Why Authenticity Will Be Your Edge in 2025: Embracing the Human-Centric Approach

Why Authenticity Will Be Your Edge in 2025: Embracing the Human-Centric Approach

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 185 of the business development podcast. And in today's episode, we're chatting all about the human centric approach and how inserting more of yourself. We'll help you stand out in 2025 and beyond stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 185 of the business development podcast. My gosh, 185 episodes. It blows my mind. It won't be long now until we'll be crossing our 200th episode guys. And let me just say it is an absolute honor to be here.

It is my pleasure to show up week over week, month over month, and nearly year over year. Doing this show with you for you. It is a pleasure. It is an honor. And I just want to thank each and every one of you for supporting this show, for helping me to stay motivated to keep coming back week over week to do this.

Never saw this coming guys. Talked about it on the show. Plenty of times, never saw podcasting to be, you know, an avenue that I would explore as just a lowly business development rep. But yeah, it's come a long way as we approach 200 episodes. I think we've done a lot of good in this world. And I hope that we can continue to educate and inspire for many, many, many more episodes.

Today, I want to chat all about the human centric approach and how we have to go back to leap forward. I am absolutely pumped about this episode, guys. It's been one that I've wanted to do for a while. Really. We've talked about it on the show a lot about how we need to be more human, how we need to bring humanity back into this, how authenticity is the way forward.

And we are absolutely going to chat about that today and how authenticity and being human can be the secret to standing out here in 2025 and beyond. But before we do, I want to do a show update guys. We are sitting at 223, 000. Thousand downloads. We have 2,957 followers on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and that is growing all the time.

Appreciate it guys. We are at 21 months, 21 months of the Business Development podcast. We are. Three months away right now from our two year anniversary of the show. I can't even believe it. I really can't. It's hard to believe we have come a long way in those two years. And man, it's been a, it's been a ride for those of you who are new to the show.

We try to do a community questions episode once per month. This is my ability to connect with you, my incredible rockstars my amazing BDP audience. Where we can hopefully do one on one coaching sessions, essentially with our audience. You guys all have incredible, amazing questions. The funny thing is I get a lot of people who are reluctant to send questions and they say, well, you know, I don't want to seem stupid or I don't want to, I don't want to feel like it's a silly question.

And guys, the answer to this is there are no silly questions. If podcasting, business development, or business in general, the odds are that there are. Thousands of people just like you out there with that very same question. There are no stupid questions. We are first name only, unless you give me permission to use your full name.

I don't want to put anybody on the spot. I don't want to highlight anybody unless you are prepared to be highlighted. And so if you send me a community question, understand, I will keep you first name only anonymous, unless you give me permission to use your full name and tag you. I will do so if you give me permission to do so.

Otherwise. Feel free to submit whatever question you want and it will come through essentially anonymous. So you don't have to feel like I'm I'm standing you out in a crowd. We are currently still taking questions guys for our November community questions episode. You can submit those to podcast@capitalbd.ca. That is podcast@capitalbd.ca. And guys, if you enjoy this episode, I'm excited about this one. Every once in a while, an episode comes up and I'm really excited to have that conversation. And this is definitely one of them. And if you enjoy this episode, please do share it with a friend, family member, colleague.

There are a lot of people out there, guys, who would benefit from this show. So feel free to spread this thing word of mouth. That is really how podcasts grow. They grow the best through referrals and word of mouth. And so I sure appreciate it when you guys do that for the business development podcast.

And for those of you, once again, who are new to the show, please do follow us on LinkedIn. Business development podcast has its own LinkedIn page. I Kelly Kennedy have my own LinkedIn page. We. We definitely keep most of the stuff going on around the show up to date on LinkedIn. And so if you're looking for kind of the latest news on the business development podcast, who our upcoming guests are, things like that, you can absolutely, absolutely find it on LinkedIn.

 Join the conversation there. And I very much look forward to seeing you. Okay, let's just get into it guys. If 2023 was the year of AI and 2024 was the year of personal branding, I genuinely believe that 2025 will be the year of the human centric approach. Guys, we've been seeing the trend bending back towards authenticity and humans for a while.

