Personal Branding with Jessica Zweig
Personal Branding with Jessica Zweig - Inbound-Led Outbound Live
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Thank you, John.
So Jessica, thank you so much for being on the show.
It is the inbound led outbound live.
That's what we're trying to like create a category.
We made this funny name up and yeah.
First, I want to know where are you physically in the world?
I'm currently in Nashville, Tennessee, where I live.
Awesome.
Yeah.
What are you living for?
Well, I'm originally from Chicago, but I've been coming back and forth for
about
three years, a living half the year in Nashville and
my husband and I just formally moved in March.
But I feel like I've been living here pretty much pretending to live in
Nashville.
It's an amazing city and we were building a house in the woods, like in the
middle of
nowhere.
I'm very excited about it.
Incredible.
Incredible.
I tried that and stopped.
It's a construction such as disaster.
Okay.
So tell me about Simply Be what it was, what the outcome was, and with this
whole area of study,
of personal brand.
Yeah.
Well, before Simply Be, I'll take you back to even like the beginning, the
beginning,
which is really sort of the epiphany moment that I had around the space of
personal branding.
So I'm a serial entrepreneur.
I'm on my third business now after selling Simply Be, but my first business was
an online
magazine in the city of Chicago for the women of the city.
It was called Chiki.
Chicago.com was a really amazing girls guide to the city for like women in
their 20s and 30s,
my age and at the time.
And I was searching for where to go online.
So I did what a lot of entrepreneurs do is solve my own problem and create the
thing that was missing.
And so I scaled what became the biggest online platform for women in the
Midwest for about seven
years.
And as part of this was in 2008.
So this was the beginning of social media, like the dawn of the internet
marketing conversation.
And we had been organically attracting this mass audience of women.
Like we could push a button and reach basically 200,000 women in the Midwest of
Chicago.
So brands like Nike and Coca-Cola and Lulu Lemon and Bloomingdale,
I mean, I could go on and on.
We worked with over 200 brands in those seven years.
We're coming to me saying, how do we reach these women?
And so I had just an innate kind of aptitude for social media from the very,
very beginning.
But the real inflection point came actually when I left that business in 2014.
Transparently had a pretty toxic relationship with my then business partner.
You know, I'm sure many people on this call can relate to the challenges that
come with that
relationship.
And we're just ready to go off and do my own thing.
And I had no strategy.
I had no website.
I had no client.
I know nothing.
But I knew I wanted to go off and consult.
Like that was going to be the next thing that I did because I knew a lot at
that point
about marketing and branding by working with the biggest brands in the world.
And I have this little tattoo here on my wrist.
It says simply be.
I have that since I was like in my early 20s.
And I just looked down at it one day.
I was like, I'm going to name my business as simply be agency.
That sounds cute.
Again, no strategy.
I left that magazine to launch this by sending out an email to my network.
I BCC'd about 100 people and put a Facebook post up.
Literally, that's all I did to announce that I was leaving this business to go
start a new one.
And within five business days, this is a true story.
Right about this in my book.
I don't say this to brag.
I had about 25 to $30,000 worth of client retainer work booked.
Like people came out of the woodwork wanting to hire me.
And I was like, oh, the magazine isn't the brand.
I'm the brand.
People know my name.
People have clearly a perception of me as an expert or to help them do this
thing
called marketing branding that I didn't even realize at the time I had.
I was like, what if I was less like reactive and accidental and actually really
strategic and intentional?
And that's what really set me on the path to build my own brand, but like just
became
obsessed with the idea of a personal brand.
And so simply be started to evolve.
I started to pick up clients and I kind of worked with a hodgepodge of
basically anyone who would
hire me at the time because that's what, you know, the point I was at in my
career.
And then I took a hard pivot and like into personal branding exclusively as a
service
because I knew what I learned and had been doing for 70 years at that point in
the space of
marketing for major brands, but I'm obsessed with people and I believe in
humanity and authenticity
and that the internet should have more of it.
And so I combined sort of those two passions and this like real clear value
prop for simply
be as a personal branding agency.
And that's when the business blew up.
And I really, I say that I was at the right time at the right place.
This was like 2016-17 when like Gary Vaynerchuk was like everywhere and all of
a sudden everyone
sort of picked their heads up from the ground and was like, yeah, I think I
should be on this
thing called social media.
Like this is a thing.
And I was just in the right time at the right place.
And I went, you know, from one person, one woman consultant to about 30 full-
time people in less
than five years and just was exponential growth and opened up two offices in
Chicago and Nashville,
wrote a number one best-selling book, trademarked my methodology on how to
brand a person,
which I found out in the pandemic was a blessing because we innovated and had
to pivot as everyone
did. And I turned that curriculum into a DIY format and realized how teachable
it was to the masses.
So I've created multiple courses.
I've taught multiple workshops going to all sorts of corporate companies
actually
teach this to leadership and executive teams down to sales team and even like
junior level
employees because I believe everybody needs a brand no matter where you are in
your career,
especially entrepreneurs, founders and leaders and CEOs.
But I think knowing your brand is knowing what makes you you and how to
articulate that clearly
and quickly and authentically in a way that people can connect who've never
heard of you before.
And that is a superpower.
And so I believe our work changes people's lives as much as it does their
businesses.
Just to finish the tail end of the story where we are now,
on Hock Media, the company that ended up buying it,
I don't like to say buy me because they didn't buy me.
I wasn't for sale.
I called my business.
Not to end my door for like two years.
Like they were really consistent.
They like just didn't leave me alone.
