Personal Branding with Taiba Mahmood | Confident Storytelling Hub

to the next session. We have another veteran member to say. Many of you probably know her by now. We have Taiba. Taiba is personal branding coach. Taiba is a storytelling coach. Yeah, thank you so much, Ranjit, and thank you for your comments. I know you're not able to unmute, but you are constantly providing feedback. So yeah, awesome, Malka. Emotional dear fighter. Thank you, Ranjit. So Taiba is a personal branding coach. She was one of my earliest mentees. I think we have been associated for almost 4 years, if I'm not wrong. And I have seen her journey. I've seen her grow from just a budding blossom to now being a full-blown coach helping so many people across the world. And that's why I reached out to her to say, do you want to talk about something which is relevant in this era of personal branding. And this is— she is so graciously accepted that. So let's welcome Taiba Mahmood with her topic, which is Be Seen. Over to you, Taiba.

Thank you so much, Haritosh Srivastav, for your valuable words. I really appreciate all your words. So this session, I want to keep it very, very candid and interactive. So if we can all interact a lot— I used to have a channel called Talk with Taiba, and I'm going to invite that once again. Guys, please talk with me. I love talking. That's why I named that channel as Talk with Taiba. So BC, when you hear the title, what comes to your mind?

I want to know from you.

What comes to your mind? Your title of talk to— talk with Taiba, you're talking about this title that I have shared, 'Be Seen.' What comes to your mind when you hear the title 'Be Seen'? So we all have an inner urge to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be loved, to be cherished. So that's what you're talking about, I think, that is to be seen in the world around us. Thank you, thank you, Alka ji, for that. So anyone else would like to give it a shot? What does be seen, uh, what, what impression? Yeah, I think be seen implements the idea that In today's competitive world, for like, for one thing, you have so much competition that you need to stand out. So be seen is, um, like a replication and idea of that, to stand out among others. So that is what I think it is. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much, Anushka, for that answer. Okay, so we have, uh, amazing answers from the members. And be seen is actually what these members have shared. Be seen is all about, you know, how many of you are currently coaches or planning to be coaches or experts at some point of time? We have 2 coaches here. Anyone else who is planning or is already a coach?

Sandeep is a coach, I know. Rajesh is also a coach.

Okay, awesome, awesome. So being a coach, do you guys sometimes feel that so many trainers coming out, you know, with every few months, every new month now? So earlier it used to be once in a new year you will get a few new trainers, but every new month here in this industry, some new people coming up, and they're all bright and brilliant in their own ways, but Would you all agree with me? When we start our journey as a coach, as a trainer, as an expert, the first most important or the most defining moments in our career is being actually seen, heard by our target market. Do you agree that being seen is actually one of the most important things? And, uh, I believe, you know what, being seen, uh, okay, one more question to all of you. When you hear, when you hear the word sugar, what comes to your mind? When you hear the word sugar, do you get somebody's name in mind? What do you get in mind? I get diabetes. Okay, let's change that. Okay, let's hear, okay, When you hear the word Lenskart, what do you get in mind? Does it, huh, Lenskart, does it remind you of someone? Specs, okay. And the founder who formed Lenskart, right, the face behind Lenskart. When you hear the word sugar, I, I'm a big fan of Vinita Singh, so Now when I hear her name, it is like Vinita, the Shark Tank judge and also the founder. Do you also get— when you hear the word, what comes to your mind? Does Aman Gupta come to your mind when you heard the word boat? Right? So what I'm trying to share is personal branding. There's a lot and lot of things in personal branding. And I'm not going to bore you with the facts and statistics, but what I'm trying to say is each of us, whether we recognize it, acknowledge it or not, we are in some way standing up for something, right? You might be a student, you might be a working professional, you might be a coach, trainer, consultant, entrepreneur, but we all say something, we all stand for something. Sometimes that, you know, how people view us, it, it becomes a mark, a hallmark of trust, right? And would you all agree we first connect with people and then to products and services and everything else?

Yes.

