How to build an amazing personal brand

Ash Jones, Founder & Claudia Cardinali, Storyteller at Great Influence
A strong personal brand is something people say you need all the time, but rarely tell you how. That's where Ash and Claudia come in.

In the world of today, personal branding is the key to marketing yourself and growing your business. What makes it crucial is its ability to literally transform your business.

However, there is a lot of confusion, doubt, and fear around the entire concept of personal branding.

For this reason, we invited Ash Jones and Claudia Cardinali, the rising stars of the marketing industry and personal branding experts, to speak with us today.

Ash Jones is from the founding team of Social Chains, a giant business powered by professional marketers like Ash.

He left Social Chains to start his own company, Great Influence, in 2018, which has proved to be a massive success, hence endorsing his personal branding skills.

In this talk, Ash and Claudia disclose their top 7 strategies for personally branding yourself online.

Building a Life-Changing Personal Brand

People often think that personal branding is only for those who are the Stephen Bartletts of the world, but that’s not true.

You do not need to be a superhero to build your own personal brand.

For many “everyday” people, LinkedIn plays a great role in building an effective personal brand for them.

According to Claudia, LinkedIn is the most powerful tool one could use for self-branding.
She explains how LinkedIn has done wonders for her and how opportunities have knocked on her door, one after another, by remaining consistent with the platform.

It is important to note here that building a personal brand has the power to not only change your life, but also the lives of others around you.

Ash talks about his experience of working with Stephen Bartlett and how Stephen’s personal brand opened doors for him to start his own venture.

According to Ash, influence is a product of two elements:

  • Word of mouth
  • Networking

In personal branding, you work on not only engaging with your existing audience, but also strive to reach out to new audience, simultaneously.

According to Ash, “perception” is what helped him get more leads via personal branding.

To define it in a better way, he gives an example of a book by Daniel Priestley, “Key People of Influence,” which says:

In every industry, there are key people of influence

  • Their names come up in conversations
  • They attract more opportunities
  • They earn more money

To build your personal brand, it takes courage and bravery. Therefore, only 1% people self-brand themselves, and they attract 90% of audience and opportunities out there.

Personal branding works on the following formula:

Social Proofing + noise

Without good work, you’ll be left with useless noise.
On the other hand, without noise, you’ll be left with work that no one really knows about.

What You Really Need to Know about Building Your Own Amazing Personal Brand

The first and foremost thing you need to do is to ask yourself the reason behind you doing it.
Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why am I doing it?
  • What is my “why”?
  • What is the true force that really drives me to stay consistent with it?

Overcoming Fear:

This step is vital to take. It is necessary to overcome the insecurity and fear around personal branding, because these two elements can really stop you from transforming your business.

Pick 2-4 Things You Can Talk about Consistently:

Figure out 2-4 key things that intrigue you, and feel free to go on about them forever. In Ash’s case, he can talk consistently about:
– Great Influence
– Personal Branding

Equip Yourself with the Skills that Come in Hand:

For example, while working on LinkedIn, it is critical to know copywriting, researching, storytelling, and observation.
All these skills, in one way or another, really add up to the whole process of building a personal brand online.

Become a Better You:

This will go a long way for you and your business. Grow with time. It will enable you to sell better and gain a clear understanding of why you do what you do.

Play the Long Game:

Whatever you do, do it long-term. Make sure that you will be able to leverage from it in the long run.

The Danger on LinkedIn:

While LinkedIn can be an awesome tool for building your personal brand, it is important to not get trapped in the whole game of likes and comments. Don’t just do it for the numbers, do it for your brand.

One last thing that is important to remember here is that:

These strategies, if applied correctly, can LITERALLY change your life for the better!

Transcript

good morning, everyone. And welcome to yet another amazing webinar.

today our guests are Ash Jones and Claudia Cardinale.

Have great influence.

So I’ve known Ash for a while now, having been introduced by our mutual friend, Kelly Molson, the amazing Kelly Molson. yeah, she is incredible. Absolutely love it splits. Ashley’s one of those peoples whose achievements speak for themselves. he’s one of the founding teams, social chain, the agency, which was until recently led by the globally renowned Steven Bartlett and, was floated to become a public company earlier this year.

One of the things you will find from Ash is that he’s one of the most self-effacing people you will ever meet in a sense he’s the perfect personal brand builder, because it’s something he does so naturally. but he doesn’t actually necessarily seek the limelight himself, which in an era of marketing superstars and entrepreneurs is the new rock stars is actually really refreshing to just be around someone who’s.

There to help people in the, most genuine sense. I’m also really exciting to be sharing this morning with cloudier, who was ashes first ever hire? She is one of our industry’s rising stars. when it comes to personal branding, again, cloudier is and natural seemingly just quote unquote, getting it.

I’ve loved watching her journey. And while this is one of her first speaking gigs, I’ve no doubt. This will be the beginning of something special, in, the coming years, she absolutely someone I really admire today’s session on personal branding is relevant because we live in an era where we crave humanity more than ever.

So hiding behind a brand is a choice that you can make. But for my money, it’s the choice where you’re going to be missing out on a hell of a lot of opportunity. especially given the platforms that are available to us right now, whether you’re in the, SME space and you’re looking to build your clients list or your striving for something larger than that.

personal branding is an integral part of building a brand, for a company as well. And inevitably, this means that the future is no longer just a logo. It’s a series of faces, living consistent values. And today we’re going to explore that, today’s session will run as a presentation and then a Q and a, although now is the time to get your questions in, for those of you who haven’t attended a marketing meetup event before then, the line is that the.

Questions, which guests asked earlier on, generally speaking, the ones that get answered, because those are the ones that get the most thumbs up. So if you’ve got a question, get them in nice and early. and when you are in, the Q and a feature, use the thumbs up feature just so people can get the best questions to the top.

before we get going with the presentation, I just want to say a huge, thank you to the sponsors for enabling us to continue doing what we’re doing. we are coming towards like year end now and stuff like that. So I really need the community’s help in pushing how valuable these sponsors are, to, all of us in, enabling us to do what we can.

So I’ve made one ask of you, which is just please say thank you to the companies that were listed in the pre event email. There’ll be listed in the post event, email and will be mentioned now. So a huge thanks to content cow pitch fiver red gate came to Martin college Lee do brand. Further third light and human.

one ask is very simply just to say thank you. And then you can do that via LinkedIn, which hopefully you will be feeling very motivated to be using after today’s talk. so with all that said, and with the participant count, nearly clicking over to 300, asked Claudia it’s over to you.

