How To Build Your Personal Brand

Key Takeaways

guys i'm going to start a session i'm bj the ceo of the personal project um today's session is all around how to build your personal brand we have four three uh lovely panelists with us today um the fourth one i suppose um all three of them kind of operate in the space of personal branding in different guises um we've got tiwa who is a confidence coach and a speaker um she has built up her audience off the back of her corporate career over the last couple years and she will share stories and tips that she uses to continue to grow her brand we've got brian who spent 15 years as a designer um building his agency um but of the last couple of years he's actually built a personal brand and is kind of known as a social guy um and he's personally one of my go-to people i go to to kind of find out news around certain platforms you've got charlie who works for the agency wawa um oh wow and they look after entrepreneurs and leaders and help them figure out their personal brand so you've got three different people who are going to kind of talk about the matrix in different ways um the topics that we advertised and we said that we were going to cover were deciding your values data review behind your brand story as you can't be a brand without actually nailing your story um setting your personal brand targets creating a strategy around your personal brand and identifying the leadership and collaboration opportunities i want to bring on tiwa to the stage and have a bit of a conversation with her around her personal journey um so tua if you can make your way up welcome welcome um so you've had an explosive last year in the back of the pandemic i've personally seen you go from being under 10k to over 10k and followers um the numbers um are not millions um but the impact is um your name rings bells in different rooms i'm in we actually met for the first time last week in person and the power of your brain was so strong that even though i had never met you i actually recommended you and booked you for work um i'm sure i'm not only one um you understand in my opinion the power of actually understanding your narrative and understanding who you should be um so in your opinion i suppose a question i wanted to start with as a fan and also a friend um when i ask you the question personal brand what does it mean to you and is it something that you have thought about or have you just stumbled across as a strategy to kind of propel you in the industry yeah so thank you so much for having me so hi everyone so glad to be here um so when i think of personal brand i think of kind of having a reputation that is at scale so because people can have a like people can have a reputation or they can achieve results sorry but no one knows about it so for me personal brand is results you achieve at scale so um i didn't personal brand wasn't something i took seriously in the beginning but then when i began to realize the power of influenza culture and you know how you having a brand and being known for something attracts opportunities to you i was like right let's get serious with this so um what i do now is any results that i achieve i make sure people know about it i make sure that i celebrate my success i make sure that i share my achievements so it's all about knowing what are you really good at doing and how can you let the world know that this is what you are good at doing so when opportunities arise your name is the first name that comes to mind absolutely um i think you know that when i think of confidence when i think of female empowerment and sometimes when i think about if oprah believes he had a child who maybe comes up as like top of my mind um so this journey i'm surpr i suppose who you are today and the gems you've just dropped is kind of based on lived experiences based on who you are today um but it probably wasn't who you were five years ago probably wasn't even who you were two years ago um what would you have done differently with the information that you now know when it comes to maintaining your personal brand um i think because i'm like i used to be a perfectionist i'm trying not to be anymore but i think it's really important to show up as your true authentic self and i learned that there is beauty in your strengths and your struggles and so as i started showing up more confidently online i actually created a highlight that says struggles so whenever it was like late at night and i was feeling insecure or not feeling i'm confident in myself i would record videos and highlight it on my instagram page because i never wanted anyone to just come to my page and go oh she's so confident she's so perfect i want to be like her like how does she do this it's like no i'm confident but i have my fair share of insecurities like everybody else so um one big lesson i've learned is human to human connection really is the future of business and having a personal brand is the human side of whatever it is that you're doing in business and so you don't want your brand to be like super shiny and perfect you want it to be human and as a human you have your beauty and you have your struggles you have your strengths and your weaknesses right and so not being afraid to be vulnerable online and and share some of my insecurities is a big lesson that i've learned along the journey damn i might even take that little note there around the story so is that something that actually you record on the ig story keep up yeah yeah so it'll be like 2 a.m maybe i've just finished crying because i'm just like why is life so stressful like i'm not making enough tick tock videos i'm not gonna survive this and then i'll just grab my phone and be like guys like i really can't sleep right now my brain is just a mess my negative thoughts are telling me that i'm not working hard enough and i will just post it on my stories like me just sharing where i am in life with my community and i will just highlight it so that whenever anyone comes on my page if they want to see what some of my insecurities are they can see it on my instagram page so the same way i have the bikini pics and the holiday pics and you know lifestyle and vibes i also have sometimes i