7: Perception Is Reality, Platform

7 PERCEPTION IS REALITY

When I asked for time off and left the country to work remotely for seven months, I sold everything I owned. When I returned to Los Angeles, I had two things to my name: my fifty-five-liter backpack with its contents and the job I had left behind. I had no home, no car, and no real belongings. But I also had a changed perspective and the drive to stay in Los Angeles and make it work. I temporarily moved in with my boyfriend, his brother, and their roommate. I would walk about six blocks to the train station every morning to ride downtown to my office. When I left my job for the day, I would stop in at the Macy’s on the walk back to the train station and use my Macy’s credit card to buy clothes for the next workday. I was absolutely broke, but my soul had never felt so free.

After a few weeks, I found a place of my own. Well, not exactly. I moved into an apartment with two men who lived in a three-bedroom in East Los Angeles. I was certain that the apartment was going to be amazing and a sign that my world was finally coming together. When I moved in, the roommate who happened to be the one I liked was moving out. I was concerned because the man who remained in the apartment seemed a little odd. I chose to ignore my intuition because, well, I really needed a place to live.

I stayed there for about one more week, until I realized that I had moved into an apartment with an insane person, one who counted squares of toilet paper, had a closet full of leather suits, and smoked cigarettes in his room with the AC on full-blast. I was so freaked out by him and his habits that I paid rent for the six months that I had agreed to live there and just left to live somewhere else. The only new place I could afford was way out in Pasadena. That was fine while I was working downtown, where the light-rail was located. A couple of months later, right after the holidays (and right after my twenty-sixth birthday), I was laid off along with the rest of my fellow employees. I needed a new a job, and fast.

Lucky for me, someone I went to high school with but had not seen since I was seventeen saw my post on Facebook about needing a job and responded. He said that he worked for a small SEO firm in Santa Monica that was hiring for what I had been doing: social media. I went in for the interview and immediately got the job. Unbelievably, my last day at my previous company was my first day at the new one.

Everything was going well, except that I lived in Pasadena, didn’t have a car, and had just accepted a job in Santa Monica. The commute involves five freeways and a two- to two-and-a-half-hour drive each way, depending on traffic. (My own grandmother stopped answering my calls on my way to work because she didn’t have two-plus hours to spend talking with me.)

My mission was to obtain a car. I heard that Volkswagen was offering a Jetta for zero down and $199 per month. It included maintenance and promised great gas mileage, so I was (pre)sold. I knew that if I went into the dealership, it would be a time drain, and if I called into the dealership, I would get so irritated by all the waiting that I would end up giving in without a negotiation to whatever they presented me.

But I had a plan. I was going to email every Volkswagen dealership in Los Angeles until one of them gave me exactly what I wanted: a 2012 black Jetta for zero down and $199 per month with my average to less-than-desirable credit.

I mass-emailed several dealerships in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. My strategy was simple: minimize phone conversations and never give in. With the remaining days on the job I had just been laid off from, I started my search for a car. (The company paid all of us a severance to stay two weeks after the layoffs to help our users collect their content from the website.) I received email after email, followed up on my phone calls, and never gave up. I finally got a dealership to run my credit without my having to get on the phone. They got back to me and said they could go $2,000 down and $250 per month. I said, “No, thank you.” They continued to call me, but I never answered. I emailed again and said that I wanted zero down and $199 per month. What did I have to lose? I could tell by the number of dealerships responding that they wanted the business, so I kept going.

The dealership that ran my credit came back with, “The best we can do is $500 down and $199 per month.” I replied, “No problem, I will find someone who can help me.” They tried to call but I didn’t answer, and then they emailed me and said, “Okay, we got it approved. A 2012 Jetta for zero down and $199 per month.” In that same email they wrote, “We have it in white or red; which one do you want?” I emailed them back with a simple reply: “Black.”

The dealer was clearly becoming irritated, after I refused to answer his calls, when he emailed “We don’t have it in black.” I responded, “Then I will find someone else who can help me.” A few hours went by, and he emailed me again to say, “Good news: we have the car in black, and we are having it brought over from another dealership for you now. When can you come in to get your car?”

I was excited, until I realized that I had found a dealership that was very far away. (This was before Uber was mainstream, and, remember, I was broke.) I emailed the dealer, “That’s great news about the car! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to come get it because I don’t have a car. Do you offer any other solutions?” The salesman wrote, “No problem, Ms. Johnson, we will have the car driven to you, and you can sign your lease at that time.”

The salesman delivered the car. When he met me he said, “You’re Cynthia?” He had to meet the girl who was too busy to answer the phone. I laughed as I signed the lease on the hood of the car. And that is how I got my first car when I returned from traveling.

After two years with the car, I hit a pole while trying to park. (I am not the best driver—I’m definitely ready for autonomous vehicles.) When I took the car in for repairs, they told me it would be twenty-four hundred dollars to fix—more than I had paid for the car over the entire year. So I said, “No way,” called the dealer I had leased the car from, and said, “I made a mistake with this one; may I have a new one?”