It's funny when I got into the show, I didn't really know much about AI. I was really introduced to chat, GPT and AI at the start of this show. I hadn't even used it. When, when the very first episode of the business development podcast came out, I had not even used chat GPT yet.

That's how like, that's how like new this has been, but it's funny how it's just like crept into everything from show production to editing to social posts. AI is in absolutely everything. And it's funny because it's like on a certain level, we've gone so far into that AI world that As humans, we're really, like, craving genuine, authentic human connection, genuine, authentic human posts.

And so the idea for this episode really came from just a realization in myself that I was missing genuine, authentic human connection, right? You know I almost hate to admit it, but the reality is in almost every single social post that I have made nearly since the beginning of this show, AI has played some sort of role.

It started out very small and now it's kind of gone to a point where it's like It's very substantial. And so I actually made some posts last week on LinkedIn and I intentionally wrote them myself and I said it in it. This post was written by Kelly Kennedy. Look, mom, no hands. I was, I was genuinely just trying to see my gosh, can I still write a post?

Can I still. Communicate myself without the help of AI, because like, don't get me wrong, AI is incredible. Communicating using AI is incredible, but you can tell, like, it just doesn't feel authentic. It's almost too perfect. It almost does too good of a job. And there's a certain level of, there's a certain something that I feel I've lost in my ability to communicate like Kelly, like Kelly Kennedy.

And so, I made a post last week and I just said, Hey, look, Ma, no hands. This is Kelly Kennedy actually writing this post. There's no AI in this post. I included a picture. Guys, that post blew up. That post was like probably my highest engagement post all year thus far. And then I did one similarly after it and same thing.

We are craving, genuinely craving human, real human connection, real human interaction. We are. I believe we are getting AI'd out and I'm not saying the AI isn't incredible. It absolutely is. I still use AI on a daily basis. I use it for research. I use it to ask questions back and forth. I use it for literally Googling.

Basically, we use it for a lot of stuff now, but guys, you know, one of the things that I think we need to focus on. focus back in on in 2025 and beyond is how do we insert more of ourself back into our communication styles. And so today I just wanted to chat about the human centric approach. I genuinely think guys, businesses that approach a more human centric approach in 2025 and beyond are going to stand out and not just stand out a little stand out by leaps and bounds.

But before we do that, some of you are asking what the heck, Kelly, is the human centric approach? Human centric is a philosophy and approach that puts human needs, values, and experiences at the forefront of decision making, design, and development. It's about creating systems, products, services, and solutions that prioritize and respect the well being, emotions, and goals of people who interact with them, rather than focusing solely on profits, efficiency, or technological advancement.

Human Centric Approach asks, How does this benefit or impact people? In other words, in a world of AI and robots, we want to be treated like humans. Yeah, guys. I talked about this earlier, you know, last week. I just hit a wall with regards to my AI posts and I just said, my gosh, like there's got to be, there's got to be a better way to interact with people.

And yeah, kid you not guys, I did two things last week that I've not done since literally the introduction of AI. One, I wrote a couple of LinkedIn posts completely on my own by hand mistakes and all Kelly and all guys, I am not an English major. I did not, I did not go to university for writing or anything like that.

I am a business development specialist guys. Half the time. I'm probably lucky if I can type out a sentence properly, but I did it. I did it. I wrote it. It probably has spelling mistakes. It probably has grammar mistakes, but it was written by me completely from my heart, from my head, from my real hands.

Like this had zero AI and it sounds crazy. It sounds like, why is this the bar? Why is this the conversation that I, that I have to have today? But we do, we're all using an overusing AI to communicate with other people. And the funny thing is, is that. We don't really connect well with other people through AI messaging.

And I think we're realizing this. I genuinely think as like, as a community of humans, we're like, holy crap. AI is really cool, but. We're not really connecting with people when we are doing AI posts. Does this mean that I am done using AI in posts? No, absolutely not. What this means is, is that I am going to take an authentic approach to this.