feel like sometimes i'm just like not feeling good and not feeling confident and that's a part of me and that's what being my true authentic self through my personal brand looks like oh love that um now you obviously have a few things that you you do consistently i think consistency and kind of building frameworks that enable you to maintain um are two things i've identified that are quite important in kind of growing and keeping the personal brand um what are the kind of tools that you use to manage your personal brand what are the the things that you think about often that kind of people don't see at the forefront that maybe we as the audience can kind of start implementing today yeah definitely so personal branding is really about storytelling um and a lot of people feel uncomfortable about their personal brand or self-promotion because they think it looks arrogant or it's like oh now you're an influencer and you don't want to be seen as an influencer or like you know um people are going to think you're superficial because you're just about hey everyone look at me look at me look at me but actually personal branding and self-promotion isn't superficial it's the person who does it and the way they do it that makes it superficial so i like to say self-promotion is just an exchange of value and enthusiasm where i have something valuable to bring to the world and i find someone who's enthusiastic and excited about what i have to bring and so when i have a personal brand it communicates my story it communicates the impact that i have and it allows people who need what i have to find me and form community with me and trust me and either buy from me or recommend me and things like that um so i think it's really important to share your story first of all know what your story is and be open to sharing that and when you're sharing your story you're not saying hey everyone look at me i'm the best i have an amazing life no you're saying look at the impact that i've been able to have look at my mission look at listen to my why understand why i am here in this world and what i plan to do what are my hopes what are my dreams those are some of the things you want to share what inspires you share like the behind the scenes of one of your days um you know share like um you want to come across as a thought leader that is another big thing when you're building your personal brand you want to come across as a thought leader in your industry how do you do that comment on the challenges being faced in your industry so whatever social media platform that you used uh so for example linkedin maybe that's where a lot of my corporate clients are i i wrote an article with glamour magazine about return to work imposter syndrome so things like that writing articles blog posts doing interviews around the topic show that you really know what you are talking about so um i've been able to um come across as a thought leader in confidence and building women because i talk about it i have conversations about it i interview people about it i get interviewed about it i write about it so and i express my thoughts and opinions and solutions about it so yeah share your story know what your story is and share that story share the impact that you are having not just how amazing you are and um really come across as a thought leader in your industry by um commenting and joining conversations and begin to associate yourself with certain people um and certain ideas in your industry i love that um we've had a few questions in from the audience um so i thought let's just dive into them um matthew asks how do you find time to build your brand when you have a full-time job family friends hobbies yeah yeah you just have to add it on like any other activity right because there is no award for being the world's best kept secret look at unilever look at all the biggest tech companies in the world look at the size of their marketing budgets right that goes to show you that it's not good enough to just say oh the product will speak for itself just put it on the shelf you'll be fine no you actually have to speak for the product which is who you are right you have to use your mouth and your voice and share some of the great stuff that you're doing so it's just a matter of prioritizing it you know maybe give yourself 10 minutes in the morning to post something and share a part of your week share your thoughts like it's just something you have to learn to prioritize because it's actually really important so um there's really no secret to it you know the same way you make time to go to the gym and exercise you just have to make time to think about something that you want to share with your community and schedule it and then post it um we then have another question in i don't want to butcher the person's name my name was butchered so many times at school um but initials are um um so the question says personal brand being known for a particular thing how do you tackle the fear of being branded as just one thing eeg a singer because i am more than a singer and i want to be no one listener um and then they've elaborated and said that the fear has often kept them from pursuing things uh because of the fear being branded and i didn't potentially tackle this i suppose it's a two-sided question right two-sided question so let's hold the first part on fair i'll come back to that um so i wanted to be known as a speaker and nobody was inviting me to speak so i said you know what i'm gonna host my own events i'm i'm gonna create my own portfolio um i'm gonna organize my own thing so that people begin to see what i am capable of doing so let's say you're a singer and you want to branch into other things instead of waiting for people to give you opportunities to showcase your skills in other areas you have to create opportunities for yourself to showcase those skills so another big part of me is i love traveling i love creating amazing travel content now have brands flown me out to the caribbean to create travel content for them no not yet is that on my wish list absolutely but until then every time i go on holiday i'm gonna post my pictures i'm gonna create my reels i'm gonna you know get the aesthetics together