The dealer told me that he could fix it in-house to give me a better deal. When he pulled up my lease, he looked at me and said, “Who gave you such a good deal?” “You did,” I replied. After I reminded him of who I was (yes, I thought I would be far more memorable, too), a lightbulb went on, and he remembered. Then I got another amazing deal, mainly because he expected me to negotiate one. His perception was that I would haggle with him, but in reality I was at the top of my negotiating game only when engaging via email.

Why was it so easy for me to get the deal I wanted the first time I tried? I carried out the entire deal within the confines of email. I didn’t allow any personal bias to enter into the deal. (I even used an AOL email address.) The fact that I was aggressive, determined, and had injected nothing into my communication that would allude to my personality put me in control of the conversation. He was basically negotiating with an upset Yelp reviewer who had yet to leave a review.

Why did I get such a good deal the second time around? I had already established that I was able to negotiate. Negotiating takes time. When I went in to get my car, it was later in the day, and the dealer was in a rush to be somewhere else. His perception of the situation was that I would negotiate, take up his valuable time, and keep him there all night. So he skipped the negotiations, and I didn’t have to do as much work the second time around.

What does this have to do with your personal brand? Perception can only be used in your favor when you know how most people perceive you. We all have qualities and identifiers that lead to preconceptions about who we are. Fully understanding those qualities and identifiers and how they change over time is important. There will always be situations where our individual attributes will be an advantage or a disadvantage.

There are also variations in others’ perceptions of you. There is the way that people who know you perceive you, the way you perceive yourself, and the way your online presence is perceived. In most cases, your online presence reflects the way strangers perceive you as well.

Offline

To understand how people who know you actually perceive you, just ask them. Pick five close family members and friends to choose the descriptors that describe you. But before you do this, complete the exercise yourself so you can compare the way you see yourself with how they see you.

Mostly conservative and traditional
Moderately conservative and traditional
Neutral
Moderately liberal and artistic
Liberal and artistic

Mostly impulsive and spontaneous
Moderately impulsive and spontaneous
Neutral
Moderately organized and hardworking
Organized and hardworking

Mostly contemplative
Moderately contemplative
Neutral
Moderately engaged with the outside world
Mostly engaged with the outside world

Mostly competitive
Moderately competitive
Neutral
Moderately team working and trusting
Mostly team working and trusting

Mostly laid-back and relaxed
Moderately laid-back and relaxed
Neutral
Moderately easily stressed and emotional
Mostly easily stressed and emotional

Give yourself one point for all A answers, two points for all B answers, three points for all C answers, four points for all D answers, and five points for all E answers.

For each question, create a sliding scale. If you received three B answers and two E answers for question 1, you would add 2 + 2 + 2 + 5 + 5 = 16 and then divide by 5, which would give you 3.2 or 32 percent.

This range is to give you an idea of how the average person perceives you. You can segment this survey by asking five coworkers or colleagues, five family members, and five friends. Then compare the results based on how the respondents know you.

Online

Researchers Wu Youyou and David Stillwell from the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Michal Kosinski from the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University released a study declaring that “computer-based personality judgments are more accurate than those made by humans.”15 The researchers found that computers can judge your personality traits better than friends, family, and partners can. Using a new algorithm, researchers can use your Facebook likes, posts, and engagement metrics and your Twitter posts and engagement metrics to draw personality inferences about you that are as accurate as your parents’ or partner’s perceptions—and sometimes more accurate.

For their study, the researchers had 86,220 volunteers on Facebook complete a personality test that included one hundred questions. The volunteers also provided access to their Facebook likes. The personality test was used to provide self-reported personality scores for what psychologists call the Big Five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Then they compared the results to the volunteers’ Facebook likes to create the  algorithm that can form a perception of the person based on their online activity.

According to Stillwell, “The ability to judge personality is an essential component of social living—from day-to-day decisions to long-term plans such as whom to marry, trust, hire, or elect as president. The results of such data analysis can be very useful in aiding people when making decisions.”

Coauthor Youyou added, “Recruiters could better match candidates with jobs based on their personality; products and services could adjust their behavior to best match their users’ characters and changing moods. People may choose to augment their own intuitions and judgments with this kind of data analysis when making important life decisions such as choosing activities, career paths, or even romantic partners. Such data-driven decisions may well improve people’s lives.”

The good news? You can take the test (read on) and have your personality assessed online with the same tools used in the study.

The even-better news? If you know how you are being perceived both online and offline based on your likes, you can change the direction for your benefit. If you want that promotion or job opportunity, you can compare yourself to people who have those opportunities coming to them and adjust accordingly, just as you would tailor your résumé.

People may say that manipulating your personality online to achieve your goals is not an authentic approach. But consider the ways we are already doing this. We don’t approach dating the same way we approach a job interview. If our online presence is being used to assess our ability to do a job, then we have every incentive to adjust accordingly. In doing so, you are showing the kind of attention to detail that is expected by anyone who wants to hire or collaborate.

For example, I know that I have reached my personal goals on Facebook when I see ads for executive training programs and corporate lawyers.

THE TEST

Now you get to take the test yourself. Below are the links to the tests and research. In some cases, I have used link shorteners for the links that are very long. (Remember, link shorteners are case sensitive, so always use lowercase for the links in this book.)

≫ mypersonality.org: This is information on the research and updates.

