Crafting Your Digital Presence as a Founder with Daniel Francavilla

for your personal brand, you wanna make sure that whatever AI tools you're using are not determining the voice and the style that you're using, right? It needs to come from you, needs to be your tone, your personality. So at the very least, you're gonna be able to leverage these tools to help you take a lot of content and help refine that. Building a personal brand, today we're gonna talk about thought leadership specifically for founders. And as always with my talks on personal branding, it's not a science, right? It's a journey. There's no wins and losses, it's wins and learns. And we're gonna hopefully continue to learn together. We're gonna do an overview today of the many aspects of personal branding and thought leadership. Of course, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. And what that means is that you know, we'll find some gaps along the way and you'll definitely leave with some actions. Because it's a personal branding workshop, I'm gonna start off by sharing a little bit about me, my personal brand. You know, many of you are founders. Some of you may have, may be serial founders, may have multiple roles and jobs. Looking at, this is what I do. I'm a partner at an agency called King Street Media in Toronto. I'm a marketing advisor and brand strategist. At my own firm called Daniel Does. I'm recording currently in a content studio called Creator Club in Toronto, and I also run a nonprofit and a training company. So lots of stuff going on. My background just from a training perspective, I'm a certified brand strategist and part of the Canadian Marketing Association and a lot more. I'll skip through that. Before we dive into personal branding, we wanna talk about what is a brand. In general, many of you know this, it's a name, a term, a design, a symbol, or any other feature that distinguishes an organization or product from its rivals in the eyes of the customer. Brands are more than you can see, right? We have our logo, visual identity at the top, and our key messaging. But below that, a lot goes into a brand— your team, the environment, your values, your vision, all those things that make up. So when we look about what defines your brand, we want to look at a few different things. Prof G, Scott Galloway, I took his brand strategy course and he shared these different levels. Your extended identity is the public-facing aspect that brings your brand to life. Part of that is every brand has— can choose what is, what is going to represent it. Is it a person, a symbol, an organization, or a product? And in this case, we're going to talk about the person being a key part of the brand. Next, of course, we have the core identity. And the brand essence. I'm gonna skip through that today, of course, but we're gonna chat today about personal branding. Let's dive right in. What is personal branding? So when a lot of people hear the term personal brand, they think about entrepreneurs, authors, and celebrities, but the reality is that every one of us has a personal brand. Your brand is how others think of you or the space that you occupy in their mind, the way in which others perceive you is actually what defines your brand regardless of what you say or do. So this is really important about why we have to be intentional about it. This quote is from Todd Henry from the Accidental Creative podcast. So personal branding basics. Personal branding for startup founders is about really aligning your personal values with your startup's mission and vision, right? And encompasses how you present yourself in person and online, reflects your beliefs, your values, your ways of being, and your personal brand already influences how others perceive you, whether it's intentional or not. So this section, we're gonna dive right into the importance of that. And personal brand as a whole is what you're known for, right? So that you have to also think about is how others will describe you, right? But it's how you show up on in person, your values, et cetera. And whether it's intentional or not, you do have a personal brand. Okay, let's look at why personal branding matters. So 84% of consumers believe that an organization's reputation is influenced by the personal brand of its employees. This is a huge stat both for startups and for other types of corporations, of course. Employees who share their personal, stories see a 16% higher response rate on their posts. That's research from LinkedIn. So it's competitive out there. We understand the space. We know how competitive startups are. Um, you know, when you talk about founder personal branding, it helps to differentiate your startup. It establishes you as an expert. It builds trust and credibility. It enhances recognition. It encourages loyalty. And of course it expands your network and gets you more visibility. These are just a few of the benefits as to why it matters, but let's talk about where personal branding fits into the spectrum. So you've got your brand identity, which are of course the visual and verbal elements that represent your venture's brand, right? Your startup has a name and a logo. Then you've got the brand image, which is how your startup's brand is perceived by others. And then you've got the personal brand of the founder or the team, which is All about aligning your personal values with your startups. Let's talk about this idea. There's been a lot of talk about don't follow your passion, follow your talent, right? If someone tells you to just follow your passion, obviously, you know, it's not necessarily proven that your passion is gonna be a moneymaker. However, It's not only about following your, your talent or doing what you love. It's about if there's a business there, there has to be a need for it and a market for it. And of course, you know, I've done some sessions on go-to-market strategy. There's a lot of Founder Institute sessions on product-market fit. That being said, this is about you as a person, as a founder. I would recommend you look up this chart, ikigai. To compare, you know, what you're good at with what you love with what you can be paid for. At the end of the day, if you are not meeting those three requirements, you're not going to stay— stick with it long term, um, because it's not going to fulfill you or it's not going to make you money, right, if there's not a need for it. So take a look at this first, um, and then I've got this really simple formula here. So do something well for others, grow your business to execute that thing exceptionally well, no matter if you run your own company or you're part of a team inside another company. And lastly, represent a trait or a character that others will want to see as a reflection of themselves. That's how you can become aspirational, right? Be a leader. So the first thing is to think about who who you're speaking to and who you're building for. You won't have a business if you don't have customers, of course. So start by getting clear on who you're building this business or this startup to serve, right? The same goes with personal branding. Um, you need to be able to know who you're speaking to because you can't speak to everyone. And so you're going to start off by getting clear on who you're looking to serve. Now, you may have seen this exercise, of course, it's