Ash Jones: Turn social presence into business growth - Part 2

Speaker A: I just think it's very much about like, understand what you're comfortable with and couple that with the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and go, right, okay, given what I'm trying to achieve and what I can do and what I'm comfortable with, what's the execution that ticks those three boxes?

Speaker B: This is the second installment of our two part special on how to leverage social media and your personal brand to grow your business. If you missed the first part, do go back and have a listen. Today you're going to discover the secret to building a powerful personal brand, telling your unique story and reaching millions on social media. I'm here with Ash Jones, the visionary founder of Great Influence. Ash has been instrumental in shaping the personal brand strategies of some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. People like Steven Bartlett and Gary Neville. Welcome.

Speaker A: Ash, hello. I'm um, very glad to be here. Thank you for wonderful intro.

Speaker B: You look a bit like stunned by this intro. Like, wow, look at how I'm being described. It must be a nice feeling. Visionary founder.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm used to being the man behind the curtain, so to speak.

Speaker B: Well, I'm glad we've tugged you out so that everyone can see you and hear you and learn from you today. Um, maybe you can start by telling us why it's now so important that founders, business leaders, think about personal brand. Why is it so relevant now? Why should this be a priority for our listeners?

Speaker A: I think it's always been important, but the issue maybe is that it's always been gatekept. So if you think back to maybe like 20 years ago, if you're a founder running a business, being a voice for that business and being well known in your industry is always going to help with driving business and creating growth and opportunity. But the ways that you would be that voice 20 years ago were like you'd need to write a book or be featured in a magazine or featured on a radio or public speaking event. Like the idea of social media didn't exist and all those other mediums were gatekept by somebody else. Like you had to know an event organizer to ask you to do the event and you had to know a journalist to write about you to get into a publication. Whereas now you can create a LinkedIn account or an Instagram account and you own the platform, you decide everything with it. Um, and the power has gone to the individual now. And we've seen this across like a ridiculous amount of industries like music, ah, like sports athletes, like influencers, YouTubers. Like this idea of People being able to now be a voice where they couldn't before. Because the, yeah, the gates aren't kept by people now. It's, it's down to us. Um, and I think that that happened first and foremost around probably the early adopters, people like Gary Vaynerchuk, I guess, like he's been as an entrepreneur, been leveraging social media like 15 years now and he was kind of like very early to it and understanding it. And then when we started doing Stephen Bartlett's thing, that was like 2015 and we were really early in terms of like the UK and an entrepreneur leveraging social media. Um, and it was just a bit of a thing of being ahead of the curve at that time. And then now you've seen a lot more founders and entrepreneurs start to dip their toes in the water over the past few years and there's been a bit of a, a trend of it happening. And I think there comes a point, it's like the S curve. Um, and there comes a point where everybody knows about it now. And it's not like when I started Great Influence six years ago, I had to go tell people about the idea of doing this, that it was a good idea for a founder to be using social media in a certain way. Um, and that's not the case anymore. Like you've now got, um, the biggest companies in the world at board level are talking about how the group CEO or their leadership team should be more visible online as a voice of the company. Like those conversations are happening at every level of business now. Um, so I think it was just a matter of like social media has unlocked the door and now we're seeing everybody not only know that it exists, but know that they have to be doing it in some way, shape or form as well. And I've been doing this for a decade now and you kind of at the start you had the startups leveraging it. Like startup founders, like in this country, Steve is one of them. Maybe like Alan Barrett at Grenade was somebody who leveraged social media in the early days of Grenade. Um, and it was the thing the startups did and then the scale ups do it and then the corporate companies do it and the group CEOs do it. Like it just make climbs its way up. Um, and I feel like personal brand now is at a point where everybody not only is aware of it and understands it, but they know the importance of it and where it fits in terms of like priorities within business and having to do it and there's nothing new to it. Is the art has been around for decades now, has been leveraged by the smartest people in industries. Um, it just in the past looked like having a book rather than having a LinkedIn account. Um, so, yeah, I think that that idea of the barriers being removed for people is naturally meant it's more accessible to people, therefore more people do it. Um, so, yeah, I think it's. That's kind of driven, Ed.

Speaker B: And, uh, as well as removing the gatekeepers, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but it feels like there's been a real blurring between the professional self and the personal self. So the person that you see today who's talking about their business, you might not hear about their families. Ah, Even if it was 10 years ago, you might not hear about their families, what sports they do, their heartbreaks. Whereas now it feels like everyone is talking about authenticity, which also means a kind of transparency. Um, so I think people are showing a lot more of themselves as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it, again, it was something that was always happening. It's just that element of it was happening offline. So how relationships were built were typically offline. And it wouldn't be strange for you to like, have a. Have a meeting with somebody in business, in a business context. And then, like, I've literally just had a meeting now and we spoke for an hour and a half about all things business, marketing, personal, brand. And then at the end, um, she said, oh, I'm a. Like, in the. In the middle of conversation, she said, I'm a fan of Metallica. And I was like, me too. And we start talking about heavy metal bands and going to festivals and stuff like this. And that's what happens in business. Like, it starts off in a business context and then you start learning more about the individual and the other elements of them as a person. That's always been happening in business offline, whereas now it's starting to happen online, where people are bringing that element of themselves in some way, shape or form to the online piece. And again, it plays the exact same role. It's like, it's relationship building with people and it's about giving people, like a, uh, rounded version of who you are as a person. And there has been a trend towards it online in the last few years, but it's forever happened offline. And it's how relationships are really built and developed in business, I think.

