B (3:35)

Right, right. And I think that there's two elements here. I think there's two words that we think about a lot when we think about branding, and one of them actually is a word we don't think about, but we have a gut reaction to. And I will say infamous is that word. So that's more on the negative side of personal branding. We don't want. Is that we become reduced to a meme, unless that's what you want to do for a living. We want our brand to be lasting, so we want to leave a lasting impression. That is a very real. And to me, we want an evergreen brand. We want something that you can take with you to your next job, or if you are an entrepreneur or run your own business, you want something that your clients will recognize. But it's so helpful to have a brand that is, and we're going to go into this, I think, a little bit later, the five Cs of personal branding, a brand that is incredibly consistent over time.

A (4:35)

Yes, indeed. And there's a distinction you highlight in your work that I think is really key because I don't think often we think about the distinction between these two things. You paint a picture between a personal brand versus a reputation that we have. Could you tell me about that distinction and why those are different?

B (4:58)

Yes. So I think this is the number one question I get asked about personal branding is not what is personal branding? But how is personal branding different than reputation? So at the very simplest, core definition of the two, I believe reputation is what other folks say about you when you're not in the room. And then personal branding is the story that you tell for yourself.

A (5:23)

Yeah. And of course, if we do a good job at being better at being intentional with Our personal brand, we can influence our reputation in a positive way, but it really does start first with the personal brand that we do or do not project into the world. By starting there, it gives us the opportunity to be able to influence the reputation you mentioned.

B (5:47)

Yeah, I think having the opportunity to tell other people who we are. Of course, at the end of the day, if you say nothing, then people will naturally make an assumption, and often an uninformed assumption. But if you are sharing your story, out with the universe, with the world, out with your colleagues and coworkers, then you have at least a tiny bit of control over what that story is.

A (6:15)

Yeah, indeed. Well, so often when I've had conversations in the past about personal branding, or even thinking about it for myself, I think the word that often comes up for me, at least when thinking about this topic, is that it can be really nebulous. It's very like, it's hard to define. It's hard to put a framework around. And one of the things that I really love that you've done is you have put a foundation, a framework around this five things. You've identified that when you see people do this well, that they generally lean in on these five things. And I thought we'd look at each one of them. There's five Cs in thinking about how we can all do better at being a little bit more intentional about our personal brands. And I'm hoping that as folks listen, that there's at least one of these that you think, hey, there's something I could shift on maybe today as a starting point. And the first of the five Cs is clarity. And you say clarity is the foundation of personal branding. What is it that's so critical about clarity?

B (7:27)

So to me, clarity is knowing the why. So clarity is knowing at the core why are you creating your personal brand, and a little bit of who you are in that moment in time as you create your personal brand. So I think clarity is such a beautiful word. I often think of it in terms of being outside. And if you see a lake that is disturbed, if you see the debris come up, but when it settles, the lake is very clear. You can see all the way to the bottom. And that's what you want with your personal brand, is you should know at the core why you are creating your personal brand. Because if you don't, what often happens, and I see this happen so much, I see this across LinkedIn, is that you have people who create 50 pieces of content about their personal brand, but it's all over the place. It's not very clear what they're either promoting or who they are. And of course every human is very multifaceted. We all have different things and different career trajectories that we go through. But it's so helpful because we are in such a noisy world, such a busy world to clarify down for ourselves first who we want to be known as and then from there that is the story that we can share with others.

A (8:52)

I have several members in our community right now that are wanting to do better at. They haven't used this word, but I would say personal branding would be the thing that they would, if we were going to put a label on, it would be the thing they want to get better at. And they've started to do more reaching out either on LinkedIn or other platforms or through other venues. And, and oftentimes I see one of those first question is like, well, where do I start with this? Like, where do I start with clarity? When you, when you run into someone who is trying to recognizes the importance being able to do this better and having more clarity, where do you invite them to start? So they do find some of that clarity. Sure.