Thanks for the kind words.

I think that’s the greatest intro that I’ve ever had in mind.

I do my best. I try.

Okay. Spoken the most will in here as well. Hello. Thank you. Thank you to me and Joe. Absolutely.

We love you.

yeah, so this, this is cloudy, his first webinar, I think as well. And it’s also Claudia’s birthday. So

happy birthday.

That’s amazing.

Let me pull up this presentation. cool. Hopefully this is working. You can see the screen, how to build an amazing personal brand. Okay. Usually introduction, I’m Ash and obviously cardio as well. And we run a business called great influence and great influence has been going since mid 2018.

And essentially we help CEOs and founders to build that personal brands. And there’s a few people, notable people that you may have heard of that we’ve helped. along the way in great influence and, prior to that as well. So Steven Bartlett, I’ve known Steve for, eight years now. We worked together as social chain and you’ll hear a bit later, but that was, my job at social team was, to help Stephen in building his personal brand, which has gone on to do amazing things.

And then Umar Kemani, who’s the CEO of pretty little thing that one of the UK is top fast fashion brands. Oliver Cookson. Who’s the founder of my protein, Julian Hearn. Who’s the, founder of fuel Don McGregor, who was the co-founder of social chain recently left alongside Steve, Sasha Lord. He’s the founder of part life and warehouse projects.

And Chris Donnelly, who is the founder and CEO. Of the brands. So you’re going to learn today. I feel like the market, these events and webinars are always really good because they’re a little bit different in the, they not only are interesting to watch, but you also take something away. So that’s, whenever I’ve done something with market and me, I’ve always tried to make it so that people will leave in a bad position to do the thing that we’re talking about today.

Then they arrived with. So hopefully that will. No PTA. and there’s two sections. Really. She thinks you’re going to learn firstly, how building a personal brand will change your life. And I know it’s only eight 30 in the morning, but it’s a very deep thing. This. Can change your life, ask anyone in here.

Who’s built a personal brand. That Joe is like a great example is probably changed Joe’s life for the better, just through pointing self out that more. And it’s helped build the market. And me and his personal brand is a huge reason why we’re all sat here today. And me personally. Personal branding has helped build my business has helped change my life and the people around me as well.

Stephen Dom, specifically, it’s changed their lives and continues to. And, it sounds a bit cheesy to say, but I truly, believe if you do it consistently and consistently. it can change the game for you. There’s no two ways about it. I’ve seen it so many times now. And then I’ll go into the seven, seven key things to really know about building a personal brand.

And hopefully they’re things lessons from over the past few years that I just think of the fundamental things. There’s so many things that you can talk about with personal branding, but it’s like, what are the fundamental things you need to know getting into this? So yeah. How building a personal brand will change your life?

And I’m going to use, obviously I can talk about how it’s helped clients and things like that, but I always feel that it’s bad to talk about your own experiences. And, I think personal branding is the thing that people think is maybe off limits and is only for a certain few. It’s not just for the Steven Bartlett.

So this world who are insanely talented and people think that you have to be a Steven Bartlett to build a personal brand and it’s. Really not the truth. it helps, but I believe that anyone can, and we’re going to talk about mine and cloudy, his own personal experiences in how building a personal brand has changed our lives.

And we’re just two normal people. I’m not Steven Bartlett. I’m not super talented. I’m just a normal guy from a normal place, do normal things. And. Through understanding these things. It’s, helped me change my life. And I know Claudia has got a great story with it as well. So Claudia, if you watch him pin,

so I thought these posts really have the milestone, my LinkedIn journey, so basically at the end of 2019, I thought I did 2019, by the way. So 2020 is really top that, I decided basically I was going to get my shit together and start posting on LinkedIn. This post on the left here was the first post that I did that got a hundred likes and I was absolutely buzzing about hours.

So please, that was really the like tipping point for me thinking, okay, maybe this is like a monster or something with this. so I did what everyone else did at the start. I would share stuff or comment on other people’s things. I wasn’t really sure where I was going with it. I was working in student marketing at the time, which I absolutely loved.

I loved the students. I had a Rocky road when I left uni. Didn’t know what I wanted to do. so for me, it was all about helping people figure out what they wanted to do and make that kind of timeframe for them as easy as I possibly could. so that’s what I started posting about and the next post.

So this middle one here is the first one where I was like, okay, like the likes and engagement, what, a bit mental. And I was like, Just didn’t want anything that was going to happen, gender that was going to happen on that post. And it was great for me as well, because it was something that I felt really strongly about, which was like, has been the added benefit for the whole way through.

And then I think when I really started to realize that like personal branding was like an amazing thing in itself, as opposed to just posting on LinkedIn was this post on the right here. I use a hashtag quarter life crisis, and a lot of my posts because that’s like post about, and someone actually messaged me and they saw that I used the hashtag and said, do you want to be on this podcast called course life crisis?

And that was like, when opportunities start coming to me as a result of LinkedIn. So I think that was like, The tipping point again, to realizing that personal branding is amazing for opportunities. It’s great to, write about things. It’s great to help people out on LinkedIn when the opportunity started coming to me, that was when I really realized that, okay.

Yeah, this is, exactly what I want to be doing. Then the next slide. So this happened as a result of the barrier of the Josephine, right? That, Joe did a post as he does every now and again about, recommending people to follow on LinkedIn. And Ashley was actually one of those people. So I dropped them a little message, saying, let’s know more about personal branding and as a result of that, I am literally sitting here today.

So thanks to Joe. And secondly, yeah, it’s just the power behind LinkedIn. Honestly, it amazes me daily and I’ve been posting for about a year now. it’s just crazy and like a little message, like that has led to one of the biggest opportunities that are hard. So yeah, that’s my story in a nutshell.

and, for Claudia as well, like personal branding is the reason why she sat on this webinar.

Like she said that at the start of the year, she wanted to. network more. And one of the things that she did first was go to a market, meet up event at the start of the year. And then she say more, and then now she’s doing a webinar on the market and meet in the same year, which is it’s all downs, like personal brand and building that.