Speaker B: M And I guess those conversations that you have that develop naturally when you're at a meeting or you're in the room with someone, that feels very easy building A personal brand feels more intentional. So how do you start with that particular project? Like what, what do you begin with? Because it's not. It doesn't just happen on its own as a result of a conversation. You have to start somewhere.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think for me, I always start at what outcomes are you trying to create from doing it? Like, what are the specific business and career outcomes that you're trying to generate and for that looks different for everyone. I've found through working with a lot of different people in different industries, at different stages of their career and business growth, they're all trying to outcome different things, but understanding what those outcomes are like for somebody, say you're a founder who's in the first year of the business, you're responsible probably for the majority of the growth and opportunity. Like, it's your network, it's your intros. You're driving the sales, you're driving the hiring, you're driving everything. Um, and knowing, like, right, okay, I'm responsible for like bringing customers or sales or the hires in being very clear on what the outcomes are means that you can reverse engineer how you make that happen. And I think when people lose sight of what the outcome they're trying to generate is, is when they end up doing things that aren't right for them. And I think it's very easy now to turn up on social media and grow an audience talking about anything. And really, we're in business, we're all looking for some kind of opportunity that we're trying to create from doing this. And if you're going to put time and resource and effort and energy into something that has to be an roi. Um, and I think being very intentionally clear about what that ROI is that you're looking to get kind of leads you to in backwards steps what you should be doing. So if you're somebody who's like I say, found a year one responsible for driving all the sales, you really need to be doing a few things online to generate that to happen. And there's a few things that you don't need to do. Like they would be nice to have, but you don't need to do them to get to the outcome that you're trying to generate. Um, and from my experience, everyone's path is different. So there is no, like, here's a personal brand strategy. Apply it like it's very down to the individual. And then you work backwards to build the plan, which makes it a bit difficult, um, because it is very bespoke. But if you figure out what it is you're able to generate it. And I think a lot of people approach personal brand in a bit of a lazy, fair way and they never end up getting the opportunity that they're looking for because the execution isn't geared towards making the opportunity.

Speaker B: But there's a tension here, isn't there? Because if, for example, your outcome that you're aiming for is to increase sales to your business, then it's quite hard to do that on social media without turning everyone off, because no one likes to be sold to. Right. But at the same time, then you wouldn't really posting pictures of your dog or like your. The view of the river on the way to work in the morning, because that isn't technically working towards your outcome. So how do you navigate that? I guess gray area between this is my authentic self and I want you to buy my product.

Speaker A: Um, I think on the, like selling to people, it's selling without selling. So take me for example. I run a personal branding agency and the way that I can help the agency get clients is to be somebody who talks about personal brand. I never really say like, great influence does this or we do that. I just talk about personal brand as a subject. Um, and through doing that, it tends to mean further down the line that conversations happen that can turn into business. But I've never really like directly sold the work that we do and what we do. I more just talk around the subject of it. So I think there's an art to like selling without selling and that kind of falls, like thought leadership is a big part of that. Um, and then the second aspect is like, do you bring the personality and personal into it in some sense? And I think it's a very personal choice. So there's undoubtedly benefit from bringing like personal elements of who you are into doing this because it helps you to foster and build relationships and build connection with people that they can resonate to. Um, but I think there's a pressure now to do it that maybe didn't exist before because a lot more people are doing it. I don't think that people have to buckle to that pressure. I think the trick to all of this is doing something that you're really comfortable with. And for me personally, like, I try to show up online for the sake of the business and there's things like I'm not comfortable, like, uh, take professionally for the past three months, great influence has been amazing. My personal life has been a shit show for the past three months. But I'm not choosing to bring that online because I'm not comfortable talking about it. If I was, I maybe would figure out how I talk about it, what's right to talk about, and how does it relate to the people that I'm speaking to, into the world that I'm sitting in. Um, but I think you have to be comfortable with what you're doing, like, with the execution of what you're doing. And the minute that you start doing things you're not comfortable with is the minute that you lose the, like, consistency that you have to put into to make it all happen. Um, and I think that's not to say that it's never say never. Like, I've seen people go on a journey with this, that we've worked with, and they've naturally, over time, become more confident, more comfortable. They naturally start talking about things wider than they initially started in the first place. Um, and their personal lives and all that kind of thing does come into it at times, and they grow the confidence to do that. But I just think it's very much about, like, understand what you're comfortable with and couple that with the outcomes that you're trying to achieve and go, right, okay, given what I'm trying to achieve and what I can do and what I'm comfortable with, what's the execution that ticks those three boxes? And if you figure out that the consistency bit becomes really easy. And I think one of the struggles with personal brand is consistency. People can have spurts and moments where they're very active and they feel on it and all these things. And then all of a sudden, it's been two, three, four weeks, and they fell out of the rhythm. And I think it's because they haven't, like, found that almost like, trifecta, um, of ticking the right boxes. And then I found that the people that do consistency becomes very easy.

