Why You Need to Network Effectively and Build Your Personal Brand

Foreign, your personal brand. We decided not to make today all about personal brand, but it's a key facet of it and I'm very happy to talk to lots of people. You know, Martin, seen a few other people, have seen some of the speeches I've given up, say Euro Finance about it and LinkedIn and all the other things. Let's speak about the importance of why it's essential to your career success. When I first started, there wasn't a personal brand. I was there. It was your reputation, as he called. Took years of dedication. You were meeting people, building up great reliable bench strength, benchmark rather. And now it's a totally different story. You can actually create your own brand in a few minutes, develop a decent, strong LinkedIn profile, put some testimonials on there, looking great, but then it can be destroyed in seconds. One, you know, false tweet or something else and it could all go wrong. Look at this guy. I think he knows a thing or two. Mr. Bezos, it's about what people are saying about you when you're not in the room. Whether it's on or offline, you're continually being judged by those around you. If you take a look left and right of you now, those people are judging you, so watch out. And everyone in this room has their own brand. Whether or not it's a positive one or not, you've got to make sure that you protect it, otherwise you're going to suffer. These are some of the tools you can use. You've got all of these up here. You've also got other things that contribute to it. You've got things like Instagram might not be doing it, but it's still out there. And look at their reach. Crazy figures. If you've ever posted an article, people will read it, they'll judge you. Whatever you add to social media is public. It's out there and you're going to be judged from it. And everyone's going to be judging you all the time because it's constantly going. I'll give you a practical example. I was at the Chicago conference two, three years ago, and there was a lovely intern at the interns party, New starters party. We'll call him Greg. That was because that was his name. And he was in the process of looking at internships for large corporates. And I asked him about his social media use and he explained, mike, it's all right. I've locked down and removed a lot of Facebook posts. I've cleared my Twitter stream. I just asked Greg. Greg, because the Beers were free and he wasn't going to buy me a beer. He was an intern after all. I said, could you get me a beer? He said, yeah, no problem. Went off. 60 seconds, he came back. As he came back, got out my phone, I was like, greg, how was Tijuana? Lovely destination, party town in Mexico. And he was like, his face literally dropped. He was like, what? And I said, well. And I showed him a picture of him at a party which he'd been really enjoying. I said, how did you find that? I said, I used a very little known search tool called Google. And he was actually really mortified and even though he'd locked it down, someone else had tagged him in the post and it was still out there because it was public and this guy was trying to get internships and he was actually really worried about it and he should have been. So when I spoke on the panel last week again in the us there was Chris Fulton from, he's the outgoing treasurer of Scadden Law and they actually had hired someone, junior person joining them. They did all their background checks and they had to withdraw the offer because they found that this person back when they were 15, 16 had actually, you know, put some posts which weren't in keeping with, you know, and they, they were gutted. This person was incredibly bright but actually was affecting them many, many years later. So these are two real world, you know, real examples that in your everyday work, work environment, your workplace, networking events, things like this. So watch out, David is taking photos. So as he floats around, just turn your face away. And all your peers and your bosses, these are all having an impact. So I was asked again, someone asked me in the past at a conference, they said, what would you say are the key things about your personal brand? What the top three say? For me it was three Authenticity. Think about what your core values are as a person and they can become the foundation of your own personal brand. It's the real you, if you like. It's how you form your collaborations. Your long term career development will then follow from it. It's your UVP unique value proposition. I know, bit of a catchphrase, but it was what sets you apart from the competition, if you like in your, if you're looking for a role. So I just notice a couple. I will be sending all of these slides out to everyone afterwards so you can have it. So you don't need, you can just, just look at me or you can just take photos of that. I don't mind. But UVP, if you're looking there's 10 treasurers that are looking to get hired for their next big role. And what special offer do you give someone that is different to the person standing either side of you? What makes you stand out from those other people? Consistency. This is your behaviors, your values, your identity, but also your brand message. Exactly. As we said, it's about the way that you've built your personal brand. Because without it, and if you don't have one, I've got one of the practical example. One of my candidates going for an interview the end of this week. Someone he's meeting, deputy treasurer, has no social media presence at all. They made a distinct decision. That's all right. But what he said is it's confusing to him that he's actually saying, I want to get to know this person and actually get the most out of this meeting. It's actually preventing them from doing so. So it's about how you present those around you. Now, we saw the Jeff Bezos thing. I don't think that's true anymore. I think it's about more than that. It's what people are saying about you and then you're processing it and it's them, what they're believing about you. But you might not even be in the room. Networking. I say to some people, networking, particularly Jan Martin, I've seen before, they can't wait to network at the bar, straight in there. Others, I see you just heading for the door, straight off to the train. Obviously I'm in the first category, but I haven't always felt this way, so I had to work at it. And it's through years of experience coming to conferences like this and seeing that a lot of the time the most connected people were the most successful and investing in doing that networking. I saw a lot of you networking over the strudel before, but it's a good thing to do. Let's give you some tips on it, some real world tips. First one is well done. Give yourselves a fictional round of applause for actually being here today. You're educating yourselves. Conferences like this are a great start. Different ideas and everything else. Some people are at the back just like straining. Don't worry, I will send these all out to you. You're going to have a copy of them. Developing yourself, it's like one of those travelators sort of thing, but you're on the wrong way. At the airport, if you stand still and don't do anything, you're going to be going backwards compared to your peers. You've got to constantly think about developing, listening now, you might see in the bar, it might be a bit more difficult, but you've got two ears, one mouth and it's a difficult, difficult task. But if you master it, everyone's going to be want to be part of your network. Active listening and reciprocating as well. It's very easy to get wrapped up in the sound of your own voice. I say that I'm speaking up here, but I'm just doing it for knowledge. It's all right, then. It's following up whenever you speak to someone. Got a great tip for actually Chris last week. What he does, he'll go to any business meeting or an event like this and he'll get all his business cards at the end or when he pops off to the loo or whatever, and he'll just make a quick note of a couple of the bits of the conversation. Number one, so he remembers who the person is. Number two, when he's then coming back to you, they'll be impressed that you're actually interested enough to engage with them and go, oh, yeah, and your daughter's going off to college, or this is happening, actually, they remember those things and that helps form genuine relationships rather than just, what can I get? Fifth one elevator pitch. Now, few people have said to me, haven't heard of it, don't know what it is. It's basically the way you introduce yourselves. It's about telling someone in the fewest words in the time it takes maybe to come down in the elevator. And you've seen these elevators here, they're quite quick between maybe floor six down to the bottom one. So 10 to 30 seconds. And it sounds straightforward, but it's actually harder than you think. So what do I do? When you've got that person, you're talking to them. This is your sales pitch for Brand you. This is about yourselves and how you get over who you are and they do the same back to you. And if it does sound like a sales pitch, it is basically because you want them to be part of your network. So explain clearly what you do now, how you can add value to them by having you as part of the professional network. Now, some of the other tips we've got here, don't undersell or oversell yourselves. Don't keep going, oh, this is what I do, this is what I do. Get a balance with that. Now, how do you do that? The best thing to do is rehearse it as you rehearse it with a friend of yours, you know, someone that can give you decent feedback and Actually find out what they think and say, look, that actually was good, and get it with a really good friend so they can say it was really bad. You know, that's really going to help you reciprocate. This is a key one, I think. So what do you do if you're showing active listening, so you're saying, okay, and then trying to relate it to their experience, it's actually going to work. And then we said about writing the notes, perfect way of doing it.