and now i have another brand on my instagram called holiday tiwa so my followers my community whenever i'm on holiday they know wow holiday tiwa has arrived right i'm still confident and killing it tiwa i'm still all the other teamwork but there's there's so many different parts of me and i'm not gonna hide one just because i'm known as confidence and killing it so don't be afraid to showcase different sides of you but what i would say is look for a common theme across all those different passions and interests so for example um yes i love uh speaking and i love putting on events and i love meeting people and i love traveling but what's the running theme underneath all of that i believe believe in living your life to the fullest i believe in helping people live life to the fullest and i'm also going to live life to the fullest so whether it's travel whether it's food whether it's fashion whether it's female empowerment there's a running theme across everything that you see me and you know this is somebody who lives life to the fullest and who shines her light in the world so your personal brand is bigger than just um your career right that's that's separate it's what do you want to be known for what energy what reputation do you want to have and my personal brand is i shine my lights i empower people i'm adventurous and so i do those things to reinforce that um and then fear is just a negative thought of something in the future that hasn't even happened yet so your story right there's so many different chapters to you as a human you aren't just one thing in one box like you're multifaceted you're diverse so think about how you can express all those different sides of you and people will always have something to say your job is not to make everyone like you your job is to show up as your true authentic self and if they like it amazing if they don't they can leave like it's not by force to follow you they can actually leave they don't have to be in your space so never shrink yourself because you're afraid of what other people are gonna think always acknowledge your true authentic self and do what makes you happy because at the end of the day on when you get to the end of your life you can't blame people on social media because you didn't follow your dreams and you didn't express yourself so um you don't always have to be known for one thing you can be known for multiple things but look for a running theme between all of those things amazing um there's a few live more questions that come up um i don't know if you want to jump off and try answer some of those um there's tiffany who's kind of asked a question around confidence post um but it's been a pleasure to have you on and i'm now gonna pass on to charlie sure i'm just gonna put like my social media um in the in the chat so if anyone has any questions that weren't answered feel free to um send me a dm and i'll be happy to answer them but yeah thank you for having me all right then we're welcoming him in charlie on next hey hey everyone um so charlie take it away um i'll pass on the mic and i'll bring a note when the time's up but i hope everyone is enjoying as far all right let me know if you can see my screen yep we can see it fantastic all right hey everyone thank you so much for having me on board um this is my first webinar so really excited to be involved and really hope that you can take away something uh tangible by the end of the session so um t has gone through quite a few of these bits already but i always just think it's it's worth recapping kind of what is your personal brand and personal branding is kind of the practice of marketing individuals and their careers as brands so it's that ongoing process as tia said um kind of developing and maintaining your reputation so it's you as a brand and a representation of you and your beliefs but what makes personal branding good well there's lots of different kind of ideas and blogs and comments and opinions out there but essentially these are the key things that can really put in the pillars of your personal brand so being consistent posting regular content showing up literally like the gym the diet learning a language show up be there post as much as you can um be credible so talk about your niche your experiences your ups and downs so anything that you've kind of experienced on your journey and because that can really help people along the way be authentic so again this has been said before but i think this is such an important point and you know you've really got to show the real you and reflect on your experiences there's no point kind of ever you know the famous quote ever be yourself everyone else is already taken um i think that's super important and you know it would be super boring if we were all the same so make sure that you're bringing that authentic element be responsive so comment on live trends or events or any content news things that are relevant and interesting to you as a particular individual or your industry and that really ties in with kind of being a thought leader as well and being self-aware so make sure that you again are being you but you're adding value and you're connecting with your audience so why should you start a personal brand well there's an element of trust and authority so this helps build the trust and you're with your audience um so depending on who your client or your customers are you can really put yourself in a position where you can connect and network with them and you really functional way really position yourself again as a thought leader in your industry again building a network so touching again on that reputation side of things just making sure that you've got that personal brand that really articulates who you are what you do and and how you can help people understand what their problems are and show how you can give them a solution you can really leverage your personal brand as well online and offline so i think it's really important you know kind of your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room and i think that's something that is a quite a cool quote and it's quite cool to kind of reflect on you know when when you walk away you want someone to say oh wow that