Speaker B: It's really great to hear you, an expert, be so pragmatic and sort of tackle these issues, because I do feel there's a lot of pressure to overshare and to share the bad stuff. And in fact, we've had guests on this show whose businesses were really struggling. And then, um, was the founder of White Rabbit Skincare. She went on Instagram and basically kind of had her breakdown in public saying, I'm gonna have to close my business. I've been throwing everything into this for the last few years, and I can't do it anymore. And then the response was enormous. She sold out within, like, 24 hours. Every product she had went. But the pressure is then, I guess, on her, that was a moment. But then she has to keep sharing and sometimes maybe it'll feel to her like it's over sharing. And I think that's really hard for founders to know where to draw those boundaries.

Speaker A: Yeah, you, the issue is, is that you're not A TikToker. A 17 year old TikToker in their bedroom with no responsibilities. Like you've really got to bring into the picture the idea of stakeholder management. Like the majority of people doing this in a business context have at least one person who it matters what they say and it impacts the other person involved. Um, whether you're a freelancer and you have a client, you've got to think about what you're saying through how the client perceives it. Or you're the CEO, uh, of a 500 person company and you've got investors, you've got employees, you've got partners, you've got suppliers like this, there's all those kind of things. So like stakeholder management really does have to come into the picture with this and you have to know the balance of like, okay, I'm comfortable sharing something that's a bit personal or a bit um, revealing of the business. How do I do that in the best way given the idea of stakeholder management? Like what can I say that's gonna toe the right line with our team? What can I say that's going to toe the right line with the investors? And it is a bit of a complex thing to do. And I've seen a couple of instances, I literally saw one this morning of the founder of a uh, fashion brand and she was essentially saying like I can't do this anymore. And I was thinking in my head, I was like, I don't think that's the best thing for you to say. Like there's a way to say what you want to say or. But you've just got to package it in the right way because that, that you've just posted. Yes. A bunch of people on social that follow you. Uh, your audience are going to see it, but your team are going to see it and your leadership team are going to see it and your investors are going to see it. And what confidence does it give them? Like yes, you're going through a moment and they'll know that you're going through a moment and it's not uh, the problem isn't sharing the moment and being honest and vulnerable if that's what you want to do, but it's just being a bit smart and clever of the packaging of how you're saying that for it to land in the right way and to balance this idea of like stakeholder management in the right way. Um, and I get it because business is a very like, emotional thing and if you've got a voice online, you naturally feel like a pull and a gravitational, um, pull towards speaking. Like it helps you. It's cathartic in a sense. Um, so, yeah, I understand it, but I do think there is an element of like, you've got to toe the line and you've, you've got to be careful. Um, and it's about being very tactical. I feel like personal branding in business is very, very, very tactical. Everything has to be thought out. It's intentional, um, because of those reasons I just spoke about. So, yeah, it's something to consider for sure.

Speaker B: So would you say if someone is having a moment like that or, you know, that they would naturally take to social media and say, you know, this is the worst day or something, that you should always sit on it for a day? I mean, what's the best advice when it comes to like hitting the pause button in those moments of stress?

Speaker A: Yeah, like, I felt it personally. Like I've, I've been there, I've wrote the post and then I've just sat on it for a couple of days and I've realized that like, essentially I was, I just needed to journal a little and then if I want to take something and share it and I think, ah, uh, this could actually be quite valuable. Like go back to the journal and figure out what of that is private and what is not private. Um, so yeah, I say anything that you think is gonna, um, be a vulnerability. I think it's always worth sitting on it for a couple of days as nothing's ever immediate. And then also it's worth getting somebody else's outlook on what you've said. Like, if you trust somebody, like run it by them and just sense check things. Um, because I think it's very easy as well nowadays just to fire off a thought because you literally just open your phone and press post. You can do it in like 15 seconds. And that comes with a danger of like, especially, um, a lot of entrepreneurs can be quite impulsive and it kind of plays into that. It's like very easy to be impulsive and just shoot something off and then not even think about it. And yeah, unfortunately we're in a world where you can't, um, your actions tend to have consequences. And I don't say that to put people off the idea of personal branding. It's just the reality. And there's great, great, great pros and opportunity that come from doing this, but there's also great cons that come with it as well. Um, and you've got to find the balance between the two. And for me, like, the idea of personal brand, if you're in business, it's the number one most important thing because it feeds everybody everything. So that's the level of importance and ROI and opportunity that you can create from it. Like, there's a reason why the people at the top of the game are investing so much into this. Like, Stephen Bartlett has a team, spends the majority of his time doing personal brand because it feeds literally everything across his entire business life. But you also have to get the balance right of knowing like the potential pitfalls of what you're getting into and finding the line with things. Um, so, yeah, I find that the majority of people, they know where the line is themselves and it's just making sure you're self aware and sense checking.