And I wasn't ready because I knew the business was really going to take off
even after the book
launch in '21.
And I finally seriously entertained their call in the summer of '23 and
we were officially acquired in December of '23.
So we started the year as a Hock Media company and that's been its own journey
and
loves to share if anyone has any questions about the acquisition process.
But I love Hock Media.
They've been wonderful.
And yeah, there's nothing more truly that I love than helping people build
their brands
because like I said, it's so much more than just perception.
It's like empowerment.
Respect.
You're an incredible story.
So like I'm just trying to get my head around the timeline.
So in 2008, you started this agency?
No, in 2008, I started my magazine.
Right.
It's left in 2014 to start this.
14.
Mm-hmm.
And then I kind of like, yeah.
Like that's when I started my first company and like if you would have said the
words
personal brand to me at that time, I would have sounded Greek.
You know, it sounded like something I'm just like, I don't need that.
I don't want that.
I need to like sell on phones to people.
Yes, interesting.
It's so, but I guess I'm not an early adopter and you're just like the enemy.
Like I said, I'm also, I look a lot younger than I am, I think.
I'm around a while.
But I was saying like 2017, like when I pivoted the business,
in 2014, I was like general marketing branding consultant.
Like if you needed help with anything marketing related, you could hire me and
I'd help you.
But when I took a hard left or right or whatever, you want to call it into
personal branding in like 16, 17,
that was really when the conversation started in a lot of ways.
And even then, I mean, people were like, what is that or you?
Like why would I, that's so ego driven?
And it's become much more of a common conversation and like kind of everything
right now.
And that's why Auk was like, because we had really positioned ourselves as one
of the top
personal branding firms in the country.
And Eric, the CEO like was getting asked to do personal branding all the time
and didn't have
the internal team to do it, which is why he wanted us.
But you're right.
I mean, it's, to some people, the idea of branding yourself is weird.
But I think that if you really want to win today in business, like everyone's
online.
And instead of having to make those sales calls, like you were saying, when you
get your brand
right, it reverse engineers that process.
Like I didn't, I didn't pick up a single phone call to start an entirely new
business that
turned into a seven figure business in less than 18 months.
I did that all in my name and reputation and market perception.
And like I said, I do that accidentally.
And so when we get really intentional, that's when we become like the ROI on
this stuff is like
kind of almost intangible because there's so many doors open.
And you train your audience and your market to what to know you for through the
power of clarity
and consistency and constancy, which equal ability.
And that that's your strongest business card you'll ever have as your personal
brand.
And the power of the power of doing it authentically is really my jam and
making new
magnetic. And the last thing I'll say, because I want to take your questions.
You don't have I'm just like, clearly I'm very lit up about it, but you don't
have to be like
famous. Like you don't need millions of YouTube followers or LinkedIn followers
or
we've transformed people's businesses by growing their LinkedIn following from
like 300 people to
like 10,000 people. You know, you just have to be known in your lane.
And that's actually amazing and more effective than trying to go super wide and
shallow.
Like go narrowing indeed is the way is the move.
This is such a terrific conversation and you have such an amazing journey,
Jessica.
So let's dive in. And the question that's on everybody in mind probably is 2024
How do we build our personal brand? So let's pick a persona like say
entrepreneur.
And by the way, like I think we told you this, like everybody on this call is B
2B, SaaS.
A lot of founders, mostly founders, some marketers, every single one of them is
on this call because
Santos and I have a personal brand now. And 18 months ago, we had never made a
post on social
media. So this is like a near and dear conversation to us. And it's just worked
so well for us that
I'm trying to share as much about it as possible because I just can't believe
it.
You know, it's like the most. Yeah.
And like there's a lot of, there's a lot of, so there's two things that I'm
just dying to ask you.
Like one, I get asked a lot of the time because we have this magical alignment
where
like, so we were selling into D2C. That's like how we knew Hawke Media in that
world.
And then we launched a product for B2B. So like for us, for SaaS people in
March.
And we started making content for SaaS people last Labor Day.
And like now it just exploded because it's this magical alignment where I am my
ICP and my ICP
is on this platform, which is perfectly suited for this deep thought leadership
Yes. You know, whatever, right. Question number one I always get is,
what if I sell the hospitals, but I'm a SaaS? Should I still do the LinkedIn
thing, right? Like,
how do I build my personal brand to be this secret weapon if I don't have the
magical alignment that
you have Adam? Like, what would you recommend? You know, a slightly different
question, like,
what should their goal? What should their strat? I think everybody agrees with
you. It's like,
I need to use this tool for something. But like, what is a reasonable goal and
what outcomes could
I expect if I don't have this magic thing happening? So B2C, B2B, D2C,
like, I feel like at the end of the day, we're in we're in the P2P industry,
people to people,
like people do business with people. And you're a love that you started on
LinkedIn. I think that's
like social media is more powerful today in 2024 than it's ever ever been.
But what I feel like you've probably done Adam in a very like accidental way to
is
be yourself, like be a human. For sure. Right. Like,
anybody on LinkedIn, right? And that cuts through on LinkedIn, by the way,
because everybody's
like, like, they're at work. Yes. Yes. LinkedIn, we could do this whole, I
could do a whole hour on
LinkedIn alone. We can definitely talk about it. But it cuts you being yourself
, cuts through any
really truly everywhere. You just have to stay consistent with it. And to go
back to San Tosh's
question, like, what do we do? Where do we, where do we start? I would love, I
mean,
I'm not doing a shameless plug for my book. Like, I'm really not, but you
should go buy it. You
actually will shamelessly plug it. I won't go buy my book. But this is this is
the
entire framework and methodology of what we did at the agency. This is all
trademarked
methodology. And I have a very clear like process that I would just walk, I'll
walk you guys all
through on just how to think about it. First is, I believe messaging, like, yes
, you can create a
ton of content and like crank, crank, crank, social posts and blogs and emails.