very common to identify your, you know, your ICP and who you're serving as a company, but also for your personal brand, identifying that audience and getting specific as possible is really going to help. Because you're going to be creating a community of these people, right? The tone of voice you use on your social media and email is going to be in their style. It's going to cater towards them. Um, and so get clear on who they are, create some— potentially create some customer profiles and know, hey, if it's Adrian, this, this person over here, you know, this is where he prefers to communicate, this is the style he likes, this is his life, right? And, and when I'm gonna be creating my content as a founder, I would be speaking to this Adrian person, for example, right? So I'm gonna skip through this really quickly because we do have a lot to get through in a very short period of time. But defining your target audience is not just demographics like age and gender, but it's also the psychographics, which is how they think, right? So these are some different psychographic factors to consider. What are people interested in? What are their lifestyle choices, their beliefs, their values, their hobbies? All these things. One thing I'll ask you to consider as well is What makes your business have a positive impact? And what is innovative about it? The reason I'm asking this is because there's probably a lot of people doing similar things in your space. You know, I run a marketing agency, there's thousands of marketing and advertising agencies, right? But ask yourself these questions about impact and innovation to help drive what you do forward. So let's clarify your personal brand. These 6 questions we're gonna go through are gonna be very helpful. I may not recommend that you do them all in this session because we gotta move really quickly, but note them down. So the first one is, what problem do you solve? Or maybe go back, watch the recording, and answer them, right? The clearer you are about the problem you solve, the faster that your personal brand can grow, right? Clear is greater than clever. You don't have to be the greatest ever, but you wanna be someone who's clever, showing that you understand the problem and can solve it. Someone's asking if the speaker, if you can hear the speaker, I am the speaker. Someone said it's working, so we're good. Awesome, thank you very much. Number 2, what are you passionate about? This goes back to that ikigai diagram. What fires you up? right? Think specifically. For example, you, you might love to solve financial problems, but maybe you hate teaching people how to use spreadsheets, right? What specifically of the part of the work are you passionate about? And next is, what do you study? What do you research? What do you have knowledge of? That could be related to your, you know, academic background if you have one, but also what do you choose to spend a week— weekend learning about, right? What are you self-taught? What content do you consume? We all have some knowledge that we study, right? Next, what do you have results in? So what have you been through or overcome? What have you done, right? This is different from just the research and things that you know about. This is now about what do you have experience in? What are you proven in, right? And I have this quote here that says, you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. right? So for me, um, one of the things that I do is, uh, I teach. I teach, uh, in advertising and marketing. And I believe that as someone who's not only gone through a creative program in university and ran a marketing agency, um, I believe that I am positioned to help serve those people who are in my shoes, right? Same, same could go with you with your startup. So Question 5, what business are you in, right? What are you actually in the business of? And question 6, what would people be willing to buy from you now that we know all of these other things, okay? So for me, for example, if my product, if I started selling cars, I don't know if people would be willing to buy cars from me specifically because I don't have any other identity in my personal brand and my messaging and my education background and my content and my experience that says, hey, I'm the car guy. Right? So think about what people would be willing to buy. The next thing here is defining how you're going to communicate and show up online, in writing, in emails, right? So what's interesting about this is you can choose if you're more on the funny side or the serious side, if you're, you know, more informational than inspirational, or you're slightly more inspirational than you are informational, right? Are you more of a motivator? You hype people up encourage them, or are you more of a teacher where you're sharing specific knowledge and education, right? And then do you wanna come across as someone who's very wise, older, and experienced, or are you coming across as someone who's younger, newer, fresh, ready to go, ready to learn? And so these are just some ways you can decide to pull the throttle, right? To decide how you'd like to represent yourself. So let's look at again, what's the goal? When we talk about branding and companies and startups, we often think about the Start With Why book by Simon Sinek, right? Simon Sinek, if you don't know, he's best known for giving one of the most popular TED Talks of all time called Start With Why. And he has something here called the Golden Circle Theory. And this explains how leaders can inspire people to cooperate, trust, change, right, in business. So based on Simon Sinek's research into how the most successful organizations and startups think, act, and communicate, they do that by starting with why, right? So founders and fellow marketers like me can appreciate the Golden Circle because it helps us to focus on how we can stand out from similar competitors, right, by communicating the differences. So it's not just what you do, it's also how you do it and why you do it, and that needs to show through. So we all start off as an unknown personal brand or expert, right, in every category. There are people who are known and unknown. There's chefs and restaurants who are known and unknown. There's, you know, certain technology tools that are known and unknown. There's, uh, all different apps and devices and whatever it is. Celebrities, a lot of music, a lot of musicians that are known and unknown, right? You might have a friend or a family member who's an unknown musician, but how do we go across the wall between the unknown to known? Well, the way that I recommend doing that is to focus. And there's this quote on the bottom that says, when you have diluted focus, you have diluted results. So what I'm suggesting here is to narrow your focus to become a leading expert or authority on blank, that one thing. After you've broken that wall, you can talk about everything. So why is there a picture of Gary Vee here? Well, Gary Vee used to only talk about wine. Now he's got millions of followers. He's into agencies, investing, sports, media, NFTs, and much, much more. Oprah started off in news and TV, but then she reinvented that whole category And then she expanded into media, film, products, magazines, investing. She did partnerships with Weight Watchers, all of these things. And