≫ applymagicsauce.com: This is where you can connect your Twitter account to have their algorithm predict your personality.

≫ discovermyprofile.com: This is where you can find additional questionnaires and tests that you can complete to discover your psychological profile.

My results follow (Remember, I manipulate my results by choosing not to post personal content.)

I am thirty, but my online behavior is that of a thirty-three-year-old…according to the internet.

My psychological gender suggests that I am the “epitome of masculinity.”

My personality

MY JUNGIAN PERSONALITY TYPE (MYERS-BRIGGS® ASSESSMENT): ENTJ

According to Myers-Briggs, ENTJ stands for Extroverted + iNtuitive + Thinking + Judging. ENTJs often excel in business. They are assertive, outspoken, confident, outgoing, energetic, charismatic, fair-minded, and unaffected by conflict or criticism. However, other  traits may lessen the impact of their strengths. They may appear argumentative, confrontational, insensitive, intimidating, and controlling. They can overwhelm others with their energy, intelligence, and desire to order the world around them.

ENTJs tend to cultivate their personal power and often end up taking charge of a situation that seems (in their mind, at least) to be out of control. Also, ENTJs seek knowledge and strive to learn new things, which helps them become good problem solvers. They may be viewed by others as aloof and coldhearted, since ENTJs appear to take a tough approach to emotional or personal issues. In situations requiring feeling and value judgments, ENTJs are well served to seek the advice of a trusted Feeling type.

There are some truths here, and some results that are manipulated. But if you want to rebrand, these results are important in understanding your preferences.

OPEN TEXT PREDICTION

If you are looking for help in identifying your personality profile goals or to see how else you can be perceived, this tool also allows you to upload text with no minimum word count; however, at least two hundred words is preferred.

To give an example, I uploaded a paragraph from this book to see how I was perceived as the author. The results were that I was mostly female (transparent conversation versus the managed persona on Facebook) and that I was forty-eight years old (high-level conversation versus Facebook posts). My personality type even changed from ENTJ (Extroverted + iNtuitive + Thinking + Judging) to INTJ (Introverted + iNtuitive + Thinking + Judging).

INTJs are very analytical individuals. They are more comfortable working alone than with other people, and are not usually as sociable as others, although they are prepared to take the lead if nobody  else is up to the task, or they see a major weakness in the current leadership. They tend to be very pragmatic and logical individuals, often with an individualistic bent and a low tolerance for spin or rampant emotionalism. They are also generally not susceptible to catchphrases and commonly do not recognize authority based on tradition, rank, or title. Hallmark features of the INTJ personality type include independence of thought, strong individualism, and creativity.

Persons with this personality type work best given large amounts of autonomy and creative freedom. They harbor an innate desire to express themselves; that is, they want to be creative by conceptualizing their own intellectual designs. Analyzing and formulating complex theories are among their greatest strengths.

This description is a much better fit for the book I am writing. You can change the way the internet and algorithms perceive you, just as you would behave differently in front of your mom than you would at a job interview. You get to decide how you are perceived. Now run your own tests to gather information on how you are perceived, because perception is reality.

CASE STUDY: PERCEPTION IN PRACTICE AND THE CASE FOR MAINTAINING IT

A study published in January 2017 assessed the student evaluations of teaching (SET), or student reviews of teachers, which are widely used in academic personnel decision making as a measure of effectiveness.16 This large-scale study of RateMyProfessors.com data looked for correlations, trends, and potential biases in publicly accessible web-based student evaluations of teaching. The study sourced 7,882,980 reviews (of 190,006 US professors with at least twenty student ratings) to provide insight into student perceptions of academic instruction and possible variables in student evaluations.

The study found that women did not have higher scores than men in any of the fields, but some difficult fields (such as chemistry) showed no difference in ratings between the two. Professors who taught science, technology, engineering, and math had lower scores than those who taught humanities and arts. Professors who had classes that were rated as easy had better overall scores. This study specifically left out professors who were considered “hot” because they had better ratings. Go figure.

The author of this study, Andrew S. Rosen, a PhD candidate in chemical engineering at Northwestern University, told InsideHighered.com how he felt about the results of the study: “Even if critics shrug at data from [RateMyProfessors], the biases present on the site are of particular importance,” because they imply that potentially invalid metrics exist in institutional evaluations as well. He added, “They still have significant importance in both the course selection process for students and the academic promotion process. I don’t anticipate this will change anytime soon, so studies like this can highlight ways institutional [evaluations of teaching] can be more critically and accurately evaluated.”

Perception: Professors who teach easier courses are better teachers.

Reality: Some course subjects are easier than other subjects.

Perception: Professors who have better ratings are better at their jobs and deserve more promotions than teachers with worse ratings.

Reality: Professors who teach less-complicated subjects get better ratings.

IMPOSTOR SYNDROME IS HURTING OUR WORLD

In my career, I have been in situations where I was the right person for the job but felt as if I weren’t, and I have been in situations where I was definitely the wrong person for the situation I was placed in.

Imposter syndrome runs rampant among high achievers and doers. These are people who have more experience, knowledge, and education than some of us could ever imagine. Yet they attribute most of their success to luck. They brush off the compliments and excitement over their achievements by saying things like, “Anyone could have done it,” or, “I just got lucky.” Imposter syndrome is a fear that all of your success is based on luck or that someone else’s poor judgment is what led to your opportunity.

