610: 3 Lessons from the Luxury Brand Playbook to Create Instant Credibility and Massive Executive Presence

What if the biggest lesson for your executive presence is not coming from the boardroom, but from luxury brands like Hermes, Ferrari, and Rolex? Welcome back to Speak Up now, proudly the top 1% of all podcast worldwide. And that's in addition to being number one in the business communication category. But here is where we help high performing introvert leaders, including you social introverts, turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes. Because being brilliant does not automatically make you influential. I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator, executive presence strategist, and Godmother. And by the end of this short episode, you will know three luxury branding principles that instantly elevate executive presence and strengthen leadership credibility. Ways subtle communication habits shape how others perceive your expertise. How to create confidence and trust so your ideas receive attention, influence, and the recognition they deserve. Have you ever wondered why someone will happily spend $18,000 on an Hermes Birkenbag? Yes, I looked it up and the price of Birkenbag, which is a purse for those of you who don't know, ranges between $10,000 and $30,000, but some even go up to half a million dollars. But anyway, let's take a $15,000 leather purse or you could have a $89 leather purse. That would hold the exact same phone, the same wallet, the same car keys, your sunglasses, or why someone waits and waits for the opportunity to buy a Rolex when your Apple Watch is objectively more accurate. Luxury brands have fascinated me for years, not because I will ever spend the equivalent of a nice used Honda Civic on a handbag. But some people will. But the truth is that luxury brands understand something about human psychology that applies just as much to your career and my career as it does to handbags, watches, and sports cars. So today I'm going to borrow three lessons from the world's greatest luxury brands, because executive presence is not nearly as different from luxury branding as you might think, even if you're the most down to earth person. Eight years ago, I actually recorded an episode on luxury brands and at the time I was talking about marketing or so I thought, but now looking back, I went to another look at it and I was really talking about executive presence. Because luxury brands don't just manufacture products, they manufacture expectations and a vision and an experience. Before anyone ever touches a Ferrari or walks into a Ritz Carlton or carries a Louis Vuitton suitcase, they already expect excellence. That's powerful because expectations shape experience. And actually I live in South Carolina and this is where they have BMW manufacturing plants and those BMW, the brand leaders, they expect to have the young people have their car on their wish list from the time they're 18. They want a teenager to be dreaming about having a BMW one day. Anyway, the same thing happens in leadership because you speak in the meeting, people have expectations. Are you strategic? Are you calm? Are you prepared? Are you worth listening to? Executive presence is largely the management of those precise expectations. So what can we learn? Three lessons. Number one, luxury brands never apologize for their price. You would never see an Hermes ad saying, we know this purse is very expensive, but here's why. Or Ferrari does not explain itself. Rolex doesn't do a comparison with Timex to show why it's worth it. No, luxury assumes value. Now think about how many leaders unintentionally do the opposite. Oh, sorry. Oh, this may be a stupid question. I'm not an expert. I just want to throw something out there. All of those apologies. Tell people, oh, lower your expectation. And folks, I know some of you are thinking, hey, Laura, but you've told me to speak when it's not my area of expertise. Yes, you're right, but that still doesn't mean you have to apologize. You can ask from the point of view of your expertise in another domain. In any case, nobody is expecting perfection. What executives do assume is that you're going to take responsibilities that you're not going to apologize. You're going to recommend. You're not going to hedge. You're going to clarify. Instead of saying, maybe we could, the executive version is, my recommendation is blah, blah, blah. Small difference, massive difference, and perception. Lesson number two, luxury brands create scarcity. You know that there's a waiting list to get one of these $30,000 Birken bags, right? Part of what makes luxury feel luxurious is that it isn't available everywhere. You can't walk into Costco and accidentally leave with a Ferrari. Luxury is not trying to be for everyone. Now, I'm not saying to stop showing up at work, but do notice something. The top senior executives rarely are the ones who speak the most, but they're very deliberate. They don't interrupt. Some might, but as a rule, the best ones don't feel every silence. They are not meeting dominators. They don't answer every single question right away, because they understand something that psychologists call signal value. And that's when something is rare, people assume it matters. And the same thing applies to communication. If you contribute 12 comments in a meeting, people probably aren't going to remember any of them. But if you contribute one insightful observation and unexpected question that changes the discussion, that's what they remember. You're thinking your I can hear you say, "Laura, but I don't know what that insightful thing is." You start looking for it, and if you seek, you're going to find it. Most of the time, executive presence is not about speaking more, but it's about making each contribution more valuable. All right, lesson number three. Luxury brands obsess over tiny details. You've all been in an Apple store, or maybe you've been in a four seasons hotel, the lighting, the music, the way they greet you, the uniforms, the typography, the packaging, even the rites in Paris, they have their own signature room fragrance. But you can smell it in the lobby, but it's like, you can't buy it. But none of these details, even the sum of which, it's not that's why you pay more, is that they collectively create this experience. And so executive presence works exactly the same way. It's not one big magical skill. It's dozens of tiny signals like your posture, how you introduce yourself, whether you answer a question before giving context, whether your slides look clean, whether you pause, whether your emails require three follow-up questions or none. Each detail can seem insignificant, but together they make up your leadership brand. Now, here's the interesting part. Luxury brands are not selling the leather or the steel or the tires, the hotel rooms, they're selling confidence. Confidence that the experience will match the expectation. And that's what senior leaders are buying when they promote someone. They're not promoting the smartest person, they're promoting the person that's not going to disappoint them, the one they believe can be trusted with bigger problems. So it's belief, it's perception, it's expectation. That is why he's been so much of time teaching executive presence, not because appearance is more important than substance. But just Mark Andreessen, he's a top VC investor at the founder of Netscape, he says strategy is story and story is strategy. And the same thing, your executive narrative, like I've mentioned in other podcasts is your brand and the way you show up, including how you dress, but other, a million other things too, all of that that they all work together. So people experience your substance through your communication, which is just an umbrella term for all the signals you're giving out. And if that communication creates confidence, your expertise gets noticed. If it creates uncertainty or if it's just ignored, it does not. Again, it's not how do I sound more impressive. It's like what are the expectations I am creating even before I open my mouth? Because just like luxury brands, your executive presence is built long before people evaluate the product. It's the sum of every interaction, every meeting, every update, every presentation, every conversation. It's an accumulation. So if you upgrade 1% every year, every time in a year, I think it's a 35% improvement. You can do the math, but it's massive over time. If this episode is making you think differently about executive presence, you might want to share it with someone, it's not about becoming a super chatty person in order to have more value. Sometimes you simply need to communicate your value like luxury brands do consistently, intentionally, and with quiet confidence. And if this episode has made you realize that executive presence is not about working harder, but managing expectations, you might want to check out the executive presence scorecard assessment is linked in the show notes. It will help you pinpoint exactly where you're strong in executive presence and where you're not, where your opportunities are. So you know where to focus. Just head to the show notes and click the first link and take that assessment. And then you'll have a personalized starting point for building the executive presence. Your expertise deserves. Have a fantastic and glorious day, and I will catch you on the next episode. (upbeat music)