But like,
if your message isn't clear, if your brand identity isn't sharp, it's just
going to be noise.
It's no, people aren't going to feel it. It's not going to pierce through at
the end of the day.
So I have this framework. That's my number one foundational framework called
the personal brand
hologram. I won't go through it in too much depth because we only have so much
time.
But essentially what I do is, and we do this, we've done this for thousands of
clients. This is
the first step we take all of our clients through. And sidebar, most of our
clients at Simply B were
in the B2B space. Like, that was our niche as an agency. We mainly work with
tech founders and
software, AI, you know, fintech, food and beverage recruiting, like that. We
weren't talking to
influencers and celebrities. We were serving the B2B space. So this works for
everyone. It works
like a charm. And it's essentially helps you identify like your brand slogan.
Like, what's the
thing, the one word, the phrase, the feeling that you want people to associate
your name with when
your name comes up? Like Gary Vaynerchuk is hustle. I keep going back to that
or, you know,
what do you think when you think of an Elon Musk, like, think of a lot of
things, but you know,
disruption, innovation, you know, acts, like whatever, alien. But this is like
the one thing
that you want people to just associate you with. This is typically the hardest
part of the hologram.
Then these four boxes are called your brand pillars, which are four topics for
basically
tenants of your brand message that you stick to. Because if you try to talk
about everything,
anything you feel like any day of the week, no one is going to have anything to
remember you for.
You're going to come off really kind of messy and unmemorable. And inside of
the brand pillars,
it's called be a no BS guide to increasing your self worth and net worth by
simply being yourself.
Just to answer the question. So these become the pillars that your brand like
literally stands on
and you have to be kind of vigilant with yourself with sticking to your own
script and creating
your message. This is like the blueprint that builds the house called you. And
then inside the
pillars are called called the unique insights, these little bullet points, so
that you can really
extract what makes that part of your brand yours and yours alone. So you might
be a tech innovator.
You might be a, you know, financial leader. You might be a incredible father.
You might want to
incorporate that into your message. But like, what is it about your approach to
fatherhood or your
approach to technology or whatever that is unique to you? And that's where the
hologram really starts.
It's just it helps us get clarity in the brand story. Because if you don't have
a brand story,
your content is going to be blurry. And we can't have blurry content today. It
has to be razor sharp.
From there, I have another tool called the supernova, which is a pretty much a
venn diagram where I
challenge the reader slash the client slash my team to combine those pillars
into one plus one
equals three, essentially. So if I combine like fatherhood with leadership,
like, what else can
I talk about now? And this is the idea of the supernova to explode your mind
with new ideas for
content. And this is a really great practice. If you're not a content creator,
and you're more of
like, you're more of a technical mind, this is why this framework works so well
, because it just is
it's super pragmatic, actually, you don't have to be exceptionally creative to
do it. But once
you're done with those two tools, those two exercises of really honing in on
your four content pillars,
you're kind of brand slogan. And you start to play with how those things come
to life together.
You have you have foundation of what your your messages, what you're going to
start talking about,
how it can come to life through blogs, through social posts, through email
newsletters, through
keynote talks, through programs, through, you know, webinars and white paper.
The next piece is where
you actually say it, and who you say it to. We have to know our audience, you
know, we can't be
everything to everyone or we're going to be nothing to know one. So there's a
big section in my book
of really identifying your audience, understanding the competitive landscape,
just looking at other
people in your space who have interesting and, you know, impressive personal
brands who are
reaching that same audience and how you can differentiate. So it's a bit of
brand analysis and
strategic study. Did the lights just go out where you are? Well, it's just got
dark. Okay.
It's like it looks kind of like, yeah, like campfiring. And I hope I'm not
going through this too fast.
I just want to be efficient. This is this is perfect. And I can't wait to like
say a couple
things once you get done because you're saying this and like the best people,
what you're saying.
I just have all these examples still like sight. Yeah, like,
I don't really believe in competition, but like study your competition, like
look at the other
people who are like crushing it with their personal brands in your industry and
beyond.
And there's things that we can learn and be inspired by when we see that. And
then the last
thing I'll share because there's much more to get through in the book. I talk
about PR, I talk about
social media in depth, but this is one of my cornerstone frameworks for
strategy, which is this what I
call the pinnacle content framework. Most of us start with social media.
Everyone wants to play
on LinkedIn and Instagram and X and Facebook. And this is where we think our
personal brand lives
and dies. That's if you want to be a content creator for a living. But I
believe everybody on
this call is an executive and wants to be paid for their expertise and business
. And so this
is what we call in so many words, a thought leadership strategy, where we zoom
up and we
start at the top with pinnacle content. And pinnacle content is how you
establish thought
leadership by creating deeper, more slightly time intensive, high value content
in the form
of a podcast. This is thought leadership, what you do every single week at them
. This like,
you know, you've branded it, you were saying earlier, like, this is a fun thing
we've called it
this thing and just messed around whoever you were with before. I was like, no,
you branded it.
You just called it, you needed a thing. We have secondary content,
amplification content through
email, SMS, like push notification, there's all sorts of ways we can get our
content out there.