I am going to do my darnedest to insert myself back into my posts, back into my social engagements as much as humanly possible. And yes, I think it would be a great challenge and I'm going to do my best to once a week from now on, at least write one post completely myself, mistakes and all Kelly humanity and all, and you will be able to tell they're very different posts.

They are incredibly different than the posts that are coming out from AI. Why? Okay. Because we don't write like AI, that's the funny thing. Humans don't write like AI. You can spot AI posts a thousand miles away. And you can spot a genuine human post a thousand miles away. And guess what? You connect better with genuine authentic human posts. Okay. I did something else last week that I have historically shied away from completely. Why? One, because I'm afraid of video too, because I get performance anxiety. And guys, I've tried to avoid video since the beginning of this show. I think it's pretty bloody obvious. I have an audio specific show.

On the one hand, I don't think that that's a bad thing. Why? Because I think most people listening to this show are busy executives, entrepreneurs, people doing lots of stuff who don't necessarily spend a lot of time watching video. I think a lot of people listen to podcast when they're driving in their car, when they're doing data entry, when they're doing something else, yard work, you name it.

We listen to this show. I genuinely believe that that is my audience. So for me, I haven't felt like it's been a huge loss that I haven't gone deep into video. However, however, understand that there's an underlying thing to this that is Kelly Kennedy and it is genuinely, and you know what, like, yeah, I'm a little bit embarrassed.

Sure. I'm a little bit embarrassed to say this video has scared me. Being that Real being right there to have that conversation. And that connection has been a scary thing for me. Obviously we've done clips for a long time, but clips still feel disconnected. Clips still feel like I'm having a conversation with another person.

You're kind of having that back and forth. It doesn't feel as vulnerable. Doing a genuine video, speaking to you, my rock stars or my audience on LinkedIn or whoever else I'm speaking to has genuinely felt like a pretty scary endeavor. Why? Because I don't want to look stupid. I don't want to look dumb. I get it.

I get the same fears as any one of you. The other hand is, You know, I didn't have the skills to do video video was never a skill set that I learned. And so I'm going down an endeavor with video now where I'm having to learn all the skills again. And yeah, that is scary. That is vulnerable. I have performance anxiety.

I have stage fright. Believe me, these are things that are like, Oh my gosh. However, it is the next evolution for me, Kelly Kennedy. It is that fear that I need to face in this moment. And I recognize that it has been the fear that has been holding me back the most in this journey, in this journey of not just the business development podcast, but my journey as a business development specialist, as Kelly Kennedy, it has held me back.

My fear of video has held me back. And so, I went to the store last week, guys, and I bought a really fancy DJI Osmo Pocket 3 camera, and I recorded my very first video speaking to you, my rock stars, my audience, and I just put it out there. I really did. It was just me and Jett. And I put that video out there and it's the first of many guys.

And I said that, and that video got a whole bunch of engagement too. And I also hand wrote the caption and post that went along with that video. If you guys want to see what this is, just hop on over to LinkedIn. You'll be able to find it there either under the business development podcast or me, Kelly Kennedy.

But understand we all have those things that are holding us back. But the funny thing about video guys, and the thing about video in 2025 is I genuinely think it's a great way. To build a genuine, authentic human to human connection with your audience, with your clients, with your customers. I think it genuinely is the way forward.

It's just, if you're like me and you've struggled with it, I can totally understand your fears. I can totally understand you. You guys listening right now and saying, Kelly, I don't want to do video. I get it. I also didn't want to do video, but I recognize that for me, it has nothing to do with the fact that video is not going to be a great option because it is.

It's obvious. Video connection is a great option for connecting with your audience. We just have to get past our own fears of it, our own fears of inadequacy, our own fears in general, they're typically what are holding us back from that genuine, authentic connection that we need to make. It's the same reason that we're using AI.

Could we hand write it? Of course, but we feel like, well, if I use AI to do it, I at least know there won't be any mistakes or I can at least hide. I have a degree of separation, right? We get a degree of separation with AI in the communication. We absolutely do. But in that degree of separation, we're actually losing a bit of our authenticity.

We're losing our humanity in that connection, in that dialogue. Guys, the the video and the the the handwritten posts, I did those on purpose and it wasn't just to challenge myself. It was, it was to inspire you guys to do the same. It was to literally practice what I preach. I know from the beginning of the show, I told you guys I was going to be honest.

