Personal Branding—What is it Really?

Hi everyone, welcome to today's Biznology webinar. We have an exciting webinar today because I'm joined by Monique DeMaio, giving us some insight into personal branding. For those who are new to our webinars, let me give you a little background. Our Biznology webinars are half an hour Our platform allows you to chat with other attendees through the chat tab. You can also tweet about the webinar with our hashtag #BizNowWebinar, and any questions for our speaker can go in the Q&A tab, and we'll ask them at the end. We also can't get started without giving a shout out to our sponsors. Garrus Corp is a full-service digital strategy firm that reaches deeper into the conversation than any other agency anywhere. On Demand CMO, a marketing agency focused on helping people and organizations see what they don't see for themselves. On Demand helps them create better narratives, better customer engagement and retention, and ultimately revenues. And last but not least, Solo Segment. Revenues trapped in your site search? Solo Segment's Site Search Inspector can help you set that revenue free. So let me tell you a little about myself. I'm Mike Moran, founder of Biznology and a senior strategist at Conversión and Solo Segment. I'm the co-author of Search Engine Marketing Inc., Outside-In Marketing, and the sole author of Do It Wrong Quickly. I'm a veteran of IBM, managing groups on IBM.com for 8 years and retiring from IBM in 2008 as a distinguished engineer. That's enough about me. Today we're talking with Monique DeMaio. So thanks for being here today, Monique.

Oh, thanks for having me, Mike. It's always a pleasure to see you.

Terrific. And I know, Monique, that you have a great deal of expertise on personal branding. You're CMO and founder of a 20-year-old consulting firm, On Demand CMO, which focuses on B2B marketing strategy, positioning, and messaging. You also help executives develop game plans to test their personal brand and live their personal brand. Is there anything else you think the audience might want to know about your background in the subject? How'd you get here?

You know, I started my career at IBM, funny enough, right, years and years ago, and then went to Salomon Brothers and did some marketing there. And then I was publisher of Brandweek and ran a not-for-profit for profit in the marketing area and realized at that time, and even more so now, that clients were locked in to having relationships with agencies and other people that didn't serve them. So I created On Demand CMO in the model that they should only be able to get or pay for what they needed, no more, no less. And then how I got into personal branding was I was realizing the correlation, and I'll talk about that. between corporate branding and personal branding are very, very, very closely aligned.

Very cool. Very cool. So that's probably a good place to start. So why don't you tell us what is personal branding? Not everybody's probably familiar with it.

Yeah, it's funny. It's a term that I'm not sure how it resonates with people, but I have a couple-part answer for that if you can indulge me. The first thing that I like to quote is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, who says that branding is what people say about you when you're not in the room. And I love that. I think that's so true, right? Me, I personally would say there's 2 things. One is that it's what you communicate every day at home, at work, in your community, how you show up, right? And what you stand for and how people understand that. And then the second part, which is the foundation of what I do in my program, the, you know, Be the CMO of Your Life, which is what 3 keywords would describe you if I asked, your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your friends, your family to say, how do you describe XYZ, Mike, Monique, anybody, those 3 keywords? And why is it 3? Because the power of 3 in all branding that I always do, people can't remember more than 3 things, right? So he's short, fat, and bald. She's tall, skinny, blonde. We always talk about things in 3s. So when you are, you know, when there's conflict—

Yeah.

And the person that you're asking the question gives you different answers, like if there's no real direct same similarity between the personal and the professional opinions of those 3 keywords, the person is in conflict because they're trying to be something that they're not, or they're not showing up as authentic and they're not in alignment with who they should be for themselves and for the world. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about more of the practical, pragmatic approaches to what we can do and tips and tricks and techniques that could give that personal alignment rather than branding in theory. I'm sorry, Mike.

That sounds good. I mean, I just want to correct the record and say I'm not short. The fat and bald, yeah, probably. The thing— what I wanted to ask next was, why is personal branding important? And I can imagine it's really important if you're short, fat, and bald, but—

No, no, that wasn't part of the personal branding, by the way. That was just the fact that people can't remember more than 3 things.

So tell me why it's so important, uh, in to do personal branding.