B (9:37)

So I'll give you a very simple exercise that I talk about in the book, but I do this with my. When I work with Fortune 500 C level executives or director levels or above, this is the exercise that I do with them, or more accurately, what I do with their team members. And that is going through a list of keywords that help define who you want to be known as. And once again, all we're doing is we're trying to simplify down our brand. So we start with what are, I call them soft keywords and hard keywords. So soft keywords are what are adjectives that you might want to be described as. So once again, these might be intelligent, these might be funny, this might be warm, this might be insightful, this might be forward thinking. And then what are the hard adjectives or hard nouns that you want to be known for? And for this, this might be engineer, this might be writer, this might be project manager, this might be founder, etc. And what you want to do is you want to create a list of at least 20 keywords that are soft keywords and 20 keywords that are hard keywords. And from there you get to pick three, only three total, and you have to pick at least one from each column. And the reason why we do this exercise, it's a mental exploration of what you even think of yourself, which is big and heady and goes beyond personal branding. But it helps you start to think about, okay, who am I? What do I want to be known for? And I tell my clients, this is so important that you do this by yourself. I know the impulse is to immediately throw it into AI and have AI do this exercise for you, or ask a partner or ask someone at work to do this for you. But it's so helpful to do this exercise for yourself, using your own brain and your own thoughts, because it will help unlock some really interesting keywords that you didn't think of before.

A (11:45)

Ah, boy. What. What a simple place to start. And I'm glad you mentioned AI because, like, maybe that might be a tool along the way of, like, generating a long list of words that you could consider. But this comes down to, this is like. It gets back to where we started. Like, this is you. This is like, your quirks, what you care about, the why. So, like, it really does have to be you filtering through that, deciding, figuring out exactly what are those three words that surface for you.

B (12:14)

Yeah. And I think that we live in such an instant gratification world these days that it's hard to say. I'm very, I guess, old school in this way. But I think it is so helpful to do some of the manual work and to let your neurons connect and to come up with these thoughts on your own. Because what is very cool about that is you will come up with a word that you thought, oh, is that how I want to describe myself? Or, oh, maybe I want to be known for this? And the thing about AI is it only knows what you input into it. So its boundaries of knowing you are what you put into it about yourself, and then also what it finds on the vast Internet. But that might not be the word that lives in your heart, that might not be the word that lives in your mind. I think it's very powerful to try to do these kind of exercises on your own first before getting that outside help.

A (13:14)

One of the fears that I've experienced and I've heard from other people is when they do something like this, whether it's this exercise exactly. Or something like it, where they do get clarity on what it is that they're presenting to the world is they feel like, ooh, I'm limiting myself. I'm only talking about these two or three things. Everything I need to say has to be about those two or three words. Right. When you hear that kind of response from someone, what do you say?

B (13:42)

So I think it's always helpful to think about your personal Brand is the hub on a wagon wheel. Right. I think about playing Oregon Trail when I was younger and I think about those wagon wheels on the. I wasn't old enough to go on the Organ Trail, I guess, during that time in which the pioneers did that. But I like to think about the wooden wagon wheel. I think about the hub which connects all the spokes. Now, your hub, the very center that is these three keywords. So those three keywords exist, the hub. But of course, from the hub there are so many spokes, There are so many other ideas that come from this. So having a very narrow start point actually can become quite expansive. But you're seeing everything through the lens of that. And also we want to narrow down. We want to narrow down because once again, we live in such a busy world. And if you meet someone, say you meet someone at a conference and they say, hi, I'm. I don't know, hi, I'm Greg, and I do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And you will probably only remember one of those. This is if any at all, right? Because we are inundated with so much information every single day. So the more you can narrow down and say, if I met somebody tomorrow and I said, hi, I'm Goldie Chan and I'm an author, you will likely remember that I'm an author, as opposed to if I say, hi, I'm Goldie Chan, I'm an author, I'm an agency owner. On top of that, I like to. And then three of my favorite hobbies and then four of the other interests that I have. It becomes very confusing. And we want to be memorable, which we just talked about. We want to be memorable in a good way. And that starts by being really thoughtful about curation and cherry picking, the things that we want to be known for. So narrowing down, while it might feel restrictive, is actually so, so helpful. Because if someone remembers that you're an author, the beauty is the next time that you meet them or the next time that you talk to them, you can go beyond that simply being an author. So you can say, okay, well, I'm an author, but also, did you know that I run my own agency? And then that becomes another data point that someone can remember about you. But it's so helpful to start with the strongest bullet point about yourself and about your work or your career that you want someone to take away. Because so many people these days, when they introduce themselves, you know, we talk. I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but there's the elevator pitch that exists. And the elevator pitch, of course, is that bite sized way of talking about yourself. But I think even better than the elevator pitch is the single bullet point. What is that single bullet point that you want someone to take away from you if you were, say, in an elevator together and you had the 5 to 10 seconds to explain who you are?