Imposter syndrome is hurting the world. It is hurting our economy, education system, political system, and corporations. When the right people for the job are humble and, in an effort to seem modest, leave out the most successful parts of their story for fear of being judged, then the best are shying away from attention while the unqualified are ending up in positions of decision-making authority.

The first time you are put into a new situation, you may run the risk of failure. The thing to remember is, so does everyone else. We are all just trying to figure it out. All of us. How do you get past those fears? Assert your excellence. One reason the world is off-kilter is that there aren’t enough people competing at a high level. Are people challenging one another at high levels? Sure. Is everyone who could compete actually competing? Nope.

How do you make sure people know what you want them to know that you know without feeling as if you are bragging? Show; don’t tell. Here’s how:

≫ Make sure your LinkedIn profile is complete. Whenever you add a positive update, make sure you have “Share changes with your audience” turned on so that your followers will see what you added.

≫ If you get media attention, a new job, or anything else that you wish people could see but you don’t want to seem full of yourself, send it to your mom, partner, sibling, or someone else that you have a close relationship with. Once they have posted it and gloated about you, you can acknowledge it, everyone will see it, and your mom (or whoever) looks like a superhero.

≫ Don’t talk about what you can do; instead, show what you have done. Avoid too much commentary on or explanation of your success. People want to congratulate you, so let them and do the same in return.

≫ Make sure people can contact you (or your branded self).

≫ Put your email and other contact information on your profile and website. Make sure people know how they can contact you and what they should contact you about.

≫ Create a media email address (Media@YourWebsite.com, or whatever) if you don’t have an assistant or agent (as most of us don’t). Be your own helper. That way you can negotiate on your own behalf while keeping impostor syndrome at bay.

ARE WE LIVING IN A MATRIX?

I think we might be living in a Matrix (or what we now call a computer simulation). We are probably connected to a simulator that tells our brains stories, like virtual reality, but it is our own reality. Personal branding is really just a game inside the game. How did we get here? Who controls it? Aliens, most likely.

Before you continue reading, please ask yourself, Do I believe Cynthia when she says that we are most likely living in a Matrix? Register your answer and continue reading.

Do you think I am crazy? Or do you see what I see? Have you ever heard of Moore’s law? It basically claims that computers double in size every year. This means that supercomputers have the ability to compute the entire eighty-year life span of a human being in a decade. That would include every single thought, dream, and declaration. So it is entirely possible that we are living in a Matrix, right?

Don’t believe me? What if I told you that NASA, Elon Musk, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have all publicly acknowledged that we are probably living in a Matrix?

The philosophy was first introduced by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, a young scientist with a lot of original ideas. Dr. Bostrom believes that descendants who are much more evolved than we are could have us imprisoned in a digital world.

In an interview with VICE, Rich Terrile, director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory talked openly about NASA’s supercomputers and how they are computing at twice the speed of the average human brain:

“In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed. Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this. One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it. What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us—and that’s cool.”

According to Terrile, “the idea that our universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos.”

Before you continue reading, ask yourself again whether you believe me now. Register your answer and then continue reading.

In 2016, analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch sent out a report about virtual reality to their clients. The report stated, “It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and computing power, members of future civilizations could have decided to run a simulation of their ancestors.”

According to an article in Business Insider, the Bank of America report explained that “many scientists, philosophers, and business leaders believe that there is a 20 to 50 percent probability that humans are already living in a computer-simulated virtual world. In April 2016, researchers gathered at the American Museum of Natural History to debate this notion. The argument is that we are already approaching photorealistic 3D simulations that millions of people can simultaneously participate in.”

Before you continue reading, ask yourself, Do I believe Cynthia even more now? Register your answer and continue reading. (I’m starting to sound like a simulation myself.)

Still not convinced? Well Elon Musk also believes that we are living in a Matrix or simulation. Here are his words from the Code Conference in 2016:

“The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following. Forty years ago we had Pong—two rectangles and a dot. That’s where we were. Now, forty years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. And soon we’ll have virtual reality; we’ll have augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all, then the games will become indistinguishable from reality, just indistinguishable, and because we will not be able to distinguish real from unreal, it would seem to follow that the odds that we’re in ‘base reality’ is one in billions. Otherwise, if civilization stops advancing, then that may be due to some calamitous event that stops civilization.”

Apparently, some as-yet unnamed tech billionaires believe the theory so much that they have actually hired scientists to try to help us escape.

Now, one last time: do you believe me more now than you did at the beginning of this section—that there is a possibility that we might be living in a Matrix?

You may not believe me more or less, but you definitely understand how I could come to that conclusion after hearing all the other people who have agreed on the possibility. We perceive the relevance and likelihood of an idea by first judging the reliability of the source.

When ordinary people claim they believe in or have seen aliens, they are often considered crazy and may be exiled by family, friends, and society. However, when Elon Musk and NASA say they believe, then we start to believe with them.

