Personal Branding & Founder-Led Marketing in an AI Trust Recession

Speaker A: Most founders are completely wrong when it comes to all things personal branding.

Speaker B: They think it's ego and selfies and, um, posting your life online. And maybe to some degree that's true. But according to Rachel Gogos, the CEO over at the Brand id, your personal brand is not about being louder and more visible online necessarily. It's more about making your business, your company, feel more human and more trustworthy and more real and authentic. In this episode of Humans of Growth, Rachel and I talk about why every company brand starts with the founder, even when the founder is not necessarily the face of the company. We dig into why faceless marketing is losing power, how AI is making authenticity more important than ever before, and why your website should feel less like a brochure and more like a real life experience with your business. We're also going to dive into the very fine line between personal brand and too personal. How to make your ideal customer feel seen, known, valued, and why branding is so much more than fonts and colors

Speaker A: and having a nice, pretty logo.

Speaker B: So if you are a business owner who wants people to trust your company before they ever get on a sales call with you, this is the conversation for you.

Speaker A: Rachel, welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Thank you. It's so good to be here.

Speaker A: So, Rachel, I introduced a little of the professional side of you, but in Ascendance or story, where you a human, what is bringing you joy right now?

Speaker C: Good question. Um, as a human, I. One of the things I really identify with is actually my Greek culture. Uh, my parents were immigrants to the US and so my first language was actually Greek. Um, I love the work that I do. I'm super passionate about helping companies and founders build their brands online. That's a lot of what we do at brand ID and. And, um, outside of that, I have two daughters that are 18 and 20. My youngest is about to go to Colle. And one of the things that brings me the most joy is seeing them grow into their themselves and finding their career path and just next chapter, you know, figuring out their next chapter in life.

Speaker A: What do you do for fun when you're not working?

Speaker C: Oh, that's funny.

Speaker A: Or working on or doing or doing anything with kids. What's your personal fun thing?

Speaker C: I love to garden. I plant a big garden in the summers. Love to read, and I actually love to cook too.

Speaker A: Okay, so like flowers or vegetables?

Speaker C: Vegetables.

Speaker A: Okay. What are you growing?

Speaker C: So it's a little too early to plant, but I typically do tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, eggplants, uh, lots of different herbs like dill and basil and cilantro. Um, I've tried broccoli, but haven't had much luck. And peppers, which do really well.

Speaker A: Okay, so it sounds like you have a very green thumb compared to me. Uh. Ugh.

Speaker C: I've just. Every year I learn something new, so. Okay.

Speaker A: Are you starting from seed, or are you buying small plants?

Speaker C: No, I buy small plants.

Speaker A: Okay, you're not starting from. I've tried starting from. I have 40 tomato plants in my backyard.

Speaker C: Oh, wow, that's impressive.

Speaker A: How many of them are going to live through the season? Maybe about half from the looks of where they are now. But we had hail last night, so I was out there, like, 11 o' clock at night trying to, like, tarp everything.

Speaker D: Uh-huh.

Speaker C: Well, even 20 tomato plants will give you a lot.

Speaker A: It'll give me a lot. I think only probably, like, 12 will end up surviving. Some of them are like. It's like, I planted you three weeks ago, and your leaves are yellow and, like, mottled, and I don't know what's going on with you. I. Listen, I'm good at marketing. I enjoy gardening, but I'm not good at it.

Speaker C: So just real quick, before we dive into the marketing, did you know you could actually send a soil sample to, um, Penn. I think it's Penn State University. Okay. And they can analyze it and tell you.

Speaker A: And they can analyze it and tell me why I'm not doing right yet. My friend has told me to do that 17 times. Or, hey, Allie, go get a soil tester. And I'm like, but I don't have more money to spend on more dirt or garden things anyway. So, like, yeah, the first year. This is year three. The first year we spent, I don't know how many hundreds of dollars on, like, dirt.

Speaker C: I know.

Speaker A: And you're like, I'm paying how much for dirt? For dirt. What. What. What am I. I know, but think

Speaker C: of the money you're saving on the tomatoes, right? I mean, so many.