was a really interesting comment that experts have made and i think that's you know that's a really nice way to tie it into kind of attracting more clients as well so building your personal brand and seeing you as the go-to expert in your space in your industry or your niche will really give you an opportunity to attract those clients and as we see things becoming more more and more specialized you know this is becoming a really really important factor so this is linkedin specific um but do you let me know we do work across kind of different channels as well so instagram tiktok twitter facebook um so but this is linkedin specific just just to bear in mind for this particular presentation um so before you start creating content it's really important to identify your purpose so this is something that is key identify your audience so who do you actually want to talk to and then develop your content strategy what do you actually want to say so for this one i've used um an example of a couple of posts that i've done recently um on the left there is one of my clients sarah davies she's literally just gone into strictly come dancing which is really exciting and you may also know her as a dragon on dragon's den and what is the point in posting this post well it's a great way for me to show value so i can show other people potential new clients current clients how authentic and how relatable sarah is but i can also showcase from the value side of things in terms of wow and the business that we have these high-profile people and this is fantastic and this is an important way to you know really identify what you want to say the post about sky brown and the post about today's webinar you know these are really good ways to be responsive but also to post and let people know what you're up to you know what does success look like what targets am i trying to hit what's your personal mission what do you want to achieve i want to showcase you know young females doing particularly well in sport that's something that i find really interesting i want to showcase fantastic webinars that are happening i want to showcase really cool clients so these are things that are part of my personal mission and are part of the wider wow mission as well but in terms of building your wider career it's always really great to have that personal presence this is a really important one and i don't think we've touched on it too much just yet and this is to identify your audience so who do you want to talk to and what do they do so do they work in marketing do they work in tech are they um do they live in a certain country you know what is it about them what what's important why are they your main demographic and what are their main challenges this is a really key point so kind of really helping provide the solution for them where can you offer advice that they might need or where can you provide something that would really add value to what they need any learnings that you've had so we've got a lot of amazing founders that we work with who have had various different ups and downs and they love to talk about you know experiences that maybe weren't so positive and that actually can be really really good for founders that are up and coming because it's not all sunshine and rainbows and you know sometimes it can be difficult and that's okay and it's okay to talk about it and it's something that you know we should talk about more because essentially you're never gonna learn if you don't make mistakes and i think that learning curve is actually where successful people come and so i think that's something that's really important and also how can you help your audience so what can you show them um you know how can you engage with them and what can you do for them that they haven't been able to see before so this is the most important one this is creating a content strategy and this will be the most time consuming and so here you kind of what you want to do is place you at the top and and essentially pop your your key values or or your key elements into buckets so we like to call them pillars or buckets and the three that i've gone for here are just kind of the journey so that could be your career journey your personal journey any values that you might share and anything else that might be important to you so you know if you're particularly passionate about the environment for example or you're particularly passionate about female empowerment or sports these are things that we can all touch on but essentially these need to be unique to you they you know there isn't a kind of across the board everyone should follow because everyone works in different spaces and everyone's achieved different things so you really got to think about kind of what you want to stand for identify your values as a person and how you want to achieve what you want to achieve and what kind of content you want to produce kind of you know you do you want to do lots of videos do you want to do imagery what is it that you're producing and why um and also how will you ensure that consistency because again that consistency is important and showing up is important too so here's some linkedin hacks that uh hopefully will be to be useful for for moving away from this session um so just as a recap posting on weekdays in the morning is when we personally at wow see the most engagement for our clients so that is unique to our client base can be different for different people but across the board on average mornings work best um again this is linkedin pacific uh discussion so make sure that you're you know getting your commenting you're getting involved with conversations you're really in inviting people to get involved with what you're talking about also you know following hashtags or getting involved in further conversations messaging etc really make sure you optimize your content so grab the reader's attention first impressions unfortunately do count on linkedin you know it's a saturated place the people that are posting are you know posting a lot so you've got to make sure that what you are posting is is really effective and gonna grab that reader's attention and test and learn see what works experiment you know put a photo up