BBY Show S11 Ep12: From intention to agency

Welcome to Building Brand You, the show where we help you to accelerate your success, growing your reputation, your visibility and influence, and getting you more of the opportunities you want by unlocking your greatest asset, you. My name is Kim Hamer. I'm a recognized global expert on leadership, visibility, and personal branding, as well as I'm an international educator, facilitator, and coach. And I designed this podcast for you to help you unlock what you already have and to give you a whole host of tools and techniques that you can implement in order to accelerate your success and build your own brand new.

So let's unlock this episode and lift the lid on what's next in building brand new. Hello everyone and welcome to this final episode of season 11 of the Building Brand New podcast, a season that was all about building beyond you. Right back when we started in episode one, we looked at the ripple effect. And one of the things I was really keen to explore in this season was how we build thinking and behaviour patterns into habits that create a ripple effect.

Something in the world that's well beyond our immediate circle of contact and influence. and how we can use this to galvanise individuals to act with both personal clarity and collective intention, which might seem like a bit of a paradox, but it is the paradox our world is facing. We've come out of a couple of decades of pronounced individualism in large parts of the world. And what we're looking at now is what's missing.

How do we belong? How do we create community again so that our individualism doesn't become our nemesis? So the title of this episode is from intention to agency. We've talked a lot in the podcast about intention, intention about building your own impact, your own influence, your own authenticity, your own, I guess, self-assurance and confidence with how you can show up, how you can connect with others in a more meaningful way, not just on the business front, but in all aspects of life.

While this is a business and entrepreneurship podcast, I think the lessons are ones for our own life in a holistic way. But one of the things about intentions is that despite all of the good ones we have, you know, all of those great ideas, our passions, our purpose, they're actually for nothing if we don't get into action. And action means having agency. To give you a little bit of a look at what we might mean by agency, I was having a bit of a look on Google and I found a definition that I really liked that was published in Psychology Today back in March of 2022.

It was by Thomas Bateman and he says, agency is the highest level of personal competence. Human agency is a mindset plus a set of learnable actions that help us attain what we want in life. We often hear agency described as a sense of control over our own lives. So with this in mind, this sense of control, this mindset plus learnable actions, I hope that season 11, all about building beyond you, has given you some food for thought about how you can take your passions, your visions, your great ideas, and actually turn them into the actions and the path to get you where you want in your business, your career, in your life in general.

We heard from six fabulous guests this season and five of these I selected from seasons we'd had before because I felt they really exemplified this transition from ideas and purpose and passion into action, into something that has become something that's lived and breathed in the world, not only for themselves but for others as well. We first heard from Simon Boyle, episode two, and he talked about his work for the greater good. Simon is an accomplished chef and at a point in his career he found that developing the Beyond Food Foundation was something that spoke to his greater purpose in life and has gone on to impact hundreds and thousands of individuals We spoke to Natasha Wilson about shared vision and how we actually create this shared vision out of all the individual visions that we have.

We spoke to Jen Godet, who has, among other things, an extraordinary television show which reaches millions and millions of people every single week. What was the road to becoming that influential and that impactful beyond herself? She says, consistency. We then spoke to Alex Jennings.

Alex is the co-founder of the Alchemy Network and the Alchemy Foundation. His background in global procurement and supply chain leadership led him to think, how is this particular pivotal sector of our industry and our businesses being supported? How was it helping people entering the profession to gain the skills, influence and impact to build beyond themselves? He talked about moving thinking from what's best for me to what's best for us.

Then we spoke to Alan Robertson. Alan is the founder of an organization called TalkWise and the creator of a framework called VoicePrint. So Alan's background has been in communicating with people his whole life, whether it's been industrial relations, whether it's been as a lecturing fellow at Cranfield University. Alan is in the business of talking and we can't build beyond ourselves without starting to master all the aspects of communication.

Alan takes a really unique approach to using our voice or in fact our nine different voices as an instrument to convey vision, to convey purpose, to get engagement and to influence beyond our immediate circle. And our final guest was a new Rowan Martin-Ritchie is the son of Jen Martin, who was a guest on our podcast several seasons ago. And what inspired me to invite him was the story that Jen told me about what Rowan did on his 18th birthday. Yes, you heard right.