100%, right? If a founder— like, when you— let's take an example of, uh, Ratan Tata. Now, he himself is one of the best examples. He is the epitome of personal branding, I think, because— and, you know, do you feel a sense of trust when you buy Tata products? Is there that ingrained integrity? You feel that, okay, if this is Tata, means trust. Tata equals to trust.

The—

is it ingrained in your mind? Yes. Right. And also, do you feel that with certain personalities who are also associated with the groups and who are running the companies? Right. And that's the power of personal branding. For example, when I took the name Ratan Tata, certain emotions came to your mind. You might have not known him personally, you might have, uh, not read his biography or anything, but something triggered within you. What is that? That is, he has done his job right as a personal brand. He has set his position right that I am 'One entrepreneur that you can trust. I build companies that stand for trust, integrity, and care.' Awesome. So now that— so, you know, businesses, I believe only about 4 things, okay? I believe business is about just 4 things. The first thing is, uh, You need a product or a service to sell, right? Because if you don't have anything to sell, it's not a business, right? So you need, number one, a product or a service. Second, you need some kind of awareness, branding, right? That's how we know, uh, you know, what, what this time— this brand stands for, what that brand stands for. You need some kind of awareness, some kind of machine that tells people about who you are, what you stand for, what you do, why you do, and how you do. That's the second part, right? That's your branding. The third part is then actually, once branding is done, you have to create offers, right? Diwali offers, New Year offer, this offer, that offer, lots of offers coming in, right? You need to be really good at creating these offers. And final, can anyone tell me the final step after creating offers? What is that final step? Call to action. Yeah, actually selling, telling people, hey, come on, buy this product, buy this thing. Diwali, like Amazon has the biggest, you know, when does Amazon has its biggest, what do you say, revenue numbers? When does it hit? Right after he— it has done some Diwali sale or some New Year sale. Why? Because of the kind of offers that are running. But to the, to the core of all of this, do you feel that if you have a product, let's suppose, okay, you also have offers, you also have some selling mechanism, but there is no, like, no way to— you are putting that product out there, you are not sharing it with people, will it ever reach to your target market? No, not possible, right? And we also talked about just before this, first people try to connect with you, right? First we buy the person and then we buy the product or the service or whatever. So do you see how branding lies at the heart of every business, and that's why companies are so serious about branding. Let's take the example of Confident Storytelling. Haritosh Srivastav has taken branding very seriously. He has his, you know, logo here and the, you know, all the things done. That's also a very good example of branding. Okay, these are subtle ways to tell your audience what you stand for, who who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do, right? So I can go on and on talking about branding and how it is the heart of everything, but I want to open the floor for questions so that I don't, uh, you know, I want to keep it very, very interactive. I want to— I have a lot of questions. I, I always ask my audience members to ask me as many questions as possible. I collect them. I also create some videos and things of that sort. But I want to open the floor for questions so that you can actually, uh, you know, ask me some questions. How to be a brand? Nice question. How to be a brand? So see, brand has 3 elements to me, okay? First, it is your persona. Like the image. And even, uh, this— basically branding for me is two things: who you are, right? If I am a branding coach, people should view me like a branding coach. They should not be confused about me, right? A lot of times some coaches, what they do is they're doing so many things at one point of time that it confuses their audience, that, okay, is she this? Is she that? Is he that? So first of all, who you are and how you want to— how you want your people to view you, those are the two things. They should be in alignment. And when they are in alignment, and then you create that persona through your visual elements, number one, through your text, number two. See, your design is your silent ambassador, right? So through your visual elements through your colors, brand colors, fonts, and all of those things. Then second is your, uh, you know, the way you are sharing your content. Some people like doing a lot of videos, some people like doing a lot of audios, like how you are communicating. So what I like to tell, the first part is your design is like your dress, what you're putting on. It's like the dress that you're making your brand here. Then the second is your copy. Copy is how you're communicating, how you're speaking, you're sharing your content. And third is your very, very important point that, that is called your personality wavelength. In the sense, how you bring out different flavors of yourself to your audience. If you're always playing on certain emotions, Uh, then you are missing out on— because I've seen a lot of people, they gravitate towards only one type of emotion. You— I, I encourage people to share both their wins and vulnerabilities, right? So how to be a brand? Number one is who you are. You need to be clear in your head, and your audience, how they view you, that should be clear. And again, within your persona, how you create your persona, you have your visual elements, Then how you communicate, how you share things about yourself. And third is how you portray your personality, how you play out on different emotions, how you share the different parts of your personality to people. That, that is again very crucial. I hope I was able to answer that, Ranjit. Are you happy with the answer, or do you have some follow-up questions or something? Okay, so I hope The question is answered. Okay, who wants to go next? Thank you, Ranjit. Who else wants to go? If you have any questions, like lots of people have lots of questions regarding branding— where should I build my personal brand, how should I collect content ideas, how should I— which platform I should go big on, should I create podcast only, or should I go for writing books, or should I do, uh, amalgamation of everything? Okay, we have another question from Rajesh. Let me look. How to understand your customer better? Wow, this is a very fabulous question. Thank you, Rajesh, for asking this question, and I'll tell you a fabulous, fabulous answer today. Are you ready? Open all your ears. And there are only 3 things, okay? I read a very beautiful book and that was on the subject only. How to, you know, you understand your customer better. And it said the formula to understand your customer is just about 3 things: talk to your customer, talk to your customer, talk to your customer. And I talk a lot to my customers, I tell you that. I talk to at least 20 to 40, maybe 50 new people every single day. I mean, I'm not doing it like as in every single day. There are days when my schedule is quite tight, I'm not able to But I'm trying to create that touchpoint, and because of that, I've got some fabulous people in my network. So talk to your target market, talk to your target market, talk to your target market. Nothing better than that. I collect a lot of questions, you know. I have these notepads and I keep writing these questions, uh, when I actually, uh, uh, have these interactions with people. And that's why I can confidently say where is that one thing, you know, which is missing out or which you need to tweak a bit. A lot of coaches— this is— thank you, thank you so much, Rajesh. Any follow-up questions? Any other questions that you have? Then I will give one very—