so she started off niche, right? And became known for that one thing and then, you know, expanded. After you've broken that wall, you can talk about everything. Another example from a product perspective is Amazon. Look at this screenshot from 1998 of, uh, of the Amazon website. Amazon was known for selling one thing: books. And then eventually they became the everything store. There's a book called The Everything Store if you haven't seen it. So again, someone in the comments says, I still get my books from them. I also get books from them, and I also try to support some local, uh, Canadian retailers as well. But again, like for many people, they don't even know that they were famous for books, right? People who came across Amazon later on. So what is your goal as a personal brand or as a business, right? The goal is to easily be identified for something specific. You wanna become the go-to trusted source on blank. What is that one thing that you wanna become the go-to trusted source on? After you've achieved that, then of course it's easier to get hired, get promoted, get referred, get paid for these things, right? Because you are the go-to person. Um, yes, go-to, goat. I love that. Go-to equals goat, greatest of all time. Okay, quick side note here, not to get political, I'm not sharing any political views here whatsoever. I'm also not American, I'm Canadian. But when we talk about personal branding, we have to look I think personally we have to look at this example here, okay? What happened with Kamala Harris, the VP who is now running for president? Her marketing team is a masterclass in personal branding regardless of how you vote. Her marketing team is going hard. In the last 48 hours, so again, like maybe now more than 48 hours, but in 2 days we saw a full rebrand on their personal brand style, updated banners and content on all platforms. Direct dialogue with Gen Z audience, increased visibility and frequency, tapping into viral sounds and trends. So again, if you have seen this or not, but they've launched this account called Kamala HQ, and it transformed from this, like, safe status quo personal brand, one that mostly focused on Biden and catered to an older demographic. Now, all of a sudden, it's a dynamic, modern presence. They embrace this movement to appeal directly to Gen Z and millennials. So this is very important. This green theme and this whole thing came from meme culture. They really tapped into what young people are thinking and saying and doing and how they speak, right? So it doesn't matter who you are, the lesson is even if you're running for president, adapt your tone for your target audience. This is so important to think about. If a presidential candidate can do it, they can do this dramatic shift, then you can as well. And there's all kinds of articles about this that you can look up, some very interesting things they were doing on their TikTok. And this is an example of really focusing your personal brand on who your audience is. That being said, let's talk about your presence. So my profile as an example here, once you've defined all of that, you've answered those questions, how do you show up online? So for me, I'm very clear, I list in black and white, well, my personal brand is orange with this little happy face here, so I list in orange and white, I'm a marketing advisor, brand strategist, founder and mentor, who's making a positive impact. So I say the role, types of things that I do, and then what I do it for to make a positive impact, right? My profile here, I also have a byline that has some searchable words, brand strategist, marketing advisor, founder. I've added educator and changemaker. And then I added areas I work in, social good, storytelling, and startups. Now, this isn't necessarily the industry standard or the best possible thing you can have as a bio. There's other formats. For example, one other option could be for a LinkedIn headline, I help social purpose businesses and founders tell their story so they can meet their mission or grow. Like, for example, right? Someone asked where the Q&A platform is. It's to the very left of the chat. There's a little Q&A bubble. You can submit your question in there and we'll be prioritizing them. Thank you so much. Consistently having your presence across all platforms. So this is my LinkedIn platform on the left. I've got my Twitter on the right or X.com on the right here, very similar. I actually tag and link all the different things that I do. And then on my personal Instagram account, I have a different profile picture, but I also in my bio, I link, I say Amplify the Good branding, strategy, and impact, and I link all the different businesses and companies I'm associated with and organizations, right? And then I have a Linktree where you can, you can click out to all of those things. Someone asked a question about, isn't it too many keywords to focus on? So you can actually indicate your top skills and your top areas in the backend of LinkedIn. So this messaging here is just one thing that can help come up in search, right? But you can also identify those top skills in the backend platform of LinkedIn that will help you to come up. Okay, let's talk about founder-led marketing. What is founder-led marketing? I'm curious to know if you've heard this term, but founders basically means actively participating in marketing by sharing your views, products, and differences from other companies. It's when founders are sharing their work organically rather than through traditional marketing efforts, right? Or through the brand. So founders are leveraging their personal followings on social media to reach large audiences. And founder-led marketing is focusing on genuine, authentic communication as opposed to the more keyword-focused content or transactional content that the brand may use, right? So as a founder, you can use your own voice. This makes it easier to convey authenticity compared to speaking through a brand's voice. For some companies, founder-led marketing is more economically viable than traditional paid advertising, especially for if you have like a lower-priced product and you can get a large following. But individuals, founders, can relate to and connect with audiences more effectively than a faceless brand. So we're seeing this trend of founders engaging directly with their audience and contributing to discussions, debates, sharing insights, even answering customer service questions sometimes. Founders need to find that balance though between sharing authentic content and promoting their products because you don't want to overdo the marketing aspect, right? So how can founders adapt their approach? Well, change based on feedback, um, you know, how you feel personally about the content and the effectiveness of different things that you've tried. And there's some newer stats to back this up that 64% of buyers say that thought leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competency than its marketing materials and product sheets. So yes, we're all gonna have our product sheets, our comparison charts, all these things, right? But it's important to think about how thought leadership content is actually coming across as more trustworthy. 65% of buyers say that thought leadership significantly changed the perception of a company for the better.