A (16:52)

I've tried it both ways many times over the years. And absolutely the single clear starting point, ironically often engages a much deeper and richer conversation that then gets to the other kinds of things that you do. But if you try to fit everything, capture everything about yourself, professionally, personally, whatever, in one statement or elevator pitch, it just like you said, it's like nobody pays attention to that. Like we all get lost in the complexity of everything. And so I love this as a starting point and one of the other Cs. The second one is consistency. And there's a chapter in the book that is titled the Internet is for Introverts. And I love the title of that chapter because I think about, when I think about branding, I think about historically, people showing up and connecting with others. There were not a lot of ways to do that. 20, 30 years ago, you went to conferences, you went to networking events, you gave speeches. There were some like very public ways to do that. The Internet has opened up so many opportunities for us to be consistent, hasn't it?

B (18:06)

Yeah, I think that there's so many ways to be consistent using the Internet, especially as an introvert. I think that so many introverts I meet are so hesitant to even start with their personal brand because it, you know, there's another chapter where I talk about really overcoming the overwhelm that you have as an introvert. But I think that the Internet opens this really beautiful door. It creates a new room. So I like to talk a lot about and think about who are you in the room with and who are you talking to in the room? And someone who has a beautiful brand online. We were just talking on his podcast and he was saying, well, I spent a lot of time doing virtual events, so am I not in the room? Of course I had to say, no, you're in the virtual room. You're in the digital room, you're in the online room. And the online room is a massive, massive space that we can start to build our personal brand. And there are so many amazing platforms that exists on the Internet where you can start to talk about what you're interested in. Now, for me, that happens to be LinkedIn and for a lot of other professionals, that's LinkedIn. For other folks, that might be other platforms like Instagram, it might be TikTok, it might be Pinterest, it might be Facebook. There are so many different virtual town halls that you can be part of as an introvert. So I would say for those of you who are out there who are very shy or feel more reticent to join these communities, it's helpful to join any community online that you feel that you want to be more involved with or that is a common shared interest, even if it's marathon running, even if it's cats, et cetera, because you never know what joining even those unrelated communities can lead to in your career or. Or in your job, just because you have exposure to more people. It is such a powerful thing to have. You know, the N word is so controversial. Network. Right. So it's so hard to network sometimes. But if you think about it as expanding who you're connected to and who your community is, I think that's a better and easier way to think about it.

A (20:27)

I love it. And by the way, community's one of the other Cs. So I want to ask you more about that in just a second. One more thing on the consistency piece. I think, like, so much of the spirit of what you're saying just reminds me of something that a mentor told me 20 years ago, and she said, mediocre marketing done consistently is way better than amazing marketing done occasionally. And I've thought about that a lot over the years and I've really tried to, in my own work, lean in. Like, what can I do? Not just mediocre, but what can I do well, but do it consistently? Right. Like, what can I show up for that is. It is easy for me, is placed to my strengths. And when I think about consistency, a lot of it is like, yes, there are platforms that are better than others, there's ways that are better than others, but what is it that, like, really works for you, that you can do well, you can show up and you can do at least reasonably well versus, like, I have to make it perfect and I have to. And maybe I'll only do it once or twice. And I just think there's such a. There's such a lot of wisdom in there from which you're. You're suggesting.