And, like she said, the opportunity kind of opportunities open themselves after that, just through. Putting yourself out there more. And my story and personal branding, really, I started at the founding team of social chain and my role was marketing director at first. And really my KPI was to figure out how to make brands and agencies know who social team were and how I went about that was very conventional.

I literally Googled what does a marketing director do? as I’d never been more before. So I didn’t know. And Google told me that the conventional way to do B2B marketing was to do white papers, run the social chain, social media channels, do PR do events, do case, study videos, all this kind of stuff. And everything that we did was by the conventional book of what to do, which was the opposite of what social team was about.

So I feel like it was the only area that in that first year of social chain, we went against what. We believed as people was the right thing to do. And I looked to what others were doing to do it. and that was the mistake that I made was trying to do it away, that we didn’t believe in. And we spent 12 months doing marketing in not the wrong way, but it just wasn’t the best way.

And then we realized after that first year we sat down and looked where all the opportunity for the business was coming from a 0% came from what I did. And 80% came from what Steve Bartlett is. So we very quickly changed what our marketing would be and our marketing would become Steven Bartlett. That, was the thing that made the most sense.

And somebody said it the other day, like within B2B, especially personal brand, it just really makes sense because it’s the top of the funnel. So people buy from people, especially in B2B brands, find it very difficult to be heard as B2B brands, we all pay attention to consumer brands. We don’t pay attention to B2B brands, but we pay attention to the people within B2B brands there, the important thing, and that’s how it works as social change.

Steve Bartlett was our top of the funnel and. So we lent into that, became our market and, that became my job was to, help Steve. And I did that for three, three and a half years. And now I think it’s safe to say is, One of the biggest influences in business in this country and still like a young rising star as well.

it’s a journey that will keep growing as well. And, yeah, being part of that was an amazing experience of understanding the opportunity of personal branding and that opportunity alone, like Steven Bartlett’s personal brand gave me the opportunity to start great influence, which is My first experience of personal brand, seeing the opportunity to pay off onto me.

it was the door opener. When I left social chain and settled, great influence, I was able to meet people and people wanted to talk to me and people were intrigued because I’d worked with Steve Bartlett because he had this huge personal brand. It was opening opportunities for me and personal branding has been the only thing that I’ve done in two years.

The only thing I’ve done is speak on stage and post online about. My thoughts on personal brand in a more recently about the business and things like that. and that’s built the entire business. It has been word of mouth and networking people, just seeing something and saying, Oh, it’d be interesting to speak.

And this is how it works. I think this is what I’m always trying to achieve with clients. You say what’s the ROI of building your personal brand and it’s very hard to attach an ROI to brand awareness. But it all happens in the AMS. I feel. and these are some examples from the last, literally the last two weeks of my own DM, where I think the one on the bottom, It’s in blue really, summed up what I’m trying to do. And this person said, hi Ash. I saw your post today after another connection reacted to it. And I found it an interesting read and appreciate connected. And it was just in that one moment. I was like, there is, I’ve posted something. That’s essentially when I post, I’m trying to tick two boxes on trying to strengthen my relationships with my existing audience.

And I’m trying to also reach a new audience potentially. And in that one post I’ve done those two things. So this person was connected with someone that’s connected with me. I posted a piece of content, the person between us likes it. This person sees it finds the interest in connecting with me. So the person who likes it in the first place is already connected with me and I’m strengthened, my relationship.

and then it’s also helped build a new one. And this is how it always goes down. people saying, I’ve seen a few things you’ve been posting. It’s definitely piqued my interest. your last post resonated with me. Really needs to talk to you more about great influence and potentially working with you.

And it’s all, just people see something and what they see is helping further their perception of, what we do. and I’d say that’s, really like personal brand in a nutshell, especially when it comes to LinkedIn, which is a lot of what we focus on and to sum up, I think, yeah, it’s exactly that.

Understand how you want to position yourself. Repeatedly post content and then opportunities come off the back of that. And I saw this, which is from a book called key people of influence by Daniel Priestley, which is really interesting. If anyone wants to learn more about influence and personal Brandon.

and this has in every industry that are key people of influence that names come up in conversation, they attract more opportunities, they earn more money and. I was speaking with someone about it last night, in that within the book, it says that it takes a brave person to become a key P key person of influence to build your personal brand.

It takes bravery. So there’s only a small number of people who are brave enough to do it consistently to a very high degree. And those 1% of people. Attract 90% of the opportunity in an industry. And I’ve seen it where it’s almost like they get all the opportunity and they decide first whether they want it or not.

And then it passes off to, lesser influential people after that. And I’ve seen it through my own experiences where, people have said, Oh, you need to talk to Ash. Like my name’s come up in conversation. And I’m just normal guy for something that I’ve been doing as men. The, my name’s come up in conversation.

It’s all about all around this idea of building influence and. I was actually having a conversation with Steve Bartlett recently. And it really distilled what I think personal branding comes down to. And it’s these two things, social proofing and noise. So the social proofing, which I think this is a really important thing.

You have to be doing good work, or you have to be building something that people find interesting or that people care about or want to know about without that. You’re just making a lot of noise with nothing. There’s no substance to it. So you need the credibility, all the good work. And then the important thing after that is the noise.

You’ve got to make noise about it. And excuse me, what’s what Steve was saying was, this analogy that apparently, I don’t know if this is true or not, but daddy long legs is one of the most poisonous animals in the world, but it’s got no funks. So the social proofing is the poison and the noise is the funds.

So you can have all the social proofing in the world. You can have the best business in the world, but if you don’t make any noise about it, no, one’s going to know about it. And if that saying of if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around here, did it actually happen? So it’s the idea of you have to be doing great work first and foremost.

And then you also need to make a lot of noise about if you’re doing great work without making the noise. There’s a chance that somebody else is not doing as good a work there’s making more noise is going to sweep up the opportunity off the back of it. I’ve seen it many times. Talk to agency owners who have talked about other agencies who aren’t apparently as good as that they don’t do as good work, or they’re a lot less experienced or they’re new to the scene.

And. They’re winning more work than they are. And they’re like, it’s just because they’re making more noise about it. So the S the noise is actually more important than the social proofing, but the social proofing is, where real personal brand value is built. So that’s like, Why. And I think everyone in here will have their own understanding of why.

Like I don’t, I feel like now, especially in 2020, we don’t need to explain why personal brand is really important. I think that for a lot of us personal branding is the only thing that we can lean on right now to market ourselves in a world where everything is online. We can’t see people, we can’t sell in person.