Speaker A: Last year's harvest was terrible, but the year before, I had so many tomatoes that I took them on vacation with me in October, like, because it's like, I'm not gonna let these go to waste. And so I'm, like, eating cherry tomatoes with my pasta and my broccoli and my pesto sauce for months on it. I need to learn how to can, but for months on end. So we'll. We'll see what happens. This year. We're crossing our fingers we want to try to do beans, but it may be too late to Plant them, uh, green beans.

Speaker C: You can do well if.

Speaker A: But the problem is I'm gone half of October, November, so it's like I could plant them. I don't know if I get to see the harvest. Got it, give or take. So we'll see what happens. So pivoting a little bit. So once I send my soil samples to you, I'll come figure it out from there. Um, pivoting to all things marketing, growth, branding. Um, when we talk about personal brands, a lot of people think solopreneurs and solo business leaders, founders. But what does personal brand mean actually for a founder or a CEO who may not be the only person at their company?

Speaker C: Mhm. Well, every company brand starts with a personal brand and, and that's typically the founder. And even when the founder is long gone, the, the identity, the essence, the energy of that founder is like really embedded in the corporation. I uh, always bring up the example of Apple, the company Apple. Right. I mean Steve Jobs has long been gone. We've had Tim Cook and you know, other leaders, but we can still feel Steve Jobs, energy and essence in that company. It's still very innovative. It still has other aspects of his personality. And that's what a personal brand is when you're, when you're growing a company.

Speaker A: So when you're growing a company, how do you make the. Not make, but make the business owner care about their personal brand? If the company already has their company

Speaker C: brand and identity, the company needs, um, a mouthpiece. It needs a face behind the brand. People like to do business with people, not just an entity. And today more than ever, I mean, there's studies that show that consumers are extremely savvy nowadays and they want to know what a founder or a leader of a company, no matter the size of it, actually stands for from a values perspective. And the more aligned that our consumers are with the values of our own values, but of our company right there, and definitely the company values too, the more likely they are to support it. And if there's not alignment there, that's okay too because you want to attract your ideal customer and kind of detract, I guess, or um, not necessarily, like put off the customer that isn't your ideal. You know, depending on what you're selling, of course, you know.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think we've started to see this shit. Like we saw a shift probably in the 90s, early 2000s into like faceless marketing.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: With like the stock photography and we're going to hire models for stuff. But we've started to see the pendulum kind of swing back the other way where people are tired of buying from faceless entities, we're tired of supporting the big corporations. Now are we forced to to some degree, absolutely. But we're swinging back to we're tired of the faceless marketing. People buy from people. So if the founder, like when I go buy software, I get to know the founder before I'm going to go invest in that software. And so how does. And so it applies to the marketing in any industry as well. Everybody's looking at who is the founder, who are the people behind this company. And then I think it is, especially in the past two years, goes back to like, what are your company and human values.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Especially as the world is becoming more and more segregated and war torn for better lack of terminology. We only want, we want to be supporting people who agree in with our values.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: So true. Absolutely.

Speaker A: So when you look at personal branding and all of the conversations you've had with business leaders and CEOs, where do you find that there's misunderstanding of what the CEO thinks about branding, both as a personal brand as well as like on a company level?

Speaker C: Uh, just to clarify your question, a misunderstanding of the CEO?

Speaker A: Yeah. Where does the, where do you think, what do you think CEOs understand the misunderstand the most about branding?