So that's huge.

right? That means that whatever they thought of the brand so far, having their founder or leadership posting directly actually really changed that and improved that. Okay, some examples here. I love this example here from this individual, Peter Caputa, who used to work at HubSpot. He's currently at a company called Databox, and he has this, this quote here that people want to talk to people not logos. He had this post on LinkedIn saying, you know, if you're a CEO and your company is posting on your company profile more than you're posting on your own, you're doing it wrong. You know, all the experts say that posts published by people get more reach on LinkedIn than posts published by company pages. Why? No one wants to talk to your logo. They want to talk to you. So he had a great post. He goes on about this and you know, he's engaging in the comments here, people challenging it, people questioning it, and they're saying it's not just the experts that say this, you know, they agree, right? So people wanna talk to people, not logos. This is a big shift that we're seeing. And in a lot of cases, founders are getting more reach. Now, of course, I'm gonna show you a super big example here, a large-scale example, right? One of the biggest companies, Airbnb, with founder, Brian Chesky. And both Airbnb and Brian Chesky posted the same video about their winter release last year. Here are the results I want to show you. When Airbnb posted it, it got 35,000 impressions and 79 likes. When Brian posted it himself on Instagram, uh, 20— or Twitter— 20— sorry, 2.5 million impressions and 5,500 likes, right? So even if you look at, you know, the, the reposts, people are more likely to share from Brian than they are sharing from Airbnb. Very, very dramatic results here. And this is not the case for every company, of course, but many founders are getting more reach than their actual brands are. Look at, uh, look at this example, right? Okay, so I've mentioned the word thought leadership a couple of times. It's in the title of this workshop, of course, but what is thought leadership looking like today? I've got quite a few stats here. Semrush survey that interviewed over 300 marketers and industry experts. This is from almost 2 years ago, so I think it's actually gonna, the results are likely to increase even more. Question 1, is thought leadership part of your content strategy? 65% are saying yes, and almost 30% are saying not yet, but we're working on it. Only 5% said no. What does thought leadership mean for you? It's about sharing inspirational research-driven content that drives change and creates educational value. So these are the important aspects to focus on when you're actually doing your thought leadership content. How do you create thought leadership content? So CEOs and other high-level managers are creating thought leadership content in over 50% of companies. Again, it's the CEO or the leadership team doing this, right? Now, of course, in about 50%, another half of companies have subject matter experts of all kinds creating this content within the business. And then again, Some companies also let in-house and freelance copywriters take over their thought leadership content, and some work with influencers and other opinion leaders. So very interesting to see. What types of thought leadership content do you create? 91% of organizations that are doing thought leadership now are writing articles. That's a given. They're writing articles, very important. 44% are creating video. And then of course we've got, you know, speaking at webinars and events, writing long-form thought leadership like white papers and other research, but most popular right now are writing and video and events. What kind of results are we talking about here? Well, the most common result, I think this is really important to think about, the most common result is, Organic traffic, understanding that the number one goal is not sales, right? Getting organic traffic is huge. Also seeing a boost in social media following and engagement, right? Yes, you may have actual leads or sales. Almost half of the people that were surveyed in this Semrush survey said they did get that result from thought leadership content, but just be clear about your goals, right? Okay, moving on to building authentic connections. What does that mean? Authenticity is magnetic. People connect more deeply with individuals than they do with organizations, as you've seen with some of the stats, right? So as a leader, being authentic means actually allowing your personality to shine through while still maintaining that level of professionalism from, you know, for your brand. Share your wins and challenges. Be critical of certain industries that are in the issue, right? I said that are— be critical of certain industry issues, and doesn't mean you need to get involved in like politics or other social issues if they're not part of your brand, but be critical. And most importantly, be yourself. So authenticity builds trust, which we know is the foundation of loyalty. In a world filled with automation and copied trends, originality really stands out. I encourage you to share your unique perspectives and opinions. Don't shy away from, you know, being informal and doing behind-the-scenes content. Sometimes that performs really, really well. Authenticity and originality will help your startup stand out and build a loyal audience. Have a conversation. This is a quote that I love here. So thought leadership is not a one-way street. It's a dynamic conversation between the thought leader and the audience. It's a good practice for startups to engage with their audience to help foster meaningful dialogue, build relationships, and broaden horizons. Very important. You could actually broaden your own horizon as well as your audiences. Authenticity and trust. Okay, so we know that people can spot inauthenticity from a mile away, right? Authenticity builds trust. It's the foundation of loyalty. By being authentic, you're more likely to attract and retain people who see you as trustworthy, right? What are some of these stats here? So 88% of consumers consider authenticity important when deciding which brands to support. And half of all consumers prioritize authenticity as a top quality in the influencers they engage with. So authenticity is not just a buzzword. We are all human here, everyone on this call. There might be some AI note-takers or bots here, but we're all human. And so you wanna let your personality show through. Startups are serious work, yes, humor is also okay. Being authentic does not mean sharing everything. Customers can spot inauthenticity from a mile away. Let's talk about the power of storytelling here, okay? You've heard about storytelling a lot. Stories are powerful. They are, they do a great job of better communicating your mission, right? They help you to engage your audience and make your impact tangible. What do we mean by stories? It's not just reports and stats and facts. It's humanizing your own story, sharing parts of your journey, sharing your team members, your collaborators, your partners, clients telling their stories, right? Embed every fact or lesson or stat into a story, right? Customer retention rates and investor interest rates actually improves with effective storytelling. There's some stats on that. And if you're, you know, in the tech world or you have something complex you're developing, storytelling really helps— sorry, storytelling really helps to simplify these complex narratives, right? Relatable stories avoid jargon and complex language. If you're a developer or a tech person, don't be tempted to just use that language, right? Ensure Of course, you have permission to share personal stories. But again, storytelling is not just about the big wins. Even small everyday stories can be impactful. So this is the stat that I was mentioning, about to mention. Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone. This is massive. It's from a Stanford Graduate School of Business research. And only 5% of people could recall stats from a presentation. But 63% could remember stories, another massive stat from Made to Stick. So, you know, that basic story arc that you may have learned about in school works well. Give your story a beginning, middle, and end. Keep the focus at the core of your story by crafting simple narrative designed to engage, right? So again, if you're not convinced why storytelling matters, you know, Share your impact, illustrate your mission, and it engages your audience more deeply. Shift your thinking. This is what I often advise founders. Stop thinking about, you know, content or reporting or sharing information and start thinking of it as storytelling. Who will actually care? This is one of the questions I get as well, right? Who will actually care? Well, people will. The right people will. Just because you did it, you may not think it's noteworthy or significant enough, but there is an audience for that, right? The next thing to think about is that entertainment and shareability matters. Don't be afraid to tell your own story. You have a lot of experiences and parts of your journey at your startup and at past startups or roles you've had that people can get value from. Experiment with different formats. Some people on this call will love long-form text posts. Some will do graphic swipe series. Some will do long-form videos, right? It all depends. And, you know, when you are gonna share stories of clients or team members, make sure, of course, you respect their privacy. And there's ways to still share their stories anonymously. You do not need to not share the story. You can simply change key details and names and it can still be very impactful. Okay, I have a couple of examples here of the founder being the face, right? Again, we're talking about storytelling, transparency, vulnerability, and relatability. One example is this Canadian company trying to close their Series C round. Let me know if you can hear the audio.