I was going to tell you the truth. I was going to be as authentic as I possibly could be on this show. And It's very hard to be truly authentic if you are unwilling to communicate authentically, right? If you are unwilling to communicate as yourself. And so, you know, we're going to get into it today.

We're going to talk a little bit about the human centric approach, but before I do, I want to challenge each one of you listening this week. I don't care when you find this episode, 2028, whatever. If you have not communicated authentically without the use of AI, without, you know, without some type of medium separating you from your audience, from your clients, from the people that you want to communicate with, I want you to genuinely do one of two things this week.

I want you to take an authentic video of yourself, and I want you Talking about something you're passionate about, talking about something that you want to have a conversation about or that you want to start a conversation about that you want to maybe inspire people with or that you want to educate people on.

Just take a video of yourself and put it out to the world. And if that is too much, I want you to type out a post. I want you to genuinely fully write your own post, whether that's talking about your business, whether that's talking about yourself, and maybe that's talking about a life challenge or something you've had.

I want you to genuinely hand write out a post without the help of AI. And just watch. Just watch, watch the engagement you get, watch the comments you get. I think you're going to be surprised people connect with that level of authenticity. And I think as we move into 2025, and literally like near 100 percent of the posts you're seeing are written by AI or generated by AI with little to know.

Real human engagement behind it. You are going to essentially be a shining light in a sea of darkness. I genuinely believe that, guys. I really do. I think as we move into 2025, the need for human written content, the need for genuine human interaction through a video, through something that really AI can't do the same as a person at this point in time, I genuinely think it's going to be the way to stand out guys in 2025 and beyond.

We genuinely have to go back to go forward. And you know, I talked about it, guys. Some of you know, like I've struggled a lot with video. It's not a format that I've used personally or on the podcast. I avoided it for as long as I humanly could. And yeah, a lot of it is. I struggle with perfectionism. You know, I've talked about on the show a lot.

I, I win at a lot of things I take on. Why? Because I hate losing. Like I just, I do what it takes. And part of that has really led me to be a bit of a perfectionist with things. Although I've gotten better at it, I've gotten better at just putting things out there in the world and realizing that most of the time it just works out for the best, but I think video has shown flaws, for instance, that I just have been reluctant to show to the world.

It really kind of pulls out that performance anxiety and stage fright. So. I want you guys to understand. I get nervous too. The idea of video freaks me out. However, I cannot, I can no longer let that fear hold me back. Because guess what guys? Fear is funny. I struggled with these same fears when I started the podcast.

But when I faced them and I learned audio editing and I put myself out there and I released these shows. Guys, I told you episode three was nearly the end of the business development podcast. I was literally that afraid, episode three was nearly the end. It could have been the end of the show, but guys, I faced my fears.

I put it out there and we are now at 185 episodes of this recording. That could not have happened if I would not have faced my fears. And let me tell you what I started out not knowing a thing about audio editing. Now I can create incredible audio. I can turn horrible audio for the most part into pretty decent, listenable audio.

Could I do that in the beginning? Absolutely not. But over time I learned the skills and I will learn the skills with video. You will too. I will learn to type out great posts. You will too. You will too. This is the thing. We just have to do it. We just have to take that leap, put ourselves out there, be vulnerable.

You will be surprised. Some of you might be wondering, those posts I talked about, that I did, that I hand wrote out, did they do okay? Absolutely! Guys, those posts that I hand wrote out, that video that I put out there of me, So far, they've gotten almost more attention than any show that I've put out to date in 2024.

Think about that. Think about that. The only thing I did differently in this was I didn't use AI to write the post. I wrote the post. I took a video of myself and put it out there in the world. It was authentic. It was Kelly Kennedy. There was no faking it. Mistakes. Flaws and all. But guess what? Mistakes.

Flaws and all are not robots, are they? It's not ai, is it? We can stand out in 20 24, 20 25 and beyond by inserting humanity, by being vulnerable, by being flawed, by just being you. That is the secret. That is the secret to standing out. Those posts got more likes, more comments. They started genuine conversations.