Well, you know, for, for, for what I call— there is a CAD, right? CAD: clarity, accountability, and direction. And that's both for you and the person receiving you. And it goes with corporate too. What do you stand for? What, what's your value proposition? Can you be counted on to be that way all the time? And it provides you direction for where you want to take that brand or whether it's a person or a corporation. But again, it's CAD— clarity, accountability, direction— both sides, you and the receiver.

Got it. Got it. And so what kind of people are the kind of people that use your service for personal branding?

Funny you should ask that. It's really anyone that wants to make an impact on the world. and/or leave a legacy. And I will explain that for you with an example that's kind of close to home. And I'm going to use myself and make myself pretty vulnerable and put myself on a limb here just because I think it needs to illustrate the point. You know, when I started on Demand CMO 20 years ago, I was obviously focused on the corporate client, whether we worked with Intel or Accenture or all these brand, you know, big brand names or the midsize or startups. I was focused very much about business. Right? And I needed to get them clear about who they were and what they stood for and what their value proposition and so on and so forth. And then I took a look in the mirror and realized that I didn't really particularly care for my own brand. And the way that came to me was my kids, you know, were making, they were making comments in jest, but there's always, you know, truth in jest. And they weren't using the words that were maybe adult words, but like they were not the ones I wanted to leave a legacy. about. And I said, oh my God, it's time for me to eat my own dog food. So as I showed up, I was enthusiastic. I'm energetic, but I wasn't patient. I wasn't playful. I was certainly definite. I was very— the only way I could put it was hard, right? So it was all business all the time. There was no vulnerability, no human approach. It was a little bit more like, do you really want this person to be the brand that you leave, Monique DeMaio? Do you want— if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, you want to be known as a great CMO? Or do you wanna be known as a great person, right? So the notion of what does that brand look like? And then I was showing up to people in that way everywhere. So let me explain how that manifests. What does your website look like? Hard, all business, no nonsense. How does your, the way you dress show up? I'm wearing pink today. I don't know if anybody can see that, but like that's a choice, right? My press picture's in the pink. You put out an image of me in pink. I said, you know what? I'm gonna wear the same thing. Okay, brand alignment. At that point in time, it was all black all the time, every day, 24/7. So it shows up in that the hardness went from everything to the way I spoke to people, my family, the way my website looked, the colors I chose to dress in, all of it. And that's what, you know, you have to look at as brand touch points. It, you know, you want to be aware of those types of things. And now I use that framework of the 3 words to help people see what they don't see for themselves.

Got it.

All these expressions of your brand.

Very cool. That's really good examples. So I'm guessing that some of the kinds of people that use your services are corporate executives. They might be folks working for the same kind of corporate brands that you've done work for as well. Are there other kinds of people that that also need this kind of service?

Yes, actually, it's funny you should say that because people like, people who are in career transition, they're reinventing themselves. They're kind of at that same crossroads, right? What do I wanna stand for? How do I wanna show up? Who do I wanna be? What's my value prop? Why am I different? Flip side is stay-at-home moms. They always shortchange themselves. It's very interesting. They don't think that they need a personal brand. They just think they need to go back to work. But in order to go back to work, You have to figure out what makes you tick. You have to figure out why you're better, what your special sauce is. And this is what it's all about, right? The personal brand, corporate brand, same thing. What is your special sauce and why should we care? Let's look at Apple, right? So Apple is a perfect example. These people are so prescriptive about everything they do so that they show up as clean, sleek, and cool. There are teams of people at Apple that are there for the simple reason that they do not want anything to mess up that brand culture, right? They are saying, we at all costs will remain clean, sleek, and cool. And that's the manifestation of that whole notion. So, that person, whether it's corporate or stay-at-home mom or re-entry or career changer, needs to get a handle on what their secret sauce is.

I think that's, that's a really good explanation. The, I mean, the stay-at-home mom example especially resonates for me because, uh, I've, I've worked with a number of, of women who came back into the workforce after an extended period of caretaking.

Yeah.