We also tend to believe people and companies who state outrageous ideas when we know they have something to lose. For example, we will take more time in considering whether we are living in a Matrix if Bank of America Merrill Lynch says we are—especially if they tell it to their clients. Why? We believe them more because there is an obvious risk for them to say this. They could lose a majority of their clients, if not all of them. So they must be telling the truth; otherwise, why would they take such a risk?

This is an example of a great way to spread your ideas: have the least likely source spread them for you. Convincing one person or company is easier than trying to convince the world. If I hadn’t heard that Bank of America Merrill Lynch told their clients about their report suggesting that we are already living in a Matrix, I never would have believed it. I still don’t believe it, but after hearing that, I have genuinely considered it.

Some of you may have started to consider it, too, after reading about the spread of this idea by sources we perceive as credible who have no incentive to perpetuate it. This is how we shift mindsets and start rumors. The theory was first written four years after the movie The Matrix was released. Did the film inspire the scientific research? Maybe. We are all subconsciously inspired by what we read, hear, and see. That is the power of branding.

HOW EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION CAN DISTRACT FROM THE TRUTH

Building a brand that benefits you and your mission has little to do with you personally. It has everything to do with how people feel about you and how you make people feel. One of the best examples of this is when we see people who want more followers but fail to offer a compelling reason to follow them. This is similar to asking for money without ever completing the job. Someone might give it to them once but never again if the work is not completed. The term personal branding sounds like “It’s all about me,” but when an individual is good at it, the value can be even greater for the brand adopter than for the brand creator.

There is always a gatekeeper who regulates personal branding, influence, career development, politics, and everything similar. These are the people we have to persuade and connect with in order to move on to bigger and better opportunities. This requires that we understand what these people or their audiences need and provide it for them. How is this done?

The first thing you need to have is a message. This is your mission, your goal, your purpose. This mission can and will change, but that is okay. You have to start somewhere, and you can always pivot at a later point. Your mission can be as expansive as “To save the world” or as narrow as “To have a happy and healthy family.”

CASE STUDY: ELON MUSK AND TRAVIS KALANICK

Elon Musk is possibly the most interesting and successful case study in personal branding since the Rockefellers. He has shown us how an individual can directly impact the rise and fall of stock for a billion-dollar corporation. One of the highest profile stocks in recent years is that of Tesla, the electric automotive and energy storage company Musk founded in 2003. This company has surpassed Ford’s market value despite ongoing annual losses. Tesla’s stock has long been closely tied to Elon Musk’s brand, which portrays him as the enigmatic genius and forward-thinking CEO.

Always thinking bigger and better, Musk has become synonymous with the socially conscious, mad-genius persona who has driven all three of his companies to new heights. In fact, it’s so pronounced that when Elon Musk posted this tweet in August 2016, Tesla’s stock increased by 2 percent, adding $670 million to the company’s value at the time. The mere mention of a new product, feature, or technology is enough to bring about a surge in the value of the stock.

And it isn’t just stocks that Elon has been able to sway. He has also become a crusader who is rarely questioned. In fact, we question ourselves before we question him. In December 2016, Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick (founder and former CEO of Uber) joined President Donald Trump’s economic team. The headlines were filled with talk and opinions on the matter. Soon after, on January 27, 2017, the Trump administration issued the executive order banning US entry for ninety days by citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The order also indefinitely halted refugees from Syria.

Internet communities were appalled, and #DeleteUber hashtags began trending, encouraging users to delete their Uber accounts and use Lyft instead. (It should be noted that Peter Thiel and Carl Icahn, both Trump supporters and advisors, own substantial stock in Lyft.) The pressure was intense for Uber and for Tesla as well.

I have created a distilled timeline of the events and media surrounding Travis Kalanick, Uber, Elon Musk, and Tesla from January 2017 through August 2017. This timeline was created to examine the actual events and media surrounding the two CEOs and their companies, without judgment or politicization. The objective is to compare and discuss the events as they were covered in the media, when they took place, and the responses from each CEO or his company spokesperson.

January 27, 2017: Both CEOs and their companies start to receive significant criticism because of their participation in the president’s council in response to President Trump’s immigration ban.

January 28, 2017: The Taxi Workers Alliance, a nonprofit union that represents drivers in New York City, stood outside of John F. Kennedy International Airport with protesters in opposition to the travel ban. The alliance asked its members to stop work at the airport between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. At 7:36 p.m. (thirty minutes after the strike would have ended), Uber tweeted that it had turned off surge pricing at the airport.

January 28, 2017: Soon after the tweet, #DeleteUber started trending, and more than 500,000 users said they would delete their accounts. (The number of those who actually did is unclear, but the estimate is 200,000.)

January 28, 2017: Five people (the confirmed number is not reported) said they canceled the one thousand dollar deposits on their Tesla Model 3 orders.

January 29, 2017: Travis Kalanick went on Facebook and announced that Uber created a $3 million defense fund for drivers who are citizens of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen and who live in the United States but left the country and would not be able to return for ninety days. He and Uber recognized that this meant these people would not be able to work and would need compensation for lost earnings. He added a link to submit information for individuals, their friends, and family members who were affected.

January 29, 2017: Elon Musk went on Twitter to address the issue and the concerns of Tesla fans. He asked that people read the order and suggest amendments.