put a video up do a graphic sometimes it won't work so what you learn from it um and also set up google alerts this is such a great hack um for anyone that works in kind of the pr or social media space it's just fantastic for getting really quick insights and getting stuff that you need quickly and being on that responsive basis as well when's the best time to start your personal brand well the best time to start your personal brand was at the start of your career but the second best time is now thank you so much for having me guys and i'd love to see uh you guys adding each other from the webinar a great networking opportunity and you can even add me if you like um comment respond get involved ask any questions and or even set yourself a goal to write a post thank you so much charlie that was filled with a lot and a lot of gems i think we can all agree um i'm just gonna siphon you out and then bring you back in ten minutes we've got brian come to the stage all right listen with your thoughts what's going on i'm good man how are you guys it's great great great so far i'm probably going to repeat a little bit of the stuff you guys already said you guys have that advantage over me but my name is brian i'm going to be talking about my personal brand and how i built it not because i'm self-centered but because i built it and that's what i know the most about more than anybody else's i'd love to talk about rihanna but i don't really know that much about her she keeps ignoring my dms but we're gonna do me first so let's go um so this is me in january 2018 had a new family i had a new job i was just a graphic designer i had a new house and a new perspective as you can see i don't even have curtains because i just moved in and i was just brian right i was just brian kofi hollandsworth fast forward all the way to september today 2021. um as you can see i got rid of my son and i'm joking he's over there playing i'm just ahead now so i've gotten rid of my body and now i've got a little bit of a logo um nine thousand plus followers across multiple platforms written for ebooks been guest features on podcasts and webinars and had brand partnerships and i'm now graphic designer brand console and a content creator and an author not saying that to boast just saying that to show you because 9 000 isn't that much compared to some other people but it's 8999 more than i had three years ago because the only person that knew me was my mom and my wife and the match was wrong there because i added one but yes it's just to show the power of what you can do if you put yourself out there and if you talk about the things that you know and the things that you love and if you want to help people and more importantly connect and increase your reputation i didn't set out to do any of this i literally just started um talking about stuff i liked in hopes that somebody else will like the things i liked as well and talk with me and then all these years later i'm i've turned into something else right and that is the power one of the powers of personal branding um i'm so sure rihanna wanted to just be a singer and now she's got like three billion dollar brands under her name right i'm not sure when she cooked those up but she started off with something and then she turned her empire into something else um so how to build a personal brand talk about what you know and help people right talk about what you know talk about what you love and use that to help people that is it i see people talking about stuff all the time and i'm like okay you know how to talk about that but is that what you know the most is that what you know the best and i'm like well this is what you do for a job and i understand and appreciate that some people don't necessarily want to talk about what they do for a job they want to leave the job at home but imagine if you you're an advertising and you're on the internet talking about i don't know uh bags or something like right but you you do advertising why are you just going to talk about it because that's what you know the most so i always encourage you if you're going to start a personal brand talk about something you know the most because you will never run out of topics to talk about right and the best thing in the world to do is to help people right everybody needs help with something everybody has a problem and there's always going to be someone with a solution that person can be you with your personal brand so this is my mission and i always suggest that you have a mission you have you need something to do right so my mission is to help creators and businesses build a brand it's very very very simple it says who i help and how i help right so having a personal brand is you being of service to people right having anything having a company having a small company a big company being a creator whatever it is you want to do it's about serving people so if we take the mission bit out and just break it down the service is helping people and who am i helping creators and businesses um i always look at business and wonder if i've put way too many s's there listen i'm a creator i'm not a not a writer even i've written four books but i don't want to be there um and what am i helping them do i'm helping them to build a brand so before you start anything i always start with people um and getting clarity so what are you trying to do who are you trying to help and how are you going to help them right clarity is one of the most important things so you start with this little line so if somebody asks you hey what do you do well i help creators and businesses build a brand it's very simple they get it they understand who it's for if they're not a creator or a business they know oh this person can't help me um i'm not for them and i help them build a brand right so i always encourage people to get clarity because if you don't know who you're talking to or what what you can help them with or what you're talking about you you're just lost you're just going to go this way that way and every which way right so why is building a brand important first one is reputation reputation right what do people say about you so when you're not in a room when you are in a room you know what