Speaker C: Yeah, no, great question. Um, before we dive into that, I just want to go back a little bit to your question and some of the comments you just said now, which is also in the age of AI, people are really looking for authenticity, um, and transparency more than ever because we, we don't know what's real and what's fake anymore. Which makes it even more important for the videos and the photos that are not stock. And again like the, you know, to really feel like the real R E A L, um, you know, behind the brand. So in terms of misunderstandings, I would say, um, one of them is that just in general about personal branding, people, not just CEOs, but people think that it's about ego and really being out there and kind of, you know, in your face. Um, which is not the case at all. Uh, another misunderstanding is that the founder doesn't always have to be the visible mouthpiece behind the brand. It could be a chief marketing officer, it could be, you know, just another person in the company, your social media person. It really depends on the size of the company. And again like the services or the products that you're selling. Right. If you're a financial advisor or wealth manager, it really should be you. The Founder. Right. No matter how big your team is. Because that's such a, an industry where you really have to build trust. Right. Or like a dental office or a doctor's office, et cetera. Um, but back to the initial misunderstanding about this ego piece. What I want to share is there are many of us that are a little bit introverted and many of us who don't really love social media and putting our life stories out there. And that's totally fine. The key to building your brand, whether it's for your company or your personal brand, is finding uh, platforms and tactics that you're comfortable with and that do feel uh, like a natural extension of your skills or hiring someone to help you do that. So if you love to write and have a lot to say, you know, write blogs, write your social content, if you like interviewing people or you know, the, this style of platform. Right. A podcast, start a podcast. If you love videos, do videos. But just find something that feels really natural for you and something you can lean into and enjoy doing because you can feel that energy in the uh, you know, in the content that's delivered. Yeah.

Speaker A: I want to go back to something you said where it's like it doesn't necessarily have to be the founder that has the personal brand. And I've heard this and I've see it happen a lot in the tech space and in the startup space. Mhm. That it's not necessarily always the CEO. A lot of times it's like the VP of Growth or whatever that title is. How do. But here's my here from like an HR perspective, you build the personal brand of. Personal brand of the company.

Speaker B: Ish.

Speaker A: Around your VP of marketing and you invest in the VP of marketing for 5, 10, however many years. But what happens when the VP of marketing changes jobs and then you lose all that collateral and you lose all that initiative? I guess.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So what I said was you can have somebody else be the mouthpiece of your company, but the brand of the company should really be around the founder's personal brand. And those that's. It's actually inevitable because as a leader of a company, your value, you're not going to separate your personal values from how you conduct business. Right?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: And your personal strengths are going to be applied professionally. So it's inevitable that the business brand and the personal brand of the founder are linked. But if you're again, really don't like being visible for whatever reason and it could just be size of the company, maybe as a CEO, you just don't time for that. And you have to, you know, there's a lot more that you're doing behind the scenes. Completely fine to have somebody else be out there and be the face of the company.

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Speaker C: saying things about the founder or saying things about the values of the company or the mission of the company, which would have derived from the founder, does that make sense?

Speaker A: Yeah, totally, Absolutely. I love that. So, so going back to where we were talking a little bit about AI and one of the things I see people using AI for is coming across as like really put together and polished. And that's good. And that's good to some degree. Like you need a level of like polish. Like you don't need to be airing like all of the shit, but on the same time it's a little bit to the opposite of authenticity. So how do you balance the authenticity with, with the need for being polished? And where's. How do you figure out like what a good balance is with that?

Speaker C: Mhm. Well, you know when you leave your house in the morning to go to work, right. You, most people shower, do their hair, might put on makeup, um, dress a certain way. And I would say it's the same when you're creating content that you want to be perceived as a professional in. So just be who you are because people can sense that and feel that. Don't strive for perfection because none of us are perfect. And even with AI writing, right. The thing about content written by AI is it's technically perfect writing. But uh, when you read it, you don't feel emotion, you don't feel anything from it. It doesn't create a feeling within you. So it's, it's the Same with this, you know, this visual appearance is like you can feel people's energy. You can feel when they're talking and they're just comfortable with themselves and confident and exuding that if it's an AI generated image or, you know, you're perfected, people will feel that. So, uh, you know, the connection for me is like in that soul. And again, it's energetic and so the most real you can be, the, you know, the more you'll connect. And don't worry about being perfect, just focus on being yourself.

Speaker A: How do you combine that with like, the authenticity, with like, being strategic about what you post?

Speaker C: Put yourself in your shoes of your ideal customer and think about what, um, you know, what might feel like it's too personal and crossing the line and what might feel like you could lose trust, um, in a consumer if you share something. So it also just depends on your personality. I tend to be more of a private person, um, and an optimist. And I feel like whenever I'm out there, I just want to spread joy, quite honestly, um, and help people. So you as depth founder again, or the, the person out there, um, think about how you want to leave people feeling right after they've interacted with you, even if it's online. And, and, and then put a filter on. Right. Um, about what you would share that's going to grow your brand and go into any messaging you do with. What's the purpose, what's the end result you want to, or the end action that you want to elicit from your messaging, from your marketing and work backwards from that?