Um, sometimes it was for their kids. There have been other times when I've known people who have had to take time off to deal with aging parents or other types of situations, and I agree with you. They dramatically underestimate themselves. I don't know if it's their fault because I think what happens is that there's still this kind of part of business that just seems to really devalue that work, and they don't really understand how much is going on when you're actually juggling those kinds of things. They don't really understand what kind of skills it requires to do that kind of work. And I mean, I know there's most of the people I know that wouldn't hire someone because they haven't been at work for the last 10 years, or not somebody who could have actually done the job that person did the last 10 years. So that's really— No, I'm sorry. So I really like the idea of helping them to kind of find their own voice and say, yeah, this is, this is what I know how to do. These are the skills I have. And to go into that kind of, you know, forward-looking instead of kind of defensively. Because I think there's a lot of people who aren't listening when they should be about what those skills are. And I think you're going to help them either to listen or you're going to help the stay-at-home moms that are coming back to work to find people who will listen. And that's really what the goal is.

I appreciate that. You know, you're— so just to segue from the point that you just made, I was in conversations with 2 different clients in the last 3 weeks. about them needing to hire somebody. And I said, you know, if it were me, I would look at reentry or career changers. And I'll tell you why. First of all, they have something to prove to themselves. So they're gonna work harder. Second of all, they have probably more responsibility and a work ethic that you will not find.

Right.

Somebody who's changing jobs, they're changing jobs, what, for an extra couple bucks? They're changing jobs. What value and what loyalty and what skin in the game are they gonna provide for you? And secondly, think about the skill sets that you need holistically. So to your point, and some people leave that on the table, right? So this notion of taking care of your aging parents, negotiating with attorneys and trust and estates and healthcare and professionals and time management and doing volunteer work and starting up foundations and fundraising, all those things are sellable skills. But then it also at the flip side, not only what are you good at, but what do you want to do? So for me, it was that marriage of, I know what I'm good at, but I also wanted to take time to understand what legacy I wanted to leave, right? So God forbid a million times I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don't want my children having people come up to them and say, she was a great CMO, your mom. Oh, you know, like, that's not my thing, right? That's not why I was put on the planet. So we have to each find out why our businesses, why ourselves, why are we on that planet when we have a pretty good gut feel about it. So listen to the inner voice. Use somebody like myself who's trained to get that speak out of you and then package it up into such a thing that is called that personal brand.

That sounds really good. I mean, yeah, I mean, so you don't want your corporate headstone to say that— your headstone to say, hey, She had a tremendous click rate on her campaigns. I mean, yeah, I get it. So you've got some really good examples. What other aspects of people's lives really contribute to their personal brand? Like whether it's a stay-at-home mom returning to work or whether it's somebody who's changing careers. I mean, I run into people all the time that have maybe been in the journalism business, they've been in Um, other businesses that have really been, uh, whipsawed by, uh, the digitization that's gone on the last 20 years, and people look at them like they have no skills. And it's— and I mean, I've hired, you know, former writers to, uh, to come in and do content marketing, right? And I mean, yes, they don't have all the skills, okay, that's true, but they have a lot of the skills. And so, you know, and so to me, what you're talking about would make sense because maybe if you could help them with personal branding, those people changing industries would be able to really show off what their— what skills they do have and then talk about how they can pick up the skills that they don't have. And I'm just wondering, you know, beyond the examples you've given already, are there other pieces of people's lives that you're able to kind of look into and say, look, that you don't think about as being something that's really a skill, but it really is. So let me show you how you kind of turn that into something that's that a prospective employer would be interested in?

Yes, I think there's, for us, we, I mean, I look at 5 components, right? There's, believe it or not, the mental spiritual. So what drives you or how are you motivated? Are you religious? Are you spiritual? Are you, you know, are you, do you meditate? Do you, you know, what practices do you engage in on a daily, day-to-day basis? Your family self, your professional self, Past, present, future. Well, you're what and your community self? Do you volunteer? Do you belong to organizations that are cause related? What causes are those? How do they translate into what you've done for them and what they you believe that they do for you? How does it enrich your life? And then the physical self. It's like do you work out? Do you feel that a physical exercise is is important? How does that manifest itself? What what types of physical activity do you do? And and last but not least, which I I want I can tell you. Is so huge, and, and I'm such a passionate advocate about it, is food. Um, you know, we have one of the worst food supplies in the world. Um, our food is, is full of pesticides and glyphosate, and it's causing cancer and all sorts of autoimmune diseases all over the place. And I am often actually asked to code— to speak on, um, the correlation between performance and nutrition. And that— so that kind of, you know, I, I end up asking people, how do you eat? And a lot of times, if somebody's like in a bad place or they're not really finding their way, I'll probe and find out that their nutrition and their overall wellness is not where it needs to be. So once you fix that, you can receive. You know, if you're closed and your body is— you know, it's like this: you have a Maserati. Do you put leaded gas in a Maserati and expect it to perform? Probably not. So why would you think the human body's any different? Garbage in, garbage out. So we do talk about those 5 things.