Rowan is just 18 years old. He is our youngest ever Building Brand New podcast guest. And I would have to say the nuggets that came out of our conversation support that wisdom comes in all shapes, sizes, ages. There's something we can really learn from generations that are different from us, generations who have another perspective on the world.

And it might surprise you some of the things that Rowan points to that he really feels we need to have more of in our world. In between all of these guest episodes, as usual, there are soundbite episodes, which is where I pick a particular topic and talk for between 10 to 15 minutes about my views, what I'm thinking, just to give you a bit of provocation around what are you thinking about these things? These are not necessarily right or wrong answers, but maybe a different way of you thinking about things than you had previously and encouraging you to think about, well, what are all of your perspectives?

What are you hearing from all sorts of other people? One of the episodes I talked about sharing your direction of travel. Now, this is something that's so important in not just building our own personal brand and our positioning is the obvious choice for the opportunities that we want, but it's important in actually building that ecosystem around us that creates that bigger vision, purpose, and really onboarding others. It might not be that we go at it the same way, but people engaging and subscribing to our vision is incredibly powerful, incredibly motivating, a little bit scary when it starts to get a bit of momentum up.

The next episode, I talked about focus and the power of just one thing. And particularly when we think about the episode with Jen Goday on being consistent, this is something I have delved into a little more deeply. What is firstly the just one thing you are articulating about who you are, what you bring and what they can belong to? It needs to be simple.

It needs to be clear. It needs to be resonant and relevant. But it also needs to be repeatable. If you're giving people a laundry list of all the things you want them to know about you, that's not repeatable for them.

and therefore it limits the way you can build your influence well beyond your immediate circle. In the next of my Soundbite episodes, I talked about listening and asked the question, where you are listening from This is about perspective And in this episode I talked about the nature of bias I currently involved in a program at the Neuroleadership Institute and one of the big topics has been around bias If we have a brain, we are biased because we are led by our own experience, our own perspectives.

Well, there's something for me that's powerful about accepting that that's who we are, that accepting that in the moments we're surest, we're probably the most biased that we can ever be. And that's why we get so triggered when people call us out on our bias. So bringing awareness to this uniquely human attribute of ours can be really powerful in actually building our learning, our curiosity, and the way we engage others. And my final soundbite episode was letting it go.

One of the most powerful things I teach clients with teams in workshops is how to articulate a clear and simple soundbite. How can I make this so clear that others can articulate it when they think about me with others? So it's not just about saying what we do, it's building a story. And when we put this in the hands of others, they may not be able to repeat the story word for word.

That's not what letting it go is all about. It's about letting go of that story enough for someone to get the key points that resonate for them. So what would I want someone to be sharing about me? What's that one thing that if they were talking to someone and they wanted to recommend me, what would they say?

Most often I get things like, oh, she does that personal brand, personal branding, brand you, build, brand. So there's something around branding and personal branding, which is completely at the heart of what I do. As a result, I often get referrals from people I may not have spoken to for a number of years. They may have met me, they may be looking at my social media, they may have heard me speak somewhere, they may have heard this podcast.

But what they remember is that nugget that I've let go and let them take out into the world so that they can actually either repurpose it for themselves if they're ready for that or share with others and say that reminds me I was speaking to listening to there's this person him and she does this personal branding stuff you should talk to her I think she'd be able to help you with that that is the power of referral. That amplifies that repeatability I talked about in the focus and power of just one thing.

So in all of that, we come back to moving from intention to agency, building a brand that impacts and influences others well beyond your immediate circle and well beyond today or tomorrow. But I want to share something a little more personal with you to sign off on this episode. It's a story about someone who, in building beyond themselves, had no idea of the difference that he made to others and particularly to me. It's about my dad.

So the story begins with my arrival at Melbourne Airport on the 10th of January this year. My sister greeted me with the news that Dad had received an aggressive and inoperable cancer diagnosis just before I boarded my flight in the UK and had been given between two weeks and two months to live. We flew to Mariborough 48 hours later, and what followed was one of the most tumultuous and precious times of my life. Dad chose to be at home, cared for by the most extraordinary community, nurses, doctors, paramedics, and of course, his soulmate of 45 years, Beverly.