Speaker A: Yeah, And I think a lot of it's like, when you're thinking of like, what do I share of like, professional content versus personal content, it's like, okay, what's going to be. Make you relatable to your target audience?

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: And how do you be relatable in a way that like, you can share your wounds that have healed but don't share your trauma? Yes, especially. And I see this happening all of the time with like, founders and solopreneurs who are building, like they're not building a. The company's gonna come, but it's primarily a personal brand to start. And it's like you're sharing the stuff that's relatable, but sometimes you see them and you're like, you clearly have not healed from that trauma. That is not something you wanna be sharing because. And I think about, it's like, okay, if I post this onto LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and I got a ton of hate about it. Would I be okay or would it, like, cripple me? Like, I have some pretty thick skin, but it's like, I'm not gonna share about my trauma and shit on the Internet because that's still something that, like, yes, I've healed from it, etc, but it's still, like, soft and squishy if people are gonna punch up against it.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: But I'll share all day long about how, like, my dog has diarrhea today. That's personal, relatable to a lot of my audience of, like, how do you deal with family stuff and business? But if somebody tells me I'm a terrible dog owner, like them.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker A: Like, it's.

Speaker D: It's personal.

Speaker A: Or that, like, I went grocery shopping and whatever happened, like, it's stuff that's, like, it's not. It's close to me. It's my real life. But it's not so personal that if I got attacked about it on, like, a very deep personal level, like, it's

Speaker C: not going to affect you. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it wouldn't change how people perceive me.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Because it's also. It's a little bit like. Yes. You have to think about the perception of how would somebody perceive this? So, like, when I take pictures of myself in the kitchen, there's not going to be a pile of dirty dishes behind me.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: We're going to use the clean countertops. There's only one of those, but we're going to use that one for whatever reason.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: So, going back to something you said with target audience, tell me more about, like, what does it mean for your target audience to see themselves in your brand?

Speaker C: Well, when we're working on web copy, the one thing we always try to do towards the top of the page is really help that ideal customer see themselves in it. So you want to speak to their pain or a, uh, challenge they're trying to overcome, really the reason they would hire you. But from their vantage point, it's kind of. It's like relationship building 101 in the sense that when you make a new friend, you hopefully are curious to learn about them and you're asking them questions about themselves and asking them to open up. And it's the same in your marketing. Again, like, depending on the platform and the tactic, you want to get to know that person. You want to pull them in and make them feel welcome and that they're in the right place. Again, depending on the tactic. Right. But there's other times that if you're building your own Authority. Right. Your own, um, visibility. You might want to share some educational posts, let's say that's on social media, but that again. Or inspirational posts. But again, if you have clearly defined who your customer avatar is or target audience, however you want to refer to them, you're going to know what they want to be educated about or what would inspire them. Right. Like you would have taken a deep dive into them. Uh, so you want to keep catering your marketing to that ideal person.

Speaker A: I m like that. So with kind of painting the picture of what your ideal target audience is going through and experiencing, how do you navigate, like hitting on the pain points, but also like hitting on what's possible from them and what's the balance look like for that?

Speaker C: Mhm. Depends on the marketing tactic. Right. Like if there, if you're a therapist and there, you know, you want to help people, uh, we're actually working with the therapist now. Like go through whatever it is they're going through, then a lot of that messaging is around the pain they're experiencing. Right. We as humans typically only change when the pain is great enough. Um, and there was one other thing. I recently heard this, but it made a lot of sense. But when our pain is so strong is when we want to actually change and we'll do just about anything to change. So again, you want to speak to that pain point in the right context. M but you do also want to share, um, case studies and what transformation looks like and working with you and kind of like what the end goal is, uh, depending on the service or product you're selling. You also want to share that and you can do that through testimonials or you can do that on a, uh, work with me type of page. My brain tends to think in websites because we build a lot of websites and we do a lot of content marketing. But you want to show people what's possible as a result of buying your product or working with you.

Speaker A: I like that. What do you wish CEOs understood more about branding and what goes into a website?

