MBA1873 Guest Teacher – Anne Candido and April Martini – How to Cultivate Your Personal Brand

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Hey welcome welcome to the $100 RBA Show. Insightful, powerful business lessons delivered to you daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a guest teacher episode. On our guest teacher episodes we bring on an expert to teach their area of expertise. Today we have Ann Candido and April Martini who will teach you how to cultivate your personal brand. We're talking about you, not your business, but you as a person, as an entrepreneur, as a business leader. Cultivating your personal brand is so important to start thinking about and start doing because your businesses might change. You might get bought out, you might sell your business, you might pivot, you might change. What will stay the same Is your personal brand who you are as an entrepreneur. This is your biggest asset in business because this can transfer into any venture you take on. Our guest teachers today, Ann in April are the co founders of Forthright People, an on demand branding and marketing agency. They've helped so many individuals with their own personal brand, including multimillion dollar brands and they're here today to help you cultivate yours they got a lot to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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I'm so happy to have Ann and April to be teaching you today's gestitial lesson because many busy entrepreneurs neglect their personal brand. They think, hey, if I create a great product and a great business, that's all I gotta worry about. You can take on those merits, those achievements and use that in your personal brand. But that's just not enough. You gotta be known for something. You gotta be known for who you are and what you represent. There's a reason why a lot of entrepreneurs, when they sell their business, they feel very empty. They kind of feel like, what's next? They haven't worked on anything else other than the business, which makes sense. But your personal brand is just as important. So let's start cultivating it. Let's start thinking about what we can do to start growing it so it's there for us when we need it. So I want to pass it on to Annapril, but I'll be back to wrap up today's episode. But for now, take it away, Anne and April.

Hey everybody. I am Anne Candido.

And I am April Martini.

Thank you for joining us today. Today we'll be teaching you why it is so important to cultivate your personal brand. So let's get down to it. So many use the term personal brand as a punchline. But. But most successes and failures, both professionally and personally, can be linked back to one's personal brand and actually more specifically to one's attention to cultivating it. Specific times when revisiting your personal brand is super important. Are getting ready for a career pivot where you need clarity on the unique value you're going to be able to contribute in a new career or new role. Maybe you're a new manager or leader or an existing manager or leader acquiring a new team. So. So you're going to need clarity on your unique strengths as a leader and how that's going to fuel success in your career progression as well as your tendencies and triggers that may compromise your leadership. And third, maybe your career and your growth is stalled. This is going to help you recognize what unique value you contribute and then own your new progression opportunities as well as see what may be getting in your way or blocking Your opportunities.

And a lot of what we talk about is the fact that so many people choose to ignore the introspection into their personal brand because it requires vulnerability and personal reflection. And obviously that's a little bit painful and hard for all of us. So instead they try to game the system and the challenges based on mimicking behavior of others. So they take on what they think is the right Persona, they work a whole bunch of hours, they undermine the performance of other people, they chronically roll their job switch, or like we said, they just avoid it altogether. We've definitely all been there, which is why we don't leave personal brand to the esoteric. We have a specific framework for how you can become more aware of and maybe more importantly action against your personal brand so that you can get to those goals you're looking to both in business and in life. Alright, so let's get started. If you would like a worksheet, you can find it in the Deeper dive section of our worksheets tab on our website forthright-people.com that's F O R T H R I g h t-people.com and the way we talk about it is that there are three parts of your personal brand. Your characteristics, your appearance. And then we group together behaviors and actions. So if we get into the first one and we talk about characteristics, these are the features and your natural tendencies or triggers. They can be physical, like you're attractive, you're physically fit. They can be psychographic, like your values, your attitudes, your beliefs, your interests. You know, I'm Christian, I'm vegan, I'm a runner, I like to cook those types of things or personality based. So being shy, funny, loving, edgy, it's whatever makes you you. And these are the foundational things that you cannot change about yourself.

Yeah, and it's important to note that your characteristics are neither good nor bad. It's actually how they show in certain situations, which is what we call your tendencies or triggers. That either allows these to help you.

Move toward or away from your goals.

And as April said, because they are so fundamental to who you are, they can't be controlled or changed. However, your tendencies and how they show up and your behaviors and actions can be controlled. We're going to get to this later, so let's share a few examples just to really exemplify characteristics. So I am Italian, which means I can be loud, I talk with my hands, I can take up a lot of space. Figuratively when I walk in a room, my tendency is when I get passionate all of these get amplified, which can overwhelm and even shut down some people. Now, on the flip side, I can actually tend to be more introverted, which I know is very interesting considering I'm Italian. But that being introverted, I can get nervous when there's all eyes on me. So I have to really know that and I have to prepare appropriately.

Yeah.

And on my side, I'm also Italian, but Ann took that one already. So I will say, contrary to Ann, I'm a fairly extreme extrovert. And that means that I get really excited around other people. This was especially true coming out of COVID and especially when I'm around less extroverted people than me, just in general. So I talk a lot and very enthusiastically. And this can cause people to feel overwhelmed in my presence. So. So what I've learned is to take a deep breath, take a step back and assess the situation I'm going into and then dive in with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm. And sometimes this means maybe asking someone else a question so I can understand how they want to communicate and then following their lead versus just leaning into that natural tendency of being extremely extroverted.