Terrific. Those are really good examples. And, uh, So what are the most important actions that you think contribute to people's success and failures in your experience? So what are the things that when people decide they really want this rebranding, what are the actions that they need to take that really make the difference between someone who got your advice and maybe didn't take care of it the way they need to versus somebody who really ran with it and, and really turned things around for themselves?

So I'd say fundamentally it has to be a mindset, right? So if you have a closed mindset and you, you believe that the, the cards that you were dealt with right now are permanent or your default state of being, you're not going anywhere. Um, that's going to be a cause for failure, right? If you're open to receiving new information and creating possibility for yourself and seeing things as, wow, this is, you know, doable, I can do this if I do the work. I can get the outcomes that I want. Then your experience is going to be completely different. I ask people to think about reading some things throughout the course of the program, even before or before the program. But I check for mindset because if this if this is like I'm done, I'm fifty. I'm gonna give you an I'm mid-fifties, right? So if you're at that point where you're like I'm in my mid-fifties, nothing's gonna change, and this is who I am. This is who I've always been, and I've always been in this business, and da da da da, and I can't find work.

Yeah, if people are kind of feeling victimized and passive, then there's no amount of advice that's really going to help them, right? They're basically come to you saying, well, you know, do it for me. What do you, you know, just do this for me, right? And, and what you're saying is, no, you know, I can tell you what to do, but you need to do it for you. And I think that, that makes a ton of sense. So, um, So, so how do you deliver these services? Do you have like a program that lasts a certain amount of time, or do you have— or is it something that's open-ended, or does it depend on the client? How does that— how do you kind of package what you do?

So the way I initially packaged it was, you know, it's 6 sessions or 3 months. It depends on how quick the person wants to receive the information and implement change, if they need to implement some change or some tools. All right. So you could go every other week and we have a session. A session is usually an hour, hour and a half, believe it or not. them. And really quick, again, depending on how the person is receiving, um, you have kind of 3 options. Fundamentally, that's the baseline thing. The other— the second option is you work with me and, um, and I do an organizational boot camp for you. So I go to your space, whether it's your home or your office, look at your cupboard, look at your, your desk, your scenario, and, and look at the physicality of who you are and how you are setting yourself up, whether it's food, uh, whether it's, um, you know, your office situation, and make some suggestions on that. And then the third is we can do those 2 things in addition to— I partner with a wonderful woman who is a holistic nutritionist who will put somebody through a nutrition program at the highest possible level, um, in addition to me doing the coaching if I feel the person's really beyond, you know, over my pay grade, as it turns out. for that nutritional component, because I, I don't want to pretend I'm a doctor. I'm not. Certainly grounded in 20 years of research and, you know, health issues of my own that I've overcome. But if that's the case, so those are the 3 sort of levels. It's 5 sessions or, you know, or, or 3 months. In addition, the boot camp, which is the physical componentry, and the nutritional if that's what they want to do.

Very interesting, very interesting. And so What is it like for you to be doing this personal branding now alongside the corporate work? So when we think about the corporate work you do, does that have a lot of the same elements here? Is it completely different?

There's a lot of similarities. So the similarities are, where are you now? Where do you think you wanna be? Getting the journey from Them expressing, you know, I want my company to be XYZ in XYZ time, or I want to be in this place in XYZ time, or I want to stand for this. And then I look at what is— where are you at now? And then develop a plan to get to the place they want to be. So the gap analysis, the 3 keywords, the messaging and positioning are the same. The expressions of the brand are different. And then the advice that I would give use to implement the changes are through those 5 things: community, family, professional, physical, etc., which I don't get into with the corporations.

That makes sense. And do you sometimes find that you're doing, um, work with the corporation and then you're also doing individual work with their executives?