He was lucid, comfortable, and getting around the house with some independence. And every day, we would just lapse into easy conversation about our lives, what matters to us, why we do the things we do. I spent every day of the next four weeks with him, and we learned to see each other in all of those quiet moments. In fact, I think we saw each other anew and more deeply for the first time in both our lives.

I felt this visceral connection with all the ways we are alike and these are all the things I hold close now that he's gone. Dad did so many different things in his life. I can't list them all. The thread between all of them was his desire to make a bigger difference, to see something that wasn't working out there in the world and step in to bring his expertise, his knowledge and his work ethic to understanding and discovering how we could make them different and how we could make them better.

He was a life member of the Cairns Chamber of Commerce and its longest serving president He was on the Queensland Parliament Economic Development Committee and a fellow of the Australian Institute of Directors In 2006 he and Bev chose to leave the life that they been comfortable with and buy a fifth wheeler. And between 2007 and 2015, they lived in that motorhome and travelled around Australia. Dad says he probably wouldn't have done it if Bev hadn't being so keen, but is the thing that really was quite transformational in his life.

The man I knew as a corporate person, as one that paid someone to mow the lawn, was house-sitting outback properties, mending fences, feeding cattle. They travelled through all of Australia for eight years, taking up photography, spending time with incredible people. They were caretakers of various national parks. Dad got involved in Caravan Association, trying to get better conditions and writing papers for government on the experiences of grey nomads.

In 2015, they bought a home in Mariborough, bought a smaller motor home and continued to travel. Being in the community, I think Dad underestimated the impact he had on the people who lived there. And sitting in their home during January with all of the flow of visitors who just wanted to spend time and say what they wanted to say to that about the difference he'd made, learn about him and where he'd actually come from and what he'd done in his life was just such a joy and I felt that humility and kindness that I'd never really seen living so far away through my whole life, but I felt it in those moments.

I saw that thread of his quiet, thoughtful and committed contribution, the impact he'd had on all of the communities he'd been part of, and his courage in trusting himself and making big choices in life. He chose to leave us on the 22nd of February, 2026, one day after his 82nd birthday, and a little over six weeks since his diagnosis. Another big choice. We were with him right until the end and I will always remember the final words he said to me as we held hands sitting on the bed.

I've had a good life. I'm satisfied. I'm satisfied. Now that's the way I would love to be at the end of my life.

And I think that building beyond me, thinking about the wider world and how I can change things for the better, what I can contribute has really been reinforced by that six weeks about what's important to me and why I've chosen to build the business I have. It's taught me to be present in a new way and that as much as we can plan, all we can really do is see what happens and make a new plan. And it reminded me that legacy lies not only in the public visible causes but in the small everyday opportunities for generosity, kindness and the commitment that things can be made better.

Dad and I learned that we've made each other's lives better for being in them and for that precious and beautiful gift. I will always be grateful. So while the road to good intentions may be wonderful. The road along agency and interaction and impact is not always a smooth one, a straight one, an obvious one.

And sometimes it requires us not just to trust ourselves, but to reach out to others, to build collective leadership, community, collaboration, to actually build beyond ourselves. Thank you for listening to season 11 of The Building Brand New Podcast. I have loved putting this season together for you and I hope you'll join us for season 12 coming in the next few months. Stay tuned in between for some episodes from the archives and as always we look forward to hearing your feedback and letting us know how Building Brand New has made an impact on you.

Speak to you next time. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to the Building Brand New podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found Building Brand New today, so that we can help others to unlock their greatest asset and build their brand new too.

For all the latest news, you can find me in the Building Brand New Facebook group. You'll also find me on LinkedIn, where you can get your hands on my latest personal branding, influence, and leadership content. You'll find all of these links in the show notes. I help people to accelerate their results by unlocking their greatest asset.

If you'd like to find out how to unlock your reputation, your results and your impact, or those of your team or organization, get in touch and let's have a conversation about how we can accelerate your results by unlocking your greatest asset too.