I think Anushka unmuted, so maybe Anushka also had a question.

Ah, yeah. Okay. So, uh, what I wanted to ask is, sometimes when you have to creatively express yourself, there is not one emotion, like there are so many different kinds of things. So what I try to do is I like creating vision boards. So I try to visualize what type of, uh, what colors I want, what type of aesthetic do I want. Do I want stars, oceans, or some something like that. So, but time comes when this is so broad that I'm not trying to put it in a single line. So, so personal branding, like, it should be the same always, or should it go like different? So what I'm trying to ask is, if I choose different themes in the same project, will it shift the customer from personal branding, or does the brand does not form, or something like that? I mean, See, you're talking about your own brand, how you want to portray your brand over different projects, something like that. Like you're working with different clients and how you want to project your brand through those projects. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, yeah. Okay, exactly. So I feel that this, uh, this branding thing, I feel brand evolves with the— because see Brand evolves with the person. I started my journey as a public speaking coach back in the day. I did a lot of work there, you know, found some amazing, amazing work, but I evolved and evolved and evolved. And personal branding, I realized this is my thing, you know. I love— I mean, I use— definitely use, uh, uh, the concepts of all the things that I've used in the past. So my brand has evolved with time. So I think the vision at one point of time should be, uh, one thing only, because it can confuse your audience also if you use too much of, uh, creativity. Also, sometimes, you know, it kind of kills your business. Because, you know, I, I'm reading books, and when I read books, and I find this thing that business is a very boring affair. You should try to make business as simple, as boring as possible. Definitely, I'm not saying I'm not against innovation on anything. Like, with time you should innovate, you should actually try out new things. But if, let's suppose, for this year you should decide, okay, this is going to be my brand colors, or this is going to be the theme of my brand, or how I want to go about it. Does that answer your question? You definitely evolve over time, but yeah, it does. Okay, awesome, awesome. Thank you, thank you, Anushka, for that question.