What do you need right now?

I'm really very fucking struggling.

May of 2021, we had 9 months of cash left in the bank. I knew we had to raise $10 million. And so in July, we actually secured the perfect partner and the deal was going really smooth until it wasn't. And the whole thing just fell apart. Our backs were up against the wall, and we had 60 days to find a new partner and raise $10 million. Fundraising has derailed again.

I really want someone to tell me to just hold more cash.

We're not going to pull this raise off. We have 3 more weeks of money, and I need to make rash decisions. I need to know how much cash I need to inject into the business. We all have different 8.5s versus 9.2s.

It's a million.

These mistakes are going to kill the company.

French, you know right now?

Yeah, right now. Let's see if we can even pull it off.

Okay, so that's a pretty dramatic story there, but they are being really clear and authentic and transparent about what the heck is happening. Another one is— I won't show you this for time— but the founder, one of the team members, is sharing, uh, what it's like to be a founder, right? The loneliness factor of being an entrepreneur.

What do you need right now?

Okay, they also went as far as creating a podcast. This is another founder-led content strategy that I love, which is telling instead of just having to create scripted content, get your founders, get your team in a studio, talk about what's happening, share your learnings, share the challenges, interview each other. You could also get a host, of course, but this is a great way to participate in storytelling and use this founder-led marketing. So very cool. They all share their different personality styles. Of course, they have a podcast called Midday Squares. Uncensored. They say that they also consider themselves in part to be a media company, which again, if you have the resources and the capacity to do this as you're as a startup, you know, they said here, we're building our chocolate empire. We vowed from the beginning to document our entire journey in full transparency, the good and the bad. Social media is a forever changing landscape, but storytelling has been around for as long as humans have existed. I've had the chance at this studio here in Toronto to work with Jake. We've spoken on a couple of panels together. We've recorded some content with him here. It's awesome to, you know, really look at this like extreme lens of storytelling. They've been featured in the media for what they do. It's working for them. They're growing a fan base instead of a customer base. So if you can develop fans as opposed to just customers or followers, that's of course the goal, right? All right, another strategy I focus on is amplifying others, using your platform to highlight the stories of customers, partners, employees, other people in the industry and collaborating with them, right? Humans are social beings, we seek validation, right? So it's important to amplify other people's stories. It creates a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. Helps you build your community. Go out of your way to feature and highlight others in, in your industry, right? This builds relationships and positions you as a connector, which is a great place to be. Um, how are you going to use social? Obviously you're going to use the stories and you're going to leverage social to highlight other people, right? Both as a startup and as a leader. Think about why people are on social media in the first place, right? They're mainly there to learn, connect, or to be entertained. If you can serve those needs, connect with them, teach them, and entertain them, one or all three, you're gonna win for sure in that area. So create content that's valuable and shareable. And a couple stats to consider here is social media posts with user-generated content actually have a higher engagement rate. So that's just one example of, you know, using that strategy. And 92% of consumers trust recommendations from individuals such as you over brands. Okay, a few key points about highlighting others. It doesn't have to be all about you, right? Be a connector. Think about your community. Use your platform to highlight others. Encourage dialogue. Tag people in your posts and comments. Try to get their thoughts. Try to get them to participate and share. Tell the stories of others. I'm going to skip through this because we're running out of time, but Highlighting others. The way that I went about doing this is I started a podcast when I wanted to work more in the nonprofit and social good space. Through my personal brand, I created this, this thing called Growth for Good. It's a podcast. I've got all these people from the nonprofit sector into the studio. Two of them were remote, as you can see. But we were telling stories, we were sharing valuable advice, and all of this is being done through my own personal brand, and you can do the same thing for your brand as well. Another way to highlight others, you know, these are all people here. I think only one of these posts even mentioned something that my company's doing, right? On the left is a workshop I'm doing tomorrow for my nonprofit training company called Good Growth. All of these are highlighting other people's stories, people in my network, people I think you should know. And so this is a great way if you're like, oh, I don't know what to share about myself and my startup right now. You can highlight other people that you align with, okay? How do you now expand your reach? Well, other than your own social, you can contribute to other social accounts, other publications, other podcasts, other newsletters, right? This helps you to build credibility and helps you reach a new audience. This is super important. And, you know, again, companies that blog, so posting content on their blog, they receive 97% more links to their website really helps with SEO and link building. And then content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads according to the study. So lots to consider there. Um, there's a lot of places. This is just some points about, uh, making sure that, you know, you can share what you're doing in other places, not just on your own social, and you have a chance to really amplify what you're doing. Okay, do things tell people? Quick story here. A long time ago, there was someone I knew who ran a product design agency, and he had this poster that he designed for fun that they were selling. Years later, I believe that they went to go work with Shopify and do all this other epic, all these epic things, became a director at Shopify, worked on the Shop app, all these things. Long story short, do things, tell people is something that has always stuck in my mind. And, you know, being visible and active is so important. You have to be able to share everything from meetings you're at to, you know, things that are top of mind and thoughts that you have reflecting on things. It doesn't mean you're going to share everything, but because