B (21:31)

Yeah, I think that the impulse to. And this is how my brain works, so it's very funny. The impulse for me honestly to do a ton of work and then drop it and then run away is so high. And I think for so Many of us out there, we want to be able to say, okay, I made 10 pieces of content, you know, that's run and done. We've done it. Now we have a personal brand. Ta da. And that's not how personal brands work. Personal brands are a lot like living creatures. So if you ever have, let's start with the simplest kind of, I guess, creature, which is a plant. So if you ever raised plants, you know that they need water and for some of them they need fertilizer, they need other things, but at the end of the day, they still need water to grow. Most plants need water, they need some sort of element added into them. And same with their personal brand. It needs that same kind of nurture over time.

A (22:30)

Yeah.

B (22:31)

And I think that with a lot of personal brands, people think, well, if I just do one burst or, you know, I will use a V word that is very related to social media these days, which is virality. If you go viral once you think, okay, well, I never need to sustain it past that moment. However, that's not true. Even if you go viral, it's still helpful to have very consistent content that backs up that virality and that enforces what you want to be known for. So you'll see people even who have the most viral moments, they'll still be creating content on different various social platforms that enforce that viral moment. It's almost repeating that. So everyone knows that say they're the person that had the Stanley cup that burned in the truck fire, right? So whatever that viral moment is, they will repeat that. Now, going back to folks that maybe don't have that viral moment, like myself and others, I built my personal brand by doing over 800 daily videos on LinkedIn. And these were mostly edited by myself, mostly created by myself. They mostly featured me in them. And that consistency over time, I have to say, not every video was a gem. In fact, when I started to create videos, I didn't know how to edit videos. So the first, I think even maybe 20 videos were completely unedited. They were. I turned on my phone, I recorded and I dropped it onto LinkedIn. So that first 20 though, was the first start of my personal brand. And just by doing a, what you called a mediocre job, was so helpful to consistently over time, do a mediocre job. And you'll find that if you also do, say 20 mediocre posts, 100 mediocre posts, that over time your quality just naturally, because you've been doing this so many times, it tends to increase also over time. So I'm a huge fan of if you are consistently creating content that over time, even the most mediocre content starts to improve, starts to get better, you start seeing trends, you start implementing those trends into your content. You start being able to collaborate with other people. All of this develops because you keep showing up. And it's so powerful to show up.

A (24:55)

Yeah.

B (24:56)

So when you post, say, three to five videos, people maybe see one. Maybe. Or maybe they see none of them. So that's also helpful to think about when you're thinking about being really consistent is it's also a percentage game. Many people will not see anything that you post. So when you also worry I'm posting too much, you probably aren't, because the way the algorithms work these days is most people aren't even seeing what you're posting or what you're showing.

A (25:26)

Yeah, yeah, indeed. And, boy, it's just there's so many parallels to what. And whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's social media, whether it is being in an online community, whether it is being a leader, talking to a team about vision. I mean, it's really interesting to me how often I get in conversations with leaders and they'll say, well, I talked about the vision at our kickoff meeting a month ago, and like, people aren't really buying into it. And one of the first things we'll talk about is like, well, where else have you been talking about it? Are you also mentioning in one on ones? Are you also sending out messages? Are you making it a part of your regular interactions? And oftentimes it's months and months of doing that in lots of different venues where people start to get a sense of it. And like you, by the way, I've never had anything I've done go viral on the Internet ever. And. But it's the consistency over time of the messaging that has helped both of us to, like, build our brands. And I see, like, with so many people, I see that this works well. It's the consistency, I think, with even.

B (26:27)

This podcast, not to be very meta about this, but with this podcast, you've been doing it for so long, and being so consistent with doing the podcast only helps grow you grow the reputation of the podcast and also, of course, grow the SEO footprint of the podcast over time. So it's the consistency that. That is so, so helpful indeed.

A (26:51)

Okay, we've talked about clarity. We've talked about consistency. We also talked about community and the importance of community. There's one of the other words that's a part of this is Competency and this, this one for me, when I think about competency, I think one of the fears that comes up for a lot of us, especially those who tend to be a little more introverted, is we have a fear of self promotion. We have a fear of like putting ourselves out there and promoting ourselves. And of course we see a lot of that right now on social media. In fact, it's becoming overwhelming. How do you, when you're talking to people about competency and, and sending that out into the world, but also like riding that line between self promotion, how do you think about it?