I have one last question from Sanjay.

Yeah, okay, awesome. How to collect content? Okay, and this— I was about to come on this, and this is— there is one hack that I found the very, very hard way, but I've got a very good hack for this. So collecting questions for your, uh, from your target market, especially when you're beginning I remember, you know, it used to be so hard. I used to go to Quora, AskThePublic.com, and so many sites like Reddit, here, there, all over the place to just collect the questions. But at times, you know, when I generated these questions, I feel they were not so authentic in the sense they were not from real people and these were not some real concerns, right? But I found a better hack. Would you like to know the better hack? The better hack is you follow the top 10 to 20 creators in your niche. Okay, there might be people who would be at the top of your niche. Uh, you can even follow 5 to 10 people, whatever you're comfortable with. Go to the top-notch people. For example, I am into personal branding. So I will see who is at the top of personal branding. So I know this influencer, his name is Jasmin Alec, and he and I, we are connected on LinkedIn as well. And he, you know, I follow him and I follow a couple of other people also. So what I've seen is when you follow these creators and they post on your similar subject, like I'm into personal branding and I'm following this person who's also into personal branding. Now he gets a lot of questions asked every time he's posting something. Okay, how to build a personal brand, how to collect— whatever he's, you know, posting, people have lots of questions beneath his content section, that is in the comment section. And that is a gold mine for questions, I tell you, because these are real questions from real people having real problems. Was it awesome? Was it mind-boggling? Different? So that's how you collect. So make a content bank. Take all these questions, keep collecting it. And also, I encourage you to ask your target market every time. You know, whenever I invite people to my own tribe also, I always ask them, okay, why are you here?

What—

how can I help you? What are the challenges you're facing? So that ensures that I understand them better and I'm able to serve them better. Thank you, Sanjay. So, Abhi, I think the time is up, right? Haritosh Srivastav, I think.

Yes.

Okay, thank you so much. I would just, uh, share one document also with Haritosh Srivastav, and I would share the link of my tribe if you feel— if my points resonated with you and you felt that, you know, this could be something exciting for you. I would just drop the link of my tribe, Abundant Coaches Hub, which is all about personal branding, organic lead generation. So I'm going to drop it in the—

okay, while you are dropping that, I would like to thank you for taking this amazing session on the topic Be Seen. It was as always great to listen from you. I have seen your journey, I've seen your evolution, and you're really doing some incredible work. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Haritosh, for this amazing opportunity. I am totally, totally grateful to Haritosh. He is my first mentor. And, you know, first things are always very special, you understand, right? All the first things in life, they're very special. So is my first mentor. Um, actually, when I started my journey, I literally asked him that, please, will you be my mentor? And that time I was very scared. I don't know, I don't know this person, whether he will say yes or no. But I'm so grateful that day he said yes, and So far there's no looking back, uh, and we both have a very, I think, growth mindset. And I love, uh, you know, coming here. Due to the crunch of time, I'm not able to, uh, come here so often, but I try to come back to the community as often as possible. And heartfelt gratitude to my mentor Haritosh Srivastav and all community members here who keep showing up every time there's something organized. You guys are all growing and thriving, and I love the energy of this community.

Thank you, Taiva.

Yes, uh, can I share something, Haritosh Srivastav?

Yeah, yeah, please go ahead.

Thank you. Okay, so that was really great, Taiva. The, uh, the way you answered all the queries, that was wonderful. Your trick, like, talk to your customer, talk to your customer, talk to your customer, was amazing. And that's actually practical. That's wonderful. But yes, I, um, from the day like on, I think on my first day when I joined this community, you were there and I saw like there you shared your story. And after that, like, yes, I have been following you on your Facebook. But you are really doing a tremendous job. That's keep rocking and keep shining. Wonderful.

Congratulations. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your words.

Awesome, awesome. So feel free to share your whatever document you got and link.

Yeah, I'll just share that document as well.

Thank you, you are a giver. So thank you, we are so fortunate to have so many givers in the community.