is your what what does anybody say about you what do you want to be known for all of this is about being known right rihanna stopped doing music because she wanted to be known for her brands right and and and kylie you know from kylie cosmetics she stopped you know kind of hanging around her family created her own brands and now she's known for making billionaire brands dj khaled even stopped doing music for a while and he even went and going to be a creator right and he kind of stumbled in that but all of this is about reputation what do you want to be known for some people have bad reputations like trump some people have great reputations like drake for instance right so it's all about building your reputation online because that is how the world has worked in real life and it's the same way it works online what do you want to be known for and what do people say oh i want to talk about social media i know a guy oh i want to know about the latest fashion oh no person i want to know about where to take my girlfriend on a date oh yeah they just go online she does that so it's all about reputation and can people point to you when someone says hey i want to know about this right second one is opportunities this is opportunity right here i wouldn't have gotten gotten this opportunity if i wasn't out there talking and somebody and bj or somebody else would have seen me and say oh i like what he said on that podcast over there i like what he said on instagram reels or i like what he said on tiktok or youtube they wouldn't i wouldn't have found myself in in doing this webinar right now right so you can create your own opportunities by creating a personal brand that's the whole point you're building your own door and you're opening it like tijuana said don't wait for someone to invite you because they they probably won't ever invite you you can just create your own stage create your own event invite people it could be six one day and it could be 17 another day i've had an instagram live before and one person turned up i know it wasn't my mum but one person turned up and i treated it like it was 100 people because one day it might be 100 people and there's no point disrespecting the one person that's turned up and saying oh you're not worth it no they are worth it because it's all practice every time people um are going to do a concert they do a practice run to an empty hall just to do a sound check et cetera et cetera but you'll perform to an empty hall before you perform to a full hall right so before you get that opportunity create the opportunity for yourself and use the online platform to practice so to speak so when the opportunities do come you are more than ready and the third one is connect which is one of my favorite ones um again i wouldn't be here if i hadn't connected with people like bj um in order to even find to even invite me and know me and i know i'll be good for this opportunity right and building my reputation i'm just connecting all the words so i wrote a book called connect don't collect because i realized everybody was so obsessed with getting followers and followers are great right i'm not gonna say that followers aren't great but for the most part it comes with the territory and they're hard to build right if you just create better content and help people followers come but they were doing all these hacks giveaways and all that kind of stuff and i thought i don't really know how to grow followers right i don't think most people really don't know how to grow followers they just end up making great content and they try and sell you a course about how to grow followers for the most part our own followers is great but what you're really here to do especially with your personal brand or whatever platform it is twitter linkedin youtube whatever is to connect with people right i don't know how to grow followers but i know how to connect with people i've met so much people so many so many amazing people ceos of big companies small companies people doing just amazing stuff and i'm just talking to them connecting them with the dm working with them eventually and just from talking on the internet right just saying in my opinion saying something i like to talk about for free and i connect with them and it creates opportunities right and increases my reputation so one thing you should go into it by going to personal branding for is actually connecting with people right that is what social media is actually about connecting all right so this is this is how this is why you should um get a personal brand so companies are usually logos right and they're trying to connect with people but people are people they're not logos so yeah the logos eventually create meaning but for the most part people want to connect with people or floating heads in in my um example over here so people connect with people a lot easier than they do connect with logos that's why companies are spending billions and hundreds and millions trying to make you remember and connect with their logo but for the most part they use people like actors athletes influencers creators um and celebrities to actually connect with you so i started my personal brand because i really just wanted to make more money for my business but i realized that hey no one's going to care about my little agency logo that doesn't mean anything but if i start showing my face and talking about what i do and stuff like that it will be much much easier to connect so that is what i started doing and it just turned into something else and now nobody even knows my business but they know me but no no no problem there a little quick quote from um twitter so back in the day no one would give a rats ass who the ceo or founder of a company was now that was changed people want transparency and they want to know everything about your company creating a personal brand as a ceo and a founder is one of the best the best things you can do even tim cook the ceo of arguably in my opinion the best brand in the world apple has a twitter and he talks on twitter he really doesn't need to but he does because he knows it helps um having a personal brand creates opportunities we already spoke on that um so what would i do