Speaker B: You mentioned Stephen there. Uh, we have to ask, like, how did you end up working together? Tell me a bit about that partnership and how you've helped him to become, I mean, we can say super brand. He's a super brand today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I met him in 2012, um, when he just dropped out of university. He famously did like one lecture and dropped out. Um, and he had a business idea and I met him at an event that had nothing to do with business. And we had a mutual friend and I was about to go to university for three years and I wanted to do something else alongside studying. And a mutual friend introduced us. Steve was 18, um, and he said, oh, Stephen's doing something to do with business. And we spoke and then, yeah, I started working with him on this idea that he had. And that idea was around two years working on that. And then that led into SocialChain, which was the agency that he built. And I became part of the founding team at Social Chain. And, um, my job at first was marketing director at Social Chain to try help the agency like market itself and build awareness in the industry. And that very quickly pivoted to doing Steve's personal brand as we realized that the best way for Social Chain to drive business was Steve. Like he did. He wasn't doing personal branding at the time. He started by just doing public speaking. In the first year of Social training, he was doing like small events to like 15, 20 people. And whenever he did it, it always drove business opportunity for us in a big way. So we sat down at the End of the first year in 2015. And me and Steve had kind of been speaking about something along the lines of making content for a couple of years before that. We just never had a reason to. And now there was a really clear reason to because SocialChain would benefit from it massively. Um, and then that journey started. It was like, right, okay, let's figure this out and start from the ground up. And I've spent four years going on that journey with him.

Speaker B: The result is dire of a CEO.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, the result is all the wild things. Yeah, it's crazy to think of the journey that he's gone on. Um, and the interesting thing that I always find is when we sat down to film something for the first time, where we started was video content and we'd film videos. And when we sat down for the first time to do it, it was a two and a half minute video and it took seven hours and he just couldn't. Like he knew what he wanted to say, but he'd never done it before. So he's like stumbling his words. We're going over it time and time again. Um, he was a bit in his own head, like overthinking things and all this kind of thing. Um, and you look at him now 10 years later and he's like so incredibly well versed at the art of being a speaker in different formats and mediums. But it wasn't always the case. Like I literally sat in the room for seven hours to get a two minute video. Um, whereas if you ask Stephen Bartlett to do a two minute video now he does it in one take. Like there is no second take. Um, and there was like 50 takes of our first video. Um, so it speaks to like, everybody starts somewhere. And I think again, part of the pressure is that in business we don't want to see people. We uh, don't want people to see us starting from zero. But personal brand, you don't have any choice but to, uh, have be publicly starting from zero. You can't do it in private. Like you have to go out into the world and do it in public. And unfortunately you're starting from zero. And I think people have a big difficulty of their professional network seeing them not be good at something, but you have to let people see you not be good at it to get good at it. Um, and I think that's a bit of a barrier. So when I, whenever I talk about the Steve thing, I always try to use that story of like, he started exactly where everybody has to start at zero. He was just willing to not be good in public for a while. To learn how to be good in public. Yeah.

Speaker B: For more tips and tricks, head over to sage.com podcasts where you'll have access to a treasure trove of free resources that can help you grow and hone your business. And then what does he get? So right now, like, why has he become such, I guess, a business icon? Because like, yes, there's practicing and being able to deliver a two minute clip in two minutes, but in terms of like, how he comes across, um, I guess the feelings he engenders in the people that are watching or listening, like, what is he getting? Right. What is it that so crucially like on target with his personal brand?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think of all the things that he's really great at, uh, in terms of a, um, thinking mind on subject matter, Personal brand for me is like the thing that he's best at. Like how he thinks about it is, yeah, it's a step above the majority of people that I've seen. And it's, it has nothing to do with social media, it has nothing to do with content. It has everything to do with how you position yourself, how you create the right perception of your image and identity and others. Social proofing, reputation trust building, influence building is like all the psychological and branding aspects of personal brand. And his lens on that is really, really strong. Um, and one of the examples that I use to kind of say what I mean by that is he would have, when we were at Social Chain, he had a videographer, he did like a daily vlog for the agency and the videographer would follow him around everywhere and he'd do a speaking event and before he did the talk, he'd walk around the room and then he'd find a certain spot and he'd ask the videographer to come over and he'd be like, right, if you set up the camera here, the room is gonna look the most, like the fullest and you're gonna get the best shot of me on stage. And, and it's that kind of thinking of like presenting yourself in the right way and trying to like, like really craft how you're perceived in the image that you have. Um, is the art of it. And the people that I've worked with that really understand this is really that, that they're understanding, it's like, how do I present myself to the world, um, and how do I stand out from a crowd and how do I bring the me that exists offline into the online? And how do I take the Offline me and package it and present it in the right way. Um, and I think even now, like, he's got even better at the art of that.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And it's really, if you look past, like, it's presented to us in the form of a podcast, is presented to us in the form of a social clip, is presented to us in the form of Dragon's Den as a program. But if you actually look under the hood of that, it's all the fundamentals that I spoke about there and they're just being delivered in certain mediums and certain formats. Um, so, yeah, it's like focusing on those things is the art of it to me.

