See, I'm really intrigued to see what comes up, right?
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:Is it a celebrity?
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:Is it Lee Iacocca?
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:Is it a political person?
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:Is it my grandmother?
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:Right?
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:Like, right.
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:Like, I would be really intrigued to see that because I think that I'm no psychologist,
but I do think
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:When the first like three names of the people that have influenced you in your life and
you pop up with them, that kind of gives you a guiding light of like where your priorities
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:are too.
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:And it's not to judge who your three pick is.
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:It's simply if you have three spiritual leaders, well, clearly you're a spiritual person,
right?
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:If it is, you know, me, you know, all rock musicians.
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:Well, that tells you some a little bit my brain too, right?
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:Like, but
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:it.
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:And then here's the fun part.
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:Ask yourself or your friends.
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:Maybe that might be your little future Salon topic, which is, who are your three most
influential people?
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:Let's talk about why we think it is and why we think each other's is that.
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:And then maybe it becomes like a mini personality conversation.
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:I think it's a lot of fun.
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:think, think that should be a leadership exercise.
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:Don't you think?
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:It's great.
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:It's because it is it is a leadership exercise and okay in my first book powerful personal
brands a hands-on guide to understanding yours.
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:It's a chapter in my book You know where I talk about I talk about who are the people that
were influential in my life and why they're influential in my life and at the end of every
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:chapter I have a question that I ask and three pages of notes where people can write their
own answers so I've turned this book also not only as a
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:as a chapter book on different parts of personal branding, but also a workbook that's
included inside it.
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:And one of the main questions I ask is who are the top influential people in your life and
why are they influential to you?
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:And I think the why is far more important than the who.
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:Why do you find these people influential?
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:What is the things that they either do, say, act, react,
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:how they relate whatever that make them influential to you.
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:Why do you go back to this person time and time again to be able to make sure you have
ongoing conversations, that you learn something new, that oh you can increase your level
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:of expertise, whatever.
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:And it could be, as you said, could be somebody that you've never met.
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:It could be somebody that's somebody on YouTube or it could be somebody that you're
related to.
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:And all three of them are right, and there's a hundred other reasons.
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:But I think that we need to understand why people are influential to us.
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:Because why somebody's influential to you is going to be a different reason than why
they're influential to me.
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:100%.
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:In fact, we could pick the exact same person and totally different app facets, right?
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:Like it could be, you know, giggles, uh because, you know, uh we're over we've passed it,
but you know, mental health awareness month was true.
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:And I've just been, you know, learning a lot about mental health and supportive walking
tall movement.
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:Shout out to you guys.
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:But it is, let's think, let's say, let's say, for example, you and I both pick Abraham
Lincoln.
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:Sure.
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:Right.
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:So there's a lot of things like that are noble about him, right?
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:The fact that he had the courage to try to keep the union together, right?
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:Keep America together, right?
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:The ability for him to uh articulate himself.
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:He was a great orator, right?
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:You four score and seven years ago, right?
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:We know that.
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:But there's also the flip side to it, right?
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:So allegedly he suffered from massive depression.
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:And so again, I mentioned mental health awareness month was he was
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:severely depressed much of the time.
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:And yet he was able to, you know, work, I don't want to say he worked through it well, but
I'm saying he worked through it in a way where he knew he had to overcome his personal
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:challenges in the pursuit of the greater good of keeping us together as the United States
of America, right?
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:Because depression is a nasty, nasty thing.
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:And it's not something like, oh, I'll just push it off my mind.
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:It's a, you know, consider, you know,
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:Dunday, right?
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:So that to me, I find him admirable and influential in the world of, you know, how does
one serve in a way where maybe their well is empty at times.
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:I think that's just like, I think his influence on that I think is, is fascinating.
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:Two different, totally two different perspective on the same person.
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:oh
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:I'm amazed if I remember correctly that he was a failed politician in his early years.
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:Yeah.
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:He tried to become a politician early on in his career and failed miserably at it.
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:And if he had just given up and he just said, for me, fine, I'll go and do something else,
we never would have had the Gettysburg Address.
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:Who knows?
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:The war could have turned out different.
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:You never know how the world could have changed if he had not become president of the
United States.
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:You know, could have been better, could have been worse, but it would have been different
regardless.
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:Right, right.
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:Well, hey, I I love that trigger the fact that he was a boxer and undefeated boxer, by the
way.
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:That's crazy.
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:I mean, you look at that tall.
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:I think it was like six, four, lengthy.
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:I mean, like I said, he did look kind of sad every picture, but um
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:Didn't look like a boxer though, I'll tell you that much.
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:No, mean, I mean, clearly boxer form has evolved over the years.
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:Him to Mike Tyson are a little bit different, yes.
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:Oh, whoosh.
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:Okay, that's it.
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:Okay.
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:Let's get back.
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:Let's get back to the influence.
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:They try to land this plane.
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:um We need to realize what is in it for us and what's in it for the influencer.
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:And why are people trying to be influencers?
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:Are they trying to be influencers for the greater good?
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:they looking or is is is it true narcissism?
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:Like, why are we following these people?
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:What is the true value?
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:Are they adding true value to us or are they not?
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:Are they giving us good advice or are they not giving us good advice?
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:And, you know, each of that comes up to our own.
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:We need to decide whether there is value in going back to the well or not.
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:Yeah, yeah, I'm bringing I'm trying to bring it back to in my brain, obviously, because
I'm social media, I'm thinking culture, culture, culture, right?
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:Pop culture.
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:But bringing it back into the business side of the houses.
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:It does not matter what level you are in, in a corporate environment.
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:can be influential, you can you can build a strong reputation as someone that could be
reliable, health, you know, accountable.
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:execute on everything they say or can be like, look, this person wins, you know, Mr.
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:Mr.
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:congeniality, right?
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:You could be influential of being bringing good right to a workplace.
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:We can rely on, you know, Ben for that, you know, really tedious bad dad joke.
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:You know what I mean?
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:Like, but you would be influential for us to like almost start loving these bad dad jokes.
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:What ads I do love a good dad joke, but the bad ones are really painful.
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:Um, but yeah, no, I think, I think that's where my brain goes with, know, wherever you are
at, what stage in your career, could absolutely have influence.
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:If it's something where you can do it consistently, you have a perspective that you're
solving a problem or solving something and are able to articulate complex to the simple.
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:I think those are the great key ingredients, to become influential, not just an
influencer.
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:So let's leave it there.
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:I'm Ben.
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:And we'll see you soon.
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:Hey hey hey, thanks for listening to another episode of Not On This Business Fights.
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:If you liked what you heard, we most humbly ask that you like, share, and hit that
subscribe button.
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:If you want to communicate more effectively within your organization, contact ben at
imbenbaker.com or me at brilliantbeammedia.com.
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:We can help you build your community, brand awareness, and personality.
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:digital content and podcasting.
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:We cannot wait to hear from you.
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:See you next week for another episode of Nom This Business Pites.