differently if i started a game i would have started an email list so much earlier social media is great i'm never going to deny it but starting an email list allows you to jump over social media right there's no algorithms because there's no tiny robots deciding what you see or what somebody else sees and you might not be seen if it's not deemed you know worthy in an algorithmic feed it's much more versatile you can have text videos links you know instagram is forcing us all to say link in bio and not one person wants to go to a link and buy a bike in an email you can just put the link in there it's direct right again there's no algorithm so as soon as you send it 603 the person who sees it 6 03 pm in their account and this and they can open it and view it it's a sales platform email has been around for a very very long time longer than any social media platform um so you can send in it people are used to having deals in their inbox and it's personal because it's in their inbox it's one step away from having their number social media social media they have to log in um people usually don't like to give their emails up it's a bit more personal um and you have the contacts on social media what do they ask you for when you sign up they ask you for the email but you don't get the email right so if they shut your account down you've got no way of contacting any of those people but if you have your email you can take it from one platform to another platform to another email platform and you can always contact those people like i said it's one step away from having someone's address or number you have those contacts you own those contacts you can have an email list and you can move it anywhere so how do i start an email list brian that's great but what do i use so i personally use review right it was bought by twitter if you use twitter as well you can integrate it with your twitter as you can see i've sent many emails about how to get a free logo or a cheap logo and explain why and this particular review platform allows you to kind of have a web page and you could see all the emails there so they're not like oh i've just sent the email and if you didn't receive you didn't receive it nope anyone can go and check out the previous emails you've already used and you can also charge you can have a members area where you can charge however much you want for exclusive emails um and this is my tools of my trade where do i get my ideas from some of them just come from my mind so i'll just write them down notes a lot of them come from twitter emails i've subscribed to youtube videos i watched dm messages i'm having articles i read instagram posts other people's instagram posts and books i've been a graphic designer so i use illustrator photoshop adobe and a great app called in shop i do highly suggest canva if you're not a designer canva is really really really good um for shooting and editing editing films i use filmic pro and i use the remote sometimes so i can shoot from afar and i use in-shot to edit my hardware is very very simple it's a phone a stand a mic and a laptop and coffee i take one coffee a day in the morning and it gets me going it used to be six i used to be a junkie so one coffee today helps um that is it thank you for listening um any questions i guess awesome awesome there's plenty of questions i've flown through brian charlie if you want to come up to the stage as well we can move on to our q a section all right then we're gonna keep the energy up man we'll keep the energy up um right so let's go with the actual question that's coming in the q a and i'm gonna go through the comments and start taking stuff out but both of you have shared a lot of resources there you've shared things that are actually practical that people can take to their business today so thank you both for that i suppose this question coming from joanne um they've asked what are the biggest personal branding mistakes for you open floors i repeat after that for me i would probably say um not having a place to take people so you can create content great but people always want more we're humans we want a bigger car bigger house more food more better experience whatever it is we want we always want more so recently i've realized that okay i've got content okay okay what's after this brian okay i got a book they're like okay okay we read the book what's after this brian okay i got a service okay what's after that so one of the things that you really need to have is have more it could be more content it could be longer content you could have the short form content and take it to a podcast but people always want more so work on having a next step whether it's free whether it's longer form whether it's paid something you want people to pay for always have a deeper level that people can not only connect with you but learn with you and even meet you up and always just just give more i wish i had that like i realized that earlier and developed more um products per se or services um in order for people to get more out of me charlie yeah i think that's a great point um making sure that you've got kind of that clear call to action about where you're sending people um i think also a point that we touched on all of us have touched on but again just like being authentic i think it's really obvious if you're not being authentic uh you know if you're posting things that aren't quite you and one of my clients said to me the other the other day that they want their social media to come across as if they were in a pub with some mates so you know the same they want they want people to read that content and and think yeah i would he would say that you know so i think that's something that's really important to to just remember you don't want to be coming across as kind of inauthentic or not yourself i love that um we've got a new question in from cm um says hey guys would you prioritize your personal brand over your company's brand if your business is small great question um [Music] depends it depends on your business and what you want to achieve i think without knowing further context it would be difficult for me to say you know yes completely bang on but i do think that personal branding