this individual, you know, shared throughout his journey and I shared throughout my journey. Many years later, like 10 years later or so, he had left Shopify, started his own space, and we were in touch and I was able to go connect with him there. This example here that you're seeing the screenshot of on the right is actually a founder who is straight up talking about fundraising being extremely hard. This recording is him actually pitching on a call, VC pitch. Now, of course, he blurred out a couple of details, But like, anything is content, people. I'm telling you, like, you are pitching, use it, use that potentially as content and share the journey, right? Um, it's, it's a really interesting experience, and he's sharing his reflection on it in the caption. But very interesting, you're already doing that anyways, right? Okay, um, I'm gonna skip through a few of these things, but we understand you're busy building, right? Take screenshots, help share, become top of mind, shout people out, right? Use what you're already doing to create content. That's what that example was for there. Now, quick caveat here, don't share anything and everything, right? You want to be known ultimately for one or two things. So have a filter, be mindful of the frequency, don't share like 6 times a day, right, on your personal account. When in doubt, always ask, how does this add value? right? What's the takeaway? What's something you learned? What's a reflection? Okay, engaging your audience. So small following, big impact. You don't need a large following to make an impact, right? Focus on being seen and remembered by the right people. You go back to that exercise at the beginning of like, who are you trying to serve, right? Engage with your specific audience and build a smaller community, right? And also I want to mention, a lot of attention is on creators right now, the creator economy. Tons of influencers and creators are here and people love that. People love that organic content, that UGC feel content. Guess what? You as a founder or you as a team member at a startup are your, it can very well be your own creators, right? Consider becoming that ambassador, create content as a team, right? Now, when you think about quality over quantity, this is also important as well, right? Engagement interactions are more important than the total number of followers. So focus on building those meaningful connections. And it's fine if you're small, right? 82% of consumers are highly likely to follow a recommendation that's made by a smaller influencer. Okay, embracing change. Be prepared to adapt. There's no set strategy that's gonna work for the next 5 years, right? You're gonna have to pivot and adapt. Be flexible, stay relevant. Organizations that are agile and adaptable, there's a stat here, are 1.5 times more likely to outperform their peers. That's a McKinsey study. And 90% of organizations that successfully manage change see improvements in their performance, according to Deloitte. So this likely won't be the only role that you have in your life, right? Might not be the only startup you build, but build a following that you can take with you. I have a few examples that I'd like to share here. One of them is Adam Robinson from retention.com. This guy is extremely transparent. He's sharing his startup struggles through text and through videos. He had a video sharing the harsh truth about his Glassdoor company rating. But being relatable and sharing the struggles of building a startup is often what really appeals to the masses. So he's sharing actual numbers and things like this, right? You don't have to, but this level of transparency really works. Another one is Glenn Rogers from Float. You know, he has contributed thought leadership pieces. So on the left is an article about why leaders should embrace an asynchronous work culture. Take a popular subject that resonates with your audience, right? So instead of using, you know, uh, super optimized like list posts and things like this, he's just sharing the steps that he and his co-founder take or took to build an async remote company. And like all thought leaders, he gives readers a peek into his company's values without asking them for anything in return. He's just sharing the story in this tip, right? Another interesting thing about the way that he approaches social is that he is not just posting and talking about himself. He's actually sharing what others are saying. So on LinkedIn here, he's reposting. What the company is sharing. He's reposting what other articles are. He's reposting what someone is, is talk— someone is talking about Float online and he's resharing that post. So it's very interesting to see the strategy that he's using. Another quick one is, uh, is Tyler, who's, uh, one of the co-founder and CEO of Beehive, and he has a newsletter. Obviously Beehive, it's a newsletter and community company, but he's being that ambassador and using that product. And so on social, he did a saying he tried something totally different in his newsletter. He tried doing an essay. You know, he shared 3 lived experiences and why he did this. And so this is super, super interesting content. On the right is a screenshot of the actual newsletter that he shared, but he's talking about that and why he did it on LinkedIn, which gives him more content. Another example is Will from Whoop. His content is all over the place. He doesn't post as frequently on LinkedIn, but he does get a ton of media coverage. And I think that's more of a strategy is to get covered in media and then share that. Easier said than done, of course. But if you look at a screenshot of his social on his Instagram, he is really out there. He's doing interviews, he's doing podcasts, he's featuring celebrities, he's featuring these like major thought leaders and major celebrities like Ronaldo talking about the morning routine and use of the product. So he has a very dynamic presence online. Last example I'll show you as we wrap up is Matt Gray. He has a couple different businesses, but Founder OS is one of them. He shares a lot of value. He does long-form content on YouTube. He does a lot of written content on LinkedIn, but he also does these really cool graphics and screenshots where, of like his notebook, where he brainstorms his principles and ideas. He gives away so much for free and then he promotes his community and he kind of takes a no BS approach. An example of one of the things he shared was 8 strategies that helped him to go from 0 to 500,000 followers on LinkedIn. Get as specific as possible, write content that's scannable, don't reinvent the wheel, write amazing opening lines, leverage authenticity. Of course, as we talked about, don't try to be someone you're not. Remember the 80/20 principle— 20% of your effort yields 80% of your results, right? Identify where the 80% come from in your content. Number 7, he has a deep work system. Um, he gets a ton more done, a ton more done in 4 hours than most do in a week. So he talks about that. Pick one topic, which