So people are aware of our platform. And there's the importance of like
language and tone and voice
and everything you're doing. And then this is what we call external outreach,
which is our sort of
spin on PR. And we did PR services for our, we do PR services for our clients,
where we get them on,
you know, Forbes and CNN and all of the major outlets, that's like traditional
PR. But in today's world,
it's evolved and you can really get yourself seen on other people's platforms
by way of
LinkedIn lives and podcasts and panels and virtual events. And there's just so
many avenues for you
to amplify your brand onto other people's channels to grow brand awareness and
bring people back to
your channel. And so what we do is this looks very simple, but this becomes a
granular strategy of
all the different pieces we put in place. And that's why, you know, we had a
business because a lot
of people were busy and we did it for them. But there are a few things that you
can obviously,
if you're serious about building a personal brand, you're going to, you're
going to need to spend
time on it. You have to, you have to look at this as an essential part of your
day to day, week to
week schedule. So that's, I'm done. You can, you can ask me anything now. It
was a
Okay, the first thing the first thing I'm going to ask is how much time,
because like,
I view it now, again, we have this magical alignment, it's actually
all of our marketing, right? Yeah.
And it's my whole job now, you know, Mondays, I have internal meetings in one
way or another.
I'm either doing guest slots on other people's podcast for the other people's
popcorn things,
or we're like filming for something or I'm writing, you know, whatever, it's
just, I think
it just, for me, it's like the future, you know, nothing like it. But for
someone who's just,
I hear you, Jessica, every word of it, I bought the book, I'm going to read the
whole thing, but like,
how much time am I going to spend on this?
You're going to probably, I mean, I want to answer this very intentionally,
because I don't want
people to like, you know, freak out, but like, it takes time. There's ways to
scale your time
with chat GPT today, by hiring some internal people or external partners. But
you're the thought
leader, you know, it has to come from you. And you do have to dedicate
at least a couple hours a week. I mean, it sounds like your business has
evolved. Adam,
we're like, you have the systems and structures in place, and you understand
the value of the
ROI of what you're doing by getting that visibility. And so that's become your
number one priority,
which is something to aspire to, to and be motivated by to everyone on the call
listening.
Not everybody can turn that on tomorrow. I think that if you dedicate, you know
, I don't know
specifics to who's who on the call, but like posting a couple times a week in
LinkedIn, like
three to four times a week in the grid in the feed, because you're absolutely
right that
LinkedIn wants you to be a human being, and you're standing out because you're
being like,
you're fun in your business. We actually worked very closely with LinkedIn, it
simply be because
of our clientele. We had mainly executives. So they wanted us to be encouraging
our clients to
have major presence on that platform. And to just be a content creator on
LinkedIn today is an edge,
because so few people are creating content there today. Most people use it as a
content
consumption channel of like the news and what's happening in their industry.
But if you create
content, just strictly in the feed, you're winning your step ahead. You, I
would recommend
you take it a step further and maybe blog once or twice a month. You have
LinkedIn newsletters now
where you can blast your whole network with updates. Getting yourself out there
on some podcasts a
couple times a month is also hugely effective. The podcast space is extremely
exciting. And there's
multiple every niche in the world, every industry in the world has a podcast
about it, so that you
can really dive deep with targeted audiences there and build rapport with
amazing hosts. That's the
number one form of networking today is podcasting. It's a long-winded answer to
your question on
because it's kind of hard to answer, but I would say just kind of like, it
works. It's powerful.
It's pretty much the main marketing vehicle most businesses are using today,
those that are smart,
and they're spending a lot of time and resources on it. I'm not telling you to
do that right away
or even ultimately, but a couple hours a week where you're creating value for
your community
and sharing it in any capacity is necessary. It takes, and content creation
takes time.
Agreed. I know. So, back to what you were saying about the pillars.
Yeah. The people that I started studying when I really wanted to up my game on
LinkedIn was
this dude, Chris Walker, and I think he's like really. I know he's like, yes,
he's like, he's a
friend of mine too. You know, demand-gen marketing was like his thing. And like
I thought this stuff was so good. And then I spent weeks looking at his stuff
and I'm like,
wait a second. I was listening to like a hundred podcast episodes. I'm like,
wait,
like this guy's talking about five things literally. Like I made a spreadsheet.
I'm like,
here are the things he's talking about. And here are the things that I could
talk about,
which like kind of would be my version of the things he's talking about. That's
literally how
I started when I started writing for B2B. And it worked great. You know, kind
of like this idea
with anything, right? Like politics or media or like whatever. It's like, he's
a master in my
opinion because you it's like he's so good at writing that you don't realize he
's saying the
same thing he's been saying for five years. And then he wraps it up and it's
like, that motherfucker
just got me on it multi touch attribution again. Like, how do you do that?
He's so fresh and so real.
That's supernova tool comes in. I mean, people are like, you could you create
your message and
you're like, okay, how do I make this? Never boring, but never off brand. And
that tool really helps.
You come up with new and constantly new ways to talk kind of about the same
thing,
because you are who you say you are to your audience over and over and over
again.
You train your audience how to see you with through the power of your content.
And and he's
mastered that and that's amazing that you took that from him because it's how
it works today.
You have to you have to stay consistent. That's how you you stand out and rise
to the top essentially.
I mean, can we get some just from the audience? Like, I'm like on the edge of
my seat right now.
Are you guys enjoying this this info? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I just feel like
this is so good.
Let me ask a question while we're waiting for some more. So you spoke about
authenticity.
Yes. In B2B, are they still do's and don'ts to authenticity while staying true
to your values?