Speaker B: And, um, the consistency, I suppose, where you're continually reinforcing what people think you stand for, what people know that you want to talk about or have experience of. You just keep returning to those themes.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think you've got to like, you've got to evolve as well. And what I really like is how music and musicians and artists have really leveraged this. If you look at the music industry, it's so perfectly set up for somebody to build a personal brand in that there's almost an expectation that you have to evolve to survive within the music industry. Whereas in business, like, take Gary Vaynerchuk, he's kind of been the same thing for 15 years now. And there's not an expectation or a culture of evolving your image and identity that exists within music. So if you look at like David Bowie for example, there's a really great image on, um. Like if you Google David Bowie evolution, it'll come up and it's like 40 different versions of David Bowie. And he was a different identity and how he looked, how he sounded, how the music was, how he presented himself constantly evolved through different eras and periods. Um, Elton John is the same, Beyonce is the same. Like, think of anyone who's had longevity in music over decades. They've really, really mastered the art of evolving their own identity. And it's because you have to in music, if you deliver the same album three times, the sales start to go down and people want something new and something fresh. Um, you see in a band like Arctic Monkeys how they went from like this Sheffield based lad band on album one to like album five being this like LA rock and roll, leather jacket, slicked hair. Like, they had to evolve because if they delivered the lads from Sheffield on a night out four or five times, people aren't interested anymore. Um, so there's a pressure and expectation and the culture of music is Set up, if you're going to be successful as an artist, to evolve your image and identity and how you can cross them, the world. And that doesn't really exist in business. And I think it's like, that's a great thing to take is, like, you have to always be evolving. And if you look at Steve, it's one of the things that he's done really well. If anyone followed him in the early days of, like, building social chain, he was referred to before people knew, like, his name. People referred to him as the guy in the hat because he wore this, like, fedora hat on stage. And that was, like, the first evolution of the Stephen Bartlett personal brand. Like, it had a look. He talked about certain topics that he doesn't talk about now. He came across in a certain way, and he did certain things, and then he evolved that and he evolved it again. And now we've kind of got to this, like, he wears all black. Diary of a CEO as distinctive branding, like Huel Association. Like, there's. There's an image there that you could. You can build. And you look back over the 10 years of Stephen Bartlett, and he's gone through multiple phases and understood this idea that you have to evolve and push the boundaries. And I think even with Diary of a CEO, you look at that, and it was a podcast, and he took it live to theaters, and naturally, you would just take the podcast and put it in a theater and it'd be a live podcast. And he didn't do that. He made it like a musical, like a theater show. It was like a play at times. It was a hybrid of different things to create something different. Um, and I think it speaks to, like, his ability to understand that you have to evolve the medium and evolve, like, your identity to keep people interested and engaged. And sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes it does work. Um, and I think looking at music artists is a really great inspiration that you can take.

Speaker B: And it should be a relief, right, that you have to evolve, because there's nothing worse than having to talk about the same thing constantly. I mean, you get bored, let alone your audience. So the idea that what you're talking about this year might not be what you're focusing on in a couple of years should kind of be a relief and something to be excited. Excited about.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think you really have to keep yourself excited. Like, that's, again, consistency is the game here. And the trick to consistency is to stay engaged and excited. And if you're not excited, nobody else can be. So it's really, it's a very. It has to be a very selfish act, I think. And I'd imagine the same thing exists in music. Like they say with songwriters, it's like, don't write for the audience, write for yourself. Like, the minute that you're not writing for yourself is the minute that you. You start to stagnate and become bored and you start producing things that aren't great and the audience don't connect to. And it's a very selfish thing. And in business, like, if you're going to do the personal brand thing, it has to be from a selfish point of view. It's like, do I find this interesting? Do I want to talk about it? Is it challenging me to think in a different way? Um, and all too often people can phone it in, they can get their team, marketing teams to send them a report and it's like, just take this from the report and post it. And they're not really interested in. It's very passive. Um, and it's no surprise that those are the people that tend to have zero consistency in doing this and they don't really make great strides. Whereas if you ask the people who have made something great of it, they're very passionate about it and it keeps them engaged, it's stimulating them and it's developing their thinking and their. It's a big personal development journey I found as well. So.

Speaker B: And that point about not being passive, we hear a lot now about AI and people using AI to, uh, craft posts to kind of craft a personal brand, but it. Does that count as sort of being a bit too passive and not taking the lead, not being authentic? Or is that the way of the future? Is AI going to be our partner when we're building our brands?