is like the Ikigai model, where like you're going to be known, you know, that what's that one thing that you're, that you're strongest in. Um, and he says what's required to grow on LinkedIn. So, um, and he does say if he were starting again today from scratch, he would be obsessed with LinkedIn. So again, because we are, um, you know, moving really quickly Embrace the journey, okay? Um, stay authentic, share your stories, and continue to learn and grow. Remember, your personal brand can be a powerful tool that when it's aligned with your startup's mission, it can actually, you know, drive significant change. Building a strong personal brand takes time and consistent effort. Patience and persistence are definitely, you know, required there. I built mine over you know, over a decade. But again, there's a lot of ways to speed that up by amplifying it, by partnering with other people, by leveraging other people's audiences as well. And so, you know, as startup founders, you know, hopefully you can embrace some of these strategies that can help you build that and amplify your impact. A few things to do, you can take a screenshot of this slide of some things that you can very quickly start with. I highly recommend. I'm going to take a quick look at the questions. If people are willing to stay for the Q&A, Steph will have to find some other examples for you. Okay, so will the presentation be shared? Yes. Is there a clear difference between motivational and inspirational? Yes, I believe so, because inspirational is something that is gonna inspire people to potentially— sorry, inspirational is just inspiring, right? Typically motivational is gonna drive people to take some kind of action. But that's how I separated those in terms of the style of the content or the messaging. How does— someone asked, how does focus on becoming a leader, a leading expert on something, match with communicating personal stories? Okay, so you're going to be able to leverage those stories in order to show that you're an expert in those things, right? So for example, when I started telling stories about nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit marketing challenges, I was telling those individual stories which helped me to appear or become closer to those stories and have more to talk about when I'm sharing my tips. So I'm gonna leverage those stories and then I'm gonna share my learnings and lessons and recommendations, right? So to answer your question there, Frederick, focusing on becoming a leading expert does help, does also allow you to communicate personal stories because if you're not an expert in that thing, you likely don't have stories. But if you are an expert, you are going to have examples you can reference, people you know that are doing it right, um, you know, things that you can learn from. Someone asks, uh, what would you suggest to those who dislike social media, uh, and the privacy? Okay, um, so yeah, so this is founder-led marketing, or it may not be for you, right? Um, and there's a lot of people who are behind the scenes who can scale an anonymous brand and they can just grow and, and they're using ads or they're using other channels. You can also choose a face for your brand, right? It doesn't have to be this founder specifically. The personal brand of your team members, one or two people that are part of your team, can definitely represent you in that, in that matter. Again, if you want to build many startups or many products in the future, it is in your best interest to build that brand over time, right? But I would say that it doesn't have to be you. It definitely does not have to be. There's a lot of faceless accounts that are actually starting up too, where it is a person but they're not showing themselves, and they're doing voiceovers or they're doing text posts, for example, right? If you're in something like, I don't know, B2B SaaS, um, you can have a sales team, of course, they can represent, they can be the personal brand, but people do buy from people at the end of the day. Okay, someone says, uh, becoming a vocal presence on a platform, for instance LinkedIn, can feel scary in the same way public speaking can feel scary. How do you recommend that a founder become more comfortable posting to a broad audience on social media? Yes, it can definitely, um feel scary, I would say that there's no right way to do every single post, like from the beginning. So you are gonna recognize that you're gonna have some slipups, some mistakes. The good thing is that not everyone in your audience is even gonna see every post, right? Some of the posts that, you know, they may not perform, they may not get distributed. And so you're gonna keep building on that. It's— you will win more by being a little bit vulnerable, right? So the more you can share— for me, some of the best posts I've had are ones where I shared something that I hadn't really talked about much publicly before, right? Um, and so yes, it feels scary. So how do you recommend that a founder become more comfortable posting? By doing it a lot. That's the number one way. Um, and if you could be also providing thought leadership expertise by contributing to other blogs, other sources, you might feel more comfortable putting your thoughts out there and then resharing those on your own page, for example. Being interviewed is actually a great, uh, a great approach. What platform should I use to build my brand? How can I increase my audience and reach? So I would definitely recommend LinkedIn, um, as a as an amazing platform. It's not the best if all your audience, if your audience isn't there, of course. The best platform is where your audience is, where your target audience is located. It might be YouTube, right? Who knows? Okay, next question. Even big companies fail after having a brand and doing pre-market study and following the Golden Circle. What does this imply? Well, it all comes down to timing, right? You could have product market fit, but it's the wrong timing, or perhaps something you've launched did amazing, but not in this particular area, local area that you've launched, right? You could also, you know, have something that was doing super well, but then out of your control, another competitor or another company showed up and did it better, right? So there's a lot there. The golden circle though applies more to you personally, right? So it's not just about what the company does, But your own why, your own purpose, that can be applied to any company, any organization, any project you work on. It's not just for that one particular business. How is AI gonna change marketing? I'll skip that 'cause it's not too much about marketing, but you can leverage AI to help you digest your content, for example. As a thought leadership brand or a personal brand, I've worked with, clients where we'll take an hour of them speaking and we'll use AI to help identify the top points. There's software that will help you to identify the best clips, best performing video hooks. That's all using AI.