Speaker C: For the branding part, I wish they really understood that it's not just about a pretty face in the sense that it's not just about fonts and colors. There's so much more to branding than just the visual elements. And like we were saying earlier in the conversation about, you know, the essence of the brand, the essence of the founder, and thinking through every touch point that your consumer is going to interact with and making sure that that brand experience is what you want to exude and what you promise in your marketing. Right. You really have to think about that. Whether it's a return policy or you know, um, email interaction or social media interaction. You really want to think about every aspect of, of the communication and marketing or every touch point because that's an opportunity to reinforce that brand and um, exude what you, what you say you are as a brand. Right. And that's what helps build a brand over time too, that consistency and the continued communication consistency of experience. And um, what was the second part of your question?

Speaker A: Uh, website.

Speaker C: Oh, the website. Um, so websites, I always say you want to mimic what an in person experience is. If you have a brick and mortar, you want to mimic that in person experience online. Because the first thing people are going to do is they're going to search for you online. They're going to stumble on your website again. Doesn't matter if you're a consultant of one or a company of thousands. Right. But that professionalism, the messaging, the positioning, it all starts online. And there needs to be extreme consistency with what people will experience in buying from you, uh, whether a product or service. So if you look shoddy online, um, you know, people may not buy from you because your price point might not validate what they're seeing about you online, you know.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So you have to think, you just got to think about that. Right. We're in a very, we're in a world right now and will always be from now on where like we, everything's at our fingertips. It doesn't matter if the company we're buying from is in Alaska. Um, we can get a sense of, of what that experience is going to be like just by seeing what their, what their habits are online.

Speaker A: 100 and this goes back to like we talk about personal brand, we think a lot of times like social media content and how do we be relatable on social media? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. But it also applies to your website. Like you want to show that you understand where they've been and you know how to get them to where they want to be.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: And this means that in order for your website to be relatable, and this is where I see so many business leaders, especially solopreneurs going wrong is like your website is not about you, it's about your client or your future client at the end of the day. Because you can't be relatable if you're only talking about yourself all the time.

Speaker C: Exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: And so how do you flip that language? So instead of I will give you, you will experience.

Speaker B: Mhm. Mhm.

Speaker A: And the moment you can do that, it becomes so much more relatable and your positioning gets so much stronger.

Speaker C: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker A: So I want to pivot a little bit to rapid fire. Um, just first thing that comes to mind, don't think about it. You've been in marketing long enough that you know this whole world. Most overrated marketing channel right now.

Speaker C: Oh, um, I kind of think AI quite honestly, because everybody's using it to the point that they're so dependent on it for things that they really just need to go inward for or, you know, continue to be authentic for. It's a tool, it's not a replacement.

Speaker A: You know, I like that. Most underrated marketing channel right now.

Speaker C: In person connection.

Speaker A: Okay. If you had $20,000 to grow a business today and you can't spend it on branding, how would you spend it?

Speaker C: Going to an event and connecting with people in person. Um, and then also it's relationship building is what it comes down to. So, um, different ways to do that besides travel, dinner. Because I'm thinking a $20,000 event is pretty sizable. But, you know, cultivate the relationships when you're there to treat people.

Speaker A: I like it. If you had a, if you were starting a non marketing business tomorrow, what would it be?

Speaker C: Oh, restaurant.

Speaker A: What type of restaurant? What are you gonna serve? What are you gonna serve?

Speaker C: I'm gonna serve Greek food. Oh my God.

Speaker A: Okay. I will be your first customer.

Speaker C: Oh my gosh.

Speaker A: I love Greek food. Awesome. Uh, well, Rachel, thank you so much for coming on the show today. If people would like to connect with you further, what's the best way for them to find you?

Speaker C: Oh, um, visit the brand id.com that's T-H-E-B-R-A-N-I-Contact form comes to a few members of our team, including me. And, um, we also have a giveaway for your guests. And that giveaway is this, uh, workbook on how to build your personal brand.

Speaker A: Awesome. And that will be in the show notes for everyone. Um, well, for everyone tuning in today, thank you so much for joining and we'll catch you on the next episode of Humans of Growth.

Speaker C: Thanks so much.