Speaker A: Um, I think it will undoubtedly play like a supporting role, but it has to be like your personality is the thing that you're bringing to the table. And right now AI is making you sound like everyone else. In the future, that's probably not going to be the case where the conversation around AI and personal brand completely changes. But right now it's not making you stand out from anybody else. And it's almost like a bit of a red herring because you think that you're building personal brand because it's helping you do it consistently, but it's not helping you do it well. It's just helping you do it. M. So, yeah, I'm a very, very, very big believer in the idea of, like, understand yourself and then bring that to the table and stay really guard railed around who you are and what you're about. And really in business, I think we're trading on a couple of things into, in terms of building reputation and influence and authority with people. And it tends to be stories and ideas like our story and the story of what we're doing in business and what we're experiencing can be one tool that we leverage to build reputation and influence and authority. And then our thoughts, opinions and ideas is the other thing. And the thoughts, ideas and opinions, they, you can't AI them. Like, they have to come from you. And they're not easy, easy to come from you any either. It's like you have to go through the process of like, um, iteration 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, before you get to the good idea. And I think somebody like Rory Sutherland is a great example of like, he trades on ideas on the power and strength of his ideas are what gives him authority, reputation and influence. And if Rory Sutherland used AI to do that, he wouldn't be Rory Sutherland. He'd be trading at a much lower level than everybody else. But it's because he takes the time. I would love to know how much time he puts into developing those ideas, because I think it'll be a lot, a lot more than people expect. Um, and you see it with authors, they have to take a lot of time to develop the books that they do. And this is no different. And we're all in the world of, we're in the business of trading ideas and thoughts and opinions. Um, and you can't phone those in. You, you have to put in the work to, to get to them.

Speaker B: So are there no shortcuts? I mean, I was going to ask you about the hacks you can use to kind of kickstart your personal brand. But if you can't really rely on AI and you have to put in the time and the thought to come up with the original concepts and ideas, then does that mean that there are no hacks? You just have to literally, like, set boundaries around a certain, like, period of time every day or twice a week and just devote that to this particular intentional activity.

Speaker A: I think the hack for me is just support rather than something to like, game a system or hack the process. Um, it's just support to be able to do it. So no army is built alone kind of thing. Like take business, for example. It's very, very, very rare that you get a business that is truly so successful and reaching great heights just off one person alone. It takes multiple people to be able to do it. And it's the same thing here, um, like within a business if you're going to do marketing it's not just one person, like it's a number of brains coming together to make that happen. And I was at an event yesterday and they were talking about how one of the um, issues is that marketing is left to one person and it never should be. And that's why companies don't get ahead in their marketing is because it's usually left to one person um, and personal brand. It's very rare that I've seen somebody who is operating in isolation be able to do it very, very well. And there's a number of ways of like what support means and looks like. But I genuinely believe that you can't do it alone. You need somebody to be helping you. Whether it's like planning, ideating, like feeding back and observing and auditing and reporting, like creating like this, there's multiple ways that support can help. And I think that that for me is the hack. There's no, it's really hard work and the people who get out the thing that creates a competitive advantage in business, the ones who put in the hard work but you find they're never operating alone. There's always, always support around um, them to help make that possible. Because you're dealing with people that are running businesses here like that. They're very time poor people and you have to create the right ecosystem to enable them to build personal brand and make it fit within everything that they, they need to do. And it is possible. I've seen it like um, having worked with like Stephen Bartlett and Gary Neville, they're two of the busiest people that I've ever met and they make it happen at scale and they make it happen at really really well. And it's the support around them and their own drive and them putting the priority and time in needed and all that brought together that makes it possible.

Speaker B: I guess you can either have a really great team around you which limits the amount of time you're spending on it. Uh, even if you have to spend some time, you have like the supporting cast or you do have to invest a lot of your own time. Uh, you can't like there's no middle ground. It's either you pay for talent to support or you sacrifice your own time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I just think it's like anything else in business like delegate. You can't, if you're the founder, CEO you uh, can't be the executor like you have to but it's your vision and it's your ideas and your, your. Like you're setting the direction a lot of the time. Um, and it's the same thing with personal brand, but we get it confused because it's us. Like I am the individual. Whereas with marketing you can disconnect emotionally and it can just be tactical and it's still your vision. You set the direction, you give the feedback, you go, this is where we need to go. This is working. This isn't. Um, but other people tend to be the ones that are helping you execute. And I think with the idea of support as well, it's getting the balance right. What you don't want to do is pass it off to somebody else because that's not going to work because you're not getting an authentic representation of you. You're getting a watered down version of you. If it's somebody else's responsibility to be you, it never ever works. Whereas really it's like finding again the right process, the right ecosystem way of working. That means that you can show up in a way that's scalable. Because the minute that it's passed off to somebody else in a way that means you come up with the idea, because I haven't got the time, is where it's becomes a inauthentic and not truly representative, but it's just not good because that person is not you. Like, it's you that's in the hot seat in your ideas and your opinions, your thoughts, your stories, your lessons that people care about. And that's where the gold is. Um, and I think again, too often it's like you could work with somebody in your team or externally and they can put words into your mouth or it's their responsibility to come up with the idea and it's. Yes, it's never going to work. From what I've experienced.