February 2, 2017: Travis Kalanick stepped down from Trump’s economic team in response to consumer criticism. Elon Musk did not.

February 5, 2017: A host of big-name tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft, filed an amicus brief in a Washington state court opposing Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. Uber signed on. Tesla did not.

February 13, 2017: While attending the World Government Summit in Dubai, I was able to see two speakers back-to-back: Travis Kalanick followed by Elon Musk. Travis Kalanick ran through a SlideShare deck showing a lot of facts and data about driving. He was then interviewed onstage by a reporter from a large US news network, who appeared as though she had just been told that she was not allowed to ask about his former involvement with Donald Trump. The reporter ended the interview by asking Kalanick if he was aware of and prepared for the responsibility that his success had brought him. He answered. Then she walked offstage, leaving Kalanick to follow behind her.

February 13, 2017 (about an hour later): Elon Musk’s interview went differently. (I should mention that Tesla was launching cars in the United Arab Emirates that weekend.) Musk did not provide a presentation; instead, he was interviewed question-and-answer style by a moderator in the UAE. At the end of the interview, the moderator dubbed him “the next Einstein.” Musk then stood up and shook hands with the moderator before exiting the stage to loud applause. During that interview, he did not discuss how he planned to help the world, as Kalanick had done; instead, he said that he believed aliens were real, that tunnels could remove traffic, and that basic income would soon become necessary.

February 19, 2017: Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber, wrote in a blog post about her year working for the company. Her post contained detailed allegations about sexual harassment by her manager as well as the HR department’s reluctance to take action. Her blog put the focus on the alleged rampant misogyny and the hostile work environment for female employees at Uber.

February 19, 2017: The Uber CEO released the following statement, “I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention, so I have instructed Liane Hornsey, our new chief human resources officer, to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace, and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber—and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.”

February 20, 2017 (the next day): Uber hired two partners from the law firm Covington & Burling—former US attorney general Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran—to probe the sexual harassment claims. Uber appointed the company’s general council and two women from the board to assist.

February 28, 2017: Uber asked senior executive Amit Singhal to leave the company for failing to disclose a sexual harassment allegation during his time at Google.

February 28, 2017: A female engineer who was still employed at Tesla reached out to the Guardian about her sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuit, filed against Tesla months earlier (in the fall of 2016).

February 28, 2017, to March 1, 2017: Travis Kalanick was caught on camera swearing at an Uber driver, who had asked the CEO about his management style and blamed him for undercutting the fares. Kalanick responded as he left the cab, “Some people don’t like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else. Good luck!” The video went viral, and Kalanick apologized in an email to his employees.

March 2, 2017: An auto writer for InsideEVs and U.S. News & World Report, who is the father of a fifth grader, tweeted a letter that his daughter wrote to Elon Musk about her marketing idea for Tesla. Elon Musk responded, approving her marketing plan and putting it into action.

March 24, 2017: Gabi Holzwarth, Kalanick’s former girlfriend, told the media that she was with Kalanick and a team of five Uber employees when they visited an escort-karaoke bar in Seoul in 2014. According to Holzwarth, women sat in a circle wearing tags with numbers on them. Four of the male employees, who were Uber managers, picked women by calling out their numbers. About an hour later, she, Kalanick, and the female Uber employee left.

April 3, 2017: Tesla’s market cap surpassed Ford’s at $53 billion.17 According to The Verge, in 2016, Tesla—which lost $675 million on $7 billion in revenue—was worth more than GM (with revenue of $166.4 billion and net income of $9.43 billion) and Ford (with sales of $151.8 billion and net income of $4.6 billion).

April 19, 2017: Three Tesla drivers filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in San Jose, California, alleging that the company knowingly sold them vehicles with “enhanced autopilot” technology that was unsafe.

April 24, 2017: Uber was hit with a lawsuit for using a secret software program (internally referred to as “hell”) to track Lyft drivers. The technology allegedly enabled Uber to see how many Lyft drivers were in an area and how much they were charging.

May 18, 2017: Employees from the Tesla factory told the Guardian of the negative work environment, citing grueling pressure and even life-altering injuries. They attributed these hazards to Musk’s aggressive production goals. The article stated that “ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing, and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues.”

May 23, 2017: Uber admitted to underpaying drivers in New York City by taking a higher percentage of the fare than they had agreed to do. The company was ordered to pay $900 million to its drivers. Uber’s formal agreement with drivers is for the company to keep between 20 and 25 percent of the fare after deducting sales tax and a local fee for a fund to benefit injured drivers. Instead, Uber was basing its percentage on the gross fare.

May 27, 2017: Travis Kalanick’s mother, Bonnie Kalanick, died in a boating accident.

June 1, 2017: Tesla fired AJ Vandermeyden, the woman who had filed a sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuit against the company in August 2016. Tesla’s representative stated, “Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms. Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press.…The termination was based on Ms. Vandermeyden behaving in what the evidence indicates is a fundamentally false and misleading manner, not as a result of retaliation for the lawsuit.”

June 2, 2017: Elon Musk and Disney’s Bob Iger left Trump’s advisory council after the United States exited the Paris climate deal.

June 6, 2017: Uber fired more than twenty employees as a result of the sexual harassment and company culture probe.