will always benefit you uh no matter where you are in your business career or whether you have your own business or whether you are working for someone else so i do think that you know company branding is of course it's important especially if you've got a product or a service but again if you are kind of a solo founder or you're a very young business building your personal brand can be a great way to set the stage for your your wider branding to be taking off nice yeah for me again yeah it really depends on kind of what the business is but for instance sometimes you can actually fuse the two but not too much because the lines can get blurred but for instance like i said most businesses use a human to connect with people either use a celebrity or an influencer you don't have the budget for any of that which probably most small businesses don't really have the budget you could use the founder so you could talk in you know you create content for your business but you know hide behind the logo or whatever but you you you be the face of your business basically so it's not necessarily a full personal brand it's a semi-personal brand within your business because understandably promoting two accounts on every platform it's probably very very time consuming and you know it's just yes no it's not it's it's pretty hard um but like for instance for me so i ran an agency for the most part it's it's work that can't be shown or hey here's some work right um so it's kind of easy for me to go and promote myself as a personal brand because i'm not really doing so much on on on the other socials as much um because for the most part doesn't really get you working work by referrals so it's very um business relevant so what i mean whereas if you're doing like a cake business to say it's probably easier for you to use yourself as the face rather than say oh i'm someone with a cake business go over there you know i mean um but yeah it's all relevant we love that we'd love to see it um next question that we have in hmm okay cool i had a few other questions that i had in the chat here i wanted to go through um i suppose with both of you um when it comes to budget and understanding what you can do for free and understanding what it would do what it looks like working with a team i know charlie you actually help people build out um their profile i think it's another level at what stage should someone be thinking about doing that position and maybe getting support um do you like getting people super early charlie and your work and then brian maybe speak to more the solopreneur who's kind of got no budget and like what they can do like this week to kind of like take everything you said so let's start with charlie first then with brian yeah i mean great question so i think there's lots of different ways um you know you can we've got lots of different clients that are in various stages you know startups we've got clients that are you know pre-seed funding that are series a funding it just completely depends on kind of you know the situation that they're in um what i would say is kind of just to reflect back on on what i just said was that personal branding will always be important and having that personal brand we know we've got clients that have seen an increase in venture capital support in venture capital interest because of their personal brand they're sharing more about it they're sharing more about the business um and that's just really an important way to showcase that you you know you do know what you're talking about but also that raising awareness because people might not know that you know you are the ceo of said company so it's really important to let them know and they they know who to come to they know who to connect with and they know kind of where they can go welcome i'm brian for the solopreneur yeah so if you're if you are just by yourself you know there's this thing that garyvee says it's called sweat equity you know you just have to do you know i like to say you can't learn to swim from a book you got to jump in the pool and actually swim you got you know um and you like you can't beat the reps you know i mean you can't go to the gym and look at the equipment you've got to do the reps you know what i mean so in order to get from a to b if you're starting by yourself with nothing just put in as much work as you can and don't overthink the process just dive in you know i mean don't overthink the process at all you can get all the techniques and all that all of that down later just pull up a camera shoot some video pull up twitter pull up a blog and start writing and get it out there in the first place because if you do get enough money which hopefully you do get enough money or and you want to um to hire people people like to join things that are already going and already moving right nobody wants to jump in nothing that it doesn't exist yet oh i've got this idea that's great but we need proof boy we need proof you know i mean so you gotta make it look like you got something there already in order to say hey i like what you're doing over there i want to join right what you got to do i always say do your first hundred you know i mean hundred is a lot do your first hundred instagram posts hundred tweets hundred blogs hundred podcasts on youtube whatever whatever whatever your format is whatever you like to do do 100 first so you understand the ropes before anybody else comes to give you help on those ropes and i mean so yeah like that love that for you both um there's been so many gems shared are you both happy to share the slides that you guys did when when we do the wrap up to the audience yeah sure yeah yeah just awesome i'll send the invoice the price has gone up the price is fun i'll send them out um right i wanted to show people a few things that you can do at the personal project now so we've just redone our website recently um took over seo in august and it was quite important for us to try to figure out how we can better help support the community so obviously this week's topic is all around personal branding um on our on demand page is where you can read our blog site so those two events last week every time that there's an event you can g