They created genuine connection. It was engagement through human centric approach, guys. Human centric approach is going to be the key forward in 2025 and beyond. How can we use human centric approach to stand out in 2025? One, we have to understand and address the audience needs, okay? We have to research what matters most to our audience.

We need to speak to our audience in a way that they will care about, that matters to them. We need to create content that speaks to goals, challenges, and values, okay? We gotta speak to them. To our audience in a way they actually care about. We need to provide real value to them. We got to give them something they actually want. Two.

We need to provide value over promotion. We need to focus on sharing helpful insights, solution or inspiration guys from the beginning with this show. I just wanted to provide value. I wanted to educate and inspire the next generation of people who have to develop businesses. Why? Because that information should be available to people.

I don't want businesses to needlessly fail. I want people to have resources available to them. And from the very beginning with this show, I focused on benefiting my audience and building trust. I focused on sharing helpful insights, solutions, or inspiration. And I still aim to do that with every show.

And by doing that, we are automatically engaging with our audience and providing value that keeps them coming back week over week, month over month, year over year. Three, we have to show authenticity and transparency. Guys, this is the part we struggle with the most. We struggle with it because we get vulnerable.

We're afraid of what people will think of us. But I think you'll be surprised. I think you'll be surprised of the support you will find in the community when you start being authentic and transparent. I really do. Share real stories, share your successes, share your challenges and share your failures.

Guys, we connect with flaws. We are flawed as human beings. We are flawed. None of us are perfect. I don't care if you have a 500 million company, you have flaws. There are things about you that are not perfect, and we as humans can connect with those things. What we don't connect with is perfection, which is what's funny.

The thing we struggle with as humans the most to connect with is perfection, because we are all imperfect in one way or another. And so stop trying to hide the flaws. Stop trying to hide behind perfection. Stop trying to be something that is damn near impossible to be. And just be yourself. Share yourself.

Share your challenges. Share your flaws. You will be surprised about what happens. Absolutely. You will be surprised. Authenticity matters. fosters a strong emotional connection. Mark my words. Number four. We need to encourage interaction and two way communication. Don't leave comments unanswered. Like how many of you are putting posts out there and just walking away?

Guys, stop doing that. When someone comments, respond back in an authentic, thoughtful, honest way. If they give you a paragraph, give them back two paragraphs. Start real conversations with these people. Genuinely create connection, invite your followers to share their own stories and photos, encourage two way communication, encourage a story to be created, build a community and give your supporters a voice.

Guys, if you have a platform, if you have a social platform, if you have a podcast. Give your community someplace where they too can truly participate. For us guys, it's on LinkedIn. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us on Instagram. I encourage conversation. I encourage comments. And if you leave me a comment, I genuinely will write back to you and it will not be a bot.

It will be me, Kelly Kennedy, authentically responding and starting a communication with you. Number five, be relatable and use friendly conversational tone. Okay. Stop trying to be so perfect. We're all human. You can speak like a human. You can type like a human. You can interact in a relatable, friendly, conversational tone.

Real images, real video, natural conversations. Prioritize relatability and accessibility over perfection. In 2025, we have to go back to go forward. Prioritize authenticity over the status quo. Relationships over ego and human centric approach over AI. And let's build a future that we can all be proud of.

Shout outs this week. Billy Martin, Colin Harms, Shawn Neels, Deanna Kean, Emily Rushworth, Jason Michaud, Tash Jefferies, Tim Lynn, Aaron Haberman, Gary Ridge, Daniel Sonnenberg, Connor Nichols, Steve Austin, Gary Noseworthy. Jaswin Singh, AmirAbbas Mirakhorloo, Bryan Hayes, Corey Seller, Marie Soprovich, Melanie Whittingham, Jesse Schewchuck, Jory Evans, Jemiah Zagiel, Jamar Jones, Marcus Chan, David Fair, Jayson Chakkalakal, Lauren Graff, Mindy Kay McRae Broadbent, Vyjayan Swaminathan, William Silva, and Susan Poseika. Until next time, this has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.