June 7, 2017: Information leaks alleged that a top Uber executive, Eric Alexander, had obtained the medical records of a woman raped by an Uber driver, to cast doubt on the victim’s report. Alexander was fired only after journalists learned of the incident, according to tech website Recode and the New York Times.

June 13, 2017: Travis Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence, stating in an email to staff, “I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team. If we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve.”

June 21, 2017: Under pressure from five of Uber’s investors, Travis Kalanick permanently stepped down as CEO of Uber.

July 6, 2017: Tesla registrations plunged 24 percent in California, its largest market. An article in ZeroHedge stated, “Tesla declined to comment on California registration figures and reverted back to its Monday’s press release that second-quarter global deliveries rose 53 percent from a year earlier, to just over 12,000 Model S and just over 10,000 Model X, which incidentally also missed consensus expectations of 22,900 sales.”

August 7, 2017: Tesla launched its first high-yield junk bond offering at $1.8 billion, $300 million more than expected and at a yield of 5.25 percent, according to Inform Global Markets. According to CNBC, Tesla burned through $1.2 billion in the second quarter alone in the attempt to produce more cars. Larry McDonald, author of the Bear Traps Report, wrote, “It speaks to the sheer insanity found in the high yield market to have a deal like this upsized with terms so unappealing to investors. The deck is stacked for Tesla in bond deal terms; congrats to Elon Musk.”

It is clear from this timeline of events that Elon Musk emerged from an exceedingly difficult period in much better shape than did Travis Kalanick—but why?

Let’s take a look at the responses to the travel ban from each executive to get a clearer understanding of what transpired. The timeline shows that both CEOs received pushback after the travel ban for being on President Trump’s advisory council. But we see two different kinds of responses: reactive and proactive.

Travis Kalanick’s response was to create a $3 million legal defense fund to provide drivers with immigration and translation services, and then to post it on Facebook. Sounds like a good plan, right? But the problem with his response is that it is reactionary. He reacted to the fact that people were going to #DeleteUber, instead of responding to the source of this problem: the travel ban. In other words, he failed to address the reason people had gotten upset in the first place. He didn’t apologize, take responsibility, or even acknowledge that the tweet had happened.

This is the kind of message that makes people feel like they might as well be talking to a wall. Personal branding, whether proactive (created and maintained before it is necessary) or reactive (created to dissolve a problem or save a reputation), has nothing to do with what you do for people or what you say about yourself and your company. It has everything to do with how you make people feel, how you engage with them, and what they say about you to your face and to others. Kalanick and Uber’s response revealed a lack of understanding of the real issue.

From the media and public’s perspective, Kalanick had never told them why he joined Trump’s advisory council, so they drew their own conclusions. He never tweeted in support of the protests; instead, Uber used it as an excuse to draw more business with a tweet. When Kalanick faced the backlash, he responded by throwing money at the problem he perceived, not to the real one that had caused the protest. In the eyes of the crowd, he was a profit-focused CEO parading as a false martyr.

Elon Musk’s response to the travel ban was slightly different. He did not wait for the backlash; instead, he tweeted his thoughts. He did not offer a solution; he responded to the people in a thread.

The next day, he sent another tweet asking people to read the executive order and give him feedback so that he could take their advice to the president and seek the advisory council’s consensus. This tweet accomplished two things. First, asking people why they were upset and asking them for the specifics showed that he was listening. Second, his response put him in a position to help make a change. It gave the people an advocate inside the White House. Suddenly, it made sense why Elon Musk was at the president’s table—to create change from within the establishment.

Elon Musk is very proactive with his brand. He has one mission in life, and that is “To save the world.” He can join Trump’s economic team because he is trying to save the world. He can dig tunnels, launch rockets, and talk about autonomous vehicles and guaranteed minimum income. He can do all of these things because at the end of the day they fit with his personal brand the guy who is trying to save the world. People can clearly see what he is about, and this leads to forgiveness. When Elon Musk does something that seems questionable, people will stop and ask themselves what they’ve missed, trusting that since Musk is always focused on saving the world, he must be doing so now.

Kalanick quit Trump’s economic team in response to the negative feedback, but Musk did not. In theory, Kalanick and Uber should have looked like superstars for signing the amicus brief in a Washington state court, opposing President Trump’s executive order on immigration. Another thing Kalanick did that Musk did not do was to negotiate. Kalanick joined the team, then condemned the team, then seemingly broke up the protest to make money, then wanted to give money away, and then quit the advisory council, leaving everyone to conclude they had no idea of Kalanick’s true intentions. This demonstrates how people with influence can give in to pressure in order to avoid conflict, yet end up appearing disconnected from the problem—and from their audience.

Kalanick immediately addressed the claim that Uber had a sexist culture. He brought people on board to help, hired a top-notch consulting firm, fired an executive, and launched a full-scale probe into the allegations. Let’s look at the words that ultimately made his statement ineffective:

“ I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey, our new chief human resources officer, to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber—and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired .”

The use of the word I instead of we appears egocentric, while the use of Uber instead of we is not inclusive. The claim that this is the first time Kalanick had heard about the issue may seem false to many because he has not established trust in how he treats others and how others feel about him. The investigation and threat to fire current employees suggests that the CEO trusts the former employee’s statement more than he trusts the people who currently work for him.