B (27:36)

I think that competency is a lot like confidence versus ego. So when we say are at a conference I think is a great example because it's a place full of strangers who are all there for a business purpose. So when we're at a conference, I think we've all been at a conference and we've met somebody who is very confident and then we've met somebody full of ego. And to me, ego is when somebody goes into a room and they shout who they are in that room. And confidence is when they go into that room and they simply are who they are in that room. And I think that is the powerful difference between also having competency and doing endless self promotion. Competency is simply showing up in the room that you belong in and saying, this is what I do. This is what my history of work has been in, this is what my body of work has been. This is what I'm personally an expert in. It's showcasing all of those skills and all of that, all of those years of work that you probably have behind you and appearing very calm, I'd like to say calm and confident, very calm and confidently in that room, whether it's in person or online with those competencies, with all of the things that you know you can do in that room and that is so good for your brand because so many people are once again, they're ego driven, they're shouting in the room, they're like, believe me, this is what I'm good at. And then you notice that people don't believe those people. But when you show up and you say, for example, as a product manager, I believe that there are three core principles to running product. I'm not a product manager. There are three core principles to running a product launch. And then you list those three core principles and that is so much more effective over time. And also for introverts out there, that takes a little bit you out of the equation because we're just talking about what you know how to do. So instead of saying, I am the best, you're simply saying, as a product manager, I've learned this over time and these are some of my helpful learning lessons that I'm then sharing with with you. Now, the, of course, the other version of that is hi, I'm. And I'm sorry for all the Greg's listening out there. But, you know, hey, I'm Greg. I'm the best at product management. And these are three things that I think, you know, I've learned because I'm the absolute best. That's an insufferable post, right? That's like a post that we've all, I'm sure, seen on LinkedIn, but feels very, to me, cringy. It feels very much like you are shouting at the room. You are saying that you know all these things, but it makes you seem very insecure and just. Humans, as animals, we are so attracted to and so delighted by confident people. And you'll notice also to bring it back to leadership, we so naturally want to default to the person in the room who is calm and confident to be our leader. That is just the natural animal instinct in all of us.

A (31:04)

Yeah, it is. And you know, I was thinking about what you were just saying with competence and sort of the subtle but maybe key distinction I hear in what you're saying is that rather than I'm positioning, I'm advocating for people to, like, follow me. I'm advocating for an idea or a principle or something that I believe in through my experience. And I'm talking about that. And by virtue of doing that well, and it's, it's something bigger than me, people associate that with you. They associate with like the product manager who's got like, hey, here's three things I really believe in, or the person who's involved in a particular industry, like, here's, like, here's the things that we advocate for that are really important to us. And people then associate that with your brand. And it comes back to those three words you mentioned earlier. Right. Of clarity, that if you are beginning there, people recognize that and they see that in you.

B (32:00)

Yeah. And I think that at the end of the day, I also like to think this, which is it's helpful to be in conversation with other people. So when you're in the room and you're shouting, that's not a conversation. When you see someone who's standing at the edge of the sidewalk and they're shouting on the megahorn, whatever it is that they're shouting, I live in Los Angeles, so there's quite a few people who do that.

A (32:25)

Yeah.

B (32:26)

But when you see somebody shouting on a, on a megaphone, that's not a conversation. But when you stand next to someone and you say, how are you doing today? Right. Or what is it you're excited to work on? These are all conversation starters and these all help you become in conversation with someone else.

A (32:48)

We've looked at these last, the fourth and fifth c interchangeably, competency and confidence. And I just love to highlight one of the lines in the book that you said a moment ago. And I just think so. Key ego is when you shout who you are to a room, and confidence is when you know who you are in a room. And I love that perspective. And I think it comes right back to clarity at the beginning, if you've taken the time to sit down and do the work and decided for yourself of who are you showing up in a room, whether it's a physical room or a virtual room or a post or with colleagues or as a leader, wherever, that if you know that, then you're so much more likely to show up in a way where you feel more confident walking into a room. And people see that and they notice that to your point, like we can, we can see it from a mile away when someone walks in with that clarity and that confidence.

