Eureka Moment: How to Accelerate Your Personal Brand #69

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to a special Eureka moment episode of The Company Doctor. Our diehard fans will know that these shorter episodes are designed to be enjoyed over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, depending on what time of day it is, and deliver a quick hit of inspiration from the mind of The Company Doctor. So boil the kettle or uncork the Chianti and prepare for 10 minutes of A-star inspo, which this week is focused all around how to accelerate your personal brand. Hello, Gary.

Hey, you're a happy man. It must be a Friday.

Is it a Friday? It's Friday afternoon.

Yeah, I've got that feeling. You do. It's funny, actually, I, before you came on, I was wearing a hat. I wanted to take the piss out of you, and I've got one of the hats that you wanted me to get you and I couldn't get. Yeah, I was gonna wear it, and I thought, that's really mean.

It would have been mean. Yeah, yeah. I mean, luckily I've got this lovely hat which no one can see. Um, but yeah, that, I'm glad you didn't do that because I would have Taking me right down a peg or two from my lovely happy Friday feeling.

Well, you see, one of the reasons for talking about the hat is the topic today is how to accelerate your personal brand. And part of your personal brand is to wear cool hats.

Yeah, especially when I'm recording. I don't know why. It could be to do with the light bouncing off my head or I'm just a cool guy.

You creative types, you know how it is.

But no, this is a good one. You've only just told me what this subject is, so I'm very excited because you're revealing to people how unorganized we are.

On a Eureka moment, I don't think we do notes, right? So this is very spontaneous.

No, and I often don't know because then I don't know what the Eureka moment is. So it's as much as a useful thing for me as it is for everyone else.

It's a surprise. I almost told you by mistake. So let's crack on. It's only 10 minutes. For people listening, this is your chance to accelerate your personal brand. Now, great topic. It probably is worthy of a full episode, but you know what, we're just going to do it in a snapshot for people.

Yeah, that's how we roll. That's our personal brand.

So, so just to kind of set the scene, um, Because people think, okay, personal brand, what is it? I can tell you what it is in 4 parts. Okay. The 4 parts. And I think it's a chance for people. If you do have a personal brand that you don't like, just to let you know, just like Madonna, I think you can change your personal brand. It takes effort, but you can do it. And so if I give you the foundations and then I'm going to give you the eureka moment, that sounds good. Sounds brilliant. Love it. Good answer. So here's the foundations. There's 4 parts. The first part is who are you and what's your background? What is it about you? What do you want me to know about you? What's your background? What's your family interests? Who are you, George, as a person? Don't ask. That's the first part. The second part is how do you like to operate? What are your habits? What are your methods? And a good example for me is like, I like to be on time. That's my habit. It's like if you invite me to your party, I'm the first guy to come and the last one to leave.

Sorry.

Yeah, but I'm always on time and I hate it when people aren't. Sorry. Number 3 is do people know where you're going? What's your purpose? Where are you going in life? What's your vision? What's your goal? What is it? Where are you heading? And the fourth part is what do you expect? And what I mean by that is what are your values, standards, and behaviors? So for me, here's my example. Do what you say is my mantra. Everyone who knows me knows that I do what I say. Yep. And I say what I do.

Yes, indeed. But have you cultivated that personal brand for yourself, or is that just how you are naturally?

Well, that's a very good question. I think this is the, this is the challenge for people listening. It's all very well having some ideas about what your own personal brand to be, but if you don't reinforce them with behaviors, they're pointless. So I don't know what came first. I think over time I realized that's what's important to me. But the more important thing is that I reinforce those behaviors. For example, if being on time is really important but I'm always late, it's kind of laughable. And if doing what I say isn't really what happens with me, then my personal brand's killed. And although we're being, being flippant about it, Most people think what their personal brand would— they'd like it to be, but they don't reinforce it and therefore it's pointless.

Yeah. So you have to hammer it. You have to, you have to keep at it if you want that to be a personal brand.

You just need to reinforce the behaviours. That's why I've given you 4 things, because I think if people can think about those 4 things and then it gives you a chance to change it, because if those things aren't what people you might think people think of you as, then you've got a chance to change it and then change your behaviours. Yeah. As it's a quick episode, we're going to detail. We'll do another episode on it. But that's just a rough guideline. So that's fantastic. So you've got that, you're reinforcing behaviors, but how do you really accelerate your personal brand? And I've got the eureka moment. All right.

Halfway through and we're getting straight to the eureka moment.

Yeah, yeah. We're going to go— I'm going to go straight for it because it's big. Okay. Is it too soon? Am I kissing on the first date?

No. Well, slightly, but, you know, I'm here for it.

Well, so here's what I thought, because I think, look, I work with a lot of people, I do a lot of coaching. Everyone's interested in personal brand, but people don't really know how to leverage it, or they do do a bit of it. And I came across this— it's nothing new, but I'm going to tell you what it is. The eureka moment is this, George. It is the butterfly effect. Okay, do you know what the— have you heard of the butterfly effect?

I have, I have. And I think it's only because of the film that everyone knows what it is. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. What do you think it means? What do you think it stands for?