I mean, that's a different how do you bring your values and biases and beliefs
while staying
authentic and maintaining some kind of, you know, I guess some do's and don'ts
that so you don't cross
the line. So you're talking to a very biased woman. And I feel like, I mean,
you don't
don't be a dick. Don't be inappropriate. Don't talk. Don't don't go to
political. Don't, you know,
don't call people out. I'm just sore. But I'm just, you know, come from your, I
think the big,
the biggest do. This is really the unlock and the reframe that all of our
clients like had to have
because many of our clients, like we're CEOs of major tech, like tech companies
that wanted
nothing to do with being in the public eye, but it was like their CMO who was
like, we need you
as the CEO to be out there. And they kind of like drag their heels into our
office. And at the day,
when you really craft a message, that is what I call of service, meaning every
single piece of
content you create, you are thinking and connecting to the person on their
computer or their phone
that's going to receive that content. And you're there to help them. You're
there to educate them.
You're there to inspire them. And if you come from a genuine, like motivation
to be of service,
you're never going to come off egotistical. And if you, if people think that
you're being
egotistical because you have a brand, then that's not your problem. That's
theirs for the record.
That's a projection. But, you know, to not be like self promotional and gross
and make it all about
what you had for breakfast or how well your business did. Like people want to
see humanity,
people want to see authenticity, but they want to see it in service of their
own businesses,
their own team, their own industries, so that you, they come to you as an
authority and a trusted
resource because they can feel like you care about them. And that has to be a
come from,
and people can feel that energetically. Another thing to answer your question,
if you don't mind,
am I allowed to share my screen? I'm going to share my screen and share
something with you.
Let me just make sure I have it up. So one of our clients is the CEO of a
company called
Second Front, and they are a defense technology company. Okay, so like he was a
marine like
magnificent executive in like one of the most serious, like they work with the
government.
Okay, let's talk about needing to be a certain level of executive polish. And
he came to us
a couple of years ago, and we also branded his COO, but he's the CEO, his name
is Tyler Sweatt.
We transformed his entire brand. We got him at South by Southwest. We got him
on
some really major media outlets and just they went, they had just raised about
$80 million and
we're going after hiring him like 100 people within a year. They were in a
massive mass scale up when
they hired us, which is why they hired us, because he was sort of invisible and
he was the CEO.
He actually was the CRO and got promoted to CEO during his time working with
Simply Be, and he
credited a lot of that to our work with him. But anyway, you'll see here, you
know, the first,
we wrote a brand story. Tyler Sweatt doesn't want to talk about his personal
brand. He didn't
care. Like he was like, one of those guys that was not here for the fame, he
was here for the work.
He wants to talk about being an integrator for national security and emerging
technology.
So we write this brand story. I won't go through the whole thing, but this was,
you know, it's part
of the magic at Simply Be. Now, he's kind of like Joe Roganee, which is why
they wanted his personality
to be out there a little bit more. And he, he's like funny and like, like rocks
lays and stuff like
this. Like we, we, we put this on his branding to like give it an edge and make
it fun. Just,
this was an internal document, but just humanized him. And this is his, this is
his hologram, right?
So de-risk your life is his headline, who he is, by the way, the pillars of the
hologram go
number one, who you are, number two, what you do, number three, how you do it,
number four, why it works.
So number four is kind of who you are as a human being without your paycheck,
like who are you?
Good dad, good dude, good American. That's really kind of his energy.
Shapes outcomes, what he's doing essentially at second front is his app, like
exact sort of
tactitional responsibility is to shape the outcomes between emerging tech and
national security.
How he is doing it is through integration and delegation. And this is really
what we wanted to
position the brand for since one of their objectives in KPIs was talent
recruitment.
And then why it works is because he's no BS, real relationships and real
revenue.
We did his supernova where we came up with a whole bunch of fresh comp topics
for him.
We transformed his hologram into an elevator pitch. And then we came up with
voice tone,
look, feel, this was his brand identity. And then also an audience analysis of
really understanding
who he's talking to so that every single piece of content is not just random,
but pointing towards
the pain points of what they're specifically looking for. And we did analysis
of the white
space, like I said, and looking at other executives. Again, you probably don't
know these names.
None of these people are famous, but they're doing really strong things on
LinkedIn and social
media that we wanted to pull pages from so that he could stand out. What we
ultimately did with
Tyler actually go really quickly to this is his brand strategy where we put
together a podcast.
And it's called All Quiet on the Second Front. It got like, I don't know, a
couple hundred
thousand downloads in the first month. It was tons of reviews. He was
recognized in London at a
conference six months after we launched his podcast by a stranger who came up
to him and said,
I listened to your show. So we built out his original concept and all of his PR
, we got him on a
handful of these outlets and podcasts. We write the pitch letter, all this to
say, we optimize his
LinkedIn and we transformed his visibility as the CEO of this company. They've
raised more money.
And this is a long-winded answer to your questions, Santoosh, of like what st
ews and don'ts. And if
you like, it's all obviously based on the personality, we're not going to like
push you to be anyone
you're not. But Tyler's kind of like this gruff, Joe Roganee, vet who like is
really passionate about
American values and like building a huge business. And that's who we put him
out there to be online.
And it was magnetic, you know, and it really, it really, really clicked. And we
also did branding
for the COO at the time, who was a woman who was one of eight women in the
entire defense tech
spaces. And we really led with her story of being a working mom and how she
balances it all. And
also what kind of leader she is, she's a magnificent leader. But that blew up
her brand and got her
on 50 podcasts to talk about the balance between executive leadership and
motherhood, which humanized
the executive suites in a very like tech forward industry that also help with
recruitment. So
it just depends on your goals, your objectives, your audience.