Quick one, because we have been talking about LinkedIn also in our first session. We're trying to be more active. Yeah, but what is your view? If you're not out there for really hunting for a new job, is it really worthwhile to spend a lot of time to polish that up, or is that more at the point in time where you say, now I'm going to go out and stab with.

Great, thank you very much for that question. It's almost as if I asked you to tell me the one. Yeah, that's it. I bought some beer. That's it. So basically, no, it's not. When you're looking for a job, just as we said earlier, don't do your LinkedIn profile, just when you're looking for your new role. People say, but, Mike, I'm not looking for a new role. It's not about that. It's a professional network. When I spoke in Brussels a couple of years ago, Patrick Vespach, lovely guy there, he said, mike, you know, I said, tim, you need to have a photo on your profile. And we do these silly photos and things like that, needs to be professional. He said, well, look, I'm not the most photogenic. Patrick, look at this. I said, I don't have that much. And he was just like. I said, but, Patrick, it's not about that. It's about other people. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you go into a bank meeting and you walk in and you want to introduce you. Do you think they've researched you? He's like, well, yeah. So you've walked in, they've gone, hello, I'm Patrick, how are you? So you basically are turning your back on all those connections. You are 21 times more likely to make a professional connection by having a photo, for instance, on your LinkedIn profile. And people say to me, well, do I need a professional network? Do I need that? Well, you can actually use it in your day jobs. So you're thinking about a new treasury management system or you're thinking about, you know, how are you going to face blockchain. All these different challenges are coming up. And you go to your professional network of three people. Oh, do you use this system? No, we don't. Thanks. Bye. 33 people. Oh, actually, yeah, we've used it. 330 people. And if you do that networking, then it pays results. A practical example, actually, of that Chris. Chris Fulton, the guy from Scadden Law, he was actually a live case study. He just made the move from treasurer to become cfo. He'd been headhunted. And it wasn't just because he suddenly got on his LinkedIn profile and beefed it up and everything else. He'd been headhunted and been sought after, actually, not by a search firm. They'd actually found him and he'd been found by someone who thought, actually, that's the sort of person we want to work for us, because they're able to read his profile and he matched what they wanted. He did things with their Scabbard Law foundation about helping young lawyers and things like that coming through. And they thought, actually, that's a person that seems to share our ethos. And he got headhunted because of that, not because he was actively looking for a role.