So your online presence becomes. The market in, and it’s never more important than right now. So now I’m going to move into just a few things that we’ve learned along the way, and they’re really fundamental things. I think I’ll say that if you want to learn about the full execution. Look at who we work with on social, you can see the people like examples here, like Dominick, McGregor, go look at what he’s posting and you can learn about how to do the execution of it, but the fundamentals and the things that you need in place first, before even thinking about the content.

And number one, why are you doing it? what’s the fundamental reason that you’re trying to. Put yourself out there. for me, it’s helping build great influence. And I had a conversation with someone last night and he was saying how he’d posted content over the start of the year. And it was doing amazing.

He was getting like six, 700 likes per piece of content. And then he stopped and he hit a wall and he was like, I just stopped doing it. And he’d lost his wife for doing it. Like why, was he doing it in the first place? And I think it’s when you don’t have that, why you can lose the consistency. If you don’t really understand it, like I could always be consistent now because I very clearly know why I’m doing it.

And I believe in the reasons for doing it. And the consistency is like the most understated thing in all of this, you have to be consistent. Talk to Joe. He’s been posting for like you, something you stats on how much he’s posted in the past year. And he’s been consistent as how and the only reason. I’m assuming here that he’s been able to be consistent is because he has a very clear why for that consistency, why he’s posting all the time.

He knows exactly why and what is bringing into his, business and his life as well. number one, why are you doing it?

I’m not as well. I think almost as a double-edged sword with this. So like, why do you want to post on LinkedIn? Yeah. You want to build your personal brand, which is amazing, but I don’t think that should be the foundation I started posting on LinkedIn.

Because I wanted to help students that were going through a rough time because I’d been through that experience. And I know what it’s like. And I think where things for me, actually looking back at it, as I posted about being an employee on LinkedIn, which is not something that I thought that I would do, but that really resonated with people.

And I got so many lovely messages from it that helped me. So by helping people, messaging me saying, thank you so much. It’s really making a difference. And that was so cool. And I think that’s what you do. I have to carry on with is you can use LinkedIn or build a personal brand to gain something from it for yourself.

But if you do it to help other people, it takes the element of likes away. Because if you can get 10 likes on a post and one person messaging you saying. Thanks so much. That’s really helped like me. That’s way, more worth it.

and I think on that point as well that, it’s not, I’ll touch on it later, actually, but it’s really not about like likes on LinkedIn.

And when you have a very clear why for why you’re doing it. You can, step away from the trap that people fall into and I’ll come back to that. It’s a, point at the end. but number two, probably the most important one in all this. And I never, ever, thought that when I got into so personal brand in that I’d actually be like a therapist or a coach.

I thought that I’d be working with clients to help them post social media content. It turns out that I was very wrong and I’d actually spend most of my time trying to encourage them. And make them believe that they’ve got something valuable to say and not let their own insecurities hold them back. And every single moment of every single person I’ve talked to about personal branding has this exact same insecurity of it.

And I’m going to show you a little video here, just to back up this point. So let’s see if this works. If we rewind a couple of years in my own life, a guy called Ash Jones says to me,

you should make a YouTube channel.

I dismissed the idea, obviously, because I’m like, people are going to think that I think I’m

Mahatma Gandhi, or like

people are going to think that

I think I’m a genius or I think I have all the answers.

So I’m not doing that eventually after two years. He sits me down in this room and it took about eight or nine

hours for us to shoot a two minute video because I couldn’t speak, I was

self-conscious and all of these things. And

I was plagued by that thought that

my friends back home who knew me in school will think our Steve’s a decade.

He’s changed. What’s he doing? Who does he think he is? And that almost imprisoned to me. It almost stopped me from doing the thing that

actually

liberated me, made me the most fulfilled I’ve ever been. And

by allowing me to be my truest self. So there you have a very good example of overcoming the fear in the, I think a lot of people will look at Steven Bartlett now and think that he is just.

The King of personal branding or something. And it’s not the case. Like he, he had the exact same insecurities as so many people that I speak to and he had to overcome that. And it took a long time of, practice of being able to overcome it. And it’s, just such a prevalent thing that I see. And you were working with a client at the minute and I’ve been working with him for two years and he’s just broke through the fear.

Of us working together for two years, and now you talk to him and he’s like the biggest advocate for getting to the other side of the fear. And again, it’s that thing of like only 1% of people are brave enough. And I think that’s the major thing that everyone should take away from this session is that when you go to click post and you get that feeling in your stomach, the anxiety.

We all feel it. I feel it every single time. Claudia tells me about it almost every day and clients as well. Everyone feels it. One of the people that we work with, you were half a billion pounds and he’s built an amazing, business. Done. Unbelievable things. And he still has to overcome the fear during this appoint himself out there more.

When, I had that, like even transplants, when I first started producing, I was terrified. Like it’s putting your ideas in a public domain for people to literally judge them. That’s terrifying. But I think knowing that everyone goes through that process and once you’ve done it, a couple of times, Genuinely, it gets so much easier, but it’s just going through that low Rocky period at the start.

My mate’s going to take this out me. Why does anyone care what I’m saying? And you just get, you have to do it anyway. And I think once it’s like maybe the first 10 posts and then almost becomes not easy but easier.

Yeah. I think definitely as you go along, it gets a lot easier, but that anxiety will always be there.

And I think the thing that’s important as well, it’s like, Commit to a short timeframe, like safe for 30 days, I’m going to post. And for those 30 days, I’m going to try to take my emotion out of it, to almost like AB test, whether this is a thing that I should do. And at the end of those 30 days, I’m going to make a decision of whether it was worth me putting, or me going through all that insecurity and anxiety and those kinds of things.

And I guarantee you at the end of the days, the answer is yes. okay. So number three, pick two to four things that you can talk about consistently. Again, like we keep talking about consistency a lot here, and I don’t mean like a week. I don’t mean a month. I don’t mean a year. five and the thing that we see a lot with LinkedIn is people tend to be able to post and then they hit war.

And they can’t, it’s like going to the gym. When you go to the gym and you get in the routine, it’s really easy to go to the gym and then you stopped going to the gym and it, all of a sudden becomes the hardest thing to get back in the gym. So the consistency is like the most important thing you need to stay on the hamster wheel.