Can we just what are goals that people would have with this, right? Because it
's when you look at
what I'm doing and what I'm yelling about, it's like, oh, we're like, our
business is crushing
because of this. Why else is this a superpower?
So, I mean, I have so much to say about this. First of all, most people come to
this space
when they're at an inflection point, where like them being more visible is
going to help them with
what they're trying to accomplish, whether they're raising money, they're
scaling up,
they're about to sell their business, they need to hire a bunch of new people,
they're about to launch something new. So really, what's your inflection point?
Like,
why did you come to this call? Like, why does this space interest you in the
first place? Like,
what's the potential you're trying to reach? And then breaking that down into
your milestones
and your KPIs. Obviously, it's a business driver, obviously. I think that it
creates
actually doors to open for you that you probably can't even imagine opening for
you, like getting
asked to speak, being on someone's podcast, being brought into a deal,
referrals, introductions,
media that picks you up organically, that exposes you and gives you credibility
across. I mean,
I got picked up on Forbes. Like, I had an organic article in the early days of
Simply Be.
Like, I didn't pay for that. Somebody reached out of a contributing writer and
did a whole
article on me and I called me an expert in personal branding that I wasn't even
looking for. But that
writer was following me on Instagram and she was like, I want to do a story
about you. And that
accreditation of being a Forbes expert changed my business, put me in a
different sandbox to talk
to people about this. So yes, it's going to grow business. It's going to grow
influence. It's going
to go reach. It's going to grow relationships, your network, your credibility.
And how you want
that to look like, I often say a strategy is in a strategy unless it has
objectives, KPIs and
milestones. So really asking yourself, what are the metrics that matter to you?
Why are you doing this?
And building your message and your strategy from that point. But there's a
multitude of
ROI that can come from this. So, there's the go ahead, Sartos.
Oh, I was going to ask a question that somebody from the audience just
said. So the example you shared about Tyler was great, but he also had a lot of
experience.
And he was a senior exec. If somebody is slightly earlier in the career or
doesn't have the level
of experience, how do you go about building the brand? And let me take a pause.
I mean, I'm a little, I'm a little woo. So I hope that's okay with you guys.
But I feel like everybody has a story to tell. I feel like everyone has their
own unique life
experience, whether you're 28 or you're 58. And in order to become like a Tyler
, you have to start
sharing your story. You have to start putting yourself out there and attracting
your audience
for what you have to say based on where you are in your career. A lot of the
companies that hired
us at the executive level brought us in to do workshops and trainings to their
junior level
teams because they needed to know their brand. They needed to know how to
communicate their value.
They needed more confidence in their own elevator pitches and presenting in
front of
higher-up leaders, showing up on social media, representing the brand. I don't
really think
that you're too young to ever start this work. And I don't think you're ever
too old to start this
work. I think every single person has a value based on their own unique resume,
their own unique
education, their own unique family system, culture, heartbreaks, failures,
successes. Like all of that
stuff is your story. All of that stuff is actually your goal. And just ensuring
that you're always
sharing it from service. But I don't think that there's, I think you actually
have to get on it even
more significantly. If you aren't like a Tyler one day but you want to be,
start to build that brand reputation now through this work. I think that it's
an amazing question.
But I think everyone has a story to tell. And you shouldn't be disempowered by
a CEO with a big
brand because if that was the case, then none of us would do this work. And so
many people are.
And I say this in my book, like there are people out there that are doing the
personal branding
really well who aren't that great. But they're getting the business that you
want to get
simply because they're visible and you're not. So that's a huge loss. So now is
a time to tell
your own story, be yourself, be strategic and consistent with it. But there's
no reason why you
can't position yourself as the expert that you are becoming.
So a few questions have come in about like the time commitment again, right? So
like,
what, what, and I know it's not your agency anymore, but like what, what would
someone who
worked with an agency? So like, I say the wrong thing, I started with a ghost
writer and it wasn't
the right. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And I've been staying, start with a
ghostwriter,
because I think in some ways it helped because I watched how people wrote on
LinkedIn and sort
of started moving in a direction, but there was no strategy behind it like you
're saying. And now
there is, and it just emerged, you know, but like, you know, I have all that
stuff now. Like,
I understand why what I say fits into all of that because it just, I know why I
'm writing when
I'm writing and I know, you know, whatever. So what, how does someone work with
an agency? Like,
are there other entities like simply beers that the only one or like, how does
somebody,
how does somebody start this process? What's the time commitment to like get a
couple of those
decks like you just showed, right? Like, and you guys don't go straight,
correct?
No, we do. We do. We do.
So I'm glad you brought that up about the ghostwriter thing because you started
there.
And then it didn't work. It felt flat because there was no strategy and there
was no brand.
And that had to emerge in order to get what would be ultimately the output
right,
which has always been my approach. Like, you can, you kind of get what you pay
for in this industry,
in the agency life. Like, if you want to go cheap, you can do it, but you'll,
you'll, you'll get a
less sophisticated copywriter or strategist or creative. So my staunch
philosophy, which is
what we started the whole business on, which is what I wrote the book about,
which is why how we
sold the business was you have to, you have to slow down a little bit before
you speed up and
get the messaging and the strategy right. And that's what that deck when I
showed you with Tyler,
like what we did that was. And then on that same note, people don't want to
wait that long.
People don't want to go that slow. They want to, they want to activate. And so
what we did is we
sort of flipped the agency model on its head. And instead of doing this over
phases of months,
we actually have a program. It's our flagship program where we get the client
in for a full day.