Yeah, that's how it started. That's exactly how it started. So I would end up sort of giving the coaching away as value-add You know, and I— it was my time, and, and I love it, don't get me wrong. So I was doing it all the time, and I thought to myself, wait, they're calling me for this advice and I'm giving them this advice, and yet you need to stop doing that.

That sounds right. That sounds right. If it's, if it's something really valuable, giving it away isn't usually the best way to grow your business. But, uh, so, um, You know, one of the things that I've noticed, you know, I'm not an expert in branding the way you are, but one of the things that I've noticed in my work with Solo Segment is that a lot of what people perceive about a brand is actually the customer experience. It's actually the way that they experience the brand, right? It's not as much what it was in the old days of what kind of message you're putting out, but it's kind of like, how do they experience your company when they show up in person or when they come to your website? So one of the reasons we do a lot of work in site search is because site search is usually a huge turnoff on a lot of these websites because it just doesn't work very well. And I guess what I'm wondering is whether it's corporate branding or whether it's personal branding, do you think about what's going on as really an experience that either the corporation or the person is providing to whoever the person is receiving that? Is that, is that a way to think about what you're doing, because I know you're talking about, you know, kind of digging deep and figuring out who you are. But I think from the examples you had before, you were also talking about, hey, what if I don't like what I think I'm projecting? If you think about the whole thing as an experience, is that kind of a helpful paradigm? And do you use that with people?

Absolutely. You absolutely hit the nail on the head. The experience is everything. What experience do you have after you meet somebody? So think about this for a second, right? So you meet somebody and you know that you You have like this thing and you're like, oh, they have such good energy, or I really like that person, or oh God, you know, you get that visceral reaction. That's number one. That's an experience. The touchpoints are all experiences. It's like, how do you show up at church? How do you show up in front of your kids? How do you show up in front of a meeting with clients or, or in an interview if you're, you know, you're coming back into the workforce? Those are all experiences of that personal brand that I am helping you create because ultimately you're right. companies and people all provide an experience with others. And how do you let— how do you leave them? How do you land for people? Or how do you allow them to feel in your presence? So that could be good, or it could be bad, or it could be completely innocuous, in which case you're not memorable. So the idea is to not be on either, you know, on, on those— on that side of the, of that continuum, right? You want to be memorable but positive. Not memorable in a negative way.

Got it. And, and I mean, one of the things I'm wondering is a lot of times when we're working with companies, they don't even realize their site search is terrible. They've never used it. They don't bother with it. And so we're trying to talk to them about that. And one of the things we have to do is kind of explain to them that their baby is ugly. And I'm wondering, do you have to, do you have to do the same kind of thing where sometimes when you get a client, you have to kind of bring them up short and say, look, you're not really coming across the way you think you are. Well, I have to really— and is that kind of difficult to do? It feels uncomfortable.

Yeah, sometimes the most, you know, breakthroughs are, are not necessarily always easy, right? But in order for somebody to see at the end of the journey what could be possible, you have to allow them to hear it in a different way. So I use some techniques and tools that I've learned from other coaches and, and just, you know, learning that allow me to bring the mirror back to them so that they can see it and hear it for themselves in the way that they can hear it and see it. Because I think, you know, calling the baby ugly is really, really hard. But they have— I'm sure my job is to find the beauty of what is underneath that harshness. And it— the harshness or the the baby being ugly probably is a manifestation of frustration or feeling something is not enough for them. Or they're feeling inadequate in some way, shape, or form where they may not need to.

Yeah.

So, the same way as a company, they overdeliver in certain areas where they're trying to make up for a lack somewhere else. So, if my job is to find that somewhere else and make that a strength versus like it's an aside. So yeah, you bring the beauty forward and you try to mitigate the ugly.

So Monique, I'm sorry that we're out of time because this was such a fun conversation and you had so many interesting things to say. I want to thank you for all these great ideas, and I also want to thank our audience for joining us. You can sign up for our events emails at biznology.com to receive a recording of the webinar. And we also invite you to mark your calendars for our next Biznology webinar, The Human Element in AI, with Philip Resnick on November 27th at the same time, 11 AM Eastern time, and we hope to see everybody out back here then. Bye, everybody.