And the only way you can stay on the hamster wheel is by talking about things that you could talk about forever. That’s when people start. Not posting for months because all of a sudden the things that help them post is gone or it’s dried up or something LA. Whereas like for me now I try to talk about two things, really two key things, which is great influence and personal Brandon.

And as long as I’m doing great influence, I’ll be able to talk about those two things forever. There’s nothing. I just rely on my own experiences and ideas. I’m not relying on anything external, it’s all internal. So pick the two to four things that you think you can talk about consistently forever and go all in on those, I think is like the key advice in terms of content.

And when you’re talking about strategy, it comes down to something as simple as this pick two to four things that you can talk about forever. And that’s what your strategy becomes. Number four, the skills that come in hand. So obviously you can talk about personal branding, but I think, and Joe and Claudia, both great at this, the skills that help and those skills we think anyway at ease for.

So being a copywriter certainly helps being a researcher, being a storyteller and being an observer. And I think the first one copyright and when it comes to LinkedIn, copyright in is King and queen. yeah, it’s number one. If you can learn to be a good copywriter, you can do amazing things on this platform.

And I use some examples, from Don McGregor of what each of those four things looks like. So on the left, a note to all recruiters and hiring managers, this is an example of good copywriting is a strong opener is speaking directly to a lot of people. The space in throughout the post is really nice.

It’s very easy on the eyes. It’s very digestible when we’re browsing. LinkedIn is often we’re browsing it in the same way. We browse on Instagram, very passively and. What that means is that you can’t write essays on that. A big blocks of texts immediately put people off long lines, put people off. So it’s a very short hand, digestible snackable content platform.

and that’s why copywriting, like this is, so important. And then the second one being a researcher. So Dom loves Disney is like the world’s biggest Disney fund. So he can talk about Disney forever. That’s one of his four things could be Disney. and he’s always looking out for what the F what things that he cares about, or he loves is happening in the world.

So Disney released that Christmas art yesterday, and he’s a researcher on the things that you loves. So when Disney posts like Christmas art, he’s seen it and he’s, got his eyes there and then he’s able to take it, online and say something about it. And then third storyteller. So there was this news piece a few weeks ago, about two brothers that are just bought Aster.

And a lot of people started talking about on LinkedIn and. What happen at the minute with LinkedIn is something happens. And a lot of people talk about it, and it’s almost like a race to see who gets there first, because everyone’s seeing the exact same thing. So you have to be one of the first three to five people that post it.

Otherwise everyone’s already seen it. There’s a way around this. And it’s by leveraging the news, but with your own storytelling and Dom is a great storyteller. And this piece that happened, he said to us, he was like, Oh, we were up against those guys, me and Steve, Eli entrepreneur of the year we lost.

So immediately there’s something that’s happened in the news that people are talking about. And Dom has a great, fantastic story to go with this piece. And it’s something that Dom always tries to do is like storyteller about his own experiences. and then fourth being an observer. So Dom is really passionate about, I’d say two key things, mental health and young people.

I think if you ask him, those are the two things that are really important to him. And what he does is he has this great ability to observe those worlds, observe his own world of mental health and observe how mental health is affecting us all in this very current moment. And also with young people, students specifically, he’s observing the world.

He might not be a student anymore, but he’s observing that world and seeing the things that they’re going through and it’s helping him come up with his own opinions on it. And I think a lot of this game is down to two things, observing and reflecting, observe your world internally, like your own business, your mind, those things, and observe the external world.

So your industry in the world, News and all these things. And when you understand the things that you care about, you’re able to observe the world looking for those opportunities. And then once you’ve found the opportunity by observing you reflect on it, and that’s why your opinion and the commentary really comes in and the actual content comes through is when you reflect on those things that you are observant.

If that makes sense. So number five become about a, you I’ve seen this a lot where I’ve experienced it as well. Actually. I had a conversation with someone and I felt that when we last spoke a year prior, I couldn’t speak during these webinars. And. Through trying to just process my thoughts for content.

I feel like I’ve become better at doing things like this. I’ve become better at webinars, better public speaking. I’ve become better at selling to people as well, because I’m just processing my thoughts on my, on what I do and how I help people personal branding. And when you do that for content. It helps you understand it better.

You’re able to explain it a lot better. You’re able to articulate a lot better, which helps you become a better whatever. I’d say, entrepreneurial version of yourself. You’re able to sell yourself, and able to put yourself across by your ideas, your thoughts, how you think your values, your purpose, all these things are improved by this practice of.

They’re stealing your ideas content, and I’ve seen it so many times. And, you just sharpen your sword by, doing that process. And it’s not to say the webinars is still hard. Like before this went live, I was shitting myself and it never goes away, but because I’ve processed enough of my own thoughts on personal branding for the sake of content I’m able to deliver it.

Whilst the anxiety is still that I’m able to get through it because my mind is you know what you’re talking about because you’ve done this so many times for content. I think Cardi would say the same thing with, the things that she’s done with content. Yeah.

I was just going to say, I think for me, this is maybe the biggest unexpected benefit of posting on LinkedIn and building a personal brand because.

Exactly. Like you said, you have to filter your thoughts and without meaning to, you have to like really almost narrow them down to the point where you can explain them to someone else. And I found that like fascinating. And I think even if you go back through my posts from a year ago to now, they’re so different and I can make a point better.

I can explain things better. I can pick out the key piece of if I read an article even which translates into work and so many other things. Which I didn’t realize that even think about to begin with.

And then number six, play the long game. As I said before, this isn’t about week. It’s not about a month.

It’s not about a year. It’s about five. It’s about 10 it’s about 15. And I think, again, it’s that like opportunity you’re through putting yourself out there more and creating content and building your personal brand. You’re creating more opportunity in relationships. And when it comes to. The next step at any point of your career, you’re able to then leverage what you’ve done.

So when I left social chain, the biggest regret, but I haven’t lived in social chain is the I didn’t document social chain. I didn’t say anything about it anywhere, apart from a bit on my own personal Instagram, to my 15 friends back home. and when I came to leave social chain, I put a message on LinkedIn saying, I’m leaving social chain.

This is what I’m doing. And about 20 people messaged me and I got initial meetings and that really kickstart things. But if I spent the five, four, four or five years of social chain document in the amazing things that genuinely happened in our business and my experiences within them, even just once a week, but consistently for four or five years, when it came to sending that message of my next step, I’d have had 10 times the amount of me in this.