Musk and Tesla had a different approach to the lawsuit for sexual harassment and discrimination. In the statement Tesla made to TechCrunch, I have highlighted what the company did right:

“Tesla is committed to creating a positive workplace environment that is free of discrimination for all our employees . Ms. Vandermeyden joined Tesla in a sales position in 2013, and since then, despite having no formal engineering degree, she has sought and moved into successive engineering roles, beginning with her work in Tesla’s paint shop and eventually another role in General Assembly. Even after she made her complaints of alleged discrimination, she sought and was advanced into at least one other new role, evidence of the fact that Tesla is committed to rewarding hard work and talent, regardless of background. When Ms. Vandermeyden first brought her concerns to us over a year ago, we immediately retained a neutral third party, Anne Hilbert of EMC2Law, to investigate her claims so that, if warranted, we could take appropriate action to address the issues she raised. After an exhaustive review of the facts, the independent investigator determined that Ms. Vandermeyden’s ‘claims of gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation have not been substantiated.’ Without this context, the story presented in the original article is misleading.”

Notice that the word free (of discrimination) is used here, instead of against or similar oppositional words. Our employees signifies unity within the company. The employee’s story was told in its entirety, from the moment she was hired to the present. Tesla admits to having heard her complaints and explains the action that was taken. Instead of deciding on an action immediately, Tesla brought in a neutral lawyer to investigate the employee’s claims, so that if they turned out to be true, the necessary action could be taken. The employee’s name is mentioned multiple times in the statement. The last line provides the full context, implying that the story would be inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading without it.

As Kalanick was caught screaming at an Uber driver who was complaining about the way Uber treats and pays drivers, Musk was taking marketing advice from a fifth-grader, proving once again that listening and genuinely responding is the wise approach. Later, Kalanick emailed the following message to his internal team and then republished it to his company blog:

“By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video where I treated an Uber driver disrespectfully. To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away. It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it. I want to profoundly apologize to Fawzi, as well as the driver and rider community, and to the Uber team.”

In this memo to his team and to the world, Kalanick admits that he is wrong, that he does not know why he did what he did, and that he has failed as leader. The problem with this approach is that he has delivered the same message to two different entities, suggesting that it is not personal or genuine. It reminds me of the advice my younger brother once gave me about Snapchat. “Cynthia, don’t add your snap to your story and then send me the same one,” he said. “It doesn’t make me feel special.” My brother was right: individual snaps are like personal messages. They are only valuable to people when they are clearly for their eyes only.

A few days after Kalanick’s rant to the Uber driver went viral, employees at a Tesla factory in Fremont, California, complained of a terrible work environment, injuries, and insane schedules. Following is the response from Elon Musk:

“No words can express how much I care about your safety and well-being. It breaks my heart when someone is injured building cars and trying their best to make Tesla successful. Going forward, I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me, without exception. I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well, so that I can understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better. I will then go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform. This is what all managers at Tesla should do as a matter of course. At Tesla, we lead from the front line, not from some safe and comfortable ivory tower. Managers must always put their team’s safety above their own.”

Elon Musk does not explain why the injuries happened, deny that they happened, or blame the employees. Instead, he assumes responsibility, creates a plan to meet with and listen to employees individually, offers to do their job so that he can see the issues firsthand, and places the responsibility on company managers to follow in his footsteps. His message reflects his core mission—“To save the world”—beginning with making sure that employees understand that he does not merely see them as numbers or problems but as individuals. Does he actually believe this? Who knows? But his brand leads us to believe he does.

Uber’s response to underpaying their drivers was to email each driver. Below is a copy of the email that was posted in a Recode article:18

In contrast, here is Tesla’s response to firing the female employee who claimed sexual harassment

“Despite repeatedly receiving special treatment at the expense of others, Ms. Vandermeyden nonetheless chose to pursue a miscarriage of justice by suing Tesla and falsely attacking our company in the press. After we carefully considered the facts on multiple occasions and were absolutely convinced that Ms. Vandermeyden’s claims were illegitimate, we had no choice but to end her employment at Tesla.”

The one thing Musk and Tesla understood that Kalanick and Uber did not was that Musk and Tesla were one and the same to the public and their stakeholders. Tesla had to respond with the same attention to detail as Musk would. Your personal brand impacts everything you do. The companies you work for, your family, the organizations you join, the schools you attend, and so on. So when Uber sent out a tweet, Kalanick was also accountable. When he yelled on camera to an Uber driver, the company went on public trial along with him.

Kalanick stepped down as CEO at Uber. Tesla became the most valuable car manufacturer in the United States, surpassing Ford and General Motors, even while operating at a loss. CNBC has reported that Tesla burned through $1.2 billion of operating capital in 2017, just as Musk raised another $1.8 billion ($300 million more than expected) in funding.19

This outcome shows that investors, stakeholders, executives, and even the average consumer are all starting to see the power of an idea backed by a great story and a strong personal brand. We’ve examined the differences in the actions of both Musk and Kalanick and discovered that their business choices were not always divergent. It was the way they acted proactively or reactively that had the greatest impact on their individual outcomes.