Daniel, thanks a lot. However, there are tons of questions. I don't think we can answer everything, but we can pick maybe a couple.

Yeah, I wanted to invite, uh, people that you can book a session with me. Um, if you do book a session, you can get a second one completely for free as well. So if you, if you book a session anytime in July or August, and I'd love to, to help some of you with your personal brands, um, you can find some information on my website danieldoes.co. Um, but I'm happy to help with like personal brand strategy, online audit, content strategy, that kind of thing. There are some great questions here that perhaps you can save them and I can get back to some of them after as well. I know that we're a few minutes over time. Did you want me to answer? Is there time to answer a couple more or should we wait?

Okay, let's do 2 more before we wrap up.

Okay, perfect.

Should we go with—

See here. Uh, okay. What are your recommendations for balancing AI tools for creating written or visual content, um, with the need to create content on a consistent basis? Okay, so yes, uh, Jen, very important. If it's for your personal brand, you want to make sure that whatever AI tools you're using are not determining the voice and style that you're using. right? It needs to come from you. It needs to be your tone, your personality. So at the very least, you're gonna be able to leverage these tools to help you take a lot of content and help refine that, right? That's one thing. Another thing is, again, I talked about automated— automating things like your video editing, right? Or transcribing using Fireflies, or there's a million different tools you can use to transcribe your meetings and your sessions and your recording. Using that, that's still your own voice. You can then take that, turn it into digestible pieces. So that does help you with content at scale for sure. But by all means, it's got to be your own voice. It's got to be your own personal voice. Okay, let's see here.

Last one.

Yes. So someone said, how can we adapt? So you and the VP sites are excellent examples. How can we adapt your approaches to a basic site and, uh, and profile now? Where do we get started and focus on a basic presence? Okay, so if you're talking about from like a website, there's a lot of tools you can search like Google, like, you know, simple landing page tools, free website tools, whatever, to create a simple website. What's more important than the design, even though I'm a designer, is your UVP, like what you do, what is your mission, how can you help someone, right? You that, boiling that down very clear, and then taking that and applying it to the rest of your sites, your platforms, your social media profiles. You can very easily find a consistent template, a consistent graphic style through various tools like Figma or Canva or other apps to do that. But the key is that the messaging is right and that it stays consistent. Across, you know, all platforms. I love this, this last question here with, uh, with from Ray that says, is personal branding uncovering what's already there, or is it crafting an image that will appeal to your audience? Okay, so there's— of course, you've heard me use the word authenticity many times in this presentation. It has to, of course, be something that's that's either already there or that feels true to you, right? So yes, you are going to leverage already there within you, right? Your own, your own thoughts, your own ideas, your own feelings about things. But you know that you might need to, to structure that in a way that's going to speak to a certain audience. So even if it's extremely true, you might have different audiences that you're trying to speak to, and you may tweak the way that that's marketed communicator position to them, right? So it doesn't mean that you're crafting an image from scratch that will appeal to your audience. It should be based on reality and based on authenticity. And if it's not you, if you're not the person, you can create an avatar. You can create, uh, you know, have a representative that's, that's, um, the face of your business, for example. It can be a character. It doesn't have to be you as a person, but, um, you know, definitely as hard as you try, as hard as you can to remain authentic, and then just adapt your message to appeal to the different audiences. Okay, awesome. Well, we're out of time, but, uh, I appreciate all the questions that were asked. Feel free to connect with me on, on LinkedIn. I have a ton of content on social videos, you know. I'm trying to, you know, practice what I preach here, so feel free to, to find me Um, you can reach out to me through LinkedIn or any other social.

Thanks so much, Daniel. That was amazing content, really great examples. And like you said, it's useful for everyone, not just entrepreneurs. Everyone can use these tips. Don't forget to connect to Daniel, and we're gonna send the recording within 48 hours. You can learn more about FI by following the links in the chat or just go to fi.com. And now we're inviting you to the networking lounge. See you in a bit. You will be automatically sent there and you can join a table to talk to each other or to us. And hope to see you at our next events. Thanks for joining.

Thanks everyone. Thank you, Emilia.