TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

So what is the number one way to build and improve your own personal brand?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So what does personal brand even mean? It's not a phrase you heard that often 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago. But now there's this whole industry of people who are allegedly branding experts for individuals. What's your personal brand? Let's step back a moment and define terms. To me, brand is simply what something or someone does on a consistent basis that the marketplace associates with that person. So if you like Coke, you know it always tastes the same. If you like a McDonald's hamburger, you can go in any McDonald's in the world and you know that that hamburger is going to look the same, taste the same. Those French fries are going to see the same. It's about consistency and the marketplace knowing what you're about, expecting it, feeling like there's no risk they're going to get exactly what they want. What does that mean when it comes to individuals in the business world, in the civic world, public world? To me, it is about consistency. Here's the problem I have with most of the discussion on this topic, and it is this idea that it's more about, oh, your logo on your business card or the colors associated with your website. I'm not saying those things never matter. Sometimes people talk about your suit or whether you have an expensive watch on, things like that. Sure, they may take a tiny little aspect of your overall brand image, but to me, it's about really two things. It is about what is the thing you actually do that delivers high quality. For me, I'm a presentation and media training expert. So my brand, the reason my customers come back to me again and again and again is other people in their organization I worked with went from being average or even bad speakers to great speakers or average or bad at dealing with the media to all of a sudden being great. So that's my number one brand. But what else do I try to do? The other thing, part of my brand is I try to be authentic with you and be real. One of the things I do in this daily video and audio podcast is I do it live. No editing. Because when you're giving a speech, you can't edit yourself. So you're going to see me with my and hear me with my flaws. Just then my iWatch, my Apple Watch, started ringing. For no particular reason, I'd accidentally set a timer. I don't know why. So if you heard that little buzzing, that's what it is. But I wanted to give you full disclosure on that. So what else really affects your brand? It's the ultimate thing you do. If you are a famous architect and your buildings are made primarily about in glass of nonlinear lines and not straight lines, that's going to be your brand. But what can most of us in the business world do to dramatically improve our personal brand while spending the least amount of time and the least amount of money? I happen to believe, and some of you are going to say, well tj this is self serving. I happen to believe the number one thing most people can do to help their brand is become a much better public speaker. Think of famous political leaders and I'm going to use examples from across the spectrum. But Donald Trump, most people do not think of Donald Trump and comment on the fact that he's always wearing a $20,000 Briani suit. And they're typically not commenting on the style of his tie because they're typically complete solids, typically reds, sometimes blues. But they do like those who like Donald Trump. We're not getting into politics here. They like the fact that he's so outspoken and so unafraid to criticize people he doesn't like, call them stupid dummies, idiots. And he has extreme confidence when he speaks. Let's go to the other side of the spectrum. Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton. People who love him, people who hate him would all say fabulous public speaker. People are not commenting typically on the style of his suit or his haircut. That's not what makes Bill Clinton's brand. What makes Bill Clinton's brand as a political leader, ever since the 1970s when he first rose on the scene in Arkansas, was this guy gives a fantastic speech. Although those of you who follow history certainly remember as I do, he, he gave a horrible speech in 1988 at the Democratic convention, but in general gives a great speech. Ronald Reagan, known as the great communicator. He wasn't known for always being impeccably dressed, having great cufflinks, having his hair trimmed perfectly, even though he did all those things too. The dominant part of his brand was being a great speaker. And of course, Barack Obama, what built his brand as a nationwide politician? It wasn't his suits. They're fairly nondescript. Even as president, he basically has hundreds of suits that are only dark shades of gray and blue because he doesn't want to waste time with people criticizing and talking about his wardrobe. Obama built his national brand because of his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. And you can say, well, T.J. i'm not a politician. Look in your own organization, whether you work in an organization with 100,000 employees or whether it's a three person nonprofit, look at the person at the top of your organization. They might not be the best communicator, the best speaker, but chances are they're certainly one of the better ones at your organization. And in a lot of organizations, they are, in fact, the very best speaker. More on this in a moment.

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To me, this issue of personal branding hits home so much because I have clients and friends for that matter. Associates come up to me and they ask me questions about whether these shoes will fit their brand or this suit is the best and do they need to go to this tailor. All of those things are something to give some thought to. But I always find it shocking and rather appalling that some people, men and women, might spend $5,000 on a new suit, a new handbag, combination of shoes, but would never in a million years dream of spending $5,000 improving their presentation skills. And here's the problem. If you work for a large bank, for example, and everyone is well paid for the most part, everyone's going to have an expensive suit, expensive shoes, expensive briefcases or purses. You don't distinguish yourself that way. Where you can distinguish yourself is the annual conference where every division director has to stand up and talk for 15 minutes and there's 35 presentations over three days. Where you can really build your brand and distinguish yourself is by being the best speaker of your 35 colleagues at that conference. Of being the most interesting, of being the most memorable. That's a fantastic way to build your brand within a large international organization. And let's take it back down a notch. Let's say you are head of a two person nonprofit in a small town. You've got to raise money. You've still got to make your pitches to the United Way. You've got to talk to major donors. And maybe you're not giving speeches to thousands of colleagues because you only have one assistant. Or maybe you have no assistants. Maybe you're a one person organization. You still have to spend your time speaking. And if you build a brand for yourself of wow, every time I meet with this guy, every time I meet with this woman, they don't waste my time, they don't bore me, they don't give me some data dump that they could have just emailed. They tell me something interesting. They tell me something I didn't know. They tell me something that was actually useful and memorable. If you do that, I'm convinced you are going to dramatically create a brand for yourself, a positive brand, and build that brand and position yourself so it can get better, better and better. I'd like to hear from you on this. What does it actually mean to you when someone says a personal brand? I know some of you think that's just sort of marketing management speak mumbo jumbo. It's totally meaningless. Others of you think, well, oh, it's highly, highly specific and relevant. I'd love to hear from you, post your comments on our Facebook page, our blog, at mediatrainingworldwide.com or any place where you are listening to or watching this podcast. And I do want to know from you, what specifically does it mean to you to be a brand? Who do you think has a good brand outside of the world of politics? And I really want to know who has a good brand but also isn't known as a good speaker? Certainly there are a lot of people where you know them just for their art. Their art is so beautiful. There are certain authors who are known because they write the most beautiful works of literature and you never even see them on tv. So it's certainly possible. But please answer those questions for me. I'd love to hear from you and post it or send it to me on Twitter. By the way, we do always want to take your questions well, so please, please send them our way.

Your questions.

That's right. Your questions are fundamentally a part of this show. Most of this show is about you either emailing me, sometimes calling me, and sometimes posting on social media your questions about personal communication, spoken communication, public speaking, media training issues, how to speak to the media, and how to speak to a crisis. So if you have any questions, please send me your questions. I'd love to hear from you. This is an interactive show and unlike a lot of I like Gary Vaynerchuk. His show is so wildly popular, sometimes he only does one every three weeks. Your chances of him answering your questions are pretty slim. I'm here for you. This show is seven days a week. Now, I try to do a very high quality show, but part of quality is quantity being accessible. So if you send me a question, unless it's just 100% unrelated, you're asking me my favorite chili recipe, I probably won't answer that. But. But if you send me any question related to spoken communication, you're essentially guaranteed it will be answered. So please, please send me your questions. I'd love to hear from you. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending some time with me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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