Speaker B: It's just an uncomfortable situation for everyone concerned. But what about when it comes to building your personal brand? Because you said at the beginning of the call, I like to be the guy behind the camera. I like to be the one that's like doing the editing and the directing and kind of working on the strategy. I don't want to be front and center, but obviously, obviously for you, you also have to show that you can do this for yourself. So how have you found that process and is it much harder doing it for yourself than for your clients?

Speaker A: Um, I think in terms of harder for doing it for yourself than clients, yes, because it's just you've got the emotional connection and you bottleneck yourself as A result. Um, but it's teaching me something different that I wasn't getting from clients because I'm not Stephen Bartlett and I'm not Gary Neville. But I do have a responsibility to show up for the business that I run and try to figure out how I can become an influential voice within my industry. And how do I go about that as somebody who wasn't somebody to do this in the first place. And I think I've seen myself go on a journey over the past few years of um, finding the confidence and understanding what my position is in the world and being very again, like, what are my guardrails? How do I do it? And I think that I'm now at a point where I'm starting to see my approach to personal branding applied to me, start to pay off, where I'm very, um, with the clients that we work with, I'm very much like, you don't have to be everything to everyone. You actually have to be quite targeted, intentional in the voice that you're trying to build and who you're trying to be in the world. Um, and that means avoiding talking about some things and just sticking to a certain lane for a certain period of time. Um, and I've stuck to the lane of personal branding for a few years now and it's starting to create the right opportunity. I'm not just building an audience on social media that results in nothing. I'm seeing the real world opportunity as a result of sticking to my guns in a sense. And I've had to be quite disciplined and avoid doing things that I know could, quote, unquote, perform better for the sake of believing in doing the right thing to create the opportunity that I'm looking for. Um, and I know how to make people go viral. Like it's so easy. It's so easy and I could give somebody a hundred, give me six months, I can get anyone 100,000 followers, probably faster. Um, but that's not going to result in anything for them past a number on their social media page. And for me it's like you've got to take the slow, hard route of avoiding fast growth and hacking the system and doing content that's not right for you, but that just works on social media. And you've instead got to do the longer process of figuring out who you're trying to be in the world, how you show up in the right way and generate the outcomes that you're looking for. And the difference is that you're not a, ah, flash in the pan. Like you don't have one year where you're popular and then you disappear forever. You slowly, over time, build a sustainable career. And I think a really great example of that, uh, is Daniel Priestley. So he. I got his book in 2015, and, uh, it's called Key Person of Influence, and it's essentially around the idea of personal branding. So he's been around for 10 years now, to my knowledge, but in the last 12 months, he's really having a moment. He went on Diary of a CEO, he's doing more speaking. Like, he's on more podcasts, he's on more media, his own socials are growing, and he's somebody who is just kind of like, stuck to his niche and understood what it is. And he's just put in 10 years. And that, to me is like, that's. That's the game that you're playing.

Speaker B: We say it all the time on this show, but it takes 10 years to build an overnight success. Like, the people that you see and you're like, wow, where did they come from? They've actually been plugging away, doing this, building their reputations for an awfully long time before they become the overnight success. Um, but I wanted to just come back to what you said a moment ago about, on this journey, you learn to build your own confidence. Can you tell me about any moments that. That did that that made you feel like, I don't know, that you were kind of saying the right things, that it was resonating with people? Like, what were those little markers in your journey that you really read as, okay, right, this is. This is right for me, and I'm actually doing something worthwhile with my time.