At the top of the engagement, we spend like six, seven hours with a single
client. And we build it
all out in like whiteboard creative session. And then my team goes and delivers
that brand
strategy and brand identity. I'm sorry, brand identity comes first messaging
first in two weeks.
And then strategy comes two weeks after that. And then we move into ongoing
execution, which is
we're full service. So we do podcast production, we do ghostwriting, we do
social media management,
we do PR, we do quick photography, headshots, we any graphic design, like
anything that you would
need for building a personal brand platform, we do. Not everybody needs all of
it. But we can
certainly offer a customized approach to what you need. And that's one kind of
way to work with
us where we basically do it all for you. And that's a 12 month engagement,
because I'll tell you this,
if you're kind of invisible right now, online, and expect to see massive
results in three months
or six, it's a long game, like the people who are crushing it. And I'm how long
have you been doing
this? For real, it's all the time 18 months, it took me 12 months before I
understood why I was
writing the words that I'm writing. And now I just perfectly, I have three
different audiences. I know
what post will agitate what audience, you know, and to what extent before I
even post it usually.
And I dedicate a tremendous amount of time to meticulously answering every
single comment I get,
because I'm a community play. And I feel like that's, it's the H to H, right?
It's like, that's
what I'm doing this for in the first place. It's to make people feel like they
know me like a friend.
But it was 12 months is a short answer before anything even close to happened.
Exactly. So you have to know. Yeah. And now that I sort of, so like,
I love this conversation, because I feel like I now have vocabulary to explain
this so much more
clearly to people, like why it's a long game, you know, it's like, it took me a
while to figure
out my pillars, even if you figured out your pillars, it's going to take nine
months of
waterboarding those pillars into people's heads for them to be resonant and
like get this
compounding momentum and everything. And that's just like, yeah, you know, what
I believe from
posting a bunch, right? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I imagine if you had, I mean,
because you just
dove right in and you've made like 18 months to have the impact you've made is
incredible.
And if you had had a little bit more of that strategic clarity from the top,
and you know,
there's nothing wrong with like figuring it out as you go, I figured out as I
go to some degree,
because it's always changing. And that's part of the fun. But there, there is a
chapter in my book,
in the very beginning of the chat of the book called, it's a long game. Like
this is a long
game, you guys, you can't dip in to LinkedIn consistently for three months and
expect to have
a brand, you know, people who are, if you look at all the people you probably
admire,
like the Chris Walkers of the world, who are like beyond beyond they've been
doing it for a decade.
Plus, so, you know, you just have to commit to like this being the thing that
you're gonna,
you're not just building the asset right now of your brand for your business
today,
you're building it for your future, you're building it for your legacy career,
because you're going to probably sell your business or jump to another role or
whatever,
you're always going to be you. And so building that and investing in that is
like, I think the most
important asset you can invest in in your, your career is your personal brand.
So, so we have a
12 month program back to that and that's why it's 12 months, because we want to
deliver,
we want, we want to be able to link arms with our clients and commit to that
path and, and have it
compound because that's what happens when you're consistent, it compounds.
There's another program
that we do where we just do brand and strategy. We build out basically what you
just saw for Tyler,
but actually a lot more granular because we did execution for Tyler. We managed
his brand for like
two or three years. The other program we do is called the thought leadership
strategy, where we
just build the brand and the strategy for you in a pretty comprehensive
playbook and then hand
that to you so that you can take it and build it like if you're, if you, the
aptitude like Adam to
like crank and have the time and do the content yourself, but just need the
roadmap. We also do
that. Or if you have an internal team and you don't want to outsource it to an
agency, we can do that.
And then we have one other program called the brand essentialist, which is just
messaging
and visual brand identity like look, feel logo color, response, like tone. That
's just a branding
package that is not necessarily a strategy package, which depends on where you
are. Some people
just need messaging and to polish up how they look online. So those are the
ways you can work with us.
And it's really fun. Yeah. So everybody's by the way, everybody's dying to know
approximate prices
for stuff. Just like, you don't have any. Could you just, is it a million
dollars? Is it like a
thousand dollars? Right? Like what is it? No, no. It's so our, if you're going
into the thought
leadership program, which is the 12 month program, you're looking at like an
annual investment of
probably 150 base broken down by month is like, you know, eight to 10 a month.
The thought leadership
strategy development is like a one time fee of around 30, 34. And then the
brand essentialist
program, which is branding, which is our entry level programs around 20. Like I
said, you get
what you pay for. I think we're pretty competitively priced. If you want to go
try and hire a social
media agency to do this all for you at $2,000 a month, you'll probably have
what Adam had and
need to revert and kind of come back to the to square one. And that's why we
never jumped in at
execution. We took the time at the beginning to really, really understand the
client, the audience,
the message, the objectives, the strategy, which channels for distribution made
sense
according to their industry. Like we, that stuff is what makes you stand out at
the end of the day.
So that's, that's the real real. That's what we cost.
Um, what is the topic? Good. Yeah. Just a quick question. So just go, what are
the top three
reasons why somebody feels to build a brand? So they embark on the journey, but
you see them not
ending up. They don't make the time. They're not fully in and committed.
They have resistance to being seen. They just don't feel like, you know,
there's a bit of insecurity there, which I understand that, that, but that can
get in the way.