And I think it’s something that, Spins the Gallagher talks about from, agency Nomics. She says like building fame is a 10 year game and that’s your aim. We’re not doing this for a year. We’re not doing this for two years. It’s about creating a platform for life. And I genuinely think like from a personal experience, the relationships that I’m making now, I’ll still be able to leverage them when I’m 50.

And it’s not, it’s thinking about the longterm of this. And so many people get wrapped up in the short term as well. And. That brings me on to the final point, the danger on LinkedIn. So I referenced it before where you can get trapped in this whole thing of likes. And at the minute, LinkedIn, there’s a blueprint.

I’m not going to lie. There’s a blueprint of succeed in on LinkedIn. I’m not blueprint is find something that’s viral or interesting in marketing, such as burger King telling you to go buy from McDonald’s. And posted it on LinkedIn and get 500 likes and repeat the process when burger King do that thing with Steven edge for FIFA, when prime Mark with the gift, wrapping, bike, all these things.

We’ve seen them all every single day on LinkedIn. I post them for clients. I’m not saying don’t do it, but don’t get wrapped up in it because people just think that you just do that and repeat it and you get 500 likes and that’s building your personal brand. It’s not the truth. It’s a very important, it can be a very important part of the content mix.

So personal branding, I think you’ve got to look at two sides, so you need to be doing things that can drive high engagement and high reach and high views, but it tends to be that those things drive very little personal brand value and equity. So if you’re just posting the things that do high numbers, And the test of this is if you see a piece of content, put your form over the person’s name and just think could anyone have posted this?

And if the answer is yes, then it’s building very, little brand equity for that person in terms of their business and their own personal brand. So you’ve got to have a blend of the two you’ve got the half, the things that. People don’t have to care who you are, know who you are to engage with it, the burger King McDonald’s thing, whatever, but you’ve also got half the things that fundamentally will build your personal brand.

And those things might not get 500 likes. And when that happens, it puts people off. If you get 10 likes on a post after getting 500 for every single one, you’re going to be like, Oh, I shouldn’t, post about that again. But you’ve not thought about the, equity that post is built in. I think I’ve had conversations with Joe on this before where he says, like he posts market in me open webinar links, and they might only get five likes or 10 likes, but he’ll get 15, 20 signups and one signup is worth more.

To Joe in the market in meetup than 10,000 likes on a McDonald’s burger King post that doesn’t drive any signups. And it’s the danger that so many people are falling into right now where they just get trapped in the, thing of likes and don’t get me wrong. It’s important. Like I say, we do it for clients, but it’s about creating.

Within the two to four things that you talk about, make sure that some of those things, going to build the personal brand back way that really sell people on what you do, why you do it, who you are, what you’re about. there’s some good examples where there’s somebody that I know in business. And after about a year I’ve been posting, he starts posting him playing piano and like helicopter.

He’s got a pilot’s license and he drives his helicopters around. And all of a sudden, I see him play in like a weekend song on the piano. And I’m like, I love that song, IDM him. And we start having a conversation about music. And in that moment, my relationship with that person is deeper than we’ve. We’ve gone past business.

We’ve gone into something else and it’s those things. It’s like your personality and the personality of your business and the things that you add value to. And it’s really, important that you think about. Not just the stuff that’s easy, wins the stuff that will actually build long-term personal brand value and make you a person of influence, not just somebody who gets a lot of likes on LinkedIn.

And I think that’s something that a lot of people are formed into right now. Yeah.

On that quickly, I think with personal branding, a lot of people get bogged down with the brand side of it and they think they should be doing X, Y, and Zed, like constantly performing at a certain level, but The personal part of it is there for a reason because it’s genuinely people wanting to get to know you and like things like music, or if you’d go hiking at the weekends, like you’re building a relationship with someone, that’s a point of building a personal brand.

And so people want to know all this stuff about you because it makes them feel closer to you. So I think it’s really important to share that step as well.

And then the final point we come back to this will literally change your life. I can see Joe nodding. Yes. Yes. Ask anyone, DM, anyone who you think is a person of influence or you think, Oh, that person has got a good personal brand and ask them, Hey, one question is building your personal brand.

Change your life. The answer is yes, without doubt. like I say, it’s a little deep for quarter past nine in the morning. But this stuff can change a life and I’m seeing it personally every day and I’m nobody. So if it can change mine, it can change. Anyone’s preach.

I think that my biggest regret with running is not saying not starting five years earlier than I did

a

hundred percent.

Couldn’t sell about. We have done that’s our presentation. Hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you guys. There was some amazing points there, I think so obviously I was keeping a good eye on, the, on the, Q and a, and the comments as we go through. And there’s a few points there, which I just want to pick up on the first was on the confidence, aspects of things.

And actually, yeah, there was a great, great. chat thing there, which said Ashley needs to stop saying you’re nobody cause you definitely not. but, so the first one was about confidence because I think that’s something that we all feel and and that’s really. It is it’s, there’s no right answer because it’s our own personal journey on all of this.

and I think there was an awful lot in the chat box there, like folks were agreeing that it’s their own personal journey and stuff like that. So when it comes to finding confidence, I don’t think there’s ever going to be one answer where it’s yeah, it’s not like you can tell someone to be confident.

You just got to give it a go and work through it. the second was the why I think that really does carry things through, thirdly, the points about picking two to four subjects. So having had the benefit of knowing Astro a little while this was one of those sort of moments where it was like, yeah, it really makes sense to become known for two to four things, rather than everything ever.

more than that, it’s also, just being known for yourself. So of course be known for yourself, but if you can nail in on two to four things, which you become the person that’s known for that thing, that feels like a really good thing. and then finally, it was also your point about the business objectives, not just fantasy likes.

And again, there are lots of, stuff in the, chat box where people were speaking about how ANSI likes to mean anything. And it’s so true. and you gave the example of. The posts, which actually moved my business, for me personally, are probably not the ones which get the most likes, and, while it’s, I personally treat LinkedIn a bit like a diary, it’s, something which I like looking back on over the course of time, like Claudia had mentioned that her posts had changed over the course of the years.