B (33:43)

Yes, I think that we feel it. It resonates with us. When someone walks in the room, they are confident. They know who they are. There's a sureness about that. And once again, I think that that's traditionally, if we want to go back ages and ages ago, that's how people were traditionally picked to be leaders and in the rooms that they were with, because this is, say, prior to the Internet even you have groups of people and they're going to default to if they have to pick just no other criteria. They're going to pick the person who feels very confident, who stands firmly. And I believe an introvert can be that calm and confident person. Because at no point am I saying that you have to yell and shout out and be particularly outgoing to be calm and confident. That is, those are two traits that exist and come from within outwards.

A (34:42)

You have walked the talk on this. You have done this so amazingly yourself and using all the, the online resources and social media and of course LinkedIn so well to do this. And now you teach other people how to do this. You're going in organizations teaching leaders how to really think about branding of themselves and their organizations as you have done this so much over the last few years. I'm curious Goldie, what have you changed your mind on?

B (35:06)

Oh gosh, it's funny because I have a small section in my book about this which is really thinking about stacking opportunities. So this is what I have definitely changed my mind on and I think that it's so helpful to be always thinking about how you can stack smaller opportunities to create a larger one. So if you are, say in the workplace, let's talk about working in a larger corporation or larger company. If you are jumping in and helping with certain projects that say, prove that you are a great project manager. But you're starting out the smaller ones, the bite size projects and then you're stacking a few of those bite sized projects. What becomes beautiful is once you've shown that, hey, I did four or five of these bite sized projects, I really would love to do the next level up. You've now proven that competency through stacking opportunities. And I think so many people wait. They wait for that big opportunity, but in the meantime they could be doing those smaller opportunities that first of all just give them the experience and give them the consistency over time. But it just is so, so helpful to stack opportunities.

A (36:26)

Goldie Chan is the author of Personal Branding for Introverts. Goldie, thank you so much for your message of consistency. So helpful for all of us.

B (36:36)

Thank you so much for having me.

A (36:38)

My pleasure. If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes, I'd recommend one of them is episode 148, the four critical stories leaders need for Influence. One of our expert partners, David Hutchins, was our guest on that episode and David and I talked about four stories that are helpful for you to tell, related to your brand about you and being able to tell those in a way that's authentic, that's genuine, and also structured in a way people can follow. In episode 148 we walk through what those four stories are, how to structure them, and where to begin. I think it's a great complement to this conversation. Also recommended, episode 6 14, the Way to Get Noticed by Key Stakeholders. Daphne E. Jones was my guest on that episode and I love Daphne's invitation in that conversation to take advice from mentors. But taking advice doesn't mean you have to do everything. Sometimes we hear advice from a mentor or more senior person in the organization and we assume we have to do it all and she invites us to zero in on the one thing they said that really resonates with you. Go do that. Come back, talk with them about it demonstrate that you're taking action, how that can build relationships in some amazing ways. Episode614 for more on how to do that. And then Finally, I'd recommend episode 703. Your reputation is your currency. Maha Abu Elinain was my guest on that episode and Maha and I talked about the other side of personal branding reputation, right? Like what people are saying about you, thinking about you, having conversations about you when you're not in the room. And it fits so well with this conversation on personal branding. Episode 703. For that many of you told us that conversation was really helpful when we aired it. All of those episodes you can find on the Coaching for Leaders website along with every other episode I've aired since 2011. Searchable by topic. That's why I would invite you to set up your free membership because when you do, you can access the entire library by topic. All of the episodes are available on all the public apps for free. You can find anything inside the podcast apps, but it's hard to be able to track down by topic. That's why we have set up the library inside of the Coaching for Leaders website so you can find what's relevant to you right now and be able to zero in on that many episodes we've aired over the years on all of these topics, plus whatever else is top of mind for you right now. Also, if you A ton of other benefits inside the free membership. My book notes, my own personal library, all of our free audio courses. Completely free. Go over to coaching4leaders.com set up your free membership and you'll be off and running with all the resources from us. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Next Monday I'm glad to welcome Kirsten Ferguson back to the show. We are going to be having a conference conversation about blind spots and how to see what others miss. Join me for that conversation with Kirsten. Have a wonderful week and see you back on Monday.