It's to do with the fact that if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere, it can have a chain reaction that sets off all sorts of other events and it can cause a volcano to erupt.

Yes. You're following me now. So you're thinking, okay, we're talking about personal brand and now we're talking about volcanoes erupting. Are you, are you in tune where I'm going?

I think so.

Right. Well, let me— so if I give you a summary of the butterfly effect, it's actually from chaos theory. And what it is is small causes large effects. Small effects cause large effects, right?

In tandem.

Okay. So the principle of the butterfly effect is the wings of the butterfly in conjunction. Causes the ripple. And let me translate that. Is this a surprise to you?

It's a surprise that that's the eureka moment. Yeah, I've heard of the butterfly effect, but I didn't know that that would be the key to accelerating my personal brand. And I'm excited to find out how. Good.

And a good, good leading question because so if you, if you remember the foundations I just told you, if not rewind and let me give you 3 things to think about and then I'm going to give you a bit of a summary at the end because that's why I went early on this. The first one is small actions, big impact. And what I mean by that is if you want to raise your reputation, you've got to be on the radar. And what I mean by that is you've got to be posting, yeah, uh, blogs, or have an opinion about something, value pieces of content that can establish you as a thought leader over time. It could be an insightful post, it could be a video, a comment, but something that's going to resonate with your audience. And then connected to that, this is still number 1, is networking. If you can engage with just a small number of influential people, you can open up other opportunities. But all these things on their own don't work. That's why it's the butterfly effect. Because if you network without having an opinion and being on the radar, then you reduce your chances of having impact. If you just post things but you don't meet up with anyone, you reduce your impact. So we're starting to build the butterfly effect. So that's number 1. Number 2 is amplification over time. It's a bit like compound growth, you know, similar to compound interest in finance. The effects of your actions on your personal brand can compound over time, and people are generally not patient enough, so they'll kind of do one post and have 3 network meetings and give up. Yeah. But the regular engagement and consistent delivery of messaging might seem insignificant to people at first, but actually it leads to exponential growth like compound interest.

Yeah. And a great example of that, that sort of regular stuff is what you do as we approach weekends, which is your sort of thoughts for the weekend, which I always, I always appreciate.

I do it quite often and it has a big impact because it's lighthearted, but people like it and it's sometimes a bit deep.

Yeah, it's a talking point for when you meet up with people.

Yeah, it is. And so, you know, if you, if you get into that compound growth, then you'll start getting positive feedback. Like when I post those, I get a massive reaction, more than anything else. And so again, it's increasing, magnifying the butterfly effect. Yeah, that's number 2. And then number 3 is sensitivity to conditions, because you don't want to rant on about something no one cares about, like we're doing right now. You've got to add value. So you're— you should always think about being authentic, but how can I add value? Because if my personal brand is going to have any credibility, I need to be kind of current. Yeah. Therefore, that adds to my butterfly effect because it's relevant and people are interested in it. So you've got to be current. Yeah. And then that means that you can choose a certain niche. So you can think about what, what niche have I got? Like, you've got a very different niche to me, but they're both important and relevant to certain communities. So choose your niche because it can have a big impact on your personal brand. Yeah, because then you can have an opinion about that niche and be a bit more kind of binary about how you talk about it, and therefore controversial and gets people to talk about it. Yeah, that makes sense.

It does. It's about sparking that conversation, isn't it? And you being a catalyst for other people's conversations, which sort of, you know, as you say, grows your your presence in their mind.

It does, exactly. So I've got 3 takeaways, which you never do on a Eureka moment, but I'm doing it. Unheard of. It's unheard of, and I want to do it because I feel so passionate. Are you feeling my passion? Oh yeah, I feel so passionate, and I love butterflies. I want people to, I want people to benefit from their personal brand. I think they're, they're like a Ferrari with a wheel clamp on. They do a little bit here, a little bit there. They're highly charged and revving up and nowhere to go. So here's my 3 takeaways. The first one is leverage micro content across multiple platforms. Have digestible things that go on. It could be TikTok, it could be LinkedIn. Don't be— don't get obsessed with social media, but niche things, quick messages, 3 takeaways, just quick things that are easy for you to do and be consistent with. The second one is the engagement in strategic networking. Yeah, I, you know, we're firm believers in networking on a regular basis. Yeah, but, but try and engage with people that are thought leaders or influencers or good collaborators in your niche, because if you're in a niche, then you'll probably know more people that are in that niche. And the third takeaway is implement a consistent feedback loop. And what I mean by that is solicit feedback on what you're posting and what you're talking about. Through surveys or polls or, or messages, because then you're getting people to get involved in your content. So be consistent and persistent, keep going, experiment and adapt, focus on value and authenticity, and just make it part of your DNA, and you will massively accelerate your personal brand. Don't do one, it's a three-legged stool, you've got to do all. Eureka! Eureka!

Eureka! Yeah, that's a real eureka. I don't know, you know that we've mentioned the three-legged stool before, and I I think this is a really good example of that.

We need you to butterfly. You can do this.

Thank you, Gary. I feel enlightened by that and euricified. Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much. We hope that's been useful to you all. Accelerate those personal brands and we will see you next time.

See you later.