I’ll be able to look back on my LinkedIn in five years time and see what I was posting. Then see what I posted about now and see how it was very different. I’m a I’m blabbing on because I’m hoping you guys are getting the opportunity to, digest all these amazing comments coming in. last John, stop sharing your screen may and we can, we can get some questions.

so the first one, It’s not to make you uncomfortable or anything like that, but I think it’s worth asking. in your, client’s slide, Ash, there were only chaps. so do you want, do you work with any women

and I work it, I think it’s, the thing that spoke about before, where LinkedIn is a very male dominated platform.

That’s the truth. and it needs to change. Unfortunately, there’s more. I can imagine it makes it an intimidating place. I wouldn’t know, personally, I can’t say firsthand, but I can imagine it would be intimidating if you’re a, woman’s put yourself into a very male dominated environment. so it may be a little more difficult, but there is people that are doing it.

And we work with, two women, Natasha Courtney Smith. He’s an incredible, she’s got an incredible story and incredible entrepreneurial, and she’s an absolute barrel of laughs as well. and, Neela Rose, who again is like really inspirational and through learning, I’m working with her story is incredible again.

And then Kate, Lisa from social chain is like a shining example of personal brand in, a very short space of time, like nine months, she was able to build an unbelievable personal brand. And Kelly Molson again, like unbelievable personal brand. And then I might be biased, but Claudia unbelievable the brand.

and yeah, I don’t have a great answer. Like it’s a very male dominated environment. and. I’ve had the conversation that we want to start working with more women. And it wasn’t a thing where we decided to start working more women than we started working with Tushar. And no, these were just natural.

Like any other client is we work with great entrepreneurs who we believe have a story to tell we have a fit for. We don’t just take anyone on. They have to be of a certain potential and we feel like there’s a story to tell that. And it, wasn’t a conscious decision of we have to work with more women now.

it’s just, if somebody, has the potential and has a great story to tell. but yeah, hopefully there’s been a few shown examples in the past 12 months, especially in, hopefully that continues now. Absolutely.

Cool. so we’ve got a question from Laurie who is a copywriter, and a great, chat.

and he asks at a time where, people are trying to become brands and brands are trying to become people. Is there a happy, medium? And is there a sweet spot for both? And is that the same spoon sweet spot or does a brand need to cultivate a personal branding mindset? or, is it a completely different scenario?

I think in B2B, it’s very difficult. I think you see an in consumer brands, they’re all adapting, like people turn of voices, on Twitter and stuff like that. but B2B is still B2B and it’s a lot more. I don’t think it’s impossible though. Like social chain Frank, cause I’m an example when their marketing team really ramped up like 2017, open till now they’ve built an unbelievable like marketing department and do great things, as a brand online.

And they’ve not tried to sound like Stephen bottler or, anything. They stayed like a B2B brand in their tone of voice. I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a, right way to do it. I th I think it would be to be, it’s just difficult to do that transition where you’ve seen it in consumer brands now where that starts to lot people and it works.

I think B2B is still very B2B. Sweet.

Makes sense. There’s a question here that I want to ask you, Claudia, because it’s on authenticity and I think it’s something that you do, so, well, so the question is authenticity is vital in business. what do you think is the best way to ensure that authenticity comes across in your own personal brand and indeed, that of your business?

That’s such a good question. I think it just really comes down to focusing on like those two or three things you picked to talk about. And I think the bad King, Steve niche thing is a great example. Like anyone could post could have posted about that, but if it’s not relevant to you and it’s not important to you.

And I think coming back to posting things about. What you want to post about as opposed to what you think other people want to see. And there’s a very fine line between that. And like sometimes I convince myself that I’m actually facing myself when deep dark, probably no, I’m not. And that’s reflected in the way that people engage with my posts.

If it’s something that I feel passionately about and I feel strongly about. Then it tends to be better because the way that I’m writing in the way that it comes across obviously better. I think it’s just, yeah. Important to stick to your values and like what Jen, what you genuinely find authentic.

I think we see it with client work as well. Like we always say it’s the most important thing is that we get that personality in there in the majority of posts that we do. And we talk about me and Claudia talk. When we’ve had conversations with clients we’re like super useful just to under, we understand them a little bit.

I just, from talking to them and you really start to see like that personality bleed through. And then that comes into the content and it’s so easy to make. Like generic content. And I think the thing that really separates like good personal brand in, from just personal Brandon is the personality. And it’s something that like Dom is huge for.

It is really good. Like he’ll always, even with these big things that happen, that everyone sees on LinkedIn, if you look at Dom, when he does it, he always tries to support a little bit a Dom in there. Even though it’s the thing that everyone else is talking about and it’s those minor. It may be a very, small thing.

The important thing,

I think as well, the whole professional thing with LinkedIn, I’m not saying being entirely professional, but you can show your personality. Like you can make a joke, you can be sarcastic. Like I’ve definitely done that. And if anything has paid up more than just trying to be professional all the time,

Is, it’s funny that as well, there’s a choice there.

So I’ve actually found that quite regularly. If I was to ever post something, a quote unquote, a little bit more negative. Then in terms of the likes and stuff like that, and the engagement on the post, it’s actually far more, you get a lot more on it, but there’s a choice there because, you’re choosing to put out negativity into the world as well.

So I think, personally that I, something that I’ve made a choice on and. True to being like, hopefully a little bit more authentic to myself is that you try and put out good vibes into the world rather than the bad ones. So I think there’s a choice about authenticity that you can have there and the choice palatalization, when it comes to, what you put out into the world.

there’s loads and loads of questions. So I’ll try to get through them quickly given, given the short amount of time we’ve got left. So we’ve got a question from Alex, who asks, do you, do your clients write their own tweets slash posts or do you, she’s thinking about taking this in-house and should she be the one writing posts for the executive team or advise them on how they should write.

is collaborative. So what I tend to say is we need that 10% for us to make it a hundred. And that’s the most crucial thing is we’ve worked with some people. We were having dinner last night with a client, and we were saying this, we’ve been working with a few people long enough that they could just disappear forever and we could be them online every single day.

And it’d be fine. But that’s not building a gym, a genuine, authentic, personal brand. It’s inauthentic, it’s in genuine. It’s, all those things. And so they need to give us the 10% and not 10% is like, what’s happening in your business this week. What’s happening in your own experiences, your own mind, and taking, them out of the bubble of that world to say, Hey, what’s happening here.

and it’s bringing things to them and saying, what is your opinion on this? so it’s always We need the 10%. So in terms of the posts, then we, write everything up, but it comes from like their idea. And then we do the rest of the like work, and make it into like good engaging content.

