329. Your Brand is Your Promise: The 4 C’s for Better Communication

Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques

In this episode, host Matt Abrahams interviews social entrepreneur and KIND Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky about the communication frameworks that drive bridge-building across societal divides. Lubetzky introduces

Key takeaways

• Daniel Lubetzky defines builders as individuals who consciously choose to elevate humanity daily, warning that divisive media algorithms easily trap people into destroyer mindsets.
• The four Cs framework—curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage—serves as Lubetzky's toolkit for both launching KIND Snacks and founding the Builders Movement.

Main topics

• Builder vs destroyer mindset
• The four Cs of communication

Notable quotes

"A brand is a promise. And a great brand is a promise well kept."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable frameworks for authentic communication, bran

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) All communication is about building connections and relationships. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Speaker 1 (0:17) Today, I am excited to speak with Daniel Lubetzky. He's a pioneering social entrepreneur and the founder of Kind Snacks. He leverages his unique background in Stanford Law Education to bridge deep societal divides, most recently launching the Builders Movement to empower citizens to overcome toxic polarization. Daniel is a bestselling author of Do the Kind Thing and a full-time investor on TV's Shark Tank. He's launching his own podcast called Build or Break. Well, welcome, Daniel. I am a lover of your kind bars. My pantry is full of them. And I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Thanks for being here. Speaker 2 (0:56) I'm so happy to be here, Matt. Thanks for having me. Speaker 1 (0:58) Excellent. Shall we get started? Absolutely. You distinguish between builders and destroyers. Can you define these for us? And what role does communication play in that? Speaker 2 (1:10) You know, my father was a Holocaust survivor. So my entire life or since I remember, I've been trying to build bridges to prevent what happened to him from happening again to other people. And what I've learned is that every one of us has a choice every single morning, every single day in how we look at other people and how we act. And we can either deny the humanity of others and then proceed to try to divide, destroy, demolish, diminish. Or you can choose to... wake up in the morning and think, how can I make this a better world? How can I build together? How can I try to elevate humanity? How can I unite and solve problems together? And then you're a builder. And it's a choice that all of us have every day in how we live our lives, whether we're going to try to solve problems together or tear each other apart. And it seems very logical because when I just shared this message, probably 99 % of your listeners agree, but it's very easy for us to be fall prey to social media algorithms. to divisive media, to divisive politicians, to foreign influences, to divisive rhetoric, to divisive curricula that frames things as victim versus oppressor. And that makes us think that it's us versus them. And the natural proclivity over the last many years has been to think that we are in our own tribe rather than all of us being human. What does communication play into? It is the most important framework. for us to think and communicate our ideas. So without it, we have nothing. I Speaker 1 (2:41) appreciate that distinction and that it is a choice. And communication forms the foundation, as you said, to help us to break down those walls and build those bridges. You've defined four Cs that compromise a builder's mindset. Can you share what these are and how can we actively cultivate them? in our daily interactions and in the way we present ourselves in the world. Speaker 2 (3:07) Yeah. As you know, Matt, I found it kind that health is not a company that you like, but I've also built a lot of civic movements in the Middle East between Arabs and Israelis, Palestinians and Israelis working together in the United States, the Builders Movement, which is what this pin is about, to try to join forces against extremism and towards solving problems. What I started realizing as the same toolkit and the same mindset that helped me build kind is the same toolkit that helped me build movements and community and it's the four c's are curiosity compassion creativity and courage curiosity to not assume that you have all the answers to search truth to want to always be proven right or wrong so that you can always learn and grow and develop the best ideas for how to build the next snack or the best solution for homelessness. So curiosity is about the search for truth, the search for commonality, which also leads us to compassion, to the ability to put yourself in other people's shoes, not just because it's the kind thing to do, but because then you can understand where the other person's coming and then you can navigate differences and come up with solutions. Creativity to think outside the box. And the courage to take leadership roles and to do things that might sometimes be uncomfortable to say what needs to be said in a constructive way to try to solve problems together. Speaker 1 (4:28) We can be so busy and get so absorbed that giving ourselves that little bit of grace and time really can make a difference. I appreciate that. In your work you have done in bridge building, in building businesses, what communication tools do you recommend or have you found can really help? Keep the conversation moving forward, especially when you see people slipping more into what you call that destroyer mindset that's dividing more than bringing together. Speaker 2 (4:56) Probably the most important is listening, is the ability for you to, which is very hard for all of us and particularly for me to do. I always want to share and I like to hear my voice and I have ideas and I think I know where people are going. As you know, I'm launching a podcast called Build or Break, interviewing some of the most extraordinary people from Matthew McConaughey to Mark Cuban, from Kendra Scott to Lucia Harish, across the spectrum of business, artistry, geographies, demographies. And definitely, definitely the hardest skill for me has been to learn to listen. And I'm enjoying Build or Break. Because it's so challenging for me to not be the interviewee where I can go everywhere else and you're the one that has to keep the train running. So listening, I think, is an incredibly powerful skill. And even the use of pauses when you're speaking, that negative space very often creates a lot of positivity. So I think the use of pauses is very important. I think more broadly in terms of the communications tools that I would recommend to others is first and foremost, as much as possible, practice, practice, practice. In Build or Break, one of the things that has become very clear to me is that all of the most extraordinary people tried a bunch of things that didn't work,