Um, they don't know their, their message. They're just simply not clear and
they don't know
they're paralyzed every time they try to go create something. They don't, they
don't do it because
there are, there's, they're mush in their spread out in their brain and they're
, they don't take
action. Um, so it's, you know, it's messaging, it's confidence, it's
consistency. It's like all
the things that I've been saying. Great question. By the way, I went to go buy
your book. I sent
the wrong link earlier. I said, what's your new book? Oh, I have a new book
here. But I'm getting
this right now. Is anybody else buying this book? Has anybody else bought it?
It's nice. Some people bought the wrong book. Yeah. It's okay.
So somebody asked somebody who's like, oh my God, somebody's like, those prices
are insane.
What can I do? Uh, my answer was buy the book.
By the, you guys, I'm serious. This is why I wrote the book. I wrote the book.
Like this,
this book is what? $25 right now on Amazon. I don't even know. I, I talked to
my lawyer. I
talked to my dad. They were like, are you sure you want to give it away in your
book? Like what
you're doing at the agency? I was ridiculously generous with this book. I read
a lot of marketing
books as research for this book. And I was like, these are stupid because they
don't give you
anything. And I just want you to pay them more money to give them the real
goods.
And I took an opposite approach with this book and I gave you the keys to the
kingdom. The caveat
is that you have to do it yourself. Um, but I say, and they did come, I got a
lot of clients who
read the book because they were like, I need more help with this. However, if
you read my book,
there are, it's part workbook. I mean, it's a book, but there's tons of
frameworks and exercises
and tools. And if you read my book, cover to cover and you get out of a pen and
you do what I tell
you to do, you will have a brand and a strategy by the end of the book. That's
my, that is my
commitment to you. So, and I've sold a hundred thousand copies of this book. So
people, and people
have seen results from the book. So we'd love to welcome any of you in to
simply be if, if you
want to have a conversation, I'm, this was not a sales pitch at all. But if you
guys need the help,
come find me. But at the very least get the book.
I got the book. I'm going to read it. Um, man, this was awesome. I don't know
what I expected,
but this was not it. What did you expect? I don't know. I just didn't know.
I just didn't know what you were, I didn't know what you were going to say. And
I had never
heard this despite being very in this world. I had never heard this explained
like this.
You know, that's not to be a dick. Um, so, so, so yeah, like for instance,
somebody asked a
question about pillars earlier, right? And when I was trying to figure my
pillars out, I got this
Justin Welsh worksheet and I was trying to like, fill it out, but like, I didn
't
do the other stuff first. You know, I didn't understand what it was about me
that I was trying
to express and who, you know, like I had not created the character and I was
just like, oh,
email marketing and e-commerce and like, whatever, you know what I mean? It
wasn't that's not.
Yes, you bring up a really good point. I want to be mindful of time because I
know we only have
an hour, but I'm so, so glad you actually said that because that's kind of like
the
sauce of what we, what I, what I do and what I believe about this space is we
are building
personal brands, not corporate brands or product brands, but personal brands
and people respond
to emotion. That's what, that's what drives everything. Every purchase, every
referral, every
dissect in action, action is based upon emotion. I often, I've heard this once
before and I've
repeated it my whole career. People aren't trying to be like brands. Brands are
trying to be like
people. Brands are trying to effect an emotional affinity upon itself
constantly. And when we think
about in the hologram and the pillars, like when you guys read my book or you
do this exercise
and I walk you through how to get your pillars down, but it's not just what you
do and why people
would pay you money, but who you are and why they should like you and trust you
and want to connect
with you. And that's based on your humanity. So the hologram is here to
reconcile the truth,
the branding needs to be an exercise in clarity, to feel someone's brand in
less than 10 seconds.
But human beings aren't meant to be understood in that amount of time because
we're humans.
So how do you bring those two things together? And the hologram is pretty
phenomenal because
it, I mean, I've done this again for thousands of people and it, we, we just
get it every time.
To create that magnetism, you have to not just talk about ecom and email
marketing, but like,
you, and like the things that you're dealing with and who you are and effect
that emotion and that
personality. So yes, well done. That's definitely why my stuff now is working.
I said it in some guys said in a comment a few months ago, he's like, wait, you
're just
crushing us because you keep telling everyone about all the mistakes, making as
you're building
your startup. I'm like, don't tell anyone. I tell you something really crazy.
So I got a job.
But I went, I'm in the middle of a launch right now, I'm launching my new book.
And my team is
helping me with all of these auto automation sequences. And we work with active
campaign and
like one of my team members didn't click the right button. And we sent out the
wrong email with the
internal subject line that went to like thousands of people said like be and
wind sales email number
three. I was pissed, but like understood like things happen. So we had to send
out like an
oops email, like, like we kind of had to craft ourselves and address it. I sold
more books from
that one oops email than I did in the entire sequence. Incredible.
People want your human. I'm not smart. Well, thank you so much. You're so
awesome.
If you ever anything great to do, and I'm sure Santos will say the same to help
you in any way,
just let me know. Oh, little dude, thank you for having me. I mean, this was so
rad.
That is the lovely audience. Thanks. This was so great. Everybody will send a
recording around.
You're the best. Thank you so much for all. You are too. I was looking forward
to this.
And thank you for making it work with my schedule. You guys are awesome. Thank
you all for being
here. Come find me on LinkedIn. You guys drop. Don't just request me like drop
me an email so that
I can like fought. LinkedIn's a little intense for me. I have a lot of requests
. They just say,
just say you were here and let's be friends and don't be turning 28 next
Thursday. That's why she
couldn't come. Thank you so much. This was an awesome session. I had so much
fun.
You too. Take care. Talk to you guys soon. Bye, guys.
Bye, everybody.