So yeah, it’s, I’ve, seen it before where you have marketing teams and like handling the CEO’s social media and the, they just don’t give us anything and you see the posts and you can tell that the marketing team have done it because it’s. Yeah, it just looks generic. and you have to get that 10%, that little, even if it’s just a little comment or opinion or something like that, the seed has to come from that person.

But otherwise it’s not going to build up that true personal brand value. And actually, the other thing is it’s actually counterproductive because you can tell when someone else hasn’t, when someone. As w has wrote it and nobody’s took the time to actually get the person’s opinion because you can see it’s generic.

And when that happens with a CEO, you can’t come across in that position as someone who is saying basic things. I saw someone the other day say talk about something from Snapchat for five years ago, like the most basic point. And I thought you’ve not done that. I can tell because I’ve had conversations with you and you would never say that because you also want to value.

And you’ve been in this industry for seven years now and that’s a basic point. So it actually is counter productive to it, undersells them rather than, and someone in the background is saying, Oh, we just need to post on LinkedIn this week. So we’ll get something out. Yeah. Yeah. Counter productive to what you’re trying to achieve.

I love that.

And it actually ties into the next question. So are you guys okay to go five minutes over, just with a couple more sweet. so there’s a question here from Simon. to, press the question. Simon works in a large B2B company and, he works with, stakeholders who are hesitant to get onto LinkedIn and be posting themselves.

so he asked, do you have any advice or tips on how to best win over and work with those at the top of a business who are apprehensive about using LinkedIn?

You threw me off when you said apprehensive about LinkedIn, which is maybe the confidence. And so you find that people that have been in industries for five, 10, 15, 20 years, they’ve worked so hard to build a reputation that they’re now going into something new that.

They’re not confident about, and they’ve never done before, like posting on LinkedIn and they’re very protective over their reputation. Rightly because they’ve been building it for 20 years and to go do something new is a very, again, it’s like bravery. if it’s a confidence thing, then again, it’s I’ve had to take on the role of, like encouraging people to put themselves out there more.

And that takes time. but if it’s just the. Like the value of it, you just say to them, like, how did you start this business? That network will have been the driver in those early days. And still today, it doesn’t matter how far along you are in business. The person who’s at the top of the business tends to be a heavy driver for a lot of what happens within the business in terms of opportunities.

So if you put it through them like that, It’s a no brainer for them because it’s just another extension of the face-to-face meeting pitch or their networking event of the drinks at the dinner is just another one of those

how’s that? No, thank you, mate, because I think that’s, really spot on and hopefully folks can take a lot of.

Sort of relax a bit, a little bit with the pressure of it all, it’s, an extension of what we do quite naturally. We just interact with other human beings. which is really the point. so there’s a question here from Sarah and we’ll make this, the last one that I have taken the copy and paste of the rest of them.

And hopefully we’ll find a way to get them answered. so from Sarah, how do you balance building the brand of the business versus your personal brand? When you’re in a small agency slash solopreneur and you are the business, this is you, but you want to grow the business to be bigger than just you.

and I think.

so

yeah, so I’ve had this conversation with a client before and we store it social chain, I think as well, where the smart thing to do at first is like now with great influence, I’ve got a company page and we’ll, we could do a blog and all these things, you won’t see us do it. Until, if we’re like 30, 40, 50 people, then we’ll do all that.

And we’ll leverage the personal brands to get attention onto those channels. and I think it’s a smart thing to do when you’re in the early stage of building a business. It is you that drives it. So leverage that on till there comes a point where name is like, People are starting to pick up on the name.

So for the first year of Steve building his personal brand, nobody knew miss Steve Bartlett. He was just the guy in the hat for 12 months. And then he became, Oh, Steve. Oh, Steven Bartlett. Yep. Yep. Yep. And then after that it was like, Oh, the social chain. So it’s almost like guy in the heart, Stephen bottler, social chain.

That’s that was like the, process of learning that people went through. So when that’s the case, like people, with great influence, I, someone said it to me maybe yesterday or the day before. Oh, I’m starting to see great influence in places. And I’ve been building this business for two years and I’ve mentioned great influence.

And now I’m wearing a great influence t-shirt yes, but it’s only at that point where I’ve I’ve got to the point where people. Like my own name, is, a driver for it still. And I’m like, Okay. That’s it’s time to start getting the name of the business out there. Now, that I’ve got my name out there enough.

So I think when you’re in a small business, it’s smart to just hold off on marketing the business for awhile, because it also takes money to do that. Usually it doesn’t take any money to build your own personal brand. so yeah, I think it’s smart decisions. It’s just, unless you really need it. if you can get away with it, just let your, the individuals drive the market and, sales and word of mouth for the company, and then bring in the brand later when you’ve got more resources and more time, and you can dedicate things

to it.

Absolutely love it. So I think we’re going to call it there. there are 37 questions, which is amazing. I’m really sorry that we can get to them all, but hopefully the ones that we have asked are the ones which are, really resonated with the most black

people question like the ammos afterwards, me and Claudia, both on LinkedIn, always happy to answer questions or talk to people.

And yeah, thank everyone for, tuning in this morning. It’s 350 people. It’s crazy. And it’s massively, appreciate it. Blows my mind. So thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

And thank you to Joe as always. It’s been an absolute, nothing short of a legend in business. And, he’s one of those people, again, like he says, I’m the guy that’ll just sit in the background and not take the credit, but I’m talking to one in him.

and he deserves way more credit than he gets. And I think I speak for everyone. When I say, thank you, for continuing to create a community that brings people together. And it brought me in Claudia together. Then Claudia is the best thing. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

you guys. I’m sitting here in my tracky bottoms when things settle down themselves, it’s an absolute pleasure to say, thank you guys for an incredible session and thank you everyone for Tanya.

The chat section has been unbelievable this morning. it’s so wicked. See everyone not only turning up, but contributing, discussing, The luckiest people alive really in that sense. thank you all. I’ll send an email with, follow-ups with the sponsors and stuff like that. And with Ashton cloudier, LinkedIn as well, do you take the time to say hello to those?

Please do thank the sponsors. It really make a big difference. And, yeah, I hope we’ve set up your day. In a very good way. just have a great one. Everyone take care of yourselves. Our next webinar is next Tuesday morning as ever. We’ll see you then take care.

Bye.