Speaker A: Um, I think there was two or maybe three, and one of them is two in one. So I'll explain. The first one is, um. So Gary Neville went on, have I Got News for you? Maybe 18 months ago now or two years ago now? And he's been doing TV for a decade, so he's very well versed in TV. But, uh, he's used to live TV on Sky Sports and have I Got News for you was auto cues. And beforehand, he'd never done that before. So it's like a new thing for him. Even though he'd done TV and he filmed this little video in the green room before beforehand saying, like, I'm actually nervous. I've never done this before. And I just wanted to share that. Even after 10 years in TV, I'm still like, this happens. Um, and that was just, like, a very comforting thing to know. Like, the same nerves that I have of showing up in my little way is the exact same nerve that Gary has showing up in his way on national television. Like, it always exists. You're never going to get rid of the feeling. You're always going to feel uncomfortable. But the people that do this well acknowledge that they sit with the feeling. They let it happen, and they do it anyway. So I think for me, that was, like, the first thing that I saw. And I saw the same thing with Steve when he went on TV for the first time. And how he felt beforehand versus what he had to do in front of the camera was like, two different things. And you realize that the biggest people doing this feel the same way you do do. And it's quite an empowering thing. Like, right, okay, they feel it too. The difference is they push through. And I have the choice to either push through or not. So for me, I was like, right, okay, I'm always going to try to push through. Um, and then the second thing is probably in the last six months or so, I've just found the confidence. And I don't know what it is. I don't know where it's come from to believe in what I say with conviction. And I noticed that yesterday I did like, a. An event speaking at an event, and I just felt I spoke with conviction, like, really believed in what I was saying. And I. Not that I don't care what people think, but this is just what I believe, and I'm saying it with conviction now. And if it's for you, great. If it's not, that's fine. Um, whereas beforehand I was maybe unsure and a little meek and. And the only way I've been able to do that is just do it more and more and more. You have to learn in the arena kind of thing you can't learn in private. Um, and the more that you put yourself out there, I've personally found, is like, you start building, uh, you're comfortable in the setting, and when you're comfortable in the setting, you start to relax your shoulders a little and you can settle in. And once all that anxiety goes away, because you're familiar with doing the thing that you're being tasked, that's when you start to be able to articulate yourself a little better and you build a bit more confidence. And then eventually you find that you're getting more conviction around what you're saying. And then that comes across in your tone of voice and how you hold yourself and your body language, um, and all these things. And it really really, really is a journey. I've seen that from working with people and seeing them go from telling me that they're never gonna have a photo taken of them or film a video, to producing video content every single day across five platforms in, In a journey of five, five years. Like, it just takes time and the confidence kind of builds naturally from throwing yourself in the deep end with it.

Speaker B: And can you recall and will you share with us an example where you made a mistake, like, your greatest mistake when it comes to personal brand, and then, I guess what you learned and how you moved past it.

Speaker A: I think the biggest mistake is not something that was, like, one moment that was definitive. I've been a touch wood. I've not had a disastrous incident kind of thing. Um, but I think there was a moment where I looked at what other people were doing, it was working for them, and I thought, right, okay, that's. I apply that to the work that I'm doing and just the copy and pasting what others were doing and applying it to who I was working with. And this was maybe around, around 20, 22, and there was a period of maybe like three months where I was kind of like, right, that's what we need to be doing for who we're working with, and that's the way to get ahead. And I lost sight of the fact that the reason why it worked for that person is because nobody else was doing it and that it was right for them to do. Um, and I'd always held that view, but there was a short period where I lost it for a few months and I had to remember and bring it back to, like, the fundamental principles of what I believe in, which is you have to figure out who you are and show up in a way that suits you. And if you do that, you tend to do things that nobody else is doing because you're not focused on what anyone else is doing. You're focused on what's right for you. Um, so, yeah, I'd say that was probably the biggest mistake that I made. I let my, um, tunnel vision swerve off for a little and I had to pull it back.

Speaker B: And on that theme, have there been any moments when, through no fault of your own, maybe it's an algorithm changing or some, like, tech mega trend where you felt like you've been thrown a bit, like, in your work with your clients, with their personal brands, like, have there been curveballs that have been thrown your way, um, that you've had to adjust to, change, change course, learn from?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think in with entrepreneurs, everything's changing all the time. It's like constant shifting suns from, like, the business strategy and what they're doing to the overall business. Like, there's always changes being made internally, different direction, um, negative things are like maybe redundancies or cash flow issues or anything like this. And then people leave businesses, they exit them, they start new ones. And it's like all of a sudden you might have to completely shift what you're doing and you've got to plan ahead for that, um, even down to, like, how the social platforms operate. Um, so, like take LinkedIn, for example. There was a report recently where engagement and reach for the average person on the platform is nosedive. 50, like it's 50% lower than it was two years ago. Um, so LinkedIn had like a golden era that you could take advantage of. Um, and there's always like shifting sunset to contend with. But I think that the thing that saved it is that, that again, that thinking of what personal brand actually is is the foundational elements that have nothing to do with something that's not in your control. It has nothing to do with how an algorithm reacts. And through focusing on that, rather than like, how can I become popular on LinkedIn? If you just try to figure out how to become popular on LinkedIn, you're at the mercy of LinkedIn in like, you're building a house on a castle, like castle of sand kind of analogy. Um, and yeah, taking the time to actually lean into the right fundamentals of personal branding mean that you, you, you're not, um, like excused of shifting sands and challenges, but you've got a lot more control over things.

Speaker B: I found Ash, that's been an absolute masterclass. I feel like I've got an MBA in personal branding now. Having listened to you, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all the insider knowledge that you've accrued over a decade. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker A: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker B: Now, a little news from us here at Sound Advice. This is going to be our last episode, so I just wanted to take a moment on behalf of Sage and the whole team here to thank all our fans and all the wonderful business owners who have taken part and shared their stories, stories and brilliant advice over the past three years. We have won some amazing awards along the way and even reached number five in Apple's top 10 podcasts for entrepreneurs in the UK. Don't worry, our back catalog isn't going anywhere, so anytime you need a little sound advice, you can dive back in, just visit sage.com podcast I've been your host. Becks Van Callender signing off, wishing you all luck in all your endeavours.