Yes. And so those are examples of characteristics and how tendencies and triggers are impacted by your characteristics. Next, part of your personal brand is your appearance. Now these are physical and verbal attributes. So some may call this your image. It covers how you look like, your clothes, your hair, your facial expressions, your posture, as well as how you sound so like your tone, your vocabulary, your articulation, your style. Now this is a big, very, very sensitive topic and can feel a bit taboo in the workplace. So don't count on getting really clear feedback here. But don't let that lack of feedback lull you into believing that there is no biases because everybody has them. So keep in mind that people's perceptions are their reality. Whether they are right or wrong. It doesn't matter whether we intended for it or not. It doesn't matter. You can only control how you show up. Right. So a few examples of appearance. So I've already alluded to one example earlier when I talked about my Italian heritage and how influences my verbal and physical expression, especially as I get passionate. So that's one thing I need to really watch for as I'm in the context with certain people in certain situations. But here's another one. When I am processing, I look up to the ceiling and I cross my arms. So I've been told this makes me look closed off and irritated. So that's something I got to really watch for. Now, one I have had to give feedback on multiple times to others is how they dress or show up to meetings and events and how this may be different than how you typically dress. That doesn't mean that you need to be uncomfortable, but it does mean you gotta dress for the image you want people to have of you.

Yeah. And on my end, when I'm thinking and processing, I apparently get, like, a really taut expression on my face, which can be really scary for people. And I actually had one coworker in particular that finally worked up the nerve after a year to tell me that when I make that face, she would get super anxious about it and what was going to come out of my mouth, literally for a whole year. And then finally she realized that it just meant that I was thinking and got over it. But ever since that, I've been really conscientious of this, especially on zoom, because for whatever reason, that camera gets me every time and I have to work really hard to control my facial expressions. All right, so those were examples of appearance, which, again, are the physical and verbal attributes that you possess and how you show up that way. Next, we have behaviors and actions, which, again, we said we grouped together. This is how you actually show up. It's a manifestation of your characteristics and your appearance together, and it ultimately becomes your reputation or what people say about you behind your back. Quite frankly, both good and bad behavior is the way in which you conduct yourself. A speech, especially towards others. So are you conscientious? Are you active? Are you ambitious? Are you creative? Actions is the fact or process of doing something, usually with an aim in mind that you want to achieve. So you're always on time. You make eye contact, you're animated when speaking. Many people use these terms interchangeably, which is fine. It's not necessarily the classification that's important. It's just capturing it holistically.

So behaviors and actions is actually what you can control. And with intent and mindfulness and preparation, you can dial up and down how your characteristics and appearance attributes show up so you can better move yourself towards your goals. This is why it is so important to be aware of and always cultivating your personal brand. So some examples. One of my characteristics is action oriented. So sometimes I don't hold the people to the standards in favor of just moving things forward as quickly as possible. This has resulted in some executions not being as good as they could have been. Although they're always really good, it's not as good as they could have been. And I've had to learn to exercise some restraint and have more of a healthier respect of kind of speed versus quality. And actually now I have a partner who's kind of skewed more the other way to hold me accountable. Yep.

So good segue for me. I do not like to let things go out the door without being just right, especially when it comes to design, because that's so much of my background. It is really important to me that things are polished and I do lean into being a bit of a perfectionist. But now I have a partner that balances that and I've learned sometimes you have to let it go. And she's learned that sometimes I'm just not gonna let it go. So to recap, in order to better move you towards your business and life goals, you always, always have to be mindful of cultivating your personal brand. So always working on it. This is especially important, though, if you're getting ready for a career pivot, becoming a new leader or manager, or acquiring a new team, or if your career or growth has stalled. Especially when you're working through this process, you should reflect on again, your characteristics, your appearance and how these manifest in into your behaviors and actions. Be mindful of the tendencies or triggers that arise in certain situations or contexts and when you're in doubt. And also to ensure you're seeing the real picture, get feedback from those people you trust most.

All right, this was Anne in April. If you want to continue learning about cultivating your personal brand, you can visit forthright-people.com again that's f o r.com. Where you can find podcast episodes from our podcast Marketing Sparks, as well as blogs and worksheets on this topic. Thanks again for joining us today. Now back to Omar.

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Loved today's lesson on cultivating your personal brand. A lot of simple, practical tips that you can implement right now. Feel free to rewind today's episode re listen to it and take down notes so you can take some action steps if you want to learn more from Anna and April, just check out forthright people.com and you can check out their podcast over@forthright people.com podcast that wraps up today's episode, Today's lesson. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things that I did that helped me, or I should say forced me to think about my personal brand and what I want to be known for is creating a simple one page website. When you are putting yourself out there in the world and you have something for people to look at, you're kind of conscious of how you want to be portrayed or be perceived, right? And this gets you thinking about what you stand for, what you're